The great mischief of proper journalism is that it generally tends to be far too dull.
Or, more accurately, the CBC thinks we are generally far too dull for proper journalism.
The grand miracles of everyday life are so common that they have become invisible to the modern eye. Think of only a few of them:
We stay warm in the winter because of oil and housing insulation
Many of the great plagues of the past are cured by modern antibiotics
We can call our friends across the country
Most of us are able to use our eyes and see
Our bellies are always full
These miracles are so repetitive that we no longer notice them. Our brains are blind to our noses; our sense of wonder is blind to everyday miracles. In large part, this is because the media sells us sensationalism to keep things on edge. We read online articles or listen to the news and conclude our world is a world of extremism. Every story is more “wild” than the last. Every headline details a greater danger than the day before.
Take COVID, for example. Day after day, we were assaulted with figure after figure:
“10 more dead! 20 more in hospital! 5 more injured!”
Of course, no one dismisses the tragedy of losing a loved one to disease, but for every “10 more have died” that the media reported, there could have been a “4.2 million in Alberta are alive!” The fact that millions of Albertans and tens of millions of Canadians survived COVID is really a more sensational fact than those who (again, tragically) perished. It’s a tragedy that a man be injured in a car accident, but it’s far more remarkable that hundreds of thousands of cars travel Alberta’s highways every day without a crash.
But it would be incorrect to suppose the CBC sells sensational stories because senatorial stories sell. Their profits (or lack thereof) prove they care little for private profit at all. Why would you, when you are subsidized by government? Instead, the CBC sells sensational stories because they shape an agenda.
The old journalist produced as much credible information as possible.
The new journalist restricts as much credible information as possible.
The power of the new journalist is not what they say, but what they do not say. The danger of the CBC is not what they tell us, but what they are paid not to tell us. It’s true some Canadians died of COVID—the CBC made sure to show us that—but what they didn’t tell us was how many Canadians survived COVID. The former makes us panic in fear; the latter eases our worries. Proper journalism provides both sides of the narrative; CBC has become the narrative.
To take another example, the CBC tells us that those on the right are generally extremists.
We know that’s a lie.
What we do not know is a lie is what we are not told. Perhaps the Liberal Government has ordered a hush over a particular story that otherwise would decimate their party. How are we ever to hear? The CBC is paid by government, are they not? As such, is it not in their interest to stay silent on specific stories, or divert the public attention away from some real scandals and onto false ones?
Instead of reporting on stories, the CBC creates them. They drum up drama to further the narrative they are ordered to provide. We need to defund the CBC, not because they are journalists, but because they are bureaucrats. We will never have truth reported to us while the media is married to the Government of Canada because,
Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.*
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