(What Was Wrong With CBC’s The National Mission Statement.)
Time allotment for The National stories on Wednesday.
What was wrong with The National Wednesday night:
- The lead story was the NYC terrorist attack again. A fair report but not sure it needed to be the lead story again.
- The lead report segued into Trump’s response to the attack. The CBC didn’t like his “name-calling and finger pointing” of the terrorist and the diversity lottery immigration program. Then they rolled out the usual Democrat politicians so they could blast Trump’s response as divisive.
- Then the CBC continued its long saga reporting almost every other day on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry. More heartbreaking stories, but sadly nothing new from what has been seen over the past while from the bungled inquiry.
- Oddly a report on the criminal investigation by the Competition Bureau involving raiding offices of Loblaw, Metro and George Weston left out all of their names and spent most of the report having experts say it’s likely nothing and that grocery stores have tight profit margins. Bizarre way to report the development, but like I say in my mission statement, CBC tends to go easy on the elite, an inevitability with state-funded media.
- The National quickly reported on the Liberals plan to up immigration, including the Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen making the announcement. Was a quick report just going over the plan, but I’m sure in coming days CBC will cheer lead the decision.
- The CBC then spent a whopping 15 minutes on an Indigenous reserve’s new housing developments and a new type of home. The National loves to spend a third of each episode on a long feature that probably loses the average viewer’s interest after a few minutes. I appreciate the importance of covering Indigenous peoples’ stories, but they seem to get an inordinate amount of the coverage on The National.
- After the break the CBC had another feature on an indigenous story about a film that is entirely in a rare Indigenous language. Another snoozer for someone looking to get the news of the day.
- The rest of the program was little unremarkable segments and then a longer segment on the chances of the Canadian Men’s Hockey team’s chances of winning at the Winter Olympics. The National will continue to promote its upcoming Olympic coverage clearly.
- A top news story missing from The National‘s coverage? Toronto Sun columnist Tarek Fatah’s would-be assassin being arrested. Tarek’s daughter Natasha Fatah is one of CBC’s best reporters. (Yes, they have good people within the organization, the problem is the corporate climate putting pressure on CBC staff, which causes a PC echo chamber in its coverage of the news. The government funding also compromises the coverage.) It seems odd that those two features needed to run so long that no mention of the attempted assassination of a Canadian columnist didn’t make the nightly news.
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Raving Canuck 