A guest post from… take a wild guess. (See associated picture.)
– Fake Ouimet
I think it was last year when Ouimet published a YouTube video from Al-Jazeera.
The announcer was inviting comment and opinion, even in the form of videos, and promised to broadcast as many of them as they could.
This was startling, and encouraging. So very different from the way most media outlets deal with dissent and lunacy. They’re always happy to deal with compliments, but anything else is given token viewership. Flashed up at the end of a program.
Management thinks this is fair. They’re even proud of themselves for being so gracious and generous.
They’re smug, and, in fact, cowardly.
When these people edit others they do so to serve themselves.
Yes, they will place it in the guise of protecting you, protecting you from harm, from views and opinions and certainly specific words, that might harm you.
But it is themselves they are protecting foremost.
Does not an intolerance toward differing viewpoints betray an insecurity?
There are times I want to turn things off, and to not listen. Bill O’Reilly, for example. Or George.
But I really like the people at CBC. I also grew up reading the media in this country, and I thought there was an extreme anti-CBC vibe. I thought that even before I worked there. When the CBC does this, they get ripped, but when other media does the same thing, they don’t. And it’s beyond the taxpayer dollar, most people don’t know that only half of the funding comes from taxpayers, the other half comes from advertisers, so I thought it was a bit odd. I believe in what it is. They’re good people, and I wanted to work with them, so if I’m going to work with them, I’m sure we can make something good.
Carlin: “CBC should be seeking out the widest range of opinions.” No, it shouldn’t. CBC should publish its own chosen, curated, cultivated ecosystem of opinions and let other people publish dissenting opinions.
Push this to the limit and you’ll have CBC hosting dozens upon dozens of columns calling for the elimination of the CBC. Why aid and abet the enemy?
– [Fake Ouimet]
Yet the people that both of them are referring to are Canadians, their fellow citizens.
What are they so afraid of?
If people want to call for the dismantling of the CBC, why should that not be allowed to be heard on the CBC?
What is the CBC afraid of?
For our own sake, we must be open to having our views challenged.
It’s how we grow, and understand things better. We question our own views and allow others to confront and correct us if necessary.
It is this commitment to openness that helps us to further believe in ourselves, and that all that edumacation every day and year is actually helping us to help others to make the world a better experience for everyone.
The CBC, more than anyone else, must be open to a wide range of views, and not just the pretensions toward [doing so] that have been pervasive since This Hour Has Seven Days went off the air.
The CBC is more than 70 years old. It was commissioned when there was simply no media like it available in this country.
This is now a world of true multi-media.
Do we really need the CBC any more?
Or is it really just the people who work there who need the CBC?
And are these questions just too frightening, bizarre and unreasonable to be permitted on the air of the CBC?