[Hardy]

Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:

The old service to the boondocks argument is out of date. As I said before elsewhere, with the internet and satelite, broadcast television is becoming a dinosaur.

I bet rural areas have really bad telegraph service, too. Who cares?

About 1/4 of children in rural areas of the US live below the poverty line. "Let them eat cable" won't cut it for them.

[Scape]

ZING!

[Patrick_Ross]

Right now, I'm reading You Can't Print THAT! by Charlie Lynch (for those not in the know, he's the person depicted in The Longest Mile as screaming "Traitors! Damned Traitors!" at his wayward carrier pigeons).
There's a part in the book where he talks about working for the CBC during the election that eventually delivered John Diefenbaker to power. Dief was considerably behind in the polls, and called Lynch in for an interview, in which he insisted he was going to win.
Lynch wrote an article about Diefenbaker being confident of winning, and the CBC tried to quiet it up. The editorial line was that the CBC was more interested in covering what they believed to be an impending Liberal party victory.
Instead, as history shows, Diefenbaker sensationally won a minority government.

So, while insulting and entirely unethical, the CBC spindoctoring shown here is really nothing new. Then, there's this:

http://www.canadaka.net/modules.php?nam ... ly&t=16486

And this:

http://assholenexus.proboards101.com/in ... 1148491158

Predictable.

[SireJoe]

All non fiction is about convincing people? What does that mean? Are you telling me that everything ever written about non fiction is biased one way or the other, in such a way that it tries to manipulate your preception of the events it is depicting?


Somehow I cant bring myself to agree with that one.

"There is no such thing as unbiased journalism. There is such a thing as paying to hear what you want to hear, rather than to hear information regardless of whether or not you agree with it. "

Ok, so I pay into the CBC so I want to hear unbiased news. And yet I somehow dont get it....how can you explain this?

[Tricks]

IceOwl IceOwl:

You're complaining that you aren't hearing what you want to hear. But then, if you're just told what you want to hear, it's usually even further from the truth.

So bias news is the truth? I think what Sirejoe is saying is that he doesn't want to hear what he thinks, he just wants to hear what is going on so he can form his own opinion.

[Hardy]

Tricks Tricks:

I think what Sirejoe is saying is that he doesn't want to hear what he thinks, he just wants to hear what is going on so he can form his own opinion.

The problem with that is, what do you show? At any given moment, there are probably a hundred things going on which people might want to know about. Even if you just run events, unedited and uncommented upon, the moment that you have decided to air one thing instead of another, you have introduced something which could be considered bias.

[Tricks]

Hardy Hardy:

Tricks Tricks:

I think what Sirejoe is saying is that he doesn't want to hear what he thinks, he just wants to hear what is going on so he can form his own opinion.

The problem with that is, what do you show? At any given moment, there are probably a hundred things going on which people might want to know about. Even if you just run events, unedited and uncommented upon, the moment that you have decided to air one thing instead of another, you have introduced something which could be considered bias.

Excellent point. I meant that with world events such as this, you should report what is happening. Report what you know, but don't alter what you know, or offer any opinion what so ever.

[Hardy]

You could do like C-SPAN, and run multiple channels of political goings on all day -- although most people find C-SPAN to be slightly less interesting than watching paint dry.
http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/c ... hedule.csp

That's not the evening news, though -- that's a lifestyle. And even then, what of all the foreign and non-political news? There is just way too much for any individual to possibly take in.

It would be interesting to see any network try to run a series of clips, uncommented, of events of that day, as the news. My suspicion is that people would change the channel en masse, but then again, I don't think it's ever been tried.

[Patrick_Ross]

IceOwl IceOwl:

There is no such thing as unbiased journalism. There is such a thing as paying to hear what you want to hear, rather than to hear information regardless of whether or not you agree with it.

Speaking as a journalist myself, I can tell you this is an excuse that is being used for not even making the effort to be impartial and objective, and it's being used more and more.
Can we be objective? Perhaps not. But we are ethically and morally obligated to try. Otherwise, it's demagoguery.

IceOwl IceOwl:

There was no spin here.

None? How about when this "journalist" talked about protestors meeting with Peter MacKay, and then talked about how Harper was "unconvinced"? How about when she outwardly lied about which question Harper was answering when he said "the response was very predictable?"

IceOwl IceOwl:

You're chiding the CBC for favouring one form of spin doctoring over another? Looks like I wasn't incorrect when I said that you'll favour the Conservatives whether they're right or wrong.

I've made my stance on biased journalism very clear, both on this site and elsewhere.
I primarily ply my trade as an opinion writer, and can say that while that hardly makes me a paragon of objectivity, at least I've never lied about someone's comments, or cut-and-pasted them to try and make them seem as if they were something they weren't. I have more respect for my readers than that, and in this case, where the journalist is quite literally in the employ of their viewers, this respect simply is not there. This is a very disturbing and disappointing violation of journalistic ethics and standards.

[ridenrain]

I guess one's persons spin is just anothers "Canadian Values"

While we might agree that the telling of a story imparts some common frame of reference, cutting and pasting the parts you like best is wrong, and I'd bet, against the CBC's mandate.