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Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

376 points by steelstraw 5y ago

adamc 5y ago
I am curious what Canadians think of this argument. Does it seem true? It's hard for me, a USA resident who doesn't follow the CBC, to really evaluate.
- MarcelOlsz 5y ago
  I'm Canadian. I don't know anyone in any age group who watches CBC or even TV for that matter. Not saying there aren't, but that's for my circle.
- goalieca 5y ago
  The CBC has fallen short on challenging the government on matters of public policy. They read like state media and this should not surprise given their funding situation. They also do focus on matters that aren’t of broad and general interest. The journalist hit the nail on the head. But cbc isn’t the only troubled media as of late.
- briga 5y ago
  CBC is widely criticized here for its distinctly liberal bias, usually from the nation's conservatives. Which is fair enough--you pay for it in taxes regardless of which side of the political spectrum you're on, so you'd at least expect it to have a balanced coverage of issues. That's not to say that CBC does no good journalism, but like the author of this article mentions they are a bit lacking in journalistic integrity sometimes.
  - notatoad 5y ago
    CBC's bias is Liberal with a capital-L, not liberal. They're centrist and corporatist, which aligns them pretty well with the Liberal Party of Canada.
    - briga 5y ago
      Yes, which leads to all sorts of griping about CBC just being a mouthpiece for the Liberal government. But to be fair their bias was the same even when the Harper government was in power.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  I cannot speak about the alleged wokeness, as I don't consume enough CBC content to make an informed judgment. What I can say is that CBC is the only major Canadian media company that is not capital C Conservative, at least among English-language media. Toronto Star used to fit this description too, but they got sold to what I think is a private equity firm who has been selling off their assets, so I don't expect them to be around much longer. Toronto Star is/soon-to-be was leftist. CBC is supposed to be neutral. All other major media companies are Conservative. See party endorsements for federal elections for example. Note that all non-Conservative endorsements come from the late TorStar corporation. https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/ https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/ So maybe the issue is not that CBC is too Liberal, but that every other publication is Conservative, so even a neutral publication will look far left by comparison. Again, I don't consume enough CBC content to comment how their leanings are. I just know a bit about Canadian media atmosphere in general.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >What I can say is that CBC is the only major Canadian media company that is not capital C Conservative, at least among English-language media. [...] >https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/ https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/ But the source you cited seems to only include newspapers? Media companies tend to pander to their readers, and newspapers attracts... a certain type of readers. It's not surprising that most newspapers are conservative.
    - smnrchrds 5y ago
      These days their websites are much more prominent than their print editions, and it's what people read online and link to on Facebook and social media. They are not stuck in the past. The Globe and Mail is widely regarded as Canada's newspaper of record, and even they endorse Conservatives.
  - frabbit 5y ago
    I generally do not read/watch/listen to the CBC. I got tired of their NPR-ish comofortable liberalism which always drifted into conservatism a long time ago. Sure, there were occasional nods to the idea that not all was happy in our settler colonial land, but in general it was smug "we're all nice" and "aren't Americans crazy?!". Our local outpost plays hideous CanCon music in the mornings and repeats the same low-information density press releases disguised as news. There is little that is combative or thought provoking and lot of self-congratulation. I have been especially un-impressed with their lack of willingness to address the abuse of power by the RCMP at the Fairy Creek protests including the detention of one of their own videographers; their supine acceptance of the insane tar sands projects; their lack of aggression in pursuing the Trudeau administrations failure to address the horrendous mistreatment of autochthonous people people and communities. These days I mostly read The Tyee¹ and listen to Canadaland² 1. https://thetyee.ca/ https://thetyee.ca/ 2. https://www.canadaland.com/ https://www.canadaland.com/ That said, the author of the original article lost me when she trotted out the silly line about transgender Filipinos.
- kache_ 5y ago
  The only reason CBC is still around is because of public funding.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  I regularly consume news and other content from the CBC (radio and news app). I haven't noticed a "hard left" turn at all. The CBC has ALWAYS interviewed pretty progressively. I'm assuming what has happened is that, since MeToo/BLM/Trans issues and protests have become front and centre, people are talking about that more. But really, COVID is dominating the airways at the CBC too. I can't speak for internal newsroom politics of course. Another comment made the observation that the CBC is really the last news source that is left of centre-right with all of our other traditional media sources centre-right and slowly drifting right. Our most popular "left" newspaper, The Toronto Star, was usually taking centrist position with pro-business leanings, but it's been moving right too. Full disclosure, I get a most of my news from the Economist or the CBC.
- KLK2019 5y ago
  Most people consume CBC very differently. I mostly listen to the radio and the content is pretty good and has great local news coverage. I don't think I know anyone else who follows CBC closely but I do think its overall seen as a trusted source of news. Personally, when I think of the recent content from CBC I remmeber reading more about climate change and reconcilation with our native history. Both of Which I think are fairly important to be informed of. But I do wish they do more investigative work.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  The basic issue is that to be news, there has to be a conflict to tell the story about. Even if the conflict is fabricated expectations vs. some mundane reality, that conflict is the necessary condition for a story to be news. The lens of victim/oppressor theory can apply to literally anything, and so with that tool for manufacturing the necessary ingredient of universal conflict, the news becomes anything they want it to be. It's stupid, but it works. Most of the people who use that technique even believe it, and the one rule they're taught is if you protect the narrative, the narrative protects you. I've heard reporters ask what all this concern about fake news was because they have all these objective facts, and it never landed for them that it's fake because the necessary conflict that drives the story was wholely fabricated by ideology. I worked in print media as a freelancer just over a decade ago and knew a lot of other writers and editors, and even then CBC was seen as the partisan state organ. You have to remember that the mandate of the CBC is to create a federal narrative to hold a vast and sparsely populated country together with a coherent national identity. News is only one of its myriad projects, and it's not engaged in a mission of discovery. What changed is milennials graduated from campuses that had been compromised by what is objectively a mass hysteria created by their professors - who themselves had previously graduated in the 90s during the first wave of what they called "political correctness," at the time, and who in turn were taught by radical boomer professors who had been indoctrinated with standard revolutionary playbooks, mesmerized by French postmodernists like Foucault and Baudrillard, and you can trace a lot of its intellectual roots back to things like the SCUM Manifesto, Weathermen, Black Panther Party, Situationists, and other cold war era soviet political projects. No single thing happened so much as the state of the CBC is the effect of milennials being educated by two generations of carefully trained marxists to become a revolutionary corps of true believers. The rest of government is rotted through with that stuff as well. The center won't hold, and I really don't see the country intact in 15-20 years because the people running it are to weak and insincere to provide legitimacy.
- moistly 5y ago
  I think CBC needs to return to gritty journalism, local, provincial, federal, and global. There’s no money in real journalism any more; it’s far more profitable to provide “news” entertainment, aka exaggerate and fabricate. I think the most important thing a government could do is pay a percentage of the budget strings unattached to independent, credentialed, public journalism. It helps keep a government honest.
- dirtyid 5y ago
  >This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. CBC does lean liberal. There's idpol drama, but it predates her timeline. Honestly looks like she's manufacturing a story to push her book / substack / fishing for conservative media eyeballs, which is basically most of private Canadian media that still has money. But being privy to too much CBC goss in my social circle, I just want to say she's full of shit simply because CBC has had drama/tensions over idpol for years. Well over 18 months ago. There is almost zero chance she's even in the realm of being "furthest left" in the newsroom hearing shit I've heard from before her first published article on her CBC profile. And given her body of work at CBC is consisted almost entirely of mediocre listicles, I can understand the desire to attention merchant over more profitable cultural wars.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  It doesn't really seem authentic. To an extent, yes there is an increased focus on some of the things mentioned. But for it to be entirely true, I'd kind of expect them to be inarguably soft on left-leaning politicians, especially the prime minister. But I don't see that at all, if anything, they've become more critical of particularly specious policy moves and bills being proposed. A more suspicious person would claim it's a smokescreen, but it seems to me to a reasonable source of news, at least more so than Global, The Gaurdian a lot of the time, and certainly any of The Sun variants out there.
herodotus 5y ago
I am a leftie, but the only radio station I listen to is CBC. I have to admit that I get irritated by the organizations narrow focus these days.
- newsclues 5y ago
  The lie of diversity makes a good case for what’s going on. Given that diversity of thought and opinion is not tolerated, authentic diversity is not the goal.
dane-pgp 5y ago
> It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. I've heard people say something similar, about how they were left-wing when they were young, but found themselves right-wing when they were older, without changing their politics, because the next generation had moved the Overton window, but it's surprising to hear of an environment where the shift happened in the space of 18 months. I think that many people on the right imagine that identity politics is the true form of left-wing politics, and that it was invented by Karl Marx for some reason, but experiences like Tara Henley's suggest that identity politics is more like an aggressive meme that takes over the brains of some subset of people who happen to gravitate towards left-wing politics, and it perhaps has a disingenuous astroturf form which appeals to people on the right as a way to shield themselves from left-wing criticism.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  The article didn't say what happened. Did they turn over everyone but her in the 18 months? Or did everyone but her change their position? Or did everyone but her decide that they had to look and act like they changed their position in order to fit with new directions coming down from on high? She didn't say. I wish she had; I would like to know what drove the change.
  - golemotron 5y ago
    Elite overproduction leads to society-wide purity spirals.
  - nick__m 5y ago
    I blame the federal government that ties funding to "diversity and inclusion" to the detriment of everything else. It cause ridiculous situations like the one described in that article https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/minority-professor-denied-grants-because-he-hires-on-merit-people-are-afraid-to-think/ar-AAR4KHE https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/minority-professor-den... So if the funding for the CBC is allocated on similars concerns, her colleagues are probably scared. That would also explain why they produced this mostly absurd list of banned words https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/words-and-phrases-commonly-used-offensive-english-language-1.6252274 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/words-and-phrases-comm... , a list that include violent words like brainstorm, lame, grandfathered and tribe. The CBC used to be a bastion of integrity and reason, now it is a novlang factory.
andrewclunn 5y ago
> "It is to endlessly document microaggressions but pay little attention to evictions; to spotlight company’s political platitudes but have little interest in wages or working conditions. It is to allow sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures to roll out — with little debate. To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny. And to watch the most vulnerable among us die of drug overdoses — with little comment." Your movement (progressivism) has been co-opted. The same happened to the religious right a generation ago. Grifters told you that winning was the most important thing, and that politicizing identity was how to do it. Now your views have been reduced to platitudes and slogans meant to mobilize sheep and distract from real issues while the powerful plunder (as they always have). I'd say, "learn for next time," but let's be honest, it will be some other movement (likely one that rises out of opposition to this current one) that will be the next one to be co-opted, and you won't be part of it because it will be ostensibly "right wing."
aaronbrethorst 5y ago
Henley's departure from the CBC is a real blow to that organization. The loss of her reporting on critical issues like "Can hitting snooze and taking a long lunch be the real keys to success?" [0] or "Five West Coast hikes you probably don't know about (but should!)" [1] will be catastrophic to Canadians' ability to understand what's happening in the world around them. In all seriousness, I imagine that Henley decided that writing sponsored content for CBC wasn't a solid career, and wanted to get on that contrarianism gravy train that folks like Bari Weiss have been pioneering. Check out the rest of the articles published under Henley's byline—they're all in the same vein: https://www.cbc.ca/life/work-money/author/tara-henley-1.4401986 https://www.cbc.ca/life/work-money/author/tara-henley-1.4401... [0] https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/can-hitting-snooze-and-taking-a-long-lunch-be-the-real-keys-to-success-1.4127784 https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/can-hitting-snooze-and-taki... [1] https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/five-west-coast-hikes-you-probably-don-t-know-about-but-should-1.4027920 https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/five-west-coast-hikes-you-p...
- epivosism 5y ago
  This is interesting, but all downstream of her complaints. i.e. The article alleges her freedom to write meaningful articles was constrained by political problems. You can't judge a player for having a low batting average as a way to discredit their claim that the game is rigged.
- _bfhp 5y ago
  She wants to join Bari Weiss in focusing on housing crises, wages and working conditions, billionaire greed and authoritarian drug wars?
- transcriptase 5y ago
  She was a TV and radio producer. First paragraph of the linked page in case you missed it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
undoware 5y ago
- dang 5y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - undoware 5y ago
    - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
      Wait why are we not allowed to complain about trans people. Are they special in a way that makes them immune from being complained about? Im fine with trans people. I am asking literally are we not allowed to complain about them.
      - undoware 5y ago
        Taywee 5y ago
        > You're allowed complain about us, I guess, but not in front of us, and we're all around you? That's a roundabout way of saying "No, you aren't allowed to".
        _0ffh 5y ago
        Assuming it is true that discussions on "free speech" always lead to "That Topic", maybe it is because a clique of political activists that claim for themselves the exclusive right to speak on any matter pertaining to "That Topic" are among the most censorious and intolerant that most people are likely to ever encounter?
lame-robot-hoax 5y ago
Sounds more like an ad for their Substack. No proof or backing for any of their claims, just a bunch of hollow, inflammatory statements What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
pyuser583 5y ago
“The last 18 months” coincides perfectly with start of the BLM protests. I’ve been involved with an arts-based non-profit for a long time. They do very specific type of older art. They produce it, exhibit it, encourage others to produce it, etc. The art form is Eurocentric, with a political history that contains some small instances racism, and vast oceans of mainstream liberalism. Every since BLM protests happened (the second time - in June 2020), they’ve been freaking out. Suddenly they’re trying to hire as many “BIPOC” as possible, even though there aren’t many open slots. They’re acknowledging every racial injustice under the heavens. They’re apologizing for existing (literally). Most of all, they’re scared. When I go to their exhibitions, every single person, is white. Occasionally a Black family will be there. Everyone in the crowd parts to allow them through. Everyone greets them - and only them. I imagine this awkward veneration is one reason why so few Black families come. Most of all, the leaders of this org are scared. Terrified. They don’t want to be considered “non-anti-racist.” When speaking with others, the terror is palpable. Edit: just to be clear this is an author specific type of performance art. Think a Bach symphony, a Wagner opera company, or a Shakespeare theater.
- golemotron 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
- telesilla 5y ago
  Suggest to them that they talk about exactly what you are saying here. Say that it's difficult. That we are figuring it out. Put together exhibitions that talk about it. That's a hell of a lot better than shutting down communication. Be inclusive. Ask for help from other galleries who have better representation. Maybe they can do an exchange. Identify what there is to be afraid of - it's the necessary step to moving forward.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    Regarding putting together exhibitions, this is an author specific type of performance art. Kind of like a Shakespeare theater company. There’s room to reinterpret the artist, but frankly interpreting this author as socially conscious has been done so many times it’s boring. It would be like putting on a feminist production of Antigone, or a pacifist recitation of the Iliad, or an anti-racist production of Othello - not only “already done” but probably what the author intended. The folks running the show have been avoiding actual “woke” (so hate the phrase) art for exactly this reason - already done 1000 time - and the new era demands new efforts! Instead it’s hiring and outreach that’s gone bonkers. Regarding communication- it isn’t that people have stopped talking. They’ve stopped listening. Realistically, the donors are in charge. They’re the only ones listened to. And currently the powers that be are trying very hard to find new “anti-racist” donors, preferably BIPOC donors. I’m not sure what anyone can do about that. Other than stop donating. What do you mean when you talk about doing an exchange with other galleries?
epivosism 5y ago
What clearly seems wrong is the requirement to fill out forms on the race and gender of people you interview, and to have quotas to control whose voice is heard based on those irrelevant traits (irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.) My policy is to refuse to give my gender or race. If everybody did this, high frequencies of "other" or "unknown" could be spun any way they want to people looking at statistics. If they aren't satisfied with this, they have to go on record clarifying exactly how they define race - which seems difficult since they're also the people who claim it's not a real concept.
- cuspycode 5y ago
  Obligatory story beginning in 1963, where computer scientist Les Earnest explains why he always entered "mongrel" when questioned about his race: http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
  - epivosism 5y ago
    This is pretty good, thanks. TLDR: institutional adventures from a national security employee challenging the requirement to declare their race. This reminds me of "Seeing like a State" by James C Scott: attempts to simplify the world to allow generalizations about it always lose valuable detail.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    Lol … I like the part about the Caucuses being in the USSR, so being Caucasian meant being Soviet. I once told a friend from west India to put “Aryan” down for race, but then stopped him and apologized after I realized that was mean-funny, not funny-funny. I was really an asshole in my 20s.
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    Kinda unrelated but Les is one of my favorite people to use as an example of how "websites" used to be. His writing is fun and honest, and some of his ideas were imo groundbreaking (and many are floating about waiting to be rediscovered).
iso1210 5y ago
[flagged]
badRNG 5y ago
I'm not sure these sorts of articles provide much value on HN. By "these sorts of articles", I mean the ones that have claimed that "diversity efforts have gone too far this time." Regardless of your support or opposition to diversity, I think one would agree that these rapidly turn into unproductive, highly divisive comment sections that are out of place with the rest of HN.
- ineptech 5y ago
  They very reliably rise to the front page (because people like arguing about this stuff) and then sink off again (because, I believe, the HN algorithm penalizes a low upvote-to-comment-count ratio). I predict this'll be gone in two hours...
  - hammock 5y ago
    >the HN algorithm More accurately, it's people flagging it and also manual nerfing by @dang
    - coldtea 5y ago
    - badRNG 5y ago
      To be fair, every comment that didn't agree with the conclusion of the article was nerfed. The top comment on this post for most of its existence immediately left the top and within seconds jumped to being the very last comment at the bottom with all the other even vaguely pro-diversity comments.
      - dang 5y ago
        Your and others' comments criticizing the article have been heavily upvoted, so this is clearly not the case.
        badRNG 5y ago
teg4n_ 5y ago
This is incredibly tedious. I can't fathom how this has anything to do with "Hacker News" but I guess it's appeal to a certain subset of the audience here overrides that.
- kache_ 5y ago
- badRNG 5y ago
  The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. It seems reasonable that a subset of the culture that produced the work environment at Blizzard [1] or has historically rallied behind alt-right thought leaders would also be here on HN. Talk to any woman software engineer, I 100% guarantee they have multiple stories about dealing with a...specific type of guy. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22823991/activision-blizzard-sexual-harassment-victim-press-conference https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22823991/activision-blizz...
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    > The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc. But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and I just started working with tech/SV companies as that happened.
    - lazyasciiart 5y ago
      D&I is definitely commonplace across the corporate world, and similar opposition is too. My brother and sister once worked at the same company for a while - my brother complained that everyone wanted to promote women and he was disadvantaged, while my sister got groped in a taxi by a colleague and was told by her male manager that if she wanted to get promoted she should make sure senior managers knew that she didn't want to have kids (not actually the case).
CapitalistCartr 5y ago
Except at political groups to which I belong, I am almost always the left-most person in the room. The Lefts greatest weakness is an enthusiasm for splintering over small matters of doctrine. Identity politics, tribalism over principle, virtue signaling, whatever fad this is, it's deeply hurting progress.
- wussboy 5y ago
  I suspect you’re right. My personal solution to this problem, having once run a left-leaning organization that was taken over by all the things you mention, is to learn more towards the centre. I’m curious if you’ve considered the same, especially because you describe yourself as “the left-most person in the room”?
  - CapitalistCartr 5y ago
    In the United States the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right. In a Scandinavian Country I'd be a fairly moderate, conservative social democrat. Here, if people knew my thoughts, I'd be seen as a Wild-Eyed Radical. But given the politics in my country, I've given up compromise and actually moved further Left. And more militant, less quiet. Luckily, the organization I'm currently involved with (the SRA), while hilariously disorganized, is firmly Left.
    - laszlojamf 5y ago
      I don't mean this as any kind kind of criticism, but being a swede with an American friend who was partially brought up in Sweden during the good ol days of Swedish social democracy I wonder if Americans really know what they mean when they talk about Scandinavian social democracy. These days they're a lot more conservative than they used to be. Mostly I imagine their stance on immigration control, and crime wouldn't be what Americans have in mind. Or maybe you do! All I'm saying is that it's interesting hearing it come up a lot in American discussions as if it's its own thing when really they're quite the moving target. EDIT: but i guess for you guys it might be more single-payor healthcare and reasonable taxation in which case, yeah, some things haven't changed :)
monkeybutton 5y ago
I wonder where she will go after publishing her book. Postmedia? Bell media? Staying independent? The news landscape in Canada is rather limited and still consolidating. Think what you may about the CBC and its biases, its nothing compared to the National Post where the owner, Conrad Black, airs his crappy opinions.
- gruez 5y ago
  Quitting [media organization] and starting a substack seems to be pretty popular these days.
- generalpf 5y ago
  Rebel Media.
- kerneloftruth 5y ago
  I think she's joining Glenn Greenwald over at substack.com.
- version_five 5y ago
  I saw the National Post carried her article as well. Hopefully she will stay independent, and focus on constructive reporting rather than just reactionary complaining. We see a lot of this in politics, people with what could be good ideas just getting caught up in getting upset and creating outrage about the ridiculous things the other side had done. Better to try and shift the dialog entirely rather than just complain.
- djkivi 5y ago
  Conrad Black hasn't owned the National Post for over 20 years.
  - moistly 5y ago
    True, but sad to say they still carry his opinion column.
paulsutter 5y ago
Left and liberal do not mean the same thing. Basically all of my blue or red friends agree with the principles of Liberalism, which brought us the enlightenment and [modern] civilization. You can ask your own friends, here's a definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism (quote below) In terms of numbers, about 8% of the US population is.. left. 25% is traditional conservative. And the other 67% is regular folks who in fact agree on most policy questions From Wikipedia: > Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), democracy, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and a market economy
- bambax 5y ago
  > Liberalism, which brought us the enlightenment and civilization itself Civilization predates liberalism by about 7,000 years.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Over the past ten years, there's been a weird collaboration between centrists and right-wingers to define not being a bigot as being left-wing and being a bigot as being right-wing. So corporate PR has transformed huge employers and the finance industry into left-wingers, and when right-wingers complain about being silenced, they're specifically talking about being censored about race and gender. This creates the false drama. Instead, what the US has is two liberal parties, one trying to also appeal to a base of evangelical whites and the other trying to appeal to people who aren't white. Both are trying to pass the same liberal policies, policies that I hope you aren't trying to associate with some 67% silent majority. 67% of people aren't against antitrust enforcement or free health care.
  - paulsutter 5y ago
    Not trying to associate any specific issues, just pointing out the surprisingly broad appeal of Liberalism as defined. Really an eye-opener the responses I got sharing that with folks. Yes both parties have a bizarre set of priorities, conveniently avoiding the really important questions (like the two you raise)
newbie789 5y ago
[dead]
newaccount2021 5y ago
notatoad 5y ago
>It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like. as a regular reader of CBC, this is the line here that resonates the most with me. If CBC was a left-wing organization advocating for tearing down the structures of power and building a more equitable society, their focus on whatever microagression is currently trending would seem a lot more honest. but their bias is overwhelmingly in favour of the governments and corporations who have built the status quo, so their articles decrying social inequities ring pretty hollow.
freeslave 5y ago
This would be more meaningful if it wasn't an advertisement for her substack.
elevenoh 5y ago
- ninkendo 5y ago
  "Wokeism" is a pejorative catch-all term for all the negative aspects of trying to be against racism, so it's kind of true by definition, isn't it? Literally no one is defending "wokeism" any more than people are defending "racism", because the terms themselves are intended to convey something negative. It makes the term kind of useless, wouldn't you think? It's a placeholder term for whatever you don't like.
  - bequanna 5y ago
    The precise definition of the pejorative 'woke' can be debated, but I think we all can agree that "we know it when we see it". And it is far from useless. IMO it accurately labels people who are either: 1. Taking liberal talking points to extremes for the sole purpose of attention seeking or 2. Naive, coming of age youth bumping against reality for the first time in their lives and use the distraction of politics and remote injustices to avoid confronting the "hard work" which will be required to thrive in the adult world.
  - ameminator 5y ago
    Unfortunately, I think a lot of people implicitly or explicitly defend "wokeism" as interpreted in the most severe and uncharitable way. I try to be charitable in my assumptions, but even then, it's hard to argue that it's safe to criticize any DIE or "woke" initiative. There always seems to be some risk in being fired/blacklisted or otherwise attacked for even modest criticism of the DIE movement.
    - metabagel 5y ago
      It may seem that way, but I think that's because right wing media does a stellar job of surfacing extreme examples. Plus, right wing media fosters a collective sense of grievance, which I see in some of the comments here.
retrocryptid 5y ago
nottorp 5y ago
Hmm going on a tangent here: do HNers "consume" news from old style media any more? I'm pretty certain that I haven't got my news from either radio or TV in a billion years. Since I had a pet dinosaur.
- rsync 5y ago
  I habitually listen to NPR (KQED in the bay area). I find that the PBS newshour is of high quality and I also like "Fresh Air". On the Internet side: I enthusiastically recommend the daily "Monocle 24" news podcast. It is very well done and regardless of what you think of Monocle magazine I would suggest that if you consumed just one world news show it should be this one.
pyuser583 5y ago
> It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. I’m glad people are starting to realize that participating in culture wars, regardless of the side, is supporting American cultural dominance. I say this as a fairly jingoistic American, who feels American influence does much more good than harm.
rdtsc 5y ago
> To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny. Not an accident, I believe. Occupy Wall Street made the billionaires and Wall Street take notice. As a consequence, they probably decided people need to be busy with something else, just in case, so they don't get any more funny ideas. Identity politics is a great one to divide people, fan anger, get more clicks and views, and at the same time get them uninterested what the billionaires and Wall Street firms are doing.
- president 5y ago
  I find identity politics to be fascinating and scary. Essentially, it is a grouping of many individual fringe concepts/movements that form a large political power and is backed by masses of well-meaning people who are sold stories and imagery of oppressor vs oppressed. IMO it is a large distraction which draws a lot of attention and money from more pressing issues occurring in the world. I fail to see where identity politics have helped in any non-superficial way and the level of division it has caused in society will be hard to reverse.
wussboy 5y ago
The primary arts centre in one of Canada’s largest cities spent most of last summer running a series of events where transgender artists presented children’s songs and stories. I can’t help but think that for the vast majority of casual viewers (pedestrians and casual passers by) it was confusing at best and “another example of how we waste money on the arts” at worst. I love and respect the arts. It’s goals are worthy. It needs to do better than this.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Couldn't this be said for almost all art?
kazinator 5y ago
The CBC got a $1.2B in government funding in 2019-2020: Source: themselves: https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/impact-and-accountability/finances/annual-reports/ar-2019-2020/financial-sustainability/revenue-and-other-funds https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/impact-and-accountability/fin... Can you believe it? Yet, these money-grabbing robber barons don't provide Canadians with streaming. There is a shitty CBC app compatible with Android TV which serves some canned videos and pictures, and a CBC News app for phones that has live news (that will Chromecast). I say cut the taxpayer funding, or else make them deliver to Canadians the content they are paying for. In Japan, NHK (rough analog of CBC) has a website where you can watch the actual broadcast. (Not available outside of Japan without a VPN, but that's entirel beside the point.)
- erk__ 5y ago
  That a broadcaster with approximately twice the government funding is delivering a better service is not a great argument to cut funding, you could even say that it is the opposite. CBC get $31,807,419 CAD per million capita from the government.[0] NHK get $61.293.417 CAD per million capita from license fees.[1] CBC may be awful compared to NHK, but your argument loses power when you have not looked up information like this. Danish Radio gets $114.787.353 CAD per million capita from the government which is more than both the above, and they also have a great collection of shows and movies available to stream. [2] [0]: Your link [1]: https://www.nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/english/publication/assets/pdf/corporate_profile.pdf https://www.nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/english/publication/asse... [2]: https://www.ft.dk/samling/20201/almdel/KUU/bilag/103/2332285.pdf https://www.ft.dk/samling/20201/almdel/KUU/bilag/103/2332285...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kazinator 5y ago
    It terms of television (which isn't all there is to CBC, I realize) CBC isn't delivering any service to you, if you don't subscribe to some expensive service from a cable TV monopolist (that they are in bed with). They have no qualms about helping themselves to a piece of your income, though.
paganel 5y ago
> It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like Very glad this got mentioned, in all of this people have forgotten who their enemies really are: the government for some, the big corporations for other, sure as hell the real enemy is not Sam from around the block who doesn't believe in LGTBQ rights. Sam doesn't have an ounce of power, no matter how retrograde or not his beliefs are, the government and the big corporations have, lots of it.
- YZF 5y ago
  Enemies? Sam has a lot of power. We've seen over the last few decades how speech influences a lot of Sams and completely changes society. Society is the sum of all Sams and Sams have a lot of power. Sam from around the block is the Sam that used to report or burn the witches in the 1500's. Now LGBTQ isn't necessarily the dearest topic to my heart, but freedom is and this is just one aspect of it. Racism and bigotry are all over the place. What do we do about it? I would argue that those mindsets are not that dissimilar then those causing issues with governments and corporations.
  - ameminator 5y ago
    If you believe in freedom of expression and of speech, it doesn't matter how much power Sam has, even if you disagree with what he says. I don't like or agree with white supremacists, but I consider the ACLU defense of their speech a monument to our civilization's respect of human rights.
    - boppo1 5y ago
      > ACLU defense of their speech a monument to our civilization's respect of human rights. Is there an argument from a landmark case or are you speaking gsnerally?
      - ameminator 5y ago
        Here is the specific case I am referencing: https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/skokie-case-how-i-came-represent-free-speech-rights-nazis https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/sk...
ILMostro7 5y ago
Yeah, those abolishinists and civil rights protesters were very unpopular. These "woke extremists" are not sympathetic to how most people around me feel about them.
- boppo1 5y ago
  Abolitionists and civil rights protestors had more clearly defined 'win' conditions. What is the end goal for 'woke extremists'? A person who was previously my friend could not articulate it to me. He said 'when white supremacy is gone' and then regularly leveled that label at every single thing you can think of, including Netflix, my parents, museums, and more. I have heard that "discomfort is part of the process" but also that "there's always more work to do." My friend and I had "difficult conversations" about "doing the hard work" and I kept agreeing with him against my own beliefs and letting him go on about this stuff until one day he cut me out of his life anyway for not being woke enough. I am sincerely at a loss for understanding.
  - ILMostro7 5y ago
    Yup, cause Civil Rights problem was solved with a law, and black people got exactly what they wanted. Before you start dissecting the argument piecemeal, just pointing out that it's difficult to tell arrogance from ignorance these days no matter what the issue is and on what side one stands. Simply dig in and hold on tight! ;). But what do I know, merely another down-vote in an online echo chamber disguised as Zeitgeist and further eroding critical thinking.
coldtea 5y ago
>It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. Don't worry, you're still the furthest to the left. It's the others that have aligned with the priorities of mega-corporations, think tanks, and power centers - downplaying class and overplaying identity issues (and at the moment when those are the least anti-establishment and most incosequential position). Worse, they're using this as a weapon for class warfarce (against the working class, white predominantly, but they'd also openly use it against the poor black and latinos too, but they need to pretend they champion them) and a class signifier.
- metabagel 5y ago
  What makes you think corporations, think tanks, and power centers are aligned with identity politics? I draw rather the opposite conclusion. I'm not big on identity politics, but then I'm white. But, I also don't get why we can't allow other people to express their own valid experience without trying to shout them down.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >What makes you think corporations, think tanks, and power centers are aligned with identity politics? Their (coporations and power centers) lip service towards those, their funding and support, establishment of departments and roles devoted to it, use in advertisements, mobilisation of corporate policies and law to stiffle any dissidents, constant signalling, and so on. >But, I also don't get why we can't allow other people to express their own valid experience without trying to shout them down. Isn't this the exact problem with modern identity politics? Shouting people down and monopolizing the discourse (usually by privileged class-wise minority, and mostly white at that) with rage-bait and conformity signaling.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
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karaterobot 5y ago
> This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. I know that sort of announcement is not the place where she'd answer this question in depth, but that line made me curious, and I wished she had. 18 months is a very short timespan: since before the start of quarantine. What does she feel precipitated these changes at the CBC?
deleted 5y ago
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msie 5y ago
rasengan 5y ago
This article wasn’t really about race. It was about the freedom of speech and the chilling effect upon news journalists of late due to editorial guidelines enforced by pharmaceutical sponsors and fact checkers also sponsored by the like.
olivermarks 5y ago
Strange thread here ignoring the very important points about the media Tara is making. 'Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted. It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.' I would argue the UK BBC & US NPR are also in dire straits because of similar erosions of impartialness. Neilsen demonstrates that the legacy media are dying fast, fewer and fewer people are tuned in as the broadcasting becomes more and more toxic. This is a good thing imo. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-business-presidential-elections-arts-and-entertainment-7cc91db0950a8e7e7bcf50d5d23dfc26 https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-busin...
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  >Neilsen demonstrates that the legacy media are dying fast, fewer and fewer people are tuned in as the broadcasting becomes more and more toxic. This is a good thing imo. But is it a good thing? A free press can be thought of as the sensory organs of the polity. If the sensory organs are faulty, or worse are deliberately lying, then alternative sensory organs may fill in the blanks with less robust information. These days, when you read a story from mainstream sources, it's often best to say, "well, I don't know anything about this story, but it's pretty safe to assume that what I just read is either wrong or nonsense." That's really not good. It gets worse if the only alternatives are just as wrong, or just as nonsensical, and you have to apply some kind of boolean bullshit math to get some outline of what the issue even is. The erosion of public trust isn't a short-term problem.
  - olivermarks 5y ago
    By 'free press' here I think you mean state sponsored and/or corporate 'news' outlets. The internet has transcended these last century print and broadcast foundationed constructs long ago, but their owners prop up their mastheads as though they are still the top tier of 'fact checked' integrity, despite the fact they are now in some cases sloppier than the Drudge Report ever was. Tara presumably left a salaried job where her job description changed. Good for her, now the challenge is building credibility on the censorship dominated internet and staying on the right side of the big tech editorial platform gatekeepers....CDA230 where are you?
beaconstudios 5y ago
yet another instance of Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Measuring diversity of organisations is a good way to know if people are being excluded from opportunities based on immutable factors. It's not something you should be actively boosting by refusing to hire cis/het/white/male people and calling that equality. A much better approach would be to say something like "oh, our company hires less black people than you'd expect based on demographic data. Where's the bottleneck? Are we discriminating in hiring, either intentionally or unintentionally? Is our industry insulated from black employees by geography, culture, perception?" Then when you know (or at least have a good idea) where the bottleneck is, you know where to intervene if it's something you're able to do. It's basically just the institutional equivalent of investigating problems based on dashboard metrics. If you have a dashboard of t1 vs t2 subscriptions and you think the ratio's wrong, you don't just start banning t1 subs to fix the metric, that's moronic. Good "wokeness" is just egalitarianism with a systemic/holistic perspective. Bad "wokeness" is just more racism a la "two wrongs make a right".
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
djoldman 5y ago
> To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity. Unfortunately, it appears fairly clear that over the past decade, a deeper cognitive dissonance is that of journalists' beliefs about their profession. Journalists seem to believe that Quality News [0] can sustain itself. News is entertainment. Quality News loses because it commands less engagement than tweets, youtube videos, tv/movie streaming, gaming, and others. News organizations survive now by aligning their stories with a chosen tribe (liberals, conservatives, whomever) and inflaming the base with rage rhetoric. Unfortunately, it turns out that people don't really care about truth - it's pretty boring. [0] Quality News defined however the particular journalist wants to define it (ethical/fair/unbiased/relevant/etc)
- akomtu 5y ago
  If the populace are psychologically toddlers, they have to be engaged with toys. Nations are started by mature egos who value truth above else, but gradually replaced by those toddlers who like emotions better, and so they let the nation decay and fall.
lnxg33k1 5y ago
- p_j_w 5y ago
  >we have to be careful for example about using the right pronouns in order to accomodate the need of like a 0.% of the population Is this really a problem? It's a zero cost action.
  - lnxg33k1 5y ago
    It would be, it could be, but the few times that you refer to a person with the wrong pronoun then you are likely to be offended and to be lectured about how you didn't understand that they were something else
    - blueflow 5y ago
      You can use the "Shinigami Eyes" extension to warn you about people who might get offended by misgendering them. Saves you alot of trouble if you are spending time on Twitter or Reddit.
      - lnxg33k1 5y ago
        The day I install an extension in my browser perpetually loaded in order to accomodate and make an effort to satisfy the 0.% of the population while the 0.% of the population is not available to make an effort in order to let me know in a civilised way that they identify with another pronoun, then kill me, because also letting people know in a civil way that you prefer other ways to address you is a 0-cost action
      - jabej 5y ago
        That’s absolutely insane.
        blueflow 5y ago
        Its genius, given the fact that these people themselves created these lists to allow anyone to avoid them.
Dig1t 5y ago
I honestly believe that bringing back the FCC fairness doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine) would help alleviate some of the divisiveness in America. Being presented both sides of an argument really helps people empathize and come to compromises. It also makes people less angry.
Mikeb85 5y ago
ben7799 5y ago
Why is this here, it's just clickbait self promotion: The TLDR: - She claims she's not an aggrieved conservative - She blows a bunch of right wing dog whistles - Says she quit - Plugs her book and new substack effort (Check out my soundslice!)
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  > - She blows a bunch of right wing dog whistles Is there a particular reason you've concluded that she's dog-whistling? My understanding of "dog whistling" is that it's intentionally ambiguous. I.e., it's mean as a signal to a target group, while being plausibly deniable to everyone else. But the key point is that it's ambiguous.
deleted 5y ago
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joemazerino 5y ago
Glad someone said it. I don't follow the CBC (I imagine only canucks do) but any article I've seen in the last few months has been outright commie garbage.
quattrofan 5y ago
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entropicgravity 5y ago
I can't but agree with this column. I've come to think of CBC News as the "Women's Human Interest Review" except Hanomansing of course, but getting decent news two nights a week for billions of dollars a year isn't what the Canadian tax payers signed up for. It's time for this Emperor to get some decent clothes on tout suite.
8note 5y ago
The CBC's funding was decreased by a bunch in the Harper years. I imagine the liberals haven't reinstated it. Without funding, they can't stay independent of what's fashionable
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
raxxorrax 5y ago
Problem with that is that the cooler heads will leave. A saying in German is that the smarter one gives in... To be honest, I don't really believe people that cannot see this problem are trustworthy.
deodorel 5y ago
I was part of many left wings groups and I remember there was a transitional period in which there was a lot of talk about intersectionalism, that is how we need to not only take into account the class, but also race, gender, sexual orientation etc. Then slowly the class part dissappeared so only the latter were left to intersect.
mmaunder 5y ago
Flagged. Well that is very unfortunate. Looks like HN isn't immune from the incredibly insightful points that Tara is making.

376 points by steelstraw 5y ago

I am curious what Canadians think of this argument. Does it seem true? It's hard for me, a USA resident who doesn't follow the CBC, to really evaluate.

MarcelOlsz 5y ago
I'm Canadian. I don't know anyone in any age group who watches CBC or even TV for that matter. Not saying there aren't, but that's for my circle.
goalieca 5y ago
The CBC has fallen short on challenging the government on matters of public policy. They read like state media and this should not surprise given their funding situation. They also do focus on matters that aren’t of broad and general interest. The journalist hit the nail on the head. But cbc isn’t the only troubled media as of late.
briga 5y ago
CBC is widely criticized here for its distinctly liberal bias, usually from the nation's conservatives. Which is fair enough--you pay for it in taxes regardless of which side of the political spectrum you're on, so you'd at least expect it to have a balanced coverage of issues. That's not to say that CBC does no good journalism, but like the author of this article mentions they are a bit lacking in journalistic integrity sometimes.
- notatoad 5y ago
  CBC's bias is Liberal with a capital-L, not liberal. They're centrist and corporatist, which aligns them pretty well with the Liberal Party of Canada.
  - briga 5y ago
    Yes, which leads to all sorts of griping about CBC just being a mouthpiece for the Liberal government. But to be fair their bias was the same even when the Harper government was in power.
smnrchrds 5y ago
I cannot speak about the alleged wokeness, as I don't consume enough CBC content to make an informed judgment. What I can say is that CBC is the only major Canadian media company that is not capital C Conservative, at least among English-language media. Toronto Star used to fit this description too, but they got sold to what I think is a private equity firm who has been selling off their assets, so I don't expect them to be around much longer. Toronto Star is/soon-to-be was leftist. CBC is supposed to be neutral. All other major media companies are Conservative. See party endorsements for federal elections for example. Note that all non-Conservative endorsements come from the late TorStar corporation. https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/ https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/ So maybe the issue is not that CBC is too Liberal, but that every other publication is Conservative, so even a neutral publication will look far left by comparison. Again, I don't consume enough CBC content to comment how their leanings are. I just know a bit about Canadian media atmosphere in general.
- gruez 5y ago
  >What I can say is that CBC is the only major Canadian media company that is not capital C Conservative, at least among English-language media. [...] >https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/ https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/ But the source you cited seems to only include newspapers? Media companies tend to pander to their readers, and newspapers attracts... a certain type of readers. It's not surprising that most newspapers are conservative.
  - smnrchrds 5y ago
    These days their websites are much more prominent than their print editions, and it's what people read online and link to on Facebook and social media. They are not stuck in the past. The Globe and Mail is widely regarded as Canada's newspaper of record, and even they endorse Conservatives.
- frabbit 5y ago
  I generally do not read/watch/listen to the CBC. I got tired of their NPR-ish comofortable liberalism which always drifted into conservatism a long time ago. Sure, there were occasional nods to the idea that not all was happy in our settler colonial land, but in general it was smug "we're all nice" and "aren't Americans crazy?!". Our local outpost plays hideous CanCon music in the mornings and repeats the same low-information density press releases disguised as news. There is little that is combative or thought provoking and lot of self-congratulation. I have been especially un-impressed with their lack of willingness to address the abuse of power by the RCMP at the Fairy Creek protests including the detention of one of their own videographers; their supine acceptance of the insane tar sands projects; their lack of aggression in pursuing the Trudeau administrations failure to address the horrendous mistreatment of autochthonous people people and communities. These days I mostly read The Tyee¹ and listen to Canadaland² 1. https://thetyee.ca/ https://thetyee.ca/ 2. https://www.canadaland.com/ https://www.canadaland.com/ That said, the author of the original article lost me when she trotted out the silly line about transgender Filipinos.
kache_ 5y ago
The only reason CBC is still around is because of public funding.
Ensorceled 5y ago
I regularly consume news and other content from the CBC (radio and news app). I haven't noticed a "hard left" turn at all. The CBC has ALWAYS interviewed pretty progressively. I'm assuming what has happened is that, since MeToo/BLM/Trans issues and protests have become front and centre, people are talking about that more. But really, COVID is dominating the airways at the CBC too. I can't speak for internal newsroom politics of course. Another comment made the observation that the CBC is really the last news source that is left of centre-right with all of our other traditional media sources centre-right and slowly drifting right. Our most popular "left" newspaper, The Toronto Star, was usually taking centrist position with pro-business leanings, but it's been moving right too. Full disclosure, I get a most of my news from the Economist or the CBC.
KLK2019 5y ago
Most people consume CBC very differently. I mostly listen to the radio and the content is pretty good and has great local news coverage. I don't think I know anyone else who follows CBC closely but I do think its overall seen as a trusted source of news. Personally, when I think of the recent content from CBC I remmeber reading more about climate change and reconcilation with our native history. Both of Which I think are fairly important to be informed of. But I do wish they do more investigative work.
motohagiography 5y ago
The basic issue is that to be news, there has to be a conflict to tell the story about. Even if the conflict is fabricated expectations vs. some mundane reality, that conflict is the necessary condition for a story to be news. The lens of victim/oppressor theory can apply to literally anything, and so with that tool for manufacturing the necessary ingredient of universal conflict, the news becomes anything they want it to be. It's stupid, but it works. Most of the people who use that technique even believe it, and the one rule they're taught is if you protect the narrative, the narrative protects you. I've heard reporters ask what all this concern about fake news was because they have all these objective facts, and it never landed for them that it's fake because the necessary conflict that drives the story was wholely fabricated by ideology. I worked in print media as a freelancer just over a decade ago and knew a lot of other writers and editors, and even then CBC was seen as the partisan state organ. You have to remember that the mandate of the CBC is to create a federal narrative to hold a vast and sparsely populated country together with a coherent national identity. News is only one of its myriad projects, and it's not engaged in a mission of discovery. What changed is milennials graduated from campuses that had been compromised by what is objectively a mass hysteria created by their professors - who themselves had previously graduated in the 90s during the first wave of what they called "political correctness," at the time, and who in turn were taught by radical boomer professors who had been indoctrinated with standard revolutionary playbooks, mesmerized by French postmodernists like Foucault and Baudrillard, and you can trace a lot of its intellectual roots back to things like the SCUM Manifesto, Weathermen, Black Panther Party, Situationists, and other cold war era soviet political projects. No single thing happened so much as the state of the CBC is the effect of milennials being educated by two generations of carefully trained marxists to become a revolutionary corps of true believers. The rest of government is rotted through with that stuff as well. The center won't hold, and I really don't see the country intact in 15-20 years because the people running it are to weak and insincere to provide legitimacy.
moistly 5y ago
I think CBC needs to return to gritty journalism, local, provincial, federal, and global. There’s no money in real journalism any more; it’s far more profitable to provide “news” entertainment, aka exaggerate and fabricate. I think the most important thing a government could do is pay a percentage of the budget strings unattached to independent, credentialed, public journalism. It helps keep a government honest.
dirtyid 5y ago
>This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. CBC does lean liberal. There's idpol drama, but it predates her timeline. Honestly looks like she's manufacturing a story to push her book / substack / fishing for conservative media eyeballs, which is basically most of private Canadian media that still has money. But being privy to too much CBC goss in my social circle, I just want to say she's full of shit simply because CBC has had drama/tensions over idpol for years. Well over 18 months ago. There is almost zero chance she's even in the realm of being "furthest left" in the newsroom hearing shit I've heard from before her first published article on her CBC profile. And given her body of work at CBC is consisted almost entirely of mediocre listicles, I can understand the desire to attention merchant over more profitable cultural wars.
brailsafe 5y ago
It doesn't really seem authentic. To an extent, yes there is an increased focus on some of the things mentioned. But for it to be entirely true, I'd kind of expect them to be inarguably soft on left-leaning politicians, especially the prime minister. But I don't see that at all, if anything, they've become more critical of particularly specious policy moves and bills being proposed. A more suspicious person would claim it's a smokescreen, but it seems to me to a reasonable source of news, at least more so than Global, The Gaurdian a lot of the time, and certainly any of The Sun variants out there.

herodotus 5y ago

I am a leftie, but the only radio station I listen to is CBC. I have to admit that I get irritated by the organizations narrow focus these days.

newsclues 5y ago
The lie of diversity makes a good case for what’s going on. Given that diversity of thought and opinion is not tolerated, authentic diversity is not the goal.

dane-pgp 5y ago

> It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. I've heard people say something similar, about how they were left-wing when they were young, but found themselves right-wing when they were older, without changing their politics, because the next generation had moved the Overton window, but it's surprising to hear of an environment where the shift happened in the space of 18 months. I think that many people on the right imagine that identity politics is the true form of left-wing politics, and that it was invented by Karl Marx for some reason, but experiences like Tara Henley's suggest that identity politics is more like an aggressive meme that takes over the brains of some subset of people who happen to gravitate towards left-wing politics, and it perhaps has a disingenuous astroturf form which appeals to people on the right as a way to shield themselves from left-wing criticism.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
The article didn't say what happened. Did they turn over everyone but her in the 18 months? Or did everyone but her change their position? Or did everyone but her decide that they had to look and act like they changed their position in order to fit with new directions coming down from on high? She didn't say. I wish she had; I would like to know what drove the change.
- golemotron 5y ago
  Elite overproduction leads to society-wide purity spirals.
- nick__m 5y ago
  I blame the federal government that ties funding to "diversity and inclusion" to the detriment of everything else. It cause ridiculous situations like the one described in that article https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/minority-professor-denied-grants-because-he-hires-on-merit-people-are-afraid-to-think/ar-AAR4KHE https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/minority-professor-den... So if the funding for the CBC is allocated on similars concerns, her colleagues are probably scared. That would also explain why they produced this mostly absurd list of banned words https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/words-and-phrases-commonly-used-offensive-english-language-1.6252274 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/words-and-phrases-comm... , a list that include violent words like brainstorm, lame, grandfathered and tribe. The CBC used to be a bastion of integrity and reason, now it is a novlang factory.

andrewclunn 5y ago

> "It is to endlessly document microaggressions but pay little attention to evictions; to spotlight company’s political platitudes but have little interest in wages or working conditions. It is to allow sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures to roll out — with little debate. To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny. And to watch the most vulnerable among us die of drug overdoses — with little comment." Your movement (progressivism) has been co-opted. The same happened to the religious right a generation ago. Grifters told you that winning was the most important thing, and that politicizing identity was how to do it. Now your views have been reduced to platitudes and slogans meant to mobilize sheep and distract from real issues while the powerful plunder (as they always have). I'd say, "learn for next time," but let's be honest, it will be some other movement (likely one that rises out of opposition to this current one) that will be the next one to be co-opted, and you won't be part of it because it will be ostensibly "right wing."

aaronbrethorst 5y ago

Henley's departure from the CBC is a real blow to that organization. The loss of her reporting on critical issues like "Can hitting snooze and taking a long lunch be the real keys to success?" [0] or "Five West Coast hikes you probably don't know about (but should!)" [1] will be catastrophic to Canadians' ability to understand what's happening in the world around them. In all seriousness, I imagine that Henley decided that writing sponsored content for CBC wasn't a solid career, and wanted to get on that contrarianism gravy train that folks like Bari Weiss have been pioneering. Check out the rest of the articles published under Henley's byline—they're all in the same vein: https://www.cbc.ca/life/work-money/author/tara-henley-1.4401986 https://www.cbc.ca/life/work-money/author/tara-henley-1.4401... [0] https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/can-hitting-snooze-and-taking-a-long-lunch-be-the-real-keys-to-success-1.4127784 https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/can-hitting-snooze-and-taki... [1] https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/five-west-coast-hikes-you-probably-don-t-know-about-but-should-1.4027920 https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/five-west-coast-hikes-you-p...

epivosism 5y ago
This is interesting, but all downstream of her complaints. i.e. The article alleges her freedom to write meaningful articles was constrained by political problems. You can't judge a player for having a low batting average as a way to discredit their claim that the game is rigged.
_bfhp 5y ago
She wants to join Bari Weiss in focusing on housing crises, wages and working conditions, billionaire greed and authoritarian drug wars?
transcriptase 5y ago
She was a TV and radio producer. First paragraph of the linked page in case you missed it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

undoware 5y ago

dang 5y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- undoware 5y ago
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Wait why are we not allowed to complain about trans people. Are they special in a way that makes them immune from being complained about? Im fine with trans people. I am asking literally are we not allowed to complain about them.
    - undoware 5y ago
      - Taywee 5y ago
        > You're allowed complain about us, I guess, but not in front of us, and we're all around you? That's a roundabout way of saying "No, you aren't allowed to".
      - _0ffh 5y ago
        Assuming it is true that discussions on "free speech" always lead to "That Topic", maybe it is because a clique of political activists that claim for themselves the exclusive right to speak on any matter pertaining to "That Topic" are among the most censorious and intolerant that most people are likely to ever encounter?

lame-robot-hoax 5y ago

Sounds more like an ad for their Substack. No proof or backing for any of their claims, just a bunch of hollow, inflammatory statements What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

pyuser583 5y ago

“The last 18 months” coincides perfectly with start of the BLM protests. I’ve been involved with an arts-based non-profit for a long time. They do very specific type of older art. They produce it, exhibit it, encourage others to produce it, etc. The art form is Eurocentric, with a political history that contains some small instances racism, and vast oceans of mainstream liberalism. Every since BLM protests happened (the second time - in June 2020), they’ve been freaking out. Suddenly they’re trying to hire as many “BIPOC” as possible, even though there aren’t many open slots. They’re acknowledging every racial injustice under the heavens. They’re apologizing for existing (literally). Most of all, they’re scared. When I go to their exhibitions, every single person, is white. Occasionally a Black family will be there. Everyone in the crowd parts to allow them through. Everyone greets them - and only them. I imagine this awkward veneration is one reason why so few Black families come. Most of all, the leaders of this org are scared. Terrified. They don’t want to be considered “non-anti-racist.” When speaking with others, the terror is palpable. Edit: just to be clear this is an author specific type of performance art. Think a Bach symphony, a Wagner opera company, or a Shakespeare theater.

golemotron 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
telesilla 5y ago
Suggest to them that they talk about exactly what you are saying here. Say that it's difficult. That we are figuring it out. Put together exhibitions that talk about it. That's a hell of a lot better than shutting down communication. Be inclusive. Ask for help from other galleries who have better representation. Maybe they can do an exchange. Identify what there is to be afraid of - it's the necessary step to moving forward.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  Regarding putting together exhibitions, this is an author specific type of performance art. Kind of like a Shakespeare theater company. There’s room to reinterpret the artist, but frankly interpreting this author as socially conscious has been done so many times it’s boring. It would be like putting on a feminist production of Antigone, or a pacifist recitation of the Iliad, or an anti-racist production of Othello - not only “already done” but probably what the author intended. The folks running the show have been avoiding actual “woke” (so hate the phrase) art for exactly this reason - already done 1000 time - and the new era demands new efforts! Instead it’s hiring and outreach that’s gone bonkers. Regarding communication- it isn’t that people have stopped talking. They’ve stopped listening. Realistically, the donors are in charge. They’re the only ones listened to. And currently the powers that be are trying very hard to find new “anti-racist” donors, preferably BIPOC donors. I’m not sure what anyone can do about that. Other than stop donating. What do you mean when you talk about doing an exchange with other galleries?

epivosism 5y ago

What clearly seems wrong is the requirement to fill out forms on the race and gender of people you interview, and to have quotas to control whose voice is heard based on those irrelevant traits (irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.) My policy is to refuse to give my gender or race. If everybody did this, high frequencies of "other" or "unknown" could be spun any way they want to people looking at statistics. If they aren't satisfied with this, they have to go on record clarifying exactly how they define race - which seems difficult since they're also the people who claim it's not a real concept.

cuspycode 5y ago
Obligatory story beginning in 1963, where computer scientist Les Earnest explains why he always entered "mongrel" when questioned about his race: http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
- epivosism 5y ago
  This is pretty good, thanks. TLDR: institutional adventures from a national security employee challenging the requirement to declare their race. This reminds me of "Seeing like a State" by James C Scott: attempts to simplify the world to allow generalizations about it always lose valuable detail.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  Lol … I like the part about the Caucuses being in the USSR, so being Caucasian meant being Soviet. I once told a friend from west India to put “Aryan” down for race, but then stopped him and apologized after I realized that was mean-funny, not funny-funny. I was really an asshole in my 20s.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  Kinda unrelated but Les is one of my favorite people to use as an example of how "websites" used to be. His writing is fun and honest, and some of his ideas were imo groundbreaking (and many are floating about waiting to be rediscovered).

iso1210 5y ago

[flagged]

badRNG 5y ago

I'm not sure these sorts of articles provide much value on HN. By "these sorts of articles", I mean the ones that have claimed that "diversity efforts have gone too far this time." Regardless of your support or opposition to diversity, I think one would agree that these rapidly turn into unproductive, highly divisive comment sections that are out of place with the rest of HN.

ineptech 5y ago
They very reliably rise to the front page (because people like arguing about this stuff) and then sink off again (because, I believe, the HN algorithm penalizes a low upvote-to-comment-count ratio). I predict this'll be gone in two hours...
- hammock 5y ago
  >the HN algorithm More accurately, it's people flagging it and also manual nerfing by @dang
  - coldtea 5y ago
  - badRNG 5y ago
    To be fair, every comment that didn't agree with the conclusion of the article was nerfed. The top comment on this post for most of its existence immediately left the top and within seconds jumped to being the very last comment at the bottom with all the other even vaguely pro-diversity comments.
    - dang 5y ago
      Your and others' comments criticizing the article have been heavily upvoted, so this is clearly not the case.
      - badRNG 5y ago

teg4n_ 5y ago

This is incredibly tedious. I can't fathom how this has anything to do with "Hacker News" but I guess it's appeal to a certain subset of the audience here overrides that.

kache_ 5y ago
badRNG 5y ago
The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. It seems reasonable that a subset of the culture that produced the work environment at Blizzard [1] or has historically rallied behind alt-right thought leaders would also be here on HN. Talk to any woman software engineer, I 100% guarantee they have multiple stories about dealing with a...specific type of guy. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22823991/activision-blizzard-sexual-harassment-victim-press-conference https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22823991/activision-blizz...
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  > The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc. But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and I just started working with tech/SV companies as that happened.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    D&I is definitely commonplace across the corporate world, and similar opposition is too. My brother and sister once worked at the same company for a while - my brother complained that everyone wanted to promote women and he was disadvantaged, while my sister got groped in a taxi by a colleague and was told by her male manager that if she wanted to get promoted she should make sure senior managers knew that she didn't want to have kids (not actually the case).

CapitalistCartr 5y ago

Except at political groups to which I belong, I am almost always the left-most person in the room. The Lefts greatest weakness is an enthusiasm for splintering over small matters of doctrine. Identity politics, tribalism over principle, virtue signaling, whatever fad this is, it's deeply hurting progress.

wussboy 5y ago
I suspect you’re right. My personal solution to this problem, having once run a left-leaning organization that was taken over by all the things you mention, is to learn more towards the centre. I’m curious if you’ve considered the same, especially because you describe yourself as “the left-most person in the room”?
- CapitalistCartr 5y ago
  In the United States the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right. In a Scandinavian Country I'd be a fairly moderate, conservative social democrat. Here, if people knew my thoughts, I'd be seen as a Wild-Eyed Radical. But given the politics in my country, I've given up compromise and actually moved further Left. And more militant, less quiet. Luckily, the organization I'm currently involved with (the SRA), while hilariously disorganized, is firmly Left.
  - laszlojamf 5y ago
    I don't mean this as any kind kind of criticism, but being a swede with an American friend who was partially brought up in Sweden during the good ol days of Swedish social democracy I wonder if Americans really know what they mean when they talk about Scandinavian social democracy. These days they're a lot more conservative than they used to be. Mostly I imagine their stance on immigration control, and crime wouldn't be what Americans have in mind. Or maybe you do! All I'm saying is that it's interesting hearing it come up a lot in American discussions as if it's its own thing when really they're quite the moving target. EDIT: but i guess for you guys it might be more single-payor healthcare and reasonable taxation in which case, yeah, some things haven't changed :)

monkeybutton 5y ago

I wonder where she will go after publishing her book. Postmedia? Bell media? Staying independent? The news landscape in Canada is rather limited and still consolidating. Think what you may about the CBC and its biases, its nothing compared to the National Post where the owner, Conrad Black, airs his crappy opinions.

gruez 5y ago
Quitting [media organization] and starting a substack seems to be pretty popular these days.
generalpf 5y ago
Rebel Media.
kerneloftruth 5y ago
I think she's joining Glenn Greenwald over at substack.com.
version_five 5y ago
I saw the National Post carried her article as well. Hopefully she will stay independent, and focus on constructive reporting rather than just reactionary complaining. We see a lot of this in politics, people with what could be good ideas just getting caught up in getting upset and creating outrage about the ridiculous things the other side had done. Better to try and shift the dialog entirely rather than just complain.
djkivi 5y ago
Conrad Black hasn't owned the National Post for over 20 years.
- moistly 5y ago
  True, but sad to say they still carry his opinion column.

paulsutter 5y ago

Left and liberal do not mean the same thing. Basically all of my blue or red friends agree with the principles of Liberalism, which brought us the enlightenment and [modern] civilization. You can ask your own friends, here's a definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism (quote below) In terms of numbers, about 8% of the US population is.. left. 25% is traditional conservative. And the other 67% is regular folks who in fact agree on most policy questions From Wikipedia: > Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), democracy, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and a market economy

bambax 5y ago
> Liberalism, which brought us the enlightenment and civilization itself Civilization predates liberalism by about 7,000 years.
pessimizer 5y ago
Over the past ten years, there's been a weird collaboration between centrists and right-wingers to define not being a bigot as being left-wing and being a bigot as being right-wing. So corporate PR has transformed huge employers and the finance industry into left-wingers, and when right-wingers complain about being silenced, they're specifically talking about being censored about race and gender. This creates the false drama. Instead, what the US has is two liberal parties, one trying to also appeal to a base of evangelical whites and the other trying to appeal to people who aren't white. Both are trying to pass the same liberal policies, policies that I hope you aren't trying to associate with some 67% silent majority. 67% of people aren't against antitrust enforcement or free health care.
- paulsutter 5y ago
  Not trying to associate any specific issues, just pointing out the surprisingly broad appeal of Liberalism as defined. Really an eye-opener the responses I got sharing that with folks. Yes both parties have a bizarre set of priorities, conveniently avoiding the really important questions (like the two you raise)

newbie789 5y ago

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newaccount2021 5y ago

notatoad 5y ago

>It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like. as a regular reader of CBC, this is the line here that resonates the most with me. If CBC was a left-wing organization advocating for tearing down the structures of power and building a more equitable society, their focus on whatever microagression is currently trending would seem a lot more honest. but their bias is overwhelmingly in favour of the governments and corporations who have built the status quo, so their articles decrying social inequities ring pretty hollow.

freeslave 5y ago

This would be more meaningful if it wasn't an advertisement for her substack.

elevenoh 5y ago

ninkendo 5y ago
"Wokeism" is a pejorative catch-all term for all the negative aspects of trying to be against racism, so it's kind of true by definition, isn't it? Literally no one is defending "wokeism" any more than people are defending "racism", because the terms themselves are intended to convey something negative. It makes the term kind of useless, wouldn't you think? It's a placeholder term for whatever you don't like.
- bequanna 5y ago
  The precise definition of the pejorative 'woke' can be debated, but I think we all can agree that "we know it when we see it". And it is far from useless. IMO it accurately labels people who are either: 1. Taking liberal talking points to extremes for the sole purpose of attention seeking or 2. Naive, coming of age youth bumping against reality for the first time in their lives and use the distraction of politics and remote injustices to avoid confronting the "hard work" which will be required to thrive in the adult world.
- ameminator 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I think a lot of people implicitly or explicitly defend "wokeism" as interpreted in the most severe and uncharitable way. I try to be charitable in my assumptions, but even then, it's hard to argue that it's safe to criticize any DIE or "woke" initiative. There always seems to be some risk in being fired/blacklisted or otherwise attacked for even modest criticism of the DIE movement.
  - metabagel 5y ago
    It may seem that way, but I think that's because right wing media does a stellar job of surfacing extreme examples. Plus, right wing media fosters a collective sense of grievance, which I see in some of the comments here.

retrocryptid 5y ago

nottorp 5y ago

Hmm going on a tangent here: do HNers "consume" news from old style media any more? I'm pretty certain that I haven't got my news from either radio or TV in a billion years. Since I had a pet dinosaur.

rsync 5y ago
I habitually listen to NPR (KQED in the bay area). I find that the PBS newshour is of high quality and I also like "Fresh Air". On the Internet side: I enthusiastically recommend the daily "Monocle 24" news podcast. It is very well done and regardless of what you think of Monocle magazine I would suggest that if you consumed just one world news show it should be this one.

pyuser583 5y ago

> It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. I’m glad people are starting to realize that participating in culture wars, regardless of the side, is supporting American cultural dominance. I say this as a fairly jingoistic American, who feels American influence does much more good than harm.

rdtsc 5y ago

> To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny. Not an accident, I believe. Occupy Wall Street made the billionaires and Wall Street take notice. As a consequence, they probably decided people need to be busy with something else, just in case, so they don't get any more funny ideas. Identity politics is a great one to divide people, fan anger, get more clicks and views, and at the same time get them uninterested what the billionaires and Wall Street firms are doing.

president 5y ago
I find identity politics to be fascinating and scary. Essentially, it is a grouping of many individual fringe concepts/movements that form a large political power and is backed by masses of well-meaning people who are sold stories and imagery of oppressor vs oppressed. IMO it is a large distraction which draws a lot of attention and money from more pressing issues occurring in the world. I fail to see where identity politics have helped in any non-superficial way and the level of division it has caused in society will be hard to reverse.

wussboy 5y ago

The primary arts centre in one of Canada’s largest cities spent most of last summer running a series of events where transgender artists presented children’s songs and stories. I can’t help but think that for the vast majority of casual viewers (pedestrians and casual passers by) it was confusing at best and “another example of how we waste money on the arts” at worst. I love and respect the arts. It’s goals are worthy. It needs to do better than this.

brailsafe 5y ago
Couldn't this be said for almost all art?

kazinator 5y ago

The CBC got a $1.2B in government funding in 2019-2020: Source: themselves: https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/impact-and-accountability/finances/annual-reports/ar-2019-2020/financial-sustainability/revenue-and-other-funds https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/impact-and-accountability/fin... Can you believe it? Yet, these money-grabbing robber barons don't provide Canadians with streaming. There is a shitty CBC app compatible with Android TV which serves some canned videos and pictures, and a CBC News app for phones that has live news (that will Chromecast). I say cut the taxpayer funding, or else make them deliver to Canadians the content they are paying for. In Japan, NHK (rough analog of CBC) has a website where you can watch the actual broadcast. (Not available outside of Japan without a VPN, but that's entirel beside the point.)

erk__ 5y ago
That a broadcaster with approximately twice the government funding is delivering a better service is not a great argument to cut funding, you could even say that it is the opposite. CBC get $31,807,419 CAD per million capita from the government.[0] NHK get $61.293.417 CAD per million capita from license fees.[1] CBC may be awful compared to NHK, but your argument loses power when you have not looked up information like this. Danish Radio gets $114.787.353 CAD per million capita from the government which is more than both the above, and they also have a great collection of shows and movies available to stream. [2] [0]: Your link [1]: https://www.nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/english/publication/assets/pdf/corporate_profile.pdf https://www.nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/english/publication/asse... [2]: https://www.ft.dk/samling/20201/almdel/KUU/bilag/103/2332285.pdf https://www.ft.dk/samling/20201/almdel/KUU/bilag/103/2332285...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kazinator 5y ago
  It terms of television (which isn't all there is to CBC, I realize) CBC isn't delivering any service to you, if you don't subscribe to some expensive service from a cable TV monopolist (that they are in bed with). They have no qualms about helping themselves to a piece of your income, though.

paganel 5y ago

> It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like Very glad this got mentioned, in all of this people have forgotten who their enemies really are: the government for some, the big corporations for other, sure as hell the real enemy is not Sam from around the block who doesn't believe in LGTBQ rights. Sam doesn't have an ounce of power, no matter how retrograde or not his beliefs are, the government and the big corporations have, lots of it.

YZF 5y ago
Enemies? Sam has a lot of power. We've seen over the last few decades how speech influences a lot of Sams and completely changes society. Society is the sum of all Sams and Sams have a lot of power. Sam from around the block is the Sam that used to report or burn the witches in the 1500's. Now LGBTQ isn't necessarily the dearest topic to my heart, but freedom is and this is just one aspect of it. Racism and bigotry are all over the place. What do we do about it? I would argue that those mindsets are not that dissimilar then those causing issues with governments and corporations.
- ameminator 5y ago
  If you believe in freedom of expression and of speech, it doesn't matter how much power Sam has, even if you disagree with what he says. I don't like or agree with white supremacists, but I consider the ACLU defense of their speech a monument to our civilization's respect of human rights.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    > ACLU defense of their speech a monument to our civilization's respect of human rights. Is there an argument from a landmark case or are you speaking gsnerally?
    - ameminator 5y ago
      Here is the specific case I am referencing: https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/skokie-case-how-i-came-represent-free-speech-rights-nazis https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/sk...

ILMostro7 5y ago

Yeah, those abolishinists and civil rights protesters were very unpopular. These "woke extremists" are not sympathetic to how most people around me feel about them.

boppo1 5y ago
Abolitionists and civil rights protestors had more clearly defined 'win' conditions. What is the end goal for 'woke extremists'? A person who was previously my friend could not articulate it to me. He said 'when white supremacy is gone' and then regularly leveled that label at every single thing you can think of, including Netflix, my parents, museums, and more. I have heard that "discomfort is part of the process" but also that "there's always more work to do." My friend and I had "difficult conversations" about "doing the hard work" and I kept agreeing with him against my own beliefs and letting him go on about this stuff until one day he cut me out of his life anyway for not being woke enough. I am sincerely at a loss for understanding.
- ILMostro7 5y ago
  Yup, cause Civil Rights problem was solved with a law, and black people got exactly what they wanted. Before you start dissecting the argument piecemeal, just pointing out that it's difficult to tell arrogance from ignorance these days no matter what the issue is and on what side one stands. Simply dig in and hold on tight! ;). But what do I know, merely another down-vote in an online echo chamber disguised as Zeitgeist and further eroding critical thinking.

coldtea 5y ago

>It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. Don't worry, you're still the furthest to the left. It's the others that have aligned with the priorities of mega-corporations, think tanks, and power centers - downplaying class and overplaying identity issues (and at the moment when those are the least anti-establishment and most incosequential position). Worse, they're using this as a weapon for class warfarce (against the working class, white predominantly, but they'd also openly use it against the poor black and latinos too, but they need to pretend they champion them) and a class signifier.

metabagel 5y ago
What makes you think corporations, think tanks, and power centers are aligned with identity politics? I draw rather the opposite conclusion. I'm not big on identity politics, but then I'm white. But, I also don't get why we can't allow other people to express their own valid experience without trying to shout them down.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >What makes you think corporations, think tanks, and power centers are aligned with identity politics? Their (coporations and power centers) lip service towards those, their funding and support, establishment of departments and roles devoted to it, use in advertisements, mobilisation of corporate policies and law to stiffle any dissidents, constant signalling, and so on. >But, I also don't get why we can't allow other people to express their own valid experience without trying to shout them down. Isn't this the exact problem with modern identity politics? Shouting people down and monopolizing the discourse (usually by privileged class-wise minority, and mostly white at that) with rage-bait and conformity signaling.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

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karaterobot 5y ago

> This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. I know that sort of announcement is not the place where she'd answer this question in depth, but that line made me curious, and I wished she had. 18 months is a very short timespan: since before the start of quarantine. What does she feel precipitated these changes at the CBC?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

msie 5y ago

rasengan 5y ago

This article wasn’t really about race. It was about the freedom of speech and the chilling effect upon news journalists of late due to editorial guidelines enforced by pharmaceutical sponsors and fact checkers also sponsored by the like.

olivermarks 5y ago

Strange thread here ignoring the very important points about the media Tara is making. 'Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted. It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.' I would argue the UK BBC & US NPR are also in dire straits because of similar erosions of impartialness. Neilsen demonstrates that the legacy media are dying fast, fewer and fewer people are tuned in as the broadcasting becomes more and more toxic. This is a good thing imo. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-business-presidential-elections-arts-and-entertainment-7cc91db0950a8e7e7bcf50d5d23dfc26 https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-busin...

deltarholamda 5y ago
>Neilsen demonstrates that the legacy media are dying fast, fewer and fewer people are tuned in as the broadcasting becomes more and more toxic. This is a good thing imo. But is it a good thing? A free press can be thought of as the sensory organs of the polity. If the sensory organs are faulty, or worse are deliberately lying, then alternative sensory organs may fill in the blanks with less robust information. These days, when you read a story from mainstream sources, it's often best to say, "well, I don't know anything about this story, but it's pretty safe to assume that what I just read is either wrong or nonsense." That's really not good. It gets worse if the only alternatives are just as wrong, or just as nonsensical, and you have to apply some kind of boolean bullshit math to get some outline of what the issue even is. The erosion of public trust isn't a short-term problem.
- olivermarks 5y ago
  By 'free press' here I think you mean state sponsored and/or corporate 'news' outlets. The internet has transcended these last century print and broadcast foundationed constructs long ago, but their owners prop up their mastheads as though they are still the top tier of 'fact checked' integrity, despite the fact they are now in some cases sloppier than the Drudge Report ever was. Tara presumably left a salaried job where her job description changed. Good for her, now the challenge is building credibility on the censorship dominated internet and staying on the right side of the big tech editorial platform gatekeepers....CDA230 where are you?

beaconstudios 5y ago

yet another instance of Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Measuring diversity of organisations is a good way to know if people are being excluded from opportunities based on immutable factors. It's not something you should be actively boosting by refusing to hire cis/het/white/male people and calling that equality. A much better approach would be to say something like "oh, our company hires less black people than you'd expect based on demographic data. Where's the bottleneck? Are we discriminating in hiring, either intentionally or unintentionally? Is our industry insulated from black employees by geography, culture, perception?" Then when you know (or at least have a good idea) where the bottleneck is, you know where to intervene if it's something you're able to do. It's basically just the institutional equivalent of investigating problems based on dashboard metrics. If you have a dashboard of t1 vs t2 subscriptions and you think the ratio's wrong, you don't just start banning t1 subs to fix the metric, that's moronic. Good "wokeness" is just egalitarianism with a systemic/holistic perspective. Bad "wokeness" is just more racism a la "two wrongs make a right".

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

djoldman 5y ago

> To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity. Unfortunately, it appears fairly clear that over the past decade, a deeper cognitive dissonance is that of journalists' beliefs about their profession. Journalists seem to believe that Quality News [0] can sustain itself. News is entertainment. Quality News loses because it commands less engagement than tweets, youtube videos, tv/movie streaming, gaming, and others. News organizations survive now by aligning their stories with a chosen tribe (liberals, conservatives, whomever) and inflaming the base with rage rhetoric. Unfortunately, it turns out that people don't really care about truth - it's pretty boring. [0] Quality News defined however the particular journalist wants to define it (ethical/fair/unbiased/relevant/etc)

akomtu 5y ago
If the populace are psychologically toddlers, they have to be engaged with toys. Nations are started by mature egos who value truth above else, but gradually replaced by those toddlers who like emotions better, and so they let the nation decay and fall.

lnxg33k1 5y ago

p_j_w 5y ago
>we have to be careful for example about using the right pronouns in order to accomodate the need of like a 0.% of the population Is this really a problem? It's a zero cost action.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  It would be, it could be, but the few times that you refer to a person with the wrong pronoun then you are likely to be offended and to be lectured about how you didn't understand that they were something else
  - blueflow 5y ago
    You can use the "Shinigami Eyes" extension to warn you about people who might get offended by misgendering them. Saves you alot of trouble if you are spending time on Twitter or Reddit.
    - lnxg33k1 5y ago
      The day I install an extension in my browser perpetually loaded in order to accomodate and make an effort to satisfy the 0.% of the population while the 0.% of the population is not available to make an effort in order to let me know in a civilised way that they identify with another pronoun, then kill me, because also letting people know in a civil way that you prefer other ways to address you is a 0-cost action
    - jabej 5y ago
      That’s absolutely insane.
      - blueflow 5y ago
        Its genius, given the fact that these people themselves created these lists to allow anyone to avoid them.

Dig1t 5y ago

I honestly believe that bringing back the FCC fairness doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine) would help alleviate some of the divisiveness in America. Being presented both sides of an argument really helps people empathize and come to compromises. It also makes people less angry.

Mikeb85 5y ago

ben7799 5y ago

Why is this here, it's just clickbait self promotion: The TLDR: - She claims she's not an aggrieved conservative - She blows a bunch of right wing dog whistles - Says she quit - Plugs her book and new substack effort (Check out my soundslice!)

CoastalCoder 5y ago
> - She blows a bunch of right wing dog whistles Is there a particular reason you've concluded that she's dog-whistling? My understanding of "dog whistling" is that it's intentionally ambiguous. I.e., it's mean as a signal to a target group, while being plausibly deniable to everyone else. But the key point is that it's ambiguous.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

joemazerino 5y ago

Glad someone said it. I don't follow the CBC (I imagine only canucks do) but any article I've seen in the last few months has been outright commie garbage.

quattrofan 5y ago

[dead]

entropicgravity 5y ago

I can't but agree with this column. I've come to think of CBC News as the "Women's Human Interest Review" except Hanomansing of course, but getting decent news two nights a week for billions of dollars a year isn't what the Canadian tax payers signed up for. It's time for this Emperor to get some decent clothes on tout suite.

8note 5y ago

The CBC's funding was decreased by a bunch in the Harper years. I imagine the liberals haven't reinstated it. Without funding, they can't stay independent of what's fashionable

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

raxxorrax 5y ago

Problem with that is that the cooler heads will leave. A saying in German is that the smarter one gives in... To be honest, I don't really believe people that cannot see this problem are trustworthy.

deodorel 5y ago

I was part of many left wings groups and I remember there was a transitional period in which there was a lot of talk about intersectionalism, that is how we need to not only take into account the class, but also race, gender, sexual orientation etc. Then slowly the class part dissappeared so only the latter were left to intersect.

mmaunder 5y ago

Flagged. Well that is very unfortunate. Looks like HN isn't immune from the incredibly insightful points that Tara is making.