This from Newfoundland, crossposted at Our Public Airwaves and iridescent spoke:
ST. JOHN'S TELEGRAM
September 10, 2005
EDITORIAL
Some things reach the end of their useful life, run out and get thrown away. The manufacturers of the Bic pen, for example, announced on Thursday that they had manufactured their 100-billionth pen, meaning - when you look at the manufacturing announcement in a different light - an unimaginably-huge pile of thrown-away pens somewhere.
Other things are worth keeping, even though their flaws may be legion. Everyone probably has a battered old kitchen utensil somewhere - a vegetable peeler held together with string, an old pepper mill that perpetually falls off the stove - that just seems to work better than any replacement version you try out.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation certainly fits that mould. With the current CBC lockout, the usual critics are coming out of the woodwork to ask that perpetual CBC question - is the broadcaster worth its huge federal subsidies and, even more, is it worth those subsidies when it is competing so thoroughly with private broadcasters?
As usual, there are other broadcasters who focus on the subsidy and simply say the CBC shouldn't get public money, conveniently forgetting the millions of dollars private broadcasters take out of federal television production funds.
It is an easy target because the subsidy is right there in front of your eyes — not as visible, say, as million-dollar funding from federal business development funds, or free Crown land and tax breaks from provincial governments, or even the defacto government support of EI payments to workers in companies that specialize in seasonal industries.
But the CBC is a more complicated equation than that.
Is the CBC sometimes parochial, occasionally stodgy, and downright unable to decide whether it is a private business or a public broadcaster? Yes.
Are their journalists paid substantially more than their private-sector counterparts in this province? And do they sometimes look down their noses at those private-sector compatriots? Yes, again.
Does the CBC - even locally - have its own particular and sometimes frustratingly aggravating self-righteousness? Absolutely.
But can anybody in their right mind honestly argue that we'd be better off without it? Absolutely not. And especially not in Newfoundland and Labrador.
For weeks now, there has been a decided dearth of local broadcast news and current affairs. While they might not be everyone's cup of tea, CBC radio and television have a crucial place in the broadcasting spectrum, especially in as far as their responsibilities as public broadcasters give them the opportunity and ability to broach topics that private broad-casters have long since quietly given up on.
The continuing lockout is damaging our ability to hear one part of a range of voices and opinions. And the damage could be permanent.
Monday was to have seen the relaunch of a one-hour supper hour Newfoundland and Labrador newscast on CBC Television, an effort to reverse the mistake that cost the province Here and Now.
Now, you have to wonder if that relaunch will even happen.
The CBC isn't perfect, and it never will be. They are not the be-all and end-all of the news business. But they are an important voice in the province, and one we can't afford to have silenced. No matter what anyone says, the CBC is not disposable media.
This lockout has gone on long enough.
© The Telegram
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