Most countries are founded on a tribal reality. Native French people who live in France are held together by a powerful ethnicity. Native Russian feel the same way as do native Italians. Thousands of years of consanguinity, music, literature and history binds the tribe.
But there are few new types of country, like Canada that have only a small tribal base and have become nations because of a set of ideas and values. These new countries have to work very hard to create the belief that all Canadians are Canadians and not just my tribal bit of Canada. If we fail in this supreme national task, we risk the events that we witness in New Orleans. If your media supports the idea of the "other" then anything can happen and there is no future for a nation of differences.
The central mission of a national government in a nation made up of immigrants is to work to ensure that all believe that they are citizens of equal worth who can expect the support of others who look different to them but who also call themselves nationals of that country. How do you do this?
In these immigrant nations, the national values are established by the main norming process of all communities - conversation and story telling. A national set of values is set mainly by a national broadcaster. They tell our national and local stories. They tell us about the world through our eyes. Listen to how a family talk. You will hear what they value by their conversation. The conversation forms the values of the family. So when you travel to a new country, your observation of the local media tells you too what this place values.
So the values of the media are a critical force in the values of a nation or any community. You can lose this glue if you miss this point.
For generations in the US the national news departments acted differently from the rest of the network. They saw themselves as the temple of truth. Americans could rely on CBS, NBC and ABC to make a distinction between news and entertainment and between news and the profits of the network. In the heyday, news was indeed a public service. It does not take a sensitive observer to note that this is no longer the case. Powerful centrifugal forces are now in motion. Why?
News is increasingly trivialized and has become entertainment. Worse, Fox increasingly resembles a tribal network where only a ultra right wing view is tolerated. So the America story becomes the OJ trial or Bill O'Reilly's view of the world. This does not have a trivial effect on the total values of America. The commitment to the state to the citizen is falling as is the commitment of the state to all Americans.
So what has this got to do with the CBC? The CBC is a vital part of the making of Canada as a nation that is all about minorities and that accepts difference as its central norm. By 2017, whites will themselves be a minority in Toronto. In a nation where all need the protection of the state, who will host the conversation that we need to thrive in such an environment?
I worry that our politicians have missed this as has the leadership of the CBC.
If I was the president of CBC, I would work tirelessly to strip out the bureaucracy, but I would also see the strengthening of its role as the voice of our country as my life's work.
I sense that the PMO's office wish that CBC would become more CTV. Mr Harper would prefer Fox. The current leadership certainly want to see CBC cast as a business. If we get Fox, what will Canada be like? Can we survive this type of values?
In a large and diverse country such as Canada, the national government has to pull the right nation building levers or we risk failure. They have to invest in our connective tissue - roads, rails, the air, the internet and the national media are not private goods. They are what makes us a nation. The CBC needs reform but it does not need to be made irrelevant.
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