A terrific example

Just a quick word of praise for the CBC event at Centrepointe Theatre In Ottawa last night. Yes that’s right, a word of praise. The event was called Bias and Belonging: Being Muslim in Ottawa. It was a terrific event. Thoughtful, smart, detailed, contextual. It wasn’t flawless, but it made you think that this is what public broadcasting should be about: a conversation that helps you understand and make sense of the world around you. None of the sensationalizied shit that too often passes for news these days on the CBC. Too much of that stuff is bullshit — pure and simple — and I do mean simple. What people want was on full display last night. Help me make sense of what’s going on. Bias and Belonging tried valiantly to do just that. Mostly it succeeded. I hope senior management at the CBC was watching. They could learn a thing or two about what public broadcasting in Canada ought to be all about.

Happy New Year 2011

Happy New Year one and all.  I hope to find the time to write in this space more often in 2011. The original mission of this blog — to start a national conversation about what it means to be a public broadcaster in 2011 — remains as vital as it was when I started this thing a little over a year ago.  Shockingly, there’s not the big money in trying to kickstart that conversation that I was hoping there would be.  Who knew?

But the fight to save the CBC from its own senior management continues despite the meagre returns.  The firing of Richard Stursberg was one of the highlights of the past year, but the paucity of his vision — not to mention his deep contempt — for what public broadcasting ought to be remains deeply embedded in mindset of too many of the careerists who populate the senior managerial ranks at the CBC. 

That’s why 2011 will see the further Magidization of CBC News as its “if it bleeds, it leads” mantra takes over more of what you hear on CBC Radio. 

I’ll be writing about that in the near future, as well as some of the other egregious goings-on at the CBC.  It’s amazing the number of people inside the CBC who want to bend a guys ear about what’s happening to a place they deeply care about.   

I want to reiterate two things from that last sentence.  I plan to continue to plug away at this blog because I — and many, many, many other deeply unhappy people inside the CBC —  deeply care about public broadcasting and what it means.   Many of them also deeply feel it’s a conversation that ought to be happening inside the CBC.  What does it mean to be a public broadcaster in the 21st century?  How do we justify the money we get from the public purse?  What does that mean for the journalism we offer to the Canadian public on a daily basis?

But one of the really sad things about the current CBC is that conversation isn’t happening internally at all.  The culture of questioning, of probing, or meaningful dissent, is being lost.  Get with the program, or get lost is the mindset of too many CBC managers at the moment.  It is just one more way that group is contributing to the loss of something special – and something different — in our culture.

Anyway, I continue to hope we can find a way to talk about this.  You can find my occasional contributions to the conversation here.  Feel free to join in.

In the meantime, Happy New Year.

It’s been a while…

 The blog’s been on the backburner for a bit, but recent events have got the typing fingers itchy, so here goes.

I find a lot of irony in the announcement by Sun Media that it wants to introduce a new news channel with a more conservative bent to Canadian television screens. Have they been watching the new CBC News Network, and the local supper hour casts currently on offer?

The CBC could not be trying harder to make itself more palatable to the Conservatives (and conservatives).

The entire remaking of CBC News could be taken from the Conservative playbook. The CBC is looking for a larger audience, and the consultants are telling it the way to do that is to focus on the things that matter to that (thankfully, so far uninterested) audience – the weather, their safety, their health, their lives. Furthermore, give the audience that stuff in a way that touches the emotions, but leaves the thinking out of it. Surveys say critical thinking is elitist. So is politics. And policy. So too really, is the whole concept of civil society – that there is something larger than you and your concerns. All of it elitist and unnecessary.

Instead, you have every right to be frightened beyond measure about the growing crime rate (wait a second, the evidence suggests otherwise), or the presence of a Muslim woman in a niqab, or the firebombing of an unoccupied bank in the middle of the night. And you have every right to be angered beyond measure about the inconveniences of everyday life – like the traffic backup you were subjected to this morning, or the presence of a group home for some marginalized group being built in your neighbourhood. The only thing that matters is what matters to you.

We promise you’ll see yourself and hear yourself on the new CBC News, but as for the business of challenging your comfortable assumptions, or offering up alternative ideas…forget about it.

The other irony in Kory Teneycke’s announcement is that while he’s got the diagnosis right, his prescription for what ails Canadian TV is likely to make the Canadian body politic even more unhealthy than it is at the moment. Teneycke is bang on when he says the CBC is smug, condescending and irrelevant. More so now than at any point in its history. But his prescription for the problem is to treat news as entertainment. More of the more emotion stuff, and less of that pesky, problematic thinking stuff.

But then Teneycke and the Sun chain aren’t really worried about the health of the Canadian body politic. They just want to continue the migration of the centre in Canadian politics to the right – a migration that’s happened over the course of a generation, but you can’t help but feel is speeding up. Especially now that the CBC News no longer even pretends it’s trying to be a public good, but is simply in the business of giving people what its consultants say they want. Simple, safe and unchallenging.

A quick word too about the CBC and the World Cup. It’s hard not to get caught up in all the greater meaning stuff being attached at the moment to soccer, or football, if you will. Smart people will always try to attach greater meaning to something they spend hours on end watching. Otherwise we’re simply wasting time watching a dumb game that doesn’t really mean anything. So we’re getting a lot of the soccer is life stuff at the moment. I get a kick out of a lot of it. And so in the same spirit, here is my attempt to attach greater meaning to CBC’s coverage of World Cup football.

Watch it and see how the new ideology at work at CBC dominates coverage. Content is secondary to the new prevailing ideology that people will only watch if they see themselves. And so we get the almost entirely vapid and content-less “Pulse of the Nation”. I defy anyone to identify one interesting moment from any of the “Pulse of the Nation” spots. But then its not meant to be interesting – its sole purpose is to convince Canadians of the CBC’s populist bona fides. Watch us, and eventually you’ll get to appear on camera . Maybe then you’ll watch, right? Promise? Please. Don’t make us beg. Because we’re very close to doing so. Right now we’re working on something that involves Stursberg coming to your house and pleading with you. He tears up very, very well. We’re market-testing it at the moment.

Anyway, look for some version of “Pulse of the Nation” to migrate over to the National once the World Cup is over.

Then there’s also spectacular commercialization of the World Cup coverage on Canada’s public broadcaster. You’ve got “Captain Morgan at the Half”, the “Budweiser Man of the Match”, the “CIBC Post-Game Show.” I know the World Cup is a real money-making opportunity for Canada’s public broadcaster, and I accept that money is an issue at the CBC. Given that, I think Stursberg’s missed a real opportunity. You’ve got 90 whole minutes with absolutely no commercial content. Stursberg should be getting Mitch Peacock and Scott Russell to regularly interject…”you’re watching the 13^th minute of the match between Slovenia and Slovakia. It’s brought to you by TD Canada Trust. Coming up in 23 seconds, will be the 14^th minute of the match, brought to you by Lakota.”

See, that’s where the real money is. I’m surprised a visionary like Richard Stursberg hasn’t thought of it. Oh well, it’s out there now. Maybe in four years time, eh?

　

One more thing on a completely different topic. I’ve just finished a terrific thriller that I think everyone should read. I’m just starting in on this Stieg Larsson trilogy, but I can’t believe any one of them will be better than “The Dying Light” by Henry Porter. It’s absolutely fantastic. And, as an added bonus, it makes you think as well. Mostly it makes you think about where our growing obsession with safety and security (are you paying  attention CBC management types?) will lead us. Do yourself a favour, and read it this summer.

　

Running on empty…

As I’ve written in this space before, it’s hard to keep writing about a subject that you’ve almost completely lost interest in watching, or listening to. Which helps explains why there are fewer posts on the blog these days. I’m running out of things to say about the new CBC News.

The National used to be must-watch TV in my life. It no longer is. Almost every time I turn on the new CBC News Network, I find something new to be appalled by. The breaking news reporter position is in danger of becoming a joke. 22 Minutes should take it on. The reporter rarely has anything interesting to say beyond the fact that we’re on the story, and trying to chase down more information. We’ll deliver that nugget to you breathlessly as soon as we get it. My favourite breaking news moment came after the Supreme Court decision on Omar Khadr. You know the one where the court ruled his Charter rights were violated, but wouldn’t go as far as ordering that he be brought back to Canada. The guy on the breaking news desk that day told the viewers at home that the Supreme Court has ruled his rights were violated…you know life, liberty, the…

He stopped himself there, vaguely aware that he might have the wrong set of rights.

I don’t mean to mock the guy. He’s in a difficult position. The people in these jobs have a thankless task. They’re making this shit up as they go along because their bosses are telling them that surveys say Canadians want their news, and they want it now.

Richard, those surveys are wrong. People want more from the CBC than uninformed and ill-informed babble that simply marks a story, and takes up air time.

Anyway, enough about that.

One of the theories I’ve heard from a few folks inside the corporation about the changes to CBC News is that they are a means to an end. Suck the people in by giving them what the surveys say they want…fast, simple, easy to digest, filled with emotion, detail-sparse, if not free. News about what matters to you because you’re all that matters.

The theory goes is that once you’ve got them watching, or listening, then you spring the detail and context and complexity on them. Tell them stuff they might not want to hear or watch. You’ve got them hooked.

It’s an interesting theory. It’s not happening in practice.

Case in point, the story about the arrest of Colonel Russell Williams. On Wednesday morning, Christie Blatchford in the Globe kicked the journalistic world’s ass with her front-page story about Williams and what he allegedly told police under questioning this past weekend.

That story should have thrown down the gauntlet for the CBC.

This is the story Canadians are talking about. It’s the one they want to know more about. It’s the kind of story that CBC News staff people were told the changes to CBC News were about – at least the internal changes. The creation of a more centralized assignment desk for instance. CBC News wants to own stories like this one, and the changes we are making will help us do just that.

And yet, yesterday in the face of the Globe’s challenge, CBC News withered. What we got last night on the National was a story based around the chief of defence staff’s appearance at CFB Trenton yesterday, and then a strange and hectoring interview with Walt Natynczyk. about how closely the military had monitored Russell Williams before his arrest????

The interview was a mistake. The news report offered little of substance, and nothing new beyond the prepared words from the general.

But early in the day, in the face of the Globe’s scoop, there were all sorts of possibilities of what to do with this story, where to take it. To name just one…who is Russell Williams? We apparently knew little about him prior to his joining the military in 1987. What more can we find out? What more can we tell Canadians?

Sadly, CBC News wasn’t up to the task. Pick up today’s Globe if you want that story.

Instead, what we got from the CBC is what we’re increasingly getting as part of the daily fare – the obvious. What’s right in front of us. A story built around an event.

The idea of organizing ourselves in a way so that we can deliver something new, something different, something that’s not right in front of us and requires a little digging and exploring is increasingly being lost.

But we’re still first to air with news of what officials and authorities are telling us about a lost dog in Newfoundland. Our breaking news reporter is on that as we speak.

Not only have the leadership at the CBC failed us with the paucity of their vision, they can’t even deliver on what they promised the changes would deliver.

The new attitude stinks. It’s easy to see why Canadians increasingly aren’t paying attention to the new CBC News.

Makes you wonder why nobody in a position to do something about it is.

A tolerable level of dissent

One of the most disconcerting things about the Stursberg-led CBC is its absolute disdain for dissent.

Now I realize dissent is a tricky thing for any organization trying to get its employees pulling in the same direction.

But I’ve always thought that a journalistic organization – if it’s working properly – has to allow for something I call a tolerable level of dissent.

The ability to question; to wonder aloud; to seek answers about what’s going on; is central to what journalists are meant to do.

I think a healthy journalistic organization recognizes the value in nurturing those traits, and allowing it some voice internally. Again, I recognize this is a tricky area. How much voice? When does dissent become destructive to the organization?

Those are valid questions, and not easy things to measure. But I think the silencing of dissent can be even more destructive to an organization where a large part of the job is meant to be in asking questions to authority; or in challenging the status quo; or in seeking answers as to whether a proscribed course of action is the best way to go.

But in talking to friends and former colleagues within the CBC, that ability to question is increasingly in peril. It’s been in peril for a long time now, but I think it’s fair to say its never been less valued than it is at the moment at the CBC.

One of the old war stories I like to tell about my time at the CBC is about attending a national radio meeting in Toronto shortly after CBC Radio blew its early coverage of the death of Pierre Trudeau. It took CBC Radio too long to get the news on-air, despite the fact that Newsworld was already broadcasting the news. Then when it did finally get to air, on the World at Six, the reporter doing the lead story sounded rushed and ill-prepared – as if his death was a surprise, despite the fact that there had been rumours Trudeau was on his deathbed for almost a month before he actually passed away. It was not CBC Radio’s finest hour.

And then weeks later, I watched as the then vice-president of English radio, Alec Frame presided over an impromptu post-mortem about what had happened. Staff from across the country had gathered in Toronto, and they wanted to talk about it.  I dont’ remember the subject being officially on the agenda, but Frame let it go ahead anyway.  And it was an often angry venting session. How did this happen? How can we ensure it doesn’t happen again? Frame sat at the front of the room, and listened without responding for more than ten minutes. Then finally he said, enough. Let’s move on.

Now I’m not sure Alec Frame represents the right poster child for a tolerance of dissent. I didn’t know the man well enough to say that with anything approaching confidence.

But that episode has always stuck with me. It suggested to me that I worked for an organization that wanted to learn from its mistakes, that allowed its employees to vent; to give voice to their concerns, to question what was going on.

I can’t imagine Richard Stursberg putting himself in anywhere near the same position. When he stands up in front of staff, he looks like he’s ready for a fight. When a question arises that contains the slightest suggestion of criticism, Stursberg often goes for the jugular. He mocks. He argues. He makes it clear he’s not happy with the question being raised.

His attitude towards dissent increasingly permeates the organization. CBC managers – never the most courageous of characters – know it’s in their best interest to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Increasingly, so too do staff on the shop floor. It’s not worth the effort of opening your mouth to question what’s going on. To do so only gets you identified as a problem.

It’s not a healthy situation for any self-respecting journalistic organization.

But then I don’t think Stursberg ever had much respect for the CBC in the first place.

A New Year…

One of the difficulties I’m having in writing this blog about the CBC, and its news programming, is doing the basic research.

The place is losing me.

I’m finding it harder and harder to watch, and listen, and not think about how much more the CBC could be than it is at the moment. And so, I’m watching and listening less than I ever have before.

Which makes it hard to generate content.

It’s easy to write about the low points. Unfortunately they are legion at the moment. I think I watched about 10 minutes total of CBC News Network yesterday, and in those ten minutes I saw Canada’s public broadcaster take some TMZ footage of Mariah Carey at an awards show, and have Carole MacNeil pronounce her “hammered”. Later I saw Colleen Jones do a piece where she wondered aloud whether Stephen Harper meant perogies instead of prorogation. The bit she fronted may represent the lowest point yet in the history of Canada’s public broadcaster, but god love her, she’s still out there trying to best herself.

But writing about the low points is not only too easy, it’s kind of depressing and destructive as well. I’m writing about an institution I still feel tremendously passionate about, and want to see succeed and flourish. An institution that matters enormously to how this country, or your city, functions. As I’ve written before, the place is filled with talented journalists passionate about the work that they do. Many of them want the place to be better than it is at the moment. There’s a ton of people across the country who believe in the place and its possibilities far more than the senior managers at the CBC apparently do.

And so while I can’t promise I’ll never take another potshot at senior management and the damage they are doing to CBC News, I’m going to try and turn over a new leaf in the new year.

I want to focus on how we make CBC News better. What’s worth keeping? What should the CBC be doing differently? What does it mean to be a “public” broadcaster in this country at this time? I realize this is a tall order, but I’m going to peck away at it in the blog posts that follow. Again, I’d like to hear from you guys as well, both inside and outside the CBC. What are your thoughts on how we create a CBC that wants to be more than it is at the moment…that wants to be more than just popular, but relevant, interesting and different as well.

Keep those cards and letters coming…

And they’re off…

As Ottawa’s 2010 municipal election race starts to gear up, here’s a question.

What are the chances that Alex Cullen is Ottawa’s Ralph Nader?

A smart, principled man blind to the possibilities that his candidacy makes the least attractive option for the majority of Ottawans more likely to happen?

Here’s the thinking. Larry O’Brien will soon announce he wants another term as mayor. He’ll tell us he’s got unfinished business to tend to at city hall, and he needs another term to get it done.

Accurately reading the tea leaves that there’s a large “anybody but Larry” feeling across the city that he can exploit, Ottawa West-Nepean MPP Jim Watson will enter the fray. His entrance will likely keep others who are reported to have interest – like Peter Hume and Diane Deans – out of the race.

But for Ottawans with a progressive bent neither Watson or O’Brien are great choices. Both come from the centre-right.. Watson is perhaps – just perhaps – more centre than right, while O’Brien is more right than centre.

Mayor Jim Watson would mean a significant shift in style at city hall. But one of the early unanswered questions about Watson’s candidacy – should he decide to go – is just how different on substance would he be from O’Brien?

It’s an important question because my sense is that Watson’s not all that uncomfortable with the substance of O’Brien’s message – that city hall is big and bloated, and could run much more efficiently than it does. When it comes to substance, I’m not sure Jim Watson is the anti-Larry.

I suspect many of the people pressing Watson to run are just fine with that. They’re looking for someone they think represents a much more attractive message delivery system than the guy who currently occupies the mayor’s chair. Watson may be it.

And Watson is a credible enough candidate, and a smart enough politician, to draw support from across the political spectrum. But it will be interesting if he does decide to run to listen to how he crafts his message. If he presents himself as the anti-Larry on style, but not substance, there will be room there for Alex Cullen to present a different vision of city hall, and what it can do.

And that vision will get support, especially in the old city of Ottawa. How much support it gets could determine the outcome of the next race for mayor.

It’s early days yet. I realize I’m getting way ahead of myself.

I want to make it clear that I don’t think Alex Cullen is Ralph Nader.

The race for mayor needs him – or someone like him – in it. He brings a perspective to the contest that the voters need to hear as they make their decision on who is best placed to lead this city.

But his presence does make what will be a terrifically compelling municipal election campaign in 2010, even more interesting. If he’s got staying power, and can find a message that resonates, it won’t be Larry O’Brien he’ll be taking votes away from. And if Jim Watson is seriously thinking of running, he needs to give that some consideration when it comes to crafting his message on why he wants to be mayor.

Quality should be job one

I spent much of the past few days in Toronto where, among other things, I had time to take a look at the new Toronto supper hour TV package. I watched Thursday’s nights News at Six in its entirety. I won’t go on at length about how bad it was except to say that bad really isn’t the right word to describe how not-good it was.

Unfortunately, it was almost a parody of a newscast. It started with the “lead” — a story on winter driving tips — followed by the “breaking news” that driving was slow-going on the 400 series highways, followed by a “developing story” about a controversy involving a dating website trying to buy ads on the Toronto transit system. Problem was, there was no controversy at all – the ads were never going to get the go-ahead. But I guess because it involved an adult dating site, the show producers felt it met one of the important criterion in the new Stursberg news standard – to titillate, rather than inform.

And the show went downhill from there. As I say, I won’t go on at length about it.

But I mention it to come back to a subject I’ve mentioned here before, and will return to again. That is, what do we do about it? How do we get a public broadcaster who respects its audience enough that it refuses to dumb itself down simply because it believes that’s where the big ratings are.

A public broadcaster who recognizes that in a ratings-driven universe it’s got a huge opportunity in its news programming to offer something different from what everybody else is offering – a package that informs, that digs deeper, that helps its audience understand the complexities of what’s going on in their city, country and world.

A public broadcaster who believes in something more than offering winter driving tips as its top story to its viewers?

I’ve had the good fortune to have a number of conversations with some smart people about this subject over the past few weeks. I want to return to what I think is one of the keys to turning the situation around at the CBC. I’m returning to it because it keeps coming up in many of these conversations – and that’s the role of the union – the CMG – in leading change at the CBC.

There needs to be a far larger conversation about the CBC, and the future and role of public broadcasting in this country in the 21^st century than there has been up to this point. And I think the union should be leading that conversation.

What’s the CBC meant to be? What does it mean to be relevant? How does it make itself so? What does it look like, and sound like, and read like on a daily basis?

Chris Waddell, who is the acting director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton, came up with what I think is a really interesting analogy in a conversation I had with him a couple of weeks ago. He talked about how the North American auto unions traditionally focused on the things unions focus on – working conditions, benefits – almost to the exclusion of focusing on the quality of the product their membership was building. Product quality was a management issue.

In hindsight, how much better served would the membership have been if part of the focus of the union leadership had been on the quality of the product – the cars and trucks– that Ford, GM and Chrysler were making?

I realize it’s not a traditional role for a union to take on. But these aren’t traditional times at Canada’s public broadcaster.

Maybe quality should be job one for the CMG?

And in other Regis Philbin news…

I’m still trying to figure out whether it was a small moment of courage, or just a different way of talking about the same old story, when Peter Mansbridge brought up the Tiger Woods story on the “At Issue” panel on The National last night.

Mansbridge asked the panel for their thoughts on what the obsession with the Woods story says about us – meaning the greater “us”, as in all of us.

I think the question would have been more courageous, and more relevant if he’d meant “us” to mean “us” as in the CBC.

I suspect there was a little of that in his question. There had to be. Because the CBC has been as guilty as almost everyone else in the mainstream media of mindlessly following where the tabloids and TMZ have lead them. In fact, you could make a strong argument that there’s really very little difference between the mainstream, and the tabloid media anymore.

A man of money, means, and apparently motivation commits adultery, and this is a story? Not just a story, but THE story of the week. My oh my, it’s a world gone mad.

The crew in charge at the CBC now tosses around the word “transparency” to talk about how it covers things differently than it did before.

“More transparent,” they tell us.

Well here’s what I’d love to see in terms of transparency. I’d love to see Jennifer McGuire – who’s in charge of CBC News – take to the airwaves and say something like…

“You know what? We’ve been talking about this in our newsroom, and we can’t figure out for the life of us what the news value is in this story. So, we’re not going to report on it anymore. We’re going to leave it to others to obsess over, and report on. You guys are smart enough to know where to find those others, but we’re going to move on to other things.”

Fat chance, eh? It will never happen with this leadership team at the CBC.

Because in the Stursbergian vision, news is simply stuff that happens.

There’s no choice in whether or not we cover it. No thought about why it matters.

It’s happening…everyone else is reporting it…we have to report it as well.

Expect something more from the CBC…something different from your public broadcaster?

Those days are done.

Headline this evening on the CBC News Network scroll

“Regis Philbin recovering after successful hip surgery”

If there’s not a full story on this on tonight’s National, I’m going to scream.