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.
December 4, 2009 at 2:06 pm |
Andy, the other night on the five o’clock radio newscast the woman anchor – I can’t remember her name – did the Tiger Woods story as the second story. It was the day the police dropped their investigation into this non-incident. She read, and I quote, “Police have dropped their investigation into Tiger Woods….(long pause)…car accident.” It was the verbal quotes around “car accident” that was so galling. What has happened to editorial oversight? Unbelievable.
Ken