A rchive Date
[ 12-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/byfield.html
CBC policy is hardly impartial
By TED BYFIELD -- Edmonton Sun
January 12, 2003
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - starving for cash, corporately emaciated, reduced to a skin-and-bones budget, all because it no longer commands the unquestioning support of the general public - has apparently decided to leave the world behind and join the angels. In a manner of speaking, that is.
That is the implication of a policy outlined to the masses last month by the head of its news department. In order to preserve its almost unblemished record of impartial, dispassionate, utterly neutral objectivity in its coverage of the world, it will no longer call anybody a terrorist.
Others may call people terrorists, said Tony Burman, editor-in-chief of CBC News, and the CBC will quote them to that effect.
But the CBC itself will never assign the term to any individual or organization because, of course, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. To label an act "terrorism," therefore, is to take a side in a political question.
There is nothing new in this policy, he adds. It's been in effect for 25 years. The CBC believes in letting the viewer decide whether the blowing up of school buses, pizza parlours, or New York skyscrapers to make a political point is terrorism or not.
Not quite consistently, observed Norman Spector, former Canadian ambassador to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In the attack last fall on two nightclubs in Bali that claimed about 180 lives, mostly Australians, the CBC blamed terrorists, quoting nobody.
Was killing Australians in a nightclub terrorism, Spector wondered, but Israeli kids in a school bus not?
Well no, replied Burman. Calling the Bali bombers terrorists unattributed, was a "lapse." There had been other "lapses," such as in CBC coverage of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But no more will be allowed.
You wonder how exactly the CBC defines this policy. Apparently if I were to shoot a man dead on the street in an attempt to rob him, I am a simple killer and may be described as such. But if I do it for a cause - because he is an abortionist, for example - then I command an instant respect on CBC news. I am no longer a killer per se, I am a particular kind of killer.
Others may see me as a saviour of human lives, making a political statement on behalf of the unborn, and my status therefore acquires a definite respect on the CBC News.
How far, you wonder, will they take this? If I and several friends rob a bank to enrich ourselves, we are, in the view of the CBC, mere bank robbers, common criminals.
But if we rob the bank in order to finance some higher cause - to get money so that we can make bombs to blow up school buses - then we are no longer common criminals. We are uncommon criminals, freedom fighters in the view of many. And we must command a certain respect on the CBC News.
Notice the role this high-minded endeavour assigns to the journalist. In his professional life, he must be above all causes, looking down like the angels, as it were, on the mass of us mere mortals with our various allegiances, all of which are to be regarded as much the same.
As Kipling in his Just So stories portrayed the cat - "I am the cat, and I walk by myself, and all places are alike to me" - so the CBC portrays its journalists: "I am the CBC, and I walk by myself, and all causes are alike to me."
Behind this policy, please note, lies a distinct agnosticism. No cause may ever be considered "really" good or "really" bad - for to the CBC there is no such thing as "real." But that in itself is a highly partisan position.
If we can't tell the difference between right and wrong, we have not risen above humanity; we have sunk below it.
And if we see children mangled and screaming in a school bus, bombed not incidentally but singled out and deliberately, we are looking at something that is plainly evil.
By failing to say this, the CBC is not representing impartial journalism, but blind stupidity, as sinister in its own quiet way, as was the deed itself.
Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@edm.sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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