Is It Just Me?

Last night, in a telephone conversation, the observation was made about how the CBC had organized two stories in their 6:00PM newscast. The first story was about Harper's $1200/child childcare subsidy, which was followed up by an article about a study in Quebec that suggested that placing children into daycares before they were two years old was "a bad thing"(tm).

The implication was that this was a "manipulated message" - namely one intended to serve a propoganda purpose. At the time, I brushed it off. For the most part, the CBC has traditionally managed to do a pretty good job of reporting factually and honestly.

However, micromanagement (and Harper's clearly a micromanager)tends to beget more micromanagement. I'm beginning to suspect that the CBC has been "put on notice" to be "good little mouthorgans" for the CPC government, or risk having major funding cuts in the upcoming budget.

Why would I say this? Several reasons - looking back over my own blog columns in the last couple of months, less and less of my raw source material has been coming from the CBC. In fact, the CBC's reporting of Canadian - and international - political affairs has become nearly non-existant. Even more disturbing is the significant gap between what's on the "World at 6" newscast and the stories carried on CBC's website. (Major omissions on the website, mostly).

Then, I found The Globe and Mail publishing yet another government official being micromanaged. After this outrage, it begins to fit together. The CPC government is going to try and tightly control every message coming out of government - to the extent of _telling_ us what we want.

(I'm just waiting for Peter Mackay to come out of his next snugglefest with Condoleezza Rice and tell us that Canadians WANT to go to war in Iran...)