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Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

tarahenley.substack.com

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Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#131

Post by Aloha »

_zzaw wrote: post #5
dane-pgp wrote: post #3

> It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. I've heard people say something similar, about how they were left-wing wh…

I’ll admit that I’m one of the people who’s increasingly convinced that what she’s describing is the true form of left-wing politics, at least right now, and I’m saying this as a leftist. I think at its core, true workable leftism is about compassionate pragmatism: trying to make the world better for as many people as possible. What disturbs me most about the ultra-woke brand of leftism is that it isn’t pragmatic at…

It's the "required pieces of flare" problem.

You can be left as all get out, but if you don't speak in the stilted expected movement oriented language, and swallow the whole enchilada - and sign on to every policy no matter how worthy or good, you don't have the required pieces of flare - and even though you want the same things and would vote for 95% of the things they support, you're thought of as at least suspect if not outright as one of the enemy.

Like I have a focus on broad based poverty reduction, but because I'm not focused on poverty for urban poor people, or BIPOC people, I'm suspect in their head - I support broad based poverty reductions because they create durable electoral coalitions, just focusing on one group or another does the opposite. I have other similar "problematic" perspectives.

Outrage politics works great for winning social credit on social media, but it does very little to solve actual problems.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#132

Post by anton96 »

badRNG wrote: post #22

I'm not sure these sorts of articles provide much value on HN. By "these sorts of articles", I mean the ones that have claimed that "diversity efforts have gone too far this time ." Regardless of your support or opposition to diversity, I think one would agree that these rapidly turn into unproductive, highly divisive comment sections that are out of place with the rest of HN.

I see that you complain about the quality of the debate on HN but at the same I time I still have interest for political debate here.

I know it's not the main goal of this site but at the same time, the usual culture here makes it interesting to see how it unfolds.

I wonder if the drop of quality from those subject is because they get flagged fast.

Anyway, sometimes I wish there was a website of the same quality as HN but for politics.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#133

Post by NikolaeVarius »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #93
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous job HR directly contacted me and told me to put my pronouns on my profile. I said sure and proceeded to ignore it. Fuck that shit

Which profile.. some internal org chart or a public platform like linkedin?

Internal

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#134

Post by coolso »

bastardoperator wrote: post #116
coolso wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pronouns are merely virtue signaling acts of control. By specifying pronouns if they are obvious (99% of the time) you are signaling you are part of a non-bigoted, non-hateful club. Surely you don’t hate people right? So why don’t you have your pronouns visible, fellow citizen? It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious. You want to just live your life? Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my p…

I don't know about everyone else but I've been using non-gendered pronouns my entire life. I was taught words like "they" and "them" in first or second grade. At this point I just assume anyone bothered by this is the actual narcissist.

No post body was provided.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#135

Post by telesilla »

pyuser583 wrote: post #103
telesilla wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggest to them that they talk about exactly what you are saying here. Say that it's difficult. That we are figuring it out. Put together exhibitions that talk about it. That's a hell of a lot better than shutting down communication. Be inclusive. Ask for help from other galleries who have better representation. Maybe they can do an exchange. Identify what there is to be afraid of - it's the necessary step to moving…

Regarding putting together exhibitions, this is an author specific type of performance art. Kind of like a Shakespeare theater company. There’s room to reinterpret the artist, but frankly interpreting this author as socially conscious has been done so many times it’s boring. It would be like putting on a feminist production of Antigone, or a pacifist recitation of the Iliad, or an anti-racist production of Othello -…

Thank you for the response, it's interesting to read about the perspective.

>What do you mean when you talk about doing an exchange with other galleries

You've been really clear at outlining some of the concerns of the artists and the economic concerns. It would be interesting to take those concerns and questions and ask for feedback from others in the community who are underrepresented. Perhaps an informal gathering of some other people in the field in the form of a structured symposium. Or just a sit-down.

One of the world's worst offenders of pushing a euro-centric history recently went full frontal and acknowledged their history (the Rijksmuseum,https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/past/slav...). Might be helpful also to seek out similar situations and how they are working through it.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#136

Post by ketzo »

hammock wrote: post #128
kennywinker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it sounds bad, right? But if all the people they talk to for stories are white - and they’re attempting to fix that, and track their progress in fixing that - how exactly should they go about doing that?

Is the issue that all the people they talk to for stories is white? Or is that a symptom of the real issue, which is something else? And if it is something else, is there a better thing to track?

Even if it is a symptom – say they're interviewing CEOs for a piece on Canadian business, so it's tricky to find people who are not white men – then I would argue that what they're doing is important.

There's a chicken and egg thing, and media can be a part of addressing the root cause. To me it seems logical that a young black woman who sees a black female CEO interviewed on TV is more likely to become a CEO herself.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#137

Post by SavantIdiot »

epivosism wrote: post #17

What clearly seems wrong is the requirement to fill out forms on the race and gender of people you interview, and to have quotas to control whose voice is heard based on those irrelevant traits (irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.) My policy is to refuse to give my gender or race. If everybody did this, high frequencies of "other" or "unknown" co…

> they have to go on record clarifying exactly how they define race -

In these contexts, "race" is a stand-in for social segregation phenomena and not the Oxford dictionary defintion.

By not identifying the distribution of various discriminated-against groups, they are rendered invisible, or nonexistant when it comes to policy making. THis is fine if you are in the majority, because that is the de facto policy making consideration, but not so good if you are not represented.

Dismissing this as "spinning statistics" is a very privileged viewpoint, because it means you aren't affected by the statistics so why should you care?

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#138

Post by badRNG »

finite_jest wrote: post #98
badRNG wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One small counterpoint: Employers enjoy a bully pulpit on these issues. Employees with legitimate concerns about their employers' stances / policies sometimes can't even discuss them without the risk of losing their livelihood. There are endless platforms that are better suited for these discussions: Gab, 4chan, and Ruqqus to name a few. "HN's anonymous-yet-respectful forum" is best preserved by not hosting these ty…

Right. To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized to a few corners of the internet suffering from "the coven of the witches" problem. And for the record, Ruqqus was shut down [1], so it really doesn't even exist. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799199

There's a chicken or egg problem with the "coven of witches" conjecture. I also don't think Gab is all that marginal. It seems to exist largely to facilitate conversations around perceived excesses with diversity efforts.

My greater point is that communities that facilitate these types of conversations typically have less inviting, more hostile cultures. There's a spectrum of course, but you can see glimmers of the type of discourse found on sites like Gab in the comment sections of anti-diversity blogs on HN. I think that an HN which plays host to more discussions about perceived issues with diversity will alienate a lot of folks who aren't entrenched in those sorts of debates and self-select for the type of discourse associated with these so-called "covens of witches." It seems to me that there's no value in sliding down that side of the spectrum for a site that's largely meant not to play host to ideological battles.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#139

Post by briga »

notatoad wrote: post #48
briga wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CBC is widely criticized here for its distinctly liberal bias, usually from the nation's conservatives. Which is fair enough--you pay for it in taxes regardless of which side of the political spectrum you're on, so you'd at least expect it to have a balanced coverage of issues. That's not to say that CBC does no good journalism, but like the author of this article mentions they are a bit lacking in journalistic integ…

CBC's bias is Liberal with a capital-L, not liberal. They're centrist and corporatist, which aligns them pretty well with the Liberal Party of Canada.

Yes, which leads to all sorts of griping about CBC just being a mouthpiece for the Liberal government. But to be fair their bias was the same even when the Harper government was in power.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#140

Post by snarf21 »

badRNG wrote: post #22

I'm not sure these sorts of articles provide much value on HN. By "these sorts of articles", I mean the ones that have claimed that "diversity efforts have gone too far this time ." Regardless of your support or opposition to diversity, I think one would agree that these rapidly turn into unproductive, highly divisive comment sections that are out of place with the rest of HN.

One thing I learned in my many years in this life: you can't fix inequity by inching slowly in the "right" direction. However, the "right" stopping point is too often controlled by the same oppressors. You have to be like a pendulum and swing waaayyy too far past "equity". Then the pendulum will eventually energy out at a more reasonable equitable point. This is a lot of anchoring point bias built in. This overcomes it.
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