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Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

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

#231

Post by kennywinker »

ketzo wrote: post #136
hammock wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think it's the media's job to fix societal problems - just to accurately reflect them. But if CBC is only interviewing white male CEOs, they're not accurately reflecting anything.

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

#232

Post by president »

rdtsc wrote: post #75

> To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny. Not an accident, I believe. Occupy Wall Street made the billionaires and Wall Street take notice. As a consequence, they probably decided people need to be busy with something else, just in case, so they don't get any more funny ideas. Identity politics is a great one to divide people, fan anger, get more cli…

I find identity politics to be fascinating and scary. Essentially, it is a grouping of many individual fringe concepts/movements that form a large political power and is backed by masses of well-meaning people who are sold stories and imagery of oppressor vs oppressed. IMO it is a large distraction which draws a lot of attention and money from more pressing issues occurring in the world. I fail to see where identity politics have helped in any non-superficial way and the level of division it has caused in society will be hard to reverse.

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

#233

Post by kbenson »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #201
kbenson wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They hem and haw because some people care a lot and make a big deal if you get it wrong and it can have social consequences depending on where you live/work, etc, and if you repeatedly ignore what other people want to be called it can be seen as an act of aggression. In the current climate, people want to get it right for other people because either they don't want to be an asshole, they believe it's important, they'…

What else about myself do i have to actively advertise so that people are not afraid of talking to me.

That is just one of three reasons I listed. I'm not sure why you'd focus on that exclusively, it seems a bit silly to me.

What's being asked of you is a common courtesy. Anyone that refuses this courtesy that takes so little when specifically asked for it is taking actions that speak for themselves.

You're being asked something as simple as "how do you prefer to be addressed" and you've scoured the area for all the loose dust and detritus you can find to make yourself a mountain to die on. Is it really worth it? Perhaps there are other aspects to recent culture shift that are slightly less defensible that are better targets?

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

#234

Post by thaumasiotes »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #137
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…

> 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.

It's not a majority/minority concern. The concern is whether people are counting you in order to help you or hurt you. Jews aren't so vigorously opposed to Jew-counting because they're a majority.

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

#235

Post by frabbit »

smnrchrds wrote: post #45
adamc wrote: post #18

I am curious what Canadians think of this argument. Does it seem true? It's hard for me, a USA resident who doesn't follow the CBC, to really evaluate.

I cannot speak about the alleged wokeness, as I don't consume enough CBC content to make an informed judgment. What I can say is that CBC is the only major Canadian media company that is not capital C Conservative, at least among English-language media. Toronto Star used to fit this description too, but they got sold to what I think is a private equity firm who has been selling off their assets, so I don't expect the…

I generally do not read/watch/listen to the CBC. I got tired of their NPR-ish comofortable liberalism which always drifted into conservatism a long time ago. Sure, there were occasional nods to the idea that not all was happy in our settler colonial land, but in general it was smug "we're all nice" and "aren't Americans crazy?!".

Our local outpost plays hideous CanCon music in the mornings and repeats the same low-information density press releases disguised as news. There is little that is combative or thought provoking and lot of self-congratulation.

I have been especially un-impressed with their lack of willingness to address the abuse of power by the RCMP at the Fairy Creek protests including the detention of one of their own videographers; their supine acceptance of the insane tar sands projects; their lack of aggression in pursuing the Trudeau administrations failure to address the horrendous mistreatment of autochthonous people people and communities.

These days I mostly read The Tyee¹ and listen to Canadaland²

1. https://thetyee.ca/ 2. https://www.canadaland.com/

That said, the author of the original article lost me when she trotted out the silly line about transgender Filipinos.

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

#236

Post by onemoresoop »

david38 wrote: post #141
nefitty wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel (gay man), Caitlyn Jenner (trans woman) and Kanye West (black man) all publicly support Donald Trump. It's not identity that's the issue, it's economic inequality. Even as part of marginalized groups, these people's vast wealth allowed them the luxury to support a man who did not have marginalized group's best interests in mind. If I was rich and wanted to take over a local government, I would channel my…

This. IMO, most of the culture was a distraction from what really matters. People are up in arms on TV over who can claim to be a woman, but meanwhile, the concentration of wealth and economic power and worse than even the guided age. If the bottom 50% of the population (economically) united on JUST this topic, they would see massive change - better structured education, housing, health, etc. Instead we get what I ca…

I share a similar opinion. Everything and every group's voice should be heard at some point but not in a more divisive manner and to the detriment of attention to the immediate problems that affect us all in the most serious ways: housing, healthcare, wages, political corruption, conflicts of interest, and so on. We're in very bad shape and a risk major collapse. If we continue down this path we'll see homelessness and and inequality rise to catastrophic levels. What we really need at this point more than anything is some form of unity.

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

#237

Post by throwawayboise »

kbenson wrote: post #159
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally dont give a shit what you call me. People who hem and haw about getting pronouns wrong blow my mind of how weird this has all become

They hem and haw because some people care a lot and make a big deal if you get it wrong and it can have social consequences depending on where you live/work, etc, and if you repeatedly ignore what other people want to be called it can be seen as an act of aggression. In the current climate, people want to get it right for other people because either they don't want to be an asshole, they believe it's important, they'…

So if you are "she" and someone calls you "he" out of ignorance and you correct the person, and he says "Oh, I'm sorry for my mistake" can that not be the end of it? Is that such a terrible thing to have to deal with?

I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.

One place where the "pronouns in the signature" can be helpful is if your name is foreign. I work with a group of international folks and if I haven't met the person, I don't always know if a person's name is a male or female name. So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.

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

#238

Post by Dig1t »

badRNG wrote: post #64
teg4n_ wrote: post #24

This is incredibly tedious. I can't fathom how this has anything to do with "Hacker News" but I guess it's appeal to a certain subset of the audience here overrides that.

The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. It seems reasonable that a subset of the culture that produced the work environment at Blizzard [1] or has historically rallied behind alt-right thought leaders would also be here on HN. Talk to any woman software engineer, I 100% guarantee they have multiple stories about dealing with a...spec…

I don't think anyone on this site will argue that the culture at Blizzard was good or normal, in fact most engineers working in the Bay will tell you that the culture at their company is extreme in the opposite direction. I've worked in FAANG for the last 5 years in the Bay and can tell you that in my experience I could not even fathom how a culture like Blizzard was allowed to exist, my everyday experience has just been so extremely different. For example _all_ (and I mean literally every single one) corporate communication from the company to employees has to do with diversity/inclusion issues for at least 50% of its content.That's every newsletter, every speech, all the internal organizations communications, even things that are supposed to be technical in nature. Women and minority candidates are already given a more lenient interview experience as well as an abundance of communication that they are valued and welcome. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's just that most peoples' lived experience working in this industry is nothing like Blizzard's.

I think what you see on this site mostly is more of a moderate "hey can we chill out a little?" sort of response rather than an extremist alt right type of thing, though it may come across differently depending on how frustrated that person is. And yeah it can be frustrating to always feel like you are being lumped in with the group of oppressors and or bigots no matter what you do.

TL;DR I don't think most people are racist or evil.

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

#239

Post by hk__2 »

speedgoose wrote: post #59
jfk13 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If asked for race, I suggest answering "human".

It's not often, the last time for me was the stackoverflow survey. I usually reply that it's an illegal question where I live.

> I usually reply that it's an illegal question where I live.

It’s not. Questions about race or origin are allowed in France with some conditions; it’s a common misconception that they are prohibited. For example, it’s fine to ask which race you feel you belong to, or any similar subjective question [1, p.70].

[1]: https://www.cnil.fr/sites/default/files/atoms/files/ddd_gui_...

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

#240

Post by pessimizer »

paulsutter wrote: post #37

Left and liberal do not mean the same thing. Basically all of my blue or red friends agree with the principles of Liberalism, which brought us the enlightenment and [modern] civilization. You can ask your own friends, here's a definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism (quote below) In terms of numbers, about 8% of the US population is.. left. 25% is traditional conservative. And the other 67% is regular fo…

Over the past ten years, there's been a weird collaboration between centrists and right-wingers to define not being a bigot as being left-wing and being a bigot as being right-wing. So corporate PR has transformed huge employers and the finance industry into left-wingers, and when right-wingers complain about being silenced, they're specifically talking about being censored about race and gender.

This creates the false drama. Instead, what the US has is two liberal parties, one trying to also appeal to a base of evangelical whites and the other trying to appeal to people who aren't white. Both are trying to pass the same liberal policies, policies that I hope you aren't trying to associate with some 67% silent majority. 67% of people aren't against antitrust enforcement or free health care.

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