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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

#331

Post by chongli »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #230
inglor_cz wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On social stuff, California is well left of Europe including Scandinavia. What you say could apply in Arkansas. For example, Danish or Norwegian immigration rules would be a perfect fit for any R president, perhaps even too strict.

This is reductive to the point of being incorrect. "Social stuff" includes things like maternity leave, childcare, healthcare, incarceration and drug policies. California is proud that they ended sentences of life-without-parole for children in 2017 - and replaced it with life-with-possible-parole-after-25-years, which remains far worse than Denmark permits even for the worst adult crime (life with possible parole af…

You must have missed the news on Chesa Boudin [1], San Francisco's district attorney. He's so far extreme left that criminals essentially have free rein in the city because his office refuses to prosecute anyone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin

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

#332

Post by john_moscow »

olivermarks wrote: post #163

Strange thread here ignoring the very important points about the media Tara is making. 'Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted. 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, f…

>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.

The whole left/right division has completely lost its point. You can see it if you list the typical points of disagreement, order them from most discussed to least discussed, and look at stances from left to right:

  COVID vaccines: mandate -> encourage -> offer for all -> offer for vulnerable -> ignore
  Climate Change: ban plastics/meat/kids -> subsidize solar/wind -> promote nuclear -> work on mitigations -> declare hoax
  Race: discriminate majority -> be color-blind -> discriminate minorities
  Homeless + petty crime: tolerate -> prosecute -> punish progressively
  Homeless + mental issues: tolerate -> offer treatment -> force treatment -> imprison
  LGBT: set quotas + role model for kids -> allow with no special benefits -> frown upon -> criminalize
  Immigration: allow arbitrarily -> set quotas -> allow high-skilled only -> ban
  Abortions: allow -> allow for medical reasons -> ban
  Housing: increase density -> ban foreign capital/increase rates -> develop new areas -> do nothing
What typically happens is a vocal person holding a specific opinion on a specific topic declares everyone left from them "communist" or everyone right from them "far right", implying that they have the leftmost/rightmost stances on all other topics. So people that would normally agree on some middle-ground solution for most topics end up at the opposing sides of the artificial division.

We must resist it and look at specific problems and specific solutions and call bullshit on anyone trying to generalize and alienate someone based on their affiliation.

P.S. Note how impactful topics like interest rate, retirement, corporations taking place of middle class owner-operated businesses, etc. are not even on the radar.

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

#333

Post by smnrchrds »

finite_jest wrote: post #318
smnrchrds wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are right that newspapers lean capital C Conservative [1] in Canada. It is mostly due to Postmedia. Ownership by Postmedia is quite conspicuous in the list. CBC is really woke though. You don't need to suffer them too much to notice that. Randomly turn on the radio while driving a few times, and you will see. [1]: Which in its current form looks like a bland, toothless, uninspiring, "big tent" party. Roughly spea…

Now that TorStar is on its deathbed, without CBC, Canadian English-language media will be comprised of solely Postmedia. That's not a future I am looking forward to, but one that is quite likely the next time CPC gets elected.

No party wins popular vote anymore (as in more than 50%). With FPTP, we are stuck with less-than ideal seats-to-votes correlation.

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

#334

Post by carlivar »

wussboy wrote: post #216
tgv wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right and the religious are also known to splinter over small differences. I see it as a trait of fanaticism, and an indication of tendency towards extremism.

Agreed. It is a human quality, not a Left or Right quality.

Indeed, the notion that a single axis can represent people's views and values is laughable.

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

#335

Post by boppo1 »

dan_pixelflow wrote: post #142
john_moscow wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone asks me about preferred pronouns, my answer is "I prefer a raise over pronouns and thank you letters". I wish more people would do the same.

This weird hatred of not sharing pronouns is harmful - it's.. a few characters next to your name to help people talk to you and to help people who use different pronouns to what society has given them. Please stop acting all high-and-mighty over them - it's always with good intent.

I actually don't mind using/learning pronouns. But I'm a male, I identify as male, and I present as male well enough that no one has misgendered me in 32 years. Something about listing my pronouns feels not only silly, but distinctly wrong in light of that.

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

#336

Post by motohagiography »

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.

The basic issue is that to be news, there has to be a conflict to tell the story about. Even if the conflict is fabricated expectations vs. some mundane reality, that conflict is the necessary condition for a story to be news.

The lens of victim/oppressor theory can apply to literally anything, and so with that tool for manufacturing the necessary ingredient of universal conflict, the news becomes anything they want it to be. It's stupid, but it works. Most of the people who use that technique even believe it, and the one rule they're taught is if you protect the narrative, the narrative protects you. I've heard reporters ask what all this concern about fake news was because they have all these objective facts, and it never landed for them that it's fake because the necessary conflict that drives the story was wholely fabricated by ideology.

I worked in print media as a freelancer just over a decade ago and knew a lot of other writers and editors, and even then CBC was seen as the partisan state organ. You have to remember that the mandate of the CBC is to create a federal narrative to hold a vast and sparsely populated country together with a coherent national identity. News is only one of its myriad projects, and it's not engaged in a mission of discovery.

What changed is milennials graduated from campuses that had been compromised by what is objectively a mass hysteria created by their professors - who themselves had previously graduated in the 90s during the first wave of what they called "political correctness," at the time, and who in turn were taught by radical boomer professors who had been indoctrinated with standard revolutionary playbooks, mesmerized by French postmodernists like Foucault and Baudrillard, and you can trace a lot of its intellectual roots back to things like the SCUM Manifesto, Weathermen, Black Panther Party, Situationists, and other cold war era soviet political projects.

No single thing happened so much as the state of the CBC is the effect of milennials being educated by two generations of carefully trained marxists to become a revolutionary corps of true believers. The rest of government is rotted through with that stuff as well. The center won't hold, and I really don't see the country intact in 15-20 years because the people running it are to weak and insincere to provide legitimacy.

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

#337

Post by coldtea »

metabagel wrote: post #313
coldtea wrote: post #143

> 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. Don't worry, you're still the furthest to the left. It's the others that…

What makes you think corporations, think tanks, and power centers are aligned with identity politics? I draw rather the opposite conclusion. I'm not big on identity politics, but then I'm white. But, I also don't get why we can't allow other people to express their own valid experience without trying to shout them down.

>What makes you think corporations, think tanks, and power centers are aligned with identity politics?

Their (coporations and power centers) lip service towards those, their funding and support, establishment of departments and roles devoted to it, use in advertisements, mobilisation of corporate policies and law to stiffle any dissidents, constant signalling, and so on.

>But, I also don't get why we can't allow other people to express their own valid experience without trying to shout them down.

Isn't this the exact problem with modern identity politics? Shouting people down and monopolizing the discourse (usually by privileged class-wise minority, and mostly white at that) with rage-bait and conformity signaling.

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

#338

Post by kbenson »

nrdgrrrl wrote: post #149
kbenson wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the sentiment, I think to some degree putting a pronoun down is for the benefit of those conversing with you, so they don't have to wonder or get it wrong. In lieu of this, and because I don't really care what pronoun is used for me, I sometimes just put "any" if it's an option to denote that I don't care.

I'm transgender and this business of putting pronouns everywhere bothers me too. If I'm in a group that usually doesn't do pronouns but does when I'm in the room it's like they're pointing a finger at me saying "you're different and we're afraid of offending you, so we're going to act differently around you". No. I just want to be a human being. If you wonder about my pronouns, ask and I'll happily answer. If you get…

Hopefully it all settles down a lot more in the future. Around societal and cultural change there's always friction, and there's always people that take more offense to new norms (or what people want to be new norms) not being followed, whether to pump up their self importance or because they're honestly exasperated. I like to treat each thing as it comes, and whether I think it makes sense or is sully, if someone asks something of me with regard to dealing with them that doesn't require much as is accepting of people making mistakes, then I don't see a problem with humoring them, as long as they also accept neutral terms, such as you/they/them (which are the English language accepted neutral terms). There's only so many genders and pronouns I can wrap my head around, but as long as people are accepting that others can just use a generic term, I think we're all at a place that's workable.

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

#339

Post by rurban »

olivermarks wrote: post #294
consumer451 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a different edge of said window expanded to include actual ethno-fascists. This is not whataboutism, just want to portray the scenario in a more complete light.

Actual ethno-fascists?

She was talking about ethno-stalinists, not fascists

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

#340

Post by r_hoods_ghost »

dan_pixelflow wrote: post #142
john_moscow wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone asks me about preferred pronouns, my answer is "I prefer a raise over pronouns and thank you letters". I wish more people would do the same.

This weird hatred of not sharing pronouns is harmful - it's.. a few characters next to your name to help people talk to you and to help people who use different pronouns to what society has given them. Please stop acting all high-and-mighty over them - it's always with good intent.

Perhaps you would like me to publicly declare my other protected characteristics in all my correspondence? My religion perhaps? Ethnicity, race, that I have a disability? It is not always with good intent, instead it is a demand to publicise a characteristic by which others will often judge you. If you want to announce that you are he/him she/her, they/them go ahead. But don't demand other people do it, because I have a right to privacy.
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