Our disgraceful national public broadcaster

Tonight while channel surfing, I noticed a few things that pretty much sum up everything that's wrong with the CBC.

On the main network was a puff profile of former NDP leader Tommy Douglas, which continued from Sunday night. I didn't watch either evening but apparently it doesn't mention the fact that in Douglas' MA thesis he advocated the jailing of homosexuals as well as his views that Aboriginals and adulterers should be banned from procreating. I'm sure the biography was also light on criticizing the mixing of church and state by Baptist minister Douglas - he's a New Democrat, so it's OK - and the organized campaign, including a call to arms on the NDP website, to stuff of the ballot box by Dipper activists in 2004's "Greatest Canadian" contest.

On Newsworld, we had George Strombolopolous, titan of public policy and "Make Poverty History" bracelet-wearer (and also, a fella who is closer to 40 than 20, but you'd never know it with all of his piercings) interviewing Noam Chomsky, whose associations with and defense of Holocaust deniers and other ne'er do wells is well-documented (see here and here.)

Oh, and did I mention that Georgie was Douglas' advocate during the Greatest Canadian voting?

Now these are just two examples of the CBC's sympathy for left-wing heroes, and what's wrong with that, you may ask? Nothing, in and of itself, but the issue is that people like me have to pay for it. If there's such a market for this type of commentary, shouldn't people be willing to pay for it out of their own pockets to support and promote it? Adding insult to this is how at 9 PM on CBC's "The National", Patrick Brown, the network's correspondent in Afghanistan, downplayed the PM's historic visit to the troops and dismissed the overwhelmingly positive reaction of the soldiers by saying that "oh, they're all just macho and acted as if they would have rather been out fighting than hanging with a civilian". A civilian? This is our PM we're talking about, not the guy in front of you in line at the concession stand as you blow your kids' day care cash on beer and popcorn at the local Junior A rink.

I'm pretty sure that even if Brown doesn't recognize that, our soldiers do.

In any case, I think the overt editorializing that permeates CBC programming is lamentable. How about instead of debating the worthiness of getting rid of the Taliban, we have a House of Commons debate on making the CBC face some competitive pressures to be held more accountable for the politically-charged left-wing propaganda that they peddle as Canadian storytelling while forcing us all to support it through the state apparatus?