Canadians watch the CBC to catch a glimpse of themselves. This particular taping of The National illustrated to me that the reflection we see is not quite as genuine as one might believe. There is a subtle distortion that occurs, raising questions about the integrity of the CBC itself…
…What I am suggesting, is that the CBC is misreprenting Canadians to themselves. By choosing pundits to tell us what is “at issue”, the CBC is framing political discourse inside a very narrow box. While the CBC openly solicited questions from the audience, the apparent spontaneity we see on television is entirely fake. What viewers are not told is that questions had to be submitted by email, days in advance. This panel may pretend to be addressing the topics we want to examine, but the reality is that they are playing Q&A with themselves.
The December 13 “At Issue” panel is archived here. In this edition, the panelists address questions presented by members of the live Chan Center audience.
Two weeks later added the following follow-up:
The story bears updating because 2008 has begun with some major developments that most people are not aware of. The big story is what took place in the Japanese Diet on January 11 of this year. The house was debating whether or not to continue to support the US-led “war on terror”. Japan’s contribution is in the form of a refueling mission, the renewal of which was up for discussion.
Yukihisa Fujita of the Democratic Party argued for thirty minutes that the mission could no longer be supported until it is established who the actual terrorists are. In the words of Mr. Fujita:
“So far the only thing the government has said is that we think (9/11) was caused by Al Qaeda because President Bush told us so. We have not seen any real proof that it was Al Qaeda.”
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