Mike Oldham's Virtual Pen

Trouble at the CBC? You don't say.

    Storm clouds, darker than usual, have apparently amassed at Canada's national public broadcaster. Morale is so bad it's described by one insider as "subterranean". As a former insider myself, I can vouch for the fact that the CBC's micro-climate has always been variable. Experienced employees used to compare working there to being stuck on a Ferris wheel: sometimes you're at the top, other times you're down at the bottom in the shit. If you're there long enough, you'll go through several cycles. In other words, times at the CBC toggle between good and bad, often depending on the regime in charge.
    But things seem to have reached a new pitch of near David Mamet-like dysfunctionality.
    It's gone public due the leak of an internal survey of CBC Radio national reporters. It measured reaction to a recent re-organization, completing the integration of radio and television resources. The overall rate of discontent indicated by the survey is pegged at about 95 per cent.
    I spent the majority of my working life in CBC Radio News - several decades. I left three years ago, just before the integration with TV was implemented. However, I didn't need a survey to tell me there was moroseness in the workplace. At every get together with former colleagues there have been complaints, bemoanings, requests for advice. And, in the past year, assurances that this was "the worst it's ever been".
    I know the place can at times seem hopeless. There was a period in the late '70s/early '80s that was particularly bad. So my reaction to these observations was generally: "you just haven't been there long enough" and "things will get better".
    But when I started hearing these complaints from people who had been there long enough, I began to wonder. And now this survey. You have to admit, a 95 per cent level of dyspepsia is pretty catastrophic for any organization. The results, though, speak to long-standing issues at the CBC which have only been getting worse.
    One is bureaucracy. In my 30+ years there, it always had a split personality. On one hand were the editors, writers, producers and on-air personalities who created the programming. On the other, multiple layers of mandarins in management whose prime concerns were the corporation's bureaucratic functionings and their own self-interest. Managers often appeared less interested in the product and moreso with endless rounds of meetings and self promotion. To that end an inordinate amount of time would be devoted to coming up with new organizational concepts, often represented by buzz words or phrases: synergy, creative renewal, integration. In the latest iteration, they've dropped the "creative" part and simply called it CBC News Renewal. Managers are so busy trying to carry out the latest initiative of their superiors that it's often as if the product - the programming - is an afterthought. They would vehemently deny this, but it has been my observation over the years.
    It looks like the increasingly heavy bureaucracy has finally encroached on the programming operations. Specific comments in the survey are noteworthy. Here are a few:

"99% of ny experience with this [new news gathering] entity results in double the phone calls and e-mails I used to receive."

 "It is unclear who is accountable."

"Instead of having a straightforward conversation with one person, there is now a team, none of whom seem to speak to one another."

    These are all hallmarks of a bureaucracy: I don't know who's in charge, who's accountable, things are run by a committee.
    The survey speaks to other established problems. One is quite obvious to listeners and viewers. Since leaving the CBC and becoming a consumer instead of a participant it's much clearer to me: repetition. When you're working and generating material for one program area, you're not as aware of it because you don't have time to listen to the other programming as much. When you're a consumer of the product it becomes quite evident, as encapsulated in this quote from the survey: there's now an emphasis on "ensuring each platform has the same line-up". That means CBC Radio, TV and the website are all covering the same things.
    If, during the course of the day, you've heard World Report, the main morning newscast, some of The Current, an Hourly newscast or two, the World at Six, As It Happens and The National you'll find the repetition almost unbearable. I admit few people hear this much programming in a day, and if you do you'll probably go batty. But even if your hear just a few of those things you'll notice the same stories being repeated over and over.
    In fact, if you catch BBC World on TV as well, by the time you get to The National all the news on the show will seem old.
    One of the biggest complaints about this integration is the detrimental effect it's having on CBC Radio. In fact, it didn't take a great brain to predict that TV would subsume radio simply because it's more powerful as a corporate entity and sucks up way more resources.
    [Assignments] "often...seem like TV stories being assigned to radio" is one reporter's observation about the new integrated assignment system. Indeed, the survey even points out the problem, unintentionally, by asking, among other things, whether the recent changes to World Report, which include increased "use of syndicated TV sound" have improved the program (more than 80% of respondents said no).
    Not a surprise. TV sound is meant to go with pictures. On the TV. It's not radio sound. Somehow this basic concept seems to elude CBC managers, but not the network's audience. Here's a comment from one listener, ironically under the age of 25, the holy grail demographic the CBC is falling over itself to attract lately:
    "The loss of essence of radio news pours out of the speakers every time an audio clip of a TV report plays".
    Using sound on the radio is an effective tool. But it can't just be any old sound. It needs to be evocative, it needs to be specifically pegged to something in the announcer's or reporter's script. It above all should be used judiciously. Throwing any old bit of white noise on the radio, which happens increasingly on the CBC's news broadcasts, simply causes listeners to turn to their radios and say: "What the hell's that?", missing the next sentence or two of the script in the process. If you can't tell whether the sound is a tank in the Middle East or a blender in someone's kitchen then it's useless. TV sound is often unsuitable to radio, though there are exceptions.
    In fact, listeners and viewers in general are aware of an overall decline in the CBC's quality. Here's an online comment from another listener:
    "People who have never listened to radio are being hired to run CBC Radio."
    That's not true actually, though the listener is onto something. The real problem is that people with little or no background in journalism are being hired to run radio news. Their experience nowadays tends to derive more from radio programming generally, not from news reporting or editing. There's a difference even between news and current affairs, never mind the vast gulf between news and, say, variety programming. A good radio programmer may not make a good journalist, but the distinction is becoming blurred and is even infecting TV. (I saw a red flag years ago when a one-time manager sat me down and asked: "What's the difference between news and entertainment?" I walked away thinking: "Uh-oh". It has finally seeped into the corporate media culture).
    The corporate reaction to the leak, and its reaction to the reaction, has been predictable. Jennifer McGuire, the general manager of CBC News, sounds more upset about the leak than about the survey's results. In an internal e-mail she wonders why the complainants didn't take their concerns about the corporation's direction (or lack of it) to CBC management. This in itself betrays a core part of the problem.
    A large percentage of CBC employees don't feel there's anyone they can talk to. Over the years the Mother Corp. has acquired the aura (internally - this wouldn't necessarily be perceptible to its audience) of a Communist-style politburo. And by that I don't mean left-wing (leftist tendencies at the CBC are exaggerated by the corporation's critics). I mean in the bureaucratic sense, in the sense that questioning of some corporate fig's bright new policy, dissent such as that expressed in the survey, is, well, discouraged. People who work there, in increasing numbers, are afraid that to voice these sorts of feelings personally would brand them. They would be deemed not team players, or dinosaurs. Or, at the very least, management might listen but then nothing would happen.
    In asking her question, Jennifer McGuire is demonstrating management's blindness to this problem, which constitutes a good portion of CBC's morale issues.
    Another person in an executive position is quoted as observing that it's unfortunate the survey was leaked on the Internet: "I think we just hurt each other here. We should be able to have these debates and share opinions without having it go out on the Internet".
    She's right. In a healthy corporate environment such debates and expression of opinion should be possible. But that's the problem. The CBC is not a healthy corporate environment.
    One of the most common topics of conversation at the Corp. is when people will be eligible for early retirement. "How much longer do you have," is heard often enough in hallways. It's like people filling out a prison sentence. I have been told repeatedly since I left that: "You got out at the right time".
    There are many problems in the running of what should be a valuable Canadian cultural institution. One of the biggest is that CBC managers tend to ignore problems. That's because they don't want to admit to having made bad decisions, mistakes or instituting poor policies. There's nothing wrong in a healthy corporation with acknowledging problems or mistakes, as long as they're identified and dealt with deftly. That's part of the reason healthy corporations are healthy. The CBC approach tends to be to let the problem fester for a few years, then shelve it while declaring it a great success, instead of dealing with it.
    I'm not sure this survey will bring a different result.
    I think the CBC is important for Canada. For one thing, it is the country's only national radio network. It's a lifeline in terms of communication, connectedness, to remote areas and small communities. It promotes Canadian culture, and therefore identity. Or at least, that's what it should be doing. But it's going astray. It's getting mired up in a tangle of inept leadership. It's not even sure what it wants to be any more. It insists it doesn't compete with the private broadcasting sector, yet tries to do so. For some perverse reason, just when it's on the verge of having its biggest audience ever handed to it on a silver platter (the baby boomers, who constitute the CBC's traditional older audience) it's decided to chase a younger demographic. All it's succeeded in doing is pissing off its core audience while while proving ineffective in attracting a large younger cohort of listeners. Those who do gravitate to the CBC are looking for its distinctive tone. They're trying to escape the targetted younger programming of the CBC's competition (or at least trying to supplement it by adding something different to their diet).
    The CBC has lost its compass.
    In closing, I have to say a few things in my defence, since CBC honchos will react to this with their predictable utterances. Jennifer McGuire has already complained about the online response to the survey's findings as being partly from disgruntled former CBC employees.
    Yes, I am a former CBC employee. No, I am not disgruntled.
    I don't suffer from a "boy, that place has sure gone downhill since I left" perspective. The downhill process started long ago.
    I'm not a dinosaur.
    Nor am I against change (another typical corporate response: "They just don't like change". In fact, most people don't mind change. What they don't like is change for the worse).
     I am disappointed at the sloppy way in which, as a corporation, the CBC seems to careen, like a pinball, from one internal crisis to another. At the lack of vision of its leaders.
    I'm sad for many former colleagues still there whom I like and respect toiling under a very unhappy period of their lives. And I'm sad that so many CBC listeners feel let down by what is, after all, their broadcaster.
    It doesn't have to be this way. It shouldn't be.

The Survey

The Leak

Jennifer McGuire's response

The wisdom of Hubert T. Lacroix now at a portal near me

    I finally know, now, what I'm going to do with my retirement.
    The revelation arrived this morning in the mail, courtesy of the gnomes who run the pension plan of the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster. All retirees, it proudly stated, would be given a right hitherto reserved for active employees: access to the iO portal.
    I admit, since I had no idea there even was an iO portal, that this revelation would have been lost on me had it not been for a brief list of what this would entitle me to. And topping that list, in tones of near-breathless reverence, was the pièce de résistance: the portal will allow us "to read the speeches of Hubert T. Lacroix".
     Not just any Hubert Lacroix. Hubert T. Lacroix, president of the CBC. Quick, courier me a bottle of valium before I die of excitement. Heck, I haven't been this excited since the corporation reran a Juliette Christmas special from the 1950s!
    Now, I know since I spent about three decades at the Mother Corp. that those who create the programming and those who manage the place live in two different worlds. Management always seemed to occupy an alternate universe. People who work there refer to it as going through the rabbit hole. It's kind of like a bad Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.
    Increasingly over the years, the strains of a personality cult has also developed around certain CBC bosses. The first time it became really visible to me was when a portrait of Tony Burman appeared on the wall at the entrance to the radio newsroom at CBC HQ in Toronto. Burman was in charge of TV news but had been elevated to the grand poobah of English-language news - TV and radio. And then his portrait showed up. It gave the place a decidedly North Korean tinge. The Dear Leader, and all that. There was something Communist Politburo about the whole thing. Mind you, in typical CBC style, it was only an 8X10 photo. Hell, if you're going to hail the glorious leader in a personality cult, that person at least deserves a monstrous statue - like the ones erected to some of the leaders of the kleptocracies in the 'Stans of formerly Soviet Central Asia.
    I think the CBC should put up a monument to Hubert T. Lacroix, in granite, with quotations from his glorious speeches etched around its base.
    And while they're at it, I have a marketing opportunity they shouldn't miss. His speeches should be collected in a book (maybe it should be red, like the quotations of Chairman Mao) and sold at the CBC gift shop. What a great idea for the kids! Instead of those ridiculous stories about a honey-besotted bear and its friends, pies made out of alligators, places where wild things are or cats in ridiculous hats, just think how much better the speeches of Hubert T. Lacroix would be at settling your kids down for the night.
    They could create household conflict, though. Care would have to be exercised. First there would be the arguments that would inevitably develop between parents and older siblings over who would get to read the night's speech to the little ones. Then there would be the problem of the kiddies themselves demanding one more speech before they go to sleep.
    "Just one more?"
    "No, no, dear, it's bedtime. Really."
    "But you promised we'd re-read Hubert T. Lacroix's speech from last August!".
    "No, we've already had two speeches tonight".
    "I hate you!"
    Yes, the tots will be insatiable.
    As for me, being retired I'm kind of on extended holiday. And how better to while away the hours than with those marvelous, stirring insights. Now available to me, but sadly not you unless you're also a CBC retiree, through the magic of the Internet and the iO portal.
    Isn't it wonderful?

Conservative tactics backfiring on Afghan torture

    No amount of nattering by our federal government can now change the widely held perception that it is involved in a cover-up regarding the handling of detainees in Afghanistan.
    There are allegations that Ottawa was warned about torture in Afghan prisons early in Canada's military mission there. The Canadian government at the time was Liberal. It's Stephen Harper's Conservatives, who were in power when the issue of detainee transfers came to a head, doing the back pedaling.
    It was pretty common knowledge that torture was used in Afghan prisons when Canadian soldiers started transferring those it had rounded up in patrols or fighting to local authorities. Diplomats and organizations from various countries were aware of the problem. Some have been quoted on the issue from as far back as 2004 - before Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin says he started alerting Canadian officials in his memos.
    But the government persists in trying to avoid this controversy by defaming Colvin as some sort of Taliban sympathizer and accusing the Opposition parties of being disloyal to our troops by even raising the issue. In short, the government is doing everything but telling the truth.
    Its release of documents on the handling of Afghan prisoners is simply adding some pretty volatile fuel to an already burning fire. These documents are heavily censored - so much so that they throw doubt on the government's claims that they are redacted for security reasons. So many sections are blacked out that observers can only come to one conclusion: the government must be hiding something.
    Suspicions are only bolstered by the fact that even those with the proper security clearance - like the Military Police Complaints Commission - are being denied access to uncensored versions of the documents.
    Does Harper's government really think people believe this spin, this poor attempt at propaganda, because they don't.
    This story is also a good example of why even apparently healthy democracies need a free and functioning media. The media on all political sides have been doing a good job of investigating this affair and holding the government's feet to the fire over its excuses.
    The Canadian government is not acquitting itself well in this matter. The public are not buying its broadsides against Colvin or the opposition. Each newly released blacked out document and government denial adds to the growing sense the government is trying to hide what it knew and when it knew it.
    Stephen Harper's Conservatives have nothing to learn from Tiger Woods when it comes to embarrassing themselves in public. With the Afghan torture affair, they're doing the political equivalent of driving their car into a tree and fire hydrant with each passing day.
    The only way out for them is to come clean and release all the relevant documents, uncensored.

The pandemonium pandemic

    Canadians are confused as hell, and who can blame them? An almost daily barrage of mixed, sometimes contradictory, messages and hyperbole has turned this country's H1N1 campaign into a sort of tragi-comic farce.
    The swine flu has been both hyped and played down. People have been urged to get shots, but also discouraged from doing so. There have been conflicting signals over the severity of the illness. No one seemed to anticipate the logistical problems associated with administering the vaccine. Even the bottle neck in its production has surprised health planners. And the message over who should get the vaccine wasn't clear enough from the beginning.
    Little wonder that the reaction to the virus among people in this country has ranged from jejune to panic-stricken.
    The problems began months ago, in what now might be called the first wave of swine flu, with the use of the unfortunate term "Pandemic". I suppose health officials weren't wrong to use it, since it merely refers to a virus that spreads quickly over a wide geographical area and could affect a relatively high number of people in diverse populations.
    There is nothing in the definition of the word that talks about severity. And indeed, the first round was generally mild, despite some deaths.
    That doesn't change the fact, though, that "pandemic" is a loaded word. As unwarranted as it may be, when the general public hears "pandemic" they think the plague has arisen anew. No one in official health circles seemed to take that into account when they were bandying the word around. Then again, they're health officials, not writers or editors.
    That doesn't excuse the media, which used the word liberally, mostly without an explanation. And given that this began during a slow news cycle (at least here in Canada), the swine flu story was reported with a torque intended to give it the excitement and drama befitting a lead story almost daily.
    People's interest started lagging when it turned out that the swine flu's oink was worse than its bite. By the time the so-called "second wave" came around - the one we're currently in - a lot of people had decided H1N1 was predominantly mild (which it is), they weren't likely to get it and they therefore did not need a shot.
    Health officials were surprised at the initial lukewarm response to their initial vaccine appeals. So the message got ramped up. This could spread quickly, it could be deadly, a lot of society could be affected. That was all duly repeated in excitable tones by the media. People were virtually implored to get the shot.
    So they started turning out in droves. I don't know what it's been like in your country, but Canadians are a patient and law-abiding lot. Thousands of people have spent hours on end standing in lines outside clinics, day after day, only to be sent home.
    Turns out there isn't enough vaccine for everyone. It can't be made, shipped or administered fast enough to handle all those people.
    So after hearing "get the shot, get the shot, get the shot", the thousands of people who took it to heart and turned up were sent home without being vaccinated because the clinics weren't prepared to handle that kind of response.
    Incongruously, health authorities sounded surprised by the scale of the response. Who could have seen it coming, they ask. Well really, what did they expect with their constant exhortations, ads and appeals - all supported, again, by nearly daily media reports.
    Public anxiety grew with every reported death (there have been 192 in Canada as of this week) and every media report of an "outbreak".
    I have to side with Rick Mercer on this one. In one of his recent rants, he took the media to task over reporting an "outbreak" at a Toronto hospital. It turned out three people had got the flu. As he rightly pointed out, when Canadians hear the word "outbreak" they think of a Dustin Hoffman movie about a planet-ending Ebola-type scourge, not three people with some flu symptoms. The media need to be a lot more careful with their terminology.
    Then there was the poorly-explained priority system in getting people vaccinated. Health authorities across the country designated certain groups as high priority. Those people would get the shot first because they were deemed to be at higher risk from the flu than the rest of the population. Except that was completely misunderstood by the public (or, perhaps in some cases, misappropriated).
    So, as ordinary Canadians were turned away because they weren't in a "priority" group, we had executive board members of hospitals getting the shot; wealthy clients of expensive private clinics; even hockey and basketball players - some of the healthiest specimens on the planet. When challenged about this, a manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs refused to discuss it because it was a "private matter". Like hell it is. It's a very public matter indeed.
    Part of the problem was simple human selfishness - people using position and privilege to get dosed up so they wouldn't have to wait in line with the masses. But part of it was poor communication on the part of health officials. See, some of these people didn't understand that when health authorities talked about high risk groups, they did not mean people at high risk of getting the flu. They meant people at higher risk of developing serious complications as a result of getting the flu. For the most part, that would discount professional athletes.
    At least in Alberta, the person who arranged for the Calgary Flames to get the flu shot without lining up was fired.
    Then there's the whole mess of making and distributing the vaccine. Back at the start of the decade, when the federal government was considering a response to a possible pandemic, it decided that concentrating vaccine manufacturing was a sensible idea. So it awarded the contract to one pharmaceutical company - GlaxoSmithKline.
    In practice, that turns out not to be such a great idea after all. The plant can only pump the stuff out so fast. And with a little thought, surely that could have been foreseen. What about the possibility of some sort of problem at the plant? Wouldn't you at least want a back-up, a fail safe? As in a second or third plant also processing vaccine?
    So GSK is only one plant and it can only get the stuff out the door at a finite rate. Then everyone realizes that - hey - pregnant women need a different version of the vaccine. GlaxoSmithKline has to suspend production of the regular shot so it can produce vaccine for pregnant women. Surely someone - like a public health official - could have foreseen that.
    The Canadian government ordered 50-million doses, we're told. By the time it's all ready, the swine flu will have passed. It's probably a good thing, you know, that a not insignificant number of Canadians have decided against getting the shot. Otherwise this process would be even farther behind.
    The media, meanwhile, have been covering not only every blip on the H1N1 radar, but also themselves. Has the threat of swine flu been exaggerated, they ask rhetorically. You're damn right it has and the media have been paramount in that effort. Even Judith Timson, normally among the country's more sensible columnists, asked recently in her paper: "I wonder whether we in the media have gone too far by hyping H1N1 news to the point where anxiety about the disease is spreading faster than the virus itself." Yet in the same column she admits that if it came down to the lives of her loved ones she's not sure what she'd do - implying she might also jump the line and get a "VIP" vaccination. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that" she concludes. Couldn't help ending with a hint at the nightmare scenario, huh?
    The media's job is not to scare the bejesus out of us, it's to inform us. And the best way to do that is with balanced, clear, level-headed reporting. Stop competing for eyeballs and ears by out-trumping each other with melodramatic headlines and language.
    As for the country's emergency medical preparedness, it's good that we're going through this turbulence now and hopefully we'll learn how to deal with a real outbreak, because if this were the big one, we'd be in even further over our heads.

CBC - it's a pity

    I feel sad for Canada's national public broadcaster, for those who work there and for its small but devoted audience.
    Once upon a time, the CBC offered Canadians a distinct voice. It had a mandate to be different from the private, for-profit broadcasters and it fulfilled that, with varying degrees of success. It wasn't always perfect by any means. When I started there in the mid-1970s the tone had a tendency toward an outdated, stuffy 1950s BBC-like style. But people respected the CBC for the calibre of its work, the depth of its journalism, its thoughtfulness and its honesty, among other things.
    Unfortunately, some of that has been jettisoned in the corporation's new makeover. The CBC has been taking a real hammering for its changes, both from its audience and from columnists in other media, and rightly so. The new CBC, though trumpeted to the skies by the management team, is a complete triumph of superficiality over content.
    Most of the derision drawn by the changes is being directed at TV, namely The National, the main nightly newscast, and the former NewsWorld, where the superficiality of the new format is most evident.
    Much is being made of the CNN-ification of NewsWorld, the CBC's 24-hour TV news channel, now going under the name CBC News Network. Some of the Corp's wittier insiders immediately dubbed it CB-CNN.
    Senior managers are dismissing the claims that CNN was the template for the new look as a myth. But the visual and programming similarities between the two are striking. And it's a fact that just about everything that has been tried on CNN has ended up on NewsWorld over the course of its history. There has been heavy copy-catting from Day One, and it certainly has not abated with CBCNN's new format.
       Jennifer McGuire, the editor-in-chief of CBC News, tries to defend the corporation against these allegations by saying that the programming schedule is its own. "We did our own research, looked at our own resources, came up with our own schedule," she says.
    Yeah, sure the CBC drew up its own schedule. That has nothing to do with it. And undoubtedly the corporation did its own research. That does not in any way preclude "researching" CNN and adopting wholesale a lot of its set and graphics style, and programming ideas. Just look at the two networks. The similarities are glaringly obvious.
    Critics - and they're legion - have been chortling over the stylistic changes at the CBC main TV network's newscast, The National. They have focused on the most immediately visible change on last Monday's debut: the host, Peter Mansbridge, spent all his on-camera time during the hour-long program standing up, instead of sitting behind a desk.
    Mansbridge looks like someone who doesn't know what to do with his hands. He looks awkward. That, in turn, gives the show an awkward air. It leads to other problems, too. Because Mansbridge is standing, everyone else who appears on the set with him has to do the same. And there's a lot more in-studio activity than ever before. Like on most TV newscasts, Mansbridge used to anchor sitting at a desk. He'd introduce items, then the audience would get the details from a reporter in the field. There's less of that now. There's a lot of Mansbridge quizzing reporters standing in the studio with him, face-to-face.
    According to McGuire, part of the reason behind the changes is "this idea of getting to where the news happens".
    Well I have news for her: the news does not happen in the studio. It happens out in the world, and that's where your reporters should be. That's why BBC World is so strong. They, also a publicly-funded broadcaster, appear to have the globe blanketed with reporters. They're out there where the stories are happening. You see them on your TV screen, right in the thick of things. That in and of itself makes their news coverage compelling. The CBC's new in-studio chit-chat style of "reporting" (note the quotation marks) pales by comparison.
    Trooping reporters through the studio to stand before the host and give a recital on their stories looks like nothing more than a parade of school kids standing before an elderly headmaster to do an oral. Especially when you realize that a number of these chats are about what the reporter is working on, not the story itself. So we're told, for example, that the reporter will have such-and-such a story tomorrow. Do me a favour as a viewer: wait until tomorrow, then just give me the story.
    It also accentuates another problem, which is a tendency on The National to pander to Peter Mansbridge. This was too much in evidence before. He would introduce a story then throw to the reporter by name. The first word out of the reporter's mouth in response would be: "Peter". That gave the newscast the unfortunate tone of a conversation between the host and the reporter, leaving the viewer on the sidelines feeling like an eavesdropper. This effect is made worse by the new format. Now you see two people - host and reporter - standing, facing each other, having a conversation.
    Hello? Aren't you supposed to be addressing me, the audience? In order to do that, you have to face the camera. Well, pardon me for listening in.
    Making matters even sillier, guests - people other than reporters - brought in to answer a few questions from the host also have to stand up. This week, both retired General Rick Hiller talking about his new book and Dr. Michael Gardam being interviewed on the swine flu were put through this. It's ridiculous.
    Personally, I have nothing against the anchor standing to, say, introduce the show. Mike Embley, for example, often does that on his broadcasts of the BBC World News. I like it. But perhaps the anchor could be at a desk after, say, the first item? Definitely when interviewing guests.
    These stylistic modifications to The National, though, are essentially cosmetic. The biggest damage caused by the new format is to the show's content.
    For years, CBC executives have been obsessed with concepts like playfulness, pacing, sound effects on radio news and graphics on TV news. There's nothing wrong with any of that if it's used judiciously to enhance the main ingredient - the journalism. Trouble is, while producers, writers, editors and reporters at CBC know how to do that, the managers who run the place and decide on these format changes don't. They're consumed by "sizzle" to the exclusion of meat. If they were running a steak house on which you depended for your meals you'd hear plenty of sizzle but you'd also starve to death.
    On the new National, items are getting shorter treatments and there seems to be less detail, all in pursuit of a snappier pace. CBC management seems to have decided that we should all be agog at the style, the set, the graphics and the pace (and just the very presence of Peter Mansbridge). They seem to have decided the audience has much less interest in the actual news, which can be glossed over in favour of a snap, crackle and pop presentation. They seem to have also decided that the audience cannot handle the slightest complexity when it comes to issues and that it has all the concentration ability of a child with attention deficit disorder. So, best to keep those news items short and snappy.
    "News has gone through a convulsive change" over the last several years says Richard Stursburg, CBC's executive vice-president in charge of English services, in effect the hands-on head honcho of the English-language network. He's certainly right on that score. In the United States especially, it's changed from journalism to info-tainment. Apparently that's the CBC's model now.
    I suspect these changes are primarily driven by Stursberg's personal "vision" (if one can call it that) for programming. And it stems from what I have perceived as a disdain for not only the CBC's employees but also its audience. Stursberg seems to think the audience is made up of intellectually limited low-brows who want to watch nothing but retreaded reality TV shows. This, at a time when that type of programming is in serious decline. But that's just like CBC management: perennially behind the curve. This man is single-handedly ruining the Canadian public broadcaster.
    In a news release she posted on the CBC's website at the beginning of this week, Jennifer McGuire listed some of the considerations the corporation followed in designing its revamp, based supposedly on public input. They included: "You told us you wanted to be well-informed" and "You told us you wanted the whole story so you could choose what to believe and what decisions to make". From what I've seen of the new programming so far, the CBC powers that be have ignored those two considerations. The programming - and this is no fault of the reporters - has been dumbed down to the point where achieving those goals is impossible.
    Welcome to the new CBC: shallow, cutesy to a fault, thrilled that it has new graphics and some of its shows even have new names!
    The damge is heaviest on the journalism side. But then, what do you expect when many of the people in charge of that department have little or no basic journalism training. They're either programmers or bureaucrats. They fail to grasp that journalism, even if it's on TV or radio, isn't like other programming. It's primary goal is to inform, whereas a variety show's primary goal is to entertain. There's a big difference in emphasis there. CBC mandarins don't seem able to see it.
    Nor do they seem able to see the difference between what a public broadcaster should do and what private stations, run as money-making enterprises, should. A public broadcaster has a different mandate. That can vary from one public broadcaster to another, but overall can be summed up as: provide an alternative to private stations. Or, in other words, be different from them. The CBC is moving towards, not away from, the private model.
    A friend of mine noted that the head of PBS in the States, accepting an Emmy award, remarked that it illustrated the difference between public television and popular television. Too bad the CBC executives are blind to that difference.

That scandalous Michelle Obama!

    Good God Almighty. Michelle Obama has worn shorts.
    She's exposed some thigh.
    What are we living in, a Victorian novel, or the 2000s?
    First of all, she went to the Grand Canyon. In the summertime. And it was not an official appearance.
    What would you wear to the Grand Canyon in summer? A raw silk suit? A cocktail dress and heels? One guy suggested she should have worn linen pants (to respect the office of the President since she travelled on Air Force One). Get a life.
    The media have gone into hyper mode again. "Everyone" is talking about this, we're told. But as a reporter with Associated Press observed, the media themselves seem to constitute the "everyone" to whom they're referring. They're trying to make up for a slow news period and they're sick and tired of covering the iterations of the U.S. health care debate.
    One reporter, while dismissing the whole thing as a media creation, went on in the same breath to ask what it all means. Dismissing it then analyzing it. Great reportage. And to answer the question, found an observer who concluded that it means we're all interested in Michelle Obama. There's another conclusion you could reach: that as a society, we're capable of stooping en masse to salacious twitty-ness.
    Next thing you know she'll be wearing a swimsuit - at the beach! So don't get all hot and bothered just yet.

Toronto's stinky residue

    If the longest civic strike in the history of Canada's largest city is any indication, everyone should be glancing over their shoulders when it comes to their jobs.
    It would be very tempting for some people to use the current financial crisis to justify full frontal assaults on employment, wages and benefits. It's already happened to some extent. People have lost jobs; those who have kept them have in some cases been forced into making concessions in what seems on the surface a reasonable argument under the circumstances: better to do that than lose your job either through cuts or having your company go out of business.
    But what happens when employers use the crisis as an excuse to downsize or roll back? You have to admit, it's a great opportunity.
    Unions are easy targets at times like this. That was amply demonstrated in the strike by Toronto civic employees. Cheerled by the media, the public got itself into paroxysms of anti-union vitriol. Fire them all, was a popular refrain, and hire new people. There are lots of folks out there who would be happy to have those jobs.
    I don't think so. Many of those on strike were garbage collectors. It's not a job people are exactly lining up for, and with good reason. It's a shitty job, but someone has to do it and those who do aren't paid enough.
    Really. Those are long hard days. The work, especially collecting compostable decomposing foodstuff, soiled diapers and pet feces, literally stinks. Even with the new mechanical arms in place to tip the garbage and recycling bins into the trucks, it's heavy work. Those people also have to collect sofas and other castoff furniture, appliances and numerous other items not part of the conventional garbage.
    We complain when they leave a bin or yard waste container uncollected because it's too heavy. The reason there are weight limits to what these employees will pick up or haul around is because muscle and back injuries are common in that job. And they can be career enders.
    This work has to be done regardless of the weather. It doesn't matter whether it's one of those punishing Toronto summer days when it's 95 Farenheit with 90 per cent humidity, or whether it's 20 below.
    The work is tough and the days are long. And on top of all that, even though these people are performing a vital service to our society, the public looks down on them.
    A shitty, tough, backbreaking and thankless job. And many people would be happy to have those jobs? Not likely.
    The garbage collectors became the focus of this strike simply because of the city employees on the picket line, they were the most visible in terms of both their work and their absence. Residents were reminded daily of them by the growing mounds of garbage and the increasing challenge of how to cope over a 35-day period making as few visits to authorized temproary city dumpsites as possible.
    But other workers were off the job as well, from lifeguards to park landscaping crews to people who issue permits to daycare workers.
    They were, curiously, the most invisible when it came to media coverage of this strike. Daycare workers. The people entrusted with looking after our children. Grossly underpaid considering they're charged with tending supposedly the most precious things in our lives, our kids. And ignored by the media. Even today, one of the city's papers referred to "the garbage strike", as if that was the only element involved.
    That's what it all came down to. That and 18 sick leave days the union employees are allowed to bank each year.
    The media made this the sole issue of the labour dispute, even though there were others. They were rabid over the fact that CUPE union members had this provision. After all, it was pointed out, no one in the private sector has bankable sick days. That cry was taken up by the public and applied to many of the other benefits the union members had, even to the fact that they had jobs at all.
    How dare they go on strike when people in the private sector had lost jobs!
    But the main rallying cry became: I dont have that benefit, so why should they?
    Surprising, really, how quickly Toronto was reduced to a level of self-interested pettiness.
    We in the private sector don't have banked sick days. Why should they?
    I don't have job security. Why should they?
    I don't make that much. Why should they?
    These people are asking the wrong question.
    The question should be: They have that benefit. Why don't I?
    Ask your private sector employer.
    It's not the unions' fault that they have these things. They were negotiated, and won fairly and squarely, with employers in legitimate contract talks. And to a large degree, people in the private sector can thank unions for the things they do have. Union contract agreements have pretty much forced private sector employers to at least approximate (the best employers match) those wages and benefits for their own employees in similar jobs.
    With no benchmark, the private sector would be free to do what it chose within the confines of government labour legislation. And if you think unions aren't necessary to set a benchmark - that the competitive market will do that - just look at what happens when the private sector doesn't like conditions in the current market: the employer lays off his workforce, closes his plant and moves the operation to a developing country where he can pay a pittance and provide no benefits.
    The union movement got going to protect flagrant violations of workers in the industrial revolution. A lot has been accomplished since then and most of us feel complacent, not just about workers' basic rights but many other areas. Don't be. If unions were to be disbanded we'd find out very quicly why they're necessary. Society must never turn its back on any gain, from civil rights to workers' rights to women's rights. There are always elements keen to roll those back.
    Times are tough. A lot of jobs have been lost and people in private-sector positions have had to make a lot of concessions. Many of them do not have the same benefits or compensatory wage provisions as unionized employees. That just illustrates why unions are needed.
    As for the sick day bank, it's an extra perk that union happened to negotiate. So what? Get over it. Now the new contract has been signed, that provision will cease to exist. New hires won't get it so it will disappear. As far as how much that provision costs the city, the figure presented in the media is exaggerated. First of all, just over half of the union members received it under the old contract, not all of them. Under the new deal, some will opt for the new short-term disability provision.
    In addition to that, not all of the eligible union members collect on those sick days (which they can save up and cash in when they retire). Some will go to other jobs well before they hit retirement. Others will die. Many of those days won't be cashed in. Even when an employee cashes in all the eligible sick days, they add up to six months' pay. Big deal. Amortize six months' pay over the next 30 years of your life. It's nothing compared to the grotesque bonuses and golden handshakes given out in the corporate world. People should be angrier that their governments are using their tax money to bail out companies that have done such a bad job they're in danger of going under. The theory is they're too big to be allowed to fail. So average working people - unionized and not - foot the bill.
    The Canadian commentator Naomi Klein calls the bailouts "the greatest heist in monetary history".
    Let's get our priorities straight. Banked sick leave for some people in backbreaking jobs is a pittance.
    And anyway, why didn't I have that benefit?
    Last night, I re-watched a 70-year-old movie from a 70-year-old book on television. The Grapes of Wrath. Very relevant to our current situation. Economic hard times. People losing jobs left, right and centre. Share croppers being forced off their farms not by the dust bowls so much as the start of large-scale industrialized agriculture. People forced to migrate in search of piece work.
    Like many, young Tom Joad's family goes to California and finds work picking fruit. Five cents a bucket. Joad (Henry Fonda) doesn't believe it when he's told by people who have been through the experience that soon they'll be chiselled down to two-and-a-half cents. One day a truck of new arrivals comes to the labour camp where the migrant workers live and Joad overhears the foreman telling them that the rate is now two-and-a-half cents. Arbitrary. Just like that.
    "Who are these reds anyway?", Joad asks at one point. "Seems everytime you turn around someone's calling somebody else a 'red'. Who are these 'reds' anyway?"
    They're the people trying to organize union representation for the workers so they can actually be paid what their work is worth. But the employers, with the help of sherriff's deputies, bust heads with ash clubs to stop it.
    Written in 1939, shot in 1940. A book and movie for our times.
    As for Toronto, the strike is over. Let's be glad our pools are re-opened, our kids can go back to daycare, where their overseers make slave wages, and our garbage can be collected again.
    Now we can all go back to debating plastic take-out coffee cup lids, another issue city hall has been vexed about of late. Apparently the city can't recycle the lids. One of its bright ideas? Ban take-out coffee cups.
    As if. But that's a rant for another time.

Walter Cronkite

    I became familiar with Walter Cronkite through my father. He was in the habit of sitting down and watching the network news at 6:30 on weeknights. He'd sample the various networks but mostly it was the CBS Evening News. With Walter Cronkite. I'd often sit with him, even though this started when I was a kid and I didn't always grasp what they were talking about on the TV.
    Despite that, it was easy to see that Cronkite was someone you could believe, who was trustworthy, who wouldn't steer you wrong, lead you astray or even leave you with a wrong impression. It was easy to see how he became like a father figure to an entire nation. I wasn't part of that nation. But if you lived in the stretch of Canada near the U.S. border, especially around large cities like Toronto, you got the American networks on TV in those days - way before cable, never mind satellite television - and he had the same effect on us too.
    We depended on him. If anything at all happened of note, you turned to CBS to see what Cronkite had to say. I remember that now-famous clip - one of those everyone has been playing in their obits - of him anchoring the Kennedy assassination coverage. The moment when he announced that Kennedy had died. When Cronkite took off his glasses and - just briefly - seemed as deeply effected as his audience. It wasn't an overly dramatic gesture - Cronkite would never be given to that - but it was touching, he established an instant rapport with his audience, he summed up, without words, what we were all feeling. It was dignified. And that was the man.
    It happened again, though on a happy occasion, when Neil Armstrong became the first human being to step onto the surface of the moon. Cronkite could only grin, give a little huff and shake his head in awe - once more summing up, without words, what we were all feeling watching this incredible thing unfold right on our TVs.
    No matter what had happened each day, Cronkite delivered it in a way that made the information accessible, understandable, with fairness, balance, authority, humanity, even a sense of humour. Never overstated, no gimmicks. Always dignified.
    That's the way it was with him. The greatest news anchor ever.
    I shed a small tear, actually, last night. Very uncharacteristic of me. I never met Walter Cronkite but I feel a part of my life is gone.

The Globe goes sour on Stephen Harper

    In the days leading up to the last federal election the Globe and Mail, which bills itself as Canada's national newspaper, endorsed the Conservative leader and serving prime minister, Stephen Harper. The Globe seemed satisfied with the progress Harper had made as a politician since his Reform and Canadian Alliance party days. It noted that he had demonstrated a capacity to change and that there was no reason to think that would not continue.
    In fact there was every reason to think it would not continue. The Globe was not alone in being unable to see that Stephen Harper has an agenda and a vision for Canada and, like other people with agendas and visions, he wants to see it come to fruition.
    The agenda, essentially, is that Harper wants to recast Canada in a conservative mold. He wants the Conservative party to be seen as the country's natural governing entity, a perception that has been granted to the Liberals in a very general way over the years.
    Many observers, including some dyed-in-the-wool conservatives on the right end of the spectrum, have fretted that Harper has departed from their core values during his time at the helm of successive minority governments. It was perhaps that belief that led the Globe and Mail to think he had shown the capacity to change.
    However, since shortly after the election the Globe has been rethinking its assessment and trying to delicately back away. There have been a number of columns and at least one op-ed piece questioning Harper's tactics and policies. And today the paper's strongest language yet from its veteran political columnist, Jeffrey Simpson (oddly, his name was left off the column in the print edition, but I'm sure that was just a coincidental mistake).
    Some rather scathing shots are fired at Harper over a comment he made about taxes after the G8 summit in Italy. "I don't believe that any taxes are good taxes," he remarked.
    Under the headline "A very scary PM", Simpson calls it "one of the most stunning, revealing and, frankly, ignorant statements ever made by a prime minister". As he rightly points out, taxes are necessary. He contends that even right-wing conservatives agree the government is responsible for defence and law enforcement. If not for taxes, how would it pay for those (and defence, under this Conservative government, accounts for a growing share of federal spending).
    Not even, says Simpson, the Chicago school of economics under Milton Friedman - a very right-wing group indeed - believe that no taxes are good taxes. Such a view is "wrong economically and very, very scary socially and politically".
    Those are strong words from the little paper with the neo-Con heart.
    Harper, though, is showing no signs of slashing government programs. That would likely be very different if he had a solid majority. Nor is he about to raise taxes, despite the deficit the government will be ringing up thanks to its stimulus package to help get the country out of the economic doldrums. Interestingly, a previous and useless Harper tax cut comes very much into play here. You might recall that in a shallow attempt to attract votes he cut the Goods and Services Tax by one per cent. That was followed by another one per cent cut.
    According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, Canada is in a structural deficit. There won't be enough money for expenditures coming out of the recession. Turns out, according to the PBO, that the size of that deficit about matches the revenue lost to the government through its 2 per cent GST cut. It did nothing to help the economy and now it's really costing the government because of the then-unforseen economic crisis.
    Simpson is correct in observing that Harper's latest comment about taxes could have come out of his days with the National Citizens Coalition, before he got into politics.
    Further proof that the leopard is not changing his spots. In fact, he's doing a decidedly unconvincing job of even trying to camouflage them.
    And to the Globe and Mail an "Excellence in Journalism Award" for getting its endorsement so wrong.

Michael Jackson

    The media reacted to the news of Michael Jackson's death yesterday with an excess that somehow sadly befitted the pop star.
    I was shocked when I turned on the TV to watch BBC World, as is my custom at 6:00, not by the news but by the newscast. They were in live coverage mode, unusual in itself for the Beeb, in a manner so like CNN that I had to check the logo on the screen several times to assure myself I was watching the right channel.
    CNN pioneered what is now a common 24-hour news channel format: go live with a breaking story (even when it's not even very newsworthy) and stay on hell or high water, regardless of whether you have anything to say or show. Thus, the viewer is treated to, say, an hour's live video of a vehicle parked outside a building or on the side of a road while a news anchor, reporters and analysts tell us they don't really know what's happening but speculate about it anyway.
    I turned the BBC on a bit early yesterday. They were already live, going through the top of the clock when they would normally run the intro to their newscast, meaning they suspended the normal format, something that would ordinarily happen for an event of stupendous magnitude - 9/11, for example. They kept broadcasting the same live helicopter video of Jackson's house and the UCLA Medical Center. There was nothing to be seen around the house. At the medical center the camera kept switching from a shot of two empty rooftop helipads to one of a parked ambulance. Occasionally, a picture of some yellow caution tape strung across a street and a couple of policemen standing by some orange traffic pylons were added. In other words, shots of nothing. Live video of stationary objects (though at one point, as if to imply confirmation of the event, the newscast's host told us there seemed to be a lot of activity around the UCLA Medical Center. I would have assumed that to be a normal state for a major medical facility in a city like Los Angeles).
    All the while, the anchor kept telling us that there were unconfirmed (and he stressed that repeatedly) reports that Jackson had died, likely of a heart attack, and had been taken from his house to the medical center. This packet of information could have easily been handled in a minute. It was repeated over and over for 17 minutes, at which point I turned the TV off.
    After the Beeb masquerading as CNN, later that evening came CBC's The National, which treated us to some more stunning commentary. CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi, appearing as an expert pop culture and music analyst, told us that many people had never known a world without Michael Jackson (my sympathies) and added: "That starts today". You'd think he was talking about the sun becoming permanently obscured by cloud cover due to some twist of global climate change.
    Then there was the Hollywood reporter who was asked to bring us up to date on reaction in Los Angeles. And in all seriousness, she told us the city was reeling after a series of celebrity deaths this week.
    I hope that puts things in perspective for those self-centered protesters in Iran being repressed by their own government, those tens of thousands displaced form Darfur who are living in tents, the people of Gaza and Iraq living with daily power, water, medicinal and food shortages. You think life's tough? Have a go at trying to recover from a series of celebrity deaths and you'll get a real taste of hardship!
    The media devoted to Michael Jackson the breadth and depth of analysis they might bestow on Churchill, Kennedy or Gandhi. For that, I have to bestow on the entire industry a fecetious Excellence in Journalism Award.
    In any event, I was never a Jackson fan. I was listening to music when he started out as a kid. Wasn't taken with the high-pitched, nasal voice, which didn't improve in "adulthood" with the addition of those fake girly squeals.
    The Jackson Five were purveyors of bubble gum, a genre in which they couldn't be rivalled by the Archies, the Ohio Express, Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, or even now, Lady Gaga.
    Michael Jackson's later music simply recast bubble gum pop in techno-synth with a dance beat. His videos generally were well-choreographed, but indivually he appeared to be not so much a dancer as a marionette suffering from myoclonic jerks.
    I think one headline got it right: "Jackson's weirdness eclipsed achievements".
    His bizarreness became the main act, his music the sideshow. But given his life - when you're internationally famous and in the spotlight, completely detached from reality for 45 of your 50 years - how can you not be bizarre?