As a retired journalist worried about all the cuts in staffing, quality and relevance in the news business over the past decade (or more) any announcement of a NEW all-news network is great news. And the fact that the move will substantially revvolve around the station where I spent 26 great, mostly happy years makes it all even greater: it will mean more news jobs, and greater opportunities and security for my co-workers.
Or will it?
For those who missed it, Shaw Media has applied to the CRTC for “a regional, Global BC-driven all-news speciality channel” to begin broadcasting next summer.
The company says the new network will provide viewers throughout the province with “top local, national and international headlines” 24 hours a day and “more live event coverage and more in-depth, original local reporting than any other in the market”.
I like it … if it’s true.
Keeping to those promising words could give viewers (not just those of us who are news junkies) all kinds of new windows of coverage on events, issues and politics unfolding at municipalities, regions and the provincial level.
But that will take a lot more resources than Global has at its disposal right now … including more seasoned journalists, adept at covering more than shootings, fires, traffic accidents, weather events and charity walks, runs and swims; serious political reporters who ENJOY getting out from behind a desk to go ask tough questions of politicians, and investigative experts, given the resources and time to research and shoot compelling stories and exposees.
That would be just wonderful … and could even have a multiplier effect with other BC news stations and networks as well …benefiting us all. As I reported on the blog in November CTV also expanded its news shows in BC … another good step in the right direction.
Of course, the new network could be a bust.
Just the same stories we now get, run over and over again …twenty times a day instead of four or five or six.
Or hours and hours of talking heads … more people sitting behind desks, discussing the news instead of showing it to us. That’s what we got with the “new” Sun News network …the last place I go to find out what’s happening with serious breaking news. About all I find there are talking heads, and repeat broadcasts of talking head shows I’d swear I had seen when clicking hours earlier in the day. Almost all of it, of course, what I would describe as just right wing propaganda. Yech!
Of course, there will be lots of cynics who will worry the “new” BC news network will be nothing more than a provincial Liberal government or federal Tory government mouthpiece … offering up pap and propaganda in return for lots of government advertising revenues, which after all is the mainstay of private stations and networks.
And how will the dedication of the huge resources needed for a substantive 24-hour news channel affect the Newshour and other news shows on Global?
Will the Newshour be scooped by its own new rival? Will the competition enjoy a new “heads up” service, advising them at 3 p.m what the Newshour will be featuring at 6 p.m? Or will the Newshour withold legitimate news stories from its own 24-hour network, making it “all the news … the second time over”. And what about Newshour sports? Will much of the 6 p.m. (and Early and Noon and Final) be original sports coverage and different? Or just cuts and/or rehashes from sports stories running on the 24-hour network?
Lots of questions. Lots of fears. But lots of opportunities.
And that’s sure better than the past 10 years … of watching Global doing more with less … and suffering as a result.
Harv Oberfeld
Let’s face it: Canada’s record on dealing with racism is not spotless.
Just going back as far as World War II is bad enough to get the point. Our treatment of Japanese CANADIANS in interning them without cause and stealing most of their possessions was shameful to put it mildly; our turning away of Jewish refugees (and even sending many back to their deaths in Europe) was an anti-Semitic blot on our history; and our subsequent failure to expeditiously pursue war criminals who made it here was not our shining moment.
Not to mention those aboriginal residential schools, our second-rate treatment of Asian immigrants, and the racial discrimination practiced for too many decades in jobs and appointments, our residential neighbourhoods, social clubs and even our supposed institutions of higher learning.
It still bothers me to think about this stuff … and although I am fortunately too young to have witnessed most of it, I do remember …je me souviens … as we said where I grew up in Montreal, Quebec some of thes realities. In fact, on this blog I wrote “Memories” in 2008 about my personal experience witnessing what a wonderful black man named Sweeney … Oscar Peterson’s brother-in-law… went though at the hands of the oh-so-proper White Upper Crust English Montrealers when he just tried to run a neighborhood restaurant.
Thankfully, though, things have improved greatly almost everywhere in our land: discrimination and racism is seen for the silliness it is; anti-semitism is relegated to the idiot-fringe; huge waves of Asian immigration have been absorbed without many problems, and welcome additions to our dining delights; and if Sikhs and Muslim immigrants experience any new-culture challenges, they seem more often to be internally-generated rather than externally applied.
Except in Quebec.
I still remember, moving to my first newspaper job at the Saskatoon Star Phoenix in 1969, how surprised I was to find the city’s mayor, Sid Buckwold, was Jewish. How could that be, I wondered? Co-workers were appalled at the question … until I explained that, in Montreal, an English person …let alone someone who is Jewish..could NEVER be elected Mayor.
Sadly, 40 years later, THAT IS STILL THE CASE in Montreal and Quebec. An Anglo or Jew or Chinese or Muslim or Black could NEVER today be elected mayor of Montreal or Quebec City or Premier of Quebec. With very rare exceptions, Quebec minorities are still largely electable only in communities where their ethnic minorities exist in larger numbers.
It’s a reality we in BC thought Canada had left behind decades ago. It was 40 years ago that Dave Barrett was elected Premier of BC without his Jewish religion being an issue at all. We’ve had mayors and MLAs and MPs elected from virtually every minority without their ethnicity being an issue of any kind.
But a minority member becoming Mayor of Montreal or Quebec City or Premier … even now …. NON! Impossible!
And yet no one says anything. After all, it’s Quebec.
In fact, students of history will know that minorities actually were treated and accepted better in Quebec two hundred years ago than they are now. The province actually led in passing laws granting voting rights to Jews, for instance. But while there has been progress among Quebecois in the higher-educated sectors of urban society on some parts of the Island of Montreal, much of Quebec … especially rural areas … remains isolationist and unwelcoming.
Many will remember how, in 2007, the town of Herouxville way up the St. Lawrence River past Quebec City, adopted a set of STANDARDS warning any ”new arrivals” who might dare to think of moving there that they must NOT bring their home country lifestyles to Herouxville! “We consider that killing women in public beatings or burning them alive are not part of our standards of life,” the City Fathers warned.
“And the only time you can cover your faces is during Halloween,” they added. What Ignoramuses!!! The rest of us may have laughed, and condemned …but, in my view, the good people of Herouxville, Quebec had made themselves quite clear; foreigners with any “foreign ways” not wanted.
Can you imagine if a BC community passed such warnings? The BC government, the federal government, the Canadian Human Rights Commission … probably even the UN …would have raked them over the coals. But it was Quebec: so we just “tsk tsk”ed and did nothing.
An anomaly? Unfortunately not.
Gatineau, Que. is a suburb of Ottawa that owes MUCH of its economic development and residential growth to its proximity to the nation’s capital. And along with that growth have come ethnic minorities, and (YIKES!) immigrants from far-flung lands. … all part of the modern Canadian modern mosaic.
Most of us wouldn’t bat an eye. Yet just recently, the City of Gatineau released a 16-point , FUNDED by the Quebec provincial government, warning newcomers not to cook “smelly” foods, not to carry out “honour” killings etc., not to brutalize their children etc. What imbeciles! (Fortunately the Quebec experts left out any reference to where to park your camels!)
Again, no outcry from our “leaders” who would have raked over the coals (justifiably) any BC or Alberta community that issued such a demeaning, 1930′s type document.
The truth is today that horrible racist view by Francophone Quebeckers that only they are ”pure lain” (pure wool …ie real Quebeckers) still applies in much of Quebec society: outsiders (non French-speaking, non-Catholic, non-white) … are still not accepted as equals …. even those with family roots going back 200 years.
And with no one calling Quebec on the issue, it’s NOT getting better.
Ask black Haitian immigrants who thought they’d be welcome as French-speaking additions to Quebec society. Not! When many … like immigrants everywhere … got started in their new land taxi drivers, taxi companies soon came to understand when callers asked for “un bon chauffeur” (a good driver) they meant a WHITE driver.
This is not to say, of course, thast there aren’t bigots elsewhere too …but in Quebec, it is still respectable and acceptable to express ethnic ignorance and bias.
That’s why in recent weeks, there was public outrage … not opposed, but actually LED by the Quebec French media because, tabernacle, the Canadiens hired a coach who doesn’t speak French.
Now, you might have thought the only real criteria for hiring an NHL coach is that he (or she) have the capability of taking the team to the Stanley Cup. Not in Quebec! No matter that ALL the Canadien hockey players today speak/understand English or that only a few are even of French origin: the Canadiens coach, according to many, must not only speak French but should BE French.
Apparently, that’s more important than winning.
That, sadly, is the truth of Quebec today … and if you pay attention to what they say down there, you’ll hear/see a lot of racism and xenophobia openly expressed …. and just taken for granted.
It’s time for the “leaders” in our society to start standing up against it.
Harv Oberfeld
