Sunday, May 24, 2009

Save Our Democracy

If you’ve been paying any attention to the news lately I’m sure you’ve noticed that our media is in trouble. Newspapers have laid off extraordinary amounts of staff, some are folding altogether or filing for bankruptcy, and once again the CBC, our national independent public broadcaster is being forced to cut jobs.

Why bother with newspapers and why should you care about the CBC when you can get all your news online for free anyway? For one, it’s newspapers and the media that pay investigative journalists to research and break stories. Without funds to employ journalists, stories won’t be researched and we the voting public will remain un-informed. Without local, independent and non-partisan media; democracy is ineffective. For our democracy to function properly the country needs its citizens to be educated on local and international news. To vote properly we have to be able to make informed decisions, with a clear view of our potential representatives’ policies. We need fair and balanced media.

By trying to remove the per-vote subsidy in last year’s budget, Stephen Harper essentially tried to destroy his opponent’s political parties. Now Harper’s trying to attack our democracy by destroying the CBC, our public broadcaster! At least the Harper government is considering plans to bailout big media corporations like CanWest and CTV, but still he’s insisting on starving the CBC of funds. The Conservative minority government is turning down the CBC’s request for a loan and cutting the CBC’s parliamentary grant this year. This is forcing the CBC and Radio Canada to drastically cut over 800 jobs, as well as programming. We fight wars the world over in the name of Democracy, why are we standing by while our own is attacked!?

For a long time, the CBC has been forced to rely on advertising for a percentage of its revenue, making it carry American rather than Canadian shows, and focus on commercial rather than cultural content. This is part of a long term strategy to eventually privatize and sell off the CBC.

Among western industrialized nations, Canada is near the bottom when it comes to investing in public broadcasting. The global average is $80 per citizen and countries like Great Britain, Germany and Norway invest even more. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has recognized this and called for a minimal increase to $40 (we’re now at about $33 per citizen).

So, what can you do? Well you can start by telling your MP their treatment of the CBC and local media outlets will affect your vote come election time by simply writing them or by checking out this link: www.friends.ca at the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting website. There’s also a petition you can sign at www.avaaz.org.

Craig Cooper
Golden, BC