CBC has gone off the rails
Over the past few years the Cowichan Valley Citizen has facilitated a healthy and sometimes contentious dialogue about the purpose and validity of the CBC. I and others have taken part on either side of the issue and, once again, we owe the Citizen a debt of thanks for upholding the tradition of open democratic debate.
Now, however, the issue of the CBC has reached a new level of concern. Recently the CBC did a piece telling Canadians which words in the English language they ought not to use. Among these were “blackmail”, “brainstorm”, “tone deaf”, “spooky” and other terms that are staple expressions in our language. Just to remind Canadians about what the purpose of a national broadcaster is, it ought not to include becoming cultural arbitrators of our language and telling the public how to speak. Setting aside the fact that they were originally supposed to be a national broadcaster representing the majority of Canadians rather than a minority of ideological elites, it is simply not their business, or mission, to tell us what to do or how to express ourselves.
As well, Tara Henley, a veteran 20 year broadcaster CBC producer, just resigned stating that she can no longer work at the CBC since “to work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.” Henley’s article on Substack has gone viral. She is no lightweight and, at this point, we should perhaps start to think about whether or not we want to support an organization that attempts to dictate our speech to us and makes a dedicated veteran journalist quit a coveted job because of biased ideology she can no longer bear.
Perry Foster
Duncan