In 1897, Adolph S. Ochs, owner of the New York Times, coined the famous motto “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” The slogan, which still features on the Gray Lady’s masthead, was intended to convey the newspaper’s commitment to impartiality, but has grown to be a punchline amongst those who find the flaunted bias of the progressive press insultingly obvious.
As the late Christopher Hitchens once noted: “I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what… is it supposed to mean unless it’s as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse.”
That sums up how I feel about “Canada’s national broadcaster,” the CBC, which receives an enormous amount of taxpayer money for the task of curating the national narrative. Their activist journalism is almost entirely committed to pushing a very specific agenda. Canadians who do not share their progressive views – such as orthodox Christians – are the subject of relentless and overtly hostile scrutiny, while the LGBT movement’s agenda is defended without proviso (the CBC even ran interference for the transgender industry when the Cass Review was released).
The publicly-funded media’s power comes not only from how they cover stories, but which stories they cover. When the press covers a story, they are asserting, implicitly, that a) there is a real story here and b) this is a story that’s fit to print – that is, it is in the public interest. Thus, the CBC frequently creates stories where there are none in order to launch or support their preferred narrative. The conclusion of the story is set before the “reporting” even begins.
I’ll give a personal example. Back in 2015, the pro-life organization I work for, the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, mailed out thousands of anti-abortion postcards across the country. A representative from the CBC called me, asking how I would respond to a mail carrier who objected to the material on the postcards. I told him that there was no story here – mail carriers aren’t allowed to choose what they deliver, and furthermore, the postcards were in sealed envelopes anyway.
I got a call back a few hours later. The intrepid CBC journalist had called several mail carriers, informed them what was inside the envelopes, and asked if they had a problem delivering them. After about 24 hours, he had several pro-abortion mail carriers thoroughly disgruntled about what they were delivering. The mail service told the CBC precisely what I’d already told them: that the personal opinions of delivery personnel were not relevant to the job. The CBC called the union, got some quotes, and ran several stories, nonetheless – after creating a story, out of thin air, that fit their pre-existing narrative.
That same year, just after the Center for Medical Progress released its undercover investigation revealing that the abortion industry was dealing in baby body parts, a CBC reporter called me (obviously without checking with his editor first). I told him that baby body parts were harvested in Canada, as well, and directed him to the online evidence that this was occurring from one of Canada’s most prominent abortion rights groups. He was stunned. “Okay, I’ll call you back after I talk to my editor!” he said. “No, you won’t,” I thought. He didn’t.
In that context, consider this April 26 headline: “Town of Woodstock will no longer fly Pride banners on downtown lampposts.” The story is that the small town of Woodstock, New Brunswick – population 5,000 – has decided to limit the banners flown on city lampposts to heritage and tourism banners due to a “multitude” of different requests that were coming in. The CBC, of course, knew what the real story was – that the town was not flying the “Pride” banner anymore. In fact, the local LGBT group had not even been notified before elected officials passed their policy (imagine doing your job without checking with the local LGBTs first!)
Amanda Lightbody, founder and president of the local “Pride” organization The Rainbow Crosswalk, was not fooled by the council’s simple explanation for the policy. “There’s this movement to say, ‘We include everybody, so we’re going to not recognize anybody,’” Lightbody said. “And that’s a dog whistle for people who are a little bit bigoted.” The CBC asked the mayor for an interview, but wisely, she declined – her quotes would have been plunked into a pre-written story about the dark spectre of LGBT-phobia in Woodstock.
The council of a small town of 5,000 in New Brunswick passes a policy on which banners to fly on lampposts due to the many requests it receives each year. This is not a story. But according to the CBC, it is news that is fit to print because any lack of overt support for the LGBT movement, or any evidence that Canadian enthusiasm for “Pride” is flagging (as it were) must be called out, shamed, and subjected to “news coverage” that is, in fact, merely an attempt to push local politicians into reversing their decision. That isn’t journalism, and it is disgusting that Canadians are forced to fund this activist operation on the pretext that we desperately need a Canadian broadcaster committed to the local stories nobody else bothers to cover.
