Friday, February 5, 2010

The CBC has become a disciple of the Religious Right


These days, watching CBC business news is like attending some mid-western bible college, in which Amanda Lang has assumed the pulpit of Pat Robertson.

Insofar as its pathetic and facile coverage of the income trusts issue is concerned, the CBC has become a disciple of the religious right.

Gone is fact finding investigative journalism, replaced by the spouting of mindless religious dogma.

Not only has the CBC subscribed totally to the creationist concept of tax leakage, which only serves to enjoin the CBC in Jim Flaherty’s $35 billion income trust fraud, but we now have bubble heads like Amanda Lang providing divine justification for that act of blatant fraud on the part of the government that is only a stone’s throw away from “blaming the victim”.

For Amanda Lang to even suggest that the government’s actions of Halloween 2006 to double tax income trusts in RRSPs, but not pension funds, after solemnly promising Canadians that the government would do no such thing, was somehow justified by some revisionist concept of “income trusts had to stop because it was a bubble and most were going to bust”, is an insult to the intelligence of every Canadian in this country and a total misrepresentation of the facts, to the extent that facts even matter to the CBC.

Not only is such a statement grossly ignorant and blind, it completely obscures and ignores the fact that the justification proffered up by the government had nothing remotely to do with what Amanda is trying to guile Canadians into believing and provide some smoke screen to obscure the fact that the government’s actual argument of the day, namely tax leakage, is a complete manufactured falsehood and therefore the entire process by which Canadians lost $35 billion of their life savings is nothing more that a textbook case of fraud, not unlike that involving Bernie Madoff to the south.

Could Amanda Lang and the CBC be further from reporting on this story accurately if they tried?

Meanwhile apart from the gross ignorance of Amanda’s statement, there is the utter callousness to be considered. For Amanda Lang to say that the actions of the government were justified by her “bubble theory” is no different than the justification offered up by Pat Robertson for the devastation that occurred in Haiti, in which he stated that Haiti was “cursed” after its “pact with the devil” and therefore the devastation that occurred is the fault of the Haitian people themselves?

For Amanda Lang to go on air with Canada’s public broadcaster the CBC, and foment nonsense like she did yesterday, can only mean that either she or her employer the CBC are the ones who have engaged in some pact with the devil concerning their blatantly wrong and totally misguided coverage of the income trust matter, from start to finish. Except we aren’t yet finished, which is the only good news on the horizon The CBC’s pathetic coverage of the income trust issue is looking less like a case of incompetent journalism and more like a case of a deliberate and premeditated cover-up.

The evidence of this is abundant and I refer you to anyone of these pieces:

CBC’s active suppression of the news: 3 strikes and you’re out CBC

CBC’s pretense of soliciting questions from Canadians for Stephen Harper

CTV skewered Dion, while CBC aided and abetted Harper in 2008 election

As pathetic and grossly obvious as Amanda’s biased journalism there is the other matter of her co-host Kevin O’Leary’s commercial conflict of interest on the matter of income trusts, in what is notionally supposed to be the point-counterpoint show of the LOL Exchange.

Does the CBC not even realize that Kevin O’Leary is in a position of commercial conflict of interest on this matter, which probably explains why he is happy to let Amanda drop bombs like income trusts were a bubble and let her get away with such nonsense, since the benefits of such patent nonsense and utter revisionism accrue to him? If not, then I think its time the CBC did, lest it find itself on the receiving end of legal action for having hosts engaged in topics for which they have not declared their conflicts of interest, as follows:

Does BNN’s Kevin O’Leary have an embedded conflict of interest?

Gross biases? Embedded conflicts of interest? This hardly makes for a show’s format that is supposed to be point-counterpoint? More like point-point, or rather pointless-pointless.

When will the CBC get its act together on the income trust fraud that is being perpetrated by this government? Its like the CBC had gone from exposing the Airbus scandal under Brian Mulroney one minute and then become an active co-conspirator with Stephen Harper in his $35 billion income trust fraud the next? Praise the Lord. Amen.

God help us.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where's the video on this sheite? Got a link?

Spent WAAY too much time looking for it... what is this, hide and mis-speak?

m

Fillibluster said...

m:

This is the closest thing I could find:

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/More_Shows/Air_Farce

Brent

Dr Mike said...

At least with Pat , what you see is what you get--- a right-wing nutbar who cannot see the world because of his twisted interpretation of the bible.

Amanda is a chameleon that changes her stripes to suit her cause.

The problem is that her world should revolve around the facts & only the facts , but instead she tries to twist these same facts to fit whatever the hell it is she is trying to say.

Her comment that income trusts were a bubble ready to burst was perhaps one of the most inane comments I have ever heard---over 3 years have passed since the massacre of 2006 & 95% of these trusts are still intact , one way or the other.

This woman is ridiculous & has no place in a position of influence.

Dr Mike

Anonymous said...

CBC should give the Income Trust case to a non- business CBC reporter,
yes ...no LOL coverage, no Amanda Lang coverage , give it to Susan Boner etc...
Amanda will fume , but who cares, let her report the Olympics or the debt in Dubaii or the business of shoes and underwear.

JC

Fillibluster said...

JC:

Air Farce could do a better job of it!

Brent

Anonymous said...

Don't forget her career brought her through the NYSE - she has no problem seeing "the bigger picture" or how low the cost of $35Bill might be, given that the victims were only the "little stupid people" who will ultimately be better off in the big picture when we assimilate. She is in it for herself - something else she learned in NYC - you can't spend integrity.

As far as the government is concerned - she is now perfectly placed - she gives them credibility for their deceit . . . at a reasonable price.

h

Anonymous said...

Kevin O'leary, Canada's Donald Trump without hair. All these shows, are entertainment not critical analysis. Even the news broadcast is now termed a show as opposed to a program. Note the change in discourse.