Sunday, August 28, 2005
CBC XXXII: The CBC "cult" and the public sphere
Conservative columnist Andrew Coyne is at his worst with his column in the National Post reprinted in CBC Watch.
Coyne, who has his own blog, is one of the few conservative bloggers who has anything intelligent to say ( The best, in my view, is ex-pat Brit, openly gay, conservative, Republican skeptical Andrew Sullivan. Most are anonymous and most just repeat arguments that are the web equivalent of the screaming matches now too common on US news shows.)
Coyne makes the usual, and some would say, valid argument (mirroring one in the United States over PBS) that the private sector can provide alternatives. He also reports on the problems with the mandate and what government hasn't done with the CBC.
Coyne, of course, is not very consistent with his criticism of public broadcasting, a quick search on his blog reveals:
While I'm praising the CBC
Coyne does not tell his readers at the National Post how often he, himself, feeds at the CBC trough. He appears on the current affairs portion of the National on the At Issue panel, and occasionally on Newsworld. He also came to the Toronto Broadcast Centre a few months ago and took part in an internal seminar on blogging and how it would affect the future of news. In fact, I venture to suggest, that with the lockout (and it is a lockout, not a disguised strike as Andrew Coyne maintains) continuing and the future of the CBC in doubt, a small but significant portion of Coyne's package of freelance income is disappearing.
Then he turns around and talks about "the extraordinary reservoirs of self-delusion that sustain the public broadcasting cult," probably referring not only the CBC, but PBS, NPR, the BBC and every other civilized country on this planet.
Of course, Coyne works in a major urban centre with all its advantages. The argument pales when it comes to people who live outside big cities. The private sector is abandoning the rest of the country because there is no profit in small stations with local news and rookie DJs, it's the Broadcast News headline service and syndicated talk shows, music chosen by a consultant in LA.
(This isn't only happening in Canada, there were news stories from California at the time of a recent tsunami warning that with so few private radio stations that broadcast news that the cops and fire departments had go out and blast the warning on loud hailers. I now have the image of some poor soul listening to Rush Limbaugh or a syndicated playlist as a huge wave crashes into a house).
The original idea for this blog was to only write about my book The Sonkrai Tribunal, the writing process and related issues. (Note get back to the edits Robin) My late father was a prisoner of war on the River Kwai Railway of Death. On the Burma Thailand railway, human lives depended every day on cooperation, so the conservative obsession with individuality (which failed or made things worse in these circumstances) has always been a mystery to me. It's how I was brought up, with tales of that cooperation, of building slave communities in the jungle.
I have always said that I despise conservatives who have never had anything more than a toothache and then tell people who have suffered to "get over it"
It appears, the toothache analogy was apt. In last week's New Yorker, (the Aug 29 issue, tattooed guy on the cover) Malcolm Gladwell examines the decaying state of the US health care system and begins asking why the poor have such bad teeth. The brief answer is that they spend their spare money on health care, so they can't afford to go to the dentist (which of course makes their health worse).
The big picture comes from a theory from economics called "moral hazard," which I had never heard of until I read the article. It seems to be strange combination of American individualism and that fact that most economists believe that world is a spreadsheet, not a planet.
Gladwell calls "moral hazard" an American obsession. A dangerous obsession, because it is behind not only the attack on public broadcasting here and in the US, it is behind the growing attack here on public health care in Canada.
Gladwell gives the example of an uninsured American with a broken hand who couldn't even afford a cast, so the doctor wrapped the hand in an Ace bandage.
What the theory (which originally came from studies of insurance) comes down to, it seems, that anything that supports an individual as part of a community, in the public sphere, is economically wasteful and, in conservative terms, immoral.
According to this idea, as Gladwell points out:
Yeah, and when I was an underpaid casual at CTV back in 1993, with no extra money for that sort of thing, and I had cancer, (and I did) what would I have done if we had a health care system like the United States? Most likely I wouldn't be writing this blog, my ashes would mixed with the sand on a BC beach. (And it is the way I was treated as a casual, mostly at CTV, with no health benefits beyond OHIP, that I strongly oppose the casualization of CBC).
If anything is a cult, a dangerous cult, it is this idea that public sphere is wasteful. It goes beyond whether or not you like the programming on CBC, it is simply this cult's conventional wisdom that to provide a public service to Canadians, whether it is CBC radio in the North or making sure a casual with cancer gets health care, is a waste of the taxpayers' money. What's next, roads and sewers? Am I, as an individual, going to become responsible for whatever meterage of water, sewer and road is outside my house?
One last note. The British and Australian POWs I describe in The Sonkrai Tribunal set up a society of survival, where cooperation and a buddy system kept men alive.
As part of this research, I found out about another POW camp (where some of the same unfortunate men ended up later in the war) with largely American prisoners. In this camp (unlike some POW camps with many Americans) the rugged individualism, every man for himself, anything for a buck, attitude prevailed. Because of that men died who may have lived.
The result was a society always on the brink.
The outcome was a secret postwar court martial. I obtained four thousand pages of documents on that trial under the Freedom of Information Act. I hope to write about that someday, but for now, the current book is taking up my time and again, so far, publishers have shown no interest in a "bad news" book about US servicemen.
The real moral hazard comes from the destruction of the public sphere in society.
Update: A comment on CBCwatch also points out that Coyne gets paid for his appearances on CBC TV.
Another comment recognizes that the satellite services are growing and inevitable and then says:
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout, Andrew Coyne, Andrew Sullivan, POW, health care, Malcolm Gladwell
10:02 AM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
Links to this post
Conservative columnist Andrew Coyne is at his worst with his column in the National Post reprinted in CBC Watch.
Coyne, who has his own blog, is one of the few conservative bloggers who has anything intelligent to say ( The best, in my view, is ex-pat Brit, openly gay, conservative, Republican skeptical Andrew Sullivan. Most are anonymous and most just repeat arguments that are the web equivalent of the screaming matches now too common on US news shows.)
Coyne makes the usual, and some would say, valid argument (mirroring one in the United States over PBS) that the private sector can provide alternatives. He also reports on the problems with the mandate and what government hasn't done with the CBC.
Coyne, of course, is not very consistent with his criticism of public broadcasting, a quick search on his blog reveals:
While I'm praising the CBC
Coyne does not tell his readers at the National Post how often he, himself, feeds at the CBC trough. He appears on the current affairs portion of the National on the At Issue panel, and occasionally on Newsworld. He also came to the Toronto Broadcast Centre a few months ago and took part in an internal seminar on blogging and how it would affect the future of news. In fact, I venture to suggest, that with the lockout (and it is a lockout, not a disguised strike as Andrew Coyne maintains) continuing and the future of the CBC in doubt, a small but significant portion of Coyne's package of freelance income is disappearing.
Then he turns around and talks about "the extraordinary reservoirs of self-delusion that sustain the public broadcasting cult," probably referring not only the CBC, but PBS, NPR, the BBC and every other civilized country on this planet.
Of course, Coyne works in a major urban centre with all its advantages. The argument pales when it comes to people who live outside big cities. The private sector is abandoning the rest of the country because there is no profit in small stations with local news and rookie DJs, it's the Broadcast News headline service and syndicated talk shows, music chosen by a consultant in LA.
(This isn't only happening in Canada, there were news stories from California at the time of a recent tsunami warning that with so few private radio stations that broadcast news that the cops and fire departments had go out and blast the warning on loud hailers. I now have the image of some poor soul listening to Rush Limbaugh or a syndicated playlist as a huge wave crashes into a house).
The original idea for this blog was to only write about my book The Sonkrai Tribunal, the writing process and related issues. (Note get back to the edits Robin) My late father was a prisoner of war on the River Kwai Railway of Death. On the Burma Thailand railway, human lives depended every day on cooperation, so the conservative obsession with individuality (which failed or made things worse in these circumstances) has always been a mystery to me. It's how I was brought up, with tales of that cooperation, of building slave communities in the jungle.
I have always said that I despise conservatives who have never had anything more than a toothache and then tell people who have suffered to "get over it"
It appears, the toothache analogy was apt. In last week's New Yorker, (the Aug 29 issue, tattooed guy on the cover) Malcolm Gladwell examines the decaying state of the US health care system and begins asking why the poor have such bad teeth. The brief answer is that they spend their spare money on health care, so they can't afford to go to the dentist (which of course makes their health worse).
The big picture comes from a theory from economics called "moral hazard," which I had never heard of until I read the article. It seems to be strange combination of American individualism and that fact that most economists believe that world is a spreadsheet, not a planet.
Gladwell calls "moral hazard" an American obsession. A dangerous obsession, because it is behind not only the attack on public broadcasting here and in the US, it is behind the growing attack here on public health care in Canada.
Gladwell gives the example of an uninsured American with a broken hand who couldn't even afford a cast, so the doctor wrapped the hand in an Ace bandage.
What the theory (which originally came from studies of insurance) comes down to, it seems, that anything that supports an individual as part of a community, in the public sphere, is economically wasteful and, in conservative terms, immoral.
According to this idea, as Gladwell points out:
...those with health insurance are overinsured and their behaviour distorted by moral hazard. Those without health insurance use their own money to make decisions about insurance based on an assessment their needs. The insured are wasteful. The uninsured are prudent.
Yeah, and when I was an underpaid casual at CTV back in 1993, with no extra money for that sort of thing, and I had cancer, (and I did) what would I have done if we had a health care system like the United States? Most likely I wouldn't be writing this blog, my ashes would mixed with the sand on a BC beach. (And it is the way I was treated as a casual, mostly at CTV, with no health benefits beyond OHIP, that I strongly oppose the casualization of CBC).
If anything is a cult, a dangerous cult, it is this idea that public sphere is wasteful. It goes beyond whether or not you like the programming on CBC, it is simply this cult's conventional wisdom that to provide a public service to Canadians, whether it is CBC radio in the North or making sure a casual with cancer gets health care, is a waste of the taxpayers' money. What's next, roads and sewers? Am I, as an individual, going to become responsible for whatever meterage of water, sewer and road is outside my house?
One last note. The British and Australian POWs I describe in The Sonkrai Tribunal set up a society of survival, where cooperation and a buddy system kept men alive.
As part of this research, I found out about another POW camp (where some of the same unfortunate men ended up later in the war) with largely American prisoners. In this camp (unlike some POW camps with many Americans) the rugged individualism, every man for himself, anything for a buck, attitude prevailed. Because of that men died who may have lived.
The result was a society always on the brink.
The outcome was a secret postwar court martial. I obtained four thousand pages of documents on that trial under the Freedom of Information Act. I hope to write about that someday, but for now, the current book is taking up my time and again, so far, publishers have shown no interest in a "bad news" book about US servicemen.
The real moral hazard comes from the destruction of the public sphere in society.
Update: A comment on CBCwatch also points out that Coyne gets paid for his appearances on CBC TV.
Another comment recognizes that the satellite services are growing and inevitable and then says:
Out of 175 new [satellite radio] channels only 6 will carry Canadian content. It is only a matter of time before this pattern will transfer onto the TV screen as well.
How then can any new emerging Canadian actors, writers, directors, singers or other performing artists hope to survive, let alone break through?
In truth, this will accelerate a process already begun. Artists will have to write, sing or perform material so neutral that no one could tell if they came from Newfoundland or California.
The only question remaining is, does anyone care?
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout, Andrew Coyne, Andrew Sullivan, POW, health care, Malcolm Gladwell
10:02 AM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
