Avoiding Accountability. The case of (and for) the CBC

On the heels of the Conservative Party’s election to majority government on May 2, 2011, then minister of heritage James Moore promised to “maintain or increase support for the CBC”.  Months later Moore (following orders from our illustrious prime minister) presided over a $115 million cut to CBC’s budget – amounting to a 10 percent decrease in funding.  As a reward for the hack job, he was moved to a different portfolio, thereby undermining his accountability to all Canadians.

Moore’s accountability is further reduced by constituency changes for the forthcoming 2015 election.  No follower of the CBC living in Port Moody, Anmore or Belcarra can now vote their conscience in light of Moore’s failed promises as representative for the original riding of Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam.

Moreover, the Harper government’s business model for the CBC is really nothing more than an ideology to justify rubbish – purposefully produced, that is.[1]  And as the suspect link between business and entertainment grows so does our liberty from thinking which in turn welcomes the dull habit of putting things out of our minds – and receiving instead without discernment or critical effort, subjecting ourselves to the dictates of supply and demand, and the state.

In Canada these days culture is mostly nothing but a commodity, exchanged for commercial value, therefore the need for advertisement on CBC (now ironically failed on Radio 2 – perhaps an indication of its unique space).  But the “Harper government” continues with its mantra of “competition and choice” which are really different words for market individualism’s mass attack on public awareness.

As the CBC goes, so goes Canada.  If the CBC becomes state broadcaster for the “Harper government”, or if it becomes another PBS, Canadians will be cheapened and cheated.  And no one will be held to account.

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[1] See Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, tr. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: University of Stanford Press, 2002), p. 95.  See Chapter 5 “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” pp. 94-136.