For instance, there is no factual basis for a broad scale conclusion about the sexual adequacy of Republican men.

LOL. I thought Kate was doing some creative writing there, but no, it's actually in the PDF linked ( http://www.cbc.ca/ombudsman/page/MALLICK-PALIN.pdf ). Amazing.

Yes, I think he just called her a pig.

So when does Ms Malice meet with the March Hare and the Mad Hatter?

Alice:

"If it had grown up, it would have made a dreadfully ugly child; but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think."

this: "but we must ensure that people of differing views are given a fair opportunity" is correct *only* because the CBC is publicly funded.

Private broadcasters ought not to have any such obligation.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.

'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax --
Of cabbages -- and kings --
And why the sea is boiling hot --
And whether PIGS HAVE WINGS.'

Cheers

"but we must ensure that people of differing views are given a fair opportunity"

Well they sure seem to fall down in that area.

All Liberal - All.The.Time!!!

So, "unfortunately," though it "appears to be true" that on the CBC, there "does not appear to be a wide range of 'pointy' views" of "an opposite ideological viewpoint" I'm wondering when the CBC is going to offer a writer from the "opposite ideological viewpoint" a forum from which to write a response to Mallick's "pointy" POV.

CBC's admitted a problem. So, what are they going to do about it? Anything? Or just pat us on the back as they shake their heads and say "Tsk, Tsk, we bad"?

What puzzles and disturbs me about Mr. Carlin's review is his mentioning negative comments made on Fox News and various blogs about Heather Mallick after her savaging of Sarah Palin. I can think of no other reason for this inclusion except the Ombudsman's trying to play the poor-Heather card, which had no place WHATSOEVER in his review of Canadians' complaints about the CBC's publishing of Mallick's "opinion" piece.

His trying to muster some sympathy for "poor Heather," is absolutely NOT what this review was supposed to be about. It would appear that he stepped outside the bounds of his mandate to try to garner the public's sympathy for Heather Mallick.

Heather Mallick's ended up in a pig sty of her own making and richly deserves any comparisons to the usual occupants of said domicile. Lipstick or no lipstick.

As one of the original complainants I must ask:

That's it?

Whose heads will roll at CBC for not following their mandates?
Where is the timetable for the changes he requests?
What is the Ombudsman going to DO about the egregious bias at CBC?
His last statement seems to ask for more money for the CBC.
The Ombudsman sends a letter of rebuke, and that’s it?
Has CBC even reported this scolding?

"Private broadcasters ought not to have any such obligation."

Well, yes, and no... Private broadcasters that use public airwaves should. If they wish to develop private distribution means for their personal ideologies than by all means do so.

Public "airwaves" would include, in Canada, taxpayer subsidized or regulated satellite and cable distribution systems. While neutrality is indeed subjective, I would favour tighter restrictions (or guidelines) on presentation - news readers vs op-eds etc.

At the moment there is no distinction and the editorial scale has swung way to the op-ed approach to "news reading", leaving it to the listener to have to figure out context and truth. There is no particular objectivity in this process. Yes, news reading can be boring, but when I want op-ed I'll go to Yuk Yuk's. The current talking heads and scribes have demonstrated that my education was better than their education, so just give me verifiable facts.

One can't help but wonder what the characterization of this article would have been if the target had been Obama, and the source had been slightly right of center.

How would it play I wonder...

"Senator Obama's supporters are poor and uneducated"

"His male supporters are rampantly promiscuous"

"Senator Obama's children dress like street thugs."

Hmmmm, I wonder if an internal probe would be enough, or would Warman of the HRC be on the case in a taxpayer sponsored second???

The measure of Vince Carlin's sincerity is how soon it happens again.

"CBC journalists are required to exercise appropriate oversight over material that appears on CBC outlets. Ms. Mallick is entitled to her opinions, and those opinions should not be censored..."

Two problems with this statement. The fact that Ms Mallick's trash piece made it to distribution means that editorial oversight failed, or that the editorial oversight is itself unaware, or incapable, of meeting CBC's "journalistic standards" (emphasis intentional). At one level, this is a more serious matter than her gutter mouth. The integrity of the editorial personage and process has lowered itself to a point below that of Ms Mallick. No mean feat.

Secondly, while Ms Mallick is entitled to her opinions, she is not necessarily entitled to have them distributed at taxpayer's expense in a manner contrary to the public interest and to the stated policies of the CBC. She can do what the rest of us must - purchase time and/or space and present our opinions on our own dime. This is equally true to many of the CBC reporter's who don't understand the concept of "fair and balanced" reporting.

The CBC has no choice but to do otherwise. It is not a private broadcaster. If the Mallicks, the McDonalds, that moron on the entertainment beat, and many others want to soapbox, they can suck up to someone else for their pulpit.

Still need an awful lot of lipstick to cover up Mallick's big gob.

Fire.Them.All.

The CBC is a 'culture' in itself, a sect, a kin-based place of employment only for like-minded people. That includes Carlin, the Ombudsman. They work for and with themselves and the Outside World has no role in this Sect.

His 'rebuke' was almost a whisper, a tight-lipped dribble of hesitant acknowledgment that Mallick was 'not up to par'. That's all.

His attempt to state that she had no facts to substantiate her opinions fails to note that her opinions were presented, not as rational conclusions of facts but as emotional insults. Since when does an insult, meant as an insult, have a factual nature? He ignores that her whole article was a litany of personal insults and therefore, could hardly be even defined as 'opinion'.

The number of complaints didn't create his 'rebuke'; it was the public anger against Mallick on the blogs, in the MSM, in the American press. The CBC therefore had no choice but to respond.

It did so, in the weakest possible manner. Claiming that her opinions had 'no basis in fact' utterly ignores that what she wrote wasn't 'opinion'; it was a relentless rant of vicious personal insults. Now, if the CBC wants to claim that such verbiage are opinions...that's another story.

The CBC SUCKS
I would rather see Vince and Heather the pig, earning someone else's money.
Burn it down.

Smile everyone. we are paying a big swack of cash every year for these incestuous malcontents of the spectrum to have a national forum to try to brainwash us and bring our collective IQ to their low level. It is not working Mr Carlin, we see through you. Fewer and fewer people watch you attic dwellers and if you ever got out of Toronto, where you people think little mosque and Mike Bullard are funny, you would see that people in the heartland don't like you. Your CBC like a toilet full of turds needs to be flushed!

I don't want to see these horrible perveyors of leftist agitprop reined in or stifled in any way. I want them to go even further so that when the great day comes, all their disgraced sorry asses can be booted out, the lights shut off, and the doors of a vacant building locked behind them.

As Greta van Sustern said, sorta: That pig can dish it out, but she sure can't take it.

I had the misfortune to see The National the other day when all eyes were on Wall Street for the big bail out.

CBC used the occasion of this calamity to run a 100% uninformative screed of anti-capitalist boiler plate, and some canned footage of Brits whinging about rich young stock brokers behaving badly in London.

As a taxpayer who funds this "news" service, I would be MUCH happier if The National actually explained what was happening, lent some insight into -why- it happened, and perhaps laid out the proposals of what various groups were planning on doing about it. Maybe even, God forbid, some trustworthy expert opinions on the likely outcomes of those plans.

If I want Liberal Party propaganda I can go to their web site, can't I?

As to the Heather Malik thing, while it is nice to see a CBC official admit their standards policy is strictly stage dressing for the rubes, its just a momentary pleasure. Being as how I'm paying for all this I'd like to see some HEADS ROLLING IN THE STREETS outside the CBC head office where all the department heads responsible for this can be found.

Either follow the policy, or just tell the truth about what you're actually using my money to do.
It isn't like we can't see you're lying, after all.

Interestingly, had Ms. Mallick’s column been written in the spirit of her note to me, it would still have been pointed and provocative but, with a broader context, would probably not have failed to meet editorial standards.

Well, that's a lame and totally gratuitious statement. What's it matter when the Mallick's finished product made it to print with the editor's approval.

Reading between the lines I don't think it was the 300 angry letters, a handful of cranks in their minds, that jolted them into the defensive. It was exposure on FOX news. It had to hurt when Greta van Sustern, a very reasoned person ordinarily, called Mallick a pig in return.

By the time these slow on the learning curve MSM morons figure out how stupid and vilified their product is their industry will be dead. It can't happen fast enough.

So what does this mean? Did the CBC pull her article and withdraw any payment they made to Mallick until she re-writes it?

That about says it all set you free, with some small corrections. That pigs can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.

by batb; His trying to muster some sympathy for "poor Heather," is absolutely NOT what this review was supposed to be about. It would appear that he stepped outside the bounds of his mandate to try to garner the public's sympathy for Heather Mallick.

That about the way it sets now with "CBC", they are trying but I think that it is going to hit a brick wall.

Kate you forgot to add "Unhinged" to the title.

I doubt there would have been any response if the current election was tilting Liberal. Rather, the Conservatives are flirting with a majority.

Must be a lot of CBC employees checking the want ads. Come little darlings, come into the real world. You know, the one without a net.

irwin:

There's still jobs at Al Jazeera.

I've sent in 3 separate comments to CBC.ca on the Ombudsman's rebuke of the CBC.
I've simply asked their readers if they were aware of the dressing down.
All three comments were censored out.
Yet any and all Leftist rants, personal slurs etc. are there.

They've been sick for so long, I fear there's no hope for them.

Well...that was a measured, politically correct response on the part of Carlin.

I feel so much better now that he came to those 'conclusions.'

Just wondering ...who signs his paycheck?

MICHAEL COREN put it into perspective nicely.

http://www.ottawasun.com/Comment/2008/09/27/6898701-sun.html

"CONCLUSION:
Portions of Ms. Mallick’s column do not meet the standards set out in policy for a point-of-view piece since some of her “facts” are unsupportable."

Translation: Mallick's piece was a vulgar leftist polemic.

.

Vince baby gave us lip service. Does anyone at the CBC disagree with Mallick? Does anyone at the CBC care what any of we filthy conservatives think?

Absolutely not.

Vote Harper .... if he gets a majority pressure his government to get rid of that rat's nest.

For instance, there is no factual basis for a broad scale conclusion about the sexual adequacy of Republican men

Palin is a disaster, but I don't really care about what Mallick does or doesn't think about her.

But on the note about Republican sexual inadequacy, she is bang on. Heterosexually, conservatives suck at sex. They are boring. They never seek any excitement or change, and that makes them stuck in boring patterns. They are (generally, of course) too afraid of offending sensibilities to bring any REAL fun into their sex lives.

Of course, this doesn't apply to conservatives when it comes to gay escapades with congressional pages, or airport bathrooms, or meth-dealing male prostitutes. In those cases, they excel. I suspect they do SWIMMINGLY at hidden homosexual romps.

Who was that sfh that just slid thru the neighborhood?

It really is time to examine whether or not continuing to fund a public broadcaster serves any worthwhile purpose.

It might be just me but..... During the last federal election, I seemed to notice the CBC changed a little in the last two weeks.

There is no question following their little snide remarks and dead pan (just good reporting) observations, of anti-Conservative bias. Yet I though they tried to be objective in the last two weeks. This could be as a result of the polls showing a minority Conservative government.

I thought they might be treading lightly. Whatever the reason, although I do not have figures, this monolith contined on. Only the "arts community" seemed to have felt Conservative steel. No money for the rock band with expletive thus: F*** etc. No money for Avi Lewis and sardonic Gwynn Dyer.

It could be that the CBC is once again covering it's ample posterior on the home front.

What better an outlet for their ingrained hate, than to tee off on some of our American friends? The venom of some of these people, gives them the same DNA as certain American malcontents.

Maybe a double dose of defeat come the two countries vital election, will send them to the beer parlour/cocktail bar to drown their sorrows.

Solution: Elect Harper, let's get to work, sell the CBC. I won't mind the trash as long as it's all from private funding. No more public money for haters and pigs. If liberals believed in their own platitudes that should certainly be an easy sell.

So,does this mean that the cbc will print an apology to Mrs. Palin and her family? I doubt that the self-righteous leftist sow will. It will be back to business as usual.Their balanced programming will stay the course,watch for two weeks of nightly programming that will be anti-bush,anti-republican,michael moore tripe leading up to the U.S. election.They did it 4 years ago,and will likely do it again.

Uncle Vinnie writes "she does not have the obligation of impartiality that a CBC journalist would have". Holy Hanna,has he ever watched the cbc? Mallick fits in perfectly with the band.

Ron Good / Skip.
Must agree with Ron, a balanced view should be a requirement of a public broadcaster, but NOT for a private one. Remember, this is what the Dems tried to do with the disastrous "fairness doctrine. Skip, your "public airwaves" makes as much sense as describing WallMart aisles as public because the public walks though them.

ET: Exactly my take on his letter. Memo to file bumpf.

Again, if we must have a public broadcaster -- and I don't think we need one today -- at the very least the mandate needs to be rejigged to completely exclude news and current affairs amd political op-eds. And no, it can't be controlled through some kind of oversight commission or balancing mechanism. That's impossible.

Me No Dhimmi has a very good point; what mechanism could be put in place to ensure an absolutely unbiased format? The only thing that comes to mind would be to give each of the main political parties a couple of hours each week in which to present their povs (and diss each other ;) )
Any other in-house solution poses the problem of finding truly unbiased presenters.

Ron Good @ 7:44, exactly!!!!

Are far as Carlin is concerned. Yawn. So you finally admit that the CBC is stacked in favour of the left. What does CBC intend to do about it? Even with Avi Lewis now with a more appropriate position, there are still at least half a dozen or maybe more hard left personalities whose daily/weekly broadcasts constitute the core flagship programs of the CBC.

Either fire them all or, better yet, put your company up for sale. If you give each and every Canadian a share in the corporation and let us buy and sell at will, I, for one would at last be able to cash in my shares. And I don't even care if they are worthless. At least I won't be paying for Liberal Party propaganda any more.

Thanks DaninVan (Me From Vancouver, too). I'd just add that the free market will sort out and give play to all points of view. However, government licensing -- CRTC -- taints this somewhat with a kind of perceived cudgel: behave or maybe you won't get your renewal.

And of course the CBC is not the free market as we are coerced into funding it thru our tax "contributions". In an ideal world the CBC would be funded by volunatary subscription fees with, if need be, some kind of public matching funds. Then the CBC might behave in fear of being punished in the market. In short: the only reliable balancing mechanism is a properly functioning free market.

"Skip, your "public airwaves" makes as much sense as describing WallMart aisles as public because the public walks though them."

No, actually it doesn't. The "public airwaves" are both extremely pervasive, and by their nature, and the scale needed to use them, they're monopolized by oligarchies. That's why the FCC and the CRTC exist (that and the value of cash). There isn't enough resource there for the free market to operate. You only need to look south to see how well that works.

It ain't about politics kids, it's about money.

The CBFC has a serious problem and it is getting worse every month. Nobody turns to them anymore. CBC television has viewership in the single digits. Yet they are gobbling tax dollars at an unprecedented rate.

One of the best ways to increase viewership is to pi$$ people off. The more, the better. The resulting hype means more consumers. How many of you would have seen Heather's crap had it not been cross posted or linked to from another site?

There is a reckoning coming with the CBFC, rest assured. When the dust settles, some otherwise unemployable liberal flimps are going to be looking for work.

skip, with respect:

Using your logic it would follow (among any number of similar things) that all retailers, for example, should be obligated to stock and sell their competitors' products. I mean, after all, without "public roads" their customers couldn't even get there to buy stuff--and, in Canada, without "public medical care" some customers wouldn't even be alive to shop there in the first place.

The Property Status of Airwaves

Skip, whatever gave you the idea that when you look south, you're seeing "the free market operate" when it comes to airwaves/broadcast spectrum allocation?

The only time the CBC is unbiased is when its running a test pattern.

My solution, put the corp up for sale, let Bell Canada buy it. That way, the audience gets to pay for it.

IanV

Ron, I'm not sure I follow vthe point of your post at 6:59.

My comment about how well the free market works in the US wrt to the airwaves was cynical, not supportive - there never has been, never will be, a free market in regard to the airwaves. They have too much strategic importance. To a degree, the market is allowed to participate in the use of defined (and tightly controlled) segments, but the limited resource made available has such a high commodity value that only a few can afford to play, hence the preponderance of an oligopolist market. Presently the content of those segments is held primarily by the leftosphere, with the results we all have to live with. That is why regulation for balance is required; otherwise its just propaganda.

There is no analogy to general commercial retail here. The roads thingy is closer, but still not quite the same thing, the salient difference being the importance of time compression inherent in the "airwaves".

IanV, you realize that if the friggin' Bell sale actually goes thru, then that puts the CBC in the hands of the teacher's pension fund... the horror clear enough?

Ok, so when does Kate start getting paid to write as a freelancer for the CBC?

Talking of the CBC. I suppose one could either ignore it and turn it off or- as Mr Duffy says in his little blurb "somebodies got to keep 'em honest". He is talking about Parliament Hill.

This morning with a Tim Hortons to go, I drove up the road home and heard CBC Radio One. A Michael Enright had one Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason (Knopf). Two professorial types joined her.

Her sneers were- of course at McCain and Rightist intellectuals. Using the word "folks" as a new appendage. Saying there was a "lionization of the average person". She threw in the late George Wallace and his "pointy headed intellectuals" phrase. She accused Obama's opponents with trying to play act as the ordinary man in the street. Then one of the speakers had a hit at Stephen Harper. Trying to tell Canadians that he is "one of them". A regular guy no less.

One of the speakers added that Pierre Trudeau certainly did not appear to be identified with the average Joe. Yet he was Prime Minister. Meaning the tactic is not needed - this to identify with the average Canadian. Not mentioned was how his popularity waned. Nor the con job against Joe Clark to get Trudeau back in power.

By all means says I, to my car radio, go ahead and enjoy your morning. One of the speakers spoke about Tim Hortons patrons and someone looking down on latte drinkers.

I enjoyed my Hortons and free timbit for my dog even more.