Bruce Dowbiggin
Saving CBC: Do The Liberals Believe They’re Saving Themselves?
News Item: A senior government official told CBC News the government is in the final stages of drafting “major legislative and regulatory changes” to better position CBC for the future as it grapples with seismic developments in the news and broadcasting space.
Having shovelled billions into the maw of CBC for almost a decade to keep its creaky mandate going amid “seismic developments” it seems an odd decision for the Liberals to now re-define that same mandate. With less than a year left till an election (it could be a lot less) in a bureaucracy where time is measured in decades (unless it’s climate) the idea of getting anything this profound done before Pierre Poilievre gets his hands on the Corp is risible.
Poilievre has made clear his intentions to stop the billion-dollar gravy train to CBC. Clearly the rethink is a political feint to assuage its aging progressive base that remembers the good old days of Peter Gzowski and Don Harron. Sure, the model is broken, but if we call Poilievre a mini-Trump and demagogue Elon Musk often enough (and have our paid scribblers repeat the charge) can we turn this scow around in time to save our hides? Desperate times call for disparate measures.
So what is going on here? Has Team Trudeau just realized that the gig is up for the CBC’s traditional media structure? Do the threats about jailing purveyors of alternate narratives indicate they’re doubling down for their pals in big Telcos? In dumping CEO Catherine Tait have they gotten the message that global communications giants don’t give a flip about the Liberals’ protectionist plans?
Example: Netflix is pulling its financial support of programs in the Canadian film and TV sector due to the new Online Streaming Act, Trudeau’s hapless attempt to make foreigners prop up Canada’s failing print and TV production. Out of sight, out of mind. Spotify also announced it was increasing prices in Canada— because of you-know-what.
While French-language Radio Canada might still have a cultural argument in Quebec to make for its continued existence, no such imperative faces English CBC services anymore. The private production side and the digital world are perfectly capable of finding the next Schitt’s Creek or Pottery Challenge without air cover from the feds. So the Libs survival strategy now is attack, attack, attack.
Perhaps if enough captive media slappies demonize Poilievre (“The Conservative leader’s rhetoric seems tailored for a media climate that rewards maximum drama” whines CBC) protectionist intimidation could halt the growth of internet opposition.. Likely not. As blogger Mike Benz notes, “The best way to start the story of Internet censorship is with the story of Internet freedom.”
Will pumping CBC’s tires/ banning internet critics actually stem the tide? CBC’s national news division is compromised beyond recognition. In concert with the huge private telecommunications firms they’ve also hollowed out local/ regional economies, leaving skeleton operations beholden to head offices in Toronto and Ottawa. And now that independent podcasts and sites emerging since the 1991 privatization of the the internet are filling these gaps Trudeau thinks it’s time to re-think CBC so it can finish off his antagonizers?
While the precise strategy of Trudeau’s hubris remains opaque, in the United States the issue between old media and new media is now existential. With Elon Musk coming out in favour of Donald Trump and a new coalition with RFK Jr. Hillary Clinton has raised the banner of jailing those whom she believes purvey “disinformation and misinformation” (translation: things she disagrees with) .
In the past the Grift Queen needed only to make some phone calls to insider media to get her agenda bannered across the major press. Her acolytes would go to the Sunday Morning TV panels to spin her take on affairs. The FBI would cower. Now she’s a remnant of a toppled order. She seems to be saying, why can’t they all be like Kamala Harris and follow my orders?
But new digital media defies her by aligning with Trump. One need only look at the polls indicating that the 18-35 year olds are moving toward Trump to see the demographic peril for the Clinton/ Obama insiders. No wonder the U.S. Defence department and Homeland Security are funnelling millions to prestigious American universities to “study” what can be done about “misinformation” from critics like Trump. Spolier alert: jail time.
Their old order is dying. Even reliable squishes like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are having second thoughts about Harris. This past Saturday SNL savaged Harris, Biden and Tim Walz in a skit that was unthinkable even six weeks ago. And that pillar of Democratic orthodoxy 60 Minutes broadcast a damning clip with Harris in which host Bill Whittaker asked her tough questions— which she fumbled. (CBS quickly scrambled to bury the clips.)
You’d almost think the Media Party are looking to distance themselves from a Harris train wreck. So Clinton and her shell-shocked allies want arrests and pronto. Indeed Musk confessed this week that should Kamala Harris prevail next month he will probably be in jail in six months from the new administration taking office.
One of the favourite claims of the old media looking to rough up Trump/ Poilievre is the Hitler meme. We are told that they read his book, follow his agendas and want to eliminate their racial enemies. But the more apt comparison of eras is not Germany 1933-45 but revolutionary France in the late eighteenth century.
There, dissolute snobs with a hereditary claim to being obeyed suddenly found themselves outflanked by people they hardly deigned to acknowledge let alone understand. Expecting protection from the trappings of their power they never saw the Reign of Terror till it walked up the stairs of their palaces. The guillotine ended their pleas for privilege.
It may not be that bloody in modern terms. But the last gasp of a dying elite will look a lot like Marie Antoinette clutching her pearls on the way to meet Madame Lafarge.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Look Who’s Back & Who Now Controls The Social Media Pulpit
“A Second Trump Administration Would Be a Carnival of Corruption and Greed,” New York Times headline.
Surprise! The carnival just rolled into DC. On a night after Americans told the Washington elites and Hollywood toffs to get stuffed, the denial squad was back in full force in both America and Canada on Wednesday. Instead of asking what they did wrong they re-doubled efforts to do the Obama finger point at people they see as their lessers.
But it’s falling on deaf ears. It’s now okay to answer questions again about what happened in 2020 and what will happen going forward. Our good friend Toronto Mike asked if we thought the 2020 election— laughingly billed as the “the most secure election in history”— was rigged. Our answer was that, just as in justice, it’s not good enough stage a fair election. You must be seen to stage a fair election.
The 2020 vote failed that test. Tuesday night the best argument that 2020 was a stinking potage was the mystery of the missing voters, Specifically, it appears that Kamala Harris will win about 12 million fewer votes than did Biden. They didn’t go to Trump, who’s just barely ahead of his 2020 number. Where did they go? Did they sit out the election? We thought there were millions more Americans set to vote in 2024?
Or did they, as Trump loyalist Steve Bannon suggests, never exist in the first place? It’s a telling point as the new Covid voting rules left gaps in the supervision and conduct of mail-in voting, drop boxes, vote harvesting and chain of custody. Because they were so greedy for power the DEMs engineered the @Biden win in 2020, using Covid restrictions to gin up a fanciful 81 million votes for Biden, who they knew was senile. In their exuberance to stomp out Trump using illegal ballots did they produce too high a bar for votes? Oops.
They got their comeuppance Tuesday night as Biden World collapsed onto a shellshocked Kamala Harris. Perhaps the biggest losers outside of Harris/ Biden were the legions of celebrities who took it as their appointed duty to lecture what Sunny Hostin of The View called “uneducated” voters. The sense of entitlement by everyone from Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen to Cardi B was shattered by the referendum on privilege Tuesday.
All you needed to know about their heavy foot in this election was George Clooney. The A-list actor decided after the June debate that senile Biden couldn’t win. He cut off his financial support and urged other Hollywood libs to do the same. Then he wrote an OpEd telling Joe to go. On the say-so of Clooney and Hollywood loons like Rob Reiner, Mark Ruffalo and Ed Begley the DNC threw away the legal primary votes for Biden and stuck Kamala in his place— without any vetting on her lecherous husband or radical roots.
They then rounded up the Media party and pollsters to take her from 36 percent approval to 50 approval in a week. And there we were on Tuesday. George Clooney’s election. Hope The View enjoyed it. Now they’re reduced to begging for rapprochement from the GOP after having none when the tables were turned.
The lasting takeaway from 2024 won’t just be Trump but Elon Musk and the replacement of legacy media by social media. By restoring Right voices to his X site he destroyed the social media cabal of Facebook, Google, MSM and more supporting the Blob. By going on the Joe Rogan podcast for two hours or talking to Tucker Carlson’s podcast he emphasized the new prominence of podcasts and social media as an alternative to debates on the Big Four networks or sit-downs with dismissive hosts on 60 Minutes .
Suddenly there was another channel for message sending. Musk’s conversion to Trump (after the Left spurned him) left the grandees of status quo from the Bidens and Barack exposed. Their traditional interlocutors had lost the public trust during Covid. With no alternatives but middle-of-the-night raids and dissembling NYC prosecutors they showed their true colours. .
The Trump hate was endemic— some of it justified. Allusions to Hitler, internment camps, defunding unfriendly media and more. This from the party where Barack Obama said they go high when others go low. Good night and good riddance. Had they simply waited out Trump’s second term in 2020 they’d have likely won last night with a fresh leader and an eight-year runway. Now Trump gets four more years, with J.D. Vance, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Hailey and Tulsi Gabbard ready to tack on another eight years. Kamala Harris disappears ignominiously. Bad move all around in 2020.
In Canada, a volatile Trump re-elected should act as a brake on Justin Trudeau’s wilder instincts. While Canada is not America, the populist unrest that propelled Trump is very alive in Trudeau’s nation. He sits in the 20s for approval. A Kamala win might have been a green light to more globalist pandering. Now, after Tuesday’s bloodbath Trudeau risks the CDN economy by moving further to the trash heap. For the next six to twelve months his Chinese handlers are going to be mad as Trudeau must cleave closely to them.
As we said, some are calling for unity and understanding in the wake of the 2024 election. (Most of them the ones who took the nastiest, most vicious shots at him in the courts and Congress.) There will be time for that soon. But first, for no other reason than to remember how they acted in power, recall how they took a picture of mounted border police apprehending illegal migrants in a Texas river. Biden said they were whipping the people with their reins. His lapdog media piled on. It was a lie they perpetuated for weeks.
Finally, say a prayer for the polling industry such as Disney’s 538 Project whose work was followed religiously by most media and political junkies. In the end almost all pollsters outside Rasmussen and Atlas Intel came grovelling in favour of the candidate from the uniparty. Even when the mistake was revealed several major firms refused to call close races. Meanwhile those who followed the polymarket betting sites saw a consistent preference over 60 percent in favour of Trump all night. In the end they might have been the night’s biggest winner.
Charles De Gaulle famously asked, “How can you govern a nation with 538 different cheeses?” America is about to find out that, in the new news era, governing will involve 538 different media sources producing information. With Elon Musk as the ring leader.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
Hat Trick: Nick Bosa’s Photo Bomb Re-Ignites The Colin Kaepernick Fury
For many this U.S. election can’t be over soon enough. The epidemic of the stupids still rages. (Anyone expecting resolution on Tuesday night better be in for a wait.)
Example: On last week’s Sunday Night football, San Francisco star Nick Bosa photo-bombed a postgame interview wearing a MAGA hat. (For some reason it was not the telltale red). He then quickly departed leaving his teammates and NBC reporter Melissa Stark to continue the usual bromides about team and character.
Predictably in this insane election season, Bosa’s drive-by political statement sent social media into an Elon Musk orbit. First were the demands that Bosa be fined by the NFL for political activity. Indeed the NFL can impose a $11,255 fine for “wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages… which relate to political activities or causes.” (As of this writing, the NFL has yet to impose any sanctions against Bosa.)
Then there were butt-hurt Democrats. “I hope (49ers CEO) @JedYork trades Nick Bosa to Mar-A-Lago,” wrote Robert Rivas, Democratic speaker of the 29th District of the California State Assembly. “As a lifelong @49ers fan, I can say I’ve seen enough of Bosa in California.” And so on.
More telling were the Colin Kaepernick flashbacks to when he sat in 2016 during the national anthem to highlight his conversion to #BLM orthodoxy. “I better hear all the angry white people who told Colin Kaepernick to “shut up and play ball” or go “keep politics out of the NFL” outraged by this too. Like come on keep your energy or does it only count when you’re able to be racist?
“Two 49er NFL players. Two political statements. Black Lives Matter v. MAGA. Only one is allowed by the NFL.”
“Anyone remember when Nick Bosa called Kaepernick a clown for taking a political stance? Imagine being this much of a hypocrite,” another fan added.
Well now… we could make the point that photo bombing a political preference during an election is somewhat different from a high-profile convert to radical racial reparations disrespecting the national anthem in a non-election season. Here’s how we covered it in August of 2018.
For those who don’t remember the grievance, Kaepernick (who was raised by white parents) suddenly had a fit of conscience over the alleged slaughter of unarmed blacks by police. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Which is his right, except unarmed black men in 2016, unarmed black men in 2024, are not being killed by police in the hundreds. (Most years it’s in single digits to 20 range in a population of 41 million blacks.) While tut-tutting about the gesture made on his employer’s time, the NFL declined to sanction Kaepernick. Which sparked copy-cat kneel downs and protests around sports, accompanied by the racial divisiveness typical of the Obama years.
His protest also coincided with his decline as a starting QB in the NFL (the 49ers won just two games in 2016). By 2018 Kaepernick was out of work in the NFL (after opting out of a contract from San Fran) and a full-blown BLM martyr. Nike gave him $ 3 million a year to spearhead their Woke campaigns. Netflix did a series on the ex-QB. Newly minted president Donald Trump decried the whole situation. Then Cowboys owner Jerry Jones— who’d knelt with players in Week One of the anthem controversy— threatened to bench any players who upstaged the anthem.
The NFL then passed a rule saying any players who wanted to protest the national anthem could do so in the locker room. That limp policy lasted just a few weeks. Protests during the anthem petered out as they lost their ability to shock. For the next years Kaepernick would claim he was blackballed (he reached a settlement with the NFL in 2019) and express his desire to play.
The 2020 George Floyd riots— after he died of a drug-induced heart attack while in police custody— pushed Kaepernick’s story to the side. He’s now done as a possible QB and the financial problems of BLM have made them a lesser player in the grievance cause. But it is fair to say Kaepernick made a choice to be a symbol for all multi-million dollar oppressed athletes and the radical Left has moved on without him.
So Bosa acting like a college sophomore to express a voting preference after a game compared to Kaepernick wanting a race-based social revolution in America? Mmm. These things are not like the other. It’s like accusing Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce of political interference for appearing with his girlfriend Taylor Swift, a vocal Kamala Harris supporter.
What is inarguable is the toxic Trump effect in pro sports such as football or basketball which have over seventy percent black players. It’s not just black players. Prominent white coaches such as Golden State’s Steve Kerr and San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich go off about Donald Trump. Here’s Pop during a press conference: “He’s pathetic. He’s small. He’s a whiner… He’s a damaged man.”
As we’ve said many times, the left-leaning sports media piled on Trump as well. Former ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski F-bombed Trump, TNT analyst and HoF player Charles Barkley said anyone voting for Trump was an “idiot” and award-winning host Bob Costas called him the “most disgraceful figure in modern presidential history” and his voters “a toxic cult”. So the messaging on Bosa vs. Kaepernick is supect at best.
We will update this column after we learn the results of the election (likely later this week). But for now let’s all be grateful that candidate Trump as political football is at an end. And the hysteria from Kamala Harris’ crowd can be re-directed to the border.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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