A live online panel by a Canadian think tank agrees the CBC needs reform, and two of three panelists thought defunding was in order..The 90-minute discussion was hosted by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and led by Aaron Wudrick, director for the MLI’s domestic policy program. Panelists included Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne, former CBC journalist Tara Henley, and former Calgary Herald publisher and CRTC vice-chair Peter Menzies..Coyne, a member of the CBC’s At Issue panel, said the media landscape is completely different from when the public broadcaster was launched to meet a need commercial networks wouldn’t..“That market failure, arguably, that made the case for subsidy and regulation in the past, simply doesn't apply,” Coyne said..“I don't really have to be a purist about it. You can still have some element of subsidy somewhere in the message, if there's particularly things you don't think are being addressed. But getting CBC English TV off of the subsidy — since it's the most expensive and the worst functioning — seems to me the priority.”.Less subsidy, better content, Coyne said..“Moving the CBC on to pay benefits not just the viewers, and not just the taxpayers, but the people who work with CBC themselves, because the evidence is that moving TV onto pay produces much better quality TV,” Coyne said..“The CBC is torn … between serving either the advertisers or the government. If you move it on to a viewer-paid [model], then it's really clear what their mandate is. And that's to serve the viewing audience, the paying audience. And I think that would be the best thing that could happen to the CBC itself.”.Henley said as “a working journalist for more than two decades”, the CBC should not be defunded, but needs reform. She said there was merit in having a public broadcaster free of political and commercial pressures..“I am a strong believer in the service that a public broadcaster can perform. At its very best, a public broadcaster, I think, can play an important role in upholding democracy in informing a citizenry and encouraging discussion and debate and a pluralistic society, and facilitating social cohesion and national identity,” she said..Henley said the CBC was already funded less than public broadcasters of many countries, but recognized some people wanted it defunded altogether..“There was a spark advocacy poll recently that showed 45% of Canadians were drawn to the argument that we should shut down the CBC to save tax dollars. Perhaps most concerningly, 40% of those surveyed believe that CBC News is propaganda and young people are more likely than older people to feel this way.”.The CBC’s own reports shows its radio and TV audiences are declining and failing to reach targets as is digital engagement in the regions, Henley noted..“We can also look to a very troubling trend of in-person and online anger directed at CBC journalists, which the broadcaster considers so much a problem it's taken to hiring security to accompany its journalists on some assignments, and has launched an online harassment of journalist program initiative called ‘Not OK,’” she said..“The [CBC] ombudsman's annual report for 2021-22, this is from English services, notes this year was the most active and contentious year he's ever experienced, that complaints surged up 60% from the previous year, and that the frequency and ferocity of fury in these messages was quite jarring. So all of this begs the question of what exactly has gone wrong.”.Henley said she was proud to have worked at the CBC, which she did until 2021. She said she never witnessed direct government interference on coverage. However, she said one-quarter of the workforce works on contract and is afraid to be a contrarian, lest they get fired..“There's some merit to the criticism that CBC has a left-leaning bias. I think this dynamic, in my opinion, is both top down from leadership and bottom up from a workforce. And my concern is if you have a workforce that generally comes from the same kind of background, urban, university-educated, secular, and holds the same set of progressive political opinions, that newsrooms and other parts of the broadcaster can become echo chambers and can fail to be aware of, let alone reflect, the vast diversity of viewpoints across the country.”.Menzies, a senior policy fellow for MLI, said he wants the CBC both defunded and reformed..“We need at least one broadcaster that will cover the Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut, and Prince Edward Island elections, instead of prioritizing American nomination races, and is capable of telling the nation's stories to other parts of the nation — not so that we all agree with each other, but so that we know each other well enough not to hate each other because we do decently disagree,” Menzies said..“We need, in other words, a good public broadcaster. The problem is we don't have one.”.Like Coyne, Menzies said CBC English is the part most worthy of defunding..“Let's purify the CBC, so we’ll make it a proper public broadcaster that cannot sell any form of advertising on any domestic platform, anywhere. That'll defund it to the tune of $400 million, which means it will have to be trimmed down and refocused,” Menzies said..“All it needs is one television network, one radio network, one all-news channel and one website in each language. Plus, of course, specific northern services, because that's about the only thing right now that keeps the North feeling as if it's part of Canada.”
