Vancouver's well-funded and reactionary Fraser Institute, a tax-exempt think tank which supports "competitive markets, lower taxes, and less regulation," released a 22-page study today which -- no surprise considering the source -- concludes that CBC ís anti-American.
This anti-American bias at the CBC is the consequence of a “garrison mentality” that has systematically informed the broadcaster’s coverage of the US. Garrison mentality was a term coined by Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye. He used it to describe a uniquely Canadian tendency reflected in our early literature, a tendency, as he put it, to “huddle together, stiffening our meager cultural defenses and projecting all our hostilities outward.”
“The anti-Americanism of the CBC, we argue, is a faithful reflection of the garrison mentality evoked by Frye,” said Professor Barry Cooper, co-author of the paper and managing director of the Institute’s Alberta Policy Research Centre. “This mythical and symbolic anti-Americanism typifies a broad view of the world disproportionately maintained and believed in by Canadians living in the Loyalist heartland of southern Ontario.”
Ah. Blame those Loyalists, those rejecters of Voltaire and Ben Franklin and Tom Paine. I know I do every time I am forced to suffer non-stop live coverage of some Royal visit.
Anyway, the stunning ''garrison mentality'' conclusion drawn by the Fraser Institute study is based on
one year’s coverage of the Corporation’s flagship news program, The National, for 2002 was examined. The authors chose 2002 because it followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, but was prior to the US invasion of Iraq.
The National's sins:
In total there were 2,383 statements inside the 225 stories that referred to America or the United States on CBC in 2002. As with most news coverage, the largest number of statements was neutral; they constituted 49.1 percent of the attention. Thirty-four percent of the attention to America or the United States was negative, over double the 15.4 percent positive descriptors. Only 1.6 percent of the statements were considered ambiguous.
So many problems with this study. Where to begin?
1. The National is just one program on two of CBC's four over-the-air networks. But the study extends its ''anti-American" charge to the entire corporation.
That's just junk science, the label Fraser Institute types affix to claims of global warming.
2. The period is hardly representative. It was a highly-charged political time in Canada, when there was much debate over joining the U.S. war effort.
More bad science.
BTW: The Fraser Institute might not like to remember this, but most Canadians opposed that war. Now most Americans disapprove of how the war is being waged.
3. It did not help that four of our troops were killed and eight injured when an American F-16 dropped a bomb on them in 2002.
But the Fraser study only mentions that incident once, and in passing, and says that it was given a "negative spin."
And the positive spin would be ... um ... er ... ?
4. That year was also when Françoise Ducros, chief flack to then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, was overheard calling U.S. President George W. Bush a "moron." The Fraser Institute skips over that to get to what it considers more evidence of anti-Americanism:
As David Halton reported at the time, conservative American commentator Pat Buchanan said,
the moron remark is just another flagrant example of Canadian anti-Americanism . . . Even before the moron controversy, beating up on Jean Chrétien’s government was becoming more frequent in conservative media in the US. One magazine this week talks about Canadian wimps spending too much on social programs and not enough on the military. The article castigates Canada’s absurd socialist politics and its neurotic anti-Americanism. (The National 2002: November 22)
That one sector in the American media seemed to reciprocate Canadian anti-Americanism then became a source of Canadian news. The image of "Canadian wimps" squandering money on social programs instead of defending themselves was clearly designed to provoke Canadians to adopt a hostile attitude towards the United States. The fact that Canadians—not all of them conservative—had made similar comments only made matters worse because now the Americans had noticed.
One sector? Hmm .. the exact same sector that is usually in accord with the politics of the Fraser Institute. The exact same sector that those fellows at the Institute would cite to reinforce their views that Canada sucks in the eyes of Americans.
And on and on it goes.
The report's co-authors conclude in their executive summary:
CBC has certainly claimed an important agenda-setting role for itself.
Yabbut, so does the Fraser Institute. And they both do it on my dime:
Charitable receipts given in accordance with Revenue Canada guidelines.
But where oh where is the charity?
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