A lame Senate report on the CBC’s future
Early in the twentieth century, the American journalist Walter Lippmann and the philosopher John Dewey butted heads over how a modern democracy could possibly govern itself, given that so few citizens had the time, ability, or inclination to study the complex issues of the day. For Lippmann, the only non-violent answer lay in governance by an intellectual and technical elite that would rule, in the public interest, on the basis of “manufactured consent,” a consensus built around “necessary illusions” created at election times using the tools of modern propaganda. Dewey...
Read MoreBill C-60 Endangers CBC’s Independence
© 2013 Wade Rowland As someone who teaches media studies to second year university students, I spend a deal of time each new semester explaining that there is a difference between a state broadcaster and a public service broadcaster. USSR Gosteleradio, China Central Television, and Cubavisión are examples of the former; our own CBC is an example of the latter, I tell them. I need to go through this every fall because a majority of my students have no clue what the CBC is, or what purpose it is intended to fulfill in the increasingly complex media ecology in which we are all...
Read MoreJustin Trudeau Attack Ads by the Conservatives – Should the CRTC regulate negative political ads?
Anyone watching the new Conservative party attack ad aimed at the new Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, might well wonder why we should permit such deliberately misleading claims to be made about a politician when we prohibit it in product and service advertising. Surely the democratic process deserves at least as much protection as the fortunes of Coke® and Pepsi®, Tide® and Sunlight®. Like most commercial advertising on television, attack ads are designed, researched, produced, and focus group-tested to appeal not to intelligence, but to emotion. Quotes are pulled out of context. Dramatic...
Read MoreAbout Wade Rowland
Ranked among Canada’s leading literary journalists, Wade Davies Rowland has written more than a dozen books on subjects ranging from television journalism, organized crime, and international environmental law to his current concerns, which include communications technology, the philosophy of science, and technology and human values. Full author bio.