This article (along with reader comments) was first published in a shorter version on the Establishment-oriented Canadian Journalism Foundation’s J-Source website on July 27, 2011.

This longer version was picked up by Tony Sutton’s international aggregator, ColdType (“Writing Worth Reading From Around the World.” in September 2011.

It’s the third story down, right after John Pilger’s “Insurrection In London.”

The article has also appeared on a number of other websites.

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The date was July 7, 2011 — the day Canada pulled its troops out of Afghanistan after nine years of pointless bloody war.

One hundred and sixty-one Canadian soldiers and civilians died in the war.

By the close of this day we’d lost more troops per capita in Afghanistan than any of the other 21 coalition nations — including the United States which started and ran the war.

Canada’s Afghan war, it’s longest-ever, cost some $18-billion.

So July 7, 2011 was an historic, momentous day for our nation.

A day to remember.

A day to show respect.

A day to mourn.

A day, perhaps, to celebrate.

Yet you wouldn’t have had a clue about this day’s significance if you watched the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) flagship news program on the evening of July 7, 2011. 

The National devoted its entire first section to blanket coverage of Will and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, smiling sweetly and shaking hands at the Calgary Stampede, arguably the world’s biggest rodeo.

This, after endless, excruciating weeks of CBC News fawning over these two pretty celebrities who had never actually done anything of note except get married and come visit us on their honeymoon. (The National, in particularly parlous economic times, had already spent a hugely expensive week in London covering that wedding live.)

So — the thirteenth day of the Will and Kate tour of Canada was lead story on The National.

Then, after a long commercial break, came a murder trial in Florida, floods in China, a stadium collapse somewhere and a dust storm in Arizona.

Only after all this entirely meaningless celebrity-adoring, foreign crime and weather, did The National report on the end of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan — the sixth story in its lineup, reported not from brutal, battered Kandahar, but voiced-over from Toronto, using free pool video.

Part reason for the decision, according to a CBC journalist who shall be nameless was: “National Defence was very conflicted about how to wrap the mission and was getting cool responses from Ottawa.”

Other sources claimed the Defence Department wanted a classic farewell parade with marching bands and all the traditional pomp and ceremony, banners, drums and pipes, the military adores.

Ideally, a patriotic speech from the Prime Minister. If not, it would settle for the Minister of Defence.

In fact, the end of the war turned out to be a very low-key affair and no Canadian politician showed up to say goodbye.

Apparently the government — all too aware that most Canadians had long lost any enthusiasm for a foolish war which ended sans victory, not even a truce — decided Canadian troops would slip away with as little fanfare, ceremony and publicity as possible.

Sceptics believe CBC News went along with the politicians.

July 7, 2011 was the day I finally lost all respect for The National.

I really, really didn’t want to write this story. The National is in my blood, a truly significant part of my life.

Back in the seventies, I wrote for, reported for, then produced the program. Back in those days we weren’t perfect, but we were fiercely protective of The National’s journalistic integrity, its rigorous journalistic standards, it’s mission to bring understanding of the world we live in, it’s dedication to reporting news that truly mattered.

We believed absolutely that The National was the best damn newscast in the whole damn world.

Over the years since, however, I’ve watched it decline from proud, damn-the-torpedoes, public service journalism, to just another pointless, hungry-for-ratings, TV news program, no better than the private networks.

(At least the privates have the excuse that they aren’t Canada’s public broadcaster, directly subsidized by Canadian taxpayers and aren’t, therefore, mandated to “serve to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada.”)

In a cruelly ironic touch, The National’s campaign to persuade Canadians to watch the news we pay for was designed by very expensive American news doctors including the notorious “action news” outfit Magid.

If you really want more Canadians to watch, those doctors advised, don’t spend your money on all that expensive international crap. Nobody cares.

If you must run international stuff, they suggested, you can get most of it for free from other broadcasters and do the voice-over here in Canada.

Anyway, viewers don’t want you explaining the world they live in.

They want “human” stories.

They want celebrities.

Crime sells.

Disasters sell.

Accidents sell.

Weather sells.

Fires sell.

Get with it Canadians!

The result — CBC’s The National today. A once-proud public service news program that’s lost its soul, its journalistic innocence.

The warning signs have loomed for years.

I base my critique on watching The National, on and off, for the last 30 years or so. But also from notes (nine pages, 4,000 words) written after screening it every night for seven consecutive evenings, then re-screening the next day.

My research is based on only one program, CBC’s flagship The National. But I believe this criticism — with local variations — is valid for almost all TV news here and in most other countries.

Recognize any of these problems in your own TV News?

1. •A patronizing chief-anchor-for-life who can read a TelePrompTer without stumbling, yet almost never actually seems to feel the scenes he describes. Unless it’s politics, his specialty, he rather obviously doesn’t care what’s in the stories, doesn’t see the scenes, doesn’t feel the emotions. Has no genuine human response. As a result, of course, neither does the viewer.
   

2. •As interviewer, he delights in long speeches, presenting his own very important view of the matter before finally getting to his question. In one interview the question droned on for 40 seconds, another lasted 30 seconds.
   

3. •Fill-in anchors, most of whom communicate no better than the ageing king, specialize in perkiness and fake smiles, never sound (or look) like real people thinking aloud and talk down to us like elementary school teachers.
   

4. •And how they emote! Presumably that’s because it’s such a big studio and the cameras are so far away. Someone should tell them they don’t have to push their voices like fairground barkers because it’s not the faraway cameras that record their voices, but lavaliere microphones pinned right there on their chests.  
   

5. •Writing that lacks insight, knowledge, wit, clarity and style. Writing filled with clichés, codes, bromides and jargon. Writing that too often tells the entire story in the anchor’s introduction, then has the reporter repeat identical information in the body of the story. 
   

6. •Reporters who announce in a most unnatural manner, confuse speed and volume with energy and authority.
   

7. •Reporters who believe their own dulcet tones are far more interesting and important than the views of real people who were actual players in the story. As a result, endless reporter narrations, leaving time for only the briefest of responses from interviewees.
   

8. •Reporters who never learned storytelling and still follow old newspaper style — starting the story at the end, the climax, then working back to the context through which the story could be understood.
   

9. •Reporters who seem to have no idea that good storytelling is almost always a chronological journey (context, dramatic development, moving inexorably to climax. In that order.) Why? Because in real life, cause usually precedes effect. And, anyway, life is chronological. Storytelling brings life, drama and meaning to stories — whether about a couple who’ve just lost their home, or an analysis of the 9/11 attack on the twin towers. 
   

10. •Reporters who believe asking puzzled people-in-the-street silly questions about matters in which they have no expertise is keeping in touch with the masses.
    

11. •Editing that randomly places reporter narration over cuts. But the human eye is more powerful than the ear. So when there’s a new scene after a cut the viewer stops listening to the aural information while trying to make sense of the new visual. When viewers are forced to make a choice, video always tops audio.
    

12. •Story after story that are merely events, are cheap and easy to find and shoot, have no meaning, bring no understanding, illustrate nothing of value.
    

13. •A weather section at the end of the program that takes up precious minutes and is entirely useless as an explanation of the weather over six time zones in the world’s second largest country.
    

14. •And, of course, the aforementioned concentration on often-meaningless “human” stories the news doctors promise will make Canadians watch, thus increasing ratings and, no doubt, bringing glory to CBC executives.
    

15. •And much, much more.
    

I don’t really blame the CBC journalists — that dwindling band of digitally-stained wretches — who serve The National as best they can.

In fact, CBC News still has a few of the finest, most dedicated journalists in all Canada.

When they can get airtime, its handful of travel-worn foreign correspondents are among the very best in the world.

CBC News investigations into wrongdoing are exceptional, if too occasional.

In the main, however, Canada’s public broadcasting flagship The National is no longer in service to the Canadian people.

It would rather fawn over such as Will and Kate, than tell truth to power.

It’s forgotten that as journalism goes, so goes democracy.   

Simply put, the senior executives responsible for The National have gone rotten, abandoned the organization’s mandate and, in their rabid race for ratings, lost their journalistic focus and with it their journalistic integrity.

That sad, obsequious, pandering, insolent evening of July 7, 2011 was the inevitable result.

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So what does all this mean? Why are so many Canadians willing and eager to say such nasty things about CBC’s iconic The National — in the past almost never criticized, often compared to the much-revered BBC News?

Is it just that Canadians have simply lost faith in this one news program, the CBC’s flagship?  

I don’t think so.

(Of course, Canadians expect a lot better of their public broadcaster than its private rivals who are no better — and often a great deal worse — when it comes to broadcasting a video version of People magazine and calling it news.)

I believe the uproar roused by my article exposing the naked emperor goes a great deal deeper.

And wider.

At the risk of being labeled pretentious, I believe it’s a tiny part of a sudden, spreading, worldwide cynicism rightly focused on our lords and masters.

In fact, there’s a growing, screaming anger against authority, the various unknowable, unreachable, untouchable Establishments which tell us what to think and what to do and, by so doing, rule our lives.

The international result:

1. •The Arab Spring and its revolt against that world’s corrupt and ruthless rulers.
   

2. •The much wider revolt against Western imperialism everywhere.
   

3. •The clash of civilizations between Islam and much of the more- successful rest of the world.
   

4. •Spreading revulsion at the incredible mess made by politicians and money-men serving savage capitalism in the U.S. and European Union that threatens to destroy the world’s economy along with many of our lives.
   

5. •Increasing rejection of the obscene disparities in the world’s wealth, not just between nations, but inside every nation.
   

6. •The triumph of the Internet which, for the first time ever, lets us see outside our own communities, compare our lives to others’, and understand we’re being royally screwed by the sickening greed of our lords and masters.
   

I write these words with considerable trepidation. How can a simple journalist dare compare a few letters to the editor deploring the manifold and manifest faults of the Canadian public broadcaster’s flagship news program with the urgent crises facing the world this 2011?

I fall back on an old friend, John Donne who lived nearly 400 years ago, to answer:

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(To comment:TimKnight@rogers.com)

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