FOX in the Henhouse

Part of my blogging lassitude over the past three months is simple to explain. No matter the topic, somebody, somewhere has summed it all up better than I ever could. More likely manybody, manywhere.

Such is the case as regards SUN TV News, the FOX News-clone that Stephen Harper is bound and determined to bring to Canada. The Net is bulging with commentary pro and con; you can't open an op-ed page without stubbing your eye on somebody's high dudgeon.

Nevertheless, I'd like to add my voice to the cacophony.

First, let's dispense with the notion that SUN TV NEWS will be, as its name implies, a "news" channel. We already have two 24-hour news channels in Canada and a third, as far as I'm concerned, is doubly redundant. Quebecor knows this; ergo they're not interested in reporting the news. Instead, like FOX south of 49, they are interested in manipulating the news, in browbeating their viewership with opinion disguised as fact. If they can do so in a controversial manner, so much the better for them. To my ever-growing chagrin, "News" as a television genre has been largely replaced with "ooze"--news as entertainment. And sadly, watching a bunch of so-called human beings screaming at each other seems to be endlessly entertaining to a sizeable subset of the population. FOX News slaughters its competitors most hours of most days.

Surely not every rabid American FOX viewer is also a rabid FOX believer. (Then again, if he is, it would explain a great deal about that benighted country.) I figure--I hope--that at least some of the people glued to FOX News are stuck there because of the Howard Stern effect, otherwise known as train-wreck syndrome: what blatant lie will they pass off as truth next?

Now, this is not to pretend that our current sources of 24-hour TV news are pure as the driven snow. CBC News Network in particular can easily be accused of ideological bias, and they don't always (or indeed ever) acknowledge their bias up front. Indeed, this is supposed to be the prime reason for SUN TV News in the first place.

Proponents of the new channel, and there are many, suggest that anyone opposed is either unpatriotic (which is a real stretch when one of the most vocal opponents is Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood) or somehow against freedom of speech. Speaking for myself alone, I'm not against right-wing ideas getting a fair airing. I am very much against Canadians being forced to pay the carriage costs, especially since by QMI's own admission, the channel would not otherwise survive.

And let's be honest: the prospect of Northern FOX unnerves me a little. because FOX News is extremely good at what they do. They start out by taking a talking point, any talking point, and slowly, ever-so-reasonably twisting things until there's only one "reasonable" conclusion to be drawn. They're not above cutting the microphone of anyone who disagrees with them, leaving that person flapping his lips and looking stupid.

These tactics have demonstrably resulted in an insanely polarized political spectrum in the United States. It frightens me to no end to see my own country looking to go down that road. That way lies madness.

That way also, if Harper plays his cards right, leads to a Reform Conservative majority. Once he controls a whole media stream, he'll find a way to make Canadians drink from it. Which is why he's taking a personal interest in the matter, and why it's been rumoured he's making every effort to remove any impediments.

Interestingly, the head of the CRTC has denied political interference. The following was published in today's Globe and Mail:

I read with consternation Lawrence Martin's column Is Stephen Harper Set To Move Against The CRTC? (Aug. 19) calling into question the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's independence as a regulatory body. The column stems from Quebecor Media's application to launch a TV news service called Sun TV News. I would like to categorically state that no one at any level of government has approached me about the Sun TV application, the appointment of the CRTC's vice-chair of broadcasting, or my own mandate[...]

Konrad von Finckenstein, chair, CRTC, Gatineau, Que.

Methinks he doth protest too much. Even if he's telling the truth, you can't fault anyone for thinking Harper's applying pressure. Not when Harper's set play whenever faced with anybody who would dare oppose him is to apply lots and lots of pressure.

Can I play political prognosticator here for a minute? I fully expect Harper's next move will be to tarnish the CRTC. He won't mention SUN TV or anything else related to this specific episode. Instead he'll start hammering them on their consistently siding with Bell, Rogers and Telus against any upstart that tries to break in to the cellphone/internet racket. He'll tell Canadians the CRTC is why we pay the highest cellphone rates in the world, and why we can't get all those juicy American channels, and why our internet is so frackin' slow. The hell of it is, he'd be right!

Harper would get a lot of support if he takes this tack, because a lot of Canadians believe the CRTC has served its purpose...if it ever had one. Once he's worked up a good head of publish steam, he'll move to abolish the outfit, throwing Canadian telecommunications and media wide open, and (incidentally) paving the way for his pet TV channel.

That'd be my play, were I him.

But I'm me, and damnit, I want my country back.