State-owned CBC radio host digs for answers from cabinet minister, finally succeeds

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If you’re a regular reader here you’d be conditioned to think, after reading my headline, I was on about the CBC Radio host questioning a conservative-type minister, but no! It was BC’s NDP Health Minister Adrian Dix.

I dump on the news media and especially the state-owned CBC every day, all day long, because they’re awful. CBC news is worse than most of the other news media. But I’m happy to report to you today that it was a CBC Radio host, Stephen Quinn, who broke from the pack, demanding answers, through repetition, of a BC provincial cabinet health minister, and an NDP one at that. And succeeding with sheer perseverance and adherence to his actual job description. And an erstwhile liberal Vancouver Sun columnist outed the whole thing today. What a day for actual news reporting.

Vaughn Palmer: Dix ducks and covers before ‘fessing up on care home COVID outbreaks

Reading it is almost funny. Well actually hideous is a better word. Scary? Here’s columnist Vaughn Palmer:

“Broadcaster Stephen Quinn put the question to Dix during an interview on the Early Edition on CBC Radio on Friday. … Quinn was not to be deflected … “So why is it happening?” asked Quinn for the third time. … Quinn persisted. … Two more questions. Still no answer. …

And all those dots represent not just one but numerous deflections, obfuscations, diversions, and efforts to run out the clock, on a question concerning our very lives. Palmer went on:

…But it was Quinn’s show, he was in control of the clock, and he wasn’t giving up.

“What you’re telling me again, is that where we have community outbreaks, we have transmission in long-term care homes,” continued the CBC host. “What you’re not telling me is exactly how the virus is making its way from the broader community into those homes.”

Whereupon Dix threw in the towel.

“Well, in the vast majority of cases, it comes in with staff,” he conceded. “There’s no question about that. In the vast majority of places, it comes in with staff.”

… So, to recap, it took six questions and five rounds of duck and cover, before the health minister finally admitted that staffers were bringing the virus into long-term care.

The answer finally admitted to, we’re left to wonder how, after all this time, the NDP has not solved the problem of BC healthcare workers spreading the virus to seniors in long term care. Palmer wasn’t done:

“…the challenge of the second wave, which broke over the province while the electioneering New Democrats put the government into caretaker mode for the better part of two months.” [for a totally unnecessary election in the midst of a pandemic, designed purely to take advantage of the crisis pandemic to secure more power for the NDP —Narrator].

He went on: “As outbreaks raged through long-term care in the late fall and into the new year, Dix also rejected calls for more interventionist testing of health-care workers.”

Yikes.

Here is a rare example of the news media — one a host for the state-owned CBC, of all things, and the other a columnist for a liberal paper — doing its actual job. And the result, when that happens, often ain’t pretty —merely important, and real.

Not taking what any government official says “at face value” is an important concept to news reporting and commentary. Bravo gentlemen.

Joel Johannesen
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