Here’s a huge sidebar ad being displayed at the CBC.ca/News web site. It’s obviously supposed to be an eye-catcher, and I have a small problem with it on a taxpayer-funded “news” web site:
It’s not an ad for the CBC itself, nor even for Obama, but I understand your confusion. It’s actually for Rogers, the cable provider which of course carries CBC (it’s the law in this country that they and all cable and satellite providers carry the CBC and make it available to customers, unlike, say, Fox News Channel).
As you can easily see from just the eye-catcher picture and top line of the ad, Rogers is promoting the concept that now that Obama has been elected, you and me and all of us should get together and “make history repeat itself”. There’s no mistaking that. It’s a little premature since 2012 is a ways off, but then I don’t expect maturity from the CBC. I do expect a little more from Rogers.
After I clicked on the ad and was taken to Rogers web site to learn more about what they’re advertising, I found that the link just takes you to their main Rogers page. Not much about “history repeating itself” or any information remotely connected to that concept. So it is very hard to find any real—any non-political—meaning behind their CBC ad, assuming there is even one to find.
Sure Rogers gets their name out there on this ad, and it might be as simple as that. But Rogers isn’t the main part of this ad. The CBC isn’t either. Barack Obama is. And moreover, they’re playing on the perception that at the CBC.ca, this concept will hook their visitors’ attention. It’s a perfect fit, apparently, for their scarce advertising cash. And that’s very telling.
It tells us all a lot about the CBC audience and the general—even professional—perception that it is a “news” web site which nonetheless is clearly left-leaning, Obama-supporting, and has a solid left-leaning following. In these “tough times” this company, Rogers, has decided to spend wads of advertising cash to target-market to that specific demographic. But again the fact that they found that liberal-left political hook befitting a taxpayer-funded “news” web site —is disconcerting. To help clarify this notion, clearly, the CBC won’t likely be emailing me any time soon about taking ad space out here at PTBC. Rogers? No, apparently not them either. So it makes me wonder.
I really wonder—if I were in charge of Rogers—if I’d have made that CBC advertising choice. But they have.
I’ve asked before about supporting companies that advertise on the CBC. By so doing, these companies are obviously supporting the CBC, even if passively.
Should we as conservative Canadian citizens—many millions strong—support companies that pay money to (even passively) support government propaganda departments like the CBC, which, at our expense, work against our own political, economic, social, and other interests? Should we support companies like Rogers which support agenda-driven, wrong-headed so-called crown “corporations” which, as I see it (very clearly), are used to effectively advance a left-wing or even far-left political and social and economic agenda, and which is itself actually de facto socialism-reliant? Does Rogers support socialism?
The CBC is taxpayer funded already to the tune of over one BILLION taxpayer dollars PER YEAR. The CBC is state-owned. It has vast resources and a huge extensive reach, thanks to draconian and anti-democratic, anti-free-market Canadian laws ensuring that they do. The CBC’s directors and senior management are all appointed by the federal cabinet. All central directives are set and controlled directly by government, and the CBC’s lawful mandate is to report not to Canadian citizens, but to the government. And we all pay for it.
I don’t support that. Rogers apparently does. So should we support Rogers? I don’t think so.
This isn’t Cuba. Let’s not let history repeat itself.
Reader comments welcome in the “J-Log” version of this article.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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