As Twitter is finding out with state-funded media like the CBC and NPR:
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) announced it will quit posting content on Elon Musk-owned Twitter, joining other U.S.-based media outlets.
“Our journalism is impartial and independent. To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter,” CBC wrote in a tweet on Monday.
One of the things that drives me absolutely batty about debate in an American–and now a Canadian–context is the way one can get into trouble the fastest: by stating the obvious. It was true before the “woke” era and has only set us up for the unthinking moralistic food fight we have now. You can state the absolute truth and, if it doesn’t fit everyone’s preconceived notions, everyone goes postal. (Sort of like the Celtic folk tale I talk about in Messing With a Celtic Agenda Isn’t a Good Idea.)
The low point for this on this blog took place a few years back when my “Canadian Sheeple” went nuts over my common sense observation (well, I thought it was) in my post What Working for the Church of God Taught Me About Race that organisations with larger budgets had more opportunity for waste. Because I had the bad taste to finger government entities to have the largest budgets, he couldn’t take it. (I might add that, at one point in his career, he worked for the CBC.)
It’s interesting to note, however, that the same people who don’t like observations like this will pooh-pooh private charity vs. government relief because the government a) has the larger budget and b) has the coercive power of the state to make things happen, overlooking the obvious fact that government agencies tend to be slow off the line after, for example, a disaster, when speed is of the essence.
The more serious mystery is that, in our oligarchic society, why supposedly “privately owned” and “independent” media routinely carry water for elite opinion.
Positive Infinity 