Muck-Rating

It’s fitting, somehow, that a book about Canadian broadcasting should mimic the sort of experience one has when flipping through the channels of a cable-equipped television set. We’re all familiar with the routine. In less than 30 seconds, a viewer can use the remote control to survey everything from “I Love Lucy” reruns to Knowlton Nash’s contrived inflections. In print, especially in that medium known as the book, one expects something more focussed. Focus, as it turns out, was clearly too difficult a concept for the editor to tackle when he sat down to assemble Beyond the Printed Word.

The book is a collection of speeches and presentations delivered to a symposium in Ottawa organized by the National Archives of Canada in October 1988. Far from being a “comprehensive account of the evolution of news broadcasting in Canada,” as the blurb on the outside cover bravely promises, the book is an eclectic assortment of random thoughts and reminiscences by people who have worked in or studied Canadian broadcasting. Like the television viewer who is madly cycling through the channels for something interesting, the reader may gain the occasional insight as he flips through the pages of this book. But there is a lot of muck to wade through along the journey.

Take, for example, the presentation by Lloyd Robertson, veteran anchor of the CTV national news. He criticizes the CBC in its early years for hiring print journalists who couldn’t speak well or ad lib. Television, he concludes, is an entertainment medium and, in the broad sense, anchors should be seen as entertainers. Frank Stalley, a CBC announcer in the 1950s and 1960s, echoes those sentiments. He bemoans the move toward anchors who are experienced journalists, rather than professional announcers. “Although the CBC has groomed many first-rate TV reporters and correspondents, there are far too many ‘journalists’ on the air today who do not pay sufficient attention to pronunciation, voice production and grammar, and who have unattractive voices. The CBC no longer sets the quality standard.”

Then there are the comments by George Frajkor, a former CTV and CBC television news reporter. Frajkor admonishes the television critics who say that broadcast news is too superficial. He is particularly critical of those who object to minute-and-a-half story items. “Psychological studies have shown that people do not have an attention span on most subjects of more than one minute and ten seconds,” Frajkor says. “My point is we are already giving you twenty seconds too much on the minute-and-thirty second reports.” Such are the profound conclusions of men who have spent their lifetime in broadcast journalism.

By no means is the book without value. There are interesting snippets throughout, from the importance of preserving archival broadcasting material to a lively discussion of the media’s role in reporting the October crisis of 1970. Yet there is a nagging feeling that many of the players in the broadcasting field are engaged in a game of clips, stand-ups and sound bites that stress form over content, style over substance. The more broadcasters try to defend themselves against such criticism, the more it seems they have fallen victim to a medium that has the potential to corrupt journalists with offers of wealth and celebrity status.

Some of the most provocative and insightful comments at the symposium came from Paul Rutherford, a history professor at the University of Toronto who has specialized in broadcasting. In a concise analysis of two ‘sample’ national newscasts, one by CBC and the other by CTV, he shows how the principles of journalistic objectivity and balance are often thrown overboard in favour of outright bias in some cases, and the desire to create dramatic tension in others. Rutherford goes further:

News is also an ideological statement, a fact journalists are sometimes uncomfortable with. Radical scholars have argued time and again that the news works to buttress the hegemonic authority of the dominant classes in society. How? Why by accepting as given the bourgeois values of the mainstream, by giving a voice to respectable dissent like the NDP but by vilifying violence or terrorism as dangerous forms of deviance, and by neglecting to critique the class conditions which give rise to the conflict news reporters so cherish.

Not surprisingly, Rutherford’s views were roundly condemned by the working broadcast journalists in attendance, all of which led him to reply: “It seems to me that journalists respond much like academics do when they are criticized. Like stuck pigs, there’s an awful lot of squealing that goes on.”

Neither the academics nor the journalists, it seems, spent much time at the symposium predicting what would be the future of broadcasting. If they had, they might have foreseen and spoken out against the wide-scale budget cuts which have hit the CBC in recent times. Those cuts, in addition to eliminating hundreds of broadcast employee jobs, have meant the cancellation of regional broadcasting in many parts of the country. Discussion of the finer points of broadcasting policy and history seems a trifle pointless when entire news and current affairs programs are being taken off the air and others severely restricted.

For all its faults, television plays an important role in Canadian cultural development. The CBC is the prime mover in this field, and its efforts to develop Canadian news, current affairs, drama and entertainment have helped this country resist pervasive American cultural influences. Unfortunately, the political forces which would integrate Canada’s economy more closely with that of the United States also seem intent on weakening the CBC.

Anyone who is serious about venturing beyond the printed word should realize that money and resources must be available to make the venture successful. Otherwise, students in the future may find that the National Archives is the only place to see examples of Canada’s broadcasting heritage. ♦

Cecil Rosner is a producer with CBC “24 Hours” I-Team. He has 16 years’ experience in print and broadcast media.

Beyond the Printed Word: The Evolution of Canada’s Broadcast News Heritage, Edited by Richard Lochead, Kingston, Ontario: Quarry Press, 1991 Paperback, 400pp., $29.95; cloth, $39.95