Sunday 19 May 2013

Ombudsman Radio-Canada: l'Intégrité et l'arrière garde

Bonjour Pierre Tourangeau

(I am bilingual, watch RDI 7 days a week, but have difficulty writing in French)
On the panel segment of Le Téléjournal, May 16, 2013, in reference to the BC election, Michel Côté and Tasha Kheiriddin made it clear that the BC Liberals won because of their strong message on the economy and belittled the environmental messages of the NDP suggesting that this is not a prominent consideration when people vote -- the economy trumps over the environment.

While these journalists are entitled to their perspectives, one does expect a little integrity.  Since the NDP got 39% of the vote and the Greens got 8% of the votes,  the pro-environment votes, 47% of the total, were more numerous  than the Liberal votes at 44%, or about 50,000 votes more than the Liberals.  In other words, the so-called views of Michel Côté and Tasha Kheiriddin were factually incorrect and the factual  story is the split in the environmental vote resulted in the victory of the Liberals.
100 years ago, the majority establishment view was that women cannot  be equal in the workplace, 75 years ago the right to abortion was unthinkable for most Canadians, 50 years ago gay rights and marriage was belittled by the majority of the followers of public opinion and today this same arrière-garde belittles references to the environment as an important public issue.

I don't expect Michel Côté and Tasha Kheiriddin to know that the clean technology sectors are among the strongest growth and job creating sectors in the world today, that there were 1.6 million people working in these sectors in China in 2011 and 372,000 employed in these sectors in the same year in Germany, more than the German auto industry.  Nor do I expect them to know that wind energy was the largest source of new electrical power generation in the US in 2012 or that 20% of the US venture capital activity in 2011 and 2012 was invested in the clean tech sectors,  there are now over 500 wind technology manufacturing facilities in the US , 119,000 currently employed in the US solar sector and California is expected to have 1 million employed in the clean tech sectors by 2020.
The arrière-garde always defends a vision of a future that will be the same as the past and belittles indications of any new economic social and environmental orders.   In contrast, the avant-garde promotes a vision, which as Wayne Gretzky might put it, focuses on , "where the puck is going."

I am not saying that Radio-Canada should not have representatives of the arrière-garde.  But I do expect integrity.  And on this score Michel Côté and Tasha Kheiriddin are sadly lacking, time after time.  RDI/Radio-Canada, true to its integrity standards, must ensure that panel members meet these standards or be replaced.
Will Dubitsky

No comments:

Post a Comment