The CBC and its Obsession with Twitter

[Update: I subsequently found... or, more correctly, was shown the Land & O'Leary Exchange email address as the program announces it at the end of the show.  It must be well buried on the website, as I could not find it but I despite all this I still stand behind what follows.  And even though I now know the email address, I am not forwarding my comments as they probably do not care about such viewpoints anyway as it doesn't really square with the narrative they need to keep telling.]

Don’t get me wrong, as far as mainstream media as sources of reliable information goes, the CBC is a treasure.  (In fact, some of my favourite media sources (especially when it comes to television) are public or state-sponsored broadcasters (CBC, PBS, BBC, Al Jazeera International).  As someone who devotes most of his life to studying the media, I can confidently say these can be or tend to be very good sources.  (BTW, my favoured source of news and current events are independent websites, radio, magazines and research institutes.)

So, I am not a CBC-basher or idealogue who thinks that public broadcasting is akin to Communism, but I am very frustrated with the likes of the CBC and their obsession with social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook.  Sure, it’s popular amongst the ‘kool’ kids… those in high-school or think they still are in high school and feel an undying need to ‘run with the pack’  and who visualize themselves looking cool while others are watching them use their cool gadgets (and thinking to themselves: ‘Man, I’m so connected’).  That’s annoying but OK.  I can put up with such posturing but when it starts to really take over, then that is when I begin to worry.

I just tried going to the Lang & O’Leary Exchange website to make a comment about some recent programming but could not find, anywhere on the CBC’s vast website, any way to send an (e)letter to the editor.  Instead, apparently, the only way you are supposed to contact the program’s staff is to follow them to some proprietary service, hand over all you private information, and then you’ll have the pleasure of reading, in 140 characters or less, some inane fact or thought passing through their heads.

Now, if this was a private news source, then I would not mind so much.  If some news business thinks that it will expand its news-reading audience by limiting its interactions to a narrow space within the media-sphere that is primarily occupied by youth (who tend not to consume news), then that is their business decision.  But a public broadcaster has a different mandate: it is meant to serve the public at large and in various capacities.  To my mind, cordoning yourself off inside the proprietary space of another media service is not a wise way of going about this.

Perhaps it is just another way that the kool kids (that is, those who tend to swallow gallons of branded koolaid) tend to hijack things, in this case tax-payer-supported broadcasting, and turn it into just another mirror that reflects themselves to themselves while they think everyone is looking at them with undying admiration.  It is just like high school cliques all over again.  (And, really, isn’t Facebook just one giant, interactive high-school yearbook?)

It’s too bad as I like the program (especially when Kevin O’Leary is absent, hehe ) as they tend to have interesting guests and cover a lot of issues.  Perhaps I am being too harsh, but it is a travesty when, in the 21st century, a viewer cannot easily contact the editors/producers of a tax-payer funded program on a public broadcaster.

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Hmmm… I wonder… what are the important ‘twends’ that the Twitterati are twittering about now?

…and now?

… how about now?

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