A conspiracy theory that falls flat

Posted Feb 16, 2012 By Rolly Ethier

Dear Editor:

Few people can dream up a conspiracy theory like former Community Press editor Alan Coxwell.

In his recent EMC contribution, "While Canadians gently sleep ... CBC will quietly disappear," he claims the federal government is dreaming up a sinister plot to eliminate the CBC now that the Conservative dominated Sun News is established as a television network.

I quite realize that like all far left zealots, Mr. Coxwell doesn't like the idea of freedom of speech but I didn't realize the Sun was breaking any law by establishing a new broadcast media, including the creation of a lot of new jobs, if it has the resources to do so.

Second, many Conservatives do not favour terminating the CBC as much as the 1.3 billion taxpayer dollars that it takes to provide a far left viewpoint 100 per cent of the time. Let's have the CBC carry on as other media outlets do without taxpayer support.

The conspiracy tries to make you believe that it's okay for the CBC to operate funded largely by the taxpayers with a one-way bias but somehow the government has to be doing something underhanded if it licenses another broadcast media with a different editorial vision. The Liberal government got the benefi t of the left wing bias for many years but I didn't see Mr. Coxwell complaining of any conspiracy then.

Also I didn't see a conspiracy theory advanced when multi-billionaire George Soros was trying to derail Sun News from the other side of the border.

The fact that a Conservative-slanted network has somehow managed to materialize is the most refreshing thing to happen to broadcast journalism in the last 50 years. I'm not sure where the writer learned his journalistic fairness but I've always been under the impression it was a good thing to have two political points of view. From what I can see, the Sun provides a lot of interesting content you won't see on CBC because it doesn't fit into their social engineering category.

The CBC, representing the far left viewpoint at all times, and being funded by the government, doesn't make sense. Yes, the time has come to end funding for the CBC. Let the elite organization operate the way everyone else doeson their own advertising dollar.

Rolly Ethier, Campbellford