CBC Now Running Full Canadian Press Articles: We need less media concentration not more

It started slowly. Sometime in 2005 I noticed that at the end of some CBC online articles the tag would be with files from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I can't remember exactly when...except that it was definitely appearing after the Tsunami (but could have been appearing before). The latest example of the CBC using other news sources is more disturbing.

See here for a example at the bottom of a CBC article.


These days, much more of the text is provided with help from other news services. Associate Press (AP) and Canadian Press (CP) being the most common. Yet more annoying is that in a lot of cases CBC online stories are full CP pieces these days... At least to me files from the Australian Broadcasting Service (usually for article closer to where their part of the world, wasn't nearly as annoying (although i noticed it at the time and thought the CBC must really be having a hard time with the budget).

I like reading CBC because it provided a fairly succinct story and wasn't CP or AP with their biases. It wrote what it felt like writing and how it felt like writing (obviously within limits, but quite different from CP and AP coverage).

I have never really found CP articles interesting. They are useful, and they are what shows up immediately in the newspapers...before anyone else has a chance to write about a story. As such they can be interesting. But they aren't what I want to read in CBC news, nor do i think they should be. I liked the fact that CBC wasn't CP, even if I did read CP articles elsewhere.

I think we should be concerned in the long run for Canadian news coverage by this move (as well as for CBC). We already have too concentrated a media, and CBC was a more independent source of information in my view. We don't need an already very concentrated media to become even more concentrated. And they were another source of information regardless.. Also if they are using enough CP articles...well it would be that much easier to say "why bother with the CBC". My best guess is that they are doing it because of budget cuts or budget difficulty. If we want to keep a CBC that looks like it did (at least somewhat), it's time to start writing and thinking about this. Personally, I'm going to send a copy of this to CBC (once I track down what seems to be the best address I'll post it at the end of this article...today or tomorrow). But unless enough people seem to care they will likely continue to move in the same direction. And this would be a real shame because CBC was another source of independent news, and one i liked reading regularly for a good succient version of what was going on in the world.PP