The CBC's decline into clickbait hell
In the 1920s, when it was first conceived, there were justifiable reasons for installing a public broadcaster in Canada.
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In the 1920s, when it was first conceived, there were justifiable reasons for installing a public broadcaster in Canada.
Every year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are availed to maintain the operating budget of the CBC. Every year, millions of Canadians wonder whether the juice is worth the squeeze. In an increasingly digital age, where the proliferation of social media platforms has largely decentralized and democratized the means of journalistic production, traditional forms of media have suffered a massive decline. The information oligopoly that existed in the 20th century simply doesn’t in the 21st, a reality that is clearly reflected by the trajectory of the industry. And while privately owned newsrooms across the country have been forced into an indefinite state of fiscal austerity, the CBC’s prospects are—at least until this October —markedly less precarious. It is, then, troubling to see how zealously and unapologetically the organization cranks out brainless clickbait on Snapchat.
Last September, the public broadcaster announced its foray onto the platform as a way to “better inform young Canadians and foster media literacy.” Unfortunately, the content being produced is informative in ways that disappoint, and conducive to a strain of media literacy that the next generation of consumers could probably do without. Rather than using the account as a theatre for the critical examination of important social issues, the CBC uses it as a cheap digital colostomy bag for the excesses and clichés of millennial internet culture. Exploits like this, which already exist en masse in the private sector, should prompt Canadians to question the fundamental purpose of the CBC.
In the 1920s, when it was first conceived, there were justifiable reasons for installing a public broadcaster in Canada. Given the historic salience of radio communication, and the unlikelihood of private corporations developing expensive infrastructure in remote areas, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission was eventually created in 1932. This entity would later become the CBC.
And although the telecommunications technologies of 2019 bear almost no resemblance to those of 1932, the modern CBC may not be categorically obsolete. In a 2018 National Post short lamenting the predatory expansion of the CBC, Tristin Hopper shrewdly and concisely expounds the legitimate role of such an organization:
“The reason you have a public broadcaster is so it can fill needs that the private sector is unwilling or unable to do themselves: lengthy, expensive investigative reporting; better reporting in rural or indigenous communities; risky revolutionary projects that no company with quarterly reports would feel safe to green-light… if you really support public broadcasting, you should support a CBC that spends a little more time thinking about what a public broadcaster is actually supposed to do.”
Accepting Hopper’s position, the current use of the CBC Snapchat account seems inexcusably wasteful. Even the most cursory review of content reveals numerous headlines that one might expect to stumble upon in the latest print editions of People, Cosmo, or Seventeen. To analogize a more contemporary platform, it seems like the CBC just has a team of ditzy twenty-something interns regurgitating whatever pops up on the Buzzfeed Snapchat account they already follow. With recent stories ranging from “The Biggest Feud of The Year: What the Tati Westbrook/James Charles feud means for the culture”, to “TRUE OR FALSE: People Who Get High Have More Sex?!”, to “Stop. Pricing. Haircuts. By. Gender.: When a haircut is more than just a haircut”, to “Your Romcom Crushes Are Actually Trash”, it seems that the CBC is attempting to occupy an already saturated market. Assuredly, Canadians are able to find identical content on the Snapchat accounts of dozens of other outlets. If the CBC has any purpose today, this certainly isn’t it.
At a time when Canada’s public broadcaster has unprecedented access to journalistic resources, and no shortage of serious issues to cover, it is indefensible that they busy themselves with running a Snapchat account so appallingly reminiscent of a sleazy tween tabloid.
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