CBC News Editors' Blog

Hello Esther Enkin:

One suggestion I would have with how to improve the "Your View" blogs is to increase the speed of posting. On certain blogs the posting is excellent and the content is lively and when posts are updated quickly it keeps the dialogue fresh. However, there are certain blogs that never appear to be updated for whatever reason.

A second suggestion I have is a possible way to perhaps speed the posting process. I might being going way out on a limb here, but I am sure most of the slow up is perhaps related to proof reading of blogs before they get posted to ensure profanity and other offences that go against your Submission Policy are not being committed. My suggestion is to perhaps manufacture some sort of “Preferred Blogger” status to posters that are regular contributors and have shown to be ethical in their treatment of this medium. Perhaps, the posts from this type of blogger might be able to be streamlined in some fashion?

Finally, I would love to have an area that we bloggers could post a topic that we feel should be discussed and have a blog opened up on. If there is enough interest (votes), you, CBC.ca, could allow for an open forum on the topic. This would allow you the opportunity to see what topics are intriguing for your Internet Readers and blogger participants, and assist in you serving this market in the future.

Could you please cover the basi-virk trial.I beleave it would be in the public's interest and the cbc is a public broadcaster.To see the cbc in bc helping the bc liberal's hide the fact a billion doller deal was done fraudulent manner should be against some broadcasting law.cbc should not be involved in this coverup. thank you wayne

Matt from Waterloo pretty well sums it. As he says, your far to slow in putting up the postings, in addition, I feel that you are being to discriminatory in your choosing of which postings you will publish. What percentage of submitted postings are you casting aside and disallowing, 80%-90% of them? Possibly, this is one of the reasons why, the response to this blog has been so low, thus far, in responding.

Why not go back to the forums you use to have -before the site was redesigned? Some of the discussions there were fantastic, with people discussing everything from creationism versus evolution, to music, politics, sports, etc. I sometimes participated, sometimes just read it. It was a true forum and was extremely well-received. Also, comments posted fast and had the option to be removed by a mediator afterwards. Why was it cancelled? It made no sense to me.

How about taking all the tax payer money you collect (and then spend to out bid TSN and Sportsnet on Sport coverage, primarily hockey) and use it to put on a Canadian news station that rivals CNN in the US. I might add that I have seen some of your recent documentaries and they are quite impressive and informative.
I however do not pay taxes so that hundreds of millions of dollars can be directed to the NHL.
If I want my money to go to the NHL, I will watch on TSN, Sportsnet, or buy a ticket to sit in the seat.
CBC's mandate should be to further Canadian television production. The NHL does not need CBC's help or my tax dollars to stay alive.

Goal: Be more like BBC World--less like CTV.

I've been noticing a very strange disconnect between news content online at CBC versus what is broadcast on TV. CBC TV news is often sensational in comparison to the more level-headed reporting provided in text online.

There are so many things I'd like to say to CBC news management that it's hard to know where to begin. In this post I’ll cover only three areas and then deliver a small bouquet:

First, STOP ALL THE TOUCHY FEELY STORIES on the National. Deliver a sound and well researched newscast (check out the BBC if you've forgotten what that looks like) and put the human-interest, ‘man bites dog’, ‘child fights cancer successfully’ stories into another, completely separate, program. Be selective, be critical, be concise and stop trying to be sweet and sticky. That’s Canwest territory – leave it to them. Stop sticking mics into peoples’ faces and asking them ‘how they feel’, it’s pathetic.

Second, stop all the personal lovey-dovey nonsense on your regional news broadcasts too. By that I mean the little asides between anchors, remarks about the weather and the upcoming weekend. None of this has any place on the news - ever - it's Oprah material and the CBC's traditional approach was much better than the way things are tending today. This is supposed to be the way viewers get their news and information – if they want to gossip over the garden fence or share emails in an on-line chat room so be it – but keep that stuff off the news. I doubt your anchors are such good friends as they pretend to be on air – and even if they are – I don’t want to know it. I want professional journalism and nothing more.

(looks like I'll have to finish this in another post)

Last night i was watching CBC news and was surprised to see that since there was not much on the Nobel Prize. Little bit on Al Gore for his movie. No praise for IPCC. The UN Agency has been working on this for long whereas Al Gore started after he saw his end of career in politics. I think you should analyse this.

I will have to echo most of what has already been said;

1)Give me the news in it's rawest, purest form without all the sugar-coating. (i.e if the story is about terrorism, call it that for crying out loud!)

2) Posting comments should be a lot faster so that it truly represents an actual blog - lively discussion between bloggers and posters without a long gap between opinions - surely the CBC has the technology post comments faster ?

Is some news footage shot or broadcast in the wrong aspect ratio? Lately national news items feature politicians with extremely wide shoulders and short little heads in the medium close up shots (chest up). After an edit to a wider shot, things look normal.

It seems particularly prevalent at news conferences/announcements. Why would this have changed? It is a sloppy, distracting form of dishonesty.

It's not my TV. The people on the McNeil-Lehrer report right now appear in normal proportion. It's a small item, but I think we expect better from CBC. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

It's time to rejuvenate CBC political punditry. As a first step, I'd like to see Jian Ghomeshi or George Stromoboulopoulos featured as regular commentators/columnists on CBC.ca or Politics with Don Newman.

My advice, spread/spin-off the young talent to other areas of the CBC network.

Thoughts on the Weather

Welcome back Claire!

For the past few months, the CBC News has focused some of its attention to the Arctic. The main item of discussion has been sovereignty. After watching Claire describes the weather from BC to NL, and yet again, forgetting the North, I have had the same thoughts for some time now…. This is linked to over sovereignty: Canada and Canadians love to discuss weather…Canadian Weather also defines (partly) what is Canada. So by describing All of Canada’s Weather on the News every night; - that is, including the northern part of the country – we, as Canadians, demonstrate that we include all of our northern reaches as part of our Nation. CBC! …this is part of your National mandate: Canadian weather means all of Canada’s weather. Please never forget to give all Canadians a good description of the weather in the North…
PS North means Northern provinces, and above 60N

Suzanne from Yellowknife.

3. Repetition - CBC News repeats itself endlessly and refers to what it has already done, and what it is going to do, Ad nauseum. It's boring. It adds nothing new and it treats your viewers as if they had Attention Deficit Disorder. The recent features on global warming and the Arctic are a good example. Do a feature, run it once (twice at the most) and move on. Summer programming is nothing but re-runs anyway so save the broken record stuff for then. If you don’t have something new to say - shut up!

Now the bouquet - CBC still has, thank God, the best and (mostly) most independent analysis of foreign news this side of the BBC. Your foreign coverage usually rocks!

Afghanistan (and especially the compromised poll just released) is the obvious exception. You need to get out of the bed you're sharing with the US State Department on that file.
Instead of preening about the poll and how it was conducted, it would have been nice if someone in the Corporation had mentioned that the Afghan Center for Social and Opinion Research was founded by D3 Systems Int., whose client base include US State Department, the US Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan Reconstruction Group, Voice of America, (PIPA) the Program on International Policy Attitudes. It would have been fair to mention that ACSOR polls are extensively used in the US media to bolster support for the war. How could you just go along with the government like that?

Hope this doesn’t exceed the character limit – and that you’ll have the chutzpah to post it.

Wayne, by assertion, doesn't your claim also suggest; CanWest is also aiding in some-sort of BC Liberal cover-up by not covering the Basi-Virk trial?

After a month of participating in CBC’s "view" section of its Blog, I’ve noticed a pattern. Only about 50% of my submissions ever made it to the ‘public views’ section which, in my opinion, is indicative that CBC picks and chooses what 'views' make it through their editors screens and onto its story pages. By having editors pick and choose what public viewpoints/comments are published in it’s, what CBC claims to be; ‘public views’ section of its Blog is also indicative that the ‘views’ section of CBC’s Blog, doesn’t really reflect the true ‘views’ of its readership.

I contend; if it's not an open "public" forum that tolerates all public views, than participants here are doing nothing but feeding CBC's media propaganda

Unless the CBC is to take everyones views and publish them, then it is not really our view, its the CBC's view. The personal opinions of CBC employees who read these are what the people really get to see. If the CBC really wants to publish the "Your View" (our view) then they would have to have a completely unbiased way of doing that. This not its self will not be published for example because it is critical of the CBC, i would like to hear more about what other Canadians think of this to.

Hope the CBC will have a reporter covering the Basi-Virk pre-trial hearing on November 16!

I too would like to request that you do an in-depth documentary on the Basi-Virk scandal.

I am fully aware that I might be misinformed, so if it isn't a scandal at all, and seeing that so many are wondering why the dearth of coverage, informing people why would also be an important news item.