CBC Ottawa news needs a new mandate: no more crime shorts
Crime crime crime crime crime and more crime.
Of the 13 stories on the news segment of CBC Ottawa’s home page as I type, six are crime stories. You’d think we’re living in a modern Deadwood, where lawlessness and thuggery is as common as Tim Horton’s. And yet even the Ottawa police say that crime rates in this city are dropping. Statscan puts crime rates at their lowest in 25 years. So why is it filling more than half the news hole on cbc.ca/ottawa?
This question is often asked of TV and private radio outlets. And we get the tired answer, “because crime sells papers and boosts ratings and they are, after all, in the business of delivering an audience to advertisers.” So we sigh and say “oh well, that’s capitalism” and reach for the remote.
But to Canada’s public broadcaster, whose efforts I gladly pay for through the tax system, I say “what’s your excuse?”
I’ve heard CBC news types proclaim that they try to cover crime “differently” but I just don’t see it. With crime rates so low, how can CBC justify giving this much attention to crime stories at all.
Is it just because crime reporting is easy? The stories aren’t complex or challenging – there’s good and bad, nothing to trouble your typically apolitical journalist’s brain. The police PR machine is very effective at supplying journos all the information they need, delivering a steady stream of “major events” to news desks everywhere via their own, special newswire.
Crime does pay. At least advertising. And even CBC has to care about ratings. But there are hundreds of news stories in this town, full of pathos, righteousness and evil that won’t ever show up on the police blotter. Would it kill them to pay a bit more attention to them?
September 10th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Amen, amen, amen.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
AAH..so someone else out there has noticed :)
We figure if CBC (radio)were to eliminate reporting on killing/dying and crime in general, they would be at a loss to report on anything at all. Why is this ? Who is dictating this policy/agenda ?