Urgent Action !

The CRTC is closing public comments regarding plans to alter broadcast regulations from the website by midnight tonight, February 9th.

The alterations would make it okay to broadcast news - news - that is inaccurate, or wrong, so long as the broadcaster doesn't 'know' it is. This makes truth in reporting less guaranteed on Canadian radio and television. Perhaps, specifically, television.

Remember for a moment that the only way to a true democracy is a truthfully informed public. Anything that might jeopardize the accuracy of the publics' information regarding any number of issues - but especially socio-political ones - is something to be abhorred by any honest citizen.

And yet, here goes the government attempting to use the CRTC to change what they see as out-dated legislation that unnecessarily limits 'free speech'.

You can't ask for a more ridiculous argument. For a full and comprehensive report, ( - give a spoken or written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated - remember this definition, it might not be the same for long!) the Globe has a good piece on it here.

Remember too, these airwaves belong to you. It's true. In Canada, the 'air' is public space; any signal traveling through the medium is there only at our allowance.

The opinion of The Indignant Observer is that we cannot afford to see or hear our nation's news become 'news'; the kind so prevalent in the circus that is our neighbour's media.

Canadians should expect as accurate a picture of events as we can reasonably assume; not editorializing and opinion, (read, verbal pollution). Do yourself a favour and Youtube Glenn Beck; this is the monster that their legislational change could give unholy birth to. Pundits like Bill O'Reilly, radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. Players at real political discourse given - for some ungodly reason - a podium, the likes of Anne Coulter - they aren't news, they're propagandists. And no matter how you slice it, that's still a piece of the news media pie.

Let's just keep our slice on the thin side, shall we? Fewer mental trans-fats? Less cognitive cholesterol, please?

Let's not inject 'truthiness' into Canada's information networks, where we should only ever expect the truth. And let's recognize that if a country cannot have an accurate, informed media, it cannot ever expect to be truly democratic.

As one of those go-to-guys when the shit goes down, Noam Chomsky said it best; "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."1

No bludgeons in Canadian Broadcasting, CRTC. Tell them so here. And do it right now.