gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Watching the watchers

Q: Who's watching the watchers?

A: Nobody, today.

CBC Watch bills itself as an "Independent forum discussing the CBC's violation of the Broadcasting Act." And while it sometimes imagines itself to be my employer's arch enemy, monitoring the crown corporation is not such a bad idea. Everything that gets your dollars, tax or otherwise, should be monitored. And even criticism can be informative, entertaining and even - gasp! - constructive. Plenty of CBCers read it, just like Frank Magazine and the Teamakers blog.

Problem is (as the aforementioned Teamaker has pointed out - twice) CBC Watch usually sucks. It promises to "expose the bias", but ends up delivering obscenity-laden, ideologically-driven rants and flame wars.

And when someone points that out, here's the sort of response that gets posted:

Obviously the cbc sucks! So does the moron who posted the comment about cbc watch sucks. Another liberal moron from the east. The CBC is so pathetically left wing biased it's really quite amazing. It's a billion dollar a year infomercial for a way of thinking. A rediculously left wing idiotic way of thinking I might add. NDPers only make up 7 or 8 percent of our population, how rediculous is it that our national broadcaster pushes the views of 8 percent of the population? It's absurd of course! The anti-Bush propaganda that the CBC (communist broadcasting corporation) pushed for a week or two before the US election was outrageous...might as well call it the Micheal Moore network. After the Democrats lost the people on the CBC were literally having to hold back tears. It was really incredible to watch. Despite the best efforts of the liberal media and Hollywood Americans were smart enough to see past the propaganda and elect the RIGHT guy...unlike the moronic voters of Canada. What a rediculous country we live in. I'm ashamed to be a Canadian!

Get the picture?

I only mention this because I keep coming back to CBC Watch hoping for better. But today I get nothing at all.

Then again, as a colleague pointed out, perhaps "Bandwidth exceeded" means the site is so insanely popular that they can't possibly keep up with demand. What do I know?