Senate Committee — TRCM — Brief — emailletter_murschellandwatts_e

TRCM / Brief / emailletter_murschellandwatts_e

Senate Committees

November 25, 2024 To the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications My wife has already submitted an email to you. She has expressed herself very well, so I am going to submit her comments again to lend my support to the many people that will be pleading for the survival of the CBC. Prior to passing on my wife‘s comments I will add that I grew up on a farm in Southeastern Alberta. In my early childhood we were without electrical power, but we did have a cabinet radio powered by a car battery sized battery. The CBC station which we could receive was our only source of news and weather.

CBC played such a vital role in our keeping up with local, national and international news. I vividly recall when we first got electrical power and, eventually, a television! We had one station – CBC. That brought us improved access to international news as well as hockey night in Canada! CBC was our link to the rest of the world. Over the subsequent decades my options for accessing the news have increased remarkably but my number one choice for reliable and comprehensive news continues to be CBC. We live in a world that is rife with misinformation but CBC remains a reliable source of comprehensive information.

We have American friends who, when they visit us, frequently comment on the quality of the news we receive from CBC, which is not subject to the sensationalization and bias that is so common in American news. I will now add the comments that my wife submitted as she has phrased it so well: My husband and I tune in to CBC Radio Vancouver every morning as we get ready for the day, and catch up on the daily news with Adrienne Arsenault and Ian Hanomansing with The National in the evening. These are not just daily routines.

This is our way of accessing facts through a common and trustworthy source of information, created by Canadian journalists for a Canadian audience, based on the principles of honest and fair reporting. Along the way we are instilling the values of integrity and critical thinking in our children. We are seeing the political radicalization of our friends and neighbours in the US, and the same worrisome trends in Canada.

In fact, it seems the majority of Canadians already get most of the news from social media, curated by algorithms and content creators that do not follow sound journalistic practices or even a regard for the truth. I ask that you ponder how to best protect Canadians from the effects of unregulated social media, and find ways to strengthen the CBC so it can hold on to its talented staff and remain a COMMON source of information for all of us at the local, regional and national level. Thank you for your consideration. Yours truly, Warren Murschell and Elizabeth Watts

Document details

Collection	Senate Committees
Citation	TRCM / Brief / emailletter_murschellandwatts_e
Type	committee
Volume / chapter	441 / Brief / emailletter_murschellandwatts_e
Language	en
Format	pdf
Source	COMM_SEN
Identifier	b4d0f9fa38a9e6513efff002ddbeb3e43abe48a6

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