Silly Little Country

The Quality of 'The Current'

'The Current' is CBC Radio One's flagship morning news analysis show, and actually has occasional, if perhaps inadvertent, good news analysis, from time to time.
My propensity to listen to a show is often formed by the intro of the first minute or so. This show always starts with some pithy joke - time was the punch-lines were all more or less, "Gee, look how stupid George Bush is".
They have now advanced beyond that. You can judge by this morning's excellent effort.
Some background first.
Recently a number of Afghan children in the area served by Canadian troops were killed by an explosion. The villagers generally blamed the Canadian Forces and there was a lot of fuss, villagers protesting, perhaps even some reproof from some levels of government.
The Canadian Forces investigated and produced a report on the incident. Here is a report (from CBC Online!) about that report. Note one key fact - nobody contests that the children were handling a device that exploded and killed them. The only debating point is the origin of the device, and note that not just the Canadian investigation concludes it was an IED.
Here is the text of the morning joke opening today's 'The Current':

It's Tuesday, March 3rd.

A military investigation found that Canadian soldiers are not responsible for a bomb blast that killed three children in Afghanistan last week.

Currently, investigators underscored their conclusion arguing that people don't kill people. Bombs kill people.

So let's see. They have slandered the investigators, and generally the Canadian forces. And note how this utterly stupid joke is based on lies and a complete ignorance of the facts. It is the ignorance that bothers me; if you open a news analysis show with an intro that shows you have NO concern for facts, why should anyone keep listening? And I did not. In fact most of the reports I have heard on this show came on when I joined after missing the intro.
This is what my tax dollars go to.
By the way, it is also not the first time when the online CBC reporting has been much better than the broadcast version - I posted long ago on a Neil McDonald howler where he was reporting on TV false statements where the correct ones were already on CBC Online. One must wonder who manages this farce. Or does anyone?
As I likely won't listen to this show for a long time again, I should bring up one more point.
An ongoing conceit of this show is that there should be some deep-voiced guy intoning the opening joke. You should actually listen to it for just the degree of complacency and self-satisfaction it bespeaks. What a gang of idiots (I do not just mean stupid people, I mean also people who stick to their own path whatever, whatever the facts in this case)!
You can listen here.
You might listen for a little while, as the host interviews a West Bank Hamas official - "even if you are a Jew". Does she mention the Hamas charter? And in the end he cannot even speak for Hamas, as he clearly says. What a fool!

posted by Alan Adamson @ 4:14 PM