The CBC, like all similar media, dates back to the days when news was hard to find. That hasn’t been true for decades now. Govt efforts to save them (eg Bill C-18) are stifling Canadians. Americans, look out: Your legacy media might want it for you next.
Not quite so simple. News was harder to avoid in the era of three networks. If you kept the radio or TV on for background while doing other stuff, you automatically heard the brief news items on the hour and half-hour. Now you can set up a playlist of your own choice that excludes news entirely, or pick online videos for entertainment value without any interjection of news, or just play videogames.
For sure, specific alternate views were harder to find in the three-network era. The Fairness Doctrine forced the networks to carry some “public service” features, which were intentionally dull and academic.
Magazines carried a limited variety of alternate views, and you could also hear from other countries via shortwave. Before 1990 I listened more to shortwave than to domestic radio.
Most importantly, the Fairness Doctrine PROHIBITED the fake partisan “news” that now dominates all big media. When you heard a reference to current events, it HAD TO BE more objective and neutral than anything you hear now.
Modern propaganda is NOT lies. Modern propaganda floods your senses with “news-like” nonsense to overwhelm your perception of reality. Your brain works overtime processing and remembering the endless characters and subplots of political soap opera. Fake impeachments, fake elections, fake trials, fake shutdowns, fake debt ceilings, etc. You don’t notice that the real plot never advances. Nobody solves any problems or changes any real laws.
Polistra's Mill 