The Canadian Spotlight on the American Media

The CBC's The Fifth Estate had a good show last night called Sticks and Stones
that deconstructs the American media post-9/11. This is one of the few big media shows that seems willing to delve into a lot of the muck that lefty bloggers spend most of their time on. A lot of people hate the CBC, but I for one can't imagine our media landscape without it. Canadians are in a unique position to study American culture being both immersed in it and yet still detached enough to not lose our perspective. The CBC has been vitally important for providing this perspective since 9/11, since the American media has quite clearly gone off the rails.

Of course to the subjects of the show, folks like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter et al, the program is probably a perfect example what they've based their careers upon, that is the "left-wing bias" of the mainstream media. Personally I'm tired of the debate over whether the media slant to the left or to the right, or are simply lazy, or are slanting to the right to avoid being labelled as left, or vice versa. It's a stupid and never-ending argument that doesn't really get us anywhere. But let's also not forget where the argument started either. If nothing else, debunking the idea that the media is uniformly biased to the left will leave the public with only one option: thinking critically at all times. What a novel concept.