Here's why I wanted to speak out on Canadaland
The fact is, we're facing a crisis in Canadian media and culture. We need to act now if we want there to be anyone left to tell our stories.
Listen to the show by clicking here
You might have heard my interview with Jesse Brown on Canadaland (if you haven't click here!). It was quite the conversation. We don't agree on everything, Jesse and I, but I think we clearly agree that Canadian media is not delivering enough for our country.
I went on the show because I wanted to share a pretty simple message. FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting has been around for almost four decades. That's 35 years of citizens coming together to fight for our core values: integrity, independence, cultural sovereignty, and democracy. But those values are under threat, as our domestic media struggles to survive while lawless platforms like Facebook and YouTube pump hate and lies on our screens on a massive scale, and with total impunity.
Of any institution in the country, the CBC is best-positioned to tell Canadian stories and bring us much-needed local news, especially in the growing number of markets where the local newspaper is either dead or on life-support.
We're just a group of concerned citizens. We don't take a penny from government or corporations and we don't represent media workers. We represent the public interest, in every sense. If Canadians don't stand up for our cherished CBC, we will never achieve the new deal for CBC that will allow it to serve us into the next century. So please, tell the CRTC what CBC means to you .
Our culture, our media and our democracy are under threat.
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Tech giants, one complacent government after the other, and the digitization of the media and cultural economy. And here we are, all of us on the brink of losing the last few local papers in our communities; of transforming our public broadcaster, CBC, into any other channel, advertisements and all; of finding ourselves isolated and rudderless, filled with the dizzying amount of clickbait and junk news thrown at us by foreign tech giants.
The power to change the status quo is in our hands.
But it isn't inevitable. The power to change the status quo is in our hands.
We can fight back. Here at Friends, we're 360,000 strong. We campaign during elections, we go to Ottawa to lobby the government, we educate and mobilize citizens accross the country. But we can't do it without you.
By signing up to our newsletter, you join the 360,000 Canadians like you who believe in independance, sovereignty from American culture, and a right to self-expression. It's time we fought back against complacency and against the tech giants who want to rule us without asking for permission.