John Doyle On Canadian Self-Censorship

IN MY NOTE below that the rhetoric should be cooled, I did not mean to suggest that the time had come to be conciliatory. Today in the Globe and Mail, John Doyle wrote a very clear, concise, and measured summation of the situation of Bill C-10.

I would hate to think that my suggesting that Nazi and Soviet comparisons were offside might be interpreted as suggesting the fight not be continued. I agree with Doyle's every word. And at the risk of raising the ire of the Globe and Mail and their firewall, I'm reproducing it here, verbatim.

Doyle writes:

Yesterday morning on CBC Newsworld, a reporter in Alberta was giving us the gist of the election results there. As footage of the Premier of Alberta rolled, viewers saw him walking into a victory celebration and the reporter informed us that Ed Stelmach "looked a bit like a rock star."

No, he didn't. There is hardly a middle-aged man anywhere in Canada who looks less like a rock star. Barack Obama looks like a rock star at his campaign events. Stelmach looks like some guy nervously counting the days until his vacation.

What the TV reporter was doing was engaging in subtle self-censorship by gravitating toward the winner and gilding the lily. It's what TV reportage in Canada so often does.

Self-censorship is the great weakness of the Canadian culture in general. This is a relatively small country and everyone knows where the power resides. The powerful don't need to make big threats. They just need to let it be known that they're watching. Suggestions are made, and too many people - especially in the TV racket - respond by subtly gravitating toward the point of view of the powerful.

Me, I see a connection between the rantings of cable honcho Jim Shaw and the implications of that complicated tax bill that might see tax credits being rescinded for TV and film productions deemed to be what is being loosely defined as "offensive."

What Shaw has wanted is an end to Canadian TV programs funded by the Canadian Television Fund that he deems offensive to his personal taste and sensibility. He regularly cites Trailer Park Boys as a show he doesn't like, which gives the public a sense of his taste and sensibility. With the breathtaking gall that seems to arise from control of a powerful cable company, Shaw and his staff make the assumption that they are speaking on behalf of many people. At last month's Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearings in Ottawa, Shaw's representatives spoke as if they represented all their subscribers.

It's all part of the same package - a right-wing government is in power, albeit in a minority government - and the right-wing agenda on culture comes to the forefront. Those forces in the minority Conservative government and their allies make the case that they are not indulging in censorship, but in the close examination of how public funds are spent and tax credits allowed.

To some extent, they are correct. It's not outright censorship. It's a warning that there are new people in power, new rules in place, and if the TV and film industry wants to continue to operate, it'll have to engage in self-censorship.

It's a matter of creating uncertainty about what might pass the test as worthy of funding. Create the uncertainty, and the screenwriters and producers begin to self-censor.

Now, it might seem like too large a leap to jump from a TV reporter in Alberta referring to the Premier as "a bit like a rock star" to the complaints of Shaw, to the proposed new rules that would allow the federal government to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other "offensive" content. But it isn't.

At last month's CRTC hearings, I could feel and hear the commission's deference to Shaw's position. At every opportunity, it seemed to be suggesting to TV writers, actors, directors and producers that they'd just have to get used to new rules. And in the past week, I haven't heard any authentic outrage from the Liberals or NDP about the new tax-credit legislation. This is a controversy in which the opposition will defer to the government, minority though it is.

The opposition is gravitating toward the winner, like that TV reporter in Alberta. To the winner goes the spoils.