CBC Cuts on the Bias

It's sad for many Canadians that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation finds itself in dire economic straits. Sad for many reasons, not the least of which is that the memory among older Canadians is that the quality programming we relied upon and trusted has become so diluted in more recent years. The CBC has been gradually transformed from a trustworthy source of information and quality entertainment to one whose mandate to achieve greater popularity among the masses has geared it to low-brow entertainment and biased reportage.

Its saving grace is that it still manages to retain some worthwhile programming, and for that we can be grateful. But who knows for how much longer, given the recent news of the implementation of 'massive cutbacks' in personnel and programming the Canadian public has been warned is just around the corner. Due in large part, we're also informed, to the fact that an insensitive Conservative government - which has, given its due, continued to fund the Corporation to the sum of $1-billion a year of tax funds - isn't ponying up more.

If some personnel are to be axed, there are many who would nominate Anna Maria Tremonti, host of The Current. This morning public affairs show is actually quite an excellent one, and truth told, its host is quite excellent, herself. But it would be a far more effective vehicle for transmitting information if it did so in an objectively fair manner. And that the position of host was handed to Ms. Tremonti whose hostility toward Israel is evident at the least of provocations is a pity, indeed.

Any opportunity Ms. Tremonti has to slander by inference is never lost, and listeners are treated to an ongoing barrage of tainted opinion from one who, in an earlier incarnation, reported directly from the Middle East, where her perspective was as skewed then as it is now. This morning Ms. Tremonti delighted in reading a number of listeners' letters responding to the segment of The Current expanding on the late Roy Farran's murder of an Israeli teen.

The readers viewed Mr. Farran as a war hero, capably led by Ms. Tremonti's style of interviewing, and her subjectively biased intonations throughout her nuanced questioning of her various guests involved in the brief study of the Farran affair. The pleasure she took in reading these affirmative responses was only mildly offset by the grudging revelation of today's guest who had written a book about Britain's travail in handling Jewish 'terrorists', that Mr. Farran had admitted his guilt.

A few weeks previous to this, expanding on a series about water management and international water shortage crises, Israel was once again highlighted as a social malefactor in its greedily inappropriate use of water, shortchanging the Palestinians whose plight, unalloyed by any mitigating factors, Ms. Tremonti, like other lib-left intellectuals loves to dwell upon, denouncing Israel in the process. During that show short shrift was given to an Israeli water expert.

Whereas other interviewees who were critical of Israel's over-use of water in a desert climate were held to be far more meaningful. I most certainly do not anticipate that Ms. Tremonti will do a follow-up to explore the fact that Israel is a leader in desalinisation processes, sharing its expertise with its Middle East neighbours, as well as with countries like China, anxious to import such expertise to solve their own water shortage problems.

Nor do I anticipate that she will profess any interest whatever in the little-publicized fact that despite Israel's constant struggle to maintain a sufficient water supply – or perhaps because of it – Israel was named the world's most efficient recycled water user in a United Nations report issued in honor of International Water Day, at the fifth World Water Forum held in Istanbul. Or that the UN report ranked Israel as a world leader in desalinated water use.

There are presently several hundred Israeli companies whose water technology exports have been sent around the world, benefiting over one hundred countries, last year. That represents $1.4-billion in value of water management, recycling and purification, irrigation, desalination, and safety technologies. Not a bad record at all, and encompassing water-usage technologies other than desalination.

The fact that Israel purifies and re-uses close to 70% of its annual waste water for agriculture, is quite the accomplishment. Considering that the second most efficient recycled water user, Spain, recycles a mere 12% of its waste water for agriculture. The host country of the UN water forum, Turkey, recycles 3.6% of sewage water. In a world where some 1.4-million children die on an annual basis as a result of polluted water, this is quite the overall accomplishment.

Can we Canadians anticipate that The Current plans an update? If they do, it will be, doubtless, to linger on Friends of the Earth-Middle East urging Israel to tackle its high - by developed-world standards - domestic water-consumption usage.