Last CBC noontime radio news of the year -2024
In the mid 1960’s, I babysat 2 young boys and a small girl who had been neighbours for many years. On weekends, the parents liked to go out with friends and I would routinely get the call.
When the kids had gone to bed, I sometimes looked through the parents’ magazine collection and went through an array of popular magazines. But the father also used to buy a newspaper called ‘Hush!’.
‘Hush!’ is an example of what I came to understand as a ‘police blotter’. It contained lurid descriptions of local crimes – shootings- knifings- break ins and the like. The photos usually showed defiant young men smirking at a camera while ever-present handcuffs revealed that they had been arrested.
Although I was about 14 at the time, I knew that Hush! was off limits for me. It was strictly adult fare.
I knew this well since I delivered the Toronto Telegram (The Pink Tely) at that time and often hung out at a variety store to await the drop of the 50 papers for my route. The woman shopkeeper – who had her 5th degree Black Belt in customer surveillance – routinely spotted me thumbing through papers like ‘Midnight’, Hush! and the National Enquirer.
“Hey – those aren’t for someone your age – and if you want to buy them, I’ll need a note from your parents”.
When I later attended York University and lived at Vanier Residence in 1970, a number of us on the 13th floor started a Buffalo news TV club. We fashioned a simple spreadsheet and recorded the items reported on Eyewitness News. Every time there was a ‘Five dinger’ fire reported, we rang a bell. We laughed like hyenas at the police blotter reporting that had taken over stateside television airways. This was highly juvenile behaviour on our part but it serves to remind that Canadian reporting at that time was very different.
Politics, City Council, government decisions, world events and in depth reporting dominated Canadian news channels.
Fast Forward fifty odd years.
The CBC radio news on December 31, 2024 at Noon in Toronto began with a report of a shooting with all the trimmings: They didn’t have a suspect. Police are investigating. People with knowledge should contact police. Then the mandatory interview with a shocked neighbour vouching for the multi-decade peacefulness of the neighbourhood -until now.
The second news item was a nearby knifing. The same reporting boilerplate was used. Rinse -repeat.
The third item was a jewellery store break- in with hammers. This time they caught the would be robbers.
The fourth item was another jewellery store break-in also with hammers. This time the perpetrators were on the loose.
The fifth item was an item on Canada’s junior men’s hockey and their prospects for a New Year’s Eve game against the US.
I am not making this up.
Just these five items followed by the weather.
And this is from our publicly funded broadcasting corporation.
Marshall McLuhan often noted that the old media form becomes the content of the new media.
Maybe this is why the CBC channels the police blotter publications of the past.
Maybe ‘Hush!’ is still out there and CBC uses it to write the news.
Maybe.
But here is the thing that this one news broadcast has me thinking about.
There has been a lot of recent talk about banning cell phones in the classroom. Both social media and smartphones are now seen as culprits in the worrisome increase in mental health issues in young teens, especially girls.
But I don’t think we can exclusively blame youth mental health issues on social media and its hand-held pipeline.
In classrooms everywhere, we encourage teens to keep up to date on what’s going on. We encourage then to look beyond social media to understand current events.
Now imagine parents and teachers encouraging their teens to listen to CBC radio news at Noon on December 31.
You can see where I am going with this.
Shouldn’t we expect more of a national news broadcaster than a repeat of the daily work plan of the hold-up squad?