patrick.net

Every public broadcaster in the world has one client, the government. As such it is never independent. ...

The public broadcaster, once loved to excess by every Canadian is now widely hated, and last time I looked, its “news” is watched by fewer than 2% of the population. ...

Why Don’t They Love Us Anymore?

It was the betrayal of the coronavirus pandemic that took the CBC from a rough 35 percent wanting reform to 62 percent wanting it shuttered in its entirety. During the spring of 2023, the citizen-funded National Citizens Inquiry travelled the country taking testimony from doctors, nurses, scientists, the vaccine-injured, morticians, and public health officials. ...

A province-wide study showed that over 60 percent were worried about the safety of the vaccine, but any story she proposed about safety concerns was shut down. Every story—about people who had lost jobs because of vaccine hesitancy, the vaccine injured, families broken, family members [RK14] ostracized, depressed university students, suicides from lost businesses and incomes—that countered the government’s narrative was refused. ...

The CBC has flagrantly betrayed the public trust and that fact is now reflected in its rampant unpopularity. Founded to “reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences,” it has become a bully, a hysteric sowing division between every conceivable cohort, black against white, indigenous against settler, the other-sexed against “normals,” and especially creating hatred against conservatives. By every conceivable metric the CBC has failed.

Quit reading all those conspiracy theories! Schoolmarmish NPR ran a scolding story yesterday headlined, “Politically charged rumors and conspiracy theories about Helene flourish on X.”

X! Corporate media’s bane and its newest bogeyman. Without X, without free speech, dumb citizens would have to get all their news from NPR, whose job is to ensure we don’t see or hear anything that might disturb our carefully collated thoughts.

That’s all well and good, but this laughable paragraph exposed NPR’s moronic manipulation:

There's no evidence the federal government is withholding aid from affected
states. The Republican governors of South Carolina and Georgia have praised
the federal government's support.

The old “no evidence” gag! In other words, NPR isn’t denying the federal government is withholding aid. They just saying you can’t prove it.

NPR’s claim was a classic example of the argument from ignorance fallacy, ingloriously known as an argumentum ad ignorantiam. The statement, "there's no evidence the federal government is withholding aid," implies that the lack of evidence proves it is not happening. But just because there is no evidence yet does not necessarily mean something isn't happening or couldn't happen.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The biggest problem with NPR’s favorite logical fallacy is that it can swing both ways. NPR could have just as easily reported, “the federal government has offered no evidence it is providing aid to affected states.”

NPR can get its funding by selling magic crystals on its late night broadcasts.