The CBC shows its bias, in real-time

I was stuck in traffic on the 401 today, and had the CBC radio on.

I got to witness first-hand the increasing slant of a current CBC news topic.

The story is about some Canadians complaining that they were denied US dollar accounts by the Royal Bank because they hold dual-citizenship with countries on a US list of banned countries (such as Iran, Cuba, etc.).

The first pass of the story was reasonably straightforward; the main thing I noticed was that it was the kind of story the CBC would choose to promote -- what one might call a "level-one" bias, i.e., the articles you choose to run with, or not.

By the time the story hit the 6pm CBC radio and TV news, both the bias and the rhetoric had been bumped up; the slant of the story had been noticeably increased to imply that the US was interferring in sovereign Canadian affairs. Call it "level-two" bias.

By the time the 10 o'clock news came around, CBC news was in full gear, and CBC news gave what I considered to be not only a terribly slanted story, but a dishonest one. Call it "level-three".

The reason I say this is because Peter Mansbridge's opening sentence was something along the lines of "Canadian citizens are being denied US dollar bank accounts because of where they happen to have been born" -- the kind of statement designed to create an emotional reaction. As the story progresses, one complainant explains that, although Canadian, because he was born in Iran, he also happens to incidentally have an Iranian passport.

What the report should have made crystal clear, and emphasized, was that he was an Iranian citizen, as much an Iranian citizen, in fact, as he is a Canadian citiizen. And the US has decided to apply this law equally to all Iranians, not just some.

Those on the left are howling that this is an infringement of rights. As CBC radio put it, "at the Royal Bank, all Canadian citizens are equal, but some are more equal than others."

But wait a minute. The argument cuts both ways. Possession of foreign passports give dual-citizenship Canadians additional rights and privileges that "ordinary" single-state Canadians don't have -- rights to visit a country, move to the country (immigrate is probably not the right word when you are already a citizen), rights to work in the country. Is this OK with those on the left? For some Canadians to have special privileges, but not all?

Apparently so.

The other point, and an obvious one, is that if holding an Iranian passport causes a Canadian problems, he or she can presumably renounce citizenship in the other country, at which point they could expect to be treated like all other Canadians.

Problem is, too many Canadian citizens today want to "have their cake and eat it too" -- in this case, all the pluses associated with dual-citizenship, and none of the negatives.

And the CBC is more than happy to oblige -- especially when it involves a chance to smear the US and stir up anti-US sentiment.

After all, what could be more Canadian than the right to have a US-dollar bank account?

And that's the way the Ball bounces.