Be Still My Heart

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Chris Hedges went on the CBC to discuss the Occupy Wall Street movement and was forced to spend half the interview correcting the babble spewing from the mouth of a childish bully, businessman turned hack journalist, Kevin O’Leary.

Canadians need to be vigilant to this sort of garbage on the airwaves as our public broadcaster continues to desperately seek out programming that will get decent ratings, abandoning it’s role to uphold quality political discourse in the mainstream media. Mindless corporate ideologues like O’Leary make for sensational television but debased news coverage and idiotic commentary. It makes me sick to think my tax dollars are supporting a television program that gives a platform to his right-wing retching.

Hedges at the end of the interview says he won’t return to the program, and I can’t say I blame him. His voice is a valuable one, and the notion that a certain portion of Canadians will be deprived of hearing it because an anti-intellectual aggravator like O’Leary drove Hedges away is more than disappointing. When the actual experts on these vital issues start being marginalized by the mainstream media, we can expect our democracy to begin to decline as well.

Shame on the CBC for providing a platform to Mr. O’Leary.