Cross-Country Checked-out

"Canada as a whole would probably be better, Alberta would definitely be better as a state than a province."

This was the first comment broadcast on CBC's Cross Country Checkup on February 23, focused on discussing opinions on either side of Trump's 51st state comments. The rest of the intro features phone calls from these sides of the issue. Some being appalled at Trump's 51st state rhetoric, some being in favour. Cross Country Checkup host Ian Hanomansing was joined by Jeremey Hobson of NPR's The Middle to give equal weight to those who believe international law should be violated and those who don't.

Rest assured though, the two hosts began the show proper by saying that "a lot of people are angry that we are even having this conversation." This anger was shifted onto the original question the show posed, instead of the actual premise.

"We are very careful about how we do a program like this," Hanomansing said. He later read a comment from a Bluesky user criticizing the framing, where he repeated that changing the question was sufficient. This conversation was very important, you see.

The rest of the program showed that to be a complete farce. Mara Liasson, NPR's political correspondent (and the first guest) said that Trudeau should have responded by saying Canada would have a disproportionate representation in US Congress. After annexation. Great amount of care.

Other guests on the program are Dragon's Den regular and businesswoman Arlene Dickinson, war criminal David Frum and Trump loyalist Kevin O'Leary. Excuse me while I hope to reach the toilet before my nausea makes a mess.

As I, and others, have pointed out on Bluesky, the issue is not discussing Trump's rhetoric. The issue is the normalization of it. By treating these "experts" as valuable sources of analysis, they obscure their interests. Meanwhile, by taking calls from those in favour and against violating international law, the issue is reduced to simply one of opinion. This is a documented phenomenon and one that causes great harm. Acceptance of climate change as a real danger was hampered for years by news media presenting dissenters with equal weight as those who had data and evidence behind them.

Hanomansing and CBC News Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon are completely ignorant of this dynamic. Hanomansing took to Bluesky before the program aired to assure critics that "it is important to talk about." He never posted about the actual framing of the issue.

Fenlon fared no better. After the program was aired, he wrote in CBC News' editor's blog that those filing complaints were simply misunderstanding their intentions. In other words, that they were wrong to be incensed.

"There are important lessons in all of this about the precision of language, the framing of questions and the challenges of conveying complex ideas when you have only a few words to use in a program title or description," Fenlon wrote. "There are also lessons about how good intent can be derailed by word choice."

Fenlon's argument was that there were two factors that prompted this pushback: "the program's title and the proposed question to the audience." Fenlon did not address criticisms of treating those who believe in violating international law and sovereignty as worthy of discussion. "Good intent" should be exonerative, according to him. Even if you believe that there was good intent to begin with, it isn't.

This hyper-focus on the particular wording of the question is intentional. Neither Hanomansing nor Fenlon actually addressed concerns about normalizing this rhetoric. They merely defended their editorial choices by saying that they were careful, or that they just wanted to hear from the public. Here's what Hanomansing said approximately an hour into the program.

"Call-in shows like ours both The Middle and Cross Country Checkup take on serious sensitive topics that we think people are talking about and should have the opportunity to talk about on the air– Doesn't mean we're promoting it or both-sides-ing it, that's also something I saw online a lot. But learning about what people are thinking and why on both sides of the border and on many sides of the issue."

Here, the game is given away. There are not "many sides" to a violation of international law, at least none worth consideration. To have a call-in show that would fill approximately two hours of air time, opinions that are fundamentally against this law must be fielded. If one were to seriously address the actual question, it would be framed around that. "Do you believe international law should be broken and sovereignty violated?" While still problematic, it would at least show how nakedly stupid the debate is. International law is not sacred, of course. But annexation, invasion and militarist expansionism are, at least theoretically, agreed to be bad.

CBC News and its representatives also downplay the degree to which Canadians were outraged at this edition of the program. If Bluesky is any indication, hundreds of Canadians felt the need to voice their displeasure. Beyond the social media sphere, The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council closed their complaints section due to the overwhelming amount of entries aimed at the program. It's clear that the program was subject to a waterfall of valid criticism. Ignoring that is impossible. Shifting the discussion to focus on the previous title which you changed, provides a plausibly sincere apology and an excuse for continuing the show.

CBC News, and public broadcasting as a whole, is an integral part of the news ecosystem. But it's a mistake to believe that its mission is to inform and reflect the public. No, it's mission is to perpetuate the ideology of the Canadian state: a capitalist ideology. I've wrote on this before, in a far more in-depth fashion. But in this particular instance, Canada is seeing a sort of imperial boomerang effect. Clandestinely, alongside the US, Canada has violated the sovereignty of other nations. Viewed this way, that grants it the position of, at least, a viable proposal. So when you combine all these factors and add that the most powerful leader in the hemisphere rhetorically attacks Canada in this way... well... it's worth "discussion" isn't it?

It would be naive to believe that nefarious CBC News journalists and executives are smoking cigars and plotting how to normalize US annexation in dark board rooms. As PressProgress Editor Luke Lebrun put in a Bluesky post, "When journalism is not rooted in any moral values beyond 'objectivity' and 'balance,' this is the natural outcome."

Though it would make this article far too long, the omitting of the settler-colonial aspect of this expansionist rhetoric is key, as well. Indigenous perspectives are not prioritized. Neither is discussion of Israel's genocide in Gaza, which is the most blatant and violent example of settler-colonial expansion that is ongoing today. Once again, objectivity is a term to be deployed to defend from criticism, not an accurate description of our journalism's intent.

On one hand, the valuing of capitalist imperialist opinions takes precedence in their choice for interviews. On the other, any opinion aligned with international law and sovereignty is treated as equal to those opposed to it. The mere structure of the program shifts the idea closer to acceptance.

Cross Country Checkup did not fail. It conducted itself the exact way in which it was designed.