Off Wing Opinion

In a move that conjures echoes of George Orwell's 1984, the Canadian Broadcasting Company has removed the video clip of Don Cherry's Coach's Corner that dealt with the war with Iraq from the company's Web site:

The controversial Coach's Corner spot, the one in which the Iraq war was debated, has been officially removed from the CBC Sports Web site. As far as cyberspace is concerned, the Don Cherry-Ron MacLean argument does not exist.

Some CBC staffers say they are upset over what they call the network's suppression of information.

The CBC's on-line department was told a few days ago to erase the exchange between MacLean, the host of Hockey Night in Canada, and Cherry, the show's popular commentator. The CBC provides Webcast inventory of all 2002-03 Coach's Corner intermission shows, except the March 22 spot.

"The on-line staff were told to take it down," said a source close to the network. "They weren't given a reason."

Said a CBC source, "I thought we were supposed to provide information. Coach's Corner might have been the wrong forum for Cherry's comments, but it's still censorship to some extent."

CBC spokesperson Ruth-Ellen Soles said the segment was pulled because "the CBC feels Coach's Corner was an inappropriate forum for a discussion on the war and, therefore, we don't think the Coach's Corner Web site is an appropriate place for it, either."

Could the Coach's Corner spot have been moved to the CBC News Web site?

"We thought that because Ron and Don are sports commentators and not political commentators there was no reason to put it anywhere else," Soles said.

Congratulations to the censors at the CBC, the people who don't seem to think that Canadians can decide for themselves what to think about the war. What an incredibly gutless move. I've followed this story pretty closely over the past few weeks, and you can find all of my previous posts, here:

Hockey Night Meets The Press.

From Above The 49th Parallel.

There's also apparently a move afoot at the CBC to try to get Cherry fired or suspended because he had the audacity to note that anti-war sentiment has been running highest in Quebec -- the province in which the booing of the Star Spangled Banner before NHL games started in the first place.

Like many Americans who are life-long ice hockey fans, I've developed more than a passing interest in Canada and things Canadian. For many years now, it has been increasingly clear that Canada's political elites have had to work very hard to contain a barely concealed condecension for anything and everything American. When our nation was at peace, it was something to shrug your shoulders over and simply tolerate. At bottom, I somehow always thought that Canada and the U.S. would simply be friends.

But now that America is at war, it's increasingly clear that the folks at the controls in Ottawa and the people who put them in power simply can't help themselves. They should know that their message is getting through to the American people. And when the time comes, I'm not sure they're going to like the response.

UPDATE: I found this reminder that not all Canadians feel the way the censors at the CBC do.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2003 at 11:58 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.