Source : The Vancouver Province

Poor America. Imagine, your best intentions being bombarded time and again by a big, bad public broadcaster in Canada.

I speak, of course, of the Fraser Institute's Barry Cooper scrambling to defend our southern neighbour in the wake of what Cooper calls "unquestionably exacerbated" anti-Americanism emanating from the CBC in the year following the 9/11 tragedy.

In a report released Tuesday, co-authored by the managing director of the institute's Alberta Policy Research Centre, 2,383 statements from 225 stories aired on the CBC in 2002 were examined by intrepid researchers.

While 50 per cent of the statements were found to be neutral, the number of negative statements about Canada-U.S. relations and the buildup to the Iraq war more than doubled the positive ones.

Imagine that.

Of course, anybody with the time Cooper and Co. have on their hands to dissect this kind of information could probably find as much "unquestionably exacerbated" anti-Canadian diatribe gushing from any number of U.S.-based broadcast media outlets.

But then we just get into one of those utterly futile and totally unproductive hissing wars.

What is interesting about Cooper's take on all this is that he purports to be a champion of democracy and freedom for all.

He's written numerous lengthy and heart-felt treatises on the topic -- not the least of which was one titled "Powers Reserved to the Electorate: Limitations and Ambiguities."

It was delivered at a Fraser Institute conference in Vancouver in November of 2001.

In that address, he delved deeply into both sides of the big-government-vs.-direct-democracy [referendum] arguments.

A noble endeavour, to be sure.

And this is precisely what the CBC had to do to round out its coverage of the post 9/11 era -- examine both sides of the issue.

While it was very easy for the mass news media -- and the rest of us -- to jump on the jingo bandwagon following 9/11, the hard and prudent road demanded a more thorough and honest look at what had taken place and why.

That was so we could chart the most informed course to fixing the problem.

To its credit, the Mother Corp. did not shy away from the tender underbelly of this festering global sore.

And it spread the responsibility around -- including a dollop or two for the well-meaning but sometimes misguided administration of our southern neighbour.

One of the main pillars of any democracy -- direct or otherwise -- is freedom of speech.

It's what separates us from those living in tyranny.

The U.S. knows this.

Cooper knows this.

And, thankfully, the CBC knows this too -- even if it occasionally means broadcasting unpopular reports at critical times in history.

© The Vancouver Province