CBC Radio: Vinyl Cafe and Age of Persuasion

Maybe I'm starting to show my age, but I'm starting to find music uninspiring and unremarkable, at least the stuff on the radio anyway. I haven't really bothered to explore new music, but turned to CBC radio instead. I've been exploring some of the shows on there. Quirks and Quarks caught my attention initially, along with Ideas. I listened to some episodes on some of my long drives and found them interesting, but not really gripping.

Then I discovered Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean and Age of Persuasion with Terry O'Reilly. I'll write more about Vinyl Cafe in a later post, but two episodes from both shows stood out to me given the current federal political climate. Both have to do with political ads and using media in political campaigns.

The first episode is from Mr. McLean commenting on the tastefulness, or lack thereof, of negative advertising. I share his opinion that negative ads are disgraceful and do not contribute to any intelligent debate about the kind of policies that are good for our country. They break down issues into simplistic black and white points of view and are rife with disinformation. Say what you want about Stephane Dion, but his Green Shift plan was a progressive attempt to factor in environmental factors into economic accounting of businesses. It was worth a serious debate by our political leaders and media. Unfortunately, as Mr. McLean illustrates, the negative ads by the Conservative Party pretty much stifled any debate and Mr. Dion eventually lost the election and was summarily deposed by the Liberal Party. Here's an excerpt of the Vinyl Cafe episode (the rest of it involves a song and a letter correspondence).

The second episode is from Mr. O'Reilly explaining how negative political advertising came about and why they work. He breaks down the history of negative advertising and the effect of new media technologies on political campaigns. He also explains why these ads work. You can listen to the episode here.

I think it's safe to say that we'll have another federal election sometime within the next two years. Unfortunately, with that will come the slew of negative ads and over-the-top political spin. Until the general public lashes back against this type of advertising and rewards politicians who take an enlightened approach to campaigning, political parties will continue to take big issues that need enlightened debate and dumb them down with cheap spin tricks and simplistic black and white points of view. We will all continue to be worse off for it.