CBC Television abruptly cancelled a featured Falun Gong documentary just hours before it was to air on Tuesday night, prompting complaints that the network bowed to pressure from Chinese government officials.So what sort of changes will be made to the documentary? Let's ask the guy who put this thing together...
“I was actually contacted myself by a gentleman who is a cultural consultant with the Chinese embassy,” Mr. Keay said. “He was very polite.” CBC will run a new version of the documentary “sooner rather than later,” the spokesman added, but couldn't say precisely when.
The Canadian director of Beyond The Red Wall says he has no intention of re-editing a piece that he spent three years working on. “We have to quote-unquote give balance,” veteran filmmaker Peter Rowe said in an interview.But that isn't the most appalling aspect of this matter... by a country mile.
"I've never experienced anything like these kinds of demands."
The documentary draws attention to Falun Gong practitioners' complaints of persecution, including beatings, torture and labour camps in China.
It also explores an investigative report done by the former Canadian MP David Kilgour and Canadian civil-liberties lawyer David Matas, who concluded last year that a “large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience” were being executed and their hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas harvested for transplant.Your CBC... appeasers to the world.
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UPDATE: CBC splutters... a denial
CBC-TV denies it suddenly dumped a controversial new documentary on China's Falun Gong movement because of pressure from the Chinese government.**********
Joel Chipkar from the Falun Dafa Association of Canada said his members were shocked at the cancellation and claimed the Chinese government has a campaign of intimidation against CBC.
CBC, which will cover the Beijing Olympics next year, ran a six-hour documentary in 2006 on the "new China" called China Rising.
It contained no references to the Chinese government's treatment of Falun Gong.
LAST WORD: Ezra Levant weighs in
Let's do a little thought experiment here.**********
What would the CBC have done if the U.S. Embassy had told them to yank any of its constant anti-American programming, such as its airing of Fahrenheit 9/11?
What would the CBC have done if the Israeli Embassy had told them to yank some of its anti-Israel programming?
What if the Canadian government had asked the same? Or a corporation, like Wal-Mart?
The CBC wouldn't have obeyed -- it would have turned it into a news story about foreign meddling and censorship.
FROM THE COMMENTS:
Levant hits it directly on the head. He is exactly right.
Privatize CBC immediately.
Heck, put it on the ballot with Senate reform and kill both with one fell swoop.