It’s not charity at CBC with Easter Seals telethon
Bruce Rainnie Easter Seals Telethon with Anthony Comeau
CBC are charging Easter Seals about $10,000 and not donating their services to the telethon. Yes they charge money to Easter Seals to make a profit for the local CBC station. Some of your donations go into the $1 billion in tax dollars CBC already gets.
The Easter Seals Telethon promotion just got started. We will have to endure three months of the local celebrities at CBC fawning over a child with a disability as if they love the little fellow.
In truth CBC is on the quest for viewer ratings and public relations. Behind the scenes at CBC there are cynical people who display disability bigotry more than compassion.
EastLink doesn’t charge for its’ community coverage. Who would? Did the networks around the world take a cut of your donations to Haiti relief?
Each year CBC negotiates a bigger and bigger slice of the pie from Easter Seals donations. Even worse, they hard ball Rotary in negotiations and have threatened in the past to stop the Telethon unless paid.
From working closely with CBC for more than three years, I came to realize they hate to cover disability stories. Unless the story occurs during January to April, during the Easter Seals season when they need the publicity, CBC ignores stories about people with disabilities.
What are these stories? A disabled man is evicted from his home. Seniors on disabilities forced into nursing homes. People on disabilities living in poverty. Up to 8 children with autism kicked out of schools. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of stories but CBC refuses to cover them.
Let’s put aside all the stories about real people in real difficult situations for a minute. Let’s put aside that the CBC employees voted to kick a journalist out of the Press Gallery to make it hard for him to cover stories. I will admit we critique CBC for their bad coverage and they don’t like it.
For some reason CBC in New Brunswick can cover a man with MS lost his disability supplement over $1.76. CBC New Brunswick covered the story over and over – seven times. They kept the pressure on the government until the government gave in. New Brunswick Man Wins Back Disability Supplement
Let’s look at one disability story CBC Charlottetown did cover last year – the boy who was assaulted by Pat and the Elephant. School board bans van driver
The story sat in the out bin at CBC for months until we convinced one courageous radio reporter to do a story. After that, Compass covered the story on the TV news. It was like pulling teeth it hurt them so bad to report the news for someone with a disability. CBC Radio did the followup but again it was one reporter. When the story continued, CBC Compass dropped it.
The Charlottetown Guardian newspaper was worse. They refused to cover the story at all. One of the reporters knew the mother of the assaulted boy and was asked to cover it but his editor nixed the idea we are told.
The disease of conceit and bigotry at CBC Charlottetown must be a fungus in the building. There are some good people at CBC who care, some who have family members with disabilities. Most of them are bigoted hypocrites looking to make some publicity off the disabled and cash-in once a year.
Don’t stop donating to good causes for those living with disabilities. Send your money directly to Camp Gencheff instead. At the Credit Union they take donations for Camp Gencheff and they won’t skim off the top.
Camp Gencheff
PO Box 412
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island C1A 7K7
