The CBC Just Had an Argument With Its Own Audience on the Importance of Climate Change

The CBC did their call-in show about the stories of 2025. What ensued was the CBC arguing against the importance of climate change.

Earlier today, I did a writeup of what made 2025 distinct in the world of digital rights and technology. I concluded that it was the increasingly broad acceptance of the erosion of human rights. Of course, this observation was made in the scope of digital rights and technology. You can argue that there were more important stories in general if you took away those limitations on what is important and just asked what is the most important story in general.

One of the things I’ve reported on is the erosion of trust in the media in general. The issue with trust in the media is a very complex one. You can’t point to one issue and say that if the media fixed this one issue, trust would magically get restored. At the same time, you can point to numerous factors that contributed to people having less trust in the mainstream media entirely.

In 2023, I mentioned that intentionally publishing falsehoods about the state of the Online News Act was one factor, but it isn’t the only one.

Another factor is the low quality coverage of politics in general – the CBCs bread and butter I might add. One aspect is the relentless sane washing efforts in a bid to please Trump. This predictably backfired when Trump devoted an entire website to calling them a bunch of liars anyway. So, not only is the mainstream media giving left leaning people reason to distrust them, but completely and utterly failing to win over right leaning people as well – people who would never trust them in the first place.

Another factor is the coverage on climate change. Throughout 2025, the CBC seemingly made the decision to give non-stop coverage of Mark Carney pushing a pipeline in an era of climate change. The CBC sold this effort as a nation building exercise and an effort to strengthen Canada’s economic independence. This while giving previous little coverage to the issue of climate change.

Canadian’s, of course, are very much attuned to the issue of climate change in spite of the mainstream medias efforts to change the channel. This thanks to the fact that every Summer for the last several years has been a year of either almost unprecedented wildfires thanks to climate change, or record breaking fire season. Canadian’s don’t need to be reminded of the burning down of the village of Lytton in BC. They don’t need to be reminded of the hellscape images from Fort McMurray, Alberta. Canadian’s certainly haven’t forgotten the evacuations caused by the Yellowknife wildfires. Canada is literally on fire every year. More and more cities are either under threat of wildfire or are getting completely choked out from the smoke. I still have memories of one year where it was literally ashing. There was so much smoke that ash was falling down like snow where I lived at one point.

Yet, when I saw all the coverage of the new pipeline being pushed by Prime Minister, Mark Carney, I find myself asking where all the coverage of climate change and what Canadians can do to slow the process down went. If anything, as a viewer, it felt like I was one of the only people who remembers what happened just a Summer before. This while organizations like the CBC take advantage of the fact that it’s Winter and there is an increased chance that fewer people are thinking of climate change to talk about climate change.

Today, I just happened to tune into the CBCs show, Cross Country Checkup. My jaw hit the floor with what I ended up watching.

No doubt, the people planning out the show had no idea what was about to happen. It likely was supposed to be little more than a look back at the year of 2025. This while throwing out the softball question of what viewers considered was the biggest story or what they would consider to be a story that was under reported. They brought in senior writing staff to talk about the different stories including at least one political correspondent. Shortly after the show started, they took people’s calls and e-mail messages. One by one, people responded by saying that climate change was under reported on.

One person called in saying that he is worried about the future generation because of climate change. Another said that he agreed with previous callers and said that humanity has already burned through half of the known petroleum reserves and that cutbacks should be happening, and others argued that Carney pushing a pipeline strikes them as precisely the wrong direction that he should be going in. Apart from the caller talking about the petroleum reserves, it’s like people read my mind on climate change and contacted the CBC to make the point that the CBC is completely missing the mark when it comes to coverage on climate change. It was heart warming in my view to see that others had the exact same thoughts I have had on this file.

What made my jaw hit the floor was the CBCs response. The reporters in the studio couldn’t exactly be argumentative with them since they are literally talking to their own audience. So, they chose the tactic of trying to conveniently raise counter points as if to say, “yeah, but, based on what I heard, [insert excuse here]”. It was a very polite way to sit there and literally disagree with their own audience.

One of the reporters made the very weak counter argument that building the pipeline is a nation building exercise and how it’s supposed to better secure Canada’s future. It was a completely tone-deaf response because you can’t have a secure future if the nation continues to burn up for increasingly large parts of the year. If anything, pushing renewable energy would be the way forward because not only are you producing domestic energy, but also slowing down the devastating impacts on climate change. Building pipelines, as one viewer put it, is literally the last thing Canada should be focused on if the intention is to secure Canada’s future.

Another reporter tried to argue against their audience by saying that polling suggests that Canadians are increasingly disinterested in climate change. This coupled with the argument that the climate change story had its heyday about 3 years ago and it isn’t that important now for Canadians. It hints towards one of the most annoying patronizing responses mainstream media journalists have used for their audiences – that being, “Sure, it may be an important issue to you, but it’s not important for anyone else”.

You could tell that reporters were increasingly getting frustrated and let one reporter who seemed to actually care about the issue say that she was happy to see people also care about the issue. This while the rest of the journalist panel seemingly threw their hands up in despair.

Because I had to do other things, I couldn’t watch the whole show, but I did count at least 5 people reference climate change, arguing that it is an under reported story.

The CBC has the time and resources to cover these issues. The fact that they are paying so little attention to it boils down to editorial choice. In response to this, the audience just had a moment of responding to this and tell the CBC directly that the organization has really whiffed on the issue of climate change. In real time, I witnessed the CBC do exactly what you shouldn’t do in that circumstance. That is, to respond by telling the audience that they are wrong on what is important and only they know what is important to the audience. It really doesn’t get more wrong-headed than that on the part of the mainstream media.

If I was the CBC, I would look at this episode and say, “we really need to get on this climate change story more”. It was a heck of a wake up call for the CBC. Now, whether or not the CBC actually heeds this is unclear. They could add some additional coverage on climate change. They could also try and dismiss this whole thing as a one off and just continue to ignore the climate change issue even further. Honestly, given what I’ve seen come out of the CBC in the last while, I’m actually betting that the CBC is stupid enough to go with the latter response and continue to pretend that climate change just isn’t that big of an issue anymore.

Either way, this latest episode really highlights so much of what is wrong with mainstream media these days. They have concocted a caricature of what an audience member is and what they are interested in. Then, they report accordingly to satisfy that caricature. Whenever people bring up issues that fall outside of the interests of that caricature, it regularly gets dismissed as an anomaly or an issue only an outlier freak would be interested in. This before the matter gets ignored entirely. Well, what we saw today is no less than 5 callers telling the CBC that they missed the mark on the climate change file. Will the CBC, for once, listen to their audience or will they just continue with business as usual? It’s hard to say at this point.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.