CBC - Cheating & Bluffing Corporation.

CBC goofs are frequent. Last one I noticed was just a month ago during the Quebec election. Not only the CBC declared Jean Charest a winner when he was hundreds of votes behind the PQ candidate, they didn't even bother to remove the question marks from the template. If it wasn't for the turn tide around 11PM, Claude Forgues' supporters would have a good laugh.

Well, here's another goof found by Kate from the Small Dead Animals blog. Kate took a closer look at the picture showing thick black smoke over Toronto (it was used to illustrate the article on the costs of meeting Kyoto mandated CO2 reductions). The file name of the picture was "top-kyoto2.jpg". This numeral 2 looked a little suspicious - if that was a second version of the picture then what happened to the first one? Out of curiosity Kate tried to look for a similar file without the numeral 2 in its name. She was right - the unedited version of the same photograph was there. Still that wasn't the first version since the picture was cropped from a bigger photograph. To make things more interesting, the Lakeview plant shown there had been shut down and the smokestacks which CBC made the symbol of air pollution were demolished in 2006.

When the story hit the blogsphere, the CBC came up with a press release, claiming the altered picture was just a mistake rather than an attempt to mislead. They just wanted to add a "warming filter" to the picture which was "accidentally dropped in a file acceptable for use". As simple as that - it was just an accident, it has nothing to do with the "accept Kyoto or else" fear-mongering campaign, the CBC only wanted the smoke over Toronto to look darker...

In its press release the CBC claims they used a picture of a power plant which was shut down couple years ago to show "the kind of emissions the Kyoto Accord wants to limit". But Kyoto with its emission trading scheme has little to do with limiting or reducing emissions. It would simply force industries and governments to purchase emission credits from other countries that have overachieved their targets by letting their industries die. We'd have the same thick black smoke coming out of the smokestacks in our cities but we would be paying other countries to take the blame. The CBC believes there was no misrepresentation since the photograph they've altered shows emissions from an acknowledged heavy polluter. If they were honest about Kyoto, the picture would also include our pro-Kyoto politicians pretending this is no longer a Canadian smoke.