CBC Newsworld turns 20

As CBC’s 24-hour news channel, Newsworld, celebrates its twentieth anniversary, Toronto Star feature writer Oakland Ross examines the network’s continued search for an identity, in a recent article called “Can Newsworld tune in?“

Ross wrote:

“The CBC as a whole is now in the throes of revamping its approach to gathering and disseminating the news, a process that will certainly affect the Newsworld of the future, in ways many media critics find deeply troubling.

“Whatever may have been its shortcomings, Newsworld has consistently sought to provide original public-affairs programming, while enriching its straight reportage with background, context, and analysis, following more closely in the path of BBC World, the highly respected British news service, than in that of CNN Headline News, which seeks to cover breaking events with more emphasis on speed than contextual savvy…

“If sheer survival is among the abiding themes of Canadian history and culture – as novelist Margaret Atwood has famously argued – then Newsworld must be defined as a success.

“After all, it has survived, an accomplishment many of its employees, not to mention a bevy of outside critics, would hardly have predicted on the long-ago summer day – July 31, 1989 – when the service first went to air.”