Why Krista Erickson probably won't get far with her attack on arts funding

by Charlie Smith on Jun 9, 2011 at 6:14 pm

I really didn't want to give Krista Erickson any more publicity for her childish attack on dancer Margie Gillis.

But in the absence of any analysis of the bigger picture, I thought it was worth wading into this once again.

Don't kid yourself. Erickson isn't doing this on her own. If she didn't have the support of the big boss at Sun News, Kory Teneycke, she wouldn't be attacking public funding of the arts.

Teneycke is a former press secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Perhaps one day, Teneycke will be seen as Canada's equivalent to Roger Ailes—a former Republican propagandist who turned Rupert Murdoch's Fox News into a right-wing political force south of the border.

It's easy to see why Teneycke would go on a crusade against public funding of the arts, rather than raise hell about Harper wanting to blow $30 billion on fighter jets, and then lie about the cost to Canadian taxpayers. Attacking the arts will make the prime minister happy by shifting attention away from more important issues.

But Teneycke has a problem. He's not acting in isolation.

Sun News is part of Quebecor, which is a sprawling media giant that owns printing plants, newspapers (including 24 hours in Vancouver), and a large cablevision company in Quebec.

This gives artists and their supporters numerous targets should they choose to focus their attention on Quebecor rather than on one unimportant broadcaster who's probably just following her boss's instructions.

Look no further than Rogers Communications. It learned a lesson when its stable of right-wing polemicists at Maclean's magazine decided to slap a headline called "Too Asian" on an article about Canadian universities.

Asian Canadians noticed that Rogers Communications not only owned Maclean's, but was also in the cellphone business and operated multicultural television channels. And Rogers didn't want its cellphone business going down the tubes because of a few loudmouths at a relatively insignificant magazine.

Erickson and Teneycke may want to bring the hammer down on arts funding. But if the artists in this country use their imagination, they'll get under the skin of Quebecor boss Pierre-Karl Peladeau, who will tell the hired help to back off.

Peladeau's biggest concern is going to be the share price of his company. That was the same worry that Rogers had after the "Too Asian" article caused such a flap.

Many artists are exceptionally intelligent and creative. If they're in a mood for a fight, they can cause a lot of trouble—even if they're not always flush with cash.

The moment Quebecor starts losing lucrative printing contracts or its newspaper circulation goes into a freefall or there are massive cancellations of its cablevision service, you can be sure that Erickson will move onto a different target.

Comments (29) Add New Comment
RC
Jun 9, 2011 at 10:19 pm
Right on! Artists should side with huge corporations to squash free speech! WHAT A GREAT IDEA!
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afivancouver
Jun 10, 2011 at 1:25 am
It's not a matter of quashing free speech. It's about saying "I don't have to listen to your nonsense, and I'm so I going to stop listening to you until you start being more respectful and honest".
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Danny jones
Jun 10, 2011 at 5:50 am
It's always good to pick a fight with an interpretive dancer on TV and lose. Oops.
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girlfabulous
Jun 10, 2011 at 6:24 pm
That woman was so obnoxious going after Margie Gillis like that. Like it was some hard hitting expose on Hard Copy that she had received all this funding. Arts companies are audited very year to keep them honest. Ms Gillis must be doing something right to continually receive the funding she does. She is a cultural Ambassedor for Canada a critically acclaimed highly decorated one at that. Ms Erickson is just a blone hairdo mouthpiece for a right wing tabloid news show. I shook with rage as I watched the clip. What about the Government and the Corporations who misuse our tax dollars on a regular basis? She did call herself a Cultural Philistine but that was too good a word. I would of said see you next tuesday.
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Devin
Jun 10, 2011 at 9:44 pm
KE is hot though! Also what's with the Nazis on the front cover of the straight this week? Maybe they just made poor fashion choices or something! I love Germans!
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Steve Y
Jun 11, 2011 at 9:59 am
I like how Canada is "blowing" 30 billion on fighter jets. Because it's not like we'll ever need them for the wars we are in or to defend the people of Libya. Nope, Canada will just sit in our comfy corner of the world and let the rest of the planet burn.
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Coralie
Jun 11, 2011 at 10:56 am
Let the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council know your reactions to Canada Live with Krista Erickson that aired on Sun News on June 1, 2011, at 4:15PM.
It is a click away with the following link:
http://www.cbsc.ca/english/complaint/form.php
It is a simple, easy way to make sure your voice is heard by those who can change things in your name...
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Dennis O'Connor
Jun 11, 2011 at 2:40 pm
SUN TV's parent, media giant Québecor, great defenders of the free market, benefited to the tune some 23.7 Million$$ in grant money from Ottawa and Québec over the last two years. To that let's add the generous tax credits for its publishing and broadcast divisions. - Source: RueFrontenac
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R U Kiddingme
Jun 11, 2011 at 2:49 pm
But, but. Arts funding is a 'nice to have.' Defence is a 'must have.' The details of defence can and should be debated; I am quite sympathetic to the Gwyn Dyer point of view that Canada's defence should consist of perimeter reinforcement, mining the harbours to make this a difficult place to take, rather than having force projection. That's a quibble though. It would be hard to make a case for abolishing defence altogether. Arts funding is inherently at risk because it is qualitatively different from a social need that is indubitably useful and which is inappropriate to delegate to the private sector. You need a fire department, you need a police department, you need courts, roads, hospitals, schools... You could probably get by without publically funded art.

The challenge for artists is to make a business case for it. Does a dollar invested in the arts result in a dollar ten in results? It probably does. But make that case. Make a moral case for it as well. A good society, does it offer amenities like a beautiful environment and an artistically vibrant community? I think so. Make the case. Make the argument. Don't just get mad about it or blame corporations and business. Business pays for all of it.
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zerocool
Jun 12, 2011 at 12:37 am
You fund your countries arts and if what you get back is total 'offensive crap' then that's the state of your nation's culture. You can cry about it all you want but the job of the artist is to reflect it back to you
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R U Kiddingme
Jun 12, 2011 at 10:22 am
@zerocool

Right, which is why we have Snoop Dogg, Anal Cunt and Rebecca Black. However, there's no public money in that. They are self-funded. Sponsorship is the real issue, not taste.

Don't get me wrong, I have applied for FACTOR grants and all that, but conceptually, public funding for the arts is always going to be questioned.
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JM in BC
Jun 12, 2011 at 10:42 am
Krista Erickson is a hypocrite and a moron.

She worked for the TAXPAYER FUNDED CBC for 11 years, during which time she received on the job training and mentoring her more experienced colleagues who were also paid by the same taxpayer funded corporation. I don't recall her taking a principled stand and refusing our tax dollars when they were going into her pocket.

Then Ms. Erickson up and quit last year and now she demands to know why everyone else can't suck it up and live without her precious tax dollars? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! If she could have built a career without our tax dollars she would have. But she couldn't and didn't.

Memo to Krista:

You don't get to take our money for 11 years then turn around and mock those who rely on the exact same funding you enjoyed for virtually your entire working life. You've had a non-taxpayer funded job for less than a year. You've never owned or run a business or created a single job in your life. Get over yourself and be thankful we funded your job training.

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Brian in Red Deer
Jun 13, 2011 at 9:03 am
The problem with "showing the numbers" is that we in the arts are asked to do spend precious resources all the time and so we can easily go there. We are talking about: a significant sector of the Canadian ecomony - check; development costs a fraction of what it costs in other sectors - check; invest 8 billion to generate 84 billion - wow, sounds like an awesome investment - done, see 2007. And on and on. But why are individual artists constantly asked to justify the relatively small funds they receive? Are individual oil and gas or forestry entrepreneurs asked to justify the billoins of dollars spent by governments in their sectors? C'mon: arts & culture is something we value, it is so much more than a commercial enterprise and can be held to higher and more complex standards. It is one of the roles of government to see that they are supported on behalf of the continued growth and health of our society and its people. Oh, and we have stats for that, too. What I'm interested in is why people keep asking for numbers just to blow them off, anyway?
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dgro78
Jun 29, 2011 at 12:47 am
Be confident, for the dawning of the new conservative era for Canada brings with it the promise of growth, innovation, prosperity, and 21st century jobs for all! But hark, what is that on the horizon?? It is the four horsemen of the conservative apocalypse - Apple (AAPL-Q), Google (GOOG-Q), Facebook, and Twitter (and if we had time - YouTube, Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, PayPal, and on and on and on). Yep, that's right folks - the single greatest era of growth, innovation, wealth creation, job seeding, and community building of the 20th century, and onto the 21st century was started right smack in the middle of pot-smoking, free loving, grunge listening, garage tinkering, idea sharing, hippy central USA. That shiny iPad or iPhone you have in your hand? Well that, guys, was built by a COMMUNITY of ARTISTS. The iPhone, iPad, and Android platform would not exist if not for the tens of thousands of members of the Apple and Google developer networks, all working into the wee hours of the night for 0 dollars because they are passionate about what they do. I was at the Google developer conference last year, and met Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. The guy is 38 years old, wears sandals and a hoody, and happens to be the 26th richest guy in the world (but probably number 1 or 2 most influential entrepreneurs at the moment). That, my poor misguided conservative ideologue, is growth, development, and prosperity. The only way conservatives know how to make a living is by digging holes in the ground or blowing stuff up. You wouldn't even get up in the morning unless someone dangled a dollar in front of your nose. So keep on "working hard" there Mike, because the work is only going to get harder for you, and even harder for your kids, as we slowly but surely back-pedal into the stone age while the rest of the world joins the market of ideas. Go ahead and quibble over the 0.01% of your tax dollars that goes to arts funding, while 20% goes to buy jets from a company outside Canada.

Top 3 innovative economies:

Germany: Innovation and Engineering are considered art
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY

China: Engineering is a sacred profession, and innovation highly praised.

USA: Leading the network economy, to the point of toppling dictators not with guns and bombs, but by spreading information through Google, Twitter, and Facebook!

Canada? Hello? Anybody there?
No wonder we lost our seat on the security council. We have become totally irrelevant and removed from the world community thanks to conservative governance.
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Terrance Houle
Jun 29, 2011 at 6:28 pm
free speech isn't about calling down a section of society that are under paid, poor and marginalized for having their own business in the arts. I have been an artist in canada for 7 years professionally so please tell my 7 year old daughter why people are trying to take her fathers job pay away, why people are promoting hate on the arts why artists are almost losing what little job for security, health care and wages comes from Arts funding. I would gladly debate any one of you on this, i have seen it with my Native people in this country and to use free speech to promote hate is a cowardly act by conservative SUN TV. I will fight for my right to not be treated lesser than anyone else. sincerely Terrance Houle, First Nations, Artist, Film Maker, Father, musician, performer.
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JustSomeThoughts
Jun 30, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Krista Erikson is a pathetic, unprofessional, and self-absorbed disgrace and should be fired for her outright attack on something she knows nothing about. She has made herself to be a fool.
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R U Kiddingme
Jul 1, 2011 at 11:02 am
@terrance

All of us who have been or are taking public money have to justify our jobs. Doctors, teachers, firefighters..all have to undergo wage review and negotiations. It's annoying, sure. Artist/filmmakers who are not selling their product in sufficient quantities to self-fund have zero moral argument against having to justify their grants. It's not about being called down. Everyone who takes public money gets scruntinized.

"Hate" = government spending transparency. LOL
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Martin Kalin
Sep 25, 2011 at 5:58 am
There was nothing childish about Ms. Erickson's drilling of Ms. Gilles. The only thing immature is the tone of the above column. People have the right to question the value of where their tax dollars are going.
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Aidan
Nov 3, 2011 at 4:33 pm
The only question I have...
Why hasn't Fox News offered Erikson a job yet?
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James Roblin
Dec 19, 2011 at 10:16 am
What this columnist is suggesting is that because artists are "creative" etc, we should leave them alone because they might make life difficult for us if we annoy them with questions like "what do you do of value for the money you get from the government?t" or "Why should I be forced to pay for your output when I really don't want to?"

In other words, cave to black mail.

I saw the interview in question. The arrogance on the part of Margie Gillis was stunning.
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