The CBC's television news coverage of the United States is consistently marked by emotional criticism, rather than a rational consideration of US policy based on Canadian national interests, according to The Canadian "Garrison Mentality" and Anti-Americanism at the CBC, released today by The Fraser Institute.

This anti-American bias at the CBC is the consequence of a "garrison mentality" that has systematically informed the broadcaster's coverage of the US. Garrison mentality was a term coined by Canadian literary critic, Northrop Frye. He used it to describe a uniquely Canadian tendency reflected in our early literature, a tendency, as he put it, to "huddle together, stiffening our meager cultural defenses and projecting all our hostilities outward."

"The anti-Americanism of the CBC, we argue, is a faithful reflection of the garrison mentality evoked by Frye," said Professor Barry Cooper, co-author of the paper and managing director of the Institute's Alberta Policy Research Centre. "This mythical and symbolic anti-Americanism typifies a broad view of the world disproportionately maintained and believed in by Canadians living in the Loyalist heartland of southern Ontario."