Juno News - November 21, 2022


CBC says crosswords are racist


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

196.89502

Word count

799

Sentence count

56


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Crossword puzzles are everywhere, but how inclusive are the bylines and clues? And let's play a game I like to call Guess the Canadian Media Outlet: CBC has taken aim at the crossword because there is a lack of inclusion.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 If you really want to tackle a lack of inclusivity, you have to go right to the source of this,
00:00:05.500 and I'm talking, of course, about crosswords.
00:00:10.080 Am I reading this right?
00:00:13.120 Crossword puzzles are everywhere, but how inclusive are the bylines and clues?
00:00:18.880 And let's play a game I like to call Guess the Canadian Media Outlet.
00:00:24.800 CBC, bingo!
00:00:26.220 It was kind of a toss-up between them and the Toronto Star,
00:00:28.720 but CBC has taken aim at the crossword because there is a lack of inclusion.
00:00:33.780 Now, I am the in-house crossword expert for True North.
00:00:39.140 I mean, no one assigned me this title.
00:00:41.100 I've just sort of claimed it, so I apologize to any of my colleagues
00:00:43.300 if they're as obsessed with crosswords as I am.
00:00:45.400 I do the New York Times.
00:00:46.740 I occasionally do the Times of London.
00:00:48.600 I'm not great at the cryptics, but I try.
00:00:51.540 Absolutely love crosswords.
00:00:53.020 I even at one point submitted one to the New York Times.
00:00:56.280 They didn't publish it, but I tried.
00:00:57.780 So I like crosswords, and I have never once while I've done a crossword
00:01:01.720 been struggling with the lack of inclusivity.
00:01:04.840 But apparently, it's been an issue that's been going on for quite some time.
00:01:09.500 As one crossword designer says,
00:01:12.440 when you only have puzzles that represent a certain kind of topic
00:01:15.820 or are only of interest to straight white men,
00:01:18.500 a lot of people won't see themselves reflected in the grid.
00:01:21.700 I think crosswords are only of interest to straight white men because other people have lives.
00:01:26.520 We're boring.
00:01:27.400 Let us have our crosswords for crying out loud.
00:01:29.600 No, no, Andrew, you can't get it.
00:01:30.880 But you see, that's exactly why the crosswords aren't inclusive.
00:01:34.280 It's because people like you are the ones that are only doing them.
00:01:37.500 We need to open it up.
00:01:38.320 We need to make it more inclusive for the rest of the rest of society.
00:01:42.200 I just find this so, so hilarious.
00:01:45.380 I don't do crosswords, I have to say.
00:01:47.640 I have a life.
00:01:49.540 But when I did read this, I thought to myself...
00:01:51.720 Stone cold.
00:01:53.760 When I did read this, I thought to myself,
00:01:55.900 well, again, this might be in our yearly Fake News Friday award show, Andrew.
00:02:01.540 But speaking of, we're getting close to Christmas.
00:02:03.080 You hinted at it at the top.
00:02:04.440 We are going to have to do some sort of award show,
00:02:06.460 and we're going to be highlighting the very best of the year in fake news.
00:02:10.920 And I wouldn't be surprised if this makes it into the list.
00:02:14.520 This is what Deborah Rainwright writes in the CBC article,
00:02:19.320 or is quoted as saying in the CBC article,
00:02:21.200 very hard-hitting journalism, real, real important stuff from the CBC.
00:02:24.740 This is what we pay them for.
00:02:26.100 She writes, someone decides what words get in,
00:02:28.720 what's part of the clues,
00:02:29.660 and in doing that, they're deciding what should be common knowledge for every one of us, Andrew.
00:02:33.420 Andrew, that's why you can't be the one writing these crosswords.
00:02:36.800 You can't be submitting them.
00:02:38.120 And in fact, it's probably time that you step back
00:02:40.740 and let others have their go at the crosswords.
00:02:43.220 That's really what's going on.
00:02:44.340 We need to change the target market,
00:02:46.200 and then we'll open it all up to the rest of society.
00:02:50.080 I should say, by the way, this wasn't just the CBC News article.
00:02:54.280 CBC actually ran a documentary a couple of weeks ago about this
00:02:58.300 called Across and Down, which is a great title.
00:03:00.400 But they found that women, Indigenous, Black, and queer-identifying people
00:03:05.160 have been almost invisible in crossword puzzles.
00:03:09.100 So here's the thing.
00:03:10.500 I've already admitted that I have no life.
00:03:12.480 I do the crosswords for the New York Times fairly religiously.
00:03:15.380 But the interesting thing is the New York Times has a crossword blog
00:03:19.420 every day that comes out that has some commentary on the crosswords.
00:03:23.660 And every now and then, I'll read that if I'm interested in the theme or whatever.
00:03:27.780 If you want to have a very good time, and I'm playing fast and loose with good and time,
00:03:32.520 you can see the comments on this.
00:03:34.760 And you get oftentimes these little like woke fights when people don't like
00:03:38.640 that a certain word was said or they don't like that a certain word was used.
00:03:42.220 Like one time, the answer to the crossword clue was non-PC, as in not politically correct.
00:03:48.020 And everyone was like, why are we vilifying political correctness?
00:03:50.640 Political correctness is great.
00:03:52.180 There was another time where it was 45th president, and the answer was Trump.
00:03:56.420 And someone was like, why do I have to see that name in my crossword?
00:03:59.500 So people are getting triggered by crosswords.
00:04:02.000 So maybe I am just being incensed.