I was glad to see the Broadcasting Authority calling for what will no doubt become a deep probe into CBC in an effort to get to the bottom of Audiogate.

For while it may expose the corporate body’s most sensitive areas, it is to be hoped that such an intimate and in-depth investigation will lay bare the circumstances under which an odd-sounding tape was heard playing just under the official weather broadcast of Tuesday, January 10, 2012.

There has been a lot of stimulating conversation on how this co-mingling of strange audio and live broadcasting could have occurred. But while we may try to be too judgmental on the matter, it proves that people like me who thought CBC was asleep at the wheel were dead wrong. For while the people heard in the audio may have been in a place normally associated with sleep, they were definitely not asleep.

My only worry is that it is the Broadcasting Authority which may do the investigation, an organisation whose name is synonymous with impotency in terms of regulatory clout. When last did this authority flex its muscles over anything to do with broadcasting? Its best trait is being invisible.

Of course, Audiogate will soon disappear off the collective radar screen and be remembered as just another faux pax of a media organisation whose more serious deficiencies would cause that little slip-up to pale by comparison. CBC’s major cause for  concern is, of course, its ongoing job as PR mouthpiece for the government of the day. This role has gained momentum since the present administration took office and nothing has been done by the CBC to distance itself from this stance since the departure of its former chairman Leroy Parris.

But it was also doing the same thing under the BLP administration, which certainly does not excuse what is going on now, but shows that both parties are equally to blame for the poor public perception of the corporation.

There are many talented people at CBC now, and many others who have left the corporation in frustration at not being able to contribute in a way that would bring them journalistic satisfaction. Its time for being privatised has long since passed and the present administration has at least been honest enough to show its true propagandistic intentions by saying no to privatisation while doing nothing to build out the CBC’s reputation for excellent broadcasting in the mould of National Public Radio in the U.S. or the BBC in the UK.

At least if it were to give this a try and go all out to reflect both government and opposition comments and criticism in a professionally-managed journalistic environment, then I could say, okay, this model can work.

But you can’t just say you want to be a great public broadcaster and then not do the things you need to do to become one. And when the government does change again, the one thing that will remain a constant is the present CBC policy of kow-towing to the government of the day, because that is the one policy that will never change up there.

To all of my colleagues at CBC, this column takes note of your personal integrity and creative talent for journalism and broadcasting.

But I honestly don’t think there will be any real change until CBC is sold off to private enterprise. Whether the MC-TV satellite television service is separated from the broadcasting side would be a matter for the accountants and the market itself to decide, I guess, but it must be divested out of government’s hands for there to be any improvement. The media marketplace is so full of creative energy, both in news, current affairs and general programming, that a CBC in new hands could be a media powerhouse to be reckoned with, and the folks who work there would be given much more freedom to hold up a more accurate mirror to society than they are allowed to at present.

In fact, just thinking about it makes me breathless with excitement.