CBC being sued by P.E.I. Subway franchises

The company that owns 14 Subway franchises in P.E.I. is suing the CBC over a story it says made defamatory and false claims about chicken the restaurants sell.

Islandsand Holdings Inc. filed a statement of claim in P.E.I. Supreme Court on Aug. 24 seeking unspecified amounts in damages and costs over the alleged defamation.

The claim refers to an episode of the CBC program Marketplace, which Islandsand said included an allegation Subway misrepresented its oven-roasted chicken and chicken strips as healthy.

The Islandsand lawsuit is not the only one related to the Marketplace broadcast.

In April, The Canadian Press reported Subway filed a statement of claim with a Toronto court alleging the CBC acted recklessly and maliciously in airing the Marketplace report.

Read the full story here.

Would CBC viewers pay to watch?

Post Media columnist and CBC contributor Andrew Coyne argued the state broadcaster is no longer necessary in a multi-channel, digital universe and that all taxpayers are paying for something the majority don’t watch or listen to.

Coyne told an overwhelmingly CBC-friendly crowd that today’s viewers and listeners have a menu of pay-as-you-go options "to suit every taste, high or low, broad or narrow" that don’t rely on scarce public funds.

"At a bare minimum, then, I would put the CBC on pay. It could still be a public broadcaster, but one funded by its audience, rather than taxpayers. If its viewers are as devoted as claimed, they should be happy to pay."

Read the full story here.

CBC had trespassed on the man’s property without consent

R. v. West involves actions by CBC TV journalists in Vancouver who had been investigating the activities of a suspected child pornographer. When a search warrant was executed on the suspect’s apartment, the police informed the CBC, which sent a crew to the scene.

CBC’s cameraman briefly entered the front door of the apartment after the police had entered and was recording events when the accused asked him to leave, which he did. A few seconds of this tape was broadcast in a CBC report. The suspect then sued the CBC. 

At trial, the accused pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing child pornography, subject to the result of his challenge of the search. The trial court rejected his argument and convicted him.

But on appeal, the seizure of the pornographic material, the evidence, was deemed inadmissible because it was determined that the CBC had trespassed on the man’s property without consent.

In its decision, the court noted that restraints imposed on government to pry into the lives of citizens go to the essence of a democratic state. It was especially critical of the police, writing that it was “unthinkable that officers of the state would undertake a search…when they knew the inside of a private residence would be filmed and probably broadcast to the public.” 

Read the full story here.

CBC Ombudsman mandate

CBC Audience Services

Updated 4 months ago

IMPORTANT: Entertainment, sports, advertisements and other non-news programming as well as technical issues are beyond the mandate and jurisdiction of the Ombudsman's office. Please contact CBC National Audience Services with questions or complaints about these issues.

In addition, the Ombudsman does not respond to issues around commenting and/or moderation and has no power to approve or delete user comments on CBC.ca stories.

Please visit the Ombudsman’s website if you wish to file a complaint about CBC's News and current affairs programming only.

See more here.

Why did Kirstine Stewart leave CBC for Twitter?

What does Kirstine Stewart know about the future of the CBC that the rest of us don't?

Why does anyone leave a job as the most powerful and influential media executive in the country to sell ads for Twitter Canada? And why leave immediately, without prior notice?

When it comes to public communication, the CBC itself is a lost cause, too deeply immersed in the issues of commercial secrecy and proprietary information to offer insight without a federal warrant.

The citizens of this country need and deserve a full explanation of current conditions within the CBC, and how management is responding.

Read the full story here.

Things You’ll Never See On The CBC

45 Replies to “Things You’ll Never See On The CBC”

1. Antenor

   April 14, 2018 at 2:35 am

   The best quote is that they’re not worried. They’ve been bleeding viewership for years and the “Friends of CBC” are beginning to die off in droves. Not worried, right, they haven’t got a clue about how to attract viewers cause they’ve been pumping out garbage for years and they aren’t even aware of it. If the government didn’t back them, the bunch of them couldn’t operate a Mac Donald’s franchise on their own. Not Worried, tell me another one. I’m willing to bet that there will be more than a few CBC employees that are looking for any job that comes down the pike and will jump at it because the last ones to leave the CBC will be left holding the bag. The next government will not be financing a sinking ship, the Cons know it, the NDP know it and the Liberals are becoming aware that Canadians are not swallowing the same old bullsh#t that the CBC has been pumping out for years.
2. Read the rest of the replies here.

CBC is offering clickbait

The CBC is a creature of the Broadcasting Act, which was last updated in 1991, the same year the World Wide Web was created. In a strict reading of the act, the CBC has no business setting up an online hot-take factory, any more than it has the mandate to set up a national chain of poutine restaurants.

In the YouTube era, fewer people are settling in to watch Peter Mansbridge deliver the news every night, and the corporation has to make itself relevent to Canadians if it wants to generate revenue and maintain public support.

So the CBC is offering clickbait. 

The CBC tells me it will pay union scale — 55 cents a word — which will immediately make it a very desirable market for opinion typists.

For those of us trying to make our livings in the independent news business, this is worrying. It may be difficult to compete for ad sales and journalism talent with a news organization funded by taxpayers.

And why should it be necessary? CBC has dramatically cut its news coverage over the years, protecting the big broadcasting operation in Toronto by cutting journalists in small markets. Now that Trudeau is giving it money, why doesn’t it spend that money doing public service journalism in underserved markets rather than trying to drive the last nail in the coffins of newspapers?

To be clear, CBC didn’t drive the first nails. There has been a massive migration of advertising to Google and Facebook and a huge influx of venture capital to unsustainable digital startups, leading to an increasingly desperate struggle for a rapidly diminishing pool of advertising.

Want to sell ads or hire a columnist? CBC can outbid you. Want to erect a paywall? Why should readers pay for your product if they can get free stories from the CBC?

There is no indication that CBC managers give a passing thought to the impact their activity has on indpendent news outlets — and really, that’s not their job. That’s the job of the people who provide the broadcaster with $1 billion a year: MPs.

It’s about time they start doing it.

Read the full story here.

French CBC announces new name

The French-language CBC has announced plans to change its name. Radio-Canada will lose the words, “radio” and “Canada.” Instead, the federally funded broadcaster will be known in French by the name “Ici” – which means “here,” in French. The name change had been rumoured for months but was made official today with an announcement from the Crown corporation.

Founded in 1936, the institution says the brand change will allow for greater uniformity. Its different platforms currently carry a hodge-podge of names. Now its different platforms will all contain the word “Ici.”

See more here.

CBC wants even more money

Canada’s public broadcasting network has been under fire for months over its efforts to build a digital presence in direct competition with private newspapers and other media, which are struggling to survive in the face of remorseless technological change.

The private operators maintain it’s unfair that the CBC gets generous subsidies to steal business from them. In a world of shifting readership habits and murderous competition, every penny of revenue is vital. The CBC, they note, already enjoys a federal subsidy of more than $1 billion a year, including a $150 million annual boost introduced by the Trudeau Liberals. Private operators, meanwhile, are haemorrhaging money as the strive to keep the wolf from the door.

The CBC’s response: Ask for even more money from the public purse.

Read the full story here.

Ottawa pressed to curb CBC’s growing digital presence

Private media companies are decrying the CBC's growing presence on the Internet and in the digital advertising market, calling on Ottawa to rein in the Crown corporation in order to salvage the production of local news and investigative journalism across the country.

At hearings of the Canadian Heritage committee of the House of Commons, the CBC is increasingly described as a great disruptor of the media landscape, with its recent budget increase of $675-million over five years coming as losses are growing and newsrooms are closing in the private sector.

The attacks place the public broadcaster in the same category as foreign Internet giants such as Google and Facebook, which many say are eating into advertising budgets of publishers and broadcasters in Canada while contributing little to the creation of Canadian content.

Read the full story here.

CBC Losing Viewers and Ads

CBC ad revenues remain half what they were since the TV network lost NHL licensing rights, says the Crown broadcaster’s latest Annual Report.

The CBC has asked cabinet for an additional $400 million a year in budget funding to offset the loss of advertising: “If you’re not informing and you’re not entertaining, people will go somewhere else.”

Click here.

CBC Ruined Good Doctor's Name

In trying to make the claim that Health Canada’s drug approval branch was approving medicines that never should have been used on patients, CBC twisted Dr. Leenen’s words to make him out to be an uncaring, bumbling fool of a doctor. He lost patients, friends and his reputation.

In short, CBC destroyed the life the Leenens had known.

When the case went to trial the evidence overwhelmingly showed that CBC left out key information, distorted the views offered up by Dr. Frans Leenen and had generally worked at making the interviews fit the story they had decided on before the project even began.

The court also had access to outtakes from the filming process.

"We have set up the idea that this committee is tainted with these kind of company-bought people." host Trish Wood is heard saying to producer Nicholas Regush.

At another point Regush encourages Wood to use her famous sneer.

The evidence taken together resulted in condemnation from the bench through a strongly worded judgment from Justice Cunningham.

Read the full story here.

Average Annual Salary at CBC is $124,917

How much do people at CBC get paid? See the latest salaries by department and job title. The average estimated annual salary, including base and bonus, at CBC is $124,917, or $60 per hour, while the estimated median salary is $130,926, or $62 per hour.

At CBC, the highest paid job is a VP of Marketing at $316,145 annually and the lowest is a CS Rep at $45,144 annually. Average CBC salaries by department include: Customer Support at $46,994, Engineering at $162,114, Finance at $88,339, and IT at $124,447.

Half of CBC salaries are above $130,926.

Read more here.

CBC Executive Salaries

How much do executives at CBC make? The average estimated compensation for executives at CBC, including base salary and bonus, is $224,394, or $107 per hour.

The median estimated compensation for executives at CBC including base salary and bonus is $229,357, or $110 per hour.

At CBC, the most compensated executive makes $450,000, annually, and the lowest compensated makes $53,000.

Click here.

CBC Radio Broadcasts Biased Report

On May 27 at 9:18pm EST, CBC Radio’s the “World This Weekend” news program hosted by Anchor David Common, aired a woefully biased anti-Israel report about “displaced” Palestinians by reporter Rebecca Collard.

CBC listeners were told about the “Museum of Memories” which shows 700+ items from the 1948 exodus. It’s a form of “resistance”, the Museum operator says, for keeping alive the idea of a homeland he’s never been allowed to return to.

Reporter Collard says that Palestinians dream of a homeland they never knew. We hear of the “suffering of Palestinians since their displacement.”

Not mentioned in this report, but which should have been, is that the origins of the so-called “Naqba” were caused by a war of annihilation launched against the nascent Israeli state by neighbouring Arab armies. It was in 1948, that the Arabs refused to establish a state, side-by-side with the Jewish state, as per the Partition Plan.

Read the full story and listen to the broadcast here.

CBC News prompted to Publish Photo of Palestinian Mortar Attack on Israeli Kindergarten

On May 29, Honest Reporting Canada brought our concerns to the attention of senior CBC editors requesting that an online news article published that day feature a photograph showing how a Palestinian mortar landed dangerously close to an Israeli kindergarten, shortly before school was to commence.

The article was entitled: “Israel launches Gaza airstrikes in response to mortar fire”.

We conveyed to CBC News that given the scope of this article and the information it relayed about the serious escalation in hostilities – namely the firing of more than 25 mortars at Israel by the Islamic Jihad terror group – (one which landed next to a kindergarten) that a photo be included in this report which acknowledges how these mortar attacks landed near Israeli civilian areas.

Read the full story here.

CBC a haunted museum of bloat

CBC’s television and online news departments are a haunted museum of bloat, larding tons of valuable content with tiresome victim-mongering; endless why-didn’t-the-government-prevent-this stories; Trudeau propaganda snaps beamed straight in from the Prime Minister’s Office; a dumb, tawdry nightly newscast; an opinion section that pays writers way over market (though, ahem, nothing more than what’s fair!); Canadian Press wire copy of which a lavishly resourced public broadcaster has no earthly need; and an entire clickbait department that’s stealing digital advertising revenue from private-sector outlets.

It has no clear mandate to do much of this in the first place — indeed, the Heritage Committee recommended getting CBC out of digital revenue altogether — and unlike CBC Radio and SRC, I’m not aware of a single human being who supports the TV/online status quo.

Read the full opinion piece here.

CBC Gives a Platform to Gaza Flotilla Fiasco

On May 25, CBC News online published a report by Caitlin Taylor entitled: “This Yukoner is joining a fleet of people en route to Gaza. Ron Rousseau of Carcross is aiming to raise awareness of Palestinians’ plight.”

HonestReporting Canada filed a complaint on May 27 with senior CBC News editors asking that this report be amended in the interests of fairness and balance and to ensure conformity with CBC Journalistic Standards and Practices.

There were three glaring omissions not featured in this article about this topic of controversy:

Read the full story here.

CBC criticized for amount of American TV

Even as the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s top brass hold two days of strategy meetings in Ottawa, the pubcaster is continuing to come under fire for scheduling too much American fare in primetime. 

Among the revenue-raising measures being considered at the two-day senior management meeting is the possible introduction of more U.S. fare onto the schedule as a way of subsidizing Canadian content production.

But Stephen Waddell, national executive director of Canadian actors union ACTRA, said the CBC should instead cut back sharply on American fare to distinguish itself from private sector rivals.

Read the full story here.

CBC Broadcasts Outrageous Jewish Conspiracy Theory

Disturbingly, on May 20, CBC’s “The Weekly” news program aired an odious “news report” and “interview” that was nothing short of a Jewish conspiracy theory. The CBC News program hosted by Anchor Wendy Mesley interviewed Ken Vogel, a political reporter for the New York Times.

The CBC program centres on how wealthy Jews (specifically casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his net worth of $40-billion+) effectively control U.S. President Donald Trump and his inner circle which was “instrumental in persuading Trump” to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.

The report attempts to shame former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper for having “ties” with Adelson and for their shared values and interests when it comes to being a friend to Israel and for being critics of the Iran nuclear deal. Mesley lists 9 ties on her Twitter thread.

At its core, the report centres on how Jewish money, which is both influential and “disproportionate,” effectively controls U.S. Middle East foreign policy which thereby enables the Israeli tail to wag the American dog.

Adelson is described as “the Godfather of the Republican party”.

Read the full story here.

CBC External Legal Fees

Payment of 2011 External Legal Fees.

We wish to have access to and/or a copy of all and/or any records held by CBC which pertain to fees paid by the CBC in 2011 for outside legal services and, in particular, but not exclusive of, the legal costs to the CBC to defend Quebecor's lawsuits against the CBC, M. Rabinovitch, M. Lafrance, M. Clement and/or M. Asselin.

The results?

1,513 invoices - total amount $3,980,615.59

See the full pdf report here.

CBC website outlining External Legal Fees Access to Information  ... click here.

CBC's Tax Dollars Cost Canadians Too Much

When the Access to Information Act was passed in 1985, it was obvious to some that its terms could be used to hide, as well as to disclose information.

So Access to Information legislation is not only no guarantee for increased openness and transparency by government, but can be misused as a formula for concealing or obscuring information.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than within the CBC.

By keeping salaries secret, gratuities secret, entertainment costs secret, travel costs secret, absentee costs secret, the CBC is violating its mandate and should be an embarrassment for every CBC employee.

The CBC is not a private company. We all have a right to know how it spends the money taxpayers provide.

Read the full story here.

CBC has become a gravy train for elites

News media is undergoing a rapid and beautiful process of creative destruction: digitalization means vastly lower costs, fewer barriers to entry, and a wider variety of competing options for consumers to enjoy. Amid this innovation and weeding out stands the too-big-to-fail albatross, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Already costing taxpayers $1.04 billion in 2015 and facing rising competition, the CBC's fiscal burden is set to jump by $75 million in 2016 and $150 million in 2017. Regarding the higher price tag of the state broadcaster, Finance Minister Bill Morneau has deflected by saying that “believing in innovation is also believing in the talent and in the creativity of Canadians.” Apologists further contend this is necessary to save the CBC from "extinction."

That begs the question: if the CBC is growing obsolete and people favour other sources, ones that do not cost the taxpayer, how is that a bad thing?

The truth is that the CBC has become a gravy train for elites, with the backing of government unions.

Read the full story here.

CBC News accused of spreading misinformation and propaganda

On May 17, HonestReporting Canada notified senior editors at CBC News, CTV News, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, about how these media outlets wrongly identified a dead Palestinian as a “medic,” whereas in fact, he wast a member of the Hamas terrorist organization.

Hamas produced an infographic which acknowledges that Abuhassanin is one of their members. He’s pictured on the top row, 2nd from the right identified by HRC with the red circle. (HonestReporting Canada secured an expert translation of the infographic which describes Abuhassanin as being a “Captain” of Hamas’ “Civil Defense Service” which belongs to the Hamas Ministry of Interior which is responsible for all “security” services.)

The individual in question was named Musa Abuhassanin who was reportedly shot and killed (allegedly by Israeli snipers) after having helped Palestinian-Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani, a well known anti-Israel activist.

CBC Radio’s As It Happens program on May 15 featured an interview with Dr. Loubani who described Hamas “medic” Musa Abuhassanin as “my rescuer, he was a very bright guy, an incredible man.” Loubani has also described Abuhassanin as having had “had a great laugh and was a good paramedic”. The CBC As It Happens website describes Abuhassannin only as a “medical volunteer”.

To date, Tarek Loubani has not commented on the revelation that Abuhassanin was a member of the outlawed terror group Hamas, a man Loubani described as being his “rescuer, he was a very bright guy, an incredible man” who “had a great laugh and was a good paramedic”.

In light of this revelation, it’s of paramount importance that our media reserve judgement and do their due diligence to report the facts once they are established, instead of spreading misinformation and propaganda.

Read the full story here.

CBC Anchor Carol Off Accused of Being A “Conspirator with Hamas"

CBC Anchor Carol Off Accused of Being A “Conspirator with Hamas” and “Abettor of Terrorism” by Israeli MK Michael Oren.

Yesterday evening, the CBC Radio program As It Happens featured a blatantly one-sided and bellicose interview conducted by Anchor Carol Off and former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S and current Deputy Minister in the Israeli government, Michael Oren, discussing the recent riots along the Gaza-Israel border.

Anchor Carol Off is known for her animus towards Israel. In the interview, Oren blamed Hamas for the bloodshed at the Israel-Gaza border this week, and said that the media, including CBC Anchor Carol Off, were doing the terrorist group’s bidding and were “complicit”. Oren accused Off of being a “conspirator with Hamas” and an “abettor of terrorism”.

Read the full story here.

CBC Mideast Bureau Chief inserts personal opinions

On May 8, CBC Mideast Bureau Chief Derek Stoffel and Globe and Mail Senior International Correspondent Mark Mackinnon took to Twitter to tacitly disagree with Israel’s decision to expel Human Rights Watch (HRW) Director Omar Shakir due to his alleged support of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel.

Both reporter’s inserted their personal opinions on this topic and implicitly cast doubt that Israel is the Middle East’s sole democracy. The reporter’s efforts were derisive.

Read the full story here.

CTV trumps CBC in ratings

Including airings on both CBC and CBC News Network, “The National”‘s average minute audience between Aug. 29, 2016 to April 9, 2017 was 866,000 viewers, according to data supplied by ratings agency Numeris. Including all CTV and CTV News Channel broadcasts, the average audience of “CTV National News” during the same period was 1.3 million.

In an age when many viewers consume news all day on social media, some say “The National” needs to focus on in-depth conversation and context to the headlines.

“The only way a newscast like that, I think, is going to work in the future is (if) it’s not going to tell you the news, it’s rather going to make sense of the news,” said Richard Stursberg, a former CBC executive and the new president of the writers’ group Pen Canada.

Stursberg argued the role of news anchors has changed in the digital age and they now have much less influence.

“The idea that there’s a father figure or a mother figure who is the trusted source of all wisdom that comes from the national newscast, I think those days are just gone,” he said.

Read the full story here.

CBC and local news

In the last half-century, waves of budget cuts and consolidations have transformed the CBC into a primarily national broadcaster. Regional directors have relatively smaller budgets and less control over them. Most stand-alone, regionally produced documentary and variety shows have disappeared. 

Local news survived through it all, but barely in some markets, as it went through a bewildering series of Toronto-directed changes in format, length and broadcast times. At one point, CBC headquarters dictated that the local news shows in two of Canada’s most dynamic metropolitan areas — Edmonton and Calgary — be merged into one. You’d be surprised (CBC executives were) how little Calgary residents were interested in Edmonton news. The ratings were so low that a CBC cameraman joked to me that it would save money to shut down the transmission tower and hand-deliver VHS tapes to anyone interested.

Read the full story here.

CBC’s news segment needs overhaul

Change doesn’t seem to come naturally to the cbc, whose strategies remain stuck in the twentieth century. For more than a decade, The National’s ratings have been stagnant, while Canadians’ trust in media has steadily declined. The ‘90s saw an attempt at restructuring the program: the format at the time was a twenty-two-minute-long news segment at the top of the hour and a current affairs program, The Journal, at the bottom. They combined it into an hour-long news and current affairs show, Primetime News. It was a complete failure. Mark Bulgutch, a former line-up editor for The National who was working on the program at the time, says he knew that the merger wasn’t going to work. “The cbc continues to try to find the right format; to find better formats; to find smarter formats,” Bulgutch says. “It turns its back on the audience at its own peril—when looking for new audiences you’ve got to be careful that you don’t turn off the one that you already have.” The National returned to its pre-merger version a year later, and has remained more or less the same ever since.

As Bulgutch points out, it’s not necessarily the structure of the program that needs updating; The National’s competitors have succeeded in spite of, or perhaps because of, their staid format. “ctv has done the same newscast for sixty years,” he says. “They have an average audience bigger than The National’s audience every night and they don’t do anything different than they did in 1965.”

Read the full story here.

CBC tries to hide its happy face

With his ex-broadcaster wife at his side, Justin Trudeau adopted his best “looking into the future” expression and pledged a king’s ransom to Schitt’s Creek and Definitely Not the Opera.

“A new Liberal government will invest $150 million in new annual funding for the CBC,” said the Liberal leader as the Montreal crowd around him cheered

Somewhere among the spectators, a CBC reporter or two tried to look nonchalant: It’s always hard to look objective when a politician has just promised to give you millions of dollars.

And such is the endless quandary faced by the national broadcaster when covering elections. Unlike CTV, Global or pretty much any other media outlet covering the 2015 election, it is empirically in CBC’s best interest if the Conservatives lose on Oct. 19.

Read the full story here.