Poll suggests Canadians have no idea of CBC cost

The day Lisa LaFlamme debuted as Lloyd Robertson's successor anchoring the CTV National News, CBC bought full-page newspaper advertisements promoting its flagship newscast and anchor Peter Mansbridge.

Judging from a new poll, the public broadcaster might better have used the ad space to show Canadians how its money was being spent.

The Abacus Data poll commissioned by QMI Agency and published in the Toronto Sun, suggests taxpayers underestimate how much the CBC gets from the federal government while at the same time most think it's getting too much.

According to the poll, more than 80 per cent of the 1,003 people sampled in the online poll conducted in English Aug. 12-15 did not know the CBC will get $1.1 billion from Ottawa this year. About 25 per cent believe it gets only one-tenth of its actual grant and 21 per cent thought it was only $10 million.

Read the full story here.

Can CBC Justify Taxpayer Money?

CBC spent more than a million dollars defending a lawsuit that could have been settled with an apology. Most of that money we discovered this week went to outside contract lawyers. CBC enriched the law firm of Borden, Ladner, Gervais with almost $900,000 of taxpayers money when they could have settled the lawsuit with filmmakers Claude Fournier and Marie-Jose Raymond just by saying “I’m sorry.”

Oh, and of course, I forgot to add they hired the outside legal firm despite having 22 lawyers on staff. They do this all the time.

Any big organization has to deal with the problem of absentee workers, but the numbers from CBC show why they fought to keep this under wraps. While Stats Canada puts the average absentee rate at 8.9 days per year per employee, and the average public sector rate at 12.6 days per year per employee, it turns out that CBC employees play hooky an average of 16.5 days per year.

That number is not only staggering, it shows bad management. But this bad management came with a hefty price tag for the taxpayer.

Seriously, can you think of any good reason why Canada should have a government-owned broadcaster but not a government-owned newspaper or grocery store? Whatever justification that once existed for CBC, it no longer holds in a 500-channel universe.

Read more here.

The CBC is not a private company

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.

And that's exactly what has happened.

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.

Claim that CBC encouraged testers to lie

THE Subway sandwich empire certainly gives a cluck about its oven-roasted chicken heroes.

The company claims Canada’s national broadcasting network encouraged man-on-the-street testers to lie about Subway chicken products in order to drive home an “erroneous” report that the meat was roughly 50 per cent soy.

In a hard-hitting lawsuit filed in an Ontario provincial court, Subway accuses the CBC, two producers and a reporter of asking the four testers questions about the chicken products that were “often leading and suggestive of the negative and false response elicited.”

Read the full story here.

CBC’S Gaza coverage sparks complaints to Ombudsman

Since the beginning of the year, HonestReporting Canada (HRC) has made close to 100 complaints to the CBC, over what the organization believes are unfair or inaccurate reports about Israel.

The volume is in part due to the fact that the CBC has so many platforms, including radio, television, its website and social media. But in too many cases, there is “a pattern of problematic reporting,” said Mike Fegelman, executive director of HRC.

Read the full story here.

CBC reporters qualifications and actions are issues for Canadians to consider

The gruesome routine is familiar. Israelis are hunted down by Arab terrorists, and we are condemned for defending our lives. In the media, headlines focus as least as much on the murderers as on their victims, and when a knife-wielding Palestinian teenager is shot during his rampage, it’s referred to as a “summary execution.”

As is generally the case, many media reports rely heavily on political groups that press their agendas under the facade of expertise in human rights.

However, as is very often the case, the officials of these organizations have neither the information nor the professional credentials to make such judgments, and by giving them legitimacy, journalists are simply perpetuating the myths.

In many cases, the Canadian media is no exception to this pattern. In listening to CBC Radio news programs, we hear the same distortions, biases, and clichés found elsewhere.

The assessment of the professional qualifications and actions of CBC reporters, and actions to be taken in response, are issues for Canadians to consider. But the lives of Israelis are deeply affected by these distorted and harmful portrayals in the international media.

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.”

See more here.

CBC projections provided to advertisers off sharply

Five months after the heavily promoted relaunch of The National, ratings for CBC Television’s flagship news program are down about 10 per cent from last season’s average, but executives with the public broadcaster say they are unconcerned because they had anticipated a period of churn after its overhaul last fall.

But it is down from the 525,000 average viewership of the 2016-17 TV season, which concluded at the end of last August. And it is off sharply from the CBC’s own projections provided to advertisers, which forecast viewership at a more robust 532,000.

Read the full story here.

CBC News issues vague correction

From 2012 ...

CBC News issues vague correction after it tells viewers there were no rocket attacks from Gaza in the past year.

Canada's CBC television issued an on-air apology Wednesday, a day after it misled its viewers by telling them that the recent Gazan rocket attacks on Israel were the first such attacks in a year's time.

In fact, 405 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza in the last 12 months (according to the Elder of Zion website), and 130 have been fired over the past month – most of them this week.

Read the full story here.

CBC is making Palestinians look like victims, not terrorists

Palestinian President Abbas' Wednesday speech did not include calls to de-escalate terror attacks on Israelis.

Israeli authorities called Abbas' claims that a 13 year old Palestinian boy had been executed a lie -- in fact he is receiving treatment in an Israeli hospital, as seen in the video report, above (see link below).

During all this, taxpayer-funded CBC continues to minimize the recent terror attacks, through their biased choice of words and images that depict Palestinians as victims rather than perpetrators.  

See the full story and video here.

CBC's social experiment shut down by OPP

CBC Marketplace caused a stir in Alliston when it started selling T-shirts bearing "white power" and "Make Canada Great Again" slogans in a social experiment designed to see how Canadians react to racism.

The reaction by some residents was to call the police when they saw a CBC actor selling the T-shirts on Victoria Street in downtown Alliston.

Nottawasaga OPP media relations officer Const. Harry Lawrenson confirmed the detachment put an end to the film shoot on Jan. 11 after receiving complaints from a couple of residents.

Read the full story here.

Perks of the CBC pension plan

When you start a new job, it’s all about the now. You know you should be saving for your future, but it’s hard to find the extra cash! But before you know it, you’re 50, and you wish you had paid more attention to saving.

Less than 40% of Canadian employees have a pension plan through work. We are proud to offer our CBC/Radio-Canada employees a defined benefit plan – one that pays you a regular monthly pension. It’s something you can count on! Not sure you will stay with CBC/Radio-Canada until retirement? You can choose to take the pension you’ve earned with you.

So what’s the plan worth? CBC/Radio-Canada puts in money for you each year – on top of the pay cheque you already receive. The closer you get to retirement, the more money CBC/Radio-Canada will put in. For a 30-year-old, it’s about 5% of your pay. For a 40-year-old, the number jumps to around 10% – and it keeps getting better with age!

As a permanent employee, you join the pension plan the month after you start with CBC/Radio-Canada – meaning you can take advantage of this extra money right away.

See the CBC pension plan here.

How the CBC Let Us Down

I was at the CBC when the Ghomeshi scandal broke and got an inside view of its institutional failures.

I was working from home that Friday in October almost two years ago when a flurry of texts from colleagues at the CBC started blowing up my phone. The missives were mostly questions about how much information any of us had—could we fill in the blanks, did we know what was really going on. But the common thread in every message was the acknowledgement that the things we'd been whispering about, the public secrets we'd all been sort of keeping might actually be true. Because even though at that point we didn't know much, we knew.

Read the full story here.

Why has the CBC not covered this horrific terrorist attack

On the morning of September 16 in Israel, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed to death Ari Fuld, a prominent pro-Israel advocate and dual American-Israeli citizen, in a heinous and brazen daylight murder outside a shopping mall near Efrat, at the Gush Etzion Junction south of Jerusalem.

Fuld was a 45-year-old father of four best known for being a passionate and articulate defender of Israel, as a combat soldier who enlisted in the IDF and in the war of ideas in the realm of pro-Israel advocacy.

Here in Canada, the Globe and Mail, CTV News, Toronto Star, National Post (in print and online), and most PostMedia newspapers all covered the attack (see appended below), prominently we might add, yet we have yet to see any coverage by CBC Online, Radio or TV.

Why has the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster with considerable resources, not covered this horrific terrorist attack that is most newsworthy?

Read the full story here.

CBC is not about Canadian programming but programming Canadians

CBC reporters and producers affirming their assumed superiority by churning out a constant stream of intellectual bigotry.

With the CBC’s TV ratings down 40% to a specialty channel-like 5% share of viewers even before it lost its NHL contract, according to Canadian Media Research, it’s worth asking again what has gone wrong with the Mother Corp and what should be done about it? The answer to the first question is that it no longer represents ordinary Canadians to themselves in a way they like or even recognize. So when its funding comes under scrutiny, it is not surprising that most Canadians collectively yawn while watching any of the myriad other channels available to them on various media platforms.

Someone recently observed that the CBC is not about Canadian programming but programming Canadians to its enlightened view of how the world should work. Look at the litany of in-house CBC stars and ask if any are representative of ordinary Canadians and their values?

Read the full story here.

Ombudsman Finds CBC Reporting Imprecise and Lacked Context

On July 24, HRC issued a media action alert which noted that although Israel won widespread praise for its leading role and brave humanitarian efforts in the daring rescue of hundreds of individuals associated with Syria’s White Helmets, our public broadcaster, the CBC, produced truly appalling coverage that maligned Israel’s efforts.

In that alert, we flagged a biased report by Susan Ormiston that aired on CBC The National on July 23.

Ms. Ormiston’s stating that Israel undertook this daring and dangerous humanitarian operation as essentially a smokescreen to deflect attention and criticism away from its military efforts in Gaza, was unfounded and was a highly editorialized and inflammatory statement, instead of being neutral and objective.

Read the full story and Ombudsman report here.

CBC Broadcasts Outrageous Jewish Conspiracy Theory

You’d expect to see outrageous Jewish conspiracy theories in the annals of Holocaust denial websites, not on our public broadcast’s airwaves.

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 (watch by clicking here or by clicking immediately below) 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.

Read the full story, and see the video here.

CBC declined interview with assaulted Pro-lifer

Pro-lifer assaulted in viral video speaks out — after CBC declined interview

David Menzies of The Rebel.Media reports: Outside a Toronto courthouse, I spoke to Marie Claire Bissonnette, the pro-life activist who was allegedly assaulted by Jordan Hunt during a peaceful protest against abortion on a Toronto street corner, in a video that went viral around the world.

Here are some comments from the video page (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vea9d7slJ0M):

• CBC refused to publish this incident? Yet another reason to sell or defund the CBC !!!
• Yup, getting a little tired of forking out 1.2 billion every year to keep the leftist bs afloat, if they can't be neutral and just report the news time for them to GTFO
• Good for Marie, there should be freedom of speech in this world!!! Boycott CBC
• The cbc is an embarrassment to all Canadians
• The CBC is a Biased Pro Marxist/Communist Totalitarian Government tax payer funded Propaganda Machine. The fact the CBC refused to publish this story is enough proof for me to Start a Movement to DEFUND and Disband the CBC
• and once again the Rebel gets the truth out and the CBC is either silent or telling us lies
• CBC is a disgrace for refusing to cover this assault. Our corrupt government has bought the media bias, let alone mandatory compliance for caucus members on the issue and the withholding of federal summer jobs grants for employers who will not tow the extremist pro-abortion policy

CBC political contributions to politicians

Episode six of the CBC Follies - Political contributions to politicians

CBC Exposed presents: Fifth Estate Follies

The CBC was ordered to pay close to $1 million in damages to medical scientist Dr. Frans Leenen of the University of Ottawa because of a story that ran on the investigative program the fifth estate. 

It was also told to pay another $200,000 in damages to a Toronto cardiologist, Dr. Martin Myers. 

The two doctors had sued the CBC over a story about the safety of heart medication that had been broadcast in 1996. 

They accused the investigative report of being malicious, unfair, defamatory and sensationalized.

CBC News accused of spreading disinformation and mistruths

A non-profit preventive medicine company founded by Calgary Flames co-owner Allan Markin is suing the CBC for what it claims is a series of defamatory articles.

Pure North S’Energy Foundation is seeking $6 million in damages from the national broadcaster and two of its reporters, Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell.

In its statement of claim, filed in Calgary Court of Queen’s Bench, True North says it has repeatedly asked the CBC to remove from the Internet what it says are inaccurate articles.

“Pure North’s reputation and work has been severely damaged as the result of an unrelenting broadcast campaign by the CBC and the reporters through various media which has had the result of damage to Pure North by spreading disinformation and mistruths about Pure North’s operation and practices,” it states ...

Read the full story here.

CBC Fails to Identify Dead Palestinians as Terrorists

Yesterday evening Israel time, a gunfight erupted when undercover Israeli special forces had their cover exposed by Hamas terrorists when carrying out an intelligence gathering mission in Gaza.

In the ensuing battle, six Hamas terrorists were killed, including a senior commander of the group’s tunneling operations. The seventh Palestinian who was killed was a member of the Popular Resistance Committees according to AFP. An Israeli solider was also killed in the raid. Subsequently, Palestinian terrorists fired over 80 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, several which were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system.

In covering the violence which many fear may put Israel and Hams on the brink of war, CBC Radio and TV produced news reports which failed to mention that the seven dead Palestinians were all terrorists. Accordingly, CBC viewers and listeners may have come to the wrong conclusion that Israel killed seven presumably innocent Palestinian civilians.

Read the full story here.

CBC Ombudsman says CBC journalists were wrong

The complainant, Jean-Paul Murray, Secretary of The Gatineau Park Protection Committee, thought there were errors and omissions in two CBC Ottawa pieces concerning the impact of bylaw changes on the integrity of Gatineau Park. He thought they downplayed the potential dangers and were biased in favour of the private landowners. There were an unacceptable number of errors and a lack of context.

Precision of language and informed and adequate context, all contribute to the accuracy and fairness of a piece. There were three errors in two pieces on the same subject. I acknowledge one was a live radio interview and the other was an article. Nevertheless, I consider that a disappointing outcome. It concerns me that there was not a broad enough understanding to be able to interpret the information gleaned from the National Capital Commission, which was a source for the numbers. Ms. Zowdu (Managing Editor for CBC Ottawa) agreed that in the case of the date when acquisition of property began, the location of one property and the issue of right of first refusal, CBC journalists were wrong. Committing this number of errors undermines the integrity of the work and does not meet CBC standards.

That brings my comments back to where I started - I think this story was under-researched and failed to meet CBC’s standards of accuracy and provide the necessary clarity to help citizens understand the facts.

Read the full report here.

CBC Fifth Estate film found at fault

Fifth Estate film found at fault for unfounded facts and false impressions

If you thought that headline was a mouthful, try swallowing a damages award of $950,000 and a costs award over $800,000 as the CBC had to in the libel lawsuit brought by Dr. Frans Leenan. 

After winning his case in Ontario's Superior Court, Dr. Leenen said, 'Four years ago we proposed to settle this law suit for $10,000 and an on-air apology. It was refused...The Fifth Estate persisted and took me through 10 weeks of trial.' 

The trial judge awarded very high damages for libel against The Fifth Estate and the CBC as well as individual reporters and producers. The CBC appealed.

Read the full story here.

Why was CBC reporter hired by National Defence

NDP MP Charlie Angus is asking CBC’s ombudsman to review its policy for protecting confidential sources, given the situation around the government’s hire of the journalist at the centre of the criminal case against Vice Admiral Mark Norman.

“I urge you to examine this case and consider policy options to firm up confidence in the Corporation and ensure that protections for sources are maintained even after a journalist leaves their post,” says Angus’s letter, dated Oct. 26.

CBC reporter James Cudmore wrote stories in the fall of 2015 that contained leaked cabinet confidences, including a crucial story on Nov. 20, 2015, revealing that a cabinet committee had decided to delay a naval project with Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding.

Mere weeks after his story on Vice Admiral Mark Norman, CBC reporter James Cudmore joined the Defence Minister's office as an adviser.

Read the full story here.

CBC executive vice-president term has been turbulent

On Monday, when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced that Heather Conway, its executive vice-president of English-language services, would be stepping down next month after five years on the job, it deployed the bureaucratic boilerplate that she was leaving “to pursue other opportunities.”

She may just be seeking an opportunity to regain her equilibrium.

Every media organization these days is tempest-tossed: Global TV’s chief programmer left last week and will not be replaced; the head of Rogers Media’s sports division left the week before, and that company is in the midst of shedding its magazine division. But even though CBC is sheltered from most of the economic effects of the industry upheaval, Ms. Conway’s term has been an especially turbulent one, characterized by falling TV audiences, staffing cuts and an avalanche of human resources crises triggered by the Jian Ghomeshi scandal four years ago.

Read the full story here.

The CBC Fifth Estate’s Efforts Demolished

Please join us for the book launch of I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak.

There will be a short 20-minute video, followed by a lecture on the book. There will also be a Q&A session, and food and drink.

Fred Litwin recounts how he became a JFK conspiracy freak at eighteen, and then slowly moved to believing that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. This book demonstrates how the left and the right have used the JFK assassination to drive home myths about power in America. There is also the incredible persecution of a gay man prosecuted for conspiring to kill Kennedy, the ugly story of Oliver Stone’s film JFK, an exposé of conspiracy nonsense on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, how the Soviets tried to influence American public opinion into believing the CIA was behind the assassination, and the secret reason why JFK documents must remain locked up forever. And a whole lot more.

“As a young man growing up in the heyday of Kennedy assassination theorizing, Fred Litwin believed a conspiracy killed JFK. And then he grew, and he studied and he researched. The result is this volume, a thorough, cogent and meticulously argued case for a lone assassin. A seasoned conspiracy skeptic will learn new things here, and a conspiracy believer open to looking at the other side could do no better than this volume.”

- John McAdams, Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University and author of JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think about Claims of Conspiracy

"This is a great book for conspiracy buffs—and, more important, for those who debunk such theories. Fred Litwin does a terrific job in blowing up the myriad JFK assassination scenarios, not least in completely demolishing The Fifth Estate’s decades-long efforts to “uncover” the truth. The CBC’s lead investigative show is revealed here to be more than slightly unhinged.”

- J.L. Granatstein, Author of Who Killed Canadian History?

Get your tickets here.

CBC Scandal: Alleged NDAs and Hush Money

The media in Canada has known about this for over a year. I was recently let go from a contract with the National Post after my reporting prompted Peter Mansbridge's lawyers to file a cease and desist letter. This story is not about Mansbridge having inter-office flings. Nobody has said those affairs were not consensual. What's important is that it looks like those affairs are protected by non-disclosure agreements that include paying the women involved with Mansbridge hush money. This is an open secret, but lawyers and crisis management firms are not letting the story break. Hopefully this video can quicken the process.

Copied from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11eRKZCGy_Y

CBC News Fails to Substantiate Claim

On September 26, HonestReporting Canada (HRC) asked CBC News to substantiate a claim they aired by a Palestinian “militant” who said that an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sniper shot and paralyzed his sister.

We asked CBC News if it could substantiate the claim that an Israeli sniper shot and paralyzed Raji Sebteen’s sister and if the CBC could provide context about the alleged incident?

The only information relied upon by the CBC are subjective and partisan claims made by a self described Palestinian “militant” who says he’s involved in “non-violent resistance”. An allegation of this variety, must be backed up by facts. CBC News has not sourced any evidence of any kind: no news reports, police reports, IDF or Palestinian Authority investigations, medical reports, legal documents, insurance reports, and testimony of potential eye witnesses. CBC doesn’t know the exact date the incident is alleged to have happened, nor the exact location. What was the name of the soldier in question? CBC doesn’t know. What is Raji Sebteen’s sister’s name? Has the CBC interviewed her? Has the CBC confirmed that she is in fact paralyzed?

Read the full story here.

CBC needs money but money doesn't buy smarts

You don't have to be Canada's Smartest Person – something CBC decides for us – to know that CBC/Radio-Canada needs more money to do its job, fulfill its mandate. 

But it's not just money the CBC needs. It's a dose of common sense and it needs a reminder that, while it's a special service, it cannot be remote from the principle that it is indeed a service. It's not an institution to be exploited by those it employs to fulfill their most base instincts.

But while CBC is in a better relationship with this government, it is not necessarily in the best phase of its relationship with the paying public. 

CBC needs money but money doesn't buy smarts any more than it buys class.

Read the full story here.