CBC manager denies being asked to investigate complaints ...

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's director of network talk radio is contradicting comments made by Chris Boyce, head of CBC Radio, saying that she was never asked to investigate complaints about Jian Ghomeshi's behaviour within the Q unit.

In an email to Boyce, Linda Groen said, "I have to set the record straight on one particular point" regarding comments Boyce made on CBC's the fifth estate last Friday.

“At no point did you or any senior manager ever instruct me to conduct such an investigation, formally or otherwise,” Groen wrote. “To the contrary, I was assured and confident that you and HR were handling the matter and asking the appropriate people the necessary questions.

Read the full story here.

CBC’s Peter Mansbridge says goodbye to himself

Peter Mansbridge has made tens of millions of dollars from the CBC. (By which I mean, from you, the taxpayer, although we aren’t permitted to know exactly how much.)

His time on the air is now coming mercifully to an end, though we’ll be paying his pension for a while.

So what’s Peter Mansbridge like, in the bias department?

We don’t quite know, because he keeps a lot of secrets. Like his secret trip to Italy to preside over the wedding of Kate Purchase, who is now Justin Trudeau’s communications director.

At the CBC, it’s clearly a corporate decision to be politically biased.

Read the full story here.

CBC took the rare step of apologizing

The CBC attempted to cram 150 years of Canadian history into the 10-hour docu-drama "Canada: The Story of Us." By many accounts, it's not doing so well.

But this isn't the only series that has failed to capture our rich and varied past, celebrated historian Christopher Moore said Wednesday, lamenting a general "fear of historians" that has marked "almost every film project and television project" he's been involved with.

Moore, who was not a part of the CBC production, blamed the downfall of such shows on "producers and directors who essentially are determined to become instant experts."

The Toronto-based writer added his voice to a chorus of complaints plaguing "Canada: The Story of Us," which premiered March 26.

The CBC took the rare step of apologizing Tuesday, noting "we fully recognize that not everyone will agree with every perspective presented."

Read the full story here.

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.

CBC employees overpaid

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.

The truth is that the CBC has become a gravy train for elites, with the backing of government unions. These elites have managed to persuade people that they are desperate and hard done by, while the average salary at the broadcaster is $100,528 per year. That is well into the top 10 per cent of all Canadian earners and 23 per cent more than the average earnings of a private-sector TV employee, even before the CBC's luxurious benefits.

Not only are CBC employees overpaid, their performance has been questionable. Their advertising revenues have fallen 32 per cent in just the last year, and 12.2 per cent annually for the past five years. Those five years may have been difficult for the industry, but private broadcasters saw annual declines of just 1.7 per cent. On account of CBC's consistent decline, taxpayers provided 68.5 per cent of funding in 2015.

Read the full story here.

CBC board has new selection process

The federal Liberals have put together a star-studded cast to help choose new members of the public broadcaster's board of directors.

Long-time television news broadcaster Tom Clark will head the advisory committee that's designed to fulfil a Liberal campaign promise to overhaul the process for appointing board members at CBC/Radio-Canada.

Critics have for years complained that the process for choosing board members at the CBC left the public broadcaster open to political interference.

Under the Broadcasting Act, CBC/Radio-Canada must have 12 directors on its board, including a chair and a president. Each is expected to serve a five-year term.

The term of the current chair, Remi Racine, was to end Tuesday. Hubert Lacroix's term as president is set to expire in October.

Read the full story here.

Current CBC board boasts little outside broadcast industry experience

The Liberal government is overhauling the process by which members of the board of directors of CBC/Radio-Canada are selected, in hopes of ending decades of allegations of political interference in the public broadcaster’s operations.

The Globe and Mail has learned the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Mélanie Joly, will announce on Tuesday the creation of the Independent Advisory Committee for Appointments to the CBC/Radio-Canada Board of Directors.

It will likely please many who have called for non-partisan appointments to the board, including the Canadian Media Guild, the union that represents most English-language CBC staff.

Critics have noted that the current CBC board boasts little outside broadcast industry experience, and does not reflect Canada’s diversity.

The term of the current CBC chair, Rémi Racine, expires Tuesday; the term of the CBC’s president, Hubert Lacroix, expires at the end of the year. While each man may reapply for another term, the government source noted that both would need to submit to the same new Advisory Committee process as all other candidates who wish to be considered.

Read the full story here.

CBC is the Globe's largest competitor in the digital ad space

The publisher of the Globe and Mail newspaper, Philip Crawley, told members of Parliament who are examining Canada's beleaguered news industry that the Globe's ownership isn't seeking "handouts or subsidies — but we do like to play on a level playing field."

"It's not level if taxpayer dollars directed to the public broadcaster make the competition for digital ad dollars more difficult. The CBC is the Globe's largest competitor in the digital ad space amongst Canadian-based media."

Read the full story here.

3 Anchors to replace Peter Mansbridge

Three anchors will replace Peter Mansbridge at the new version of CBC's flagship national news program, "The National."

The incoming hosts will also report in the field, said Jennifer McGuire, general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News. However, the people who will fill the high-profile positions are still being decided.

"As yet, no decisions have been made with respect to who will replace Peter and October 30th is the launch date, "said CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson in an email to HuffPost Canada on Thursday.

The newscast is currently being revamped to better reflect "the continuous digital news environment that we live in," McGuire said in May.

Read the full story here.

Report calls for CBC to stop selling digital ads

A public-policy group has issued 12 recommendations to revive the Canadian news industry, including cutting off digital revenue to the public broadcaster.

The report by the Public Policy Forum maintains that the decline of traditional media, audience fragmentation, and fake news are undermining faith in Canadian democracy.

"Free cbc.ca of the need to 'attract eyeballs' for digital advertising, which can run contrary to its civic-function mission and draw it into a 'clickbait' mentality," the report states.

As things stand now, the CBC generates about $25 million in annual digital revenue, according to the report.

Read the full story here.

CBC handling of complaints

When a formal complaint is made against information published or broadcast by CBC (whether an in-house production or a report or documentary produced by a third party), the executive producer responsible for the content in question undertakes to reply promptly.

If the complainant is not satisfied with the explanations given and applies to the Ombudsman for a review, CBC undertakes to make the Ombudsman’s opinion accessible by, among other means, posting a link on the program web page or on the page giving access to the content in question.

See the full procedure here.

CBC’s coverage of Six Day War unbalanced and unfair

Amazingly, in the CBC’s reporting on the impact of the Six Day War as we mark its 50th anniversary, nowhere did reports by Mideast correspondent Derek Stoffel mention that the war was waged by pan-Arab armies seeking the destruction of Israel.

Derek Stoffel’s June 5 article on the CBC’s website and his June 6 CBC Radio report on World at Six Stoffel failed to mention the cause of the Six Day War, where Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies tried to annihilate the State of Israel.

To focus only on the aftermath of the Six Day War and to completely ignore what started it, was most unbalanced and unfair.

Read the full story here.

CBC ombudsman slams CBC

The CBC's own watchdog has found reporting on Israel by the state broadcaster did not meet values of accuracy, balance, and impartiality. Eric Duhaime joined Krista Erickson to discuss.

See the video here.

CBC Announces 'The National' Revamp

CBC News has announced a new organizational structure, with a heavy emphasis on digital as well as changes to "The National."

In a memo distributed to staff on Tuesday, editor-in-chief Jennifer McGuire said digital will now be a part of everything CBC News does and "not a stand-alone pillar" of its service.

Journalist Steve Ladurantaye, who was Twitter Canada's head of news and government partnerships before joining the CBC last May, has been appointed the new managing editor of "The National," and tasked with "redefining 'The National' for the next generation."

Read the full story here.

CBC says statements were "substantially true"

The CBC says it gave Subway plenty of opportunity to refute the findings of an investigation into the sandwich chain's chicken products before airing reports that prompted a defamation lawsuit from the company.

Subway alleges in its lawsuit that the CBC acted "recklessly and maliciously" in airing a report that suggested some chicken products served by the chain could contain only 50 per cent chicken or less. The sandwich chain further alleges the tests "lacked scientific rigour."

The sandwich chain is seeking $210 million in damages, saying its reputation and brand have taken a hit as a result of the CBC reports. It is also seeking recovery of out-of-pocket expenses it says were incurred as part of efforts to mitigate its losses.

The broadcaster says the statements that Subway objects to are "substantially true" and were made "in good faith and without malice on matters of public interest."

The CBC also questions Subway's claim that its revenue and reputation have suffered, and says any damage the chain has experienced is unrelated to the report.

Read the full story here.

Did CBC Commit An Act Of Hate Speech?

What would happen if the CBC--Canada's public broadcaster, the purported bastion of tolerance--violated Alberta's Human Rights Act ("AHRA")? We may soon find out.

On January 20, 2017, producers for the CBC program Marketplace printed t-shirts containing racist logos and mottos, including "white power" and "white pride world wide [sic]," and hired a middle-aged white man to stand on a Toronto street to peddle the t-shirts and yell racist slogans.

The episode is titled "The Trump Effect" and was broadcast throughout Canada, including Alberta. It remains as a monument to our public broadcaster's colossal ignorance on the CBC YouTube channel.

Shortly after the episode aired, an American journalist inquired in a tweet if this is what passes for journalism in Canada. The tweet piqued my interest, so I tried to watch the show.

I couldn't finish it. It was chockful of frustrating errors, including one near the beginning of the show where onscreen graphics and dialogue equate "intolerant speech" and "hate speech". The Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC") has already ruled that these are not the same thing.

But not only is this episode the epitome of so-called "fake news" -- fabricating a story in order to report it -- it's also deeply ironic. By broadcasting this content in Alberta, the CBC likely violated Alberta's hate speech law.

Read the full story here.

CBC Bet $80 Million And Lost

CBC TV has struggled ever since it lost NHL hockey to Rogers in 2013. Sports, especially hockey, have always been the CBC's fallback programming strategy and when Rogers swooped in and paid billions for the NHL, the dazed CBC responded like a concussed defenceman. To compensate, CBC acquired the rights to the 2014 Sochi and 2016 Rio Olympics and even before the 2016 games were in the books, the public broadcaster agreed to pay the IOC until 2024.

CBC management said that the Olympics would "break even" or "make a small profit" and that the decision was "fiscally responsible."

Did CBC make a good business decision for taxpayers, its 'shareholders'? Did the games break even or make a profit? CRTC data on CBC ad revenues show that the Olympics had a relatively modest impact on revenues in 2016. CBC English increased revenues by some $45 million in 2016 and the French network had basically no increase. So, overall, in 2016 the Olympics cost the CBC $80 million and generated incremental revenues of only about $45 million, creating a net loss of some $35 million.

Read the full story here.

Does CBC/Radio-Canada need saving?

While some have been sounding the alarm for a while now, there is a perfectly viable way for the CBC to keep on operating even if the money it gets from Ottawa keeps on shrinking: direct funding from viewers, a model that works very well south of the border.

First of all, let's do away with the myth that CBC/Radio-Canada is being starved of funding. Between 2000 and 2014, government funding to the CBC was reduced by 11 per cent in real terms, while total revenues fell by just 2 per cent. Under the current government, the largest cut occurred in 2013 with a 6 per cent reduction. To put that in perspective, the previous government slashed public funding to the broadcaster by 20 per cent in 1996 and by a further 26 per cent in 1997. So current cuts are not as draconian as some would have us believe.

Still, there have been cuts, and these may indeed continue, which is why the CBC should start transitioning toward being partially financed directly by its viewers. In the United States, an average of 30 per cent of the funding for public radio and public television comes from individual subscriptions, with tax-based funding representing only 36 per cent of total revenues.

Quebec's community radios receive only 20 per cent of their revenues through government subsidies and they're able to offer good local and regional coverage.

Read the full story here.

CBC Exposed

What case can be made for the Government to be in the broadcasting business, competing unfairly with the private sector? The CBC receives advertising and cable/satellite fees-fees greater than CTV and Global but this is not enough for the greedy CBC who also receive more than a billion dollars of your tax money.

And now the new Trudeau Government has promised at least an additional $150 million dollars a year to this biased, wasteful government broadcaster.

As is, Taxpayers continue to be hosed to the tune of about $100,000,000 (yes, 100 MILLION) of our taxes every 30 days with no CBC accountability to taxpayers as they continue with their biased news service serving only the extreme socialists and anti-Semitics. Wake up Canada!

Make your voice heard!

Harassment claims at CBC emerge

Following the April 2015 release of the Rubin Report, which detailed workplace abuse and institutional failures at CBC’s Q, many internal changes are being championed by the public broadcaster. Bullying awareness posters are plastered throughout the halls and every employee must take online training to help prevent bullying and harassment.

In media interviews, CBC executives and spokespeople assure the public that institutional changes are taking place.

But CANADALAND has learned of serious bullying, harassment, and workplace abuse complaints at the CBC, throughout its departments. Through conversations with over a dozen CBC employees, our investigation revealed that CBC Radio One, CBC TV Sports, and CBC human resources have all experienced, or are experiencing, allegations of workplace bullying and abuse.

CBC Radio’s flagship current affairs program As It Happens is known for its aggressive accountability journalism and for asking unflinching questions, sometimes posed to the CBC itself. This past winter, As It Happens producers began approaching the CBC’s union, the Canadian Media Guild, with serious workplace complaints. Soon, CMG Toronto President Naomi Robinson compiled a list of 21 allegations from “about a dozen” current and former As It Happens producers. No official union grievances were filed.

This document, taken from an email sent by Robinson, was provided to CANADALAND by two sources who asked to stay confidential to protect their careers. The CBC denies all of the allegations that follow.

Read the full story here.

Union calls for CBC president Hubert Lacroix to step down

CBC president and CEO Hubert Lacroix has had a rocky eight years at the helm of Canada’s public broadcaster, and the union that represents most of his employees is now calling for him to step down.

The Canadian Media Guild, which represents the employees of CBC’s English services as well as its French services outside Quebec and New Brunswick, says Lacroix and his board of directors have lost their legitimacy and the confidence of the staff.

While Lacroix has presided over budget cuts, asset sales and falling ratings, his biggest challenges have been ethical and personnel scandals that challenged the CBC’s personality-focused system. Here’s a look back at some of the biggest controversies involving CBC stars since Lacroix — who wasn’t immediately available for comment — took over.

Check them out here.

CBC violating the Broadcast Act

The publisher of the Globe and Mail newspaper, Phillip Crawley, told members of Parliament who are examining Canada's beleaguered news industry that the Globe's ownership isn't seeking "handouts or subsidies — but we do like to play on a level playing field."

"It's not level if taxpayer dollars directed to the public broadcaster make the competition for digital ad dollars more difficult. The CBC is the Globe's largest competitor in the digital ad space amongst Canadian-based media."

Crawley, one of more than a half dozen witnesses appearing Tuesday, was flanked by an unlikely ally — Brian Lilley of Rebel Media, an online news and right-wing opinion outlet that delights in skewering the dreaded mainstream (or "lamestream") media, of which the Globe might be considered a charter member.

"You can't have a level playing field when the public broadcaster ... has decided that they want to be all things to all people," said Lilley.

"I will tell you emphatically that CBC has been violating the Broadcast Act and their mandate for a long time."

Read the full story here.

Andrew Scheer would axe CBC news

Conservative leadership candidate Andrew Scheer suggested that if he were to become prime minister, he would axe the news division of CBC.

“I think taxpayers are very frustrated by how much the CBC costs,” Scheer said in an interview with Hamilton Community News.

“I don’t know why this government is in the news business in this day and age with so many platforms with so many ways to disseminate information,” he told the paper, adding that, the government has a “glaring” conflict operating the CBC.

Read the full story here.

CBC pension plan is flawed by design

In 2010, CBC employees contributed $26.9 million to their pensions, but $51.2 million was added by taxpayers. While the split is supposed to be 50/50, CBC has chosen to ask taxpayers to fund the deficit without asking employees to contribute more. To properly fund the pension solvency shortfall, the CBC, under normal accounting rules, would be required to fund an extra $160 million each year over the next five years.

The CBC pension is a mature plan: more than 9,066 retirees are receiving money from the plan but only 8,086 employees paying into it. Every employee fired from CBC increases the cash required from taxpayers to prop up a plan that is flawed by design.

Read the full story here.

CBC History Minefield

History is a minefield. Just ask the CBC, whose Canada 150 series, The Story of Us, has blown up in its face. The outrage is running high. With their blood still boiling after the Andrew Potter-McGill affair, Quebeckers say the French role in nation-building doesn’t get nearly enough play. On top of that, they’re incensed because the French fur traders and explorers are portrayed as scraggly ruffians with bad grooming. Major victim groups such as the Acadians are ignored (at least through the early episodes). The series is an insult to aboriginals, say some. Even the mayor of Annapolis Royal is upset because his town doesn’t get a mention, even though there was a settlement there. To set the record straight, he wants the CBC to do another episode – a prequel – presumably in time for tourist season.

Following the path of least resistance, the CBC’s president has now issued a craven apology to all those who were, are and remain to be offended by any errors of commission, omission, or lack of sufficient air time. Their numbers will no doubt swell beyond counting. The truth is that the poor old CBC was doomed the moment it commissioned the project. History is so contentious these days, and identity groups so aggrieved, that almost everyone was bound to be upset.

In fact, the series is so politically correct that it makes your teeth ache.

Read the full story here.

CBC president Hubert Lacroix defends American programming

CBC president Hubert Lacroix has defended the Canadian public broadcaster’s use of American syndicated game shows as lead-ins to its primetime schedule.

Lacroix told webcast for CBC listeners Wednesday that Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, acquired from CBS Paramount International Television, are cheaper to program than homegrown shows, and “raise the awareness of the rest of our programming schedule.”

The CBC topper also rejected criticism that the Canadian public broadcaster is airing primetime fluff to bolster ratings in competition with rivals like CTV and Global Television that air mostly popular U.S. network series in primetime.

Read the full story here.

Why should the CBC be any different?

In an editorial for Newspapers Canada, Canadian Newspaper Association chair Bob Cox argues that it’s pointless—and maybe even a little corrupt—for the CBC to be reorienting itself toward online services, precisely because doing so is a business-savvy move—so business-savvy, in fact, that privately owned newspapers are already doing it of their own accord.

“There’s no need to pour tax dollars into something the the private sector is already doing without a subsidy, unless the goal is propaganda,” he writes. There’s a certain logic to this. Much of what the government does is aimed at serving the public good in ways private enterprise can’t. Why should the CBC be any different?

Read the full story here.

CBC's The National managing editor removed

CBC has removed the new managing editor of The National, the third media leader in Canada to lose his job or step down over the past week after weighing in on the toxic subject of cultural appropriation. 

Steve Ladurantaye, who had been tapped in March to oversee the reinvention of CBC-TV’s flagship evening newscast, was reassigned Wednesday afternoon, less than one week after joining a number of other Canadian media executives last Thursday in a late-night Twitter conversation in which he issued a tweet that appeared to express support for their idea of a so-called “appropriation prize.”

Read the full story here.

CBC described as a predator

Canadian journalism is in the midst of industrial and market failure. Print and broadcast journalism are struggling to adapt to both the economic models of the digital economy as well as the media consumption habits of digitally-enabled citizens. Meanwhile, our small size, lack of VC funding, large presence of U.S. digital journalism companies, combined with the rise of Facebook, Google and the pernicious effect of the ad-tech industry has led to a market failure in the funding model for Canadian digital journalism.

As a recent Public Policy Forum report (for which we were research principals) argues, it is time that Canadian media policy adapt to the realities of the digital age. While much of the coverage of the report has focused on the establishment of a Future of Journalism and Democracy Fund, in our minds the most critical recommendation concerns the CBC – namely, that the CBC should begin publishing all civic journalism content under a Creative Commons license.

Rightly or wrongly, many people that we spoke to for this project, in both the traditional and new media, described the CBC as a “predator.” This should concern all proponents of the CBC.

Read the full story here.

CBC mandate must be revisited

Back in June 2014, when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation lost the rights for Hockey Night in Canada, Canada’s private news media’s future was set, more or less, to “Screwed.”

The Ceeb was losing its fattest revenue vein and entering survival mode just as news reportage was migrating to smartphones from newspapers, televisions, radios and desktop computers. It was then, as the broadcaster looked to reinvent itself, that all of us should have demanded its mandate be revisited — for every other news organization’s sake.

Two years later, without that re-examination, the CBC’s future is healthy while its competitors in privately owned print news cling to life. The reason: the CBC’s wholesale migration to the mobile web, by way of which our tax dollars are underwriting print news (and now even newspaper-like opinion) for the price — zero — that most Canadians are willing to pay to read such stuff on their iPhones.

Read the full story here.