The story starts in 1995, when a freelance journalist, Nicholas Regush, came to the fifth estate pitching what he said was a sensational story about corruption in the drug regulatory business.
Regush and his team had four-and-a-half months to pull the piece together.
CBC insiders say there were times that the team disagreed on the script, the tone, and what was cut from the story.
When the piece was complete, it was vetted by Studer, the rest of the production team, and CBC lawyer Michael Hughes.
Two doctors, Dr. Frans Leenen, a respected medical researcher and director of the Hypertension Unit of Ottawa's famous Heart Institute, and Dr. Martin Myers, a cardiologist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital, were not portrayed in the best light.
The program aired Feb. 27, 1996. The CBC devoted its entire one-hour program to this issue, something it does only about 25 per cent of the time.
One million people saw the program, which was subsequently rebroadcast on CBC's Newsworld. Six weeks after it aired, Myers and Leenen sued for libel.
Justice Cunningham awarded Leenen general, aggravated and punitive damages totalling $950,000, together with costs, and ruled that the journalists twisted the facts and acted with malice. In a highly unusual measure, he slapped the host, producer, researcher and executive producer with hefty punitive and aggravated damages.
A long-time CBC employee says it's "flabbergasting and disgusting to a lot of people inside the CBC that management is considering appealing. It's costing 'real' money. There could still be some heads rolling because of this legal debacle. But many people I work with are stunned no one's been fired, that no one at the CBC seems to have been held accountable."
He adds: "It's quite an astonishing story. It's the biggest libel award in Canadian history and everybody at the CBC has their head in the sand. No one wants to touch this with a barge pole. It's classic CBC culture: If you stick your head in the sand, and don't see your critics, then they won't see you. Someone has to be accountable here. We're talking about $3-million worth of taxpayer's money. People are entitled to ask some questions and get some straight answers."
It's the biggest libel award in Canadian history and everybody at the CBC has their head in the sand.
Read the full story here.
cbcexposed is all about exposing the waste of the CBC ... over 1 billion dollars a year of taxpayer money funds the cbc and a lot of that taxpayer money is wasted.
The CBC continues to operate in a wasteful, bias manner serving the socialist left wing mandate only while continuing to lose viewers and advertising revenues. Scandals continue. An unsettling, ugly anti Semitic movement has grown in the CBC News operation, history experts will know that this troubling bias can have devastating results for our country. Act now- contact your MP, the PMO and the CBC to stop this frightening socialist anti Semitic driven bias now.
Disgruntled CBC workers continue to confidentially share their stories with us, reports of management snooping, waste, huge salaries for select senior management, content bias, low employee morale continue in 2021 and we will expose these activities in our blog while protecting our whistleblower contacts. We take joy in knowing that the CBC-HQ visits us daily to spy on us, read our stories and to find out who owns our for the Canadian people blog.
One of our most popular posts continues to be the epic Dr. Leenen case against the Fifth Estate (the largest libel legal case ever awarded against the media in Canadian history) yet where no one at CBC was fired and taxpayers paid the huge award and legal costs for this blatant CBC Libel action. Writers and filmmakers -this is a Perfect story for an award winning Documentary -ok - who would fund it and where would it air since the CBC owns the Documentary channel! Can you help? Please contact us.
cbcExposed continues to enjoy substantial visitors coming from Universities and Colleges across Canada who use us for research in debates, exams, etc.
We ask students to please join with us in this mission; you have the power to make a difference! And so can private broadcasters who we know are hurting from the dwindling Advertising revenue pool and the CBC taking money from that pool while also unfairly getting massive Tax subsidies money. It's time to stop being silent and start speaking up Bell-CTV, Shaw-Global, Rogers, etc.
Our cbcExposed Twitter followers and visitors to cbcExposed continue to motivate us to expose CBC’s abuse and waste of tax money as well as exposing their ongoing left wing bully-like anti-sematic news bias. Polls meanwhile show that Canadians favour selling the wasteful government owned media giant and to put our tax money to better use for all Canadians. The Liberals privatized Petro Canada and Air Canada; it’s time for the Trudeau Liberals to privatize the CBC- certainly not give them more of our tax money-enough is enough!
The CBC network’s ratings continue to plummet while their costs and our taxpayer bailout subsidies continue to go up! In 2021 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 every year. That’s about $100,000,000 (yes, $100 MILLION) of our taxes taken from your pay cheques every 30 days and with no CBC accountability to taxpayers.
Wake up! What does it take for real change at the CBC? YOU! Our blog contains a link to the Politicians contact info for you to make your voice heard. Act now and contact your MP, the Cabinet and Prime Minister ... tell them to stop wasting your money on a biased, failing media service, and ... sell the CBC.
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