Is this a potential conflict of interest?

Canada's national broadcaster has asked its ethics commissioner to review its use of a journalism job board run by one of the country's top oil and gas industry lobbyists, in search of potential conflict of interest.

For years, CBC/Radio-Canada has advertised on Jeff Gaulin's Journalism Job Board, a go-to resource for journalists and media companies looking for both jobs and employees.

The website started in 1995, when Jeff Gaulin graduated from journalism school at the University of Western Ontario. But since 2014, Gaulin has risen to public relations prominence as the vice-president of communications at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) — the largest and most influential oil and gas lobbying group in the country.

Marc Barrette, director of talent acquisition at CBC/Radio-Canada, said he wasn’t made aware of Gaulin’s work at CAPP until recently.

“We’re talking to our ethics commissioner to see if there’s an issue there,” said Barrette. “We’re still waiting for an answer back.”

Read the full story here.

Discrimination complaint against CBC

The CBC admits it's not happy with its progress in hiring Natives and other visible minorities.

But it's been tough to find openings for them, because thousands of jobs have been lost to corporate belt tightening over the last five years, said CBC spokesman Richard Chambers.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission filed a discrimination complaint against the CBC and Bell Canada last month after both failed to meet a deadline for agreeing to a joint

review of their employment practices.

"We're not happy but out record has been good. We have not consciously gone out of our way to discriminate against the targeted groups," said Chambers.

Read the full story here.

Appearance of conflict of interest at CBC

The CBC hired an external investigator to probe two top television executives after receiving complaints that at least 13 contracts were handed to production companies owned by their spouses. Although the investigator found no breaches of the public broadcaster’s conflict of interest policy, the legal counsel for one anonymous complainant said the findings are “inconsistent with the facts” and the contracts present the appearance of conflict of interest.

“Of course, if the CBC gives lots of contracts to the husbands of senior managers, that’s the appearance of conflict of interest,” he added. “And if that’s the standard of the CBC — that the spouses of managers one after the other is having contracts given to them — it is so seemingly inappropriate and smells so badly that it’s something the CBC should not be permitting in any event.”

Read the full story here.

Is CBC partnered with CNN?

According to CNN, they are a “Partner” of state broadcaster CBC.  Is this true? Are Canadians allowed to see the partnership agreement we end up paying for?

CBC journalists now going where they have never gone before

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is touting Ottawa's investments in the CBC as one remedy to the financial crisis that has hit Canadian news organizations, forcing newspaper closures and newsroom cutbacks.

He said his government has invested $675 million in the CBC and its French language arm, Radio-Canada, that has meant journalists now cover “areas where they had never served before.”

Read the full story here.

Concerns About CBC Upheld

On April 18, CBC Ombudsman Esther Enkin released a review at the behest of HonestReporting Canada subscriber David Levy which found that The Current’s February 7 broadcast (which HRC critiqued as having demonized Israel) fundamentally “lacked balance” and “fell short” of the CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices.

The CBC’s Ombud said that The Current and Host Anna-Maria Tremonti “did not convey an accurate reflection of the reality on the Israeli side and required balance.”

Read the full story here.

Netflix more influential brand than CBC

Netflix is changing the way people consume television, and this year, the streaming service entered Canada's top 10 brands for the first time.

Sitting at ninth place, Netflix now ranks as a more influential brand than the CBC, which fell four spots to 14th in this year's survey.

The most influential brands in Canada

RANK	BRAND
1	Google
2	Facebook
3	Apple
4	Amazon
5	Microsoft
6	YouTube
7	Walmart
8	Visa
9	Netflix
10	Samsung
11	MasterCard
12	The Weather Network
13	Canada Post
14	CBC
15	PayPal
16	Tim Hortons
17	Canadian Tire
18	Shoppers Drug Mart
19	President's Choice
20	Instagram

Read the full story here.

CBC News Network: 329 employees, average salary: $100,707

There might be more than 500 channels to choose from, which cater to pretty much every interest imaginable, but the vast majority of people who watch them have one thing in common: We can’t help but wonder how much money the people who get to do this for a living are paid.

The figures released by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Wednesday for 2013 provide an indication of how much the channels have spent each year on programming and how much money is going to salaries, among other things.

News and Information

BC News 1 Vancouver: 23 employees, average salary: $88,541

Business News Network: 77 employees, average salary: $86,118

CBC News Network: 329 employees, average salary: $100,707

CP24 Toronto: 87 employees, average salary: $90,021

CTV News Channel: 88 employees, average salary: $122,923

Sun News Network: 128 employees, average salary: $83,234

The Weather Network: 198 employees, average salary: $80.237

Read the full story here.

CBC compensation ranges for upper management

Four employees involved in CBC broadcasts earn more than $300,000 a year, taking home on average about $485,667 annually in total compensation. But the public broadcaster won’t identify who they are.

The numbers are contained in a document sent to a Senate committee that is studying the challenges facing the CBC. The document includes the salary ranges and total compensation ranges for upper management, as well as how much those executives could earn in the private sector.

Those four make up less than one per cent of the 1,286 on-air personnel at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Radio-Canada, as of April 1. About 83 per cent of on-air talent at Canada’s public broadcaster earn less than $100,000, not including overtime.

Read the full story here.

PS - as per the numbers above, this means that 17 per cent of CBC on air talent earns MORE than $100,000 a year!

Air Canada Attacks CBC ‘Bias’

Air Canada has taken to social media to air a grievance with the CBC, and the airline is pulling no punches.

In a Facebook post and Tweet on Friday from its corporate accounts, the airline presented what it called "confirmation" of biased reporting at the CBC.

The confirmation appears to be an internal email in which CBC Sunday Edition host Michael Enright tells a CBC producer that Air Canada's reply to a series of questions about boarding procedures was "bullshit."

Read the full story here.

CBC paid an actor to sell racist shirts

It seems that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Marketplace show was unable to find a racist Trump supporter. Instead, they hired an actor named Mike to portray one as you shall see. Mike's job as a racist Trump supporter was to sell a couple of White Power T-shirts along with a "Make Canada Great Again" T-shirt. It was their laughably unsubtle attempt to link Donald Trump to racism.

The CBC paid an actor, using your tax dollars, to sell racist shirts (that you also paid for). 

Marketplace used to uncover scams in business, like unscrupulous contractors, and bring them to justice. Now Marketplace is the one perpetrating scams.

Read the full story here.

Ratings off sharply from the CBC’s own projections provided to advertisers

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.

The show has been pulling an average of 460,000 viewers on the CBC’s main network since its overhaul, which included the introduction of four reporter-hosts replacing Peter Mansbridge, and a shift to providing deep context on a few key stories rather than a faster-paced review of the day’s events which typifies evening newscasts.

That audience number, provided by the CBC’s research department from the national TV ratings agency Numeris, has held steady over the past five months.

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 Host Awkwardly Mistakes Navdeep Bains For Jagmeet Singh

A veteran reporter confused Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains for NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on Monday, inadvertently providing a reminder that not everyone who has a beard and wears a turban is the same.

After Twitter users called out CBC News host Susan Bonner for the post, she deleted her tweet, acknowledging that it was posted in "error and haste."

Read the full story here.

Radio-Canada Reporter Arrested

Radio-Canada says it is standing behind a reporter who was arrested this week after the subject of a story he was working on lodged a complaint with police.

The CBC's French-language network said the complaint against Antoine Trepanier stems from calls and emails he sent seeking reaction to a story about the head of the chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters in western Quebec.

Accompanied by two managers, Trepanier was arrested and released on a promise to appear in court June 20.

Gatineau police said it would be up to the Crown to decide whether charges would be filed.

Read the full story here.

CBC goes ad free; sort of

New CBC TV App Will Let Viewers Pay To Watch Shows Without Ads.

The broadcaster said in a memo that the new app, which will also be available for free in an ad-supported version, will allow users to live stream CBC TV, watch episodes on demand on the same day they're released, see ad-free children's programing and see series not aired on the network.

The broadcaster said it will cost $4.99 for the ad-free, premium version of the new CBC TV app.

It says the app is part of its expanding offerings to new digital platforms as customers get more of their content from digital services such as Netflix.

Read the full story here.

Netflix more influential brand than CBC

Tim Hortons' decline in the rankings — dropping to 16th place this year, from ninth the year before — was at least partly due to the bad publicity the company experienced over the past year, says Ipsos' chief operating officer for Canada, Steve Levy.

Levy says the companies that perform well are often the ones that change consumer behaviour. For instance, Netflix is changing the way people consume television, and this year, the streaming service entered Canada's top 10 brands for the first time.

Sitting at ninth place, Netflix now ranks as a more influential brand than the CBC, which fell four spots to 14th in this year's survey.

Read the full story here.

CBC report accused of being malicious, unfair, defamatory and sensationalized

The CBC must pay one of the largest defamation penalties ever imposed on a Canadian media outlet after being denied its final avenue of appeal. 

The Supreme Court of Canada announced Thursday that it will not hear the case. The top justices never give reasons for refusing to hear appeals. 

Two years ago, 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. 

"I remain disappointed that the CBC pursued this matter until the bitter end. In doing so it has wasted millions in taxpayers' dollars fighting a case which could have been settled years ago with a simple on-air apology and $10,000 in damages." 

Read the full story here.

CBC to act more like a YouTube network?

After CBC-Radio Canada leaders last year told employees to fix their focus on tomorrow and the fast-changing media landscape, newly installed English services head of digital Richard Kanee was last week blue-skying about YouTube as one possible way to get the pubcaster round the digital bend.

We’re not just talking about the CBC distributing its content on YouTube.

Noting that it’s still early in the game, Kanee floated the idea of CBC acting more like a YouTube multi-channel network (MCN) on the digital side, with the pubcaster curating Canadian talent and privately made content for the online universe.

This digital transformation diverges from the mobile-first strategy first unveiled in June 2014 by CBC-Radio Canada president Hubert Lacroix, which has more to do with news-gathering and delivering content to phones and tablets, he explained.

Read the full story here.

LEAKED: CBC’s Digital Strategy and Employee Q&A

CANADALAND has obtained internal CBC documents illustrating how the organization is dealing with employee tension, rage and confusion.

The CBC work atmosphere has by all accounts hit a new low since the town hall, where employees hoped to learn whether or not they would be keeping their jobs. Instead, they were forced to endure President Hubert Lacroix’s “Vision 2020” unveiling, a smokescreen of digital futurism bafflegab that obscured the painful truth, that 1500 unspecified positions will be eliminated over the next 5 years. While each employee waits to find out if they’re getting the axe, they are expected to internalize and execute the CBC’s “digital mantra”, which will result in news content designed for phones and tablets, somehow (it has to do with “pillars” and “planks”).

Employees were assured that all queries would be answered if submitted via email. The results of that process have since been posted to the CBC’s iO! employee intranet and then leaked to CANADALAND.

The full document is a slog of mendacious, obfuscatory doublespeak.

Read more here.

New CBC/Radio-Canada president

Canadian television and film executive Catherine Tait will become the first woman president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada.

Tait, 60, will replace Hubert Lacroix, 62, who was selected by then Prime Minister Stephen Harper's heritage minister, Josée Verner, in 2008.

An internal audit in 2014 found Lacroix had been wrongly claiming accommodation costs, totalling about $30,000, since his 2008 appointment.

Prior to taking on the role, Lacroix practised law for three decades in Montreal.

Read the full story here.

Letter to the CBC - story is neither balanced nor accurate

I am writing because of my concerns with your recent CBC TV News story about disbarred lawyer Richard Chojnacki. The story is neither balanced nor accurate.

I am disappointed and dismayed that where the program's producers had access to additional facts that did not fit their storyline, they chose not to use them. There were opportunities to provide the viewer with more recent facts that bear significantly on the Law Society's role in the protection of the public interest.

The Law Society of Upper Canada takes very seriously its responsibility to protect the public interest, and to do so in an open and transparent manner. The events at the centre of your story began in 2004. Since then the Law Society has sought, and obtained, increased statutory authority in the managing of cases where a lawyer or paralegal is being investigated for professional misconduct. This significant fact, as I explained in my interview with the CBC, was ignored. Similarly, the Law Society has sought, and obtained, increased statutory authority permitting us to alert authorities in cases of imminent risk. Again, you failed to balance your story by letting your viewers know about these important developments.

Your story relies on things as they were several years ago, without the counterpoint of what has been done since then, and continues to be done, to enhance the protection of the public interest.

Read the full letter here.