CBC ombudsman - lack of warning was bad judgement and a policy breach

Warning: Disturbing Material - The public deserves to know when they are going to have to see or hear shocking images.

CBC news in Calgary used the images of a dead dog and cat, with tape all over the muzzle, as an over the shoulder shot while the anchors introduced a story about animal cruelty. The complainant, Faisal Jhandir was watching the news with his two young children when the images came on screen. He wrote to complain about their use and the lack of warning.

The use within the report was reasonable. The lack of warning was bad judgement and a policy breach.

Read the full review here.

CBC ombudsman - there was a violation of conflict of interest

Conflict of Interest: Consider the perception
Wednesday, May 13, 2015

The complainant, Rod Murphy, was one of many people who expressed concern about a conflict of interest when senior business correspondent Amanda Lang interviewed the CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, because of her personal involvement with a board member, and because she had spoken at events partly sponsored by RBC.

I found that there was a violation of conflict of interest policy because of the personal connection.

Read the full review here.

CBC Ombudsman - Broadcast did not live up to CBC Journalistic policy

Violence on the Temple Mount: The challenge of balancing background and news
Thursday, September 24, 2015

The complainant, Paul Appleby, thought a story about a clash on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem lacked context and misrepresented the cause of the violence. I agreed the story was not clear enough and did not provide adequate context.

CBC Journalistic policy makes this commitment:

We seek out the truth in all matters of public interest. We invest our time and our skills to learn, understand and clearly explain the facts to our audience. The production techniques we use serve to present the content in a clear and accessible manner.

This World Report broadcast did not live up to that commitment.

Read the full review here.

CBC Ombudsman - CBC repaid the expenses

Pay the piper.
Thursday, May 24, 2018

The complainant, Christopher Budgell, wanted to know why Sunday Edition host Michael Enright was able to attend the Canadian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies’ week-long lecture series in Cambridge, England.

He thought it inappropriate for a journalist to be there and was a conflict of interest. He also wanted to know who paid his expenses. His inquiry led to the correction of a violation - CBC repaid the expenses.

Read the full review here.

CBC Employees Warned

CBC Employees Warned Personal Financial Info Could Have Been Stolen.

Thousands of employees of Canada's public broadcaster are being warned their personal information may have been compromised after a recent computer theft, the CBC said Wednesday.

"The stolen equipment, while password protected, may contain electronic files, including some personal financial information" of people who recently worked for the CBC and Radio-Canada, the Crown corporation's chief financial officer said in an email.

Around 20,000 people could be affected, including current employees, outside contractors and some former employees who worked over the last 18 months, the broadcaster confirmed.

Read the full story here.

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.