There are only two possible scenarios for Rosemary Barton, and neither is good.
Either she knew that the CBC was going to sue the Conservative Party of Canada in her name and she let it happen, or she didn’t.
If she knew about it, that’s bad. She is, after all, the lead CBC journalist covering a federal election that’s mere days away. Three days before the copyright-infringement suit was filed on October 10, she was a moderator of the official English-language leaders’ debate, where impartiality was the essence of the job. To consciously make herself an adversary of the Conservative Party would be staggeringly stupid. It matters little in this scenario if she were an eager participant or just along for the ride, under pressure from management. It strains credulity to imagine that Barton was somehow forced by her employer to personally sue the Conservatives — and if push came to shove, she could always have resigned. To not refuse is to agree, and to agree is to demonstrate a shocking lack of journalistic judgment by entering into a conflict of interest that would seem to compromise her ability to continue to cover federal politics in Canada, perhaps permanently.
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