Exposé of CBC Manager Politics

Fred Litwin's new book: "Conservative Confidential: Inside the Fabulous Blue Tent" contains a chapter on the CBC that is "an exposé of the politics driving senior CBC managers" ...

Following is a short exert from that chapter:

Examining the structural, cultural and institutional biases of the CBC would be a daunting challenge. The CBC is a huge organization with almost $2 billion in revenues (roughly 60 per cent coming from the federal treasury) and about 7,000 employees providing radio, television and online services in the two official languages as well as eight aboriginal languages. We could have easily made our film about a host of problems at the CBC — it’s Toronto-centricity, its anti-Americanism, its obsession with identity politics, its cultural insularity, and so on and so forth. We decided to focus on the CBC’s bias against Israel and its bias against small ‘c’ and large ‘C’ conservatives. But it was the CBC’s antipathy to Israel that was most egregious.

I contacted Mike Fegelman of HonestReporting Canada and he sent me a USB stick with 120 clips from a variety of CBC shows. We spent hours searching YouTube, and several bloggers sent us ideas and video. We spent the whole summer watching, downloading and editing videos, adding titles and subtitles and writing commentary. By the time fall had arrived, we had produced a 50-minute documentary, This Hour Could Have 10,000 Minutes: The Biases of the CBC.

With revenues of $1.9 billion, of which 60 per cent comes from government, the CBC and Radio-Canada maintains more than 100 stations (88 radio and 27 TV). But specialty TV is the fastest growing broadcast category. Internet advertising now exceeds all television advertising. Residential TV subscriber numbers are in decline. A huge fragmentation of audiences is under way. Of the top 100 TV programs in Canada by 2014, only 23 were Canadian-produced and one-third of Anglophone Canadians had embraced Netflix.

The Broadcasting Act of 1991 mandates its two “primary tools,” the CBC and the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. Section 3 of the Act covers the CBC, and part of its mandate is to “reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions.”

That is where the CBC is losing sight of its mission. The ivory tower on Front Street in Toronto not only makes the CBC Toronto-centric, but it blinds them to the needs and requirements of people across the country.

To see more and get a copy of the book please click here.

CBC consistently losing market share despite taxpayer subsidy

I believe that when the CBC began, it was absolutely essential at almost any cost. It was one of the only mediums of communication, and for many parts of Canada it was the only television available. It was undeniably a key means of getting information out from coast-to-coast, and held great cultural value in terms of defining Canada a country. I believe it certainly justified its fairly high cost to the public purse in times past… wait for it… *sound of other shoe dropping*… Unfortunately for the CBC, the world we live in today is not the world of yesteryear.

The CBC has consistently lost market share to their private rivals that do not benefit from a taxpayer subsidy. This fact alone dictates that people have voted with their television remotes already.

I have several friends in the journalism industry, and they all report the same reality – that everyone wants a CBC job because they are better-paying and much more cushy in terms of benefits and expectations. While this might be great for the unionized workers at CBC, it is definitely not advantageous to the average Canadian. Nor is it fair to the other networks that compete with the CBC. Why should the Canadian taxpayer fit the bill for salaries that are driving up costs in the market? It is the classic private-public dilemma, and balance desperately needs to be restored.

Read the full story here.

CBC accused of attempting to reverse decades of settled law

On March 16th, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) heard oral arguments in CBC v SODRAC . The issue centers on whether broadcasters should be required to pay royalties on ephemeral or incidental copies of audiovisual works that are created during the process of making a final copy for broadcast. 

CBC submits that SODRAC is the first copyright holder to “attempt to monetize broadcast-incidental copies…[which is] a subversion of the purpose of the Copyright Act in an attempt to generate economic rents through a layer licensing scheme.

The SODRAC factum on the other hand contends that CBC is attempting “to reverse decades of settled law” and does not mince words in its opening paragraphs:

This appeal amounts to an attempt by CBC to persuade this Court, through a misuse of the principle of technological neutrality, to upset the existing statutory balance in relation to broadcast-incidental copies and to substitute its own policy preferences for those of Parliament, enabling CBC to escape liability for copies it is making and deriving benefits from, and that it has been making and paying for, for decades.

Read the complete story here.

Exposed - CBC appeared to be editorializing in a news piece

The complainant, Marc Poitras, objected to the characterization of a platform speech by the Liberal Party leader as “striking hopeful notes.” He’s right – there was no justification and it appeared to be The complainant, Marc Poitras, objected to the characterization of a platform speech by the Liberal Party leader as “striking hopeful notes.” He’s right – there was no justification and it appeared to be editorializing in a news piece.

The difficulty here was that since the whole sentence was unclear, it might not have been obvious to you that this was in fact a quotation. It compressed so many thoughts into one short sentence that it lost clarity. It left the impression of bias. I think more likely it is a case of bad writing and editing.

On this score, the article fails. I recommend CBC news managers review how this happened so that those involved can learn from the mistake.

Read the full complaint and review here.

Exposed - CBC and Canadian defamation law

Tort law surrounding defamation law does not directly curb your right to free expression; it is not illegal per se. Rather, defamation is generally about paying damages to people that have been harmed by your speech. You can still say whatever you want, but you may have to pay for it (and you may have to pay a lot).

Key rulings in Canadian defamation law: 

In Leenan v CBC and Myers v CBC , the CBC was ordered to pay damages to two cardiologists who were wrongly portrayed in a negative light on a CBC program, showing that both Crown corporations and broadcasters of defamatory content, including broadcasters of content created by others, can also be liable for defamation.

Read the full story and see more examples here.

CBC drops more TV stations

CBC has ended its relationship with a number of local over-the-air television stations, exposing deep rifts in Canada’s broadcast landscape.

The CRTC announced Thursday that CHEX-TV in Peterborough, Channel 12 in Oshawa and CKWS-TV in Kingston would be ending their affiliation with CBC and entering into a “program supply agreement” with CTV beginning Aug. 31.

Gregory Taylor, a University of Calgary researcher and expert on over-the-air television, said the CBC has rapidly been moving away from free over-the-air programming and towards online mobile content as part of its digital-first strategy.

As the CBC continues to drop local over-the-air affiliates, private networks are picking them up. Taylor said private broadcasters like CTV stand to gain more by airing their programming in local networks.

Read the full story.

Petition to scrap the CBC

In the current election both the NDP and Liberal's say they will increase funding to the CBC if elected.

The National Citizen's Coalition believes differently.
..............................................................................................................................

It is time to scrap the CBC and sell off its assets to the highest bidder.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation STILL receives more than $1billion dollars of government funding each and every year.

That's right - more than $1 billion public dollars a year goes to supporting a broadcasting corporation whose market share continues to decline. This is not value for taxpayers, and we want to put an end to it.

At the NCC we are currently producing radio commercials to spread the word about this campaign and to build support for our petition, which you can find below.

Click here to read more and sign their petition!

Exposed - Promises for CBC Funding Revisited

During the 1997 election, Liberal policy again cited the important nation-building role of CBC and called for stable funding.

THE LIBERAL RECORD ON THE CBC

Oct 31, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 31, 2000

Jean Chrétien’s Liberals may be set to offer Canadians election goodies to improve CBC, but can we count on them to deliver?  Their record gives cause for doubt. 

This will not be the first time Mr. Chrétien has made big promises about CBC.  During the 1993 election, seven years ago, almost to the day, Mr. Chrétien promised a Liberal government would provide CBC long term stable funding.  The now famous Liberal Red Book contained this empty commitment:

“A Liberal government will be committed to stable, multiyear financing for national cultural institutions such as the Canada Council and the CBC”.

After winning a majority government in 1993, the Liberals went to work on the CBC.  During the next four years CBC’s budget was cut faster and deeper than any most other departments or agencies of government.  When the dust had settled by 1997, CBC funding had been cut by more than $400 million – or about 33%.  The Liberals' post-election cuts to CBC even exceeded the Reform Party’s 1993 campaign promise to cut $365 million from CBC.

“There will not be a promise that I make in the campaign that I will not keep." - Jean Chrétien, September 10, 1993 Read the full story.

CBC sexual harassment investigation costing taxpayers

Two bungled sexual harassment investigations — the CBC versus Jian Ghomeshi and inside the federal Liberal party — are both playing out in the public eye at taxpayer expense. In both cases, we taxpayers are getting awfully paltry “bang for our buck,” since both investigations are already being handled abysmally and have a strong likelihood of coming up short.

The Ghomeshi story is morphing from concern about the host’s conduct into evolving disquiet as to whether his behaviour was covered up by CBC management, and how pervasive the culture of harassment may be at the CBC.

The CBC conducting its own investigation is like putting a fox in charge of solving an abused-chicken case.

The federal government should be the one investigating its Crown corporation, letting chips fall where they may. Unlike the CBC, the government has no ostensible interest, other than protecting taxpayers and CBC employees.

Read the full story.

CBC's Amanda Lang scandal

A new scandal blew up at the CBC this week when the website Canadaland published an exposé charging that Amanda Lang, the broadcaster's senior business reporter and host of The Exchange, tried to sabotage an investigative story the CBC produced about abuses committed by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) over the temporary foreign worker program (TFWP).

But in the rollout of the story, Canadaland alleges that Lang tried to dismiss the story's importance by arguing that what the RBC was doing was merely outsourcing (in itself, a dreadful practise).

In fact, there were a number of things the CBC producers involved in the story didn't know about Lang's surprising intervention, namely: 1) She had been paid up to $15,000 a pop to conduct speaking engagements at RBC-sponsored events; and 2) She was involved in a romantic relationship with a member of the RBC's board of directors, W. Geoffrey Beattie.

The Lang affair comes hard on the heels of the debacle over the Jian Ghomeshi assault scandal (also broken by Canadaland's owner, journalist Jesse Brown). But while the Ghomeshi affair revealed the craven efforts of CBC's management to protect one of their stars in the face of numerous allegations of assaulting women, the Lang affair speaks to the issue of how the CBC has, in effect, increasingly become a mouthpiece for big business and neo-conservative ideologues.

Read the full story.

CBC Fifth Estate Loses Libel Lawsuit

Try swallowing a damages award of $950,000 and a costs award over $800,000 as the CBC had to in the libel lawsuit brought by Dr. Frans Leenan.

After winning his case in Ontario’s Superior Court, Dr. Leenen said, ‘Four years ago we proposed to settle this law suit for $10,000 and an on-air apology. It was refused…The Fifth Estate persisted and took me through 10 weeks of trial.’

The trial judge awarded very high damages for libel against The Fifth Estate and the CBC as well as individual reporters and producers. The CBC appealed. Ontario’s Court of Appeal disagreed with the CBC, and ruled that Dr. Leenen had been libelled. Finally, the CBC tried to take the case to Canada’s highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Supreme Court ruled against the CBC in February, with yet another costs award. Dr. Leenen’s long legal journey is over. The case should be a lesson for documentary producers and journalists everywhere.

Read the full story.

Exposed - CBC may be sold

WikiLeaks Reveals the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Canada Post May Be Sold Under TPP Agreement.

The CBC Ottawa Broadcast Centre and head office of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Sparks Street in Ottawa. A confidential letter published by WikiLeaks on Wednesday reveal that the Crown Corporation could be sold under the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Photo: OBERT MADONDO/The Canadian Progressive

A secret letter leaked by WikiLeaks on Wednesday reveals that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Canada Post could be sold under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, being negotiated by Canada and 11 other countries this week in Maui, Hawaii.

Read the full story here.

Exposed - CBC in showdown with Federal Government

The CBC is warning the federal government that its efforts to control salary negotiations at the Crown agency could be at odds with the Broadcasting Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, leading to litigation.

The government's budget bill would require the CBC, and other government agencies, to seek a mandate to negotiate and "submit to the minister responsible a draft document setting out the general components of a policy on remuneration and conditions of employment."

The government has presented the measure as part of efforts to control costs at a time of fiscal austerity, bringing Crown corporations under the same broad restraint program that has been imposed on public servants.

The proposed measure has drawn fire from other sources, most notably from the union representing CBC employees ...

Read the full story here.

Creative bookkeeping at CBC?

There's a feud brewing between Canada's public broadcaster and a group of Senators, as a Senate committee tries to find the answer to the CBC's financial troubles.

The ongoing showdown between CBC and the Senate committee tasked with digging into the way it operates reached a head this week when members of the committee sniffed at a submitted document that they claimed whitewashed the amount being paid to its employees.

The Senate committee on transport and communications voted to officially receive a document on Tuesday that detailed the salaries of employees of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which was neither organized in any manageable fashion nor, according to some senators, entirely fulsome in its details.

According to Postmedia News, the document noted that the maximum salary scale for CBC News' chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge was $80,485.22.

Perhaps little would have come from the CBC’s salary list, if not for the claim that Peter Mansbridge, the face of CBC News, makes less than $85,000 a year. It is an idea that defies common sense. Mansbridge is making less than market value, or perhaps some creative bookkeeping is in play.

Read the full story.

Lack of Vision for CBC

The future of broadcasting has emerged as a hot issue with Canada’s broadcast regulator effectively putting everything up for grabs as part of its comprehensive TalkTV review of broadcasting regulation. Acknowledging the dramatic shift in the way Canadians access and interact with broadcasting, reforms to seemingly untouchable policies such as simultaneous substitution, genre protection, and over-the-air broadcasting are all on the table.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has effectively acknowledged that the world has changed and policies based on a different landscape merit a review. In the current market, scarcity has given way to abundance and broadcasters have ceded considerable control to consumers’ demands to watch what they want, when they want.

Indeed, given the many changes in the broadcast environment, the necessity for a public broadcaster that is not dramatically different from the myriad of private choices is not entirely clear. The private sector offers equally compelling news programming and strong sports coverage. The CBC frequently emphasizes the need for a domestic voice and perspective, but today Canadians are empowered to do this on their own.

There are legal restrictions that render a fundamental rethinking of the CBC enormously difficult. While no one has all the answers, starting with the view that what ails the CBC is primarily a lack of funding demonstrates a lack of vision and misses the broadcast revolution that is well underway.

Read the full story.

Exposed - The CBC is not a business

The CBC’s strategic plan to shift priorities from broadcast to digital services and outsource virtually all but news and current affairs programming is, on the whole, a sensible strategy – from a purely business perspective.

The thing is, however, that the public broadcaster is not a business in any conventional sense.

In a world of commercial sponsorship of media, both broadcast and online, the CBC’s purpose is to serve its audiences as citizens, rather than as consumers.

What CBC management has delivered is not a public broadcasting strategy but a business plan, one that further distances the corporation from its public-service mandate.

Read the full story here.

Exposed - CBC changes policy

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio-Canada president and CEO Hubert Lacroix and executive vice-presidents Heather Conway and Louis Lalande faced questions about current business correspondent and TV host Amanda Lang and former radio host Jian Ghomeshi.

Conservative Senator Don Plett raised questions about Lang accepting money for speaking engagements.

The CBC recently changed its policy and has banned paid speaking engagements for on-air journalists after Lang made news headlines.

"My word, CBC is a public corporation. Your journalists are working for the public," Plett said.

Conway confirmed there is an ongoing investigation to examine if journalism was affected.

Read the full story.

CBC will drift and decline for years

Everyone agrees the CBC can’t go on like this. The CBC agrees it can’t go on like this. Announcing the latest round of layoffs and budget cuts, the corporation’s president, Hubert Lacroix, talked of “making choices and doing fewer things better,” of “accelerating the process of reinventing” itself in the face of a “media landscape [that] is transforming at an astounding speed.”

So the likelihood is that the CBC will go on like this, drifting and declining for years to come. Like Canada Post, like Via Rail and the other stranded assets that litter the public sector, it will limp on, purposelessly, through successive “action plans” and “reinventions,” for no reason other than that no one can be bothered to do anything else — and because no one expects them to. In a politics without ideas, under a government without ambition, that’s what we’ve learned to accept.

Read the full story.

Privatize the CBC - save 1.1 Billion per year!

At a time when the world faces an economic crisis, where Canadians are struggling to pay their bills, and where the Canadian government is undertaking a massive strategic review to cut $4 billion from the annual budget, why are Canadians still shelling out a massive $1.1 billion a year to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

The Canadian government is not asking for anything revolutionary when it suggests that Crown corporations and ministries live within their means. Their review is aimed at identifying areas where greater efficiency is possible, and assuring that Canadians get good value for their tax dollars.

When considering the CBC’s funding, the guiding question should be “Why?” Why do they need $1.1 billion of taxpayers’ money? Why should they receive $32 from every Canadian when there are literally hundreds of news agencies out there that survive without tax money?

Read the full story here.

Exposed - CBC is fighting a battle in court

Vancouver is promoting employment of people with disabilities while CBC Ottawa goes to court to keep the disabled out of the workforce.

“Employment Matters” is a new CBC Vancouver documentary that promotes employment of people with learning disabilities on Canada’s west coast.

4,000 miles away on Canada’s east coast and smallest province, CBC is fighting a battle in court in September to keep the disabled from working. CBC President Hubert Lacroix approved funding for the PEI court case.

Read the full story.

Selling CBC would be Bold but Right

In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney did what many considered impossible and privatized Air Canada over the objections of those who thought the government needed to own an airline.

 As a frequent flyer of many airlines, I can tell you that Air Canada is a much better airline today.

 The same can be said of Petro-Canada, which was sold beginning in 1990.

The organization learned to operate more efficiently and satisfy customers.

That was a privatization that was started by Mulroney but finally completed by the Liberal government of Paul Martin in 2004.

If Liberals and old Red Tories like Brian Mulroney can privatize government businesses, why can’t Stephen Harper?

Selling CBC would be a bold step but the right one.

It would help taxpayers by removing the $1.1-billion subsidy and it would also take government out of a line of business it has no right to be in.

Read the full story.

CBC is flipping on its head

In a media world that seems to undergo seismic changes with the seasons, it is tempting fate for the CBC to unveil a five-year plan, let alone one that asserts the public broadcaster’s irreplaceability.

But while Mr. Lacroix and executive vice-president Heather Conway explained that the CBC is flipping on its head an investment structure that currently puts money in TV first and mobile last, the details aren’t quite so simple.

Read the full story.

Exposed - CBC has no strategy

CBC recently appeared before a Senate Committee examining its future and demonstrated that it has no real strategy for the future. Instead of a strategy, CBC has an agenda. The agenda is to shrink the CBC.

Before he became president of CBC, Hubert Lacroix, told Parliament it was his job to find new sources of revenue but after taking the job he said CBC doesn't need more money.

This month CBC submitted a document to the Committee and a 90-page slide presentation that contained contradictions, errors and misleading information.

Read the full story.

CBC Sued Over Alleged Use Of YouTube Clip

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has been sued in U.S. federal court over its use of a 31-second YouTube clip of a snowstorm in Buffalo, N.Y.

In a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for western New York and first reported on by Torrentfreak, Alfonso Cutaia accuses the CBC and U.S. news network CNN of “intentional and willful” violation of copyright laws.

He says he monetized the video, opting to have ads run on it under a standard YouTube licensing contract.

In court filings, Cutaia says he received numerous requests to use the video from multiple news sources, but around Nov. 18, 2014, he noticed the CBC using the video on its website without his permission, and with a CBC logo overlaid on top of it.

He alleges he contacted CBC and was told last month the broadcaster had obtained the video under a 10-day licence from CNN. But Cutaia says CNN never had the rights to the video either, and the CBC made the clip available for much longer than 10 days.

Read the full story.

CBC News Blurs Facts and Opinions

CBC must obey the Broadcasting Act, a law established by Parliament but the Corporation has failed to fulfill a key requirement of the Act.

CBC is no stranger to sidestepping rules and regulations. For example, Rex Murphy's weekly commentary on The National is supposed to be clearly identified as Mr. Murphy's opinion. When asked last year how viewers were supposed to know it was Mr. Murphy's opinion, not that of CBC, managers at first claimed a graphic, "Rex Murphy Point of View," appeared during the segment and then sheepishly had to admit that somehow it had been removed years ago.

The distinction between facts and opinion has gradually been blurred by CBC news, even by Peter Mansbridge, as he not only moderates opinion panels but participates in them.

Read the full story.

Exposed - CBC managers have lost control

The Jian Ghomeshi and Evan Soloman scandals signal that CBC managers have lost control of CBC. The Corporation has resorted to hiring an outside labour lawyer to investigate what went wrong with management processes, an admission of failure. But the signs of trouble have been there for some time.

For over a decade CBC Presidents, who, along with the CBC Board of Directors, are appointed by the government, have hired outsiders to manage CBC English Radio and TV. Hubert Lacroix, the current President admitted when he accepted the job he knew very little about the CBC. For the President to in turn rely on outsiders to manage the programming services is a departure from a long practice of relying on staff who came up through CBC ranks to become vice-presidents.

Read the full story.

CBC Tanks Despite Huge Advantage

The final numbers from the civic elections are in … and, no, I’m talking about the mail-in ballots.

This is about the IMPORTANT numbers … if you’re in the media, a media junkie …or an advertising buyer: election night TV ratings.

CBC had a HUGE advantage, going to its election coverage Saturday right out of Hockey Night in Canada …so in the opening moments the local Vancouver CBC outlet led all other stations … and then tanked, reportedly ending up third out of the three local network stations.

The winner: CTV … drawing 133,000 viewers… peaking at 183,800 at one point. And even I’m impressed with that …considering it was, after all, civic election results and on a Saturday night to boot.

Read the full story.

CBC Seeks Takedown of Conservative Ad

Last week, the Conservative party posted an offensive advertisement on YouTube and Facebook titled Justin Trudeau on ISIS. The ad starts with ISIS music and images of prisoners about be drowned or beheaded before running short edited clips from a 13 minute interview with Trudeau and the CBC’s Terry Milewski. The advertisement has rightly generated a backlash with questions about whether it violates Bill C-51′s prohibitions on terrorist propaganda.

Beyond the C-51 issue, the CBC waded into the issue late on Friday, as Jennifer McGuire, the CBC News Editor-in-Chief, posted a blog indicating that the broadcaster has asked YouTube and Facebook to take down the ad. The ostensible reason? Copyright.

The CBC is simply wrong. Its guiding principle is wrong and its attempt to use copyright to take down an offensive advertisement is wrong.

The CBC obviously has rights as the copyright owner in its broadcast, but those rights are constrained by limitations and exceptions under the law that allow for use of its work without the need for further permission. The CBC itself (like all broadcasters) regularly relies upon those exceptions to use the work of others without permission.

The CBC could raise some interesting moral rights arguments to counter the exceptions (if their employees have not waived their moral rights). However, the larger point is that its claim that no one can use any clips of its broadcasts without permission is inconsistent with the state of the law.

Read the full story.

CBC Complaint Review Process

The CBC Ombudsman handles complaints about journalistic content or conduct appearing on one of CBC’s three platforms (TV, radio or CBC.ca).

1. Send your complaints or comments to the Office of the Ombudsman by email or regular mail as follows:
   ombudsman@cbc.ca
   Ombudsman
   CBC
   P.O. Box 500, Station A
   Toronto, ON, Canada M5W 1E6
   Please provide your name, mailing address and telephone number in case we need to get in touch with you.

For all details about this process please go here.

CBC President upset after being caught

CBC president Hubert Lacroix repaid nearly $30,000 in living and meal expenses last fall after an internal audit found he had been wrongly claiming accommodation costs since his 2008 appointment.

"Is it embarrassing to me? Am I upset, am I angry? I mean, I've been preaching transparency since day one. And here I am, in a conversation with you on Power & Politics about my expenses in Ottawa, and that's not acceptable to CBC, not acceptable to Radio-Canada either.​"

Read the full story.