CBC Leadership ...or lack of it

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CBC Leadership ...or lack of it

Postby jon » Wed Jan 14, 2015 1:32 pm

Woe is the CBC
Canadians like the CBC, so why is it facing a spate of scandal? From money to the top bosses, the problems are more than any one star
By Ashley Csanady
Canada.com
January 14, 2015 10:45 AM

When shots rang on Parliament Hill, a nation sat rapt to its screens.

On television sets and computer screens, in the earbuds of a nation, Peter Mansbridge’s baritone allayed their fears.

Concern shifted to pride as our American cousins applauded the even-handed coverage of our national broadcaster and its chief correspondent.

The CBC shined that fateful October day, burying a growing list of questions about sustainability, editorial independence and conflict-of-interest standards.

Or, so it seemed.

Mansbridge himself was at the centre of those queries, his appearances before oilsands associated groups raised concerns about his ability to cover one of the country’s most heated debates. Long-time CBC contributor Rex Murphy (also a National Post columnist, full disclosure) also faced questions about speaking to oilsands groups.

And now, months later, the Mother Corp. is again at odds with journalistic ethics as it fends off allegations chief business correspondent Amanda Lang tried to interfere with a story by fellow broadcaster Kathy Tomlinson about RBC using temporary foreign workers. The CBC staunchly denies Lang committed any wrong doing; Tomlinson has now shared her side of the story with media criticism and news outlet Canadaland.

The she-said-she-said will continue to unfold before a nation that has, until now, largely shrugged off the burning questions before the CBC.

“The public have generally quite positive attitudes to the CBC, particularly radio but also TV,” said Frank Graves, president of EKOS research, in an interview.

When asked who they trust with the fate of their broadcasting, Canadians unequivocally support the CBC, according to a late-summer poll.

But can the concerns of the Twittering classes provide the spark to inflame public opinion?

“Yet, it’s pretty likely the cumulative impacts of this serious of controversies that have plagued the CBC in recent months are going to have a corrosive impact on their reputation,” Graves added.

Contrast the CBC’s response to the actions taken by Global, which just last week suspended anchor Leslie Roberts for his own alleged conflict, Graves said.

“These are relatively manageable issues, but at a certain point there’s a critical mass where they start taking on some of the same flavour,” Graves noted. “It’s hard to imagine this one is just going to go away.”

People aren’t going to start rioting in the streets over the CBC. It’s not going to be a ballot question in the fall election, Graves said. But when trust starts to erode, a few embers of concern can start a wildfire.

Former CBC journalist turned Carleton University professor Paul Adams said the broadcaster “is peculiarly vulnerable right now and failing to help its own cause.”

The Ghomeshi factor

Just two days after Mansbridge made the CBC the toast of international media, Jian Ghomeshi killed the party.

The news that started as a leave of absence evolved into a criminal trial involving multiple counts of physical and sexual assault; the Ghomeshi affair rocked an already shaky CBC. Between federal funding cuts and losing the lucrative rights to Hockey Night in Canada, a struggling broadcaster was suddenly struggling to explain itself.

“I think they’ve been really reeling, and I think they probably need to get a better handle on it. They’re dealing with how they handled Jian Ghomeshi, and I think they’re still really reeling from the latest budget cuts and trying to get the house in order,” said another former CBC staffer turned academic Brad Clark, now chair of broadcast journalism at Mount Royal University in Alberta. “It’s an organization that really has been shaken to its foundations on a couple of different fronts.”

The Ghomeshi case uncovered cracks that were already spreading. In the ensuing weeks and months, stories have poured out of a culture that shielded Ghomeshi from serious claims of workplace harassment, and questions still linger about what the CBC’s top executives knew when about his alleged, repeated violence.

To make it worse, the initial response was fumbled. The broadcaster first denied then confirmed Ghomeshi was on indefinite leave.
Chuck Thompson on Twitter
Jian Ghomeshi is not on indefinite leave from the CBC.
2:06 PM - 24 Oct 2014

The lingering questions in Canadian minds about how and why Ghomeshi was hiding in plain sight for so long make other issues raised seem that much worse.

Of course, the ethical quandaries leveled at Mansbridge, Murphy and Lang are nowhere near as odious as the charges Ghomeshi faces.

Yet, there are parallels in the way in which CBC’s top brass has circled the wagons. Again, we see CBC head of public affairs Chuck Thompson correcting and re-correcting the facts.
Chuck Thompson on Twitter
I was mistakenly under the impression The Globe had approached Amanda Lang. In fact, the opposite is true; I stand corrected.
11:11 AM - 13 Jan 2015

Anyone who tweets the news knows the hazards of initial information, Thompson included. In an email he writes, “my concern is always about getting the information out accurately and in real time. I put that first before any hits I may take that sometimes come with this role.”

CBC News editor-in-chief Jennifer McGuire posted a lengthy blog defending Lang that, among other things, fails to explain why Lang’s colleagues never knew about her possible conflict with RBC. She also calls the Canadaland report “misleading and ultimately damaging.”

Asked about that line, Thompson said, “I think it’s fair to say whenever any organization engages in public spats, it doesn’t help anyone’s brand. That said, CBC News remains one of the the most trusted brands in News and Current Affairs… While it has been a difficult year at CBC, we will get through this and we have great people in place to get us there.”

Every person interviewed for this story wondered whether those “great people” at the top are the ones to steer the CBC through the storm.

“When people become news executives, if they begin to regard their jobs as primarily of that as executives or corporate officers, and stop acting in their role of news managers and custodians of the values of the news, they end up in trouble,” Adams said. “Systemically, what you’ve seen from [CBC management like McGuire, CBC Radio executive director Chris Boyce, or executive vice-president of English services Heather Conway] is a series of cases where they treated ethical and journalistic issues as corporate or management issues.”

How history is written rests on who is at the top

The CBC’s funding woes are as old as the broadcaster itself.

In 1932, prime minister R.B. Bennett’s government passed the Canadian Broadcasting Act and created the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Corporation. And almost as quickly, opposition parties pledged to de-fund or reform the public broadcaster-slash-regulator (in its early days, the CBC did double duty).

“When the CBC first started and there was a sense then, particularity from opponents of public broadcasting, that it wasn’t necessary. So they used any misstep that CBC made to support their cause, and the CBC made a bunch to support their cause, to be fair,” said Sean Graham, an academic who wrote his PhD thesis on the CBC at the University of Ottawa.

Throughout the 1930s, the CBC faced and beat back several scandals: one involving Toronto father Charles Lanphier, who used his “Catholic Hour” to talk politics during an election, breaking the then-regulator’s rules separating talk of church and state. The father was suspended to much furor. And when Alberta’s seventh premier, William “Bible Bill” Aberhart crossed the same line, he was merely slapped on the wrist.

Then, as now, journalists wrote about it and powerful people might have tutted, but letters sent to the CBC focused on programming, not internal politics, Graham explained.

What has changed, is how the CBC manages the message.

In its earliest days, the CBC brought in a PR pro from the BBC to act as general manager: Gladstone Murray. He packed the blueprints for building a national institution.

“In its early days there was this strong push towards getting its message out … the word we would use now is branding, creating a clear brand,” Graham said. “When these scandals came up in the 1930s, they were in a better position to respond to it.”

“I think what we can really learn from the 1930s example is they got out in front of everything … they were very clear about what was going on and they were publicizing that. I think today they’re not. They’re more reactive. When they have been successful in overcoming these things, they have been proactive.”

Money follows the leader

The story, then, isn’t about any one ethical issue. And the immediate threat isn’t to the CBC’s credibility. It’s to its sustainability.

As author and Carleton University professor Andrew Cohen put it, it’s not about Lang, Mansbridge and Murphy whom he considers “seasoned, respected professionals…the CBC is lucky to have.”

Instead, he suggests the current fascination is the celebrity of the thing, and Canadians’ collective “proud poppy syndrome,” where we like to overwhelm the roots of anyone who grows beyond their reach.

“The CBC is having a bad year and a bad time because it’s not able to do the thing the public broadcaster should be doing in Canada and that’s because we’re underfunding it,” Cohen said.

Those growing challenges do tamper hopes of a renewed and re-funded CBC.

“Coming into an election year and if you stand up at a Liberal or an NDP meeting and ask a candidate how they stand on the CBC, what you’re going to find is much more nuanced answer than there would have been a couple of years ago,” Adams said. “It makes it harder for the CBC to cultivate the political support … and you need to translate public support into political support in order to sustain the organization financially.”

The Ghomeshi affair and the conflict of interest allegations against other stars simply compound the problems for an already weakened CBC. For Ian Morrison with Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, a non-profit watchdog, it all started when Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed a new president and, subsequently board, since he first took power in 2006.

Morrison said all of the top management has been put in place by Harper appointee Hubert LaCroix, the CBC’s current president.

“One of the CBC’s assets is basically about 85 per cent of Canadians like it,” Morrison said. They aren’t necessarily rabidly passionate, or liable to trade a local hospital for a better funded broadcaster, but they identify with its programming, not necessarily the news, and they would keep it if they could.

“The weakness right now that ties into personnel issues is leadership.”
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