We all know the media is biased. Don’t we? Most of the Canadian media has a distinct slant to the left; the CBC is so far left, it can’t even see the middle ground on most issues; the National Post stands alone on the national scene as it tilts to the right.
In the U.S., Fox News makes no apologies for its conservative bias, while CNN has an overtly liberal perspective.
In fact, bias has infiltrated media reports for so long that it’s now essentially accepted as a flaw that is inherent to media coverage.
Consequently, we’ve all grown rather complacent about it, and tend to read newspapers and watch newscasts that reinforce our own version of the world.
So it’s likely that few Canadians were surprised when the news surfaced just before Christmas that a CBC reporter had crossed one of the last ethical lines that remains in journalism by attempting to manufacture the news.
Incredibly, the reporter wrote questions for Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to ask former prime minister Brian Mulroney at the parliamentary investigations into his dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber. (Correction: An anonymous Liberal researcher later made it clear that the questions weren’t “written” for the MP, they were merely “dictated.” The Liberals typed them out.)
English is not Mr. Rodriguez’s first language, so suspicions were raised when he put forth elegantly worded questions — in English — that had little to do with the Schreiber affair and a lot to do with trying to create a new scandal that focused on the current Conservative government.
Former federal Liberal cabinet minister Jean Lapierre, who is now a journalist, quickly surfaced to state that he knew the questions had been prepared by our own ‘national treasure,’ the CBC.
The CBC has not denied the facts of the case.
In fact, it later admitted its reporter’s actions were “inappropriate” and “inconsistent” with the CBC’s journalistic policies and practices (I suspect it’s a very brief document).
Indeed, while the CBC has no problem with reporting news according to its own ideological bias, it does seem to grasp that a news network publicly and actively working to further the goals of one particular political party is a problem. Not that it hasn’t done it before. In the 2004 election, the CBC was widely rebuked after it hosted a supposedly ‘open’ townhall meeting to get the views of ordinary Canadians.
A CBC e-mail later exposed the fact that those ‘ordinary Canadians’ were handpicked for their opposition to Stephen Harper and the Conservative party.
Why don’t we dispose of any pretense, and get the powers that be to name the CBC as the Liberal party’s official communication team?
The CBC is unique — and therefore uniquely accountable to its viewers — because it is funded by the state. As such, it has a particular mandate to present the Canadian story.
Over the past several decades, it has come under increasing criticism as it has shifted that mandate to become the mouthpiece of the extreme left, presenting programs and news from a narrow perspective that is anathema to most Canadians.
The CBC has clung to its status as state broadcaster long after there is any need for such a thing by claiming its unique status frees it from the fetters of commercialism and responsibilities to corporate sponsors and thereby enables it to better report the news.
Ironically, those fetters have merely been replaced by ties to a particular political ideology and a particular party.
Beyond the issue of a dysfunctional CBC, is the issue of an obviously dysfunctional member of Parliament.
MP Pablo Rodriguez shouldn’t be sitting on a House ethics committee looking into a bundle of cash in an envelope when he is accepting and parroting the questions of a reporter in what should be an independent investigation (if not independent in terms of politics, then at least independent from media influence).
He has abandoned his duty to his constituents, to his party and to all Canadians — so where are the calls for his resignation?
Most of this news was lost in the midst of the Christmas season.
But it represents a significant breach of ethics on the part of the CBC and a Liberal MP, so it deserves our full attention now.
It’s the kind of story that fuels the public’s distrust of politics and the media, and neither group should be let off the hook.
The CBC ombudsman is apparently looking into the incident, but it isn’t likely to be the transparent investigation that is needed to truly serve the public good.
There has been no word of any investigation within the Liberal party.
Yet, all of them remain on the public payroll.
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