On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Harrison Lowman provides a detailed example of how the CBC prefers to present stories to Canadians — which signally fail to present a “360-degree view” because the CBC actively avoids including actual disagreement on any given topic:
THREAD: When you make complaints about patterns of bias or skewed reporting on the CBC, you are often met by CBC supporters who proceed to demand a list of examples.
When they don’t receive it immediately from you, they proceed to tell you you’re the biased one …. that “it’s in your head”. It feels like a bit of gaslighting to be honest.
So let me, as someone who has worked at the CBC, provide you a prime example of CBC coverage I think is glaringly biased and you can tell me what you think:
/1Earlier this summer, the CBC published this radio/TV story. The webpage version is headlined “Supervised drug site at Kingston prison has only had one visitor despite being open since 2023”
The story details a trial project where prisoners at a Kingston-area prison have been given the ability to inject, snort, or swallow the drugs they’ve smuggled into their cells under the supervision of a nurse.
The news hook is that only ONE inmate has visited the site since its inception more than a YEAR ago.
https://cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6802851
/2The CBC journalist then proceeds to interview three people: 1. someone running the program, 2. a retired academic expert sympathetic to the program wanting it expanded, and 3. a former inmate who was not in jail when the program started. All sources appear generally in approval of the pilot program.
In the story:
– At no time does the journalist speak to someone who sees this pilot program as the wrong approach. Keep in mind a recent Abacus poll shows a mere 19% of Canadians support expanding safe injection sites. (You’re literally ignoring the vast majority of the population here.)– At no time does the journalist reveal the cost of said program: a whopping $517,000 taxpayer dollars so that a SINGLE inmate could get high.
– Nor do they speak to someone who says (as many in the public would rightly ask) if given the cost and almost non-existent use, whether it’s worth continuing the program, or whether there’s a better way to spend this money within the corrections system- rehabilitation etc.
/3
Instead the CBC journalist exclusively focusses on the “barriers” to using the jail drug program, implying this all that can change- ie. look at making it easier for the inmates to use drugs.
The coverage, highlighting barriers:
– implies that they should operate at night, because it’s current hours “don’t line up with when inmates want to get high.”;
-In the written version of the article: source: “They’d prefer to take drugs during their free time after supper.”– That prisoners need to be allowed to smoke crystal meth as part of the program.
– That prisons need to make it so using the program won’t mean users getting unwanted attention from fellow inmates, officers…etc.
/4Last week, CBC News’ general manager and editor in chief Brodie Fenlon said:
“The job of a CBC News journalist is to report facts, to proportionately surface the variety of viewpoints that exist about those facts, to provide context and counter narratives where they exist, and to ensure credible analysis is in the mix. The goal is to give you a 360-degree view of a story so you can draw your own conclusions.”
“… We don’t shy away from contrarian views or perspectives that challenge orthodoxy.” “The best journalism often involves facts and viewpoints that challenge our own worldview.”
In what world is this a 360 degree view of this story? In what world is this a story that challenges orthodoxy?
Instead, this coverage appears to tell viewers the CBC approves of safe injection sites … for criminals, and doesn’t prioritize taxpayer $ waste in its coverage.
With this story, CBC is just clearly not meeting their own journalistic standards, and are failing to adequately inform the public.
There’s your example. Tell me I’m wrong.
The CBC must do better.
I plan to launch a complaint with the CBC ombudsman. It won’t be my first.
https://cbc.ca/news/editorsblog/cbc-news-platforming-1.7580219
Among the responses was this one from Andrew Kirsch:
I wrote the 1st ever memoir about being a Canadian spy. It was a National bestseller but largely positive about the org. I desperately tried to get on CBC (and TVO) to promote it. They weren’t interested. A while later my ex-colleague wrote a memoir about her career with a focus on institutional racism at CSIS. She was interviewed and her book was featured all over the website. I don’t want to take anything away from the other book. I just felt like mine was also a Canadian story worth telling.
