Signals in the desert

Iraq desert, January 2012. Copyright Blue Falcon Foto.
I’m not asking questions about the massive changes at CBC’s Ottawa operations from inside a tent in the desert just outside Al Basrah, in southern Iraq.
It was there in July 1958 that my parents listened in shock, with their one-year-old son gurgling at their feet. An Iraqi engineer working with my Dad on a US-sponsored irrigation project gave them the news.
King Faisal II had just been assassinated and a military coup had begun. He'd just heard it on the radio.
But that fragment of history is what this story is all about – family, freedom, and broadcasting.
CBC journalists in Ottawa face the greatest changes in their history here. It involves technology, language, physical space, tribes of journalists, a public broadcaster threatened on multiple fronts, and the impact of all that on CBC journalism. CBC’s internal culture is riddled with more agendas than an office supply super store. It’s not a story about “one big happy family” on the move. It’s not short on ironies either.
It's all going on in the deafeningly silent Canadian debate about public broadcasting.
In the midst of writing that story, I could see the Jewel in the Crown about to slither back into all this sand – CBC employees' freedom of expression. Public, personal, and corporate interests rage in a sandstorm where those employees who might have concerns they wish to express publicly find themselves marooned in the desert. Unlike other big corporations, since this one continues to receive about a billion dollars in public money every year, what happens to the public interest in this situation is rather important. Interestingly, its former employees - or those on their way out - that speak up. “A son of a bitch” - that’s what Maclean’s quoted the late Peter Gzowski saying about the CEO of the time (Perrin Beatty) in response to the gaping holes left in Morningside after the 1990s’ cuts.
Current employees’ silence makes for a double-edged sword, wrapped in CBC’s history, and perhaps is an important element affecting its future as an oasis in the concentrated Canadian media desert.
In Ottawa, journalists will be working out of an integrated (or converged) newsroom in the new $46.5 million purpose-built broadcast centre on Queen Street. Including CBC's Parliamentary Hill bureaus (the largest single media presence on Parliament Hill), 180 journalists from English, French, radio and television services will work out of 6' x 5' cubicles in the 35,450-square-foot on-camera newsroom. (Currently they're scattered across four Ottawa locations in space they've outgrown using old office equipment.)
As part of CBC's news integration project, new digital server technology will allow content exchange between radio and television and a greater emphasis on bimedialism – journalists working for both radio and television.
It's all the brainchild of CBC's CEO and President Robert Rabinovitch whose term ends this November. It is “sponsored and supported enthusiastically” by the vice presidents of radio and television, Tony Burman, Editor in Chief CBC News says.
The planned bilingualism will likely make it the only newsroom of its kind in the world.
Already wracked by financial devastation, the impact of all this change on journalists and what they do is an open question.
Everyone acknowledges both the enormous benefits to all journalists being together, sharing research and cutting unnecessary duplication. CBC executives say this is all about doing better journalism. But many people say it's all about saving money. CBC Radio penetrates deep into the hearts of Canadians, but CBC Television has a wider audience. Speculation about the integration agenda and its impact on that is rife.
“We found in radio that of course TV is the dog and we were the tail,” Bruce Wark says. Wark is an Associate Professor of Journalism, Research, History at University of King's College Journalism School in Halifax. Beginning in the 1970s, Wark worked at CBC in several locations, leaving in 1991. The first producer of CBC Radio's The House, he was also the producer of The World at Six and an elected union official.
“You can't do TV over the phone. You're traveling to the stories, getting the pictures, bringing them back, editing them, writing to the pictures,” Wark says. “So that even the fastest reporter gets bogged down in that process, and there's little time left over for radio. That's the problem.”
Radio could become “a very small tail on that dog.”
“I'm not confident that the upper level managers know enough about that so that they know what is really at stake,” Bruce Wark says, referring to newsroom day-to-day realities. He notes that “from Rabinovitch on down” the executives have “never really worked in a newsroom.”
“If they make it work there's a heck of a positive side to it,” Wark says, “It could make CBC more thoughtful, less reactive, less superficial.”
Demoralization from budget cuts CBC “papers over” that affected radio “disproportionately” because “TV had more layers” and a “very very low trust between management and workers” are significant factors, Wark notes, and like many other bureaucracies there is a disconnect between upper-level management and the front line.
“A consultative” rather than “heroic management” that imposes would work, Wark says, yet for all this he empathizes with CBC executives, saying that CBC has to change.
Radio concerns find their sisters on the television side of the family.
“I didn't want to keep living that way,” Peter Van Dusen says of the constant uncertainty on CBC's front line. Van Dusen is the anchor of Primetime Politics on CPAC. He left Canada Now, formerly the hour-long newscast Newsday, in July 2001.
“I always feel a tremendous commitment to my employer,” he says, and never had trouble voicing his concerns internally. Yet Van Dusen describes the difference between Canada Now and Newsday as going from “a daily news operation” to “providing news when it suited us.”
“When I'd ask a superior a point blank question, will we still have a show running out of here that's relevant to anybody a year from now, 'well I certainly hope so'. To me, that wasn't an answer.”
When it was clear “we weren't going to revisit anything,” Van Dusen says “That was when it was time to go.”
But this is a debate front line employees, if interested at all, are not allowed to publicly engage in.
I listened to many CBC journalists in this and other locations, but I am not using that material. Only three Ottawa-based journalists spoke to me on the record and raised few concerns, if any, or if they did, it was concerns of “colleagues.” In two cases, journalists, graciously, declined to speak at all. Many calls were not returned. Many conversations ended with the suggestion that I contact the union.
The majority talking spoke off the record and had fears or concerns.
For reasons real or imagined, the fear felt by most CBC Ottawa employees in talking about all these changes is at times palpable.
With free speech hurting from freezer burn post 9/11, this was a Canadian experience in freedom of expression, democratic bedrock that people, including journalists, have died for.
On this continuum, at other end is a media corporation concerned about employees' free expression compromising its image of “impartiality” and “balanced” journalism.
In answering concerns that management is focusing on the technology not the people, Burman began thus. (He spoke to Ottawa City Magazine about integration only.)
“I quite frankly, I'm so used to reporters like yourself talking to people off the record where through the luxury of confidentiality much of what you have been told - you're not held accountable for it. They're not held accountable for it.”
The price of “going places” in a bureaucracy – self-censorship – is not unique to the CBC and like all employees CBC journalists, many on serial contracts, have their understandable self-interests – careers, mortgages, families and so on.
But it's clear that for some ideas far bigger than themselves and their careers – like journalism - still resonate.
Earlier this year several newspaper articles were devoted to Sook-Yin Lee's intention to appear in a sexually explicit film. Lee, the host CBC Radio's Definitely Not The Opera, went public about CBC's reluctance to grant approval by sending an e-mail to artists and journalists.
The lion's roar over CBC's reluctance drew widespread public derision from citizens and columnists.
“Given that the CBC owes its dime to the government and the government gave us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, should Ms. Lee not have the right to do what she wants as long as it does not infringe on the well-being of others?” Moses Wuggenig of Toronto, wrote in a letter published in the Globe and Mail. After the uproar, the CBC granted Lee permission.
Unfortunately for the public interest and journalism, there is no sex angle on the Ottawa situation.
“Obviously the people you've talked to don't know the structure of the way it is,” Danny Malanchuk says. He is Vice-President of Unit 1 of the Canadian Media Guild (CMG) representing journalists, program production and editorial staff. CMG represents about 554 Ottawa-based CBC journalists, technicians, editorial and administrative staff.
“[CMG does] have mechanisms in which we protect our employees.”
“You can't get fired for just saying you have an opinion. Good grief!”
Article 35, collective agreement for Unit 1 and Unit 3 employees (administrative staff) is called the “Outside Activities.” It states employees' freedom to engage in such activities with the following exceptions: the activity should not be “in direct competition” with the CBC, not “exploit his/her connection” with the CBC, and not “adversely affect” the employee's CBC work. Further “recognized on-air personnel” in Unit 1 “must discuss” such activities “with their supervisor before engaging in such activities.”
Patricia d'Heureux, is a lawyer at Cavalluzzo Hayes, CMG's legal counsel in Toronto.
“I can't explain why not,” d'Heureux said when asked about employees' fear. “Clearly CBC management over the last several years sent a clear message that they don't want their employees criticizing internal CBC decisions.”
With no legal reason for it, d'Heureux noted however that Peter McKinnon's 2001 arbitration ruling may have had a “chilling effect.” McKinnon was a producer with Newsday, formerly CBOT's hour-long supper time newscast. Later she conceded that if the employee's “opinions are quite critical” then “probably” management would challenge “the right to make those statements. Whether or not management is successful is another question.”
Management's interpretation of Article 35 is very broad, she explains, whereas the union's is very narrow.
Before CBOT's so-called 30/30 solution Canada Now (30 minutes of national news, 30 minutes of local) debuted, the newscast's fate was vociferously debated. McKinnon wrote two opinion pieces published in the Ottawa Citizen, the first on April 24, 2000 the second on May 19th. With a strong commitment to public broadcasting, McKinnon “honestly believed” he was “within his rights under the collective agreement” because of “information and advice” from the union. In both articles, he identified his role at the CBC, his biases, strong commitment to public broadcasting and his opinion of the 30/30 plan. Before the second one was published, Burman – then Chief Journalist and Executive Director of News, Current Affairs and Newsworld, CBC Television - issued a memo to all staff stating any “outside activities” like writing letters or articles for external publication “is prohibited unless expressly approved by me. This policy is consistent with the language in Collective Agreements and Journalistic Standards and Practices handbook.” (The latter is not part of the collective agreements.)
McKinnon did not submit the second piece to Burman before publication. He was suspended without pay for six days.
At his arbitration hearing, McKinnon said he wanted “'to be part of the debate.'”
In her 53 page decision, arbitrator Paula Knopf found that by identifying himself and his CBC connection, McKinnon did not violate the Journalistic Standards. The articles did not compromise “the integrity of CBC” or bring it into “disrepute,” she found, particularly since some “shortcomings” he referred to were already publicly stated by Rabinovitch and other CBC executives to a parliamentary committee and in a Maclean's magazine article.
However, Knopf found that the second article was in a “conflict of interest contrary to” the Journalistic Standards and that McKinnon was “insubordinate” in not submitting it to Burman first. Because of McKinnon's “level and sophistication,” his suspension was reduced to two days. It was deemed sufficient to “bring home” the message to McKinnon and “the rest of the bargaining unit.”
Left smouldering in the desert was the central issue - freedom of expression.
McKinnon left the CBC in 2001.
“I shall not explore the validity of the journalistic standards and practices as a whole or the nature and extent of free speech in this work place,” Knopf wrote because the issues are “too broad” to decide in one case.
Contentious situations involving these two documents and issues go back to the 1980s when veteran journalist Roy Bonisteel left Man Alive because he felt the Standards were muzzling him. Other cases, some of which also drew attention to the CBC's relationship with the government, involved Terry Milweski, Dale Goldhawk and Arthur Lewis.
Since employee rights are negotiated based on collective concerns, former employees' descriptions of “life on the inside” indicate the chance of this issue becoming a collective concern is slim.
“There's something missing from their journalistic bones,” Wark says, adding that CBC journalists are “completely unfree” to say anything in public. “They don't value freedom of speech,” he adds, “They think of it as a sort of thrill.”
Acknowledging that he “probably felt the same” when he was at CBC, he now sees it as “one of the great problems of CBC journalism.” Denigrating people expressing views is a problem of Canadian journalism, Wark adds. He “keeps waiting” for a CBC employee to launch a Charter challenge.
Ken Rockburn, host of CPAC's Talk Politics, used to host of CBC Radio's All in a Day. Rockburn staunchly defends public broadcasting and front line CBC employees, but says because of self-interest many CBCers are “terrified” of “rocking the boat.” The unions “never stopped anyone from getting smoked” he adds.
The “degree of uniformity” and the expectation to be “one big happy family” astounded him, he says. Coming from private radio, Rockburn says he always competed with other shows. Soon after he began, budget cuts were the backdrop of the introduction of Toronto-produced syndicated content for afternoon shows nationwide.
Rockburn balked at the accepted directive that 80% or 8 items on his show would be based on stories chosen by people in Toronto. After threatening to quit, through his agent he negotiated a secret deal. With his workload already increased, he came in every morning to also research and book stories (before 10 am) that would be syndicated reducing Toronto-syndicated content on his show to 4-6 items.
When he left, All in a Day was the highest rated afternoon show on CBC Radio nationwide.
A “producer-dominated” culture, where producers are “all-seeing, all-knowing oracles,” Rockburn saves his strongest blast for CBC management. They're paid “decent salaries to keep talented journalists, hosts and presenters” along with audience considerations at “the bottom of the food chain,” he says.
“People who do a good job on air should be the ones at the top,” he says, because they understand what good journalism needs in resources. He's not convinced front line employees will have any additional resources after all the changes.
Athough different in substance, debates about whistleblowing focus the public's eyes (for now) on freedom of expression and what can happen when loyalty to an employer triumphs over public interest. If public broadcasting is not being done in that interest, then in whose interest is it being done?
“People are really tired and worn down by discussing the role of the CBC,” Dr. Marc Raboy, professor of Communications at the University of Montreal says. Raboy was an expert advisor to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage's broadcasting study released in 2003.
Raboy notes that “overwhelming” support for public broadcasting yet “it doesn't go beyond that,” adding that declining audience figures “especially in television” prove it.
Funding, financing and polemics dominate public debate on the issue, Raboy adds.
A multi-channel universe, fragmenting markets, convergence, and the Internet have public broadcasters competing for audience with all media worldwide, Raboy adds.
“That CBC is no longer present locally to a significant extent has undermined its national presence as well in terms of audience loyalty and what people think about it,” Raboy says. He notes that since 1990 diverting resources to “blockbuster national programming” has “undermined” its ability to build “a strong loyal audience base” which in turn is the “major cause of the undermining of CBC.”
With the exception of Antonia Zerbisias' columns in The Toronto Star, there is no debate about the CBC, largely due to media concentration. Zerbisias says the only place left for a debate may be parliament.
But there, the CBC would reenter a stage where it has long been seen as a political tool or target.
In its mandate under the Broadcasting Act, CBC is seen as “an agency to strengthen the cultural fabric of the country,” Wark explains. During the decades' long national unity debate, the CBC in Quebec reflected the province's stormy 50/50 views. That raised pointed questions about the federal government funding a broadcaster that was “driving a wedge” instead of promoting national unity. The massive cuts to CBC in the 1990s were not about fighting the deficit, Wark says. “Chretien was furious with the CBC,” he continues. As the former minister responsible for national unity, Chretien “felt slighted,” Wark says, noting Knowlton Nash, the former anchor of The National, wrote about it in The Microphone Wars.
The absence of a political imperative has led to this situation, Jim Abbott, Member of Parliament and member of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage says about the mirage of mutli-year stable funding for the CBC (a 1993 Liberal election promise).
“Successive governments over the last ten years have treated the CBC like a convenient football. They've trotted it out and said this is our Canadian heritage, and this is us talking to ourselves, and whatever their cute phrases are.”
It's unfairly forced CBC executives to make “long-term decisions with short-term focus because of short-term funding,” Abbott says, adding it’s also not fair to employees.
Although CBC executives perennially decry this situation and its impact on programming in public, last summer the CBC renewed its consulting contract with Edelman Worldwide. It is the largest independent public relations company in the world. A small story appeared in The National Post in November under the headline “CBC hires PR giant that excels at disasters.” Journalist Chris Wattie wrote that Edelman was hired by Exxon after the Valdez disaster, Microsoft on its anti-trust prosecution suit and New York City after 9/11. It also brought us the “dolphin-safe” tuna campaign, he wrote.
Kevin Powers, a senior consultant with Edelman in Toronto, confirmed the CBC has been a client for five years and that there are “several projects.”
The value of the contract was not disclosed.
The CBC has been exempt from the Access to Information Act (ATIA) since it came into effect in 1983.
“There's absolutely no reason on this planet” why the CBC should be exempt, John Bryden, Member of Parliament says. Bryden has lobbied for years to increase government transparency through broader application of the ATIA.
“The CBC takes quite the opposite view at the high brass level,” Bryden says. He has correspondence with Rabinovitch and Peter Mansbridge, “who's never supported CBC coming under the ATIA,” to demonstrate it, he adds. Bryden's voice takes on some urgency as he notes the irony of a publicly funded media corporation that “should be the strongest advocate for transparency” in government taking this view.
“If by the most bizarre chance the CBC felt that journalistic confidentiality was imperiled, it would be very easy in a revision of the act to put in a clause that protected the confidences of journalists,” Bryden added.
In its submission to the Access to Information Task Force Review in 2001 CBC presented the negative effects of falling under the ATIA: compromising its arms length relationship with the government, jeopardizing journalistic confidentiality and research, exposing all CBC records, a competitive disadvantage, and subjecting third parties that deal with the corporation to access requests.
“There are two approaches,” Alasdair Roberts says. He is the director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. “The first is to show that there is a gap under existing law that does not allow it to protect journalistic information. The solution is to revise the exemption not to exclude the entire organization. The middle ground solution is to say that the organization is covered but that certain journalistic information is protected.”
He noted that the latter is the case for information about the BBC which is subject to British freedom of information legislation.
After the sponsorship scandal broke, in February the government initiated a Review of Crown Corporation Governance to be conducted by Treasury Board President Reg Alcock. Still underway, that Review will seek ways to “strengthen the transparency, accountability and sound management” of crown corporations and re-examine their ATIA exemptions.
Should the CBC's exemption is overturned, the increased transparency will hopefully be the signal for the bureaucracy's wider regeneration and renewal on all fronts as a valued oasis of news, analysis and programming. It's a regeneration that ultimately has less to do with buildings and technology and more to do with people – its front line employees and the public.
Sold but unpublished, 2004
It was there in July 1958 that my parents listened in shock, with their one-year-old son gurgling at their feet. An Iraqi engineer working with my Dad on a US-sponsored irrigation project gave them the news.
King Faisal II had just been assassinated and a military coup had begun. He'd just heard it on the radio.
But that fragment of history is what this story is all about – family, freedom, and broadcasting.
CBC journalists in Ottawa face the greatest changes in their history here. It involves technology, language, physical space, tribes of journalists, a public broadcaster threatened on multiple fronts, and the impact of all that on CBC journalism. CBC’s internal culture is riddled with more agendas than an office supply super store. It’s not a story about “one big happy family” on the move. It’s not short on ironies either.
It's all going on in the deafeningly silent Canadian debate about public broadcasting.
In the midst of writing that story, I could see the Jewel in the Crown about to slither back into all this sand – CBC employees' freedom of expression. Public, personal, and corporate interests rage in a sandstorm where those employees who might have concerns they wish to express publicly find themselves marooned in the desert. Unlike other big corporations, since this one continues to receive about a billion dollars in public money every year, what happens to the public interest in this situation is rather important. Interestingly, its former employees - or those on their way out - that speak up. “A son of a bitch” - that’s what Maclean’s quoted the late Peter Gzowski saying about the CEO of the time (Perrin Beatty) in response to the gaping holes left in Morningside after the 1990s’ cuts.
Current employees’ silence makes for a double-edged sword, wrapped in CBC’s history, and perhaps is an important element affecting its future as an oasis in the concentrated Canadian media desert.
In Ottawa, journalists will be working out of an integrated (or converged) newsroom in the new $46.5 million purpose-built broadcast centre on Queen Street. Including CBC's Parliamentary Hill bureaus (the largest single media presence on Parliament Hill), 180 journalists from English, French, radio and television services will work out of 6' x 5' cubicles in the 35,450-square-foot on-camera newsroom. (Currently they're scattered across four Ottawa locations in space they've outgrown using old office equipment.)
As part of CBC's news integration project, new digital server technology will allow content exchange between radio and television and a greater emphasis on bimedialism – journalists working for both radio and television.
It's all the brainchild of CBC's CEO and President Robert Rabinovitch whose term ends this November. It is “sponsored and supported enthusiastically” by the vice presidents of radio and television, Tony Burman, Editor in Chief CBC News says.
The planned bilingualism will likely make it the only newsroom of its kind in the world.
Already wracked by financial devastation, the impact of all this change on journalists and what they do is an open question.
Everyone acknowledges both the enormous benefits to all journalists being together, sharing research and cutting unnecessary duplication. CBC executives say this is all about doing better journalism. But many people say it's all about saving money. CBC Radio penetrates deep into the hearts of Canadians, but CBC Television has a wider audience. Speculation about the integration agenda and its impact on that is rife.
“We found in radio that of course TV is the dog and we were the tail,” Bruce Wark says. Wark is an Associate Professor of Journalism, Research, History at University of King's College Journalism School in Halifax. Beginning in the 1970s, Wark worked at CBC in several locations, leaving in 1991. The first producer of CBC Radio's The House, he was also the producer of The World at Six and an elected union official.
“You can't do TV over the phone. You're traveling to the stories, getting the pictures, bringing them back, editing them, writing to the pictures,” Wark says. “So that even the fastest reporter gets bogged down in that process, and there's little time left over for radio. That's the problem.”
Radio could become “a very small tail on that dog.”
“I'm not confident that the upper level managers know enough about that so that they know what is really at stake,” Bruce Wark says, referring to newsroom day-to-day realities. He notes that “from Rabinovitch on down” the executives have “never really worked in a newsroom.”
“If they make it work there's a heck of a positive side to it,” Wark says, “It could make CBC more thoughtful, less reactive, less superficial.”
Demoralization from budget cuts CBC “papers over” that affected radio “disproportionately” because “TV had more layers” and a “very very low trust between management and workers” are significant factors, Wark notes, and like many other bureaucracies there is a disconnect between upper-level management and the front line.
“A consultative” rather than “heroic management” that imposes would work, Wark says, yet for all this he empathizes with CBC executives, saying that CBC has to change.
Radio concerns find their sisters on the television side of the family.
“I didn't want to keep living that way,” Peter Van Dusen says of the constant uncertainty on CBC's front line. Van Dusen is the anchor of Primetime Politics on CPAC. He left Canada Now, formerly the hour-long newscast Newsday, in July 2001.
“I always feel a tremendous commitment to my employer,” he says, and never had trouble voicing his concerns internally. Yet Van Dusen describes the difference between Canada Now and Newsday as going from “a daily news operation” to “providing news when it suited us.”
“When I'd ask a superior a point blank question, will we still have a show running out of here that's relevant to anybody a year from now, 'well I certainly hope so'. To me, that wasn't an answer.”
When it was clear “we weren't going to revisit anything,” Van Dusen says “That was when it was time to go.”
But this is a debate front line employees, if interested at all, are not allowed to publicly engage in.
I listened to many CBC journalists in this and other locations, but I am not using that material. Only three Ottawa-based journalists spoke to me on the record and raised few concerns, if any, or if they did, it was concerns of “colleagues.” In two cases, journalists, graciously, declined to speak at all. Many calls were not returned. Many conversations ended with the suggestion that I contact the union.
The majority talking spoke off the record and had fears or concerns.
For reasons real or imagined, the fear felt by most CBC Ottawa employees in talking about all these changes is at times palpable.
With free speech hurting from freezer burn post 9/11, this was a Canadian experience in freedom of expression, democratic bedrock that people, including journalists, have died for.
On this continuum, at other end is a media corporation concerned about employees' free expression compromising its image of “impartiality” and “balanced” journalism.
In answering concerns that management is focusing on the technology not the people, Burman began thus. (He spoke to Ottawa City Magazine about integration only.)
“I quite frankly, I'm so used to reporters like yourself talking to people off the record where through the luxury of confidentiality much of what you have been told - you're not held accountable for it. They're not held accountable for it.”
The price of “going places” in a bureaucracy – self-censorship – is not unique to the CBC and like all employees CBC journalists, many on serial contracts, have their understandable self-interests – careers, mortgages, families and so on.
But it's clear that for some ideas far bigger than themselves and their careers – like journalism - still resonate.
Earlier this year several newspaper articles were devoted to Sook-Yin Lee's intention to appear in a sexually explicit film. Lee, the host CBC Radio's Definitely Not The Opera, went public about CBC's reluctance to grant approval by sending an e-mail to artists and journalists.
The lion's roar over CBC's reluctance drew widespread public derision from citizens and columnists.
“Given that the CBC owes its dime to the government and the government gave us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, should Ms. Lee not have the right to do what she wants as long as it does not infringe on the well-being of others?” Moses Wuggenig of Toronto, wrote in a letter published in the Globe and Mail. After the uproar, the CBC granted Lee permission.
Unfortunately for the public interest and journalism, there is no sex angle on the Ottawa situation.
“Obviously the people you've talked to don't know the structure of the way it is,” Danny Malanchuk says. He is Vice-President of Unit 1 of the Canadian Media Guild (CMG) representing journalists, program production and editorial staff. CMG represents about 554 Ottawa-based CBC journalists, technicians, editorial and administrative staff.
“[CMG does] have mechanisms in which we protect our employees.”
“You can't get fired for just saying you have an opinion. Good grief!”
Article 35, collective agreement for Unit 1 and Unit 3 employees (administrative staff) is called the “Outside Activities.” It states employees' freedom to engage in such activities with the following exceptions: the activity should not be “in direct competition” with the CBC, not “exploit his/her connection” with the CBC, and not “adversely affect” the employee's CBC work. Further “recognized on-air personnel” in Unit 1 “must discuss” such activities “with their supervisor before engaging in such activities.”
Patricia d'Heureux, is a lawyer at Cavalluzzo Hayes, CMG's legal counsel in Toronto.
“I can't explain why not,” d'Heureux said when asked about employees' fear. “Clearly CBC management over the last several years sent a clear message that they don't want their employees criticizing internal CBC decisions.”
With no legal reason for it, d'Heureux noted however that Peter McKinnon's 2001 arbitration ruling may have had a “chilling effect.” McKinnon was a producer with Newsday, formerly CBOT's hour-long supper time newscast. Later she conceded that if the employee's “opinions are quite critical” then “probably” management would challenge “the right to make those statements. Whether or not management is successful is another question.”
Management's interpretation of Article 35 is very broad, she explains, whereas the union's is very narrow.
Before CBOT's so-called 30/30 solution Canada Now (30 minutes of national news, 30 minutes of local) debuted, the newscast's fate was vociferously debated. McKinnon wrote two opinion pieces published in the Ottawa Citizen, the first on April 24, 2000 the second on May 19th. With a strong commitment to public broadcasting, McKinnon “honestly believed” he was “within his rights under the collective agreement” because of “information and advice” from the union. In both articles, he identified his role at the CBC, his biases, strong commitment to public broadcasting and his opinion of the 30/30 plan. Before the second one was published, Burman – then Chief Journalist and Executive Director of News, Current Affairs and Newsworld, CBC Television - issued a memo to all staff stating any “outside activities” like writing letters or articles for external publication “is prohibited unless expressly approved by me. This policy is consistent with the language in Collective Agreements and Journalistic Standards and Practices handbook.” (The latter is not part of the collective agreements.)
McKinnon did not submit the second piece to Burman before publication. He was suspended without pay for six days.
At his arbitration hearing, McKinnon said he wanted “'to be part of the debate.'”
In her 53 page decision, arbitrator Paula Knopf found that by identifying himself and his CBC connection, McKinnon did not violate the Journalistic Standards. The articles did not compromise “the integrity of CBC” or bring it into “disrepute,” she found, particularly since some “shortcomings” he referred to were already publicly stated by Rabinovitch and other CBC executives to a parliamentary committee and in a Maclean's magazine article.
However, Knopf found that the second article was in a “conflict of interest contrary to” the Journalistic Standards and that McKinnon was “insubordinate” in not submitting it to Burman first. Because of McKinnon's “level and sophistication,” his suspension was reduced to two days. It was deemed sufficient to “bring home” the message to McKinnon and “the rest of the bargaining unit.”
Left smouldering in the desert was the central issue - freedom of expression.
McKinnon left the CBC in 2001.
“I shall not explore the validity of the journalistic standards and practices as a whole or the nature and extent of free speech in this work place,” Knopf wrote because the issues are “too broad” to decide in one case.
Contentious situations involving these two documents and issues go back to the 1980s when veteran journalist Roy Bonisteel left Man Alive because he felt the Standards were muzzling him. Other cases, some of which also drew attention to the CBC's relationship with the government, involved Terry Milweski, Dale Goldhawk and Arthur Lewis.
Since employee rights are negotiated based on collective concerns, former employees' descriptions of “life on the inside” indicate the chance of this issue becoming a collective concern is slim.
“There's something missing from their journalistic bones,” Wark says, adding that CBC journalists are “completely unfree” to say anything in public. “They don't value freedom of speech,” he adds, “They think of it as a sort of thrill.”
Acknowledging that he “probably felt the same” when he was at CBC, he now sees it as “one of the great problems of CBC journalism.” Denigrating people expressing views is a problem of Canadian journalism, Wark adds. He “keeps waiting” for a CBC employee to launch a Charter challenge.
Ken Rockburn, host of CPAC's Talk Politics, used to host of CBC Radio's All in a Day. Rockburn staunchly defends public broadcasting and front line CBC employees, but says because of self-interest many CBCers are “terrified” of “rocking the boat.” The unions “never stopped anyone from getting smoked” he adds.
The “degree of uniformity” and the expectation to be “one big happy family” astounded him, he says. Coming from private radio, Rockburn says he always competed with other shows. Soon after he began, budget cuts were the backdrop of the introduction of Toronto-produced syndicated content for afternoon shows nationwide.
Rockburn balked at the accepted directive that 80% or 8 items on his show would be based on stories chosen by people in Toronto. After threatening to quit, through his agent he negotiated a secret deal. With his workload already increased, he came in every morning to also research and book stories (before 10 am) that would be syndicated reducing Toronto-syndicated content on his show to 4-6 items.
When he left, All in a Day was the highest rated afternoon show on CBC Radio nationwide.
A “producer-dominated” culture, where producers are “all-seeing, all-knowing oracles,” Rockburn saves his strongest blast for CBC management. They're paid “decent salaries to keep talented journalists, hosts and presenters” along with audience considerations at “the bottom of the food chain,” he says.
“People who do a good job on air should be the ones at the top,” he says, because they understand what good journalism needs in resources. He's not convinced front line employees will have any additional resources after all the changes.
Athough different in substance, debates about whistleblowing focus the public's eyes (for now) on freedom of expression and what can happen when loyalty to an employer triumphs over public interest. If public broadcasting is not being done in that interest, then in whose interest is it being done?
“People are really tired and worn down by discussing the role of the CBC,” Dr. Marc Raboy, professor of Communications at the University of Montreal says. Raboy was an expert advisor to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage's broadcasting study released in 2003.
Raboy notes that “overwhelming” support for public broadcasting yet “it doesn't go beyond that,” adding that declining audience figures “especially in television” prove it.
Funding, financing and polemics dominate public debate on the issue, Raboy adds.
A multi-channel universe, fragmenting markets, convergence, and the Internet have public broadcasters competing for audience with all media worldwide, Raboy adds.
“That CBC is no longer present locally to a significant extent has undermined its national presence as well in terms of audience loyalty and what people think about it,” Raboy says. He notes that since 1990 diverting resources to “blockbuster national programming” has “undermined” its ability to build “a strong loyal audience base” which in turn is the “major cause of the undermining of CBC.”
With the exception of Antonia Zerbisias' columns in The Toronto Star, there is no debate about the CBC, largely due to media concentration. Zerbisias says the only place left for a debate may be parliament.
But there, the CBC would reenter a stage where it has long been seen as a political tool or target.
In its mandate under the Broadcasting Act, CBC is seen as “an agency to strengthen the cultural fabric of the country,” Wark explains. During the decades' long national unity debate, the CBC in Quebec reflected the province's stormy 50/50 views. That raised pointed questions about the federal government funding a broadcaster that was “driving a wedge” instead of promoting national unity. The massive cuts to CBC in the 1990s were not about fighting the deficit, Wark says. “Chretien was furious with the CBC,” he continues. As the former minister responsible for national unity, Chretien “felt slighted,” Wark says, noting Knowlton Nash, the former anchor of The National, wrote about it in The Microphone Wars.
The absence of a political imperative has led to this situation, Jim Abbott, Member of Parliament and member of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage says about the mirage of mutli-year stable funding for the CBC (a 1993 Liberal election promise).
“Successive governments over the last ten years have treated the CBC like a convenient football. They've trotted it out and said this is our Canadian heritage, and this is us talking to ourselves, and whatever their cute phrases are.”
It's unfairly forced CBC executives to make “long-term decisions with short-term focus because of short-term funding,” Abbott says, adding it’s also not fair to employees.
Although CBC executives perennially decry this situation and its impact on programming in public, last summer the CBC renewed its consulting contract with Edelman Worldwide. It is the largest independent public relations company in the world. A small story appeared in The National Post in November under the headline “CBC hires PR giant that excels at disasters.” Journalist Chris Wattie wrote that Edelman was hired by Exxon after the Valdez disaster, Microsoft on its anti-trust prosecution suit and New York City after 9/11. It also brought us the “dolphin-safe” tuna campaign, he wrote.
Kevin Powers, a senior consultant with Edelman in Toronto, confirmed the CBC has been a client for five years and that there are “several projects.”
The value of the contract was not disclosed.
The CBC has been exempt from the Access to Information Act (ATIA) since it came into effect in 1983.
“There's absolutely no reason on this planet” why the CBC should be exempt, John Bryden, Member of Parliament says. Bryden has lobbied for years to increase government transparency through broader application of the ATIA.
“The CBC takes quite the opposite view at the high brass level,” Bryden says. He has correspondence with Rabinovitch and Peter Mansbridge, “who's never supported CBC coming under the ATIA,” to demonstrate it, he adds. Bryden's voice takes on some urgency as he notes the irony of a publicly funded media corporation that “should be the strongest advocate for transparency” in government taking this view.
“If by the most bizarre chance the CBC felt that journalistic confidentiality was imperiled, it would be very easy in a revision of the act to put in a clause that protected the confidences of journalists,” Bryden added.
In its submission to the Access to Information Task Force Review in 2001 CBC presented the negative effects of falling under the ATIA: compromising its arms length relationship with the government, jeopardizing journalistic confidentiality and research, exposing all CBC records, a competitive disadvantage, and subjecting third parties that deal with the corporation to access requests.
“There are two approaches,” Alasdair Roberts says. He is the director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. “The first is to show that there is a gap under existing law that does not allow it to protect journalistic information. The solution is to revise the exemption not to exclude the entire organization. The middle ground solution is to say that the organization is covered but that certain journalistic information is protected.”
He noted that the latter is the case for information about the BBC which is subject to British freedom of information legislation.
After the sponsorship scandal broke, in February the government initiated a Review of Crown Corporation Governance to be conducted by Treasury Board President Reg Alcock. Still underway, that Review will seek ways to “strengthen the transparency, accountability and sound management” of crown corporations and re-examine their ATIA exemptions.
Should the CBC's exemption is overturned, the increased transparency will hopefully be the signal for the bureaucracy's wider regeneration and renewal on all fronts as a valued oasis of news, analysis and programming. It's a regeneration that ultimately has less to do with buildings and technology and more to do with people – its front line employees and the public.
Sold but unpublished, 2004