Don't kill CBC's troubled news group; rebuild it

High-profile host's resignation lays bare poisonous internal strife

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Canada’s national broadcaster is pretty much the only news organization left in the country with the reach and capacity to cover what matters most to us. CBC/Radio Canada is an invaluable tool that both gives citizens an alternative to the mindless pap on commercial radio and provides a bulwark against the U.S. media juggernaut that relentlessly chisels away at our national identity.

Which is why it is so important to hold the CBC’s feet to the fire. And to understand why some people feel so unfairly treated by the organization that they would like it to disappear.

Dhanraj: Did CBC expect a liberal world view from him? (photo: Postmedia)

All of this has come into the spotlight in the past week with the high-profile resignation of once-golden boy Travis Dhanraj. Before his sudden disappearance a few weeks ago, he had developed a national profile as host of Marketplace and Canada Tonight.

On his way out of the door, Dhanraj threw a nuclear-sized hand grenade into the works. And his inflammatory accusations are being gleefully seized on by the Defund-the-CBC set as proof that conservatives are getting a raw deal from the public broadcaster.

On his journey into that good night, Dhanraj did not go gentle. He claimed in an email distributed to colleagues that he was forced to resign from the broadcaster after he raised systemic issues related to lack of diversity of opinion and editorial independence.

“This was not a voluntary decision,” he wrote in the farewell message sent to numerous CBC email addresses from his company account.

“When I pushed for honest conversations about systemic issues and editorial imbalance, I was shut out. Sidelined. Silenced. And ultimately, erased.”

The CBC, Dhanraj wrote, engages in “tokenism masquerading as diversity, problematic political coverage protocols and the erosion of editorial independence.” He said it became intolerable to “navigate a workplace culture defined by retaliation, exclusion and psychological harm.”

A few days later, Dhanraj posted on X: “When the time is right, I’ll pull the curtain back. I’ll share everything…. I’ll tell you what is really happening inside the walls of your CBC.”

Wow! One can only imagine the apopleptic fits behind closed doors at the CBC’s Toronto Broadcast Centre in the heart of the land of the Laurentian elites.

If you think that Dhanraj’s missive reads a bit like a statement of claim in a lawsuit, there’s a good reason for that. His lawyer has told media that Dhanraj does indeed intend to sue the Mother Corp.

Kathryn Marshall, who is representing Dhanraj in a planned complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, also recently claimed that CBC management assumed Dhanraj would hold a “liberal world view” because of his skin colour, and were dismayed when it didn’t pan out the way they assumed it would.

Keep in mind, the accusations are vague and untested in court and therefore need to be taken with a very large grain of salt. Only the rigours of a trial will provide a proper airing of the facts. And, as so often happens, if there is an out-of-court settlement none of Dhanraj’s claims will ever get a public airing.

For its part, CBC is vigorously denying Dhanraj’s drive-by machine gun attack. CBC spokesperson Kerry Kelly said the Crown corporation “categorically rejects” Dhanraj's allegations, although she added the broadcaster is limited in what it can say because of “privacy and confidentiality considerations.”

CBC haters have not shown the same level of restraint.

“Dhanraj (grievance) speaks to something existential about the CBC’s news organization — something conservatives have always believed. It’s not ‘for Canadians’; it’s for certain kinds of Canadians,” wrote Chris Selley in the National Post. He concludes, “CBC news needs to be torn down to the studs and rebuilt.”

I think Selley is right about the clubbish natue of the CBC. Although I put myself on the progressive side of the ledger, I have increasingly felt uncomfortable with the often dismissive treatment conservative politicians receive in CBC’s news coverage. It’s not the Canadian way, and its one-sided approach threatens to create the us-versus-them mentality that has poisoned once-respected media outlets in the U.S. Fox versus CNN. Truth Social versus MSNBC.

The CBC also seems to have become ever more reliant on interviewing its own journalists as subject matter experts, rather than seeking out other voices. One wonders what has happened to its mandate, as set out in the Broadcasting Act, to: “provide a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens, and entertains.”

None of this is intended to be a knock on many of the ethical and hard-working journalists at the Mother Corp. Rather, it is to question those above them who are calling the shots.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has presented himself as a bold new leader, ready to make the changes needed to get this country back on its feet. Although he is mostly talking about the economy, his commitment applies equally to its cultural and information systems. Throwing a $150 million funding boost at the CBC — as the federal government has committed to — is not, in itself, a bad thing but it will do nothing to address the underlying malaise.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the CBC’s news organization. It stretches from editors’ story choices to the questions that their star reporters choose to put and, deeper, into the tone of story presentation.

Carney, like the rest of us, needs to demand that we get to the bottom of the barrel and root out the rot. If Dhanraj’s claims turn out to have any substance at all, the Corporation’s very future relies on fundamental change.

©DougFirbyUnfiltered

Reprint with credit to dougfirby.substack.com