Monday, August 29, 2005
CBC XXXVI: Time to escalate the blog war
For 34 years the people who work at the CBC have had to take it when hate was dished out from the CBCphobes. The only people who could answer were CBC communications. And those responses were usually bland and came from committees of at least a couple of managers and a communications person. (I once saw three managers in a meeting with Ruth Ellen Soles trying to decide how to respond to an issue).
I say 34 years because the hate campaign against the CBC really began with the founding of the Toronto Sun.
Now we have a window of opportunity. The lockout means we are no longer bound by CBC communications policy. We can finally answer back. It's time to escalate the blog war....but to do it rationally and to use the system, and not lower ourselves to the level of those who hate us.
Toronto's gay community always responded to the hate dished out by the Sun. It's a campaign that the Sun has largely abandoned. It's time for CBC lockoutees to take a hint from that campaign and fight back.
One of the most inaccurate, sloppy and nasty pieces of junk journalism I have seen my 30-year career appeared in today's Toronto Sun by columnist Peter Worthington.
Worthington has been telling Canadians what he thinks of them for all those 34 years, he was one of the founders of the Sun. He is entitled to his opinion. But if a columnist wants people to accept his arguments, he must base them on accurate facts.
In his column Worthington says:
The fact is that CBC and often only CBC has consistently covered the Canadian military. (Note: these statements are based on memory, since I don't have records that are locked in the Toronto Broadcast Centre, but they are as accurate as I can make them--and I am admitting this)
Last year, The National broadcast the show from Kabul. Peter Mansbridge went on a patrol with Canadian soldiers. Correspondent David Common has been in Afghanistan at least twice. Common is a one man band Videojournalist, doing everything himself. He not only filed TV items, he sent me, as CBC News photo editor, still photos of Kabul that I used in a couple of photo galleries.
Dan Bjarnason and cameraman Brian Kelly were onboard HMCS Windsor when the sub made its maiden voyage from Scotland to Halifax.
For the past two years, CBC.ca has published columns from a Canadian serviceman named Russell Storring who was in Afghanistan, then back at Petawawa and is now in Khandahar and is, in one way, since there is no place for his column, locked out like the rest of us.
CBC News Sunday shot, produced and aired a documentary about the Canadians in Kabul.
And when Canadian Coyote reconnaissance units were the first NATO troops to enter Kosovo, the CBC was there, while the other networks who were too cheap to send their crews, depended on video news releases from the Department of National Defence.
Worthington also says:
If there ever was a dishonest report, it is Worthington's.
Yes, the CBC did withdraw its crews from Baghdad. But so did many other news organizations.
The fact that news management decided not to embed was hotly debated among the locked out staff and many, including myself, disagreed with that decision. And, it turns out, embedding might not have been a good idea anyway, since the U.S. military had a priority list for embedded journalists, and it is unlikely the CBC and other Canadians would have got anywhere anyway. Some small market US reporters never left the United States, the units they were assigned to never deployed because the first phase of the war ended so quickly
But there were CBC reporters in the war zone.
Patrick Brown was in the northern, Kurd region of Iraq, with David Common as his field producer. Margaret Evans from radio was also in northern Iraq. Paul Workman and a CBC crew, along with other news organizations skeptical of embedding, crossed the border between Iraq and Kuwait soon after the invasion.
For someone like Worthington, who has sat behind a desk for at least 30 years, to call "cowards" reporters, producers, camera people and editors who have served in war zones in the last few years, some of whom I count as friends, shows the kind of person Worthington really is.
So what should be done?
The solution comes from the south of the border. These days if a reporter or columnist in the U.S. writes a piece, like Worthington's Monday column, that is full of inaccuracies, management usually begins an audit of that reporter's or columnist's work,as was done at the New York Times and USA Today and an increasing number of papers.
It is time that Sunmedia, Worthington's employer, institutes an external independent audit of the accuracy of statements of fact in Worthington's columns for the past several years. (Since Worthington was once an executive of the chain, an outside audit would be free of hints of conflict of interest.) If Sunmedia won't audit the reporting of facts in Worthington's columns, then it should be done by a journalism school.
Note: This is little different than a complaint to the CBC ombudsman, the CBC at least listens to complaints from Canadians. The Sun chain usually dismisses in a snarky little comment in the letters section.
I will accept the results of any such audit and I am sure everyone else would as well.
Update: Worthington's column has been posted on CBC Watch, and there are comments.
To Contact Quebecor, which owns Sunmedia, here is the contact us page.
The president and CEO of Quebecor is Pierre Karl Péladeau.
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
Toronto Sun
5:04 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
Links to this post
For 34 years the people who work at the CBC have had to take it when hate was dished out from the CBCphobes. The only people who could answer were CBC communications. And those responses were usually bland and came from committees of at least a couple of managers and a communications person. (I once saw three managers in a meeting with Ruth Ellen Soles trying to decide how to respond to an issue).
I say 34 years because the hate campaign against the CBC really began with the founding of the Toronto Sun.
Now we have a window of opportunity. The lockout means we are no longer bound by CBC communications policy. We can finally answer back. It's time to escalate the blog war....but to do it rationally and to use the system, and not lower ourselves to the level of those who hate us.
Toronto's gay community always responded to the hate dished out by the Sun. It's a campaign that the Sun has largely abandoned. It's time for CBC lockoutees to take a hint from that campaign and fight back.
One of the most inaccurate, sloppy and nasty pieces of junk journalism I have seen my 30-year career appeared in today's Toronto Sun by columnist Peter Worthington.
Worthington has been telling Canadians what he thinks of them for all those 34 years, he was one of the founders of the Sun. He is entitled to his opinion. But if a columnist wants people to accept his arguments, he must base them on accurate facts.
In his column Worthington says:
The CBC is notoriously anti-military--except when our soldiers are accidently killed by American bombs.
The CBC ignores our troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan and rejects "unbiased" documentaries that record the work they do.
The fact is that CBC and often only CBC has consistently covered the Canadian military. (Note: these statements are based on memory, since I don't have records that are locked in the Toronto Broadcast Centre, but they are as accurate as I can make them--and I am admitting this)
Last year, The National broadcast the show from Kabul. Peter Mansbridge went on a patrol with Canadian soldiers. Correspondent David Common has been in Afghanistan at least twice. Common is a one man band Videojournalist, doing everything himself. He not only filed TV items, he sent me, as CBC News photo editor, still photos of Kabul that I used in a couple of photo galleries.
Dan Bjarnason and cameraman Brian Kelly were onboard HMCS Windsor when the sub made its maiden voyage from Scotland to Halifax.
For the past two years, CBC.ca has published columns from a Canadian serviceman named Russell Storring who was in Afghanistan, then back at Petawawa and is now in Khandahar and is, in one way, since there is no place for his column, locked out like the rest of us.
CBC News Sunday shot, produced and aired a documentary about the Canadians in Kabul.
And when Canadian Coyote reconnaissance units were the first NATO troops to enter Kosovo, the CBC was there, while the other networks who were too cheap to send their crews, depended on video news releases from the Department of National Defence.
Worthington also says:
As for news bias, in the recent Iraq war, the CBC withdrew its staff from Baghdad when bombing began and wouldn't allow reporters to be embedded with attacking troops for fear they'd be suscepitble to military "spin."
What nonsense
Instead, the CBC used American footage of the war and added its own "spin" as to what was happening. Not only cowardly but, that's dishonest journalism.
If there ever was a dishonest report, it is Worthington's.
Yes, the CBC did withdraw its crews from Baghdad. But so did many other news organizations.
The fact that news management decided not to embed was hotly debated among the locked out staff and many, including myself, disagreed with that decision. And, it turns out, embedding might not have been a good idea anyway, since the U.S. military had a priority list for embedded journalists, and it is unlikely the CBC and other Canadians would have got anywhere anyway. Some small market US reporters never left the United States, the units they were assigned to never deployed because the first phase of the war ended so quickly
But there were CBC reporters in the war zone.
Patrick Brown was in the northern, Kurd region of Iraq, with David Common as his field producer. Margaret Evans from radio was also in northern Iraq. Paul Workman and a CBC crew, along with other news organizations skeptical of embedding, crossed the border between Iraq and Kuwait soon after the invasion.
For someone like Worthington, who has sat behind a desk for at least 30 years, to call "cowards" reporters, producers, camera people and editors who have served in war zones in the last few years, some of whom I count as friends, shows the kind of person Worthington really is.
So what should be done?
The solution comes from the south of the border. These days if a reporter or columnist in the U.S. writes a piece, like Worthington's Monday column, that is full of inaccuracies, management usually begins an audit of that reporter's or columnist's work,as was done at the New York Times and USA Today and an increasing number of papers.
It is time that Sunmedia, Worthington's employer, institutes an external independent audit of the accuracy of statements of fact in Worthington's columns for the past several years. (Since Worthington was once an executive of the chain, an outside audit would be free of hints of conflict of interest.) If Sunmedia won't audit the reporting of facts in Worthington's columns, then it should be done by a journalism school.
Note: This is little different than a complaint to the CBC ombudsman, the CBC at least listens to complaints from Canadians. The Sun chain usually dismisses in a snarky little comment in the letters section.
I will accept the results of any such audit and I am sure everyone else would as well.
Update: Worthington's column has been posted on CBC Watch, and there are comments.
To Contact Quebecor, which owns Sunmedia, here is the contact us page.
The president and CEO of Quebecor is Pierre Karl Péladeau.
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
Toronto Sun
5:04 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
