4 days ago
Chris Selley: We'll thank Travis Dhanraj for 'pulling back the curtain' on CBC News
One of the results of the Liberals' long-unexpected election win earlier this year is that the issue of CBC's future immediately came off the boil — and it wasn't even all that big of an issue during the campaign, despite Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's unambiguous promise to defund CBC's English-language operations entirely. Travis Dhanraj, a balanced and energetic reporter and until recently host of CBC's Canada Tonight, who mysteriously vanished from CBC's airwaves earlier this year, dropped a bomb this week that could bring the issue back to life very quickly, and perhaps very usefully.
'I had no real choice but to walk away,' Dhanraj wrote in an open letter about what he termed his 'forced resignation' from Mother Corp. '(But) I still have my voice. And I intend to use it. Because this isn't just about me. It's about trust in the CBC — a public institution that's supposed to serve you. It's about voices being sidelined, hard truths avoided, and the public being left in the dark about what's really happening inside their national broadcaster.'
He accused the network — credibly, it must be said — of 'performative diversity, tokenism, (and perpetuating) a system designed to elevate certain voices and diminish others.' Dhanraj is brown-skinned, and quickly developed a reputation on the Canada Tonight newsmagazine show for inviting, shall we say, non-CBC types on to the public airwaves. (An appearance by Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley caused particular consternation among those who carry CBC tote bags.)
Kathryn Marshall, who is representing Dhanraj in a planned complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, alleged this week 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. (I should say, knowing Dhanraj slightly and having watched him in action, both at press conferences and on TV, I really have no idea what his 'world view' is … except that it's not hopelessly blinkered. That's a good thing. He's a reporter.)
'When the time is right, I'll pull the curtain back,' Dhanraj wrote, portentously. 'I'll share everything. I'll tell you what is really happening inside the walls of your CBC.'
The sooner the better, please! Because it's just possible that this federal government might be serious about implementing reforms at the public broadcaster, and as of yet those proposed reforms amount to very weak and expensive tea.
A thousand years ago, in February, the former Heritage minister under the former prime minister proposed what she called a 'new mandate' for CBC. It was unprepossessing, to say the least: A ton of new money, naturally, plus a partial ban on advertising and some changes to how senior management positions are appointed. The CBC-related commitments in Mark Carney's Liberal platform (notwithstanding the promise of $150 million extra funding) were even weaker tea: When you're including 'the clear and consistent transmission of life-saving information during emergencies' as a new imperative for your public broadcaster, you know you're either out of ideas or have a severely dysfunctional public broadcaster. Because communicating life-saving information during emergencies is kind of Job One for broadcast journalism.
The first thing CBC did when COVID hit, let us never forget, was to cancel all its local newscasts. It later turned out that calamitous CBC CEO Catherine Tait had hunkered down for the pandemic in Brooklyn. She was last heard defending senior executives' bonuses, even as the network was shedding hundreds of jobs, as something akin to the divine right of kings and queens. Amazingly, she kept her job until her recently extended contract expired in January this year.
If I believed that an extra $150 million a year would fix what ails CBC, I wouldn't lose sleep over spending it. My complaints about CBC are myriad and easily Google-able. And it pains me the extent to which Canadian news — including private outlets such as this one, as well as CBC — is now subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer. But the simple fact is that if that support disappeared tomorrow there would be a hell of a lot less news out there, and that's never a good thing.
But I don't believe an extra $150 million would make much difference; I think it would just disappear into the gaping maw of middle management, emboldening them to get even more in the way of journalists simply doing the work they want to do. CBC news needs to be torn down to the studs and rebuilt, not tinkered with at the margins. So what Dhanraj and Marshall are teasing here is tantalizing, because it 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. That has never been any public broadcaster's mandate. And it is, perhaps, why the ratings are so poor.
I feel terrible for Travis Dhanraj, but I can't wait to see what's behind that curtain.
National Post cselley@
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