CBC president Catherine Tait has publicly attacked Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre (who claims the state broadcaster is politically biased, and has pledged to defund it), accusing him of 'CBC-bashing' just to raise funds.
CBC president bashes Poilievre for making people hate the network | Western Standard - Jonathan Bradley
February 7, 2023 - "CBC President Catherine Tait denounced Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre for inciting attacks on the news outlet. 'There’s a lot of CBC bashing going on — somewhat stoked by the leader of the Opposition,' said Tait in a Tuesday interview with the Globe and Mail. 'I think they feel CBC is a mouthpiece for the Liberal government.' Poilievre said in March [2022] at his Axe the Carbon Tax Rally in Ottawa he would defund the CBC, which received thunderous applause....
"Tait hit back at the Conservative campaign to defund the CBC, saying it's a tactic to solicit donations. The Conservatives set up a fundraising initiative which says they will save people $1 billion by defunding the CBC, so they should send in $20. The CBC received about $1.2 billion from the Canadian government in 2022, which was two-thirds of its funding.
"Tait said it's working with the same budget as 30 years ago. It did linear television and radio 30 years ago. Now it does those two mediums, CBC Gem, streaming radio, and digital platforms. She said it has 'completely tripled our output, yet we’re doing it with less money'.... Tait said it is the one broadcaster in the system which has the obligation to serve all Canadians. She added rural audiences might be limited to their television, so it is not going to abandon them."
Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/cbc-president-bashes-poilievre-for-making-people-hate-the-network/article_0421c88e-a70b-11ed-a237-338919707b33.html
To delight of Conservatives, CBC’s president bad mouths Poilievre | Toronto Sun - Lorrie Goldstein:
February 8, 2023 - "Within hours of Tait accusing Poilievre of 'CBC bashing,' inciting attacks on the public broadcaster and calling his campaign to defund the CBC a fundraising slogan (which it is, along with an election promise), the Conservatives were out with a fundraising email giving Poilievre’s response.... 'The President and CEO of Trudeau’s $1.2 billion propaganda arm, the CBC, is now openly attacking me. They’re not even pretending to be unbiased.'
"No doubt the CBC’s supporters agreed with what [Tait] said and no doubt similar views are expressed in CBC boardrooms and newsrooms every day. But for the CBC president and CEO to say it explicitly, in public, is manna from heaven for the Conservatives. They aren’t trying to convince people who support the CBC to change their minds. They’re re-enforcing the perception of bias that many Conservative supporters have about the CBC, now using its most senior executive to do so.
"Asked later by a CBC reporter whether she was concerned her comments about Poilievre would undermine working journalists at the CBC by pitting the public broadcaster against one political party, Tait said she wasn’t because she’s not a journalist (which is obvious) but the CEO. As the CEO, Tait said, she has a responsibility to communicate to Canadians, including politicians, the value of the public broadcaste.... The problem is, she walked into what a newspaper publisher rightly described to me years ago as, 'six minutes of satisfaction, followed by six miles of bad road,' in this case for CBC journalists, particularly on Parliament Hill.
"While many Canadians — present company included — believe the state-funded broadcaster is culturally more sympathetic to Liberal policies than Conservative ones (just as Postmedia, the company I work for, is the reverse) it’s also true that CBC journalists have done many investigations and produced many series and articles critical of the Trudeau government, exposing things the Liberals didn’t want the public to know. If Tait wanted to defend the CBC from allegations of pro-Liberal bias, she could have highlighted many examples, instead of attacking Poilievre.
"But, as she says, she’s not a journalist. She’s a CBC executive heading a government-funded corporation that at times makes bone-headed moves such as suing the Conservative Party 11 days before the 2019 federal election, alleging copyright infringement for using some short CBC news clips in an online political ad and tweets. Anyone who understands the defence of 'fair dealing' for copyright infringement knew the CBC would lose, which it did, while re-enforcing the perception of anti-Conservative bias."
Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-to-delight-of-conservatives-cbcs-president-bad-mouths-poilievre
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