Canadian public broadcaster's crisis: 'When you create celebrities, you create monsters'
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Version 0 of 1. Caught between a hostile government and an indifferent public, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation suffered further humiliation this week when new revelations forced it to fire another top presenter for ethical lapses. The latest victim of the turmoil is top political journalist Evan Solomon, host of the network’s Power and Politics show, who was sacked on Tuesday for allegedly peddling his influence to profit from the sale of valuable art to such figures as Bank of England governor Mark Carney, and Blackberry founder Jim Balsillie. Solomon’s ouster follows the downfall of equally prominent CBC star Jian Ghomeshi, who was fired after failing to persuade his superiors that his avowed penchant for rough sex was not criminal. Ghomeshi is currently facing trial on several charges of sexual assault and one of choking. The scandal has also renewed questions about the continued employment of the CBC’s senior business correspondent Amanda Lang, who failed to disclose her close relationships with prominent bankers while trying to suppress an exposé of their practices. The string of scandals has created a journalistic crisis at the country’s public broadcaster, once widely respected for the balance and integrity of its current affairs broadcasting. It comes after years of funding cuts and layoffs at the hands of a conservative government that is openly hostile to its existence – a fact that many observers blame for the corporation’s repeated ethical failings. Solomon’s aborted career as an art dealer was detailed in a Toronto Star article that included several emails between him and collector Bruce Bailey describing how the journalist would use his contacts with powerful figures to help sell paintings. After paying Solomon $300,000 (CDN) for lucrative introductions, Bailey balked at his demand for a million-dollar commission following the sale of a painting by artist Peter Doig to Balsillie. “I do expect to be paid the full balance owing in accordance to our agreement and as reflected in my invoice,” Solomon wrote to Bailey, threatening “to explore legal recourses available to me”. Both parties hired lawyers and settled the dispute privately. The correspondence was published shortly thereafter. In contrast to its handling of the Ghomeshi and Lang affairs, the CBC fired Solomon immediately. Solomon has denied wrongdoing, saying that he was “deeply sorry” for any damage his activities had caused. But the speed of his downfall only raised questions about the fate of Lang, who remains the network’s chief business correspondent despite having been found guilty of similar lapses in her coverage of the Royal Bank of Canada. Lang came into disrepute when she attempted to scuttle a CBC expose of an RBC initiative that required Canadian staff to train the offshore workers slated to replace them, and not revealing her romantic relationship with an RBC director and several thousand dollars in speaking fees she had received from the bank. “If it were not for the fact there was an alleged criminal among these hosts, she would be the most egregious,” says Toronto journalist Jesse Brown, whose Canadaland podcast broke both the Ghomeshi and Lang scandals. “What all this reveals is that a lot of rot has settled into the Canadian media, specifically taking hold within the CBC,” Brown said. He blamed the corporation’s “very conscious decision to groom celebrity journalists” in the face of declining public interest and overt government hostility. The CBC has undergone a steady succession of cutbacks under the conservative government of Stephen Harper, forcing the broadcaster to rely on more on personalities than content in recent years, he said. “But when you create these celebrities, you create monsters.” A CBC internal report conducted after Ghomeshi was fired hinted at the problem, with a warning against what it called “host culture” in the CBC. In that context, Solomon’s lapses were no surprise, according to former CBC producer Bruce Livesey. “Anyone who’s worked there any length of time knows this is the chickens coming home to roost,” he said, adding that it reflects a “corrosive culture” in which “stars who had no concept of content have tremendous power to shape how your story turned out”. Retired CBC investigative journalist and novelist Linden MacIntyre, who was harshly criticized by CBC management for complaining about senior correspondents claiming fees, describes Solomon’s fall as “the kind of lapse in common sense that happens when you get too big for your britches”. He too says that relying on stars to boost ratings in the absence of quality content has produced a “corrosive culture” at the CBC. “Solomon lost his ethical compass in the midst of a lot of confirmation, adulation, celebration and ambition,” the veteran journalist said. |