By Nick Ubels and Ali Siemens (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 16, 2011
Dear CBC News,
We want to congratulate you on 75 years of broadcasting excellence. You are not only the oldest news network in Canada, you are also its most loved and respected. For the better part of the past century, you’ve been a distinctively Canadian news organization demonstrative of those best Canadian values: diversity over homogeneity; reconciliation and compromise over hard-headed aggressiveness; and a fundamental empathy and desire to understand rather than castigate. You have been a bastion of quality journalism, fulfilling your mandate according to the 1991 Broadcasting Act with vigour and discipline.
Yet your high standards only seem to extend so far. In 2009, The Lang and O’Leary Exchange aired its first episode on the CBC News Network. On this program, pundit and entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary engages in a discourse with Amanda Lang about business issues of the day. Ostensibly, public dialogue should be commended as a valuable addition to the national discussion. But O’Leary’s approach has more often than not pushed the program into aggressive, argumentative and distasteful territory more befitting FoxNews than the CBC.
This type of programming may make for easy ratings, but it sets a dangerous tone for public discourse. American-style argument culture has no place in Canadian journalism. Rather than helping to direct public discussion in a productive way, it inflames differences and creates a false dichotomy between political ideologies. Canadians have always valued compromise and mutual understanding, but Kevin O’Leary’s approach encourages stubbornness and mutual disdain.
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Chris Hedges was a guest on the October 6, 2011 edition of The Lang and O’Leary Exchange and asked to speak about his involvement with the Occupy Movement. Because his views differed from that of Kevin O’Leary, he was cut off and referred to as a “left wing nutbar,” by O’Leary. This was followed by an exchange in which O’Leary continually asked if Hedges was a leftist while Hedges asked if he would be allowed to continue. This sort of name-calling of guests has no place on the CBC. In a review of the incident released October 13, 2011, CBC ombudsman Kirk LaPointe indicated that the CBC had received hundreds of complaints about the incident, many calling for O’Leary to be fired. LaPointe pointed out that O’Leary clearly violated CBC’s standards of journalism; the private apology issued was a correct step to take, but it was unclear why CBC News did not publicly apologize for the mistreatment of Hedges.
It is because of this and a string of other incidents in which Kevin O’Leary has shown a blatant disregard for the CBC’s standards that we are calling for his dismissal. O’Leary does not display the sort of journalistic integrity required for the position of power he occupies. He is not a facilitator of open discussion, but a biased pundit masquerading as such. Rather than allowing for a greater national dialogue through empathy and rationality, he seeks to polarize Canadians and get a rise out of them, all for the sake of ratings. O’Leary is an entertainer, not a journalist. He does not bring his audience objective news, or a healthy debate. Instead he acts as his counterpart to the south, Bill O’Reilly, only minutes away from telling his Canadian guests to, ‘shut-up.’ Whether his concern is for personal gain or he has become angry and power hungry in his later years, his first concern is not the public good.
The CBC should consider that its reputation as a trusted news leader is at stake, O’Leary’s embarrassing treatment of Chris Hedges will not be forgotten.
Sincerely,
Ali Siemens and Nick Ubels
The Cascade
