‘To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity’
For months now, I’ve been getting complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I’ve worked as a TV and radio producer, and occasional on-air columnist, for much of the past decade.
People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as “brainstorm” and “lame.”
As bad as we thought.
It’s been almost a quarter century since the Supreme Court of Canada told us that Indigenous oral traditions must be considered “on an equal footing” with other types of historical evidence. Alas, as the attack on famed Canadian filmmaker Michelle Latimer shows, the CBC still hasn’t gotten that memo. Thus does it fall to me to pour my emotional labour into educating the cultural reactionaries who staff our national 