Our Journalism
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27/02/2021 Friends.ca Mail - Fwd: 'Quality of CBC News' after years of cuts, budget redistribution Fwd: 'Quality of CBC News' after years of cuts, budget redistribution Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 8:58 AM To: Daniel Bernhard < > Begin forwarded message: From: Date: February 4, 2021 at 11:38:48 AM EST To: CBC Journalists - Former or retired < > Subject: Re: 'Quality of CBC News' after years of cuts, budget redistribution Hi all, CBC managers have sort-of responded to a letter journalists sent to Catherine Tait and Barb Williams (the letter below that I'd shared with you.) The employees asked the president and vp why they misled CRTC when commissioners asked about the effect of budget cuts on the quality of CBC News. Tait and Williams never replied. This message was buried in a long, all-staff email signed by Susan Marjetti, Brodie Fenlon and Cathy Perry, sent last night: Our journalism: We’ve heard from some of you who were concerned that during the CRTC hearings, senior management did not discuss the impact that cuts and added digital demands have had on our journalism over the years. It has been a challenging decade for sure. And a lot of change and shifting of resources. But let's not lose sight of what our division is doing every day. COVID-19. Rideau Hall. Nygard. This week’s WE investigation. Record- breaking digital audiences. New program launches. Top of the podcast chart in Canada this week with Evil By Design. No. 1 radio programs across the country ... and so much more. So even with the challenges we have faced — and we agree it has not been easy — you bet we should be proud, and we are, and we should be reminding the CRTC that we're the largest journalistic team in the country and that what we do has real impact. https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ik=24a7e35625&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-f%3A1691407543684913134&simpl=m… 1/12 27/02/2021 Friends.ca Mail - Fwd: 'Quality of CBC News' after years of cuts, budget redistribution There's nobody else showing up at those meetings to cheer us on. If we don't tell Canadians how good we are, how good YOU are, then how will the CRTC and the rest of Canada know? In the meantime, if you’re struggling to manage the demands, especially in this new world of working at home, please reach out to your manager or supervisor for support. Maintaining the highest standards is critical to our success as the public broadcaster. It would have been more accurate to say, "If we don't lie to the CRTC, who will?" If anyone has ideas about what, if anything, could be done about this, please share. On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 7:49 PM wrote: Hi all, This is not about Tandem, but it will be of interest to this group, especially to those who will be intervening tomorrow at the CRTC. I won’t say “happy reading.” It’s not. Onward. Ms. Tait and Ms. Williams, During your testimony before the CRTC this month you were both asked directly about the quality of CBC News. Commissioners wanted to know whether quality has diminished in recent years due to funding cuts and CBC’s redistribution of news budgets to aid an expanding digital news service. Your responses were something of a surprise to many employees who have struggled in the face of expanding demands and dramatic reductions in resources in recent years. “Absolutely no impact (on quality)...the proof is in the pudding and we are delivering historically on pretty well all our obligations in the area of news. We have done extraordinary expansion within - with very, very meaningful impact.” Catherine Tait “without compromising the people on the ground that are actually doing the local news gathering...we are still doing the same number of hours...and we still have a high quality product.” - Barb Williams. Based on your comments, we fear you don’t appreciate the very real problems faced by your frontline news teams and that you therefore misled the CRTC. As you know, a community of 390+ CBC journalists has raised concerns about the broadcaster’s move to ‘paid content.’ Many in this same group have concerns about your comments to the CRTC about quality on CBC News. We want to be sure you are fully aware of what the cuts and diverting of resources toward digital has meant in recent years: diminished resources across CBC radio and television news gathering https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ik=24a7e35625&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-f%3A1691407543684913134&simpl=m… 2/12 27/02/2021 Friends.ca Mail - Fwd: 'Quality of CBC News' after years of cuts, budget redistribution increased repetition on newscasts work overload and burnout for frontline editorial staff filing to additional platforms. To help you and our news managers better understand, we asked colleagues coast to coast to offer their own reflections. We paste below more than 30 responses for your consideration. This is an unscientific sample about quality gathered in just a couple of days. Nevertheless we believe the comments reflect a widespread frustration that should not be ignored. CBC has become a major player in the online news space in Canada to the benefit of our reach and our value to Canadians. But to suggest it hasn’t come at a cost to the news our audiences rely on from radio and TV is simply not true. Further, to say to the CRTC that all is well within CBC News undermines your own argument and efforts to ensure adequate and stable funding from the federal government to ensure CBC fulfils its mandate and meets the expectations of Canadians. Sincerely, (iUnit, Toronto) (As It Happens) (Calgary) (Ottawa) (The Current) of (The Fifth Estate) >>>>FROM A SURVEY OF CBC JOURNALISTS - January 2021 Lack of depth because journalists are spread across three platforms with no guidance on priority. Weekends have been abandoned meaning we start Monday behind the competition. Errors pervade digital copy; radio news writing is mediocre and there is no training; TV has been bled of dedicated reporters because it isn’t a priority; Facebook and social media drive story meetings; we miss major news stories; we allocate resources to ‘programming experiments’ of marginal value; the public tells/asks hosts & talent about the decline in CBC news on a regular basis. We are now only about quantity. We don’t talk about who is the best person to get for an interview or what are the best questions to ask. Instead we talk about how fast it can be turned around and how many platforms one reporter can fill. We are also all about easy targets such as local business people who now send us press releases about everything they do because they know it guarantees province- wide coverage, instead of talking to the everyday person who is a little harder to find. I work in network radio hourly news. We used to be able to air BBC and NPR stories. Then our bosses announced we would stop the practice. Instead we were promised that more CBC reporters would file stories to the hourly radio newscasts around the clock. Unfortunately that never happened. Most days we are starved for content and we barely have enough material. We are the only 24/7 operation in the entire news department. Our website is not even staffed overnights on weekends. And yet the radio hourly news doesn't have enough material to run https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0?ik=24a7e35625&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-f%3A1691407543684913134&simpl=m… 3/12 27/02/2021 Friends.ca Mail - Fwd: 'Quality of CBC News' after years of cuts, budget redistribution 24/7. At the BBC and NPR, they make hourly news a priority. They realize it is one of the most popular parts of their service. I've watched for years as CBC Radio has become the last priority of our assignment desk. We, as frontline reporters, are forced to file for "digital first" and make The National on TV the top priority, leaving the premiere news service of CBC - CBC Radio - leftover as an after thought. We recycle material, repeat clips from the day before. Where CBC Radio used to lead the public broadcaster's news service for breaking stories, doing original journalism that might not make 'great TV' -- that's been thrown in the dust bin. If Canadians only knew how room fulls of assignment editors and managers (mis)direct resources every day - sending front line reporters scrambling, filing for every platform, with less and less time to dig into and expose stories - they'd be furious. It is a travesty. As a result, quality on CBC Radio has dropped, and the depth of our stories overall is greatly diminished. We no longer cover city council on a weekly basis. We almost never cover council committees. TONS of single-source stories. Major reliance on press release journalism. Reliance on the same sources repeatedly. Little to no coverage of news from sources that lack a profile or PR presence, even though their stories might have greater news value. Our desire to do stories that are of genuine service to our audience is constantly competing with the need to get the "low hanging fruit" to fill newscasts and shows before deadlines. Poor representation of marginalized groups, not because we don't want to do better, but because we have so little time to prepare programs and stories that we go to the same, known, easy-to-get sources over and over and use the same well-worn angles without taking the time to question our POV.