OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – The head of Canada’s state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) claimed its employees, in particular its journalists, face rising “threats” to do their job in a “safe” manner but could give no examples of any instances of actual threats made to any reporters.
According to CBC’s CEO Catherine Tait, in her Annual Report sent to Parliament, her network workers “face rising threats to their safety both online and in the field.”
Tait claimed the CBC’s role as a “source of trusted news and supporter of original Canadian stories has never been more important than in today’s increasingly polarized society.”
She noted that members of her news team “are experiencing the impact of this polarization firsthand as they face rising threats to their safety both online and in the field.”
Canada is one of the safest countries in the world for journalists to do their jobs in, according to Reporters Without Borders (RWB).
The most dangerous country in the world for journalists in 2022 was Mexico, followed by Ukraine. A total of 57 journalists have been killed doing their jobs in 2022 alone, with 11 of those being in Mexico and eight in Ukraine. The last year a Canadian reporter was killed while working in Canada was in 1998.
Despite this fact, during the Freedom Convoy of 2022 held in protest of COVID mandates, the CBC hired security to follow every reporter who left to cover the protest on the ground in Ottawa.
In March 2022, CBC reporter Judy Trinh claimed, without offering evidence, that the Freedom Convoy posed a “real threat,” claiming that the event was not just people protesting peacefully “for or against vaccine mandates or mask mandates,” but also included “individuals who held extremist views and also had military training which made them even more dangerous.”
No Canadian reporters were physically harmed during Freedom Convoy
Not one protester was charged with assault or making threats to any CBC journalists. No journalists were hurt covering the Freedom Convoy either despite the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) claiming on January 28, 2022, that some of its members suffered “threats of violence and harassment” from protesters.
Later, the CAJ admitted that the alleged incidents of violence toward its members came from second or even third-hand information, notably from social media.
Also, Tait could not give one example of a serious threat that targeted a CBC reporter.
The CBC has been rife with controversy as of late when it comes to the integrity of some of its reporting.
Former CBC journalists have admitted that the news site sought to cover any COVID-related events with a clear bias to push government “propaganda.”
In May, former CBC journalist Marianne Klowak shockingly revealed that reporters were stopped from being able to cover stories critical of COVID vaccines and lockdowns and were instead encouraged to push government “propaganda.”
Klowak had already revealed in June 2022 that the CBC deliberately skewed its reporting on COVID-19 inoculations.
Other CBC reporters have also left over what they see as biased COVID news coverage.
In January 2022, journalist Tara Henley quit the state broadcaster and wrote a scathing piece in which she said, “Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly – and how dramatically – the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted.”
Despite this, Tait claimed that her reporters were tasked with telling the truth regarding stories “that matter” to Canadians.
In her report to Parliament, she noted that the CBC is “defending media freedom so our journalists can stay on the stories that matter to you as they have throughout the pandemic and war in Ukraine and during the 2021 federal election and the convoy protests.”
Per its 2020-2021 annual report, the CBC receives about $1.24 billion in public funding every year, which is about 70% of its revenue.
Overall, the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau subsidizes legacy media in Canada to the tune of over $1 billion per year, and despite low trust in legacy media, the government has promised even more money.
In late 2018, Trudeau promised that his Liberal government would give legacy media, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), an extra $595 million in federal assistance over the next five years in an attempt to save the failing industry.