Juno News - July 08, 2023


CBC 'regrets' publishing fake news


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

173.11488

Word count

1,754

Sentence count

105

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this week's Alberta Roundup, we discuss CBC's latest apology for a story it published about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's office and Crown prosecutors. We also take a look at Bill C-18 and its potential impact on the upcoming provincial election.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Alberta Roundup. I'm your host Rachel Emanuel.
00:00:03.840 I hope that you guys are having a great week so far and happy Calgary Stampede to those of you
00:00:09.380 participating in this year's festivities. I know I've already seen some of you at some of the
00:00:14.480 events and I'm sure I will see many more of you over the next couple of days. If it seems like
00:00:18.960 it's been a quiet week in Alberta politics, well it has been. I think we are in the dog days of
00:00:23.980 summer. However, there was one big headline which dropped this week. I think you guys already know
00:00:29.560 what story I'm talking about today. So we are going to dive into that and I'm going to provide
00:00:35.400 a little analysis on my thoughts. On today's show we're going to be talking about CBC's latest regret.
00:00:42.220 We're also going to be taking a quick look at Bill C-18. All that and more happening now on the Alberta
00:00:47.580 Roundup.
00:00:58.800 Unless you live under a rock, you likely heard that the CBC had to apologize this week
00:01:03.320 for a story it published back in January in which it erroneously claimed that staff in Alberta Premier
00:01:10.300 Daniel Smith's office had contacted Crown prosecutors challenging their assessment of cases stemming from
00:01:16.800 COVID-19 and the Coutts border blockade. Shortly after that story was published, CBC updated it with an
00:01:23.360 editor's note saying that it had not viewed the emails in question. Further cracks began to show in
00:01:31.120 the story when Danielle Smith, her staff and Crown prosecutors all denied that the emails existed.
00:01:37.760 In fact, the public service conducted an independent investigation and it also found no evidence of
00:01:45.540 such emails. And so it seemed the story began to unravel even further. Fast forward to May, we are now in
00:01:53.140 the Alberta provincial election and CBC was still standing behind its reporting. But then came the
00:01:59.280 independent ethics investigation from the Alberta ethics commissioner in which she also found no evidence
00:02:05.280 of emails between Daniel Smith's office and Crown prosecutors. That was back in May. We are now in July.
00:02:12.800 And what happened this week? CBC went back to update the story and say that they returned to their sources,
00:02:21.120 re-interviewed them and could not confirm that the emails did exist. In a lengthy editor's note, CBC wrote,
00:02:29.600 quote, as such, we have updated this story and related pieces, removing references to direct contact
00:02:36.240 between the premier's office and prosecutors, which the premier has vehemently denied. CBC news regrets
00:02:43.600 reporting direct contact by email. I followed up with CBC news head of public affairs, Chuck Thompson,
00:02:49.680 to ask why it took them so long to make this change. Two months after we've seen the ethics commissioner
00:02:56.400 report. In a statement to me, he said, quote, simply stated, that's the time it took to do our due
00:03:01.600 diligence. We know that Alberta premier Daniel Smith has long called the allegations in the
00:03:07.440 CB story baseless and demanded a retraction and an apology. After CBC news corrected its story,
00:03:14.720 the premier said in a statement, quote, after months of the CBC reporting interference between my office and
00:03:21.440 Crown prosecutors. Today, CBC news removed references to direct contact between my office and prosecutors
00:03:28.240 and regrets reporting direct contact by email. I've been vindicated as has my office. Now that CBC has
00:03:36.800 expressed regret for its inaccurate reporting and Albertans know the truth, I consider the matter with
00:03:42.080 the CBC closed. Additionally, I'm asking the Alberta NDP to acknowledge their error also and retract and
00:03:50.000 apologize for spreading this misinformation. I doubt that those of us who have been paying attention are
00:03:55.200 surprised to see the CBC had to change, correct and apologize for the reporting. As I've just explained
00:04:02.240 to you, there were cracks showing in the piece from the very beginning, but I don't think the CBC's regret
00:04:07.600 goes far enough. To make an error of this magnitude, it is not simply enough to change the wording in a story
00:04:14.960 and add an editor's note. This demands a full retraction. And the thing that is so enraging
00:04:22.240 about this is that we, the Canadian taxpayer, paid for this work to be done. We paid for the premier to
00:04:28.400 be defamed for months on end. And I think all of us know that this did impact the outcome of the Alberta
00:04:34.160 provincial election. As a bit of an aside, I'm obviously a journalist and I know what it's like to
00:04:39.200 get things wrong. It's very embarrassing. I also know what it's like to be excited about what seems like
00:04:44.160 a really big scoop and go to your editors and say, I have this great scoop. In fact, at a couple times
00:04:49.440 at True North, I've gone to my editors with such stories and they vetoed it because the sources
00:04:54.400 wanted to remain anonymous. And we didn't have adequate proof that what they were saying happened
00:04:59.280 did in fact occur. This is a problem about using anonymous sources is they can say anything they want
00:05:05.920 and there's absolutely no consequences to them. That's when you need good editors to come in and say,
00:05:11.120 there's not adequate proof for this story. We are going to veto it. In this case, CBC clearly should
00:05:16.880 never have published a story without having viewed the emails in question, which clearly do not exist.
00:05:23.600 And so I have the most sympathy for junior reporters who are doing their best. And I have absolutely zero
00:05:29.760 sympathy for the editors who should have known better. The truth is that these editors probably
00:05:34.480 think that Daniel Smith is crazy enough to do something like this. The CBC's bias against
00:05:40.000 conservatives and certainly against Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has been so evident since day one.
00:05:46.640 And now they have egg on their face. And I'm sorry, but a simple apology is just not going to
00:05:51.680 cut it this time. My question of the week for you guys is that Premier Daniel Smith has said she
00:05:56.240 now considers the matter settled. As I've mentioned, they didn't even issue a full retraction.
00:06:01.280 They simply changed the wording in a story and added an editor. So I don't think that goes far
00:06:06.080 enough. What about you? I also wanted to dive into some of your comments this week because
00:06:10.720 you guys all provided pretty astute analysis on what happened here.
00:06:15.040 Twitter user Reagan Nelson said, maybe CBC should use investigative journalism to base their stories on
00:06:21.040 instead of anonymous phone calls in the night. If you are actually a new service, you would verify
00:06:26.080 all stories before you print them. Basic journalism. Todd Glassman wrote, shouldn't they attempt due
00:06:33.280 diligence before printing an incredibly damaged and completely false story? And Voodoo the Viking had 0.92
00:06:39.120 this funny fake encounter of the CBC publishing a story and then deciding if they would figure out
00:06:44.080 whether or not it was true in a few months. Honestly, I had to laugh at all these because it's
00:06:49.440 exactly correct. Of course, you shouldn't do your due diligence after the story was published. It should
00:06:54.800 have been done well in advance, especially with a story of this magnitude, which had lasting
00:06:59.520 repercussions. Moving on to our next story here, I did have a chance to do another midweek interview
00:07:05.120 and it looks like most of you guys had the opportunity to catch it. But for those of you who didn't,
00:07:09.520 I wanted to quickly talk to you about the financial burden to taxpayers of C18. I know, I know,
00:07:15.760 you guys thought this legislation was just going to make it harder to find the news that you liked
00:07:20.640 on Facebook and Google, but what it will actually do is it will increase the cost to Canadian taxpayers.
00:07:27.680 Imagine that the Liberal government introduces and passes legislation. And of course, there's a fee to
00:07:33.280 all of us. Here's what Chris Sims, the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,
00:07:38.320 told me about Bill C18 earlier this week. The heritage minister piped up and said,
00:07:43.280 Oh, don't worry. We need to make sure that these newsrooms stay open. Who's we? The government,
00:07:50.160 I guess. And we are going to make sure that you have the resources you need. Now resources,
00:07:55.440 of course, is government speak for taxpayers money. This is a huge problem for two major reasons. One,
00:08:03.840 as a long time lifelong journalist myself, it's wrong for journalists to be paid by the government,
00:08:09.360 period. You cannot hold a government to account if you're counting on that government for your paycheck.
00:08:16.240 So that doesn't fly. And two, there's no way that taxpayers should be on the hook to fund media
00:08:22.560 companies and keeping newsrooms open. That is not the role of the taxpayer here. And so we're coming
00:08:29.040 after this for two major reasons. One is accountability. And the second is the cost.
00:08:34.960 And finally, moving into our weekly comment round, we had a little bit of a chat about Danielle Smith's
00:08:39.840 comments on energy policy this week. User Thomas Stewart on YouTube said,
00:08:44.720 It's true the Western provinces are thinking of leaving Canada over this energy from oil issue.
00:08:50.560 Tamara Leach is an active part of the political party whose objective is to do that because of the 1.00
00:08:55.600 oil issue. Putting her in jail and locking the bank account of the supporters of that political party, 1.00
00:09:00.560 its support for the truckers is not something the Emergencies Act was constructed for.
00:09:05.520 No matter what Canada decides, our forests take in more CO2 than Canada can produce.
00:09:10.720 So it's pointless to punish the poor by taxing them out of food, fuel, warmth,
00:09:15.520 when all that it can accomplish is perhaps to end the nation from sea to sea.
00:09:21.280 User Ed Friesen said, Dino Henshaw was a big part of the problem with AHS,
00:09:25.360 not a solution. Perhaps we have just identified about a hundred doctors who are also not part of
00:09:32.080 making our healthcare better for Albertans. Our healthcare system was severely broken and still
00:09:36.880 has a long ways to go back to acceptable standard. Okay guys, that's all I have for you today. I just
00:09:42.960 want to let you know that there won't be a show next week as I am away. I hope that you guys have a
00:09:48.480 great couple of weeks. As always, if you're able, please consider supporting our work. You can do
00:09:53.120 that over at donate.tnc.news. I will see you all in a few weeks. God bless.