00:00:00.000Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Rupa Subramanya show. I'm Rupa Subramanya.
00:00:21.720So everyone's probably heard of Elon Musk labeling the CBC as government-funded media.
00:00:28.240Previously, that tag was used in countries like Russia and China, where the state broadcaster is directly under the control of the government and doesn't really have any editorial freedom.
00:00:40.120However, the new Twitter has branded the BBC, NPR, and PBS, and most recently the CBC as government-funded media.
00:00:49.780Following the lead of their American counterparts, the CBC has decided to, according to them, pause their activity on Twitter and felt that their editorial independence was questioned by this tag.
00:01:03.580To talk about what's been happening at the CBC, I'm joined today by award-winning journalist Trish Wood.
00:01:10.860She hosts a popular podcast, Trish Wood is Critical, and used to host the Fifth Estate on the CBC for nearly 10 years.
00:01:17.900I've been on Trish's podcast a few times, and it's my great pleasure to have her on my show today.
00:01:23.680All right, so welcome to my show, Trish. It's a great pleasure. It's a great pleasure to have you here with me to talk about the CBC.
00:01:31.600That's what's been buzzing right now. As you probably heard, the CBC was labeled as government-funded media, and they decided to pause their activity on Twitter for that reason.
00:01:46.020What do you make of this decision and their reaction to it?
00:01:49.340Well, I must say that as somebody who was there, I mean, I can probably characterize it as the good old days, back in the day when we were practicing a much different kind of journalism.
00:02:03.940When I look at the CBC now, especially covering two things, one of them was the Russia hoax, which they were all in on, and the other one, of course, was the convoy, which, and you know that as well as I do.
00:02:16.600I mean, you were out in the convoy every day doing great stuff, and I could see that they weren't reporting what was actually happening.
00:02:23.520So for me, the controversy now, in a sense, is over the wrong issue.
00:02:29.360Like, I'm not sure it matters where the money comes from. It's probably not great that it's government-funded, but it did exist as a government-funded organization when I was there, and the problems didn't exist.
00:02:43.460And I have a theory about why that is, if you want to know.
00:02:47.680I don't want to go on too long, but I'm trying to be long-winded.
00:02:50.140But I think what's changed, Rupa, is the left, right?
00:02:55.580The CBC will always be populated by people driven, I think, by what they perceive as public service, kind of a leftward drift.
00:03:05.480And I was a card-carrying lefty, voting NDP when I was there.
00:03:12.280And that was not a bad thing in the sense that, in those days, being a lefty meant that you stuck up for the working-class people.
00:03:21.240You were probably anti-war, which never works out.
00:03:24.280In our lifetime, wars have never worked out, right?
00:03:26.660They're always misbegotten in some way.
00:03:29.320And we felt that our responsibility was to speak truth to power, to use a cliché.
00:03:36.200You know, we were the bulwark between the working people, the citizens of the country, and the powerful institutions that governed us and regulated products and airplanes and that sort of thing.
00:03:49.780But I feel that what's changed now is the left has changed.
00:03:52.600So the left-leaning people, which is to say virtually everybody within the CBC, is captured, I think, by an ideology that is the opposite of those things.
00:04:08.360They did not ask hard questions about COVID-19 and regulating the vaccines at all.
00:04:13.780I mean, it was absolutely shocking to me that they were, for instance, using phrases like safe and effective, which are definitive statements, right?
00:04:21.920Definitive statements about a pharmaceutical product that had only been tested for seven or eight months or six months or whatever it was.
00:04:28.260So I think what's happened is that ideology has creeped in to the mindset of the people who work there.
00:04:36.860I think a generation from now, people might have an answer as to why and how that happened, but it's happened.
00:04:42.900And I think that that's what's really, I think that they're, I think they may know that they're telling a noble lie for good reasons, but there's no such thing.
00:04:57.520And so I think that's what's happened.
00:04:59.360I think, you know, when Pierre Pellev says, oh, we've got to defund the CBC, I think we need to look at funding for CBC.
00:05:05.280I think we need to have a national conversation about how to staff the CBC with people who aren't all like a big blobby mind hive of agreement on things that most Canadians don't agree with, right?
00:05:18.280So I think, is there a psychological bent toward the liberal government because they're funding?
00:05:38.400Yeah, no, you make a good point contrasting the old ideology of the left and the new left, which just, you know, doesn't question, basically doesn't question anything that comes from the state.
00:05:54.400They just buy this narrative wholesale and it's a narrative that they actively promote, as you, as you pointed out in the context of the pandemic.
00:06:04.960There was really no challenge to that government, to that official narrative.
00:06:10.680One could say that, you know, there's always the CBC, a public broadcaster is always going to have some kind of a bias, some kind of a liberal bias.
00:06:19.400And so why is this particular ideology so problematic?
00:06:26.820Well, I think because, and Glenn Greenwald said it this morning in his latest column when he was writing about this terrible, terrible event of having the Washington Post and the New York Times helping the FBI hunt down the leaker of the Ukraine docs, right?
00:06:43.420So this kid leaks documents that show that the state has been lying to us, to them, and then us, obviously, as people who are contributing to the effort, and saying that Ukraine is actually losing the war, which most of us knew anyway, right?
00:06:59.100The Washington Post and the New York Times are supporting the state's position instead of supporting the position of a free exchange of information the public needs.
00:07:14.940So look at the difference between that and Daniel Ellsberg, right?
00:07:18.020Daniel Ellsberg, who did the Pentagon Papers, which said eventually the same thing, was a celebrated hero and defended by the news media.
00:07:26.760And this kid, they've got the news media with the help of Bellingcat, who was a Russia hoax pusher of information, and very, very sort of connected to the security state spooks who are doing bad stuff in America right now.
00:07:42.000The newspapers were actually hunting down a guy who would be a revered whistleblower any other time.
00:07:49.400It's the same, I think, deference to power.
00:07:52.160I'll give you, for instance, Trudeau held a news conference, I believe in 2021, where he said that anti-vaxxers, which is a phrase the CBC should never have used, it's hate speech, and it's imprecise, and it's untrue, right?
00:08:10.360He said anti-vaxxers were going to kill children.
00:08:59.100And that was carried out through many of the news conferences by public health and Theresa Tam and the prime minister.
00:09:06.340So those were the people in power during COVID, right?
00:09:09.780We acceded all of our whole democracy to public health.
00:09:13.720And there was nobody in between the power of public health and government and us, right?
00:09:20.740The media crossed the line, CBC in particular, in order to support the public health narrative, which we know in many cases was completely wrong.
00:09:31.680Do you think that situation was unique to Canada, especially when it comes to public broadcaster?
00:09:39.300Do you think that the BBC or NPR or PBS conducted themselves better, more professionally and asked the tough questions?
00:09:53.740And sadly, I will say I think they all did it.
00:09:57.100I mean, BBC was, their COVID coverage was terrible.
00:10:01.920National Public Radio were the ones who said, oh, we don't touch stories like the Hunter Biden laptop.
00:10:07.760That's not even a story, they said, right?
00:10:10.720So I think they're all guilty of it in some way.
00:10:15.280Why is it more painful coming from CBC?
00:10:17.600For me personally, it's because I was there.
00:10:20.160And I was there during a period of greatness.
00:10:22.420I was one of the first people hired on a show called The Journal, hosted by Barbara Frum and Mary Lou Finley, who I loved and learned a lot from.
00:10:31.660So, you know, I was pulled up through, I think the best, I missed the early days of As It Happens, which would have been like the perfect thing.
00:10:39.100But I was pulled up through a network of really talented people.
00:10:45.620And I do wonder from time to time what Barbara Frum would say.
00:10:50.120Of course, her son, David, is one of the worst people in the world right now.
00:12:13.860Why is the CBC so anguished by this when it's obviously factually 100% correct that the bulk of their funding does come from taxpayers' dollars?
00:12:23.040I think because they've been soft on the prime minister and everybody knows it.
00:12:29.780I think that a lot of the criticism, and I'm not talking about, I think there's too much, I think some things they do well still.
00:12:37.680But I think that they have been too soft on the prime minister.
00:12:40.780And once that starts happening, then people look for reasons.
00:12:46.220Most people who talk to me about this, I mean, the average sort of citizen, thinks it's about the money, right?
00:12:53.340And I think it's maybe about the money, but mostly about the fact that people within the CBC are like-minded.
00:12:59.780They would have dinner with Justin Trudeau.
00:13:02.880I likely wouldn't, and he probably wouldn't want to have dinner with me either.
00:13:07.520But they're like-minded, so that's the problem.
00:13:18.620Catherine Tate is one of the worst leaders of a corporation ever.
00:13:22.400You know, she still has a place, $5 million place in Brooklyn.
00:13:25.620And I don't mean to be too kind of sociologically imperial about this here.
00:13:34.520But I mean, somebody who lives in a $5 million house in Brooklyn, New York, which is the hub of woke nonsense, has no business running the CBC.
00:13:45.240I mean, that's not what it's about, right?
00:13:48.400I don't think she understands why people are upset.
00:13:53.780I think they're digging in with a smear campaign.
00:13:57.460You know, everything's misinformation and disinformation.
00:14:00.600And, you know, indie journalists are all whites, all the stuff they do.
00:14:04.640And my advice to her, not that she'd take advice from me, but maybe she should, is that they need to really wonder why people don't trust them anymore.
00:14:12.300And they cannot win the argument by smearing their critics.
00:14:55.560Well, the radio service, for me, is the big thing.
00:15:01.240I worked at As It Happens and loved it there.
00:15:05.980And I think the fact that it is designed to be a voice that stretches out into Kuzhuac and Haida Gwa, you know, it's, we have this huge and vast country.
00:15:21.980And I think the mission of the CBC, there's still a kernel of it left that people in remote places deserve quality journalism.
00:15:29.000I'm not sure we're getting enough of it.
00:15:30.580But that part of it, the idea of it, is still good.
00:15:35.840And, you know, I think investigative journalism within the CBC, there are a lot of people there who know how to do it.
00:15:43.500Are they doing it in the right way and covering?
00:15:45.480Are they, you know, I'll give you, for instance, on the convoy, that photograph of the Nazi flag, that was a classic Fifth Estate story back in my day.
00:15:54.840You'd look at it and say, that's weird.
00:15:56.940Why have they just got the one photograph?
00:15:58.860Why are they standing beside the Chateau Lurie?
00:16:03.260And like that great documentary about 9-11 called The Falling Man, where they took a picture and they said, what story does this tell?
00:16:11.560That's a classic documentary investigative technique.
00:16:13.920That would have been great for them, but they didn't touch it because believing, I don't know this, I'm assuming, believing that the convoy was full of Nazis was more comfortable for the people who work at the CBC than believing that probably they weren't, right?
00:16:29.080So it took Rebel News to do that great story, saying there's something hinky, there's something fishy.
00:16:36.760So to answer your question, CBC does investigative journalism as well as anybody in the world, better than most places in the world.
00:16:46.140But figuring out who they should be investigating and how they should do it is, I think that's something that's been lost because of the ideology.
00:16:59.080The Jillian Finley story, right, which I'm sure you've been following.
00:17:03.820She quit after 30 years over a remote work dispute.
00:17:07.960I didn't realize when that story first broke that she remote works from Nova Scotia.
00:17:14.580So she's mad that they don't want to, like, is this about flying her back and forth from Nova Scotia?
00:17:20.400I mean, how tin-eared do you have to be to demand that?
00:17:25.540She says, you know, I think Bob McEwen is the guy she's talking about.
00:17:28.820She said he works remotely and it's funded, and I think he's in Quebec.
00:17:32.940And yes, the CBC could be a lot better with women.
00:17:37.720The male hosts, I think, have always been treated a little bit better.
00:17:41.140But is this the time, is this the hill to die on when the bread line at the church down the street from me is now around the block?
00:17:50.840People are literally starving in this country, going to food banks.
00:17:54.680And you've got hosts at the national broadcaster complaining and quitting, in fact, retiring over the fact that the CBC doesn't want to fund their travel from Nova Scotia.
00:19:04.460So, you know, I think that for the CBC to survive and fulfill this very, very high-minded and laudable mandate is going to require a whole rethink and a redo.
00:19:18.700I would rather, I think I would rather see a redo, but I'm not sure that we have in the institutions in this country enough clear-headedness to do that.
00:19:32.960We're so divided as a culture right now.
00:19:35.760If you put someone who thinks like you or me or many of the journalists I know who are indie into the mix at the CBC, it would be probably, they'd be shunned.
00:19:46.340I mean, it would probably be awful, right?
00:19:48.240So how do you, you know, never before has the country been so divided, I think.
00:19:55.520And so how do you have a national broadcaster that facilitates that kind of interesting editorial tension in a way that works?
00:20:05.400If they can't do that, then forget it.
00:20:10.880But I still believe in journalism and I believe journalism is expensive and doing it well costs money and it shouldn't be left to the vagaries of how much advertising you're selling.
00:20:23.060But at the same time, when you have a group of like-minded people who are failing editorially as the CBC is, that's a real, it's a real problem.
00:20:32.020I mean, it's heartbreaking for me to see this.
00:20:34.320Well, I'll give you a personal example.
00:20:35.980I used to be called to come on the CBC fairly frequently, actually, before the protest, before the Freedom Convoy.
00:20:45.220And then all of those invites just magically stopped once they, you know, read what I was, once they started reading what I was saying on Twitter and my National Post column.
00:20:57.960And then, of course, my story for Barry Wise.
00:21:18.320I think it would have made for a great conversation.
00:21:20.960I think it would have reflected really well on the CBC to invite someone who had a very different perspective on what was happening there, but they chose not to.
00:21:29.680Well, they were all kind of attached to, you know, there was a certain language around COVID and certain ways of talking about things that seemed to be being proscribed.
00:21:47.820I mean, Rodney Palmer told me last week that that stuff, or already implied anyway, that stuff may have come from the Trusted News Initiative, which they all kind of signed on to.
00:21:56.860But when journalists are repeating the same phrases, something's gone terribly wrong.
00:22:03.620And when the phrases are epithets, something's gone terribly wrong, hasn't it?
00:22:07.960Could you tell us what the Trusted News Initiative is?
00:22:10.860This is something that was actually, you know, while I was researching for the show, I came across this.
00:22:17.040And I believe this is something that the government floated this idea a couple of years ago, just before the pandemic, I believe.
00:22:24.880My understanding of it is that it's an organization that public broadcasters signed into to be members of, right?
00:22:36.580And it was to kind of push the idea that these were trustworthy organizations.
00:22:43.640And what's interesting about it is that I really shall deep dive it at some point more, although I don't know how much is public.
00:22:50.680That's the other problem about it, right?
00:22:52.500But the people who were part of the Trusted News Initiative tended to cover the COVID-19 pandemic in a similar way, right?
00:23:02.680So, yeah, I mean, this leads me to my next question.
00:23:09.180There's a widespread feeling among conservatives, among conservative-leaning people that the CBC has always had a pro-liberal bias.
00:23:18.660And it doesn't really represent the conservative side of the spectrum, either small c or conservative, or for that matter, the conservative party,
00:23:27.780with whom the CBC has had a very hostile relationship.
00:23:31.680Do you think there's some truth to this suspicion?
00:24:19.580And I think arrogantly thought we were better, which I now kind of regret.
00:24:23.600But I think now we are so entrenched in our siloed positions.
00:24:31.000And the attacks on each other in the political sphere are also so completely ad hominem and ugly that, I mean, the CBC, I suppose, does reflect what's going on in the culture.
00:24:44.640And one would hope that it had a leader who could say, listen, people, we are the organization that is going to be so squeaky clean and fair editorially that we are going to lead the country out of this.
00:25:00.000The problem is that when the phrase Nazi is being thrown around or racist or he's a far right extremist, whatever,
00:25:07.460if that's how we're going to view people who don't agree with us politically or even culturally on many things, that's not a fixable problem.
00:25:17.400And then I think the other problem is that social media, people curate their own social media feeds.
00:25:24.460So people who are watching CBC, people working at CBC, people running CBC are getting fed their biases all day long in their social media feeds.
00:25:53.720I'm embarrassed to say that, but I do.
00:25:56.100And I think that as long as we are siloed informationally in this way, there's going to be big problems.
00:26:03.160And the conservatives are, you know, who, like, I think Ron DeSantis has made a big difference because he was so good on COVID and he's so good on the culture war stuff that if we had a guy like that here, I don't think we do.
00:26:16.600My personal view is that Pierre Pellev is not that guy.
00:26:19.300I think he, I was very, very upset with his response about the European MP that came here.
00:26:25.620And he was instantly out using the word vile, which is a signal that he's pandering to somebody, right, without research being done.
00:26:43.780In your experience of the CBC, did you ever feel there was a lack of editorial independence or that at any rate, the CBC seemed to have a mindset, we've talked about this, that matches more with the left than with the right.
00:26:58.060But did you ever feel that there was a lack of editorial independence of the CBC?
00:27:04.680The one, well, we did the Airbus story that was pretty scary because we were, you know, we were talking about Brian Mulrooney, but we were very fair.
00:27:15.740And of all the people, when he criticized that story, he didn't criticize us, which was quite interesting.
00:27:23.560But one story that there was a bit of balking at was one I did with Michelle Metivier, a producer there who's terrific.
00:27:32.060About the kind of matrix of satanic ritual abuse, multiple personality disorder, and recovered memory syndrome, which doesn't seem like much, but it was kind of taking over the country.
00:27:47.120And kind of like some of the trans-extremism stuff that's going on now, the psychological profession that was dealing with these issues had been well and truly captured, right?
00:28:00.000They were convincing people they had 100 personalities, that they'd been raped by their father for 40 years.
00:28:05.100And so Michelle and I, after, and this was what was so great about the Fifth State and CBC, we had time to think it through and do the research and talk about it.
00:28:15.180And we said, yeah, this makes no sense.
00:28:17.320So we were going off to expose the folly of this.
00:28:31.420She warned us that we were flying in the face of a really important idea.
00:28:37.920And the idea was that children actually are really raped by people, and as are women, right?
00:28:43.480So we had to kind of put a disclaimer at the top when I'm introducing the tape and I'm sitting in the studio saying, we had to say, yes, women really are raped and children, et cetera.
00:28:55.100And I didn't think that was necessary, but I knew what she was doing because so many gains had been made in that area that I think she didn't want it to seem like we didn't really understand there was a real problem, right?
00:29:28.840So I don't, I think there's a misperception that, you know, Trudeau calls Ms. Tate and says, I don't, and he may, but I have no evidence of that.
00:29:39.440But I just think that the staff there are ideologically very much in tune with Trudeau right now.
00:29:46.900And there may be some pressure put on them on some stories.
00:29:50.320I'm sure there was around COVID-19 because their coverage was extremely uniform.
00:29:57.160And Marion Cloak from Winnipeg, who I interviewed and quit, retired over their COVID coverage, said that they were all of one mind about it.
00:30:08.620Yeah, I mean, that's the beauty of this, right?
00:30:11.740Trudeau or a politician or a liberal politician doesn't necessarily have to call the CBC and tell them this is the story that you should be pursuing.
00:30:20.420Because that's the beauty of buying into a certain kind of ideology.
00:30:26.040You're just, you don't have to do that kind of thing.
00:30:32.420So finally, Trish, you know, I know you have to get going.
00:30:35.880But where do you think, what's the future, and this is a broad question, what's the future of journalism in Canada, given what's happening with the CBC right now?
00:30:45.880And as you rightly point to the fact that the independent media space is thriving, I'm part of two outlets, the Free Press in the U.S. and True North here in Canada.
00:30:57.280And I can tell you, you know, they're hiring, they're producing a lot of great content, there's a lot of energy within these outfits.
00:31:07.700And then you have the CBC, this giant of a corporation, you know, they seem old and worn out and fighting these petty battles on Twitter.