The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - July 08, 2023


CBC ‘regrets’ publishing fake news


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

172.13498

Word count

1,838

Sentence count

108

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this week's Alberta Roundup, we take a look at CBC's latest apology for a story it published about Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's office and Crown prosecutors. We also take a quick look at Bill C-18 and more.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Alberta Roundup. I'm your host Rachel Emanuel.
00:00:03.880 I hope that you guys are having a great week so far and happy Calgary Stampede to those of you
00:00:09.400 participating in this year's festivities. I know I've already seen some of you at some of the
00:00:14.500 events and I'm sure I will see many more of you over the next couple of days. If it seems like
00:00:18.980 it's been a quiet week in Alberta politics, well it has been. I think we are in the dog days of
00:00:24.000 summer. However, there was one big headline which dropped this week. I think you guys already know
00:00:29.580 what story I'm talking about today. So we are going to dive into that and I'm going to provide
00:00:35.420 a little analysis on my thoughts. On today's show we're going to be talking about CBC's latest regret.
00:00:42.400 We're also going to be taking a quick look at Bill C-18. All that and more happening now on the Alberta
00:00:47.600 Roundup.
00:00:58.640 Unless you live under a rock, you likely heard that the CBC had to apologize this week
00:01:03.340 for a story it published back in January in which it erroneously claimed that staff in Alberta Premier
00:01:10.320 Daniel Smith's office had contacted Crown prosecutors challenging their assessment of cases stemming from
00:01:16.820 COVID-19 and the Coutts border blockade. Shortly after that story was published, CBC updated it with
00:01:23.300 an editor's note saying that it had not viewed the emails in question. Further cracks began to show in
00:01:31.220 the story when Danielle Smith, her staff and Crown prosecutors all denied that the emails existed.
00:01:37.780 In fact, the public service conducted an independent investigation and it also found no evidence of
00:01:45.560 such emails. And so it seemed the story began to unravel even further. Fast forward to May, we are now in
00:01:53.160 the Alberta provincial election and CBC was still standing behind its reporting. But then came the
00:01:59.300 independent ethics investigation from the Alberta ethics commissioner in which she also found no evidence
00:02:05.300 of emails between Daniel Smith's office and Crown prosecutors. That was back in May. We are now in July.
00:02:12.820 And what happened this week? CBC went back to update the story and say that they returned to their sources,
00:02:21.140 re-interviewed them and could not confirm that the emails did exist. In a lengthy editor's note, CBC wrote,
00:02:29.620 quote, as such, we have updated this story and related pieces, removing references to direct contact
00:02:36.260 between the premier's office and prosecutors, which the premier has vehemently denied. CBC News
00:02:43.060 regrets reporting direct contact by email. I followed up with CBC News head of public affairs,
00:02:48.820 Chuck Thompson, to ask why it took them so long to make this change. Two months after we've seen the
00:02:55.700 ethics commissioner report. In a statement to me, he said, quote, simply stated that's the time it took
00:03:00.820 to do our due diligence. We know that Alberta premier Danielle Smith has long called the allegations
00:03:07.220 in the CB story baseless and demanded a retraction and an apology. After CBC News corrected its story,
00:03:14.740 the premier said in a statement, quote, after months of the CBC reporting interference between my office and
00:03:21.460 Crown prosecutors. Today, CBC News removed references to direct contact between my office and prosecutors
00:03:28.260 and regrets reporting direct contact by email. I've been vindicated, as has my office. Now that CBC has
00:03:36.820 expressed regret for its inaccurate reporting and Albertans know the truth, I consider the matter with
00:03:42.100 the CBC closed. Additionally, I'm asking the Alberta NDP to acknowledge their error also and retract and
00:03:50.020 apologize for spreading this misinformation. I doubt that those of us who have been paying attention are
00:03:55.220 surprised to see the CBC had to change, correct and apologize for the reporting. As I've just explained
00:04:02.260 to you, there were cracks showing in the piece from the very beginning, but I don't think the CBC's regret
00:04:07.620 goes far enough. To make an error of this magnitude, it is not simply enough to change the wording in a story
00:04:14.980 and add an editor's note. This demands a full retraction. And the thing that is so enraging
00:04:22.260 about this is that we, the Canadian taxpayer, paid for this work to be done. We paid for the premier to
00:04:28.420 be defamed for months on end. And I think all of us know that this did impact the outcome of the Alberta
00:04:34.100 provincial election. As a bit of an aside, I'm obviously a journalist and I know what it's like to
00:04:39.220 get things wrong. It's very embarrassing. I also know what it's like to be excited about what seems like
00:04:44.180 a really big scoop and go to your editors and say, I have this great scoop. In fact, at a couple times
00:04:49.460 at True North, I've gone to my editors with such stories and they vetoed it because the sources
00:04:54.420 wanted to remain anonymous. And we didn't have adequate proof that what they were saying happened
00:04:59.300 did in fact occur. This is a problem about using anonymous sources is they can say anything they want
00:05:05.940 and there's absolutely no consequences to them. That's when you need good editors to come in and say,
00:05:11.140 there's not adequate proof for this story. We are going to veto it. In this case, CBC clearly should
00:05:16.900 never have published a story without having viewed the emails in question, which clearly do not exist.
00:05:23.620 And so I have the most sympathy for junior reporters who are doing their best. And I have absolutely zero
00:05:29.780 sympathy for the editors who should have known better. The truth is that these editors probably
00:05:34.500 think that Danielle Smith is crazy enough to do something like this. The CBC's bias against
00:05:40.020 conservatives and certainly against Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has been so evident since day one.
00:05:46.660 And now they have egg on their face. And I'm sorry, but a simple apology is just not going to cut it
00:05:52.020 this time. My question of the week for you guys is that Premier Danielle Smith has said she now considers
00:05:56.900 the matter settled. As I've mentioned, they didn't even issue a full retraction. They simply changed the
00:06:02.500 wording in a story and added an editor. So I don't think that goes far enough. What about you? I also
00:06:08.100 wanted to dive into some of your comments this week because you guys all provided pretty astute analysis
00:06:13.220 on what happened here. Twitter user Reagan Nelson said, maybe CBC should use investigative journalism
00:06:19.300 to base their stories on instead of anonymous phone calls in the night. If you are actually a news
00:06:24.820 service, you would verify all stories before you print them. Basic journalism. Todd Glassman wrote,
00:06:32.020 shouldn't they attempt due diligence before printing an incredibly damaged and completely false story?
00:06:37.780 And Buddha the Viking had this funny fake encounter of the CBC publishing a story and then deciding if
00:06:42.980 they would figure out whether or not it was true in a few months. Honestly, I had to laugh at all of
00:06:48.820 these because it's exactly correct. Of course, you shouldn't do your due diligence after the story was
00:06:53.700 published. It should have been done well in advance, especially with a story of this magnitude,
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00:07:30.740 Moving on to our next story here. I did have a chance to do another midweek interview and it looks
00:07:35.620 like most of you guys had the opportunity to catch it. But for those of you who didn't, I wanted to
00:07:40.180 quickly talk to you about the financial burden to taxpayers of C18. I know, I know you guys thought
00:07:46.340 this legislation was just going to make it harder to find the news that you liked on Facebook and Google,
00:07:52.660 but what it will actually do is it will increase the cost to Canadian taxpayers. Imagine that the
00:07:58.580 Liberal government introduces and passes legislation. And of course, there's a fee to all of us.
00:08:04.340 Here's what Chris Sims, the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation told me about
00:08:09.300 Bill C18 earlier this week. The heritage minister piped up and said, oh, don't worry.
00:08:14.180 We need to make sure that these newsrooms stay open. Who's we? The government, I guess. And we are
00:08:22.100 going to make sure that you have the resources you need. Now resources, of course, is government speak
00:08:27.220 for taxpayers' money. This is a huge problem for two major reasons. One, as a long-time lifelong
00:08:35.220 journalist myself, it's wrong for journalists to be paid by the government, period. You cannot hold a
00:08:42.100 government to account if you're counting on that government for your paycheck. So that doesn't
00:08:47.380 fly. And two, there's no way that taxpayers should be on the hook to fund media companies and keeping
00:08:54.500 newsrooms open. That is not the role of the taxpayer here. And so we're coming after this for two major
00:09:00.500 reasons. One is accountability, and the second is the cost. And finally, moving into our weekly comment
00:09:06.820 roundup, we had a little bit of a chat about Danielle Smith's comments on energy policy this 0.98
00:09:11.620 week. User Thomas Stewart on YouTube said, it's true the Western provinces are thinking of leaving
00:09:17.460 Canada over this energy from oil issue. Tamara Leach is an active part of the political party whose
00:09:23.380 objective is to do that because of the oil issue. Putting her in jail and locking the bank account of 1.00
00:09:28.900 the supporters of that political party, its support for the truckers is not something the Emergencies Act
00:09:34.100 was constructed for. No matter what Canada decides, our forests take in more CO2 than Canada can produce.
00:09:40.820 So it's pointless to punish the poor by taxing them out of food, fuel, warmth, when all that it can
00:09:46.500 accomplish is perhaps to end the nation from sea to sea. User Ed Friesen said, Dina Hinshaw was a big
00:09:53.780 part of the problem with AHS, not a solution. Perhaps we have just identified about a hundred doctors
00:10:00.260 who are also not part of making our healthcare better for Albertans. Our healthcare system was
00:10:05.860 severely broken and still has a long ways to go back to acceptable standard. Okay guys, that's all
00:10:11.780 I have for you today. I just want to let you know that there won't be a show next week as I am away.
00:10:17.140 I hope that you guys have a great couple of weeks. As always, if you're able, please consider
00:10:21.940 supporting our work. You can do that over at donate.tnc.news. I will see you all in a few weeks. God bless.