You are an employee, an executive, of a large company. You are professional, respect the laws and codes of ethics. If you cherish opinions that do not conform to the prevailing winds, you keep them to yourself. But you are faced with a difficult decision. Your boss has just sent all her employees an email inviting them to follow her, at lunchtime, to express their support for a noble but politically charged cause: reconciliation with the Aboriginal peoples. Showing up for the walk, wearing an orange sweater, symbol of the day, even putting yourself in the manager’s field of vision would be wise in the game of accumulating good points for future promotions. On the contrary, being absent would risk appearing in your “debit” column. What does he have against the Natives, one might ask in high places?
This is the dilemma imposed at the end of September on her subordinates at the Ottawa head office by the president of the CBC/Radio-Canada, Catherine Tait. The invitation was also extended to members of the information services. They thought until then that if they had to be present during social movements, it would be to take note of the chanted slogans, not to conceive and sing them. Several complained to fellow journalists from other media, on condition of anonymity.
These journalists may not have followed with sufficient attention the repositioning carried out by their bosses over the past two years. In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, English Network news editor Brodie Fenlon signaled that there would be a before and an after. “We have heard criticisms, which are not new, that our interpretation of CBC journalistic standards and practices is so rigid that it can muzzle important voices and lived experiences within the organization. Do our definitions of objectivity, balance, fairness and impartiality — and our insistence that journalists not express personal opinions on the subjects we cover — against our goals of inclusion and belonging to the community and country we serve? »
Two imperatives must be disentangled. It is necessary that newsrooms and management be made up of staff that roughly reflect the composition of the population. This changes the point of view, the angle of approach, the order of priorities in coverage, bringing them closer to the diversity and complexity of reality. Cheer. But invoking the right of journalists to express opinions or to address the issues based on their experiences to derogate from the search for objectivity and neutrality is nothing less than an insult to the journalistic mission. It also insults the right of listeners and viewers to form their own opinion based on the facts presented.
The damage is obviously already visible. The suspension of the excellent Wendy Mesley, guilty of having pronounced, in a work meeting, the title of the book by Pierre Vallières, white niggers of america, was only the first sign. The decision by CBC management to apologize that French-language radio journalists committed the same crime is the most recent.
Here’s another: During the trucker blockade in Ottawa, CBC reporter Omayra Issa wrote this tweet : “ White rage on full display. As always, it undermines safety, lives, institutions, ideals. Reducing to “white rage” an anti-sanitary measures demonstration where racist people were rampant, is equivalent to defining as “anarchist” a demonstration on the climate because Black Blocks have infiltrated it.
A citizen, Isabelle Laporte, filed a complaint, in French, with the CBC. The house replied, in English, on behalf of the editor, Fenlon. It started well: “It is important that journalists refrain from expressing opinions on controversial issues. Then it got out of hand: “Omayra is also, however, a reporter who regularly receives hate messages because of her skin color, so her reality constitutes a life experience and a point of view that are important, even if more of context should have been offered. “She also withdrew her tweet, to “avoid further confusion”. Clearly: because she is black and the object of insults, she can qualify a manifestation of “white rage”. She is therefore free to reoffend, as long as she fleshes out her point a little better.
That’s not all. Mme Laporte noted in his complaint that an accusation of white rage towards demonstrators was, inherently because linked to the color of their skin, racist. She was entitled to a severe call to order from the CBC on the dogma now in force in these places: “A black reporter who denounces the racism of a group of white people is not racism. (Note that at the CBC, the words Black and Indigenous are allowed to be capitalized, but the word white is not. Disclaimer: this is not racism, it is because there is no “d ‘white history or white culture.'” In the French service of Radio-Canada, as in To have tocapitals are equal instead.)
Faced with what can only be considered a serious drift, it must be emphasized to what extent colleagues in the French sector of Radio-Canada are resisting. Even the headliners dare to openly oppose what they rightly consider to be a betrayal of their duty to inform. Among the resistants, there are several journalists from the diversity of Quebec.
In English Canada, author and publisher Jonathan Kay has become something of a chief slayer of the progress of institutional wokism. He recently wrote on his thread: “French Canadians are the adults in the room as the CBC turns into a student newspaper. »
[email protected] / blog: jflisee.org