Some nasty stuff has been going on at CTV News. Michael Harris writes:
Bob Fife blew the whistle on the sad state of affairs inside CTV, when he reported in a June 27, 2023, story in The Globe and Mail that Wade Oosterman, a top Bell Media executive, urged his news team to avoid “negative spin” in coverage of the network’s parent company.
According to The Globe, Oosterman said on an audio tape obtained by The Globe that there was a lack of “balance” in the network’s coverage. Although The Globe reported that he said he was not asking reporters to “shill” for Bell in its coverage of the company, that is exactly what his words sounded like. “But for God’s sake,” he reportedly said, “If there is a choice between helping and not helping—help.”
The Globe reported that Oosterman gave an unsettling example. When Bell reported flat revenues and an eight per cent profit, arguably obtained by cuts, he didn’t like the way CTV played the story.
The network reported the heart of the business story: that revenues were flat, not the single digit improvement in profits. “Why would we take that negative spin instead of the positive spin?” Oosterman reportedly asked.
And what did Oosterman do to solve the problem? He replaced Lisa Laflamme:
Some said that her crime was letting her hair go grey, which the company denied.
But The Globe reported that two former news managers at CTV said that Oosterman thought LaFlamme’s newscast was too “favourable” to the federal Liberals.
Laflamme's exit was only the beginning:
Then came the disturbing termination of two of CTV’s finest Ottawa bureau assets: bureau chief Joyce Napier and reporter Glen McGregor. Along with Napier and McGregor, Bell also iced the network’s chief international correspondent, Paul Workman.
Napier had been a correspondent for Société Radio-Canada before joining CTV. McGregor was the investigative print journalist who broke the robocalls scandal along with his then-colleague Stephen Maher. And Workman spent most of his long career as the CBC’s Paris-based correspondent.
With their departures, invaluable experience walked out the door.
If you have a ratings problem, seasoned journalists like Napier, McGregor, and Workman with proven track records are exactly the people to turn that around. Instead of letting these people go, BCE might have considered investing more in the Ottawa bureau. Instead, they have chosen to chastise, hobble, and diminish it.
Fife, who himself had been Ottawa bureau chief for CTV before joining The Globe, made an incredibly important point in his story. It could be persuasively argued that Oosterman’s reported attempt to inject more balance into CTV’s coverage by lecturing news managers runs contrary to BCE’s own journalistic independence policy.
As Fife reported, the policy is clear: “Any interference, either direct or indirect, actual or perceived, undermines the principles of news independence and can erode the credibility of Bell Media News, which is critical to maintaining the trust of our viewers and listeners.”
Money has corrupted our politics. It is corrupting our journalism. There is controversy about the source of the quotation. Nevertheless, its truth is undeniable. "In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
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