TORONTO – As it threatened weeks ago, Unifor, the union which represents journalists and television employees at Rogers’ OMNI TV, has filed a complaint with the CRTC over the broadcaster’s decision to hire Fairchild TV to create its Chinese news broadcasts.
The union believes that violates its CRTC licence.
“The CRTC gave Rogers a special licence with guaranteed income to bring back the Chinese language daily news for the nation’s largest immigrant community,” said Unifor media director Howard Law, in a press release. “Instead of producing the show themselves and adding to the voices in Chinese language media, as the licence requirement intended, Rogers has handed over the day to day news coverage to Fairchild TV. We have the same television company directing competing shows.”
Fairchild airs Cantonese and Mandarin language shows, including news, and is available on many subscription TV carriers across Canada.
Earlier this year the CRTC granted Rogers’ request to turn OMNI from an OTA broadcaster into a regional must-carry, or “9(1)h” specialty service, for 12 cents per month per subscriber. Rogers promised, if given the license, to renew cancelled news shows in Italian, Punjabi, Mandarin and Cantonese
On June 2, Fairchild TV incorporated a new division which began hiring reporters and camera operators for OMNI’s Chinese language news shows, reads the Unifor release. The shows began airing September 1st.
“Rogers has taken the money, broken its promises, and handed its competitor the daily news shows that inform Chinese-Canadians about local news and vital issues in Canadian politics,” said Katha Fortier, assistant to the national president. “The news director of Fairchild TV is an outspoken booster of Donald Trump and Rob Ford, and a harsh critic of the so-called mainstream media, whose show she is now directing. This isn’t what Canadians were promised.”
(Ed note: Unifor submitted evidence to the CRTC which it says supports this claim – a series of blog posts the affidavit says was written by Fairchild news director Rita Giang, and translated into English.)
Unifor is calling on the CRTC to call an immediate public hearing into the issue.
In response, Rogers Media says its deal with Fairchild to do news does not violate its licence and that OMNI has full editorial control over the product aired. “Our goal is to deliver quality newscasts to as many Canadian households as possible. By leveraging established third-party resources and expertise, we’re in a better position to offer Canadians access to quality multicultural and multilingual programming no matter where they live. We believe our arrangement with Fairchild is fully compliant with our licence requirements or we would not have entered into it. We respect our licence obligations and understand the importance of compliance, particularly for a service of this exceptional nature,” said a Rogers Media spokesperson in an email to Cartt.ca.
“In addition to producing our national Italian newscast and our national and local Punjabi news programs in-house, OMNI continues to provide our viewers with an important source of locally relevant news and information through our in-house produced Mandarin and Cantonese current affairs programs.”
