TORONTO — A group of more than 500 current and former employees of CBC/Radio-Canada who oppose the public broadcaster’s Tandem sponsored-content initiative today launched a social media campaign and website where they’ve published an open letter to Canadians to amplify their efforts to stop paid content on the CBC.
In the letter on the website (www.stoppaidcontentoncbc.ca), the group of mostly journalists asks for the Canadian public’s support in demanding CBC put an end to Tandem, the broadcaster’s new marketing division which was launched in September.
The open letter is signed by current CBC journalists, including Carol Off, Michael Enright and Gillian Findlay, and former employees Peter Mansbridge, Mellissa Fung and past-president Robert Rabinovitch.
“If you value strong, independent, trustworthy journalism please stand with us in saying ‘Stop Paid Content on CBC’,” reads the letter.
“There are so many problems with Tandem that it’s hard to know where to begin,” said Hana Gartner, former host of The Fifth Estate, in a press release issued today. “The whole point of Tandem is to produce and distribute content that is advertising in disguise. Canadians have a right to a national public broadcaster that puts their news and information needs ahead of the desires of corporate clients.”
The group also released a December 7th letter from 35 of CBC/Radio-Canada’s most experienced former broadcast executives, producers and reporters to Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbeault. In the letter, they call on the minister to order the CRTC to investigate Tandem and the production of branded content by the public broadcaster.
On November 13, several of the same former CBC employees filed a Part 1 application with the CRTC, asking for the Commission to investigate the broadcast of branded programming by CBC. They note in their letter to Minister Guilbeault that the CRTC has still not responded to their request and has not posted their application to its website.
The group also said in its application to the Commission that if the regulator did not choose to initiate a proceeding to investigate Tandem, they wanted the issue of branded content on the CBC to be added to the agenda at the public broadcaster’s licence renewal hearing which starts January 11, 2021.
Having not initially received acknowledgement of its application from the CRTC, the group followed up with several letters to the Commission, which finally resulted in a response from CRTC secretary-general Claude Doucet on November 27. However, in a letter to Doucet on November 28, the group says it’s unclear to them, due to Doucet’s “very succinct responses”, if the Commission is aware of their application’s procedural request. They also reiterated their request for their application to be posted to the Commission’s website.
In asking for Guilbeault’s intervention in the matter, the group’s letter to the minister says: “Approximately five weeks remain until the CRTC’s hearing begins. This leaves little time for the CRTC to amend the procedures for its January 2021 hearing, especially given that the CRTC’s Rules establish that the period from 21 December 2020 to 7 January 2021 cannot be considered in calculating time periods.”
The former CBC employees also note the CBC has been offering branded content since before September 2020, when Tandem was officially launched, as confirmed by CBC spokesperson Chuck Thompson, quoted in a Globe and Mail article in October. The group argues the CBC did not include information about its branded advertising content in its licence renewal application in the fall of 2019, and the public in general didn’t know about CBC’s branded content when they submitted comments about the CBC’s applications before the February 2020 intervention deadline.
In the group’s press release today, Gloria Bishop, former head of CBC Radio, is quoted as saying: “The CBC has never created advertising for clients in such secrecy and with such disregard for the public interest. What’s at stake are the basic principles of transparency and accountability. It’s bad enough that the CBC’s board of directors and its senior management approved branded programming behind closed doors but, even worse, they are now ignoring the thousands of Canadians who have objected to Tandem.”
“The CRTC is denying Canadians their right to a fair process,” added Maureen Brosnahan, former senior national correspondent for CBC News. “We are asking the Minister of Canadian Heritage to intervene to ensure that Canadians’ concerns about CBC’s secretive advertising practices are heard.”
In another move in the fight against Tandem, the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting revealed today it has obtained a “leaked recording” of remarks made by CBC CEO Catherine Tait to an online town hall with employees, in which Tait says advertising “makes us stronger”.
