CBC Radio's federal funding rears its ugly head

Though I publish a blog, I am a self-diagnosed anal retentive when it comes to journalistic integrity. Tonight, I was listening to CBC Radio's The World at Six, as I often do over dinner. CBC News is generally my preferred news source. I find them fair, balanced, and most important, possessing high standards of journalistic integrity.

But in tonight's program, I felt I heard CBC Radio's federal funding shining through for the first time ever. And it shocked me.

The top story of the newscast was the discovery of an illegal drug lab at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in eastern Alberta and the subsequent arrest of twelve current and former soldiers charged with drug trafficking offenses. It's a bad story. Soldiers using drugs is not good. Soldiers making drugs is especially not good. Obviously. The World at Six felt the same way too and seemed to go out of their way to make that point.

As the report began, host Alison Smith introduced the story saying, "We expect the best of them. Canada's soldiers are held to the highest of standards. That's one reason why tonight's news is so jarring. There has been a significant drug bust on a Canadian military base." She then went into the report. Instantly, I thought, "Hm, I think she might have just gotten away with a bit of editorializing in that introduction." The story included several soundbites from Maj. Daniel Dandurand, the commanding officer at CFB Wainwright, describing the circumstances of the discovery, but more conspicuously, why soldiers doing drugs is very bad. The story's reporter then seemed to dwell on the facts that all those charged were members of a single isolated platoon and that most of them were privates - new members of the Canadian Armed Forces, which is an extremely important detail if you want to convey a sense that this could not be happening anywhere else and that these were new, un-indoctrinated soldiers, or black sheep perhaps.

The entire story sounded more like a Government press statement than a news story. At no point where there any statements from any of the accused, their lawyers, or other soldiers who knew them. There were few details about how the lab was discovered, except that military police were involved. It was simply a bad discovery of a bad drug lab by some very bad soldiers who broke our sacred military rules. It was one-sided, to say the least.

What bothered me most about the story was Smith's opening editorializing of a top news story. Yes, soldiers doing drugs is bad. But she should not be expressing that. Using the pronoun "we" with the verb "expect" instantly implies an opinion. She might as well have said, "We at CBC News expect the best of them." It was not reporting. It was editorial.

The number one rule of journalism is to state the facts, not offer opinion on the facts. It is then my prerogative to hear the facts and form an opinion on my own. But that is up to me, not Alison Smith, and never should a reporter ever open a story with an introduction that implies anything about how she or "we" feel about the subject being reported about. In the court room, we would call that "leading the witness" - it is to put an opinion or state of mind into the listener that is not impartial or unbiased or rooted in fact before the facts have been shared. Editorial is something completely different from reporting and has no place at the top of a world newscast on the CBC. It is simply bad journalism, and Alison Smith, the host of the highest-rated news program on CBC Radio should know better.

But then I thought, it kind of makes sense. The CBC is funded by the federal government, which also funds the military. And if the government wanted to express its displeasure with these soldiers while maintaining some neutrality, what better way to do it than a Fox News style opinion piece veiled as a news story.

But again, I am anal retentive about journalistic integrity.

Listen to today's World at Six broadcast here and decide for yourself.