CBC “Inside Media” Producer is Head of Media Union with Website Attacking Private Broadcasters

If there’s one area in which you’d think the CBC would at least try to be unbiased, it would be in the coverage of it’s own profession.

Well, you’d be wrong. The CBC program that covers the media business is produced by the head of a major media labour union. Under his leadership, his union has spent more than $50,000 to create and maintain a website solely to attack private broadcasters.

Of course, the CBC doesn’t’ tell you anything like that in the program’s promotional materials, but here’s how to connect the dots:

The CBC has exactly one program on its schedule devoted to covering the media business. It’s called “Inside Media.”

The Executive Producer of “Inside Media” is Arnold Amber.

Arnold Amber is also the head of TNG Canada, which is short for The National Guild of Canadian Media, Manufacturing, Professional & Service Workers. It includes the Canadian Media Guild, the union to which most CBC employees belong.

TNG Canada spent $50,000 in 2004 just to create a website called Your Media, which gives this as its masthead slogan:

The authoritative web site on cross-media ownership, convergence and concentration.

Now, you know that by “convergence and concentration,” they don’t mean the government funded monopoly called the CBC.

No, “Your Media” is strictly an attack site aimed at the private media sector. It’s especially hostile to CanWest, to which it devotes a separate section. And of course, there’s another special section attacking Conrad Black. But there are other sections, like one entitled “Emperors and Empires,” that keep a suspicious eye on the private sector media in general.

The website is directly tied to Arnold Amber. When it was launched, he was the sole contact person identified in the press release.

So let’s hear the CBC’s supporters explain this one away. How obvious can bias be? How can anyone deny that the CBC has deep, systemic biases when it can’t even cover it’s own craft without such obvious partiality? If the CBC’s coverage of the media business is so obviously slanted, how biased must the rest of it’s news coverage be?

The CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices says the following about situations like this:

Credibility is dependent not only on qualities such as accuracy and fairness in reporting and presentation, but also upon avoidance by both the organization and its journalists of associations or contacts which could reasonably give rise to perceptions of partiality. Any situation which could cause reasonable apprehension that a journalist or the organization is biased or under the influence of any pressure group, whether ideological, political, financial, social or cultural, must be avoided.

If you object to this obvious violation of the CBC’s own policies, contact the CBC Ombudsman. If enough people do so, he will be forced to conduct an investigation.