I have a friend who likes to joke that he can get a TV show funded and produced at the CBC by pitching just one sentence:

"A transgender Indigenous Liberal MP fights climate change and racial prejudice in Canada's far north."

He claims no CBC executive would be able to turn it down! I have to admit, it made me laugh. 
 

Honestly though, an excellent strategy for someone to score subscriptions to their substack - if her premiere on substack hadn't been a populist bashing of the CBC, the National Post would never have given her the promotional boost of carrying her post as an opinion piece, let alone put it on their front page. Nothing like a bit of manufactured anti-CBC outrage to get NaPo to give you some sweet free promotion. If she'd quit CTV News or Global and made the same complaints, there'd be nothing but crickets in response. 

Last edited by Hansa (January 4, 2022 2:48 pm)

Sad to admit it as a long time and big CBC fan, I say they have allowed the pendulum to swing too far too quickly....it has begun to bite them in the ass publicly and has clearly impacted their internal and corporate culture...

I still find the local/regional drive shows and hourly bulletins are more balanced in terms of stories covered, but I definitely agree with this person in regards to a lot of the national/network programming on CBC Radio.

Gawker takedown of Tara:

What is the easiest and fastest way to make money as a writer or journalist? Many will tell you it’s taking on freelance copywriting work at advertising agencies or pivoting to film and television. But actually, there’s one simple trick to get you more money, or at the very least more recognition, than most middling writers could possibly imagine: very publicly quitting your legacy journalism job because it’s too “woke” and starting a Substack newsletter. Leaving a writing job in a huff to join the truth warriors of the newsletteratti has worked incredibly well for well-known journalists like former New York Times editor and columnist Bari Weiss, Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald, former New York Magazine writer Andrew Sullivan and Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias.Usually, this approach only works well for people with name recognition, but one fellow Canadian has proved you don’t even need that to be hoisted up as a free speech warrior as long as you type the correct words in the correct order.

A cursory look at Tara’s previous work shows that she fought hard to combat this kind of cultural Marxism propaganda with pieces such as “5 zen things to do in Vancouver, Canada's epicentre of chill” and “The most breathtaking bike routes Vancouver has to offer” and “Six surprising lessons we can all learn from early retirement gurus.” I can only imagine she narrowly avoided being silenced at every turn.In fact, if you spend even twenty minutes looking through Henley’s journalism career, you’ll see that her bread and butter isn’t news or current events at all. So when she writes about “causing strain” in a story meeting with her “views on issues like the housing crisis,” I wonder exactly when she became an outspoken advocate for such issues. Over the last two years, Henley has not once even tweeted about the housing crisis, an issue that the CBC has covered extensively in just the last few months.

CBC LIFESTYLE JOURNALIST TAKES ANTI-WOKE HIKING CONTENT TO SUBSTACK

 

Last edited by Hansa (January 5, 2022 9:11 pm)

That Canadaland interview does little else but emphasize that Brown is a staunch believer in the nouveau religion and that Henley seems unwilling to commit to anything. You can't honestly believe an environment that suspends a veteran journalist for reciting a book's title is one where people aren't on eggshells. The most unbelievable part is that she suggests this is a recent development. 

While I think it's fair to question someone's motives, I'm not sure that Gawker article (why would someone revive that site?) is fair to Henley. Her writing does seem to have mainly consisted of CBC.ca fluff, but that wasn't the extent of her work history at the company. I'm not sure how you'd track down which radio and TV stories she contributed to as a producer - especially given her complaint was about being stifled. I also don't think the jilted journalist grift is as lucrative in Canada as that piece suggests it could be. Though, I guess if Levant and Brown can make a career out of it ... 

It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.

Makes you wonder what happened to those other journalists. Did they all retire or "coincidentally" lose their jobs?