CBC Ombudsman: Power & Politics: Equal opportunity questioning
The complainant, Ray Gribeauval, thought the program host was pushing the Conservative party line in a story about fiscal update.
By Esther Enkin, for the CBC
The complainant, Ray Gribeauval, thought the program host was pushing the Conservative party line in a story about fiscal update. All parties were heard from, all positions put forward and questioned. There was no violation of policy.
COMPLAINT
You are concerned that Rosemary Barton is biased toward the position of the Conservative Party in the work she does on Power and Politics. You cited as an example a segment on the November 20 edition of the program concerning an announcement from the finance minister that, contrary to Conservative claims, there would be a deficit and not a surplus for the year.
“It would take too much time and space to reiterate examples of the biases and the intellectual dishonesty of this woman. They are legion and well documented, including in the petitions that are circulating. I will, however, give you a recent illustration of what I mean. Today (Friday Nov 20), an updated set of books on the fiscal position of the Federal government showed that, rather than a surplus, there will be a deficit of 3-4 billion. Instead of focusing on the accounting the Conservatives engaged in to show a surplus during the election campaign, she completely ignored the question and turned her fire on the new government instead. Her guest panel included no Liberals, and were of course, quite happy to go along. This kind of partisan nonsense may be OK on Fox, but not on the CBC.”
You said that Ms. Barton should have focused on the accounting methods used by the former Conservative government so they could show a surplus during the election campaign, but instead she “completely ignored the question and turned her fire on the new government.”
The story was based on an announcement from the federal finance minister that after reviewing the books he believed that the projected surplus would instead be a deficit. This was the first fiscal update given by the newly elected Liberal government.
You felt that this was one example of the consistent approach on the program to promote the views and positions of the Conservative Party and to be critical of the current government.
Continue reading this on the CBC website, where it was originally published.
