Has the ethics committee given Quebecor a bully pulpit?
The Canadian Media Guild certainly thinks so. In a recent release, the Guild, which counts CBC and six other media organizations as its members, accused the parliamentary ethics committee of giving Sun News head Karl Peladeau a public forum to slam one of its biggest competitors, the CBC. And that's not all, says the Guild: The committee isn't asking the right questions, either.
The Canadian Media Guild certainly thinks so. In a recent release, the Guild, which counts CBC and six other media organizations as its members, accused the parliamentary ethics committee of giving Sun News head Karl Peladeau a public forum to slam one of its biggest competitors, the CBC. And that's not all, says the Guild: The committee isn't asking the right questions, either.
While the Guild believes the committee has the right to examine CBC's approach to access to information, it also thinks CBC should be considered in context of all the other federal departments, agencies, and institutions. In other words: nobody has a great ATI record. Why is that?
As Marc-Philippe Laurin, president of the Guild’s CBC/Radio-Canada branch, puts it in the release:
Our members on the frontlines use access to information regularly to break important stories in the public interest. At a time when journalistic resources are shrinking, it’s taking more and more time to get a hold of information. That’s what needs to be addressed. Instead, the committee has been drawn into a ‘dirty war’ aimed at undermining the public broadcaster as we head into a difficult federal budget and appears to be serving the interests of a private company. In Quebecor’s case, ATIP is being used as a weapon and not a tool.
Here's what Peladeau had to say yesterday:
[node:ad]Despite what some may think – in other words that we are waging a war against CBC-Radio Canada – we believe that these requests are not only legal but also legitimate and in the public interest and in keeping with the [Access to Information] Act.
Either way, as a side note: In his statements yesterday Peladeau seemed to insist on calling CBC a state broadcaster — as do many of the chain's publications and the Sun News Network. It's not; it's a public broadcaster.
