Producer Quits Canada’s Government Broadcaster, Slams it for Being ‘Hostile’ to Ideas ‘Twitter Doesn’t Like’
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A former producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation publicly rebuked the company on Monday for “a radical political agenda” that she said was “hostile to ordinary people.”
“For months now, I’ve been getting complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I’ve worked as a TV and radio producer, and occasional on-air columnist, for much of the past decade,” Henley wrote in an article on Substack. “People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as ‘brainstorm’ and ‘lame.’ Everyone asks the same thing: What is going on at the CBC?”
Henley, who started working for the government-funded company in 2013, said it “produced some of the best journalism in the country” at the time, but “by the time I resigned last month, it embodied some of the worst trends in mainstream media.” She argued that it had become fixated on race — and that it had stopped hiring new employees based on their qualifications.
“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,” Henley noted. “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.
“To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity,” she added. “It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. It is to pretend that the ‘woke”’worldview is near universal … It is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. To work at the CBC is to submit to job interviews that are not about qualifications or experience — but instead demand the parroting of orthodoxies, the demonstration of fealty to dogma. It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like.”
The 84-year-old CBC operates both radio and television stations in Canada, and employs more than 7,500 people. The Canadian government funds it to the tune of $1.1 billion annually.
“This, while the world burns,” Henley concluded. “How could good journalism possibly be done under such conditions? How could any of this possibly be healthy for society?”
