The National Post has published a story about editor-in-chief Tony Burman’s career at the Ceeb. Here’s a snippet:
Christopher Waddell, associate director of the School of Journalism at Carleton University, said the CBC News of today pales in comparison to its “glory days” in the 1980s but he credited Mr. Burman with recognizing the opportunities provided by the Internet early on, launching cbc.ca.
Peter Mansbridge, anchor of CBC’s flagship newscast The National, said that in fact, CBC brass wanted to axe the regional newscasts altogether, but Mr. Burman vociferously opposed the move. “As Tony has done many times, he laid his body in front of the roaring train,” he said.
The full story is published here.
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Article is brief, and seems to scrape the barrel in trying to find any significant achievements by Mr. Burman, apart from hanging in there for so long during a particularly confused time for the CBC.
As it stands today, CBC News is dull, weak and lacking focus and enthusiasm.
And that has to be attributed to it’s leadership.
Real journalists would never settle for a desk job.
Finally, hope for a new and fresh approach instead of one that treats the audience like children.
But one point in the story does raise eyebrows.
Is the creation of CBC.CA to be attributed to Tony Burman?
A curious claim, since visionary thinking doesn’t seem to be his forte.
With Burman’s departure, can we now look forward to Mansbridge being replaced?
Or promoted into Burman’s job?
Maybe I’m a tad naive, but it seems like we’d want to avoid doing worse, right?
In my opinion - as a concerned Canadian.
Tony Burman has been a great asset to the CBC
and Canadians who are kept abreast of happenings in this complex country and world should say “thank you” to him,.
His job has had to have been complex.
The all important business of providing us with accurate information with integrity and lack of bias was well done , and if I have it right, it was indeed
patrolled by him on his eight year watch.
The CBC has as fine a group of journalists as exists anywhere. I’m sure there are, and were, many prima donnas , egos, stresses mixed in with “get it somehow ” reporting , terrible dangers, awful expenses …all that good stuff.
I often wondered how he seemed to be so cool about it when asked to publicly justify a decision.
Last thought:
Don’t discount what this guy did for Canadian journalism. His working boots will be hard to fill .
Well why don’t you tell us, Ron, just what this guy did for Canadian journalism, eh?
Because I’m hard pressed to find anything.
He did an administrative job and got paid well for it.
There was nothing remarkable about anything he did in the last seven years at the CBC, let alone for the practice of journalism.
But do enlighten us, since you seem to think you know something.
As for his cool, he had no one to question him or over-rule him, so what was there to sweat about?
List even one of his accomplishments, or go back to sleep.
He had - among others - Messrs. Stursberg and Rabinovitch to overrule him. Whether that was done, either at genuine need or personal whim, how often and by which of these…well, that’s beyond my knowledge as a viewer. But never assume for a second that his decisions couldn’t be examined under the proverbial electron microscope.