The NDP’s culture critic Charlie Angus has called on CBC Chairman Timothy Casgrain to remove Tom Long from any involvement in the search for a new CBC President and head of news.
“Mr. Long is a Conservative insider with ties that go all the way to PMO communications director, Sandra Buckler,” said Angus. “This is just another way for Harper to control media content. We are hoping that Mr. Casgrain will recognize this clear conflict of interest and remove Tom Long from participating in any way in the process.”
A CBC spokesperson last week told reporters that the CBC is not involved in the hiring process, as it falls within the responsibility of Parliament.
Angus raised the issue of Long’s involvement last week, after an internal memo went out to CBC staff advising them to send their application for the open position to him. The NDP MP sent a letter to Casgrain on Thursday asking him to “do everything in his power as chair of the institution to remove any doubt in Canadians’ minds that the search is above reproach,” according to a NDP release.
“The CBC is a public institution whose newsroom cannot afford to be tainted with the perception of political interference,” said Angus. “And Long’s involvement is akin to sugar in a gas tank.”
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Interesting.
Does the NDP know who is on the CBC’s board of directors and what their political connections are?
82% of them donate to the Liberal party. The CBC/Liberal party incest is quite obvious, it’s time to clean it up.
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I don’t see the issue after all Robert Rabinovitch counts John Rae (power Corp.) and Eddie Goldenberg (Chretian aide)as close friends (source: National Post Oct 19, 1999 “A Wise Man returns to the flock” by Matthew Fraser) That seems hardly non-partisan, time for some balance.
I demand that the Government insure that no NDPer is allowed to taint the process with thier political interference!
The CBC is a public institution that has long been politicized by the Liberal Party and is heavily influenced by the NDP. It is not surprising that feathers are flying! And it’s also not surprising that the claims of political interference are being made, could it be that the Lieberals and Dippers feel threatened? Common now, if it was ok to have the CBC stacked with Liberal appointees then why is it such a travesty to have Mr. Long in there? The sheer hypocrisy is astounding!
“The CBC is a public institution whose newsroom cannot afford to be tainted with the perception of political interference.”
Well, it’d be nice, but it’s never happened yet.
What a laugh.The CBC is owned and operated as a wing of the liberal party and they are being propped up by taliban jack.What next, only liberal and ndp can apply for the job,or the same idiots who are already in the job.Forget the ndp rant and get Mr Long in there now and get some honest reporting back into the Cbc.My first choice would be to shut the CBC down as they are useless as a Canadian broadcaster and a waste of billions of dollars each year.
Get rid of someone for political purposes because they may have a political purpose in being there. Dipper logic!!!
Please spare us all - whatever our political stripes - the name-calling. It was old when the CCF started, it was older still when the NDP launched, and it’s absolutely ancient now, almost on par with the totem poles of the BC First Nations in terms of age.
Plus, it’s rude. You can critique the politics and ethics of your opponenets quite well without that.
Remind me again why we use public money to pay for a TV station? I thought the state was supposed to be separate from the media for a reason…
This is what the NDP is all about …. intolerance.
Say what?
Mr. Long simply works with a consulting group which has made the appointments CBC positions for years. Nothing has changed, so Mr. Angus is really off-base here. This is a tempest in a teapot.
Charlie Angus is right: Tom Long has a longgg history in Ontario as one of the main architects of the so-called ‘common sense revolution’, whose main obsession was the privatization of anything public. Never mind the party politics, why should we trust one of Canada’s best assets to someone who stands for the destruction of the public sphere? The CBC is supposed to be arms length and above party politics; most politicians understand this principle. However, Tom Long comes from a neo-conservative tradition that is rather fundamentalist about imposing their ideology on the public. Angus is not reacting to the fact that Tom Long is a conservative, that would be wrong. Rather, he is reacting to Tom Long himself, and his well known history as an privatization ideologue, which should arouse the suspicions of all Canadians who value the CBC.
It would seem that the first criteria for anyone in a position of power at the CBC would be a belief in the public sphere, which is probably why more Liberals and NDP have been appointed. And for those who cry for their ideal vision of a monopoly of private media, take a look to the south of the border and try to find a nonpartisan crumb of truth anywhere in their corporate mainstream media.
The CBC is not perfect, and I regularly complain about it, however it is an essential balance to the private monopolies that are taking over the rest of the airwaves. Charlie Angus continues to be the best political advocate the CBC has, and he’s right: appointing Tom Long to the search committee for a new CBC president sends a strong signal that ideology, and not truth, will be the deciding factor in the final choice. As Angus says, this cannot help but “taint the institution with the perception of political interference”.
Again: uh oh.
What a laugh. The CBC is a hotbed of left wing nut bags. Its programming oozes socialist ideals. Of course, Taliban Jack and his ilk are cool with this and are now on a witch hunt to find conservatives.
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the PC party of Canada? Soon enough, this will be a question on the job application form. To the tune of $1Billion tax dollars a year!
Taliban Jack… I like that. No one even mentioned Mr. Layton- but Mike has it all figured out for us: 20th Century Fox News feeds and Mike flicking his red herrings at the Harper Seals as job applications… that’s the Canada we need! Sig Heil Mike. Your edu-matriculation has been a total waste.
For many years, the British, Australian and Canadian Broadcasting Corporations, along with Sweden and the Netherlands, are the favored international broadcasters in the world for balanced reporting.
In Canada, CBC radio, with it’s lively interaction with the people across the nation, is the glue that brings us our sense of Canada, our Canadian identity.
You live in a strange, romantic dream world, larry Price.