Canadian Press — The Conservative government is facing charges of political meddling in the selection process for a new president and chief of news operations at the CBC.
New Democrat MP Charlie Angus raised the alarm Thursday, after an internal memo went out to CBC journalists advising candidates for the job of executive director of news to send their applications to Tom Long – veteran Tory backroomer and one-time Canadian Alliance leadership candidate.
Long is now a partner of Egon Zehnder International, an executive headhunting firm that’s also handling the search for a new president to succeed Liberal appointee Robert Rabinovitch, who is due to depart soon.
The news director’s job came open when Tony Burman, a 35-year journalistic veteran, stepped down last month.
Angus took Long’s involvement as a sign that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to fill the ranks of upper management with people who will be favourable to his Conservative government.
“It is absolutely outrageous to think that the resumes of potential senior CBC news directors are being personally vetted by the likes of Mr. Long,” said the NDP cultural affairs critic.
Long was a key architect of former Conservative premier Mike Harris’s right-leaning Common Sense revolution in Ontario. His leadership bid for the former Canadian Alliance failed when it was revealed his organizers had signed up thousands of bogus new party members in the Gaspe region of Quebec to swell his voting ranks.
Fred Loiselle, who was Long’s campaign manager in the leadership race, now serves as chief of staff to Public Works Minister Michael Fortier.
His media spokesperson for the campaign was Sandra Buckler, now communications director for Harper – a fact that only heightened Angus’s concern.
“Stephen Harper has been obsessive in his attempt to control, limit and spin the political media of this country,” he said. “It is unacceptable that he has a key political buddy vetting the resumes of potential CBC news directors.”
Katherine Heath-Eves, a spokesperson for the CBC, said the use of Egon Zehnder to screen candidates is nothing new. The firm has done the same job for more than a decade in filling top posts at the public broadcaster.
“There’s no individual at the firm who owns the relationship with CBC,” she said. “All of the searches are carried out by teams of Egon Zehnder personnel, not by individuals.”
She acknowledged, however, that Long’s name on the internal memo indicates he is the “lead executive” for the news director search. It wasn’t clear who gave him that job, or whether he would take the same lead role in the search for a president.
Long did nothing to clarify things. “Egon Zehnder policy is not to comment publicly on client work,” he wrote in a terse email response to queries.
There was no comment from the Prime Minister’s Office, but Veronique Bruneau, a spokesperson for Heritage Minister Bev Oda, said it’s up to the CBC to choose the search firm it wants to use.
She couldn’t explain how Long happened to be the executive who ended up leading the search, but said the process will produce a list of candidates who will then be interviewed. For the president’s post, Oda will have political responsibility for recommending a final choice to cabinet.
Angus agreed there’s nothing wrong with using an executive search firm to fill CBC positions and acknowledged Egon Zehnder has a good track record. But he insisted Long should refrain from participating in the process to avoid any appearance of political interference.
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I am officially Concerned.
The optics are horrific! Tom Long should step far away from this process…
Oh, so in other words - the left wing, bastion of liberal apologensia (Look! It’s a Trudeau!) is finally going to be dragged into the world of journalistic balance.
Faster, please.
Tod, thanks for posting this.
I am concerned as well. The optics is certainly very bad as we don’t need political influence in the selection process of CBC president and Chief of news ops. So on that note, may be Egon Zehnder International should not be used as even if Mr. Tom Long is officially taken off the file, the appearance of political interference will still be there. So may be it is a bad idea to use Egon Zehnder International.
Not being a CBC expert (may be this is a good thing), I got this from Wikipedia (which seems right), “As a crown corporation, the CBC operates at arm’s length (autonomously) from the government in its day-to-day business. The corporation is governed by the Broadcasting Act of 1991, under a Board of Directors and is directly responsible to Parliament through the Department of Canadian Heritage. General management of the organisation is in the hands of a President, who is appointed by the Prime Minister.”
My point for this quote is this — may be it is time for CBC to be reported to something like a CBC Trust (re: BBC Trust) instead of Canadian Heritage. CBC is too important an institution to be beholden to the politicians in Ottawa regardless of which party they come from. May be the idea of having the Prime Minister appoints the President of CBC should be put to rest.
Just my 2 cents.
- K
Katherine Heath-Eves, a spokesperson for the CBC, said the use of Egon Zehnder to screen candidates is nothing new. The firm has done the same job for more than a decade in filling top posts at the public broadcaster.
…And that should tell us the awful truth and all we need to know
Why all the hullabaloo over a perceived rightwing bias in the selection process?
Is there the same concern over the blatantly obvious leftwing bias of the CBC?
Or are wel still pretnding it doesn’t exist?
The liberals were allowed to stock the CBC with their minions with no hint of protest about bias, now Harper’s government should be able to sell the CBC to FOX News. I’m looking forward to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly doing a full on beat down on Peter Mansbridge as part of the transfer ceremony.
I don’t think either the Liberals…or the Progressive Conservatives(and their ancestor-parties) - from Iron-Heel Bennett through to Brian Mulroney…ever took the application of cronyism to CBC appointments to the extent now being perceived by many of us in the viewership.
“Why all the hullabaloo over a perceived rightwing bias in the selection process?
Is there the same concern over the blatantly obvious leftwing bias of the CBC?”
FOX News sold the United States into a disastrous war (with now mythical WMDs and nuclear weapons) that has put them squarely in the hands of China (check who can destroy the US economy in five seconds), because the US is now bursting with debt and their economy is dying at Great Depression-like levels. There is quite a difference between “neo-conservative” and real “conservative”, as well. One is dangerous to their own country. Seems the “lefties” and the real conservative were right. One should not give two views equal time….’just because’; stories should be told on their MERITS, not for cause celebre or politcial view, which is what you seem to be suggesting. This is not the US, we have four different politicial parties, and the “liberal” or “left-wing” insult doesn’t work here.
Sorry, but there is absolutely no valid comparison of the CBC to “FOX NEWS”.
However, I agree that a “CBC Trust” like the BBC has is imperative to maintain independence.
Thanks for the update on this continuing story. If Tom Long is the man, than so be it. Would he look better if Paul Martin was still PM? I doubt it. Until the position of President and CEO of the CBC is fundamentally changed, as suggested by kempton, the gig will always have a political shade: either red or blue. I vote for green!
Kris Says: FOX News sold the United States into a disastrous war
Yeah Kris, It was all FOX News. Nobody in the US Congress voted for the war, or if they did they all listened to FOX News and were brainwashed. Everyone watches FOX news right? Use some critical thinking skills.
You use neo-conservative as if it is something bad = Smaller government, lower taxes, balanced budgets. So by logical extension you must want larger government, higher taxes and deficit spending.
You also use the word liberal like it is a good thing = big government, higher taxes, nepotism. I don’t.
You are right - there is no valid link between FOX news and the CBC. FOX news allows and supports more than one point of view on a subject. The CBC does not.
Fox news sold the war…..?
Better check your facts and logic.
Google BDS while you are at it.
Have you looked at the BBC lately? They are taking it on the chin day after day for bias, from fabricating stories about the queen to rigging their own contest, they have become a laughing stock.
Same with Reuters and their fake photographs of the war in Lebanon last year.
How’s Dan Rather doing with his ‘fake but accurate’ news?
CBC gets busted for smear jobs by Christina Lawland, CTV gets busted for wildly torqueing a fund raising loophole to smear the conservatives
The list goes on.
Now, give me one specific instance of Fox News faking the news.