Wednesday, December 03, 2014

The Corporation Indicted


From what I've seen it's all over but for a trial and a trip to the Greybar Hotel for Jian Ghomeshi.  The evidence against him is as wide as it is deep.  He'd have to walk on water to keep from drowning in it.

I don't listen to radio and never paid much attention to Ghomeshi so it's no great loss for me.  Someone else will take his place.  Celebrities come, celebrities go.

It wasn't until I read Kathryn Borel's account in The Guardian that I had a sense of a much greater problem - the culture - union and management - within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

I've spent enough time in radio and television stations to know that there's a lot of sexuality that permeates the broadcasting industry.  More than once in Ottawa did I hear a young woman say, I think half-jokingly, "who do I have to fuck around here to get a job."  I never answered the question - although I knew.

Yes, it's time for CBC to do some soul-searching and then some house-cleaning. That's a tough job if you want to avoid crushing creativity but on reading Borel's account, it's overdue.  What she went through was on the clock, CBC's time and both management and the union simply looked the other way.


3 comments:

the salamander said...

.. her description left me aghast ..
and as a man & a Canadian
feeling humiliated by what she suffered through ..

The Mound of Sound said...

Yeah, Sal. It's pretty revolting, the more so because it's from a supposedly progressive, public institution. There seems to be almost a culture of "ownership" at CBC where, the higher you go, the more apt you are to perceive the place (and those who toil in it) belong to you.

Anonymous said...

Now Stephen Harper has more reason to get rid of the CBC instead of doing what is ethical..an investigation into the roles of the top people at CBC. Anyong