Why The Entire Management Team of the CBC Should Be Fired

In the last few hours of Canada’s longest election in recent history, I’m going to wind down with some articles that have brought me the most frustration in this campaign.

This first piece argues that the entire management team of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation should be fired immediately on October 20.

They have failed Canada and Canadians who think the CBC is something worth saving.

Let’s look at a very small collection of offenses:

• They have been obsessed with the niqab, a symbol that will potentially shatter the very fabric of what Canada is all about:  tolerance and respect for all people’s beliefs, creeds or traditions, regardless of what ‘old stock Canadians’ think about it.
• They have failed to report on one of the biggest stories in the last 48 hours:  Lynton Crosby aborting the Harper campaign, like a rat jumping from a sinking ship.
• Continuous failure to address critical personnel issues when they were less ‘public’ and inability to deal with these issues properly once the public discovered the stories.  Examples:  Evan Solomon and Jian Ghomeshi on one side and Rex Murphy, Peter Mansbridge and Amanda Lang on the other.
• ‘Baiting’ Canadians with articles like this: ‘Ads claiming Trudeau supports brothels target ethnic social conservatives‘.  This seems to suggest that it’s OK to regurgitate the Conservative meme like it’s news or that they think the ethnic social conservative voter is an idiot.  Which is it?
• Poor business planning, particularly with respect to losing the NHL and Olympics to private consortiums, losing millions in ad revenue.
• Not doing enough to ensure that there was a proper NATIONAL debate broadcast and micro-cast (via social media) to the public of Canada.
• Collecting most of their ‘news’ from private sources, especially Canadian Newswire, which is now owned by PR Newswire, an American company.

Don’t get me wrong:  I love the CBC.  When it works.  In fact, I’ve shared lots of ideas in the past about how the CBC can be converted into one of the world’s leading media and communications companies.

However, I don’t love the CBC right now.  It’s a monstrous shell of a FrankenSteve invention that needs serious change in order to survive and earn back the goodwill of the Canadian public.

I’m hopeful that October 20 will be a new day for Canada and that a short time will lapse before the management of the CBC finds something else to do with their time.