Canadian broadcaster’s own watchdog warns network about its political fact-checking bias
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The ombudsman said the network needs to rethink the term ‘far right’ in its reporting and that presenting simple ‘facts,’ as is the journalistic norm, should take precedence.
(LifeSiteNews) – The watchdog for Canada’s government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) warned the network it must stop acting as a political fact-checker after a report it published that negatively criticized the Freedom Convoy and so-called “far right” media received a massive amount of backlash.
CBC ombudsman Jack Nagler said in a recent notice titled Theory or Conspiracy Theory?, as per Blacklock’s Reporter, the “programmers at CBC” have a “great responsibility when they choose to use terms such as ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ in their stories.”
He also noted how the network needs to rethink news coverage that criticizes those who call out the current federal government cabinet.
As such, network programmers, when saying what is or is not “misinformation” and “disinformation” in their news stories, Nagler said, had better get it “right” because if it turns “out down the road the information proved to be correct they can do great damage to their reputation.”
Nagler’s warning to the CBC follows an attempt in 2021 by the broadcaster to act in effect as a political truth checker.
In his most recent warning, Nagler said the network needs to rethink the term “far right” in its reporting and that presenting simple “facts,” as is the journalistic norm, should take precedence so that readers “can judge for themselves who is reasonable and who is extreme rather than declaring it for them.”
Nagler also wrote that applying “labels” to certain groups or individuals should be “employed with great caution,” and the network should play it safe by reporting that there is “no evidence for something rather than proclaiming it to be false.”