CBC News World

First segment:

Next Monday at 6 a.m., Toronto Unlocked will debut on CIUT 89.5 FM. Hosted by Andy Barrie, who will be surrounded by his regular Metro Morning crew, the strike show will strive to provide all the news and views missing from the city's airwaves since CBC locked out its 5,500 journalists and production workers two weeks ago.

All the deets in tomorrow's treeware column which you'll find here.

The irony is that next week is when the radio ratings measurement period begins. What if Toronto Unlocked tops out the private competition, as Metro Morning did?

Second segment:

Some readers have wondered why they have seen some regular CBC reporters such as the Middle East-based  Nahlah Ayed on the air. Are they scabbing?

No. CBC reporters in Quebec and New Brunswick belong to a different union. And certain international correspondents, including Ayed, Washington journalist Henry Champ, Paris-based Paul Workman and Nancy Durham and Azeb Wolde-Giorgis in London are all on affiliated contracts.

They have no choice. They have to work.

Third segment:

Diehard CBC fans are trying to organize a campaign to get the broadcaster back to business as usual. They're launching their ''Listeners Locked Out'' campaign on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. in Simcoe Park, adjacent to the Toronto Broadcasting Centre on Front Street. If you plan to come, they urge you to bring a sign stating your support of CBC and your desire to have your favourite shows and personalities back on the air.

Fourth Segment:

This guy gives Peter Worthington, who wrote a dishonest piece of tripe, a most excellent fisking.

The solution comes from the south of the border. These days if a reporter or columnist in the U.S. writes a piece, like Worthington's Monday column, that is full of inaccuracies, management usually begins an audit of that reporter's or columnist's work, as was done at the New York Times and USA Today and an increasing number of papers.

It is time that Sunmedia, Worthington's employer, institutes an external independent audit of the accuracy of statements of fact in Worthington's columns for the past several years. (Since Worthington was once an executive of the chain, an outside audit would be free of hints of conflict of interest.) If Sunmedia won't audit the reporting of facts in Worthington's columns, then it should be done by a journalism school.

The Wrap-up:

Saturday night, at a party at which many former CBCers were guests, some of us were speculating if this wasn't the point where, a decade from now, we'd look back at the public broadcaster and say, yes, that was the beginning of the end. From the intel provided by this suspected inside management blogger, the lockout could go for months.

I blame both parties, both management and the union, in this tragic dispute. Certain managers have their ambitions. And the union has ambitions of its own.

I say this as a person who worked for the better part of ELEVEN years on contract at CBC. Some contracts were for three months, others just one month. At the end, it was one exec producer who took a disliking to me and/or my work that ended my career there. It was devastating -- and it took me nearly three years to land on my feet. (Which I did, at the Star.)

Yes, it was hair-raising, especially since CBC was virtually the only game in town back then. If you weren't renewed, you contemplated a job in P.R. ... or worse.

So while I sympathize with the contract workers of today -- a pool which management hopes to expand -- I have to say that the CBC journalists today have many more options. Many former CBCers have moved on to bigger and better things.

I know.

Comments

[Neil]

Fourth Segment:
"This guy gives Peter Worthington, who wrote a dishonest piece of tripe, a most excellent fisking."

I know as much about journalism as I do nuclear physics(which is zilch) and that may be a good thing but if this individual wrote an article and published same that was deemed dishonest, much less inaccurate wouldn’t it make sense if that person stood in judgment by his peers. I can write letters, email, blog all I want on a perceived interpretation of some journalist’s views or lack there of but it has to sting when the people in your own profession call you dishonest. Let her rip!!!

[Robert McClelland]

It is time that Sunmedia, Worthington's employer, institutes an external independent audit of the accuracy of statements of fact in Worthington's columns for the past several years.a

He should have said it's time that Sunmedia audit the accuracy of all its columnists for the past several years.

[koby]

Fisk can stretch the truth, but he gets stories others do not (e.g., the missile story) and he even comes out with the odd good point. The same can not be said of the collection of nut bars who right, I mean write, for the Sun media chain. I would prefer if you, oh, Frummed as opposed to Fisked.

[fan of zerbisias not]

I think audits would be a great idea and you could start with all the columnists at the Star like Haroon Siddiqui.

[Ivan Prokopchuk]

Peter might be a little bit right of Tamerlane, but come
on, I know the guy. He's useful.

--Ivan Prokopchuk

[CharLeBois]

LOL, I find it hilarious that you used the term "fisking". When Instapundit and all started it, that was one thing, but when Bloggers on the Left pick it up, wow. It's a wonder how Robert Fisk still has a job!

I'd also like to say something in Worthington's defence. While it's obviously an exercise in hyperbole to say that the CBC doesn't cover the military, I understand what he was getting at. Worthington regularly interviews and reports back on what your average Junior Rank soldier (Pvt, Cpl) are thinking and feeling - the same stories that would irk DND Brass. E.g., He's traveled to Afghanistan and reported back on how Cdn soldiers were denied the same freedoms other NATO soldiers enjoyed in Kabul. I've never read/seen anything from the CBC that couldn't have been co-written by a DND Public Affairs Officer - the only exception being an investigation that damns the Canadian Forces (not that those aren’t valid when need be). I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.

[Antonia Z.]

Koby, that is BRILLIANT! Frummed! I love it. So I will go with that, especially since CharLeBois makes me feel especially bad for using ''fisk.''

[fan of zerbisias not]

Koby,

"Fisk can stretch the truth" Is that anything like lying?

[koby]

"Koby, that is BRILLIANT! Frummed! I love it. So I will go with that, especially since CharLeBois makes me feel especially bad for using ''fisk.''"

Cool thanks

"'Fisk can stretch the truth' Is that anything like lying?"

Bad choice of words on my part. Fisk quite frequently works himself into lather and then goes off half cocked. He does not intentionally decieve.

[Jason]

"If you weren't renewed, you contemplated a job in P.R. ... or worse."

Ouch. Some of us (like me, for instance) went from media to P.R. because we wanted to try something new. I spent seven years as a newspaper reporter and now work in P.R. for a non-profit organization and I love it.

Spare us the moral high horse please. (And it's such a gauche, predictable cliche too)

Love the blog otherwise.

Cheers,
Jason

[Fred Z]

Hey leftoids, please explain to me why the power of the state should be brought to bear on me to wrest money from my pocket to subsidize inefficient... hockey broadcasts? Amateurish lefty dramas? Biased news?

And don't give me any nonsense about them being unbiased. Far better to admit the bias and tell me it's better, or for my own good, or for the children or something at least partially sane.

[A Different Sean]

Robin Rowlands is a putz.
He cliams to be a CBC researcher, which may explain why most CBC stories seem to be coming from an echo chamber.

In the glorious "fisking" that zerb refers to (funny, she can't seem to get his name right), he doesn't seem to be aware that Mr. Worthington has spent time with our troops in Afghanistan (as well as 4 different visits to Angola during their civil war). And in his latest entry he wants someone to help him get the info on another blogger (who Rowlands calls "gutless") so that he can "out" him. Some researcher. The blogger he is after has his name and photo posted on conservative blogs.
And he calls this fellow gutless. Pot. Kettle. Black. Rowlands doesn't allow comments. I guess that's one way to ensure that nothing disturbs your echo chamber...