UPDATE APPENDED (MARCH 20th, 1:45 pm)
Last night CBC TV was set to air the documentary Volunteers Unleashed, described on its website as “a look at ‘voluntourism’ – the fastest and most controversial travel sector.”
The doc, which promised a look at the “dark side” of the “problematic” volunteer travel industry, was promoted throughout the day: CBC teased it through their official twitter account while director Brad Quenville hyped it on local CBC radio shows across thecountry.
It never ran.
Instead, the CBC re-ran a doc called Wild & Dangerous: The World of Exotic Pets.
The CBC web page for Volunteers Unleashed vanished, as did the promo clip on this page.
So what happened?
According to the CBC’s Michael Claydon, Executive Producer of Independent Documentaries, the CBC, “had a copyright issue with some footage in the doc. It requires some re-editing so we are going to re-schedule so the producer can make the changes.”
CANADALAND has learned that this is not the full story.
What we can report so far is this:
1.Volunteers Unleashed includes critical coverage of Me to We, the for profit counterpart of Free the Children, the massive charity run by Marc and Craig Kielburger.
2.Years ago, when Saturday Night Magazine ran a story questioning Free the Children’s fundraising methods, Craig Kielburger sued the magazine for libel, eventually settling out of court for $319,000 (Saturday Night is now defunct).
3. Yesterday Craig Kielburger wrapped a stint as a panelist on CBC’s Canada Reads.
To be clear: CANADALAND cannot report any information at this point linking Craig Kielburger, Free the Children or Me to We to the disappearance of Volunteers Unleashed. We have requested comment from Kielburger, and will update our coverage when and if answers are provided.
UPDATE (MARCH 20, 1:45PM)
Free the Children has confirmed that they “did raise a concern (with the CBC) when we determined the film included the use of unauthorized footage of We Day when referring to the growing levels of youth volunteerism/voluntourism across Canada…we requested that the unauthorized We Day footage be removed.”
Free the Children’s press representative Angie Gurley writes further that “we did not ask for the documentary to be pulled…Me to We trips was not one of the operators profiled and furthermore as confirmed to us by both Executive Producer, Doc Zone, Michael Claydon and the Director of the documentary, Brad Quenville, there was no critical coverage of Me to We or We Day in the film.”
Developing…
“Do you have a case you can cite as the reason why you launched this? Is there anything that’s happened?” asked Carol Off on yesterday’s As It Happens, in an interview with Press Gallery President and CBC News politics writer Laura Payton.
“No.” answered Payton.
CANADALAND has learned that this is not accurate.
The next episode of CANADALAND (Monday, Feb.16) will include a feature chat with Julia Belluz, the health reporter who Toronto Star Editor-in-Chief Michael Cooke told to “stop drinking his bathwater” when she questioned him about their flawed front-page investigation into the HPV vaccine Gardasil. Star publisher John Cruikshank has since told the CBC that his paper “failed” in the reporting of this story, and that he and Cooke take responsibility. At this time, The Star has not corrected or retracted their story, and Michael Cooke has not apologized to Julia Belluz.
The following is an excerpt from the upcoming interview with Belluz.
An investigative report into the billionaire Koch brothers’ connections to Canada was pulled from Global’s newsmagazine show 16×9 shortly before broadcast, and an article published on the same topic was scrubbed from GlobalNews.ca, CANADALAND has learned.
Last Thursday at 11:06am, an article titled “The Koch Stake in Canada” ran on GlobalNews.ca. The piece, by veteran investigative reporter Bruce Livesey summarized an upcoming investigative report titled “The Koch Connection,” which, the article promised, was set to air two days later, on Saturday January 31 at 7pm. Global News promoted the item with a post on 16×9’s Facebook page and a tweet from an official account, which was retweeted by Global’s Washington correspondent Jackson Proskow.
By Thursday night, the article had disappeared from GlobalNews.ca, the Facebook post and official tweet were deleted, as was Proskow’s retweet.
On Saturday night, 16×9 went to air without “The Koch Connection”.
The article was preserved by Google Cache and brought to CANADALAND’s attention by a reader. It can be read here.
The videos embedded in the article have disappeared, and no clips from the promised broadcast can be found online.
The article presents a series of verifiable facts about Charles and David Koch, the extraodinarily wealthy American brothers who funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into the U.S. political system, who are the biggest foreign lease-holders in the Canadian Oil Sands, and who fund the climate-change denying Fraser Institute think tank here in Canada.
Global News is owned by Calagry-based Shaw Communications, who advertise their services to the oil & gas industries here.
CANADALAND contacted Ron Waksman, Global News’ Senior Director of Online News, Current Affairs, Editorial Standards & Practices, and conducted the following interview by phone:
Why did The Koch Connection not run?
Look, it wasn’t killed, it was set aside. It was not up to scratch. Had the producer (Bruce Livesey) done better work, then…. It was not cancelled or dropped.
But why was it pulled so late? Didn’t (16×9 Executive Producer) Laurie Few sign off on it?
What do you mean “sign off?”
Had she seen it?
Let’s just say that Laurie acknowledged that due diligence was required on the script. More due diligence should have been done.
So did Laurie pull it or did you?
I read the web story, I had some concerns. It had some holes in it. I went back and watched the piece. It needs more work. Likely we won’t revisit it until next season.
What holes did the web story have in it?
Look, when we have an editorial hypothesis, we need facts to back it up, we didn’t have the facts to back it up. In my opinion it didn’t meet our standards of fairness and balance. It just wasn’t up to scratch.
Ron, you hired Bruce to write that piece and you published it. Now you’re publicly disparaging his journalism but you won’t say why? What holes were in his piece? You won’t substantiate that?
Look, my job is not just to oversee 16×9 but everything. The duty of care may be higher on 16×9. It’s better to look at the work and get it right.
Shaw does business in the oil sands, right?
No-one outside Global News attempted to influence us, it just wasn’t up to editorial scratch.
A report like this takes many people months to produce. I assume it went through some kind of editorial process before being slated for broadcast and promoted. Do you have confidence in the 16×9 team, in Laurie Few?
I have a great deal of confidence in Laurie.
Do you have confidence in Bruce Livesey?
Bruce is a freelance producer. He’s not on staff. I don’t know Bruce all that well. I judge by the work.
***
Bruce Livesey declined to comment on these events. CANADALAND is told by sources at Global News that Livesey has two pending investigations commissioned by 16×9.
Livesey is well-regarded in the Canadian journalistic community. He has been investigating corporate abuse and corruption in Canada for over 30 years, and has contributed to CBC’s fifth estate and PBS’ Frontline.
jesse@jessebrown.ca
Radio has its own craft and discipline. You might not appreciate, say, a book editor suddenly having absolute power over your TV company. If a book editor wants to work in TV, you might expect them to humble themselves, to learn, and to observe before accepting a post where they would make huge decisions about other people’s work.
The CBC has appointed Leslie Merklinger as their new Director of New Programs for radio.
Merklinger leaves her post as Commissioning Editor for the Food Network. According to an internal memo by newly-appointed English Services boss Cindy Witten, Merklinger has “had a varied career in factual, arts, lifestyle programming.” Her credits include Donut Showdown, Top Chef Canada, CTV’s eTalk, and Opening Soon: By Design for HGTV
Simon Houpt of The Globe and Mail just posted this story:
“Journalist Jesse Brown is quick to expose the failures of Canadian media. But what about his own?”
The following is taken directly from his email interview with me. I’m reprinting, unedited, the parts that pertain to the allegation that I once “faked” a scene in a 2006 CBC radio piece.
How would you characterize your experience working on The Contrarians?
Very difficult.
The show was about “unpopular ideas that just might be right”. Each episode, I would champion a controversial argument to see if it had merit. I rarely agreed with these ideas myself, but that wasn’t the point.
One episode was called “multiculturalism doesn’t work, we just eat each other’s sandwiches”. Another was about how feminism had basically achieved all its goals. Another was about how Canada is not a “good guy” on the global stage at all.
I was paired with different CBC producers on this. In cases, advocating for these ideas contradicted their personal convictions. It was a rough go. Management wanted the show to be “edgy” and really “push buttons” while the people I worked with were uncomfortable with the subject matter and suggested topics like “are cottages really so great?” (not kidding). My show’s executive producer also ran The Sunday Edition. She faced a near mutiny from her colleagues over the feminism episode. She wanted to tank it and pursue an episode championing “misandry” instead. I tried to make that one work, but the idea was so ludicrous it couldn’t sustain a 30 minute defence. The feminism episode ran. Our relationship soured, and I no longer enjoyed her support within the building.
Ultimately, management agreed that the show was “edgy” and “button pushing” as requested, and also quite good. But they also had heard about how difficult the production process was and the show wasn’t picked up on those grounds. I pitched Search Engine a short while later, and they green-lit that…
Thanks. Were you ever told that you were the reason for “how difficult the production process was” – and that in fact, as a result of that process, you had a reputation within the building of being obstreperous and difficult to work with? (And yes, I ask this knowing that they greenlit Search Engine a year later.)
Sorry, tied up the past while.
I’m sure some blamed me for the bumps in the process, but I got along splendidly with Lynda Shorten and everyone else before The Contrarians, and I got along well with my team at Search Engine afterwards. From my perspective, the conflict was a direct result of the editorial material. People weren’t comfortable with it.
I can direct you to Geoff Siskind, who produced Search Engine and who can tell you about what it was like to work closely with me at the CBC.
I liked and respected most of the people I made radio with, and I hope they felt the same way, but I won’t argue that I clashed with the CBC culture.
Yes, I realize you had the AMA, so didn’t expect a reply before now. Thanks for getting back to me.
Speaking of the AMA, I saw you referenced a “smear job.” You don’t think that’s what I’m working on, do you?
No, I don’t think you’d set out to do so, and I’m sure you’d consider with caution any dubious info about me that came your way 🙂
So wait – if not me, then who were you thinking of when you floated the idea of a smear piece? Everyone else has already run adoring profiles. (Indeed, I believe we have, too.)
One reporter profiling me told me they had been shopped defamatory info about me, which I knew to be untrue. They wouldn’t say where they got this from.
I have been told on the record that, while developing The Contrarians at CBC, you faked a scene that you included in the pilot. Would you care to respond?
omg sure.
The pilot was “multiculturalism doesn’t work, we just eat each other’s sandwiches”.
In between interviews with writers and academics, we had comic vignettes where I would go into ethnic eateries and kibbitz with the staff. For example, I went into a falafel shop and tried to engage the woman behind the counter in a debate about who has the best hummus, Jews or arabs?
For one of these, I went into San Francesco Foods on Clinton and asked if the guy could put my veal parm sandwich in a roti or a pita instead of a bun. He gruffly said “No, we don’t have that kinda stuff here!”.
But I didn’t get it on tape. So I asked my buddy to gruffly say the same thing.
Later I told my colleague Jane Farrow, a senior producer on The Contrarians, that I had a friend re-create the bit.
We chatted a bit about it- should we do that kind of thing if the show got picked up and actually broadcast? After all, The Current had little comic vignettes at the top of their show, so there was a precedent for mixing staged comedy with hard news/current affairs. I don’t remember her voicing an opinion on this one way or the other. I used the tape for the un-broadcast pilot, and made a note to bring it up later with Lynda Shorten the executive producer.
Weeks later, once the show had been picked up. I was discussing future episodes with Lynda Shorten, and I mentioned that I had re-created the bit and asked if we should do that for on air episodes or not.
She was shocked. She killed the pilot episode, which we later re-did, and she hauled me into management’s office and put a note on my file.
It was surreal. The distinction between the funny parts of the show and the journalism in the show was very clear. And I was happy to simply not do scripted bits in the future. But this was all dealt with humourlessly and with the utmost severity.
Okay. Thanks for your input.
Sure. I have no problem telling that story publicly so long as it’s told honestly, which I trust you to do.
But I am curious about how it came to your attention and what motivated that.
That story is well known within CBC, going back years.
Motivations? Did you ask the women who came to you with allegations of abuse by Ghomeshi what their motivations were?
Yes
And did that negate what they had to say?
No, but had they been motivated by vengeance or a desire to ruin him in service of their own career interests, that would at a minimum have become part of the story.
Thank goodness they were all educated and employed, then.
I’ll tell you about that line someday.
I retract that. My apologies for that last email. I’ve been reading too much Canadaland.
