Rally for the CBC

It was the largest labour dispute in CBC history, and somehow the quietest. Barely a blip on the media's radar one day, and then the nation's largest broadcaster and most trusted news source all but disappeared.

In the days and weeks that followed, CBC management looked hushed and guilty while workers appeared eloquent, reasonable and fair.

Was this polarized coverage a true reflection of the labour dispute, or evidence of media bias as journalists in other media favoured their locked-out colleagues?

On August 15, 2005, CBC management locked out some 5500 unionized workers, including journalists, technicians, producers, directors, hosts and administrative staff.

The lockout ended 15 months of failed bargaining over limits on contract workers, and about 40 other items. The CBC wanted to use more temporary workers for longer periods of time unfettered by contracts or permanent positions.

While the general consensus among CBC workers was that management was being unreasonable, Stephen Puddicombe, CBC Radio national reporter for the Maritimes, had a different perspective:

"It was a contract negotiation, and all of a sudden, in May, we get this notice saying, 'Things aren't going well, there's either going to be a strike or a lockout or something,' and we all wondered, 'What?' We had no clue, right?" says Puddicombe.

CBC employees weren't the only ones caught unawares by the lockout. The CBC itself did not report on negotiations going sour, leaving the public with no knowledge of the impending lockout.

Bruce Wark, former CBC employee and an editor at The Coast in Halifax, says this type of behaviour from the CBC is not unusual.

"As a general rule, Canadian media outlets shy away from covering themselves. On the Sunday before the lockout, there was little national coverage on CBC itself. In fact, The World this Weekend on CBC Radio and the CBC television national news did not mention that the lockout would take effect beginning at midnight," says Wark.

Chronology of the CBC strike

Journalists forced to look at their own

CBC employees were far too concerned with avoiding navel-gazing journalism that focused too closely on themselves, says Wark. As a result, they left the public in the dark.

It wasn't that Canadians weren't interested in the conflict. According to a Decima Research poll conducted one week into the lockout, 71 percent of people surveyed knew about the dispute.

People knew about it because they were hearing about it from journalists at other media outlets, who also happened to be friends and colleagues of the locked out CBC employees.

As Laura Graham, a contract reporter for CBC Radio during the lockout, explains, "There are huge biases, the Chronicle Herald is covered by the same union for example. That was the case in a lot of places in Canada. It was all a bit incestuous that way."

Despite this, Graham thinks her colleagues did the best they could in a hard situation.

"Any story we go out to do, we have biases on. And while these ones might have been a little more closer to home, I never really singled out any one story where it was obviously sympathetic to one side or another."

David Swick, ethics professor at the University of King's College, recognizes the difficulties in reporting on other journalists.

"I think there can be big, big problems in journalists covering other journalists. Because we are in some ways a tribe, we can tend to sympathize with one another."

At the same time, Swick thinks that these biases can be overcome.

"None of us are perfect. We all have, based on our history and upbringing, things that we wish weren't there. When dealing with questions of race or religion, the first thing you have to do is face your own fears. You have to realize, 'I've got a built-in dislike or suspicion or whatever.' And you better figure that out, take it heavily into account and move through it so that you can do fair and accurate work."

But how do these ideals reflect against the actual reporting on the lockout?

In essence, the union appeared victimized while the CBC was the villain.

At best for the CBC management were editorials that said the lockout would help change an already dull CBC for the better.

As "The CBC's Challenge" by Mark McNeil of the Hamilton Spectator explains, "The CBC lockout is into its sixth week and perhaps the time has come to broaden the public discussion to recognize the corporation's problems are much larger than the current labour dispute." McNeil says, "For years, the CBC has failed to take the tough medicine it needs to find a sustainable role in a broadcasting universe of hundreds of choices."

Others, like Andrew Coyne in "Living Without The CBC" for the National Post, thought CBC viewership was already dropping and the lockout would have no effect. "The news is not that the CBC's audience numbers have declined since the lockout, it's how low they were to begin with."

BBC outrage

One of the most interesting attacks on the CBC management had to do with their use of BBC material to supplement their bare bones broadcast. In the Canadian Press article "Domestic News Lacking During CBC Lockout; BBC Fills Some News Gaps", Ian Morrison, a spokesman for media watchdog, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said "The BBC as lockout-breaker, it's a very interesting model."

It was interesting because BBC unionized workers felt indignation; along with their CBC counterparts; over the use of their work to keep help keep the Canadian union members locked out.

Another anti-management article, this one for the Canada Business News Network, was "CBC Lockout Foolish and Dangerous Warn Union Leaders". In it, United Steel Workers Union national director, Ken Neumann says that it's outrageous for a public broadcaster to demand their workers "abandon their careers in favour of becoming independent contractors with no security."

Really, the only pro-management stories were the ones that attacked the old methods of running the CBC. And because the CBC's spokesman failed to correct these stories, the coverage remained decidedly biased against the management.

Jeff Keays, an employee at the CBC who was hired after the lockout explains that, "Both sides had spokespeople they were willing to put in front of the media."

The CBC management had one spokesperson, Jason MacDonald, and one message.

But the union, on the other hand, had the voices of 5500 locked out employees in addition to spokesman Arnold Amber.

The locked out journalists were ready and sprang into action the minute the doors clicked shut behind them.

They used their already established media contacts to get their voices heard.

Without work, the extremely driven and creative people that worked at the CBC were all kind of bored. And this boredom gave way to a kind of anti-CBC network in the forms of blogs, podcasts, press releases, events and radio shows on campus radio stations.

The efforts of these locked out journalists soon garnered a lot of attention as an alternative to the undermanned CBC.

Blogs like Laura Graham's Locked-Out Laura, pirate radio shows like Eyepatch Radio, Soundtrack of Our (Locked-Out) Lives and It's a Fine Line filled the void left by regular CBC programming on radio and the web. A site, managed by the online editor of CBC.ca, CBCUnlocked.com, became a very substantial online source for news where CBC.ca had fallen into disrepair.

But it wasn't just the locked out journalists that were showing a pro-media bias.

In an article for the Globe and Mail, "CBC Managers Look Like Twerps in This Farce", John Doyle says of the picket line, "The thing is, they might as well have a conga line going because, after thirty something days, they're winning. It's CBC management who look like twerps, not them. In the public-relations and psychological war that is the CBC lockout, the locked-out workers are winning, hands-down."

In Kelly Egan's article for the Ottawa Citizen, "What to Do When Faced With 54 Dozen Hot Dogs", he shows support for the locked out picketers explaining, "I had never really considered the indignity of walking in a circle for four hours, carrying a cardboard sign, on a route to nowhere."

Also, In Karen Toole-Mitchell's article for the Winnipeg Free Press, "CBC Lockout Has a Spiritual Dimension to It", she says, "What the employees of CBC want is a contract of some permanence for employment and career focus. A contract is a covenant of respect. It's treating people like they have permanence of meaning and skill, and are not simply throwaways when the budget line dictates change."

So, if you take a look at the reporting during this period, there's obviously support for the locked out workers, and contempt for the CBC.

But is this wrong? It's hard to say.

Says Swick, "On the other hand, who else is going to do the story? Journalists know how to talk to people and do research, and are trained to present information in a way that is accurate and fair. Journalists are not perfect, but we may be as good as it gets."