LETTTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
John Cruickshank
Canada Votes: well done
Independent report shows CBC coverage balanced and fair
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 | 8:37 PM ET
By John Cruickshank, CBC News
CBC News has always used a variety of tools and measures to gauge how well we do our job covering the news. Because they own us, Canadians expect a higher degree of fairness from us than from other broadcasters. Fairness and balance are qualities we always strive for, and during an election campaign the stakes are even higher.
One of the checks and balances that people are most familiar with is the Office of the Ombudsman. CBC is the only news organization in the country with an ombudsman who is an impartial voice for complaints from viewers, readers and listeners. Every year, the ombudsman responds to more than 1,000 inquiries dealing with issues of accuracy, integrity and/or fairness.
Another touchstone is our Journalistic Standards and Practices Handbook, also available online. It is a valuable tool that we use on a daily basis to help guide us through legal, ethical and journalistic land mines. Again, no other journalistic organization in the country has a similar set of formal guidelines, and most are not as transparent as we are about how they do their jobs.
And in each of the last several election campaigns, we have gone one step further and implemented a series of monitoring strategies.
Erin Research is an independent Canadian research firm that specializes in media analysis. We commissioned it to study our content on television, radio and online for the duration of the campaign from several vantage points:
- The amount of time we devoted to specific parties, issues and individuals.
- The direction (positive, negative or neutral) of every statement made.
- Gender equality and minority reflection.
- The relative proportion of analysts, politicians and citizens.
Erin also attempted to benchmark our coverage against some of the programming on our major broadcast competitor, CTV. Balance is a difficult concept to capture and quantify. There is no gold standard. These indicators, however, helped provide a snapshot in time.
Overall, in an interim report, Erin deems that our coverage was fair and balanced. Among the findings:
- Total airtime seems to be adequately divided among the parties, citizens/interest groups and analysts/experts. This suggests that the coverage provided a forum for discussion and was not just a reflection of events and agenda news.
- Interview time was almost equally divided among the three main parties, with the Conservative Party receiving slightly more time. This is a reflection of their status as the governing party going into the election.
- Being the ruling party, the Conservatives also received a larger proportion of negative comments. This is consistent with governing parties in past campaigns and was mirrored in our competition.
- While we did better than our competitors in reflecting visible minorities and women, there is still some work to do on that front.
Erin also provided us with weekly reports during the campaign. It helped guide our coverage and decide if course correction was needed; it allowed us to make informed choices about what we covered and how we covered it. In addition, again this year, we convened an independent panel of engaged citizens to give us weekly feedback on our programming. The six-member panel included input from all reaches of the political spectrum from across the country. Their weekly discussions with our programmers were invaluable in helping us fine-tune our coverage.
You can read the detailed interim report for yourself. (The final report became available on Nov. 6.)
One of our guiding principles during the campaign was to be as open and transparent with our viewers, listeners and readers as possible. We encouraged their contributions to stories and endeavoured to reflect their concerns. Making the Erin Research report public is another step in that process.
Our commitment to Canadians will not end with the campaign. We will continue to monitor what we do and provide feedback to you on a regular basis. As always, we are interested in hearing what you think.
