Evan Solomon — more the face of the Corporation than Peter Mansbridge, if only because he was heir-apparent to the big chair on The National — has been caught dead to rights steering contacts to an art dealer.
That art dealer, Bruce Bailey, paid Solomon a 10 per cent commission on art sold to rich and powerful people like BlackBerry co-founder Jim Balsillie and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney — or the “Guv”, as Solomon referred to him in chummy emails to Bailey.
According to the Toronto Star, which broke the story, Solomon was excited by the possibilities of tapping into Carney’s blue-chip network of the rich and powerful for his art business. In arranging sales to both Balsillie and Carney, Solomon never divulged that he was being paid for brokering the deals. There was a contract between the news anchor and Bailey, under which Solomon pocketed $300,000 for helping to place Bailey’s art works with well-heeled customers.
Things apparently went south on the secret enterprise when greed or bad faith — it’s not clear which — entered the picture. Bailey balked at paying Solomon a $1,070,000 commission for the sale of a Peter Doig painting, offering instead a paltry $200,000. Before that happened, Solomon says he disclosed his art business to the CBC sometime in April.
I wonder what he disclosed? After all, when the Toronto Star contacted Solomon for their story much later, Solomon denied that he had ever had anything to do with selling art. At the time he made that claim, Solomon knew perfectly well that he had had a signed contract with Bailey to do exactly that since 2013. Although the relationship had ended, it was false to claim it had never existed.
Then, Solomon began to change the narrative as he found himself surrounded by inconvenient facts. He finally arrived at a version of events closer to the claims of the Star story, complete with an exculpatory self-judgement: he didn’t see a conflict between his news job and his cultural moonlighting. Yet he still used these words in his public statement issued through his lawyer:
“I am deeply sorry for the damage that my activities have done to the trust that the CBC and its viewers and listeners have put in me …”
There’s only one way to read this. Solomon didn’t worry about the obvious ethical problem while he was taking Bailey’s money; he was troubled only by the public relations disaster he triggered when his entrepreneurial sideline became public.
CBC dumped Solomon faster than an air-drop in a war zone. It could hardly do otherwise. Remember that it was the Star which broke another story earlier this year about Leslie Roberts, Global’s then-anchor for its Toronto evening news, being co-owner of a public relations firm called Buzz PR.
Worse, some of Buzz’s clients appeared on Roberts’ show. Roberts defended himself this way: “When I sit on the anchor desk, I am in journalist mode …” And when he wasn’t on the desk? That’s the mode Global worried about before deciding to suspend him. In journalism, there is no ‘mode’, only authenticity — either you’re in the profession boots and all, or you shouldn’t be in at all. There’s no such thing as a part-time journalist.
But the CBC’s play of the Roberts story was hardly the only thing that forced them to act in Solomon’s case. For starters, this is the public network that produced Jian Ghomeshi.
The CBC had heard complaints about this deeply troubled “superstar” and his antics but did nothing about it until lightning was about to strike in the form of an expose by Jesse Brown of Canadaland.
The first stories about Ghomeshi’s departure from the Corporation talked about a self-imposed time-out. Pure BS. Then all hell broke loose. One after another, Ghomeshi’s alleged victims gradually found their voices. Investigations were launched. People at the CBC lost their jobs for not outing the radio personality in a timely way, and the performer who was making it big with his Canadian show in the U.S. is now on trial for sexual assault.
Then there were all those CBC “personalities” (entrepreneurs?) who did not seem to understand the words written by CBC’s ombudsman Esther Enkin when she said that “CBC policy states that CBC staff cannot use their association with CBC for personal gain.”
The list of those who did is long and inglorious — rather like the wallowers in the public trough that Auditor General Michael Ferguson outed in the Senate: Amanda Lang, Peter Mansbridge, Rex Murphy, Dianne Buckner and yes, Evan Solomon — many being paid speaking fees “north of $10,000″, as CBC critic Frank Koller wrote to the CBC’s ombudsman.
Worse, in nearly every case the people cutting cheques were either lobbyists registered with the federal government or organizations with a keen interest in influencing public policy. In other words, the stars were monetizing their fame by taking payment from people they were supposed to be covering — as journalists. Never mind angels dancing on the head of a pin. How many prominent CBC personalities could fit in the deep pockets of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers?
When my tenacious colleague Andrew Mitrovica outed this rot in his column, he was blown off as a “blogger” by the likes of Mansbridge. Reading teleprompters for a living inspires such delusions of grandeur. (Mansbridge is mostly politician; Mitrovica’s all journalist.)
Amanda Lang, CBC’s senior business “reporter”, was personally involved with her sources and accepted speaking fees from institutions and companies she covered. She was allowed to break the rules. She argued that only the “haters” objected to her conduct. (I didn’t know Stephen Harper had a sister.)
Jennifer McGuire, the editor-in-chief of CBC news, fiercely defended Lang when her star started taking heat for her obvious conflicts of interest. Even after the rules changed, outlawing speeches like the one Lang gave to Sun Life, McGuire let her pet go ahead with it. The coddling of poodles like Lang is nauseous to most CBC employees. The morale at the Corp is lower than it is at FIFA.
McGuire’s explanation was empty and silly; Lang, she said, had committed to the speech before the rules forbidding talk-for-pay were changed, ergo, Lang was allowed to meet her “obligation.”
Lang didn’t have to give the speech for six months, so Sun Life had plenty of time to rent another famous set of compliant tonsils. As it played out in this case, McGuire showed that her commitment was to scheduling, not ethics. For a corporation taking on water over the issue of trust, that was a disastrous — and telling — choice.
Journalism is not about sleeping with your sources. It’s not about trying to please the government by bending the tone and content of stories or broadcasts to the political agenda of the day. And it’s certainly not about monetizing your fame with the very people you report on. Nor is it about brokering art deals. All of this is being done at CBC News under the disastrous stewardship of McGuire — who should be fired. What the CBC needs to do is to put truth and trust in the chair — not stars.
Interestingly, it was McGuire’s decision when Evan Solomon was recruited to hire not a person with a background in political journalism, but someone with a “different sensibility.” Well, she got that. At the same time, CTV put a great political reporter in the chair on their nightly television broadcast — and the result has been scoop after scoop, including the Wright/Duffy Affair, broken by Robert Fife.
There are two cautionary tales McGuire and her colleagues should bear in mind before filling Solomon’s chair. When the CEO of CTV tried to shut down a news item that required an interview with a member of the CRTC, the network’s anchor and Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife objected. The interview went forward. The CEO was quickly removed.
In the United States, NBC anchor Brian Williams had just signed a $50 million, five-year contract and had a lock on the prime time evening news ratings. There was no room in the backpack for all the awards. Then it became known that he had embellished his war zone adventures. Despite the ratings and the awards, NBC executives pushed him from the chair; so far, he has not returned.
CBC News has forgotten that it’s in the trust business, not the show business. Even in the age of clowns like Ezra Levant, there’s a difference. Vive la différence.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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