Source: CBC News

Our latest step: evaluating the breadth and depth of our news content

It's my pleasure to make my first appearance here as interim publisher of CBC News.

Regular readers of this space will know that CBC News is engaged in a news renewal initiative that, simply put, is a plan to make our news better and more relevant to Canadians.

We at CBC News — whether CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC Newsworld or CBCNews.ca — are proud of the service we provide to our audiences in Canada and around the world. We're proud to be recognized as among the best in the world at what we do. We have earned a reputation for fairness, credibility, accountability and transparency. We know that a reputation is hard won and easily corroded, so we take our responsibilities extremely seriously.

We also believe that we have a constant obligation to improve what we do and how we do it, in order to first maintain and then enhance our relevance to Canadians.

We have recently made public the launch of our latest initiative in this direction, which is a study to evaluate the breadth and depth of our news content. This study, to be conducted by an independent expert third party of both our English and French language services, will also gauge Canadians' expectations of what is required of a public broadcaster's news service. When the study is complete, we will make those results public.

To quote CBC president Hubert T. Lacroix from our news release: "Given the proliferation of news sources, Canadians are more demanding than ever when it comes to trusting what they see, hear and read. As a public broadcaster, we are quite rightly held to a higher standard by Canadians. We are expected to lead the way with respect to transparency, impartiality, credibility and accountability."

I believe it's important that we put this effort into context: It is not about fixing something that is broken. Rather, we will use the information and insights that we gain, as we do with all research, as a tool to help us understand how we resonate with Canadians to help us remain the most credible news source in the country and set a standard for broadcast journalism everywhere.

And while we believe this is a standard-setting exercise for a Canadian news organization, it's also very much in keeping what we have always done, which is to independently monitor, review and hold ourselves accountable for what we do.

Again, readers will recall our regular post-election reports, our Journalistic Standards and Practices and our Office of the Ombudsman, which is an avenue for those who wish to question our editorial decisions.

We anticipate that we'll be able to report on this exercise about a year from now. In the meantime, there will be no shortage of other issues, developments and situations — expected and unexpected — to be dealt with.

We look forward to the challenge and respectfully encourage you to remain engaged, vigilant and, as appropriate, critical of what we do. And if you like what we're doing, feel free to let us know that, too.

© CBC