Source : Canadian Press

CBC transfers reporter it says fed questions to Liberal MP at Mulroney hearing

OTTAWA _ Krista Erickson, an Ottawa-based CBC-TV reporter who CBC said fed questions to a Liberal MP during the Mulroney-Schreiber hearings in December, has been transferred to Toronto after the broadcaster found her actions "inappropriate."

"Those actions, while in pursuit of a journalistically legitimate story, were inappropriate and inconsistent with CBC News policies and procedures," the broadcaster said Monday in a rare, public display of its internal disciplinary process.

The open letter angered the union representing CBC journalists, which said it smacks of political pandering.

Erickson herself said she had been advised not to comment.

The letter cited CBC policy:

"Credibility is dependent not only on qualities such as accuracy and fairness in reporting and presentation, but also upon avoidance by both the organization and its journalists of associations or contacts which could reasonably give rise to perceptions of partiality.

"Any situation which could cause reasonable apprehension that a journalist or the organization is biased or under the influence of any pressure group, whether ideological, political, financial, social or cultural, must be avoided."

The CBC opened an investigation into the matter last month, after Doug Finley, director of political operations for the federal Conservative party, wrote a formal letter of complaint.

The questions, posed by Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to former prime minister Brian Mulroney during his appearance at the Commons ethics committee, dealt with any involvement by Mulroney in the recent spectrum auction for cellular and wireless devices.

They prompted loud complaints from Tories on the committee, who accused the Liberals of going on a "fishing expedition" unrelated to the Mulroney-Schreiber matter.

Rodriguez said he wrote his own questions, but Finley quoted Jean Lapierre, former Liberal cabinet minister and now a TV reporter, as saying they were written by a CBC journalist.

"Regardless of who wrote the questions, the fact that our national public broadcaster was actively co-operating with a political party in an attempt to embarrass the government raises serious questions about the impartiality of Canada's publicly funded national broadcaster," he wrote.

The complaint became fodder for angry right-wing bloggers, who pilloried the CBC as anti-Tory.

In its reply to Finley, the CBC agreed that Erickson provided questions to the MP, but denied any bias.

"Our investigation determined there was no bias in related news coverage," the letter said. "However, our reporter, acting on her own, used inappropriate tactics as a result of journalistic zeal, rather than partisan interest."

Rodriguez, however continued to insist that he wrote his own questions.

"One thing is sure, we get information from a lot of people and at the end of the day we choose what we ask as questions and that's exactly what I did," he said.

"At the end of the day I wrote the final questions. We get information from a lot of people, from a lot of sources and that's what we do all the time."

He refused to comment on the CBC's disciplinary action.

"I really don't know the details. That's really within CBC."

Until now, Erickson had not been publicly identified, but the CBC told Finley why it made its decision public:

"Given the potential risk to the journalistic credibility of our Ottawa bureau, its reporters and CBC News generally, we have chosen on an exceptional basis to make the detailed outcome of our disciplinary process available to you, our employees and the public at large."

The letter added that Finley can still take his complaint to Vince Carlin, the CBC ombudsman.

Karen Wirsig, communications co-ordinator for The Canadian Media Guild, which represents journalists at the CBC and other major news organizations, said the CBC's handling of the affair is disturbing.

"It smacks of political pandering, particularly in pre-empting whatever the ombudsman may decide and, as far as we're concerned, is totally unprecedented in the way it names a person who's the subject of a disciplinary process and names the result of that process for the world to see," she said.

"It's frankly quite shocking."

However, John Cruickshank, the veteran newspaper editor and publisher who was named publisher of CBC News last September, said the agency chose to go public to remove "a cloud of doubt" over the whole operation.

"It was just in fairness to the Ottawa bureau," he said. "When this intially came out, it was a suggestion it was several people, that this was a sign of CBC bias and everybody in the Ottawa bureau, everybody in CBC News, wants to make it clear this is not a sign of bias or unprofessionalism at all.

"This was an exceptional incident that we dealt with very quickly."

© Canadian Press

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