BIGGER THAN ME PODCAST
Get inspired by people who make a difference bigger than themselves with host Aaron Pete. From overcoming obstacles to finding motivation, these guests will inspire you to dream bigger and strive for greatness!
Popular guests include Premier David Eby, Vassy Kapelos, Brent Butt, Ariel Helwani, Rav Arora, Tara Henley and the Millennial Therapist.
BIGGER THAN ME PODCAST
Tara Henley: 15 Ways to Fix the CBC Before It’s Too Late
The CBC is in crisis—can it be saved? Journalist Tara Henley joins Aaron Pete to break down 15 ways to fix the CBC before it’s too late. They expose media bias, lost public trust, government influence, and why so many Canadians are calling to defund the CBC.
Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, aaron Peet. It has been a wild time for news in Canada. I'm speaking with a journalist who has consistently fought for nuance, different perspectives and open discussions. We explore the wild news stories of the past year, failures of the mainstream media and how we could reform the CBC. My guest today is Tara Henley. Tara, it is an honor to have you back on the show. To start off, I want to go through some things that have happened since the last time you were on the show.
Aaron Pete:Joe Biden dropped out of the US election. Donald Trump was almost assassinated twice. Elon Musk endorsed Trump. Donald Trump was almost assassinated twice. Elon Musk endorsed Trump. Kamala Harris stepped into the race. Donald Trump won the US election. Chrystia Freeland resigned from cabinet and as finance minister. The day before the fall economic update, justin Trudeau stated he has an intent to resign. Pierre Poliev has risen in the polls significantly. Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland have entered the liberal leadership race and Trump is threatening 25% tariffs. How do you digest all of this news?
Tara Henley:Well, it's good to be with you. I always love coming on your show and it's such a pleasure to get to watch your star rise. I'm so happy for your recent successes. I laughed when you're reading out that list, not because any of those developments are funny None of them are but because you're right, the news cycle has been insane.
Tara Henley:This is something that I text with journalists about all the time. Like a lot of us are not sleeping, we're lucky if we're eating. Like a lot of us are working seven days a week. Sometimes, aaron, I'll start an article at like six in the morning and by noon the entire context for the article has shifted to the point where it's not publishable. It's really something right now, and it's important to juggle the sort of global developments, particularly in the United States, which impact us so much, with the fact that our own government is in crisis right now and that so many files in this country are in shambles, and so it's yeah, it's quite the juggling act, as I'm sure you know and are also trying to figure out. What do you cover from day to day, when you could do something every single day and never get caught up?
Aaron Pete:That was one of my big questions as Canadians. Like for journalists, I can't imagine how hard it is. But for Canadians, how are they supposed to differentiate between sensational stories versus kind of key things? Like for me, it felt like the Chrystia Freeland resignation really bubbled over, like it. It hit the zeitgeist, it hit general canadians and we went what is going in all going on in ottawa, like something's happened here, and so how do we help canadians kind of stay informed in a good way that that doesn't push too much content on them?
Tara Henley:I think it's a really big question and it's one frankly, I don't have an answer for yet. I hear hear from a lot of Canadians. I try to talk to a lot of people informally everywhere I go, as well as getting emails from the public and direct messages and tweets and all of the normal channels. I think people are very overwhelmed right now, and I think, first of all, we can never forget to say that we are in a cost of living crisis, and that is really the foundational problem for most people that I know right now is that rent is extremely high, you know, mortgages are high, food is high, everything is difficult to make ends meet right now, and so I think that's people's primary concern, and as it should be.
Tara Henley:I mean that that's scary stuff for a lot of us, right? So, um, I think that's the first thing, and then the second thing is how do you deal with these rolling waves in terms of the new cycle, and unfortunately, a lot of people I know are checking out because it's just too much, and you know, if you're already dealing with financial pressures in your life, you, you are really struggling to keep your spirits up and um, and in this country, as I said, with so many files collapsing, a lot of people are saying I just can't take all the bad news right now, and so we as journalists, I think, have a uphill battle on that front. Um, just to connect with people to hear their concerns I think listening sometimes is the biggest part of the job but then also to try to connect these bigger issues that are happening in Ottawa with the material conditions on the ground.
Aaron Pete:I want to get to your piece how to Save the CBC, because I think that's a really interesting article that pulls out a lot of kind of important discussions we're having what does it mean to be a Canadian and how do we kind of understand Canadian culture? But before we get there, I do want to kind of go through a postmortem on some stories and get your feedback. I find you to be very fair and I I hear a lot of stories and so much has changed since 2020. I just kind of want to try and get your perspective on some of these issues. So, going back March 24th 2020, the CBC wrote as a headline no, the new coronavirus wasn't created in a lab. Scientists say that's a complete 180 from January 26, 2025.
Aaron Pete:Cbc, in association with the Associated Press, writes CIA believes COVID most likely originated from a lab, but has low confidence in its own findings. And so to me, during 2020, if you said it came from a lab, you were a conspiracy theorist. We were removing that from Facebook. That was very controversial. Sometimes people were calling you a racist if you believed that because you were pushing that narrative, how do we digest that as Canadians? Because I think it's just regardless of COVID, it's jarring to have the narrative shift to that extent.
Tara Henley:Yeah, I'm really glad that you brought that one up in particular. It's a really important one. When I speak to the public and we talk about lost public trust because you probably know, I worked on that 2024 Massey essay on the state of the media all about lost public trust and I'm now writing a book on that and when you talk to the public, this particular story really rankles. People really are upset about this story in particular and, as you say, it's partly because there was a suggestion with this story that you were a bigot if you were asking questions about it or that you were a conspiracy theorist, which is a terrible aspersion, right. So I think the public is still very upset about this one. And actually there is a Canadian journalist who did very early work on this Elaine Dyer-Thwyer. I'm sorry, elaine, if I'm messing up your last name, I don't have it right in front of me, but I read her wonderful book and she came on the podcast to talk about it, and this is going back a couple of years now that she was one of the early journalists investigative journalists on this story and pointing to the arc of the story and the fact that those who were calling it a conspiracy theory actually had vested financial and professional interests in covering up this story as we're, as we're all learning now. So Canada was actually very early on this, but the Canadian mainstream media was not particularly early on this, and I think that it's important for there to be a post-mortem about these big stories that matter so much to people.
Tara Henley:Another one would be the trucker protests and the use of the Emergencies Act. These are things I hear from the public all the time, and I think even this one is a particularly funny one, but I'll mention it anyways is that the chief medical officer of health for the country came out at one point and said that if you are single and you are going this is during the height of the pandemic and you are going to have intercourse, you should wear a mask. We were mocked the world over for that comment Last time I checked. That story is still up on many of the mainstream media's sites without any context, without any questions on that. Um, you know so that it was a very bold thing to say and um, I think a lot of these stories really stick with people and that it would be healthy for our country and also in the United States as to revisit some of this coverage, and I don't know that the media will do that, but what I hear from the public.
Tara Henley:Most recently, I've been doing a series interviewing subscribers across the country and one of the subscribers to my sub stack said look like if the media came out on these big stories, particularly pandemic stories, and just said we got it wrong, we got it wrong, here's why and we're gonna do better in the future that she would definitely give them a pass. I think people are more generous as well than the public discourse necessarily reveals, but they do want some closure on these big stories. So I'm really glad you brought that up.
Aaron Pete:There's a few more. I want to go through really quickly that out. There's a few more I want to go through really quickly. Cbc in July 17th 2021. Headline yes, vaccines curb COVID-19 transmission, but that's not enough to protect those without a shot. Then CBC July 17th 2022, you'll likely catch COVID again and again. Will each round feel milder? The switch from vaccines will protect you, um, that they'll protect everybody. That if you're not vaccinated, you don't care about other people to. Even if you have a vaccine, you likely won't be able to prevent transmission. Anthony fauci's gone on um, like cnn and other news channels, and said I'm vaccinated four times and I just caught covid the the movement. On that issue, I think you can argue more of a scientific like we didn't know at the early stages, but we were told that they did know. They didn't come across as unsure when they were first reporting those stories, mm-hmm.
Tara Henley:Yes, and just to go back for one moment to the Elaine Dewar book on the origins of the COVID pandemic, I should mention too that when I was at CBC in the last year that I was there, I did cover that book at CBC. There's always exceptions, which I think we have to be really clear about. With all of the mainstream narratives, there's always going to be exceptions that get through, and I think it's really important just to state that because it's not uniform, but we still have to pay attention to the dominant narrative and the dominant coverage. In terms of the vaccines, this is a really difficult story for our country because and again, I said this while I was still at the CBC that it was already clear when I was there that the vaccines, for whatever their benefits, were not stopping transmission and infection. And you could see this Like if in the newsroom I would look every day at the hospitalization reports and they were recording how many people were vaccinated and how many people weren't. So it was very clear, dynamic already and that it just was not getting enough attention. And then, in addition, the myocarditis. There was early research from Ontario Public Health on this, with the Dalai Lama Center at U of T, which studies disease, and there was early research on this. And again, this did get on the airwaves. I believe we did a story at six o'clock in the morning on this. So these things did get through in small dribs and drabs, but the average listener or viewer probably wasn't aware of them because the dominant narrative was so strong.
Tara Henley:And my point about the vaccines was that if we know that it doesn't stop transmission and infection, if we know there's even a small chance of myocarditis, that people should be able to make their own decisions about this and should not be forced, on threat of losing your livelihood, to get these vaccines. And that was a very difficult thing to say a couple of years ago, and I have heard from tons of Canadians who lost big time on this, who lost jobs, who lost livelihoods, who lost contact with family members. This was a hugely divisive issue in this country and it did not need to be. We could have had an open public conversation about this. We could have given people all the information that they needed to make their own decisions on this. We were already very, very highly vaccinated country and unfortunately, our prime minister in particular chose to use very divisive language over around this and it has a real human cost, and I'm still hearing from people on this issue because it impacted their lives so hugely.
Tara Henley:And I think we in the media have a duty to go back and look at those stories again and understand where we went wrong. And I have a lot of compassion for the media too. A lot of us were working all day, every day. It was some of the hardest work we've ever had to do. We were ourselves frightened. We were not in the newsroom. We were ourselves frightened. We were not in the newsroom, we were at home, we were isolated. A lot of us don't have a science background. I include myself in that, covering this story day after day after day. Like I, have compassion for us too, but we have to find a way as a country to reconcile these big stories, and ignoring it is not making them go away.
Aaron Pete:The overlap I find with these stories and why I want to get your thoughts on it is because I feel like we need some sort of connection between how individual journalists approach the story and whether or not they were proven right. It's kind of like when I see these discussions take place, there's a bit of like well, nobody knew and so it's complicated, but if you got it right like to me you deserve a little bit more push up in terms of your notoriety and the respect people have on your name. Like we have to give credit where credit's due, to those individuals who actually got the story right when it wasn't easy to do so. And I just recently interviewed Maxine Bernier and one of the pieces I did give him credit on was just hey, you stood up at a time.
Aaron Pete:It's incredibly difficult to whether we agree on our politics, whether or not we see eye to eye on every issue. That's besides the point. You did something that was not easy to do at the height of when it wasn't easy to do it, and so you deserve some credit and some kudos for being willing to stand up to a mob, because that's the hardest part. It's so easy to kind of fall in line and all of these stories kind of show me that if you were kind of had suspicions or fears about the vaccine or where the origins were, that was unpopular to do. But if you were willing to do that like we have to give it was you were probably called names, insulted, judged, mocked and like. Now we're looking back and we need to give those people who are willing to stand up a bit more credit than the people who chose not to. And those people who chose not to need to reflect and figure out how they can do better in the future.
Tara Henley:I'll have to see that interview. I haven't seen it yet for sure, and you know I'd probably have some differences with Maxime Bernier on issues, but I think that he was right that it needed to be a public conversation in this country. I think there was nothing to lose by having this conversation openly. We're all adults, you know. I just don't see why we couldn't have done that. So I think that's the chief, chief point that I want to make is open discussion and dialogue and debate. That's what we need more of in this country and that's what we're pulling back from is that atmosphere where you couldn't discuss these things and when the costs for people who insisted on discussing them were so high.
Aaron Pete:We're so high. The last one I want to touch on, that I'm sure you've seen, was on July 3rd Biden sharp as attack. White House defends Biden mental acuity sharp as ever, according to the Rolling Stones reporting. This was said by CNN, msnbc and Nancy Pelosi. A little under a few weeks later, july 21st, he drops out of the race after a horrible debate performance and to me that one's just a reflection of how strong those narratives can become and how pushing a story goes beyond just the facts and becomes about kind of misinforming people and often mainstream media accuses independent media of misinformation and disinformation and malinformation and all these words. But you look at some of these stories and you go well, wait, who was right in the end on questioning Biden's performance and mental acuity at that time?
Tara Henley:Yeah, that's a really big story and I'm actually going to cover that story in my book because I think that's a really pivotal one for Americans. That's what I hear a lot from Americans about massive lost trust is that story in particular. That story is interesting because the independent press in the United States is much stronger than the independent press in Canada and so there were two parallel tracks and coverage happening at the very same time. There was what was being reported in the independent press and the opinion pieces and then what was happening in the mainstream press, and it's unfortunately converged at that moment of the debate where American citizens were able to see for themselves the unfortunate decline that Biden was going through, and it was quite a rude awakening for so many people in the public. I think part of the problem is that you know in this country for sure, and also in the United States to some extent, that there's just two conversations happening all the time. There's the conversations that are happening informally. You know around dinner tables at the dog park, you know in coffee shops, where people are speaking relatively freely certainly not as freely as we used to but are saying their opinions and trying to make sense of these big stories, and then there's the mainstream conversations, and the gap between those two is just it's too big to be sustainable. It's just too big to be sustainable. We have to allow more voices, more perspectives, more opinions into the mainstream. It's just not healthy for us otherwise. I think.
Tara Henley:Another story I would bring up, if you'll humor me for a moment, that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the conversation in this country around gender issues or around trans issues.
Tara Henley:This is something you really cannot talk about in the mainstream at all. It was a sleeper issue in the American election and then became a very big issue, as we've seen in recent weeks that I personally had talked to hardcore Democrats, feminist Democrats who voted for Trump over this issue, and I've been hearing rumblings like that in Canada for a long time Parents very concerned, People very much wanting to honor trans rights but having real qualms about, for example, elementary and high school kids sharing the same washrooms. There's all kinds of issues to navigate, with that Menstruation being one of them, If you'll excuse me for getting into detail there, but these are big issues again and this is something we're ignoring and it's going to bubble up and I wish we could just have frank, compassionate conversations. I have really big faith in the Canadian public that we are capable of that, that we can be respectful to all sides. It just doesn't seem to be happening right now and it's to our detriment.
Aaron Pete:I agree and I think it's a call on stronger leadership, because this is one of the reflections I had with Mr Bernier was the gap I see between a lot of the general public on issues like this is a sense of compassion, that if you come at the topics like trans or other issues, if you're not compassionate the other one that I think of is Indian residential school mass graves is if you come at it with a lack of compassion, you almost you can't win that argument, because Canadians want to be compassionate.
Aaron Pete:That's the position. So when I look at how Daniel Smith approached trying to legislate and address the topic of trans people, it was very different than what we had seen from other conservatives who were more jarring in their rhetoric. Premier Daniel Smith made it about health issues and making sure you have proper health care and, I think, just the reframing, the ability to have compassion and respect for people who are going through that. Because that's where you lose me as someone who is interested in what you have to say, if you're not at least trying to have an honest conversation that's not trying to bully people or take away rights or do something disrespectful to individuals. I can't imagine what that would be like, and so if you don't come at it from that perspective, which is often how conservatives approach those types of topics, if you don't bring that compassion, I think you lose a lot of people and there's a desire to address the issue, but in a compassionate and thoughtful way.
Tara Henley:I think you're very right. I hear this from Canadians all the time on the contentious issues that the vast majority of people want to be respectful of their fellow citizens and like look, trans people are Canadian citizens, they are our fellow citizens. We want the absolute best for them. We want full rights under the law. We want people to be able to live in dignity and respect. There are areas where there's clashes of rights that we're gonna have to negotiate women's sports, prisons, you know, washrooms.
Tara Henley:These are contentious issues but again, if we could have open conversations about them, we would be able to do that in a calm and rational and respectful way, as opposed to stifling all those conversations, which makes people very angry and then, when the debate finally happens, it's not the kind of debate that we would like to see. So I think we have to go back to understanding. There's a lot of perspectives on these issues across the country. People are not evil or immoral for having different perspectives on this. They're tricky issues. They're morally fraught. We have to learn to negotiate those conversations in public, which is hard to do those conversations in public, which is hard to do.
Aaron Pete:I couldn't agree more. Let's talk about your article how to Save the CBC. I think initially for some people in the political sphere that's going to be a jarring idea is saving the CBC. But I'm hoping, very briefly, you can take us back to your work in the CBC, some reflections you had when you were working there. What does the CBC look like when it's at its best from your perspective?
Tara Henley:Yeah. So you know that I love the CBC. I said that on your first podcast that we ever did together. Part of the reason why I went public with my criticisms was because I felt like nobody else was going to say the things that needed to be said and that we were going to lose the CBC if we didn't have a frank conversation. I still feel that way and this last weekend I was invited to speak at Digital Media on the Crossroads, a big industry conference in Toronto, and I took the opportunity there to make the case for saving the CBC, for not defunding the CBC, and I felt I was uniquely positioned to make that case because I have been so critical, but also because, as you can imagine, after my resignation letter went viral, I heard from thousands of Canadians on this issue and I've had so many conversations and I felt like I had a decent handle on what the actual criticisms were. So and that's what I wanted to talk about I don't think the CBC has been or is currently doing a very good job of addressing those criticisms. So McGill's Center for Technology recently did a survey. It showed that 78% of Canadians would like the CBC to continue. We hear that stat all the time in the media right now.
Tara Henley:The second part of that sentence is if it addresses its major criticisms and it doesn't get repeated, and that's a shame because it is a conversation that has to happen. I would say there are four major criticisms that I counter all the time. One is bias. Two is mistakes, particularly in pandemic coverage, particularly in that 2021-22 era that you and I have just been talking about. The CBC's own records show during that period, the ombudsman has reported a 60% increase in complaints during that time. We can't gloss over these things. We're going to have to deal with them. It's going to be painful. And then there's the complaint from within the media as a whole that the CBC is using its $1.4 billion advantage to compete against struggling media and startups like yourself and like me. And the fourth is an abuse of the Taxpayers Trust. I know you had the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on in the past. You're, I'm sure, familiar with all the arguments there, but the executive salaries are quite high. The VTs are making almost $500,000 a year. We know last year from Freedom of Information requests, the CBC paid out more than $18 million in bonuses. These are things that are very difficult for the taxpayer to accept and there has to be a conversation about that as well. Even when you look at the numbers from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation since 2015, there has been something like 231% increase in CBC staff making over $100,000 a year. Again, we are in a cost of living crisis. People across the country are having difficulty buying food that does not sit well. So those are the big criticisms.
Tara Henley:My piece sets out 15 ideas, any one of which would signal real change. I'm not under any illusions that the CBC is going to do these things. I just wanted to demonstrate what it might look like to have real change and why I wanted to do that is to come back to your question, which is what is a positive vision of the CBC? And right now, leadership has taken the approach of blaming external factors for its low TV numbers, for its declining public relevance, for the anger from the public, and it has pointed the finger at things like big tech, misinformation, that kind of thing. It's not a winning strategy. It's not going to convince people, particularly people that I hear from, who feel a sense of betrayal from the public broadcaster. It's a very emotional topic and I was reminded of that again this weekend. People feel personally betrayed, and the reason they feel betrayed is a good reason. It's because they love the institution. So that brings me back to your question about what can it be? What could it be? What has it been in the past?
Tara Henley:It has a unique ability, when it's functioning properly, to forge national identity, to create social cohesion. We have a ton of immigrants coming to our country. How do they acclimatize to news and politics and culture? Who's letting them know what they've joined, what this country is about? You know, how are we understanding what we have in common across the country? Another one of my subscribers that I interviewed said you know, how do we create something that someone who grew up in downtown Toronto, who is an IT person, has something in common with someone in Saskatchewan who is at the farmer's market every week? That takes work and it takes deep personal storytelling. And the CBC used to and sometimes is because there's lots of great people there, very, very good at that. That's what I grew up on. I grew up on listening to CBC radio. Cbc radio is the reason I became a journalist Sitting in a car listening to an interview I don't know if it was Studs Terkel, because I've never been able to find that interview again talking about.
Tara Henley:Why did you become a journalist? And he said because I love people, I love hearing people's stories. I want to know why, what it feels like to live a different life. I want to know what that person feels like. I want to know what the person and this is again a very old interview with the person demonstrating against the Vietnam war why? What do they feel like? What are their experiences? What have they lost? What are they thinking through? What is a civil rights protester? What is their story? Where do they come from? What are they thinking about?
Tara Henley:I want to know what it feels like to be someone else, and I think CBC used to give us that. It used to give us. What are our fellow countrymen going through? What's important to them? What is life in small town Newfoundland like? What is life in Manitoba like? You know? What does it mean to live in those places and experience what you're experiencing?
Tara Henley:I want to hear more of that. I want to hear less identity politics. I want to hear more of that. And I'm not saying identity politics should go away. That's part of the pie, but let's not have it be the whole pie. It's really turning people off, and then the other side of that as well is accurate reporting, accurate news, so that we have a common set of shared facts in this country that we can debate and discuss. We really need that.
Tara Henley:Another thing is current affairs programming. So many of the morning radio shows across the country still do a great job of this, of really discussing and debating the key issues in communities across the country and giving people a sense of what's actually happening all around them. What are the big issues? What's happening at City Hall? What festival is on right now? What does it mean to the community? All of those kinds of questions and, again, the discussing and debating from a range of different perspectives. We're losing so much of the public debate right now and it's sad because the coverage gets really tedious and again, that gap between the public and the private is too big. We want to hear what people think. We need to know if we're going to be governed correctly, first of all. But we also just don't? We have curiosity about other people in this country, Don't? We want to know what they think, how they feel. I mean, yeah, a bit of a rant there, you got me going I love that there's a few pieces there.
Aaron Pete:The first is the debate part. That's what I've heard the most positive feedback on having candace melcom on and we we disagree on on a lot of issues but being willing to hear her and her, hear me and go through that. Like the comment section was just filled with like why can't this be on TV? Like why can't we have discussions like this where it's respectful? I'm not accusing her of being a horrible, evil person, she's not accusing me of the same. We're trying to understand these issues and that was supposed to be an hour interview and it turned into like a two hour and 20 minute interview because we were trying to go through things and understand each other and I really want to see more debates sincere, good, well-intentioned, fair debates where it's an exchange of ideas from different political or philosophical perspectives. The second piece that I really loved, that you dove into deeply, is Canadian culture One. I think that's a huge topic right now because of Trump's tariffs and Trump's threats of becoming the 51st state.
Aaron Pete:But I just interviewed Eric Peterson. If you know him from Corner Gas, he was also in Street Legal and that was his prime thesis of our interview was talking about how to him what Corner Gas was was a perfect mirroring of the rural experience and it was based in Saskatchewan but it worked for somebody who lives in Prince George in BC or in some little community in Nova Scotia Like it works for everybody because you do have these community members and it wasn't American based, it was Canadian experiences being reshared to everybody involved and that was his passion and his life passion was to make sure Canadians hold on to that distinct culture. And I talked to him about like the reason I've interviewed Brent Budd and Nancy Robertson and Fred Iwanek like is because that's all I have left as a Canadian of like what I believe still represents the Canadian experience. It's not like we have shows like that that are really really popular, that we kind of get our Canadian content and get an understanding of, and it gets so easily mocked when you talk about CanCon or Canadian Con like. When you say those things, people go whatever, who cares? But those moments really give you a sense of national pride, they give you a connection to your fellow countrymen and a desire to want to build upon that legacy. I think in a lot of ways and that's one of the pieces I really loved that you brought up in this is that's also a piece of the pie that we can't underestimate.
Aaron Pete:And I just listened to Brett Weinstein on Joe Rogan and he talked about what's going on with Doge and trying to address all of the waste in the US government. But one of his biggest points was we're going to go too far and we really have to be careful. It's easy to want to burn it all down. That's the easy position. The hard position is to say we're going to pull this, we're going to pull this. We need to be mindful of that, we want to protect this. That's going to be hard when there's a desire to bulldoze everything and start from scratch because there has been mismanagement in the past and I really loved that you did the same thing of going okay.
Aaron Pete:It's very easy right now to say defund the CBC. I've interviewed many people who take that position. It's a very easy position right now to take, after everything you've been through, after everything you've seen, to still defend and have built up that credibility of being critical of the CBC. To still defend the CBC and say there are pieces here we should salvage. There's information here, there's an approach here that has worked over the past hundred years that we shouldn't gloss over. I find that really admirable.
Tara Henley:Oh, thank you so much. I think, as you say, it's very easy to destroy things. It's very hard to build them up right, which is why the CBC is in such a difficult position right now. Because how do you? It's a very complex, there's a lot of money involved, there's a lot of different parts of the CBC on. You know, the CBC, unfortunately, is trying to be too many things to too many people. It's very complicated, but the bottom line idea, I think, is that this is an 88, 89-year-old institution, that it has an incredible, incredible archives. Like I don't know why the CBC is not taking advantage more of the archives right now, because so many people I speak to have such nostalgia for different parts. I mean, you and I, both even we're different generations, we both have different parts of us that feel that nostalgia for the CBC at its best. Most people I speak to across the country, even those in the defund camp, still feel that nostalgia for the parts that really work well. And so how do you conserve a really important institution? How do you do that? It's really hard to think through, but I think it's really important and I do think the archives are a key that could be used right now immediately to tap into that like bring back Peter Zosky's interviews right now.
Tara Henley:Let's hear how Canadians talked through these issues in decades past. You know there's decades and decades of our culture sitting there, sitting there waiting to be tapped, and I don't want to see all of that history and culture disappear either. I'm really worried about that, particularly in a time, as we've talked about, with really high immigration. It's going to be important for us to have a shared set of ideas about what the country is that people can join. Otherwise, why are they coming here? If they come here and all they get is a cost of living crisis and no housing, what are we offering? What are we offering them? We have to do better for everybody.
Tara Henley:But again, it's very complicated and it's difficult to think through, and I guess my point from the weekend is just that we have to find our way through and it's going to be, unfortunately, radical change within the organization or else we're going to just lose it, because the going on the path that it's going on right now, which is to sort of ignore the problems and blame outside forces and speak in platitudes, that is institutional suicide right now. And the alternative is making really radical changes to the organization, which is not going to be popular or fun. It will be extremely painful, and so they're in a real bind, and Marie-Philippe Bouchard, who's just inherited all of this, is herself in a real bind, and I hope that she's able to see her way through this, because it's important to all Canadians.
Aaron Pete:I love that. The piece about being able to go through the archives I really like because one I'll confess, I don't know our Canadian prime ministers very well or what they did, or what they did badly or what they did well, that is not an area I know a lot about, but I've been able to watch, I believe, watch, I believe, robert F Kennedy and Richard Nixon debate on issues and it's a very old debate, but the way they talked, the mannerisms, their respect for each other I mean I saw videos of that juxtaposition with Trump and Kamala Harris and it was stark. I feel like the degrading of our public discourse, the dropping of the bar and you see the same with, I think, a lot of criticisms of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is it is all platitudes, it is all words. It sounds nice, but the meat and potatoes of what they're saying didn't deliver, and there's such a vast distance from that that people just want somebody who's going to do deliver, and there's such a vast distance from that that people just want somebody who's going to do something, and I think that's dangerous.
Aaron Pete:We're seeing that around the world. To do something, people. It's not like people really pushed up against their plan and double-checked it and course-corrected. That's one of my chief criticisms of Pierre Polyev is I don't feel like we're getting enough good, fair interviews with him where people are asking in-depth questions on what your plan is. How are you going to get there? What does that look like? Have you thought about this? Have you considered this In a way that's not disrespectful, that doesn't accuse him of being a horrible person, but make sure that you understand what his positions and make sure that he understands what his positions are, because it freaks me out how much polling he does before he kind of confirms a position. I want somebody who has a philosophical base on which they're operating that doesn't just follow polls, and I think that's a really important piece.
Tara Henley:Maybe he'll come and talk to you, Aaron.
Aaron Pete:That would be legendary. How much do you think the CBC's current challenges are external because of, like social media, big tech, political pressure, versus internal, their own mismanagement?
Tara Henley:I think their own mismanagement is making it impossible to deal with the external factors, and I think there's just across the board. There's quite a lot of issues in every area that would need to get addressed to make them stronger internally and to be able to weather the storm that everyone in the media is going through right now. And I mean it's everything from I don't know if you know about their precarious labor issues. This is something that matters to me a lot because I was in that position. I was either on contract or working without contracts, so you don't know when your next shift is coming, and I worked like that for many years, as do many, many people in the corporation. I think they something like they employ about 2000 workers every day in this country that are not permanent full-time staff. That creates a real problem because it's a two-tiered working environment and it's terrible for morale environment and it's terrible for morale. Everybody knows it's terrible for morale, but it's also terrible for editorial freedom. You know, unless you're crazy like me, you're not going to go into meetings and really argue with people about stories if you don't know when your next shift is coming from. You know, if you don't know past two weeks, if you're employed. It's just. It's a terrible formula for journalism and that has to change.
Tara Henley:Their hiring practices, I think, also have to change. I mean the fact that they're so centralized. Two thirds of the workforce is in Toronto or Montreal. That's just not the reality of the rest of the country. The hiring practices are very at least they were when I was there divisive. You know, for example, for the contracts that I got, you would have to sit in a board with other editorial leaders and you would need to answer scripted questions, and it doesn't matter if you've worked on the show that you're applying to get a contract on already informally, for a year and a half. It doesn't matter how experienced you are, it doesn't matter what your resume says. What matters is that you win that board, and the questions can be quite divisive, and a lot of them are about a specific approach to diversity and inclusion that is not necessarily shared widely. That can sometimes be controversial. We're seeing huge discussions about this approach in the United States right now, and so it can come across as political litmus tests, and I think we need to not do that right now. I think we need as many people as possible in the conversation.
Tara Henley:Also, I've argued that we should get rid of degree requirements. You know, you do not need a college degree to be a journalist. You just don't. A lot of the people I worked with coming up did not have college degrees and some of them did not have high school diplomas. Like it. It's not rocket science. You need training, for sure, but you do not need a degree.
Tara Henley:And if we actually want to have some economic diversity, if we want working class journalists who bring a whole different perspective, getting rid of degree requirements would really widen the talent pool and it would also combat the perception that we in the media are elites and living separate lives from the rest of Canadians, ignorant to what matters to them, to what matters to them. So there's a million things that could be done, but none of them are easy and none of them are, um, you know, going to be popular with some factions. All of it's going to be an upheaval, but the question is, do you have that painful upheaval now or do you have the upheaval of Canadians losing this institution? Um, so I guess that's why I'm really pushing for actual change and I don't know, I don't know what will happen.
Aaron Pete:May I ask? You mentioned 15 possible reforms for the CBC. Would you mind walking us through those reforms? Sure, sure yeah.
Tara Henley:So the first one is refocus the national public broadcaster on the areas that there is no good business case for and that the private industry is unlikely to serve. This is things like local news or investigative reporting. Investigative reporting is hugely expensive to do, especially if you're doing corporate accountability and government accountability. It's tricky, it can be litigious. You need institutional weight to do that. Substacks like mine are not going to solve those problems. We don't have the business model for it and we desperately need those areas covered. Two decentralize. So instead of having everybody in Toronto and Montreal, having everybody in Toronto and Montreal build small nimble news hubs across the country. This can be done. I've just done it with my own sun stack. It's it happened. You know mine is a very uh, shoestring budget. It's mostly just me, sometimes with other help from other journalists and certainly with guest posts sometimes, but for the most part it's me on a shoestring, creating a small tiny hub myself. There's no reason why a big institution like the CBC can't do that across the country and do it in places where there's news deserts.
Tara Henley:Get out of commercial advertising. It's not right for a national public broadcaster to be both a commercial competitor and also the national public broadcaster. It really should be picking a lane and I think it should get out of commercial advertising, because it cripples. What we need most right now is digital innovation and new startups. That's what we most need, but they can't. We can't compete with a massive organization with a giant annual federal budget.
Tara Henley:Four I think it should get out of entertainment programming, which is not to say it shouldn't get completely out of entertainment. I think there's ways of working in entertainment all through current affairs, radio and other places, but in terms of producing a lot of TV shows and things that cannot compete with American TV shows, I think as sad as I am to say it, because I like that aspect of our culture represented. If you're going to be brutal right now and make the cuts that you need to make, I think that that would be one area to do it. Five abolish executive bonuses. These bonuses are so unpopular and the rage about them cuts across political parties. It's just canadians really don't like them, um, so that needs to go. Uh, can I ask a quick? Can I ask?
Aaron Pete:a quick question on that one, please do. Where do you have to be in your own mind to know how horribly unpopular they are to then proceed? I just think if you were to throw me in there right now, my mindset would be to come, sit down, look into a screen and go. We, the CBC, have failed you historically, like over the past 10 years. Let's say we know you're disappointed in us. I will not take a bonus until we write this ship. You can trust in us that we are going to to pivot and once we regain your trust, once we see that number start to rise again, then yes, I may look to seek a budget or um, to seek more financial support or a financial reward for my work. Once we start to regain your public trust.
Aaron Pete:Canada, like, how does somebody sit there and then, like she's getting criticized in in parliament? People are calling her out for how much money she was receiving in her bonuses to do it again, to know that there's a political firestorm about, about this, to still take it? I just it makes me worried about our leadership. That like we don't have a leadership class that cares about what Canadians think. It makes me feel like that person doesn't have integrity, because to adjust in a moment like that would be rewarded by Canadians, not like looked down upon. It just makes me worried about the leadership class in our country right now.
Tara Henley:I agree, Absolutely I agree, and it reminds me of when Adrienne Arsenault questioned Catherine Tate about this on air and Adrienne Arsenault to her, much to her credit pushed quite hard on that. And then, more recently, Marie-Philippe Bouchard was on the Current with Matt Galloway and, also to his credit, he pushed really hard on this issue. This issue is a very central issue and it's not getting addressed. Catherine Tate could have whatever legal issues are involved, contractual obligations, all the rest with the rest of her staff, which need to be phased out. She could herself, as you say, come to the Canadian public and said look, at the very least, I'm not accepting mine.
Tara Henley:I'm not taking that money. I understand how everyone is so upset about it. We need some time to figure out how to deal with it going forward, but I will not take mine. I agree with you that that is the leadership position most people want to see. Again, marie-philippe Bouchard, on the current, declined to do that as well as recently as a week or two ago, and that is really disappointing. Again, I have a lot of empathy for the position she's in right now. She's got a lot of balls in the air, but that is a real no-brainer. Just don't take the bonus. It's so, it's easy.
Aaron Pete:Do you think it's like a financial, like I can't afford it, Like why? Why?
Tara Henley:I don't know.
Tara Henley:I really really don't know. I really really don't know. I mean, again, we have this problem of it acting as a commercial broadcaster. Executives can make a lot more going to privates in the states than they would make in canada, but but we're not a commercial broadcaster, we are a public national broadcaster. That is a different thing and we shouldn't be trying to compete with wages in the same way as we shouldn't try to be compete in other areas. It just doesn't make sense and I feel that anger myself, because I also know how hard the rank and file at the CBC works and you know, I know, I know how hard they work day in and day out. And to think that someone you know many levels above you is making $500,000 a year while you are scrambling to do two stories a day, every day, and filing on multiple platforms and dealing with hostility from the public, like it's an enraging, enraging proposition, sorry, continue, oh, no, yeah. The next point six is significantly reduce management roles. It's a very top, heavy organization and again there's all these VPs making $500,000 a year. Those are non-news roles.
Tara Henley:I think they could pare down a lot. They could pare down in HR, they could pare down in DEI. They have more than surpassed their targets for diverse hiring. I think originally it was 50% of all new hires. I would have to check and, listeners, please fact check me on this, because I didn't look this up beforehand, but I think it's something like 78% of new hires were diverse. It was some very, very large number. They're doing great on that area.
Tara Henley:All these DEI bureaucrats have been probably made obsolete by that fantastic work, so same with all their communication staff. They have a lot of communication staff. If you're not trying to be a commercial broadcaster, maybe you don't need that many layers of communications. Seven stop the precarious labor. We've talked about that already. Eight train the next generation of journalists, and my colleague Jen Gerson at the Line has a wonderful piece called the Conservative Case for the CBC in which she goes into this in detail. The CBC could see itself as a library for journalism, as opposed to a competition to the private market here, and could start doing things like opening up its podcast studios after hours for people like you and me to use. It could bring back, you know, beloved veteran journalists to offer workshops, training the next generation of journalists, giving that mentorship to the new startups and news deserts. There's so many ways that they could start participating in the community and using that institutional weight and all the resources that they have, including equipment, to support the media ecosphere.
Aaron Pete:Really quickly on that one. I just want to say A I really appreciate you for that, because you've supported me with starting to learn the basics of journalism. I don't have a background in that, and that's a piece I'm becoming more and more understanding of the importance of me developing, as I continue to interview premiers and ministers, is making sure that I'm delivering fair but journalistically integrity filled interviews that if you were to watch it, you wouldn't go. This is this is not like I want, at least for journalists to be able to listen to it and not go. Oh, this guy has no idea what he's doing in terms of journalism. Like, I can ask questions, but I would like to make sure each one has a 25% core where journalists can go.
Aaron Pete:Okay, you asked the the appropriate questions that need to be asked if you're doing it before an election and I think I'm going to continue to do more of those and so having a resource to pull on on those kind of circumstances to me is important, because Joe Rogan influenced the election and a lot of the criticisms of his interview with President Trump was that he didn't know how to do follow-ups or that he didn't have an understanding of some of the issues in a deep enough way to kind of push back where he heard things that weren't true. I think we're seeing that now in Canada. Justin Trudeau has done a few podcasts. He doesn't get asked tough questions when he goes on certain podcasts. That might be intentional, but also this is becoming a sphere and we don't have the expertise to deliver kind of the hard-hitting information we need to in some regards, to make sure that it's of a quality that meets Canadian standards.
Tara Henley:I'm so glad you brought that up because there is a shift in the political sphere of who's doing these interviews and it is the podcasters. I've been so excited to see the interviews you're doing and really, journalism it gets back to my point about you don't need a college degree. That's not what we need. We need journalism to be taught on the ground in the process of doing it, and CBC does have a mentorship structure. I was an official mentor to people in my newsroom that were just coming into journalism and that's really what you need, and I still go to the people that are 20 years ahead of me and ask them questions Like this is all stuff that is learned in the doing and that's how it should be, and we need that. If we're going to meet this next moment, if we're going to switch to digital, if the podcasts are going to play a huge role in our politics and in our media, then we need to be extending ourselves to the creators, to exactly what you're saying is to give that next generation the tools that they want and are asking for. So, yes, I think we need to reform hiring practices. I've touched on that. I think we need number 10 to enforce rules on social media. The JSP the journalistic standards and practices that the CBC has lays out this very clearly that news gathering and current affairs journalists are not allowed to say their opinion on contentious subjects on social media, on other media. Unfortunately, that rule gets broken a lot and it's not evenly enforced. Every time a journalist goes out and says their own opinion on social media, it erodes the credibility not just of that journalist but of the institution as a whole, and other outlets in the country, like the Globe and Mail, are much more strict and disciplined about this, and I think the CBC needs to be as well.
Tara Henley:Eleven increase conservative representation. You know we are asking conservatives in this country to pay their taxpayer dollars to this institution and they feel and I think very justifiably so that it does not represent them. I, in the whole time I worked at CBC, I never worked with a single open conservative on staff. I had one person once take me aside and tell me that they were a centrist and please don't tell anyone. That's the climate right and you have to understand that that's a liability. You just have to understand.
Tara Henley:There's so much about the conservative worldview the conservative worldviews because there are so many different. You know sections to conservative thought in this country. There's just a real lack of awareness of who the main players are, of what the central arguments are, what the big debates are, of who the influential thinkers are across the border that are influencing us here. Like there's just not awareness and there really needs to be. There needs to be some measurable goals for the organization. How does the CBC increase the number of conservatives on staff? How does it increase the number of conservatives on air? You know guests as well as hosts, I mean, and like also, I don't count. This is another thing. I mean I'm often perceived as being a conservative now, but I'm not conservative. Actual conservatives don't find me conservative. So this is again like we're just really missing a big part of the country.
Tara Henley:Number 12, we need guest speaker lunch and learns on contentious issues. Like, as you say, the trans issue is a great example. There's really a lack of awareness of the fact that there's a ton of liberal feminists in this conversation, for example. There's just not awareness and I think that if the CBC did lunch and learns, it's a very low budget way of bringing people into the building talking through the other arguments on these contentious issues and giving the staff some exposure to that.
Tara Henley:Number 13, review pandemic coverage. We've talked about that. They need to go back and look at what they did and issue corrections for stories where they didn't get it right. Corrections are so painful We've all been there. I hate it when I get a correction, but that's how you maintain trust, is you go? Okay, I'm human, I messed up. I'm going to say I messed up and we're going to get on with it. Um.
Tara Henley:Number 14, reaffirm the value of journalistic objectivity in 2020. There's been a debate within journalism circles for many years and it really bubbled up in 2020. There are people who think that it's not a viable aim, journalistic objectivity, that people all have their own biases and it's better just to acknowledge them and to not try to go out to the public and say that we're objective when we're not. My argument is A it's an aspiration, it is an aim. It's never going to be perfect, but it's far better than operating without that aim. And B let's listen to what the public wants. And the public says time and time again, and just recently said in Reuters Institute research on this the public wants impartial reporting. They want to know that we're doing the very best we can to give them all the facts and allow them to make their own decisions on it. It's very, very clear. So the New York Times has had a big push to reestablish this norm and to reaffirm it in public, and has said things like we went too far in 2020. I think CBC needs to do the same. Finally, the CBC needs to stop blaming other people for his troubles, as we, as we said in the starting part of this.
Tara Henley:Yes, there's all kinds of complexities. Right now. It's a terrible market for journalism right now. There is misinformation. There is all kinds of you know, complex problems that we're dealing with. There is audience fragmentation. There's all of that. There's news avoidance. These are all real things, but that's not going to win the public back to your cause.
Tara Henley:The way to win the public back to your cause is to say here's what the broadcaster has done in the past. Let us remind you of all the wonderful things, all of the wonderful interviews, all of the Barbara Frums and the Peter Zoskis and, you know, michael Enright and Peter Mansbridge and all the beloved people that took part in this organization, all those moments that meant something in your life Hockey Night in Canada, all the shows and remind them. This is what we can be, and ask for a little patience while they iron it out, but present a positive vision to the country. This is what we're aiming for now. We've heard you, we've listened to your concerns. Now we're moving forward, we're aiming for this vision. I think that would be very, very powerful. I think Canadians are hungry to hear that and I wish someone would just say it.
Aaron Pete:Beautiful. That was very well said. I appreciate you being willing to share that article. I think it's going to get a huge response, because it really is important for us to have these conversations. How can people follow along with your work?
Tara Henley:They can find me at tarahenleysubstackcom. You can also find me on Apple Podcasts, lean Out with Tara Henley, and you can find me on the Hug Podcast, my new podcast with Harrison Lohman and Peter Menzies. It's called Full Press. We talk about the news developments in this country every two weeks on that podcast, and thanks so much for having me, aaron. I am always watching what you're doing, I am cheering you on. I think you are fantastic and you are exactly what this country needs right now, so I'm a big fan.
Aaron Pete:I feel the exact same way. No-transcript problem. So thank you for always joining and for your support in my development over over the past few years. Thanks so much, aaron.
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