The National Citizen’s Inquiry (NCI) heard a shocking testimony from a former CBC journalist on Thursday that the state broadcaster prevented reporters from covering stories that went against the prevailing Covid-19 narrative and instead opted for “pushing propaganda.”
Former CBC Manitoba reporter Marianne Klowak testified that the public broadcaster barred any fair coverage of the harms of lockdowns or vaccines.
“I know that as a public broadcaster, you’d expect us to be telling you the truth, and we stopped doing that,” said Klowak.
“And it was a number of stories that I have put forward that were blocked, but it seemed to me as a journalist who’d been there 34 years, it’s like the rules had changed overnight. And it changed so quickly that it left me just dizzy.”
According to Klowak, her editors shut down stories highlighting the widespread protests against mandates and adverse reactions to the vaccine reported by doctors.
“I had witnessed in a very short time the collapse of journalism, news gathering, investigative reporting—and the way I saw it is that we were in fact pushing propaganda,” she said.
“Not only had we shut down one side by silencing and discrediting anyone opposing the narrative, we had elevated and designated ourselves as gatekeepers of the truth. We no longer believed our audience was capable of thinking for themselves.”
Specifically, Klowak said that editors had gutted one of her stories about a woman who suffered from a vaccine injury to the point that it was “sanitized.”
“It should be just a straight story about someone who suffered an adverse reaction and we shouldn’t downplay it. Instead, the way I saw it, her story was buried in experts and health officials and stats, which sanitized it,” said Klowak.
“We failed to hold power to account and no one was holding the media to account.”
In response to an inquiry by The Epoch Times, CBC’s head of public affairs Chuck Thompson insisted the broadcaster did in fact cover those stories.
“Over the course of the pandemic, CBC News had multiple stories sharing the perspective of those Canadians who opposed COVID vaccine mandates,” Thompson said.
“While we didn’t cover every protest, we covered many. And to be clear, there was no overarching directive banning our journalists from writing about them.”
