The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has dedicated around-the-clock coverage of US Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ campaign despite being mandated to cover “predominantly and distinctively Canadian” content.
Coverage of the Harris campaign by the CBC has been so extensive it reached a rate of over two stories per day, or 68 stories in the past month.
Based on cbc.ca and Google search results, True North tallied how many stories the taxpayer-funded broadcaster has dedicated to covering the Harris campaign in the past month.
Both video and article content were included in the count. Only stories where Harris’ name appeared in the headline or where the presidential candidate was a main subject of the article or video were counted.
Between July 19 and August 19, the CBC put out 68 pieces of content averaging about 2.2 stories per day on Harris’ campaign over the 31 days.
Coverage included articles and videos with headlines like: “Social media is introducing Kamala Harris to young voters. But will it get her votes?”, “Are Kamala Harris memes of coconut trees and ‘brat summer’ part of her official campaign?”, “Why is everyone going coconuts for Kamala?”, “Harris naming Tim Walz her VP pick is a ‘brilliant decision,’ says Democratic strategist.”
A True North count based on the same criteria found that the CBC only covered Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 18 times. For a few weeks during this period, the prime minister was vacationing with his family in British Columbia.
When comparing coverage, the broadcaster published nearly four times the amount of content on the Harris campaign than they did on the Canadian prime minister.
The CBC’s mandate as outlined by the Broadcasting Act requires that CBC’s content is “predominantly and distinctively Canadian and that it reflects Canada and its regions.” True North reached out to the CBC to ask whether the extensive coverage of a foreign election violated its mandate.
A CBC spokesperson pointed to a blog post published a few hours after True North’s request by CBC News editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon justifying the Canadian broadcaster’s US election coverage.
In his post, Fenlon acknowledged that “CBC News will get complaints from members of our audience who question why we give a U.S. election so much time and focus.”
“Within our coverage of the world, the United States occupies a special place for some obvious reasons,” wrote Fenlon.
“Simply put, the United States and the policies of its government have a direct and daily impact on the lives of most Canadians. It can easily be argued that the U.S. presidential election matters more to Canadians than any other election beyond our own.”
Fenlon went on to argue that the CBC’s coverage of the US election is through a “Canadian lens” and focuses on what matters to Canada.
CBC did not answer any of True North’s questions about why its coverage was so heavily skewed towards the Harris campaign.
In a comment given to True North, Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman blasted the CBC for “growing irrelevancy to Canadian audiences.”
“The CBC receives more than $1.4 billion a year to be the mouthpiece for the Liberal party instead of filling its mandate to Canadians. Despite plummeting viewership and growing irrelevancy to Canadian audiences, Justin Trudeau rewards his handpicked head of the CBC and her executives with fat bonuses for faithfully acting as the Liberal propaganda machine and hiding his many failures,” said Lantsman.
“Common sense Conservatives will defund the CBC so taxpayers no longer pay for the luxurious lifestyles of Trudeau’s propaganda machine and will turn the CBC headquarters into beautiful homes for Canadian families.”
In the latest budget, the Liberals allocated another $42 million in additional funding on top of their $1.4 billion taxpayer subsidies.
