The CBC is facing an uprising within its ranks for accepting advertising that critics say amounts to corporate-sponsored “fake news.”
Hundreds of
current and former staff, including Peter Mansbridge, Linden MacIntyre, Gillian
Findlay, Bob McKeown and Adrienne Clarkson, are expressing “grave concerns”
over CBC/Radio-Canada Tandem, a new venture that works with marketers to create
and publish what is known as branded content, or paid content: advertising that
looks or sounds like regular editorial coverage.
Tandem was
unveiled to the advertising community last month, with CBC/Radio-Canada’s new
chief revenue officer, Donald Lizotte, promising in a news release it would
“leverage the credibility of our network." The pitch proposed that Tandem
content could appear on most of the broadcaster’s English- and French-language
platforms, including the CBC website, podcast pages and audio apps, and TV
networks – among them, CBC News Network.(Globe and Mail)
