(LifeSiteNews) — The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has come under fire by its own ombudsman for violating its ethics code when it published a story in 2021 that suggested the nation’s Catholic Bishops were not coming through on a promise to raise money for an “Indigenous Reconciliation Fund.”
Per Blacklock’s Reporter, CBC Ombudsman Jack Nagler said that the network, which gets over a billion dollars a year from the federal government, violated its own ethics code over the 2021 article.
Nagler said that in his view, the “CBC made an error in judgment,” and that “Editors at CBC Saskatchewan did not have an explanation for the failure.”
Nagler’s ruling stems from a December 2021 CBC story published online with the headline, “Catholic Bishops Fail To Release Details Of $30 Million Fundraiser For Residential School Survivors On Time.”
The report was written by Jason Warick of CBC Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
This time last year, Justin Trudeau and his media allies were at the forefront of falsely accusing Catholic institutions of having buried Indigenous children in mass graves at various residential schools across Canada.
There was and is no credible evidence to support these wild accusations, but many Canadians are still unaware of the facts.
SIGN to demand an apology from Justin Trudeau for promoting the “mass grave” smear
The anger generated by the media at home and abroad saw over twenty Canadian churches burned, and extensive damage done to many more, but the record has never been set straight in what amounts to a disinformation campaign.
Terry Glavin at the National Post recently wrote a masterful piece that may go down in history as the definitive “debunking” of the assertions about the mass graves that never were.
Glavin points out that “nothing new was added to the public record” concerning the history of residential schools in Canada.
“The legacy of the schools had already been exhaustively explored in the testimony of hundreds of elders and a series of inquiries, public hearings, criminal cases, settlements and federal investigations going back decades. Most important of these efforts were the widely publicized undertakings of the 2008-2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), and the content of its voluminous findings,” Glavin wrote.
“…[N]ot a single mass grave was discovered in Canada last year,” he added.
“The several sites of unmarked graves that captured international headlines were either already-known cemeteries, or they remain sites of speculation even now, unverified as genuine grave sites.”
“Not a single child” accounted for during the extensively researched commission “was located in any of these places,” Glavin underscored.
“In none of these places were any human remains unearthed.”
SIGN and SHARE the petition calling on Justin Trudeau to set the record straight.
Even Trudeau’s kneeling at what was reported upon as a just-discovered residential school burial ground was a lie – it was actually a well-known Catholic cemetery, but the media didn’t let these details get in the way of reinforcing their narrative.
Trudeau also called on Pope Francis to come to Canada and apologize for what had happened, as outlets like Reuters, the New York Times and scores more told the world that “nearly 1000 bodies” had been found in two mass graves.
Those online articles were quietly edited from “mass graves” to “unmarked graves”, but we still have the Twitter posts from major outlets like Reuters to prove the staggering level of misinformation.
SIGN: Justin Trudeau must tell Canadians the truth – there were no mass graves
According to an extensive investigation by Professor Emeritus Jacques Rouillard from the Université de Montréal: “The ‘discovery’ was first reported last May 27 (2021) by Tk’emlúps te secwépemc First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir after an anthropologist, Sarah Beaulieu, used ground-penetrating radar in a search for the remains of children alleged by some to be buried there.”
“Her preliminary report is actually based on depressions and abnormalities in the soil of an apple orchard near the school – not on exhumed remains.”
Professor Rouillard opined that the unverifiable narrative of what could have amounted to child-murder has led to the false assertion of genocide, an assertion without any supporting evidence.
“By never pointing out that it is only a matter of speculation or potentiality, and that no remains have yet been found, governments and the media are simply granting credence to what is really a thesis: the thesis of the ‘disappearance’ of children from residential schools,” Rouillard wrote.
“And all of this is based only on soil abnormalities that could easily be caused by root movements, as the anthropologist herself cautioned in the July 15 press conference.”
The vast majority of Canadians have been misled by the media and Mr. Trudeau, believing the most incredible smears imaginable, leading to scores of attacks on churches around the country.
It’s time we heard the truth.
Please sign the petition today.
We are also cc’ing Canada’s Catholic bishops on this petition – they must also demand the record be corrected, lest Canadians continue believing the mainstream media’s disinformation.
For More Information:
How the world’s media got it wrong on residential school graves – National Post
Trudeau lied about the bogus mass grave story – LifeSiteNews
Trudeau’s narrative was a hoax – LifeSiteNews
**Photo: St. Jean Baptiste Church in Morinville burned to the ground on June 30, 2021**
Warick’s report claimed that the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) was coming up short on a promise to raise $30 million for the Indigenous Reconciliation Fund.
However, noted Nagler, some CBC readers pointed out to the network that the CCCB had not only begun fundraising for its Indigenous Reconciliation Fund, but that Warick had himself reported on this in the past.
The report was amended in April of 2022. However, the amended version of the report did not contain a note with the clarification brought up by readers, nor did it contain a statement about breaching the CBC’s Journalistic Standards And Practices guide.
This, said Nagler, meant that the CBC had violated its own policies by “failing to inform readers about the change.”
“Journalistic Standards And Practices says: When we make corrections and clarifications online we should include on the story page an explanatory note to the audience,” he noted, adding that on “many occasions” he has “reminded CBC journalists that precision matters and provides readers or listeners or viewers with confidence that CBC’s journalism is reliable.”
He said that the CBC could have made some “wiser” choices before “the initial publication of the article.”
This is not the first time the CBC has been reprimanded by its Ombudsman.
Last fall, Nagler said he was “disappointed” the outlet ran a story that falsely claimed Russia was behind the Freedom Convoy protests, adding it should have never happened.
Despite these breaches, CBC’s CEO Catherine Tait claimed that her network had the “gold standard” on ethics in journalism while announcing a cross-country tour to talk about CBC ethics.
The CBC has long been criticized by conservatives over what is said to be a left-wing political bias in its reporting. This accusation of partisanship has become a heated topic in Canada, mostly due to the CBC’s massive reliance on taxpayer funds.
In 2021 the CBC received $1.4 billion from the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, accounting for roughly 70 percent of its total revenue.
The whopping sum came after Trudeau’s 2019 election promise that his Liberal government would give legacy media $595 million in federal assistance over four years.
The mainstream media’s coverage of Catholic-Indigenous relations has also been a source of ethical controversy among Canadians.
In 2021, the CCCB announced a $30 million Indigenous Reconciliation Fund which was established to “accept donations from 73 Catholic entities across the country, and to advance healing and reconciliation initiatives.”
The Indigenous Reconciliation Fund came about as a result of the May 2021 reported discovery of “215 unmarked child graves” at Kamloops Residential School, which was once run by the Catholic Church.
Throughout 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media continually ran with the inflammatory and dubious claim that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the residential schools. This resulted in mass church burnings across Canada.
However, investigations from January 2022 have found that despite the allegations of “physical genocide” on the part of the Catholic Church, no graves have actually been found.
Despite this contradictory evidence and to the dismay of many Catholics, the CCCB has continued to comply with the mainstream media narrative and even made a public statement of apology in 2021.