CBC Blacklisting Jian Ghomeshi Interviews

Posted by RiffYou On December 17, 2014 0 Comment

As one-time beloved CBC radio personality Jian Ghomeshi prepares to battle the sexual assault charges levied against him, his former employer has confirmed that his voice will no longer be heard on some of its online properties.

In a statement submitted to The Toronto Star, Chuck Thompson of the CBC’s media relations department said that the “lion’s share” of interviews done by Ghomeshi for his radio program, Q, will be vanquished from CBC.ca and the show’s YouTube channel for the time being. His intros and outros of artist performances will also be edited out for the foreseeable future.

The Star reports that Q’s CBC.ca archive currently features more than 2,000 pieces of audio and video, while more than 2,000 videos are a part of the program’s YouTube playlists.

“We aren’t erasing the archives, we’re just taking them offline for now,” explained Thompson. “There is no obvious right or wrong approach here. We’ve been giving this a lot of careful consideration over the last few weeks and want to give the program every opportunity to be as unencumbered as possible while some very creative people reimagine Q‘s future.”

While some may critique the CBC’s approach here for removing quality, tax dollar-funded programming led by someone yet to be found be found criminally guilty of anything, what should also be considered here is whether or not CBC’s new, tough actions, should’ve been put into place years ago when they allegedly knew of Ghomeshi’s questionable behaviour.

Earlier this month, former CBC employee Kathryn Borel wrote an Op-Ed piece for The Guardian in which she recollected her run-ins with Ghomeshi and the lack of support provided to her by the broadcaster. Here’s some of what she wrote:

“I used to work as a radio producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. A few months into my job in 2007, I let out a big yawn at a staff meeting and my host told me “I want to hate fuck you, to wake you up.” I was 27 years old. I made sure never to yawn in front of him again.

“After that, there were the uninvited back massages at my desk to which it was clear I couldn’t say no, during which my host’s hands would slide down just a little too close to the tops of my breasts. A year into my time on the job, he grabbed my rear end and claimed he couldn’t control himself because of my skirt. Occasionally my host would stand in the doorway of his office when no one was around and slowly undo his shirt by two or three buttons while staring at me, grinning. He once grabbed my waist from behind – in front of our fellow colleague, at the office – and proceeded to repeatedly thrust his crotch into my backside. There was emotional abuse, too: gaslighting and psychological games that undermined my intelligence, security and sense of self. Sometimes that hit harder than the physical trespassing.

“In 2010, I went to my union to try and find a way to end this pattern of sexual harassment by Jian Ghomeshi. I had no intention to sue, or to get him fired, or even to have him reprimanded. I just needed him to stop. The union representative and my executive producer at Q, the radio show for which we worked, did nothing.”

Click here to read the rest of Borel’s accounts.