This is a very interesting discussion for me. As an independent broadcaster and journalist, I've always had a very odd relationship with the CBC. I ran afoul of this little blue book many times, and I'm glad to actually see it in print, because I always wondered why some of the stuff I was delivering was.... I was getting my wrists slapped.
In fact, just for the record and because I think it is instructive, I was not doing news for CBC because I was known as someone fairly opinionated, but I did a lot of cultural coverage in the north, and I had done a 10-part series on pioneers of the north. It's about as innocuous as you could get, but I was involved in a very controversial battle in the north, and one day I was quoted on air. That morning I got a call from a very good friend of mine, a respected CBC journalist, who said, “You know you're done here.” I said, “Yeah, I could see that.” They pulled my 10-part series that morning and said, “This will not air on any CBC station because you are seen as politically active, even though you're not one of our journalists.”
I'm asking my question because I've dealt with this code of standards. It seems to me that there is a real set of standards right across regional stations across the country; there is the insistence that CBC has a voice and that it maintains that standard. How do you ensure, not just at central command in Toronto and Montreal, but in Yellowknife and in Sudbury and in St. John's, that the standard is applied and that your producers have a good sense of what a CBC voice is and what isn't?