A Liberal-appointed senator is pressing the CBC to prove it is politically neutral, accusing some newsroom employees of targeting Conservative politicians under the guise of fact checking.Blacklock's Reporter says Sen. Andrew Cardozo (Ont.) raised the issue at the Senate transport and communications committee, saying a “sizeable part of the population” believes the public broadcaster has a political agenda. “There are two or three people who do ‘fact check’ Opposition members more than they do government members, consistently and quite aggressively,” Cardozo said. “Either you fact check everybody or you don’t fact check everybody.”Cardozo, a former Toronto Star contributor and Liberal Party organizer, said the CBC must demonstrate honesty and transparency to regain public trust. In a self-published report last March, he recommended the broadcaster handle complaints through the Canada Broadcast Standards Council, rather than in-house with its own ombudsman. “If the CBC is not biased it must provide the data to prove it,” the report said..CBC executives rejected the allegations. CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard insisted the network is politically neutral. “The notion that we are politically oriented is really against everything that we believe and the independence that we so importantly preserve,” she said, citing protections under the Broadcasting Act.Editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon called the CBC the “most accountable and held to the highest standard” newsroom he has worked for, including stints at Sun Media and The Globe & Mail. “We are called to defend our journalism, defend our standards and we are held to account by an independent Ombudsman,” Fenlon testified.Cardozo urged the CBC to commission annual external reviews and publicly report on bias. “The public may forgive mistakes but they are unlikely to forgive opacity,” he said. He added that management should “stop being defensive on the issue of bias and proactively identify its blind spots and how to address them.”
