Context is something journalists are supposed to provide in reporting on matters of national importance, but it has been sadly lacking so far in coverage of the bonuses paid to CBC employees. The $18.4 million in bonuses, which included an average of $73,000 paid to Mother Corp. executives last year, actually pales in comparison to the amounts paid to media executives in the private sector. That doesn’t even include the lavish stock options they get, which are something that employees of a public broadcaster could never even hope for. Not only has the story been blown way out of proportion in the media, the hot-button issue has been unfairly politicized by federal Conservatives salivating at the prospect of axing the public broadcaster once they take power next year as expected. They called the CBC bonuses “beyond insulting and frankly sickening,” while many Canadians are starving and facing homelessness. Such hyperbole may serve to angry up their base, but it adds little of value to what should be a constructive discussion about the role of the CBC going forward in an era of entertainment overload and news starvation.

The latest installment in the CBC bonuses soap opera came thanks to the Canadian Press this week after it obtained data on last year’s payouts under a freedom of information request. The issue had been simmering since late last year, when host Adrienne Arsenault asked CBC head Catherine Tait during an interview on the network’s flagship newscast The National whether its executives would still get their bonuses despite cutting 800 jobs in response to falling ad revenues. “We’ll be looking at that, like we do all our line items in the coming months,” is as far as Tait would go. That earned her an invitation to appear before the standing committee of the federal Heritage ministry, which is responsible for the CBC. There she received a grilling from MPs when she told them that bonuses for the year, or “incentive pay,” as she preferred to call it, had not yet been finalized. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation dug up figures which showed that $114 million in bonuses had been paid out by the CBC since 2015, which the right-wing National Post calculated could have paid the salaries of 225 cub reporters or even bought the Toronto Star twice. Tait was then called back for a second inquisition this spring, when she was accused of lying by Conservative Heritage critic Rachael Thomas. “This is the first time in a 40-year career anybody has addressed me in this way,” Tait snapped back, which prompted Globe and Mail columnist Konrad Yakabuski to ask: “Who would ever want to be president of the CBC?”

How much Tait received in bonuses is still unknown, but her salary in 2023 was somewhere around $500,000 and her total cash compensation was capped at $623,900 by order-in-council, which is far less than the calculated market comparable of $1.09 million. Her maximum possible bonus of $145,880 would thus only be a tenth of the $1.4 million received last year by Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri, which was in addition to his salary of the same amount and $9 million in stock options, for a total of almost $13 million. Rogers is a multimedia conglomerate that also includes cable and wireless divisions, so a better comparable might be the $4.3 million paid to its Sports and Media division head Colette Watson, which included a bonus of $592,510. Over at Bell, which has laid off 6,100 workers in little more than a year, CEO Mirko Bibic received a bonus of $2.96 million last year as part of his $13.4 million pay package last year. Wade Oosterman, head of its media division, which includes the CTV network, numerous cable channels and dozens of broadcasting stations, got a bonus of $1.08 million as part of his $4.87 million in total compensation.

Tait’s pay is also modest compared to that of CEOs at other public broadcasters. The BBC’s boss was paid £525,000 last year, or about $920,000, and he wasn’t even the network’s highest-paid employee. That distinction went to soccer commentator Gary Lineker, who pulled in an astounding £1.35 million, or about $2.38 million. The head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was paid a reported A$1.03 million in 2022, or about $936,000. The BBC and ABC have both come under criticism similar to that of the CBC recently. The licence fee on television sets in the UK, which has traditionally funded the BBC, has been abolished effective as of 2027, which leaves its very existence up in the air. According to the ABC’s chair, it has been the subject of a “never-ending stream of attacks,” from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., whose obsession with the public broadcaster he called nothing less than “unhinged.” News Corp. dominates that country’s media with 60 percent of its newspapers plus a significant broadcasting presence, which enabled Murdoch to prevail on the government to pass legislation forcing Google and Meta to pay publishers like him, which Ottawa recently attempted to do with the Online News Act. Murdoch’s brand of “anger-tainment,” however, has brought calls from two former Australian prime ministers recently for a royal commission into his malign influence.

Even in Europe, where public service broadcasting has a long tradition, it has come under attack recently by populist politicians who see it as a waste of taxpayer money and far too liberal. A 2022 study of public media in Austria, Germany, and Sweden found that right-wing populist parties distrust them as “biased towards ruling parties and sitting governments and/or towards a pro-immigration and a politically left-wing cultural elite.” Evidence of such bias was scant, the study noted, adding that in countries with a strong democratic tradition, public broadcasters “usually develop a higher level of professionalization and autonomy from political control.”

A serious discussion about the future of the CBC is long overdue, but it should take place in a more contemplative setting than amid the shrill attacks on it currently being launched by right-wing media and Opposition politicians. A good place to start would be with the recommendations of the 2020 book The End of the CBC?, which was authored by well-respected media scholars Christopher Waddell and the late David Taras. Noting that the CBC was down to a three percent audience share in English TV, they urged reimagining the network by eliminating entertainment and focusing on news.

The CBC has played a vital role in preserving and enhancing Canadian culture since it was founded in 1936, however, and it is unlikely that a majority would agree to it being so badly disemboweled. First they came for Hockey Night in Canada, and I said nothing. Then they came for Son of a Critch. What’s next? No, no. Not This Hour has 22 Minutes reruns.

Marc Edge is a journalism researcher and author who lives in Ladysmith, BC. His books and articles can be found online at www.marcedge.com.