True North journalist Cosmin Dzsurdza revealed on Friday that the publicly funded Canadian broadcaster hired Franklin López to produce a documentary about the British Columbia pipeline protests.
López reportedly “has been a staple figure in the Canadian anti-authority far-left for years and is the founder of the multimedia company sub.Media”, according to True North’s Dzsurdza.
His production company is responsible for a number of documentaries and short films about “anarchist and anti-authority topics”.
sub.Media’s Vimeo channel featured videos titled “Oil Pipelines Are Easy To Shut Down” and “How to Paralyze a Country”.
“The content is also a go-to resource for extremist Antifa websites that endorse criminal and violent tactics to achieve their ends. One of those websites, Montreal Counter-Information, linked to sub.Media’s video on how to shut down critical infrastructure such as pipelines”, according to True North.
The 1991 Broadcasting Act states that the CBC’s mandate is to “inform, enlighten and entertain”.
In recent years, CBC’s viewership has drastically declined as the broadcaster experienced a crisis of credibility.
The CBC’s has shown a sustained left-wing bias over the years, but the bias has grown larger following Justin Trudeau’s election in 2015.
The Canadian prime minister ran on the promise to increase CBC’s funding by $675 million.
Recently, a senior journalist left the CBC and wrote a scathing letter about the broadcaster’s bias and cognitive dissonance.
“People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive”, Tara Henley wrote in early January.
“To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity”, she added.
The extension of the Trans Mountain pipeline has been a contentious issue in British Columbia. In November, environmental radicals created an illegal blockade that kept Coastal GasLink pipeline workers hostage for days. These protestors claimed association with the Wet’suwet’en First Nation created the blockade attempt to illegally stop the construction of the pipeline.
The Elected Chiefs and Council of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation actually condemned the blockade shortly after it was put into place.
