As a centrist, I find the CBC bias mainly in the omission of perspectives from the right (moreso on the social than economic), or omission of context or counterpoints that would tend to take away from a left-leaning preference (again mainly social than economic).
One thing that is obvious comparing CBC coverage vs. other international coverage of Canada (when it happens - not often admittedly!), is that CBC rarely (if ever) mentions Canada is an outlier from much of the global West and the rest of the world in terms of things like pursuing identity silos rather than a broad shared national one (aspects of decolonisation, use of ethnic and gender labels); drugs (in enabling safer supply and supervised use); abortion (in having no regulation on it); citizenship, immigration and refugee policy (in providing citizenship by birth, permitting a broad basis for refugee claims, the TFW/IMP, etc.) - topics where there is a left-leaning preference to the status quo of being a global outlier. The effect is that it normalises the status quo for the audience.
Some recent examples on topics where there tends to be a clear social left/centre/right difference in perspective:
- stories related to supervised injection sites (
search "supervised injection"): there is a preponderance of perspectives taken from proponents of these sites. The headlines either question the Ontario government's recent decision to close some of these sites (
"As Ontario restricts supervised consumption, can 'HART Hubs' fill the gap?"), or focus on the perspective of a supporter of these sites (
"Hamilton church leader says supervised injection site 'reduced violence' rather than caused it"). What's not evident in the CBC coverage are stories that lead with the safety concerns of the communities that prompted the government review of these sites and their closure, and concerns about the data and assumptions driving the use of supervised injection sites as harm reduction. (The National Post has written on this,
for example). If the CBC is all one reads, one would be missing this essential context.
- stories related to abortion (
search "abortion"): although there isn't actually any feasible legislative or regulatory change in Canada, and no party actually has changes to the status quo in its platform, there is a disproportionate amount of coverage, often drawing from the US especially since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the lead-up to the US election. This has the effect of making it appear more of an issue than it actually is in Canada, and feeds into left-leaning political perspectives in Canada raising undue fear for changes (and, for many, of the Conservatives) here. (I note that there was fair coverage of the overt partisan hijacking of a recent Commons committee to
divert attention from domestic violence to abortion spearheaded by the Liberals - but that was a Canadian Press article.)
That all said, the CBC is better in some ways now than, say, 10 years ago, when pieces by Neil Macdonald and others (with clear bias) were passed off as "analysis" - they are now correctly labelled as "opinion". There is still some work to do on this (many "analysis" pieces miss context, in the same way as I contrasted a CBC vs. a local newspaper
earlier); and there are still inconsistencies in how the CBC addresses race and ethnicity (see the Ombud's review of
When is race relevant?), and the focus on Indigenous perspectives, whilst what one would expect for a public broadcaster, does mean that some perspectives are privileged over others.
This is all consistent with other findings of bias, e.g.
"CBC News Rated Lean Left". The
Ombuds reviews often admits these biases but finds them within the bounds of "editorial judgment", and says the CBC's approach is to
achieve balance over time. Not sure that that actually works out in practice though.
Bottom line, sure the CBC has biases, but on the whole it is still part of the spectrum. As long as you don't use it as your only source, but also look at other perspectives you'll be reasonably informed.
As the public broadcaster, it should be held to a higher standard for balance and bias-free reporting - and I think this could be served by narrowing its work to national and global level topics, spending more time researching and interviewing and writing to collate perspectives across the spectrum - and competing with PBS, BBC, DW, France 24, etc. as our contribution to global media - and avoiding competing with local media/newspapers/etc.
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