On June 4, REAL Women of Canada, and Women for Life, Faith and Family teamed up with Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) to make presentations to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) demanding balanced reporting on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The groups presented themselves as the “Coalition Seeking Balance on CBC”; they provided the only criticism of the CBC the CRTC heard that day.
Karen Murawsky, CLC’s national director of public affairs, pointed out to the CRTC numerous specific instances in which the recent news coverage offered by the CBC was biased against pro-life people. Murawsky charged that the CBC not only “lacks a balance in reporting on certain issues,” but also “when it concerns the matter of abortion, the killing of a child in the womb, the CBC has a strong pro-abortion bias.”
Murawsky noted that after the shooting death of abortionist Barnett Slepian, CLC national president Jim Hughes stated, “We condemn the shooting of the Buffalo abortionist and all acts of violence against those involved in the abortion industry.” While early reports from the CBC covered the condemnation, the declaration against violence was omitted in later reports and it was made to appear that CLC sympathized with the murderer(s).
The CBC has aired programs both on radio and television giving abortion advocates free reign to hurl false accusations of violence at the pro-life movement without any verification or opportunity for rebuttal. CLC pointed out that the January, 1999 “documentary” on the National magazine, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” pieced together film clips in such a way as to make peaceful pro-life demonstrators in Canada appear to be violent, cursing mobs.
Most recently, a Media Search Report from Bowdens Media Monitoring for the day of May 14, 1999 revealed that CBC gave only 95 seconds of coverage to the March for Life in Ottawa, while private media outlets provided up to five and one half minutes of coverage. The scant coverage on CBC comes despite the fact that 2,500 people from every province in Canada joined the march to Parliament Hill to demand protection for all human life. Over 400 hand-made Precious Life Quilts arrayed on 8 foot-scaffolding completely surrounded the lawn on Parliament Hill.
Murawsky noted that such a bias is “morally wrong, unfair and an example of the poorest of journalism” and insisted that in order “to retain its licence, the CBC must correct the bias and present fair and honest and balanced coverage relating to the issue of abortion.”
