CBC Must Correct Its False Reporting of the March for Life

To: CBC Ombudsman, Kirk Lapointe Ombudsman@CBC.CA

Dear Mr. LaPointe,

On May 12, during the CBC's nightly program "The National", CBC reporter Laurie Graham reported that 5,000 people attended the March for Life on Parliament Hill. CBC's online article repeated the falsehood which can be read here.

(The same link above also shows the video of the report where Ms. Graham reports the 5,000 number at the 28 second mark of the video.)

The reported number was a gross distortion of the truth, since the real number of participants exceeded over 15,000, as the analysis in this blog post makes evident.

As you can easily see, the CBC’s reporting is a gross misrepresentation of reality, and it once again calls into question the political slant of the CBC in not reporting the facts.

It is not acceptable for Ms. Graham or the CBC to rely on "police estimates" when those "estimates" are so clearly off the mark from reality. We'd like to get the details of these estimates, and when these estimates were made.

Canadians are sick and tired of funding a media organization which has such an obvious liberal bent that it is now misreporting to protect its liberal ideology.

I am afraid that this pathetic demonstration of misreporting is only going to further calls for the CBC’s funding to be drastically cut. If they are not accountable to the Canadian people, then they should not be funded by the public purse.

I am therefore asking you, in order to protect the public interest in fair news reporting, to conduct a thorough investigation of this incident, and if necessary, compel the CBC to correct the record on Mansbridge's program, "The National" which originally aired the false reporting.

Justice and fairness demand a correction and an apology.

Yours truly,

John Pacheco

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