‘Insensitive’ tweet gets CBC editor reassigned
Apologized for appropriation prize comments
• The managing editor of CBC’s The National was reassigned Wednesday for what the public broadcaster called “an inappropriate, insensitive and frankly unacceptable tweet” he made as part of a controversial debate over cultural appropriation.
In a memo to staff, CBC News editor-in-chief Jennifer McGuire said Steve Ladurantaye will now work on its digital “storytelling strategies” and reach out to indigenous communities “as part of his learning process.”
“As you know, Steve Ladurantaye apologized for his action,” McGuire stated in the memo. “He has made it his goal to better understand the appropriation issue from the perspective of Canada’s indigenous people.”
Last week, Ladurantaye was among the journalists who engaged in a latenight Twitter conversation sparked by a contentious magazine article advocating for more cultural appropriation in Canadian literature.
In the Writers’ Union of Canada’s magazine Write, novelist and then-editor Hal Niedzviecki suggested “anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities.”
The opinion piece also suggested there should be an appropriation prize in literature.
After the article was published, apologies came from the union as well as Niedzviecki, who resigned.
Meanwhile, former National Post editor Ken Whyte tweeted he would “donate $500 to the founding of the appropriation prize if someone else wants to organize.”
Ladurantaye replied he would contribute $100. He later deleted the tweet and apologized, saying “what I did was hurtful, and my apology is without condition.”
“In short, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t stop to think,” he said in a string of tweets.
“That’s a problem. I need to address it. I didn’t stop to think about what it is like to not have my position or my power or my voice.”
The move comes a few days after Jonathan Kay stepped down from his job as editor-in-chief at The Walrus magazine. His departure followed an opinion piece he wrote in the National Post defending the right to debate cultural appropriation.
“From the beginning, it was obvious that it was going to be difficult for me to balance my instincts as a National Post-bred opinion writer with the more staid responsibilities associated with the leadership of a respected media brand,” Kay wrote in an email to the Post Sunday.