GHOMESHI CASE
Report pokes holes in investigation by CBC execs
Despite claiming to have undertaken a serious internal investigation of the Jian Ghomeshi affair, CBC executives did not ask a single Q employee a question, according to an investigation by the CBC investigative program The Fifth Estate.
The television program surveyed 17 people who worked on the arts radio show last summer, and spoke with everyone but the former executive producer.
“No one said they’d been approached ( by management), no questions ever asked,” said Gillian Findlay, host of The Fifth Estate, which aired Friday night.
Asked to explain the discrepancy, Chris Boyce, head of CBC Radio, said he could not, and that it was a question for Janice Rubin, the outside counsel hired to probe the institutional response.
The finding is the most shocking revelation in an investigation that pokes holes in the official account of how the CBC responded over the past year to growing evidence of Ghomeshi’s behaviour, both within the CBC and in his private life.
He now faces criminal charges of sexual assault and overcoming resistance by choking.
It also reports that Ghomeshi lied in his notorious Facebook post about being offered the chance to walk away quietly before he was fired, to leave the impression it was his own decision.
“That is untrue,” said Boyce. He said Ghomeshi was offered 24 hours to provide more information, possibly about a mental illness.
“He was very upset, he maintained his innocence and beyond that, I’m not comfortable getting into details.”
The Fifth Estate investigation does not reveal new alleged victims, and many of the accounts have been previously reported.
The investigation advances the theory the CBC might have been slow to take action against its most marketable star.
In interviews with two former producers, Sean Foley and Brian Coulton, it describes how Ghomeshi “broke down” and confessed to them while on location in Winnipeg last spring, saying he likes rough sex and an angry exgirlfriend is “threatening to tell everybody.” He said he was confident he had done nothing illegal.
Later, Ghomeshi revealed to his producers that someone was posting allegations about him on Twitter under the name @BigEarsTeddy, which is a toy bear he uses for anxiety relief.
Neither producer knew what to do. One started having panic attacks.
In late June, independent journalist Jesse Brown, who has partnered in his investigation with the Toronto Star, sent an email to Q employees, laying out the allegations as he understood them and saying the “inappropriate behaviour may have crossed over into the workplace.”
Foley and Coulton went to their superiors with this email and the Twitter account.
Boyce said none of the material they presented was new to executives, and that the “majority” was not about the workplace. Boyce said he believed the tweets, at least, were “inaccurate.” But the CBC did investigate.
CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson said the investigation consisted of a review of Ghomeshi’s file, cross-referenced with other disciplinary issues, and interviews conducted “very discreetly” with ac cross-section of managers, program leaders and Q employees. He said it found no evidence of sexual harassment.
Boyce said on The Fifth Estate that the CBC did not seek more information from the Star about what it knew of the alleged victims, nor try to find out who was behind the @BigEarsTeddy account.
“Our job is not to be the police,” he said.