Bell Media boss ousted after meddling in news coverage
Interference in CRTC story cited in company’s ‘bold’ decision
Kevin Crull, the Bell Media president who was forced to apologize for meddling in news coverage at CTV, is out of a job, effective immediately.
Crull’s abrupt departure, announced by BCE Inc. late Thursday afternoon, comes two weeks after he admitted to trying to influence national news coverage of a CRTC decision.
“The independence of Bell Media’s news operations is of paramount importance to our company and to all Canadians,” George Cope, head of Bell Canada and BCE Inc., said in a release. “There can be no doubt that Bell will always uphold the journalistic standards that have made CTV the most trusted brand in Canadian news.”
Crull “did not resign,” a spokesperson for Bell confirmed in an email to the Star. A source told the Star he was fired.
Media industry analysts applauded the move, calling it surprising.
“It’s a bold move. It sets a good precedent and a good example,” said Chris MacDonald, an associate professor who teaches business ethics at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University.
“I thought it was going to be a tempest in a teapot. His apology was pretty quick and I suspected that would be it,” MacDonald said. “It’s reason for a bit of optimism about the integrity of decisionmakers in the corporate world. People do still sometimes do the right things for the right reasons.”
In March, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission handed down a decision on unbundling cable packages that will eventually give Canadians the ability to pick and choose the TV channels they really want, in addition to a basic service.
Big broadcasting companies, including Bell Media, said the new rules, slated to take effect next year, could pinch their profits.
Asource told the Star that Crull was furious at the decision and decreed that no interviews or footage of CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais air on CTV. That was shortly after Blais made an appearance on BNN, a business news station also owned by Bell Media.
Crull’s order to CTV news president Wendy Freeman meant an interview with Blais on the CTV’s Power Play had to be cancelled at the last minute.
As well, clips of Blais speaking to reporters were not used in a supperhour news piece.
Freeman feared she and other senior staff at CTV would lose their jobs if they did not comply with the order.
But CTV chief anchor Lisa LaFlamme and Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife, senior journalists at the network, decided to draw the line.
They, along with Freeman, later decided that Fife’s report on the CRTC decision, slated for the 11p.m. national newscast, would include a clip of Blais, a source told the Star.
The chain of events, exposed in media reports, sparked an unprecedented public reaction from Blais, who called it “disturbing” that the country’s largest communication company in Canada would be “manipulat- ing news coverage.”
The backlash prompted Crull, who joined Bell in 2005, to apologize for what he called his “intrusion” in news coverage.
“It was wrong of me to be anything but absolutely clear that editorial control always rests with the news team,” Crull said in a statement released March 25.
“I have apologized to the team directly for this mistake.”
CTV is a division of Bell Media, a company with assets in TV, radio and the Internet, which is in turn owned by telecommunications giant BCE Inc.
When Crull appeared before the CRTC three years ago, he insisted that Bell never interfered on the editorial side.
“The message overall is that the regulatory system, in terms of the independence of television news operations, is something that everyone is taking seriously,” said Jon Festinger, a Vancouver-based lawyer and adjunct law professor at the University of British Columbia and Thompson Rivers University. Festinger is also a former CTV senior vice-president.
“Obviously, the CRTC takes it seriously and it sounds like Bell is trying to take it seriously.”
In his statement, Cope thanked Crull for his contributions to Bell’s customers and shareholders and praised him for his role in spearheading Bell Media investments in Canadian content.
Crull was replaced by Mary Ann Turcke, who takes over responsibility for Bell Media’s national broadcast and digital operations, Cope said.
Turcke, who also joined Bell in 2005, was formerly a media sales group president.