Solomon owes the CBC a massive apology
High-profile host’s ethical lapse hits especially hard for colleagues at embattled public broadcaster
Evan Solomon did something really stupid.
Not evil. Not criminal. Just lick your finger and stick it in an electrical socket stupid. The CBC star and host of TV’s Power and Politics was fired Tuesday night. In what might be the most endearingly Canadian of Canadian scandals, it seems Mr. Solomon was moonlighting as an art broker.
It’s like they say in Compton: hook someone on a Doig and he’ll soon crave a Picasso.
The Star’s ace investigator Kevin Donovan broke the story about how Solomon was taking “secret commission payments related to art sales involving people he dealt with as a host.” These people included Jim Balsillie, co-founder of RIM/ BlackBerry, and Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor and current governor of the Bank of England.
The issue is not that Solomon was pursuing “outside work,” which is allowed under his collective agreement. But if Solomon wanted to earn a few side bucks, he should have at least skimmed his Conflict of Interest and Ethics Policy. There are more than 20 “guiding principles,” including “employees must not use their positions to further their personal interests.”
And this is where his stupidity gets turbocharged by either: a) greed or, b) temporary insanity. This is where it’s reasonable to wonder if Solomon suffered blunt force trauma to the noggin in 2013, right before he partnered with art collector Bruce Bailey to broker sales.
Solomon didn’t just hang a shingle outside his Rockcliffe home in Ottawa and wait for well-heeled clients to inquire about Kim Dorland paintings or ceremonial masks. If that were the case, he’d still be on TV.
No, based on documents obtained by Donovan, Solomon approached Balsillie to be a guest on his show. But when they met, ostensibly to have a background chat about news issues, Solomon used the meeting to introduce Balsillie to Bailey.
This was a stealth business introduction disguised as casual media business.
Balsillie had no idea the journalist was basically a middleman in a non-news venture. He did not realize the artwork he’d eventually buy from Bailey would translate into more than $300,000 in commissions for Solomon.
As bad judgment goes, this is staggering. How can one of Canada’s top broadcasters, a smart if somewhat shouty fellow who grills politicians on alleged misdeeds, be so unwise? If Solomon was hanging from a cliff by one arm, you now get the feeling he’d try to save himself by clapping.
Then we get to the part that makes zero sense in the historical context of ethical lapses: Solomon disputes his commissions from Bailey and the two men hire lawyers to sort it out.
Imagine if I committed plagiarism, got a nasty paper cut while ripping off passages in a book and then sued the author for pain and suffering.
So now Solomon is either: a) ignorant or wilfully blind to his breach of company policy or, b) so incredibly dense, so foolish, the CBC should give him a Jackass- style reality show titled, “Watch Evan Do Something Dumb.”
Solomon released a statement late Tuesday that ended with, “I have the utmost respect for the CBC and what it stands for.”
With the utmost respect, give me a break.
If Solomon cared about the CBC, he wouldn’t have done this in the first place. The “deeply sorry” he used sounded a bit like the “regret” uttered by Global Television’s Leslie Roberts, who earlier this year was forced to resign after another Donovan investigation found that the senior news anchor co-founded a PR firm and interviewed his PR clients on his news shows.
What Roberts and Solomon should “regret” and be “deeply sorry” about is their appalling greed. You know who gets into journalism for the money? Nobody. And here are two guys making insanely good coin in an industry that’s quickly veering toward retail and fast food on the average pay scales.
Their day jobs were better than most of our dream jobs.
Solomon didn’t hurt himself. He’s a gifted broadcaster. He will be snapped up by another network, probably before Canada Day, though any future employer would be wise to tattoo its employee standards and practices to the inside of his eyelids.
What Solomon did hurt was the CBC, already soaked to the bone by a downpour of scandal and financial uncertainty. By giving the its enemies more ammunition, he hurt those who defend the public broadcaster.
Most of all, he hurt his colleagues, the people who continue to crank out great journalism on shoestring budgets. This includes the foot soldiers behind the cameras and microphones. And it includes the stars who will never be engulfed by scandals of their own.
I’m willing to bet my collection of R2D2 paintings, for example, that Matt Galloway will never run afoul of internal policy, not unless the CBC one day prohibits cycling around town or baking bread on a Friday night.
Solomon should use some of his banked commissions to send gifts to his ex-colleagues, all of them. The accompanying notes of apology could just include six words: “Sorry for being stupid and greedy.” vmenon@thestar.ca