The vice president of CTV News said there was “no intent to disinform” the public when the news broadcaster aired a spliced-together clip that misled viewers into thinking the Conservatives were calling for an election to fight dental care.
On Thursday, the House of Commons ethics committee grilled CTV News’ VP Richard Gray about the incident that led to the Bell Canada-owned company firing two “highly experienced workers.”
Gray was called to answer the committee’s question about the impact of misinformation and disinformation on parliamentarians’ work. The inquiry comes after Conservatives discovered that CTV News had spliced together separate clips of CPC leader Pierre Poilievre speaking during a scrum.
The clip was edited to make him say, “That’s why we need to put forward a motion,” directly after CTV News anchor Christina Tenaglia spoke about the Liberal-NDP dental plan. The real, unedited clip made it clear that Conservatives were putting forward a non-confidence motion for a list of issues, including the carbon tax, public safety, and the economy.
In response to questions posed by NDP MP Matthew Green, Gray stated that there was “no intent to disinform” the public with the doctored clip. Gray said the two ‘highly experienced” individuals told CTV executives that they doctored the clip due to a “technical error.”
“There was a technical error in our original record that prevented the video from being presented as was. The editor took this step to manipulate the audio so that the video could cover it,” Gray said.
He said the explanation he received was that CTV removed reference to the “carbon tax election” in the interest of time.
“There was no specific ask of that reporter to alter their story for time,” Gray said. “And it was explained to us that the reporter believed that it was understood that the clip’s nature was about a carbon tax election.”
Conservatives pushed back on the notion that most watching would have come to that conclusion.
Gray restated that this was just the explanation given to him by the editors but would not answer if he accepted the explanation himself.
“I do not believe that it was deliberately done, but still it was a violation of our editorial standards,” Gray said in response to Green’s questioning.
He said the two individuals fired for doctoring the clip violated several of CTV’s ethical standards and policies.
“Our policy on misrepresentation, our policy on the utilization of source material, and the use of sound, specifically interview clips (were violated,)” Gray said.
He said the two also violated the Radio Television Digital News Association’s code of ethics on accuracy and authenticity as well as the Canadian Association of Broadcaster’s code of ethics on news and full fair and proper presentation.
Scheer questioned Gray about the success of Bell Canada’s CTV News business, noting that the parent company made around $2.3 billion in profit in 2023, according to the company’s reporting.
Gray said Bell Canada loses $40 million a year from its CTV News channels.
“There has been a consistent erosion in viewership in broadcast media in this country for a number of years,” Gray said. “It’s falling year over year.”
Scheer noted that Bell Media has lobbied the Trudeau government over 50 times in the last year.
“That’s more than four meetings with government officials a month. That’s more face time with senior government levels than some liberal MPs get,” Scheer said.
He said Bell Canada profits, particularly in telecommunications, due to the limited competition the company enjoys granted by government policies.
Scheer argued that the legacy media corporation and its parent company have an incentive to sway its audience toward the Liberals and away from the Conservatives.
“Bell would fear a government that was led by a party that believed in consumer-first types of policies and free market and pro-competition policies,” Scheer said. “(It) would benefit greatly from a party in power that continued the status quo, or, even worse, taking away more avenues for consumer choice, which would allow Bell to continue to make that kind of profit margin.”
When asked about diversity at CTV News Gray said CTV has a commitment to hire staff based on the demographics of Canada. Scheer asked if CTV also hires a diversity of viewpoints to reflect Canada’s political differences.
“It’s not the job of journalists to reflect the Canadian political spectrum. It’s our job to present stories in an unbiased, balanced, accurate and fair way,” Gray said.
Gray ended by affirming that CTV does not have a Liberal bias, which evoked laughter from the Conservatives at the hearing.