Michael Enright: The Ghomeshi revelations and the CBC workplace
They buried Ben Bradlee this week in a mighty Washington sendoff with a thousand or more of the great and the good filling the grand cathedral and remembering when his style of journalism got your heart pounding. I was going to write about this warrior editor who exposed Watergate, brought down a president, and sired a generation of journalists out...
They buried Ben Bradlee this week in a mighty Washington sendoff with a thousand or more of the great and the good filling the grand cathedral and remembering when his style of journalism got your heart pounding. I was going to write about this warrior editor who exposed Watergate, brought down a president, and sired a generation of journalists out to change the world.
I had wanted to write about the last of the great alpha male editors, but reality intruded. Things closer to home overtook the week's plan, as things closer to home have a way of doing.
We all know that this has been a trying week for everybody who works for the CBC and, I would offer, especially for its female employees.
It has also been a difficult week for the listeners of CBC Radio.
After the tonnage of the appalling disclosures of the past few days, suddenly writing about an alpha male has lost its allure.
Journalism has, for most of my time in it, been largely a male preserve, especially in the Sixties, when I started.
It was a club with its own rituals, its own unspoken membership requirements. For example, the press clubs of the nation were sanctuaries of male drinkers only. We had everything but the secret handshake.
In every daily newspaper I worked on, it was clear where the power lay. The papers were run and owned by men. Senior management was virtually entirely male. Women had to be tougher and smarter to avoid the rabbit hole of the women's department or the shopping basket column. Young women, especially if they were just starting out and pretty, faced some kind of harassment almost every day.
Things have changed over the years. In my time at CBC Radio, I've had six female bosses and only two male. But the women have had to struggle to attain and then maintain their position. Things are better than they used to be. But the struggle is still there.
Every family, if that's what we are, has somewhere in its ranks a dysfunctional member who can cause much pain and heartache.
Not to mention embarrassment and even fear.
Much of these recent days have been passed in trying to come to grips with that pain and that fear. It is a fatiguing endeavour.
I'm tired. Everybody around here, is tired.
I'm tired of people asking, why don't these women say who they are. Why don't they identify themselves. I'm tired of the relentless and shocking revelations hour after hour.
I'm tired of people asking what is going on at CBC.
And I'm especially tired of looking into the anxious faces of young women in this place and not knowing what to say to them.
As a father of sons, I have insisted that they understand that violence against women, that hitting a woman, is violence against us all, literally a crime against humanity, that which makes us fully human.
In this month, officially designated as Woman Abuse Awareness Month, there is both time to reflect and opportunity to act.
We have got to get a conversation going, a national conversation about violence against women.
For us, in this building, it has begun.
I had wanted to write about the last of the great alpha male editors, but reality intruded. Things closer to home overtook the week's plan, as things closer to home have a way of doing.
We all know that this has been a trying week for everybody who works for the CBC and, I would offer, especially for its female employees.
It has also been a difficult week for the listeners of CBC Radio.
After the tonnage of the appalling disclosures of the past few days, suddenly writing about an alpha male has lost its allure.
Journalism has, for most of my time in it, been largely a male preserve, especially in the Sixties, when I started.
It was a club with its own rituals, its own unspoken membership requirements. For example, the press clubs of the nation were sanctuaries of male drinkers only. We had everything but the secret handshake.
In every daily newspaper I worked on, it was clear where the power lay. The papers were run and owned by men. Senior management was virtually entirely male. Women had to be tougher and smarter to avoid the rabbit hole of the women's department or the shopping basket column. Young women, especially if they were just starting out and pretty, faced some kind of harassment almost every day.
Things have changed over the years. In my time at CBC Radio, I've had six female bosses and only two male. But the women have had to struggle to attain and then maintain their position. Things are better than they used to be. But the struggle is still there.
Every family, if that's what we are, has somewhere in its ranks a dysfunctional member who can cause much pain and heartache.
Not to mention embarrassment and even fear.
Much of these recent days have been passed in trying to come to grips with that pain and that fear. It is a fatiguing endeavour.
I'm tired. Everybody around here, is tired.
I'm tired of people asking, why don't these women say who they are. Why don't they identify themselves. I'm tired of the relentless and shocking revelations hour after hour.
I'm tired of people asking what is going on at CBC.
And I'm especially tired of looking into the anxious faces of young women in this place and not knowing what to say to them.
As a father of sons, I have insisted that they understand that violence against women, that hitting a woman, is violence against us all, literally a crime against humanity, that which makes us fully human.
In this month, officially designated as Woman Abuse Awareness Month, there is both time to reflect and opportunity to act.
We have got to get a conversation going, a national conversation about violence against women.
For us, in this building, it has begun.