Before Christmas, Tory election team honcho Doug Finley sent out a fundraising letter to the faithful claiming he was shocked -- shocked!! -- that a CBC reporter has been accused of passing questions to a Liberal MP to ask Mulroney about Schreiber.

From the CP story via CTV.ca:

Finley's letter mentions two other CBC reports where the network was accused of bias against Conservatives. He notes, in passing, that the CBC received $1.11 billion in government funding in 2006-07.

CBC brass have said they are investigating and considering possible disciplinary action against a reporter who allegedly supplied questions for Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to ask Mulroney.

But the broadcaster's reaction has left some puzzled on Parliament Hill.

Other reporters say they've suggested questions for politicians in the past - for instance, when Conservatives were in opposition and grilling the Liberals during the sponsorship scandal.

CBC News publisher John Cruickshank responded in a Dec. 28 blog posting:

You were well aware when you sat down to write your appeal for cash that CBC News had publicly condemned the behaviour you complain of and had called a disciplinary meeting to look into it. ...

CBC News is especially sensitive to how we cover partisan political debates. The CBC is non-partisan. We do not want to be seen to be a creation of any party (although, as you know, it was a Progressive Conservative government that brought our organization into being.)

While all our journalists try to live by our code of conduct, CBC News is not infallible. But we are accountable. When there are errors of judgment, or misunderstandings or improper interpretation of the journalistic standards and practices, we investigate. When we discover shortcomings, we change our standards and practices.*

* I wonder if Cruickshank would want a chance to rewrite that sentence. It makes it sound as if when its people screw up, the CBC deals with it by changing its standards. :)

No other news organization in the country operates within such a demanding ethical regime. For you to sully the reputations of so many dedicated Canadian professionals is utterly unacceptable. Your denigration of our ethical standards can only contribute to the public cynicism about public life that is already far too pervasive.

Those more familiar with CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices than I could perhaps point me to the exact section that the anonymous reporter at the centre of this controversy breached.

To be a devil's advocate, let's consider the following hypothetical situation: A reporter directly asks Mulroney questions about l'affaire du Schreiber -- and was blown off. Rather plausible, since Mulroney's been brushing off the story for years.

In that situation, is suggesting a line of inquiry to an opposition MP, where Mulroney must answer questions, a major or minor ethical breach, given that answers to the questions might result in a better-informed public?

Does it balance things out if the reporter in question had engaged in exactly the same behaviour with a Conservative opposition MP when a Liberal politician was in the hot seat?

That would seem to take the element of partisanship out if it, wouldn't it?

However, there are good reasons for the reporter to keep his or her own counsel.

When I was a court reporter, I would often be asked by defence lawyers, and sometimes prosecutors, what I thought of a particular witness's testimony.

I demurred from answering because I felt that would make me a direct participant in the trial's process, rather than its observer and chronicler.

Similarly, while the reporter in the theoretical Mulroney situation might be acting with the best of motives in mind, they are trying to covertly shape the news event.

However, would it be different if they had written or broadcast something saying "here's the questions I would ask Mulroney if I were on the ethics committee" a day or two before the witness's appearance and transparently put those same questions out for all the world to see?

Would that breach CBC guidelines about journalistic behaviour that could be seen as partisan?

Questions, questions and more questions ...