The brouhaha over Heather Mallick's notorious column on CBC.ca rated a news story, column and editorial in Tuesday's Globe and Mail. I never saw any mention that her relationship with the paper as a freelance columnist ended on a bad note.
In an interview yesterday, (CBC News publisher John) Cruickshank clarified that Mallick's sharply irreverent piece, which lampoons the Republicans' vice-presidential pick, is "terrific within a certain tradition of political writing." The problem, he explained, lies not with the opinion piece itself, published on Sept. 5, but with the CBC's own editing decision to run it.
"This is an issue about a particular column," he said. "This is an editing issue. This is not a Heather Mallick issue."
Mallick responded that she sees the CBC's reaction as prompted by criticism the piece has received from conservative commentators, particularly segments on Fox News in the United States. "I feel very strongly that the CBC should not take editorial direction from Fox News," she said.
She added: "I'm writing to my base, and my base is intelligent Canadians. And I really don't care to know what Fox viewers think of my columns."
I confess to some amusement when Cruickshank writes about how Mallick's column is "terrific within a certain tradition of political writing."
Here's what he wrote in his Sept. 28 letter:
Mallick's column is a classic piece of political invective. It is viciously personal, grossly hyperbolic and intensely partisan.
And that's what makes it terrific! :)
On to Margaret Wente, who seemed to see this episode as being more of a CBC problem than a Mallick problem:
The Mallick affair is bad news for the CBC, because it reinforces the widespread belief the place is a hotbed of left-wing bias. That's not good news when a Tory government controls the purse strings. Nor is it entirely fair. The CBC's online commentary arm is not exactly the flagship of the network. It is a backwater that has served as a sort of semi-retirement home for aging lefties (think Judy Rebick) who could no longer find an outlet in the mainstream media and, one suspects, supplied copy cheap. They had little oversight and less influence - until now.
The truth about the CBC is more complicated. Its problem isn't an overt left-wing bias. Its problem is an earnest, mushy-liberal mindset that can scarcely entertain a contrarian idea. Its editors, producers and directors strive to be fair-minded. It's just hardly any of them would ever vote Tory. Oh, they try. Once they even had right-wing commentator David Frum guest-host The Current. But people were so shocked they never did it again.
Ironically, no one is more bothered by this groupthink than the top CBC managers themselves. More than one have told me that it drives them crazy. And it's no accident that left-wing faces such as Avi Lewis have recently decamped for the greener fields of English-language Al Jazeera. Although I haven't talked to Mr. Cruickshank (a former colleague), my guess is that part of his mandate is to vigorously encourage a wider range of world views. Too bad Ms. Mallick popped up to prove the critics right.
Meantime, I'm not feeling too sorry for Ms. Mallick. She is a sour, narrow-minded writer - the kind of who makes Michael Moore look like a world-class wit. Her reflexive anti-Americanism is heavy-handed and stale, to say nothing of casually racist. There are many, many ways of dissing Sarah Palin. But Ms. Mallick's naughty, coarse puerility is not among them.
And finally, a harrumphing editorial:
Try to imagine the CBC publishing a website column similar to the one its contributor Heather Mallick wrote attacking Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, but on Barack Obama. Instead of a grotesque attack on the supposed "porn star" look affected by a Republican woman, and a personal attack on her children, substitute a grotesque attack on the Democratic presidential candidate and family, linking his personal characteristics to sexual excess. It wouldn't - and shouldn't - happen. But then the Mallick column should have been out of bounds, too.
That someone in authority at CBC.ca considered this offensive left-wing drivel* worthy ...
* If someone could point me to a G&M editorial that referred to "offensive right-wing drivel," I'd be most grateful. :^)
The CBC is not just another broadcaster. It's the taxpayer-supported national broadcaster, and it receives its $1.1-billion from Ottawa to reflect the country accurately and fairly, in the spirit of keeping the country together and promoting an informed citizenry. Privately-run newspapers or broadcasters are free to run whatever points of view they wish, with or without balance. But the CBC has a privileged position in this country that it must not abuse with biased commentary.
Again, unless I'm asleep at the switch (always a possibility), there was no mention in any of the three that Mallick once had a professional association with the paper.
Here's one view of her experience there as taken from a Jan. 16, 2006 McGill Daily interview with Mallick:
... On December 1, Mallick gave up her column at The Globe, resigning in protest against the newspaper’s editorial practices. She had written a column decrying a libelous interview with Professor Noam Chomsky that recently appeared in The Guardian, a usually left-leaning British newspaper. When Mallick’s editor informed her that she would have to repeat the original libel in her column, Mallick objected, and asked to see a final draft of the article before it went to print. Though the editor agreed, Mallick later learned that the column had been sent to print without her okay. She asked The Globe to pull her column. The editors refused, and Mallick quit, believing that her journalistic integrity had been compromised. ...
Heather Mallick: I’ve worked in the Globe newsroom and hated it, mainly because it’s literally a dark place. Staff were depressed and it drained my energy. I used to think that that’s why the paper is in such a low-rise building. People used to stand staring out the window and I knew they were thinking, “Yeah, but if I jump, I won’t die, I’ll probably just break a leg and I’ll still have to come in and copy edit.” Okay, I’m joking.
On the question of quitting my freelance Saturday columns, the more interesting question is why I started writing in Focus. I used to write a perfectly harmless column in the Review section and Richard Addis, the nasty but brilliant British editor who ran the place then, wanted me on Saturdays because he found my writing entertaining. I said I didn’t think the Focus editor would like me, and he responded, “Oh, don’t worry. She’s an obedient girl.” As a feminist I was enraged that he would refer to a senior woman journalist in this way, so naturally I went into Focus determined to do the best job I could for a “girl.” ...MD: Your experience demonstrates that it can be difficult for a left-leaning writer to work with a mainstream news organization. But is the frustration of dealing with corporatism and an often stalwart conservatism a necessary evil in order to get at least some sort of a progressive voice into the mainstream? For example, National Post writer (and former Daily editor) J. Kelly Nestruck’s criticized your reasons for leaving The Globe, writing that “I’ll respect her resigning her column over a single editorial decision, but frankly I’m more fond of the stay-and-fight mentality.... Does she just want to preach to the converted over at Rabble from now on?” Any thoughts on this assessment?
HM: As for whether I should have stayed and fought The Globe over its editing, its censorship (I will never forget being told, “You will not write a column attacking Stephen Harper on Saturday”), and its failure to send me a final version of a column in which I believed they might have inserted a libel, the fact is I had been fighting for years.
The “As If” column was just too high-maintenance. I had a book to write and I also write an internationally syndicated political column for the New York Times Syndication Service. They edit it, they send me the version, are open to my suggestions, and it just goes like a dream. So unlike our own dear Globe and Mail.
My Globe column only appeared in Rabble on Sundays because I got a huge amount of reader email, especially from young people. The day The Globe began charging readers to read columns online, my university student emails ended. It horrified me. What a foolish thing to do in an industry that desperately needs young readers. So Rabble, a free web site, gave me an online voice for young people and people who aren’t interested in Jeffrey Simpson, which is all I wanted.
This Spring 2007 Ryerson Review of Journalism profile tells a slightly different story:
In 1999, Mallick quit the (Toronto) Sun, saying, “I could not bear the thought of turning 40 and working there.” She sent a few samples of her reviews to Simon Beck, then the Globe’s Review section editor, who hired her freelance a few days later. Originally, “As If” was an arts column that appeared in the Review section, but a year later, the new Globe editor, Richard Addis, asked Mallick to move her column to the Focus section. It was supposed to be edgy, with a lot of attitude. “Bought” debuted in 2003 after a Style section editor talked her into it. Her Globe work brought Mallick the profile she still retains a year and a half since her departure, and led indirectly to the book contract for 2004’s Pearls in Vinegar. But Mallick’s memories aren’t all fond: “I didn’t fit in at the Globe at all.” In her absolutist style she adds, “I was the only feminist there and that was pretty noticeable.”
Absolutist plays well in some circles. Pearls in Vinegar editor Diane Turbide of Penguin Group (Canada) says, “What I love is her attitude that the world is going to hell in the proverbial hand basket, but there are these glimmers of light and little incremental changes, and maybe once in a while you can make a difference with something you write.” Others are less impressed. “She is an anti-Christian bigot,” says Ezra Levant, publisher of the Western Standard. “If her targets were Muslims or Jews, she would be roundly denounced as such.” Mallick rebuts, “I dislike all religions equally. What matters to me is protecting the underdogs, the victims of religious institutions of massive wealth and power.”
Similarly critical of her work is Globe columnist Marcus Gee. “She seems to treat Americans as though they are a loathsome species, not just a country whose policies she disagrees with. But to caricature a people in that way is a form of prejudice, really.” Again Mallick defends herself, “May I note that evaluating Americans has been a splendid intellectual stream since Alexis de Tocqueville.”
Mallick’s sudden departure from the Globe in December 2005 arose from a misunderstanding with her editor, Jerry Johnson. She was disturbed and outraged by a Guardian interview that she believed had libeled Noam Chomsky, and wanted to write about it. Johnson wanted her to include some of the material that so offended her in the column, to help provide context. She strenuously objected, saying that reprinting it would constitute a second libel. She then asked to have her column pulled, but the Globe flatly refused. In the end, the contentious statements didn’t appear in the paper, and the Guardian later issued an apology for misrepresenting Chomsky’s views, but Mallick quit a few days later on a matter of principle. She says now of the incident, “Basically, I got hot-headed. I wish I knew how to stay calm more often.”
Full disclosure: I worked for Bell Globemedia Interactive as a senior web producer for globeandmail.com -- a job that ended (ahem) involuntarily when they blew up the company in February 2003 (dozens of dozens of people got let go; they didn't say: "Attention: Ze following layoffs vill be announced in alphabetical order. "Doskoch. Bill!" Zat vill be all"). I now work for CTV.ca News, which is another branch of CTVglobemedia.
I think the Globe, which I read every day, does some brilliant stuff and a few ... curious things. :)
I also worked for CBC.ca News for nine months as a casual after the axe fell at globeandmail.com. As I've mentioned before, that's where I came to the conclusion that Ken Finkleman's first season of The Newsroom was less a satire than a documentary. :)
I've never met Ms. Mallick. Don't really care to.