A former CBC Manitoba reporter said the broadcaster hid the truth and misled its audience during the pandemic..Marianne Klowak told the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) she had many pandemic-related story ideas turned down by editors, such as protests against vaccine mandates, concerns with adverse vaccine reactions, and problems doctors faced with reporting vaccine injuries..“As a public broadcaster, you’d expect us to be telling you the truth, and we stopped doing that,” said Klowak. .“A number of stories that I have put forward … were blocked, but it seemed to me as a journalist who’d been there 34 years, it’s like the rules had changed overnight. And it changed so quickly that it left me just dizzy.”.Klowak said the network betrayed public trust by slanted coverage..Those who questioned the effectiveness of COVID-19 public health restrictions and vaccines were portrayed as “dangerous and spreading misinformation,” while those who reinforced the perspective of authorities were portrayed as “competent and trustworthy.”.“I had witnessed in a very short time the collapse of journalism, news gathering, investigative reporting — and the way I saw it is that we were in fact pushing propaganda,” she said..“Not only had we shut down one side by silencing and discrediting anyone opposing the narrative, we elevated and designated ourselves as gatekeepers of the truth. We no longer believed our audience was capable of thinking for themselves.”.Klowak left the network in December of 2021 said “complaints and criticism” from CBC viewers and listeners “continued to mount” in her final months there..“People [were] stopping me on the street and saying ‘what the heck is going on at the CBC?’ People [were] telling me they felt betrayed, lied to, a gut feeling that they weren’t being told the whole truth,” she said..In June 2021, Klowak wrote an article about Canadian parents who were concerned with potential links between the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and heart inflammation in children. Although the article did not mention ivermectin, her editors asked her to drop the Canadian COVID Care Alliance from the story because they supported the drug..“I could not believe that they were asking me to do this. I said, ‘This is unethical. This is immoral. You’re violating all the principles of fairness and balance and accuracy and being impartial and acting with integrity.’ And I said, ‘what you’re asking me to do is dishonest and it’s manipulative.'”.Klowak wrote another story by on a woman injured by the COVID-19 vaccine, but her editors heavily modified it..“It should be just a straight story about someone who suffered an adverse reaction and we shouldn’t downplay it. Instead, the way I saw it, her story was buried in experts and health officials and stats, which sanitized it,” she said..“We failed to hold power to account and no one was holding the media to account… We failed to serve the public, and we broke their trust.”
