Lisa LaFlamme, CTV News, and Bad Executive Decisions

Alma L. Figueroa

Previous CTV countrywide anchor
Lisa LaFlamme

There will be no bittersweet on-air goodbye for (now previous) CTV national information anchor Lisa LaFlamme, no ceremonial passing of the baton to the following generation, no broadcast retrospectives lionizing a journalist with a storied and award-profitable profession. As LaFlamme introduced yesterday, CTV’s mother or father company, Bell Media, has decided to unilaterally end her agreement. (See also the CBC’s reporting of the tale here.)

While LaFlamme herself does not make this assert, there was of course fast speculation that the network’s decision has a thing to do with the point that LaFlamme is a female of a specified age. LaFlamme is 58, which by Tv specifications is not precisely younger — other than when you compare it to the age at which well-known men who proceeded her have still left their respective anchor’s chairs: look at Peter Mansbridge (who was 69), and Lloyd Robertson (who was 77).

But an even additional sinister principle is now afoot: instead than mere, shallow misogyny, evidence has arisen of not just sexism, but sexism conjoined with corporate interference in newscasting. Two evils for the selling price of 1! LaFlamme was fired, states journalist Jesse Brown, “because she pushed back towards a single Bell Media govt.” Brown studies insiders as professing that Michael Melling, vice president of information at Bell Media, has bumped heads with LaFlamme a selection of situations, and has a historical past of interfering with news coverage. Brown additional studies that “Melling has continually demonstrated a deficiency of respect for girls in senior roles in the newsroom.”

Useless to say, even if a individual grudge plus sexism describe what’s heading on, below, it even now will appear to most as a “foolish determination,” just one guaranteed to cause the company headaches. Now, I make it a plan not to query the company savvy of expert executives in industries I really do not know nicely. And I recommend my students not to leap to the conclusion that “that was a dumb decision” just mainly because it’s a single they don’t have an understanding of. But still, in 2022, it’s difficult to envision that the firm (or Melling additional specifically) didn’t see that there would be blowback in this situation. It’s a person detail to have disagreements, but it is another to unceremoniously dump a beloved and award-profitable girl anchor. And it’s bizarre that a senior govt at a news business would believe that the fact would not arrive out, given that, after all, he’s surrounded by individuals whose job, and private commitment, is to report the information.

And it is tricky not to suspect that this a significantly less than happy transition for LaFlamme’s alternative, Omar Sachedina. Of training course, I’m positive he’s pleased to get the job. But when Bell Media’s press release prices Sachedina stating sleek things about LaFlamme, absolutely he didn’t want to believe the anchor chair amidst prevalent criticism of the changeover. He’s using on the part underneath a shadow. Probably the prize is value the price, but it is also tough not to picture that Sachedina experienced (or now has) some pull, some means to affect that method of the transition. I’m not expressing (as some absolutely will) that — as an insider who is familiar with the authentic story — he must have declined the occupation as sick-gotten gains. But at the really minimum, it seems good to argue that he really should have utilised his affect to form the transition. And if the now-senior anchor does not have that type of impact, we should really be worried certainly about the independence of that function, and of that newsroom.

A final, similar observe about authority and governance in advanced businesses. In any fairly properly-governed organization, the determination to axe a big, community-experiencing talent like LaFlamme would involve signal-off — or at least tacit approval — from more than just one senior government. This suggests that 1 of two issues is real. Both Bell Media is not that type of nicely-governed organization, or a large number of people were associated in, and culpable of, unceremoniously dumping an award-winning journalist. Which is even worse?

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