The CBC says it “regrets” an article blasting Conservative MP Rachael Harder for sharing “misinformation” after she posted a Toronto Sun column about COVID-19 deaths in Alberta on social media.
“Ten. That’s the number of otherwise healthy people who have died from COVID-19 in Alberta since the beginning of the pandemic,” reads the lead sentence of the Sun article published on Nov. 17, 2020.
Harder did not include any of her own comments when sharing the post on Facebook.
Harder complained to CBC Ombudsman Jack Nagler, contending that the article violated the public broadcaster’s own Journalistic Standards and Practices and was “bent, inaccurate, and sensationalized.”
“There were violations of policy and I hope fervently that programmers will learn from their mistakes here,” he said, noting that the article overall was “flawed.”
Nagler also acknowledged that the statistics in the Sun article were accurate.
Despite Harder’s demand for a formal and public apology, the news agency did not offer her one, although Nagler said CBC Calgary senior director Helen Henderson had agreed that Labby’s article “failed to live up to CBC’s journalistic standards.”
“This piece fell short of what we deem acceptable,” Henderson said, according to Nagler’s statement.
“Let me reiterate that I regret we did not live up to our, and our audience’s, expectations of CBC News.”
CBC Calgary has since updated the article to reflect Harder’s views and to contextualize some of the reactions to her Facebook post, including a change to the article’s headline which now reads “Lethbridge MP under fire for sharing article on COVID deaths, comorbidities and restrictions.”
Harder was re-elected in the 2021 federal election in her riding of Lethbridge, Alberta, for the third term with 55.7 percent of votes.