Media Accountability

CBC/Radio-Canada is fully committed to maintaining accuracy, integrity and fairness in its journalism. As a Canadian institution and a press undertaking, CBC/Radio-Canada is committed to compliance with a number of principles. Foremost among those is our commitment to scrupulously abide by the journalistic code of ethics formulated in our own handbook of journalistic standards and practices, which stresses lack of bias in reporting.

The Ombudsman is completely independent of CBC program staff and management, reporting directly to the President of CBC/Radio-Canada and, through the President, to the Corporation's Board of Directors. He or she acts as an appeal authority for complainants who are dissatisfied with responses from CBC program staff or management.

The Ombudsman generally intervenes only when a correspondent deems a response from a representative of the Corporation unsatisfactory and so informs the Office of the Ombudsman who determines whether the journalistic process or the broadcast involved in the complaint did, in fact, violate the Corporation's journalistic policies and standards.