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Politics, History, & 'Conspiracy'
Postby Masato » Tue Jan 02, 2024 7:11 pm
Honest testimony from a veteran Canadian journalist MARIANNE KLOWAK regarding the absolute destruction of credibility of the CBC and most other journalism in Canada during covid.
"we have betrayed our audience on a massive scale, massive.”
They all completely picked a side, glorified and demonized, censored and slandered. They all sold their souls.
Great vid:
"we have betrayed our audience on a massive scale, massive.”
They all completely picked a side, glorified and demonized, censored and slandered. They all sold their souls.
Great vid:
https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/witn ... ne-klowak/
- [spoiler]
- Shawn Buckley
W
Shawn Buckley
Now, Marianne, my understanding is, and it might be easier for you to give the highlights,
but I’ll try and go through some of them.
You have been a veteran senior reporter for the CBC, which for our international
participants is the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, for thirty-four years. And as a
journalist, you’ve been involved in all aspects of news gathering and investigative reporting
for radio, television, web live reporting, short and long-form documentaries. You have been
involved with current affairs as a current affairs news anchor for radio and television.
You’ve filed stories nationally for “World Report,” “The World This Weekend” and the
hourlies. You’ve basically done regional stories published on CBC National’s digital
platform. And the highlights could go on and on. Are there any other highlights that you’d
like to just, kind of, describe your career? Because you’ve been at this for thirty-four years,
and I’ve got a whole list of highlights. I just don’t know which ones to touch.
Shawn Buckley
Thank you. Now you’re here to share your experiences while you were still at the CBC and
working as a reporter and some of the stories you tried to run and what happened. So I’m
wondering if you can just start into that and then if we need any clarifications, I’ll jump in.
Marianne Klowak
Before I get into that, I think there’s a little bit of background that’s required. I know that as
a public broadcaster, you expect us to be telling you the truth, and we’d stop doing that.
And there was another number of stories that I had put forward that were blocked. But it
would seem to me as a journalist who’d been there thirty-four years, it’s like the rules had
changed overnight. And it changed so quickly that it left me just dizzy in disbelief.
I was blocked and prevented from doing stories that I’d pitched, that I’d put forward. They
never saw the light of day: they never made it to air or print. And some of those stories
were protests against vaccine mandates, people’s safety concerns about the vaccines, and
also the many problems with reporting adverse reactions in Canada. And for me what was
so disorienting about this was that, you know, I had learned from the best of the best at the
CBC. This is where I learned to think critically and fearlessly hold power to account, to
break stories and uncover information that you, the public, has a right to know.
And I also would like to mention that the newsroom I worked in, in CBC Manitoba, that they
were a leader in investigative journalism across the entire network, second only to
Toronto. And this was a newsroom that produced award-winning stories that sparked
change at the highest level of corporations and government. By the time I left in December
of 2021, I no longer recognized the CBC. And I really didn’t think my career would end this
way, that the skills I learned and honed at the CBC would be used to hold power to account
within the corporation.
Shawn Buckley
Can I just slow you down because I think it’s important for people to understand what
you’re saying. And especially because you were working as a journalist and as an
3
investigative reporter for much of the thirty-four years. So my understanding is, when
you’re a senior reporter like yourself, you can just follow a story, like, “Okay, I’m going to
report on this,” and you can do the story.
[00:05:00]
And generally speaking, you’re not second-guessed or your story isn’t changed. So your
experience in learning from true journalists in the past was just to run a story, to be fair,
and that was your experience until COVID hit.
Marianne Klowak
Absolutely. I would say, like, prior to COVID, I was expected to come into that editorial
meeting. I would have two or three original stories, what we call enterprising journalism,
original stories. And I was able to work on those unless there was big breaking news that
day. But normally, I would be assigned that story, given the time. And within, you know, a
day or two, I could turn those stories around on all three platforms, radio, TV, and web. And
I would also like to mention that I had one producer vetting for TV and radio. And rarely
were there any changes made in my script or the content. And for web, it was another
producer, but it was minor things like, let’s move this sentence, let’s change this word, we’ll
tighten lead. That was prior to COVID.
Shawn Buckley
So I’ll just follow up on that again because I think it’s important for people to understand.
So basically, your stories were standing as you made them.
Marianne Klowak
Absolutely, and they backed me in doing that. I was supported in doing it. That’s what they
wanted: original enterprising journalism.
Shawn Buckley
Okay. And so that ties into when you’re saying the Manitoba news desk at the CBC prior to
COVID, I mean, that was a hardcore journalistic news desk. They were expecting you to get
truthful fair stories. And they were not censoring. They were wanting the news.
Marianne Klowak
That’s the way it was prior to COVID.
Shawn Buckley
Okay. So COVID—that was a completely new ballgame when COVID hit. So even the swine
flu? Because we experienced that, you know, during your career.
Marianne Klowak
Yes.
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Shawn Buckley
None of this. It just started with COVID.
Marianne Klowak
No, it changed so quick that it left me spinning. And I mean, the way I saw it, I’m just going
to give you a little bit of a synopsis, and then I’ll get into specifics in terms of what was done
with my stories.
But we betrayed the public, we broke their trust. And we had been riding on a reputation of
excellence for years. And now we were quickly shutting down one side of the debate. And
how were we doing that? We branded the doctors and the experts the CBC chose that we
used in our stories: we branded them as competent and trustworthy. And those who
questioned and challenged the narrative were portrayed as dangerous and spreading
disinformation. And that was regardless of what their specialty was, what their background
was, and what their experience was.
And I just also want to sort of give you a window into how this affected me personally. As a
veteran journalist, I had solid contacts in the community. I had people calling me with
stories. So I was seeing and I was hearing and I was absorbing all their stories of suffering
and pain. And they were sharing them with me, and these stories weren’t being told. Some
of those were from the vaccine-injured. Some were from people who had lost their job
because of their vaccination status. Those whose families had been blown apart, and they’d
been ostracized. University students who were depressed over repeated lockdowns and
mandates. And parents who were calling me that were agonizing on whether they should
vaccinate their child or not. So all these stories were sitting inside of me. They were left
with me. And I felt the crushing burden and the weight of their truth not being given a
voice. And it affected my well-being because these people trusted me, and I felt I had failed
them and I had let them down.
Shawn Buckley
So can I just interject? So when you’re a journalist and people are coming to you with
stories that should be reported, you’re feeling a responsibility to give voice to those stories,
but you’re not being allowed to do so for the first time. And that’s what was causing the
distress internally.
Marianne Klowak
Absolutely. I was losing sleep, it was distressing. It was like I had failed these people as a
journalist to give voice to their truth.
So I had witnessed in a very short time the collapse of journalism, newsgathering,
investigative reporting. The way I saw it is that we were in fact pushing propaganda. And to
define propaganda: it’s information, ideas, opinions, or images that give one part of an
argument which are broadcast, published, in order to influence a person’s opinion.
[00:10:00]
And mental health workers have their own definition of propaganda as manipulative
persuasion in the service of an agenda.
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In a published article written by a former CBC editor-in-chief in 2018, she outlines what’s
called the Journalistic Standards and Practices [JSP] [Exhibit OT-4]. And these are the most
fundamental principles that govern who we are as journalists and who we are as a public
broadcaster. Basically, these are the pillars—the holy grail for journalists. This is what
every story we do can be measured against these: they are accuracy, fairness, balance,
impartiality, and integrity. She goes on to say that “the JSP is not merely a guide for the
people who work at CBC/Radio-Canada. It’s a key component of our promise to Canadians
that the work we do is, first and foremost, a public service.” Then she says, “The real test, of
course, is ensuring that our journalism is credible, reliable and worthy of your trust.” So in
other words, you the audience decide if we’re trustworthy, if we’re telling the truth. It’s not
up to us to hammer you with what we define, decide, or think that the truth is because the
pillars of balance and fairness require us to present both sides. And after you examine
them, you ultimately decide what the truth is. She says, “. . . you can hold CBC News
accountable against the principles that are laid out in the Journalistic Standards and
Practices.”
In my last year and a half at the CBC, we violated all of them. Not only had we shut down
one side by silencing and discrediting anyone opposing the narrative, we had elevated and
designated ourselves as the gatekeeper of the truth. We no longer believed our audience
was capable of critically thinking for themselves. I’m going to give you very specific
examples of that. But before that, I’d like to read you a page out of a journal that I wrote a
month after I left the CBC. It gives you a sense of the culture and the toxic work
environment that led me to leave before I had wanted to.
For months prior to my departure in December 2021, the complaints and criticism from
listeners and viewers continued to mount from the public. Calls, emails, people stopping me
on the street and saying, “What the heck is going on at the CBC?” People telling me they felt
betrayed, lied to. A gut feeling that they weren’t being told the whole truth. They no longer
trusted the CBC to tell them both sides of an issue. What was most troubling for me as a
journalist is that they no longer felt safe to tell me their story and have their voice heard by
their beloved public broadcaster.
Passion for the truth has been my driving force as a journalist, and we become journalists
because we see ourselves as truth tellers. The vast disconnect between the stories people
were telling me and what we were broadcasting and publishing just tore me apart. So
armed with documented examples and specifics, I voiced my dismay about our editorial
direction to all levels of management over several months—both locally and at the highest
level of power in Toronto. And I did this; I brought in a witness to every scheduled meeting
who would document what happened in those meetings.
The narrative among mainstream media including the CBC emerged early on in the
pandemic. By narrative, I mean presenting one side of a complex issue and effectively
censoring, cancelling and silencing the other side—only giving voice to experts who control
and reinforce the narrative. I’d seen it happen on issues in the past but never to this degree.
For the most part, logic, common sense, and critical thinking are suspended, preventing
deep dives on stories holding power to account. Facts may be omitted if they don’t fit into
the narrow focus of the narrative.
Who were we to deliberately withhold information the public needed to know and had a
right to know in order to make a decision based on informed consent about their health?
Canadians were starting to see this, and they were calling us out on it.
So for me things started to escalate, I would say it was early 2021.
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[00:15:00]
And I was disturbed and alarmed about the language that was being used in some of our
editorial meetings. All of a sudden, the term “anti-vaxxer” came up and I said, “Whoa, whoa,
let’s stop right there. What is an anti-vaxxer? Who is an anti-vaxxer? What do they believe?
Because are you saying it’s someone who’s against all vaccines? Because the people I’m
speaking to, who are vaccine hesitant, have had all their other shots, but they have
problems with this particular one.” I also brought up those who couldn’t get it for health
reasons because of allergies. And what about people who just needed more time and
information to make a decision. And yet we were lumping them all in this same pot as being
an “anti-vaxxer.” I said, “Using this term is dangerous. It’s discriminatory. And why are we
talking about these people with such hostility and such contempt?”
Shawn Buckley
So Marianne, can I just stop you there because that’s a term that’s become very sensitive at
this hearing. And I’ll explain that in a second. So when the term comes up in the newsroom,
it’s being used in a really negative term? Like, it’s meant to be pejorative?
Marianne Klowak
Almost laughing, ridiculing. It’s like these people aren’t educated: that was the kind of term
that was being used and that was what was inferred.
Shawn Buckley
And I’ll tell you why I’ve stopped you with that. So we’ve had, and I think it was the
Saskatoon hearings where I started to notice it. So we’d have witnesses, like literally
vaccine-injury witnesses, talking about how their lives were literally destroyed by this
particular vaccine. But then they would add during their testimony, just literally out of
context, “but I’m not an anti-vaxxer.” And then, we had a lady that really was part of one of
the biggest freedom groups in Saskatoon that arose because of the mandates and things
like that. And she made a point, “but we’re not an anti-vaxxer group.” So that told me—
because my understanding, and it’s based on a lot of the evidence that was here, but also,
you know, prior to me coming here—is that these terms are created basically to ridicule
and basically to close our minds, right? Because no one wants to be labelled as an “antivaxxer.” So if somebody is labelled as an anti-vaxxer, you’ll close your mind to them, right?
So it’s just interesting. I’m sorry to stop you, but it’s interesting to hear because you
basically used laughter as a description: that these people would be laughed at in a
newsroom.
Marianne Klowak
And ridiculed. And I think that was the prevailing consensus in the newsroom. That if you
were educated and if you were intelligent, you got the shot. To question it meant you
weren’t intelligent, which really flies in the face of critical thinking. And it’s opposite of
journalistic practice.
In June of 2021, the Manitoba government had carried out its own survey on vaccine
hesitancy.
7
Shawn Buckley
And we’ll just pull up your slide for a second [Exhibit OT-4]. There we go.
Marianne Klowak
So in the next slide, you see the reasons for vaccine hesitancy—why you’re not in a rush to
get it/not sure if you will get it/you’re not going to get it at all. Look at the top three: It
found 25 per cent were concerned about long-term effects; 18 per cent were concerned
about side effects and reactions; and 15 per cent said the vaccine was experimental and
unproven. So more than half, that’s 58 per cent, almost 60 per cent had concerns about
safety and that it was experimental. Now notice where religion comes in, it comes in at 4
per cent.
So more than half of the people were listening to their gut and they weren’t convinced by
the mantra of “safe and effective.” But instead of critically thinking, doing newsgathering
and real journalism on safety concerns, scrutinizing the Pfizer data, and asking some of the
hard questions people were asking me—like, “Why is the CBC the arm of public health?”—
we chose to focus on that four per cent. Those who were hesitant for religious reasons. So
our mission at the CBC now was to educate these people, or for that matter, educate anyone
who was vaccine hesitant and eliminate it, because surely if they were educated, they
would have changed their mind.
This to me was arrogant, it was condescending, and we were telling people what to think
because we didn’t trust them to think for themselves. Our tone implied they were a danger
to society if their thinking didn’t fall in line with the narrative. And to me,
[00:20:00]
this was mind boggling because I understood our mandate of the CBC was to elevate the
voice of Canadians to tell stories on a local, a regional, and a national level, reflecting
Canadians to Canadians to promote understanding and unity. And instead, we were fanning
the flames of fear, of division, of segregation and hatred against a particular group, the
unvaccinated. So the stereotype we were creating emerged early on: The person who was
unvaccinated was uneducated; they were likely a person of faith. They were denying that
COVID was real. They probably lived in a rural community. And they were branded—"a
danger to public safety.”
Shawn Buckley
So I’m just going to stop you. So these are themes that the CBC in their newsroom came up,
to actually use, to basically denigrate, create a group called “the anti-vaxxers” and denigrate
them. So we actually have our state-funded news organization coming up with themes to
create a separate group and to make them look uneducated and basically like “Luddites.”
Marianne Klowak
That was the image that was portrayed.
Shawn Buckley
And this was a deliberate decision.
8
Marianne Klowak
It was a deliberate decision because look at the government survey: it showed that almost
60 per cent of people were concerned about safety, and yet we were focusing on religion.
I’ll give you a couple examples of the stories.
Shawn Buckley
And if I can just interact a little bit. Because it would seem to me the story is, “Here’s what
people’s concerns are, and let’s go talk to those people.” Right?
Marianne Klowak
That would be the common thinking, wouldn’t it?
Shawn Buckley
And then see what flows from that as the story develops. Okay.
Marianne Klowak
That would be the common thinking.
This is a story we ran in May of 2021: “Death bed denials” in southern Manitoba hospital
patients, the doctor says. So it was a fact that pockets of Southern Health in Manitoba did
have the lowest uptake of the vaccine. But I challenged the stereotype: I’m saying, you
know, “I know doctors, I know educated people, I know people in the trades, I know people
working in garment factories, social workers, people all over the province that are vaccine
hesitant. They do not fit this stereotype.” But many of them, by now, were too afraid to be
interviewed because they knew it wasn’t safe. They knew what would happen to them—
that they would be labelled, stigmatized, and they would likely lose their job.
Here was another story we did in targeting people in faith communities that we ran a few
months later. And that was in September of 2021. Manitoba health officials were targeting
the low vaccination rate in the southern part of the province. They thought the best way to
get through to these people is to get the community leaders and the religious leaders on
board, and then “we can convince people to get the shot.” The story says: There’s “no
legitimate reason for religious exemptions” to get the shot “across several major belief
systems, the leaders say.”
That’s not what I was hearing from people. People were applying for exemptions and on
their deeply held spiritual beliefs. And their applications were consistently being rejected,
and they were losing their jobs because of it. These were gut wrenching stories that people
were calling me saying, “I’m being escorted out of my workplace right now. I can’t believe
this is happening. I’m being discriminated against because of my faith.” They said, “Where’s
the right to religion, freedom of religion and where’s the right to bodily autonomy,” and
where was the CBC and why weren’t we telling their stories?
I mean, there was one man that I had spoken with, he’d been with a company for 25 years
and he was in a management position, and he was working from home and he applied for
an exemption that was rejected. He lost his job and he was—because he wouldn’t get the
shot and he was continuing to work from home. It was ludicrous. It was absolutely
ludicrous. And we didn’t do these stories.
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So this was all sort of coming to a head and on June 3rd, 2021, I called for a meeting with
the managing editor of CBC Manitoba, the executive producer. And I asked that a witness be
present at all of the meetings to hear my concerns about our editorial direction. Now that
witness was a person who was recently hired as the executive producer of diversity and
inclusiveness. So in that meeting, I raised a number of issues. I said, “Why weren’t we
investigating the safety of the vaccines when that’s what came up at 60 per cent in a
government survey? Why were we creating a dangerous stereotype of who we thought a
vaccine-hesitant person was? Why were we creating a hate culture against them and
demonizing these people as a threat to public safety?
[00:25:00]
“Why were we endorsing and promoting an experimental drug that we didn’t know much
about other than what the government and the manufacturer were telling us?”
And I’m going to give you an example of how that happened. Going back to the journalistic
standards about how we’re supposed to be impartial: We had reporters posting on their
CBC Facebook page at the local and national level with a sticker on their arm and their hand
up in the air saying, “I’m part of Team Pfizer and Team Moderna” with their hand up. And I
said, “How is that being impartial and how is that being objective? And why were we
getting behind Pfizer, which paid out huge criminal settlements? And would these images
convince people who were not sure to get the shot?” I said, “Clearly, this is a journalistic
breach.” When I flagged this to management, they didn’t have an issue with it. They didn’t
think it was a problem.
I also brought up to them.
Shawn Buckley
Let me just stop. The management didn’t view those issues as a problem?
Marianne Klowak
No, they said if they want to do that, that’s their choice.
Shawn Buckley
You mean, if who wants to do it?
Marianne Klowak
If a reporter wants to post on Facebook they’ve gotten the shot and they’ve got a sticker
and they’re part of Team Pfizer or Moderna, they didn’t have an issue with that.
Shawn Buckley
Okay.
Marianne Klowak
I also brought up at that meeting what happened with thalidomide. That’s a drug that was
endorsed in the early 1960s for pregnant women who were nauseated: a drug that caused
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severe birth defects. And that we shouldn’t be getting on this bandwagon—we should be
very cautious because this was a brand-new vaccine that had just become available.
Now I’m going to give you a specific example of a story that I was shut down on. So June
2021 was the time when Israel was starting to see some links between the Pfizer vaccine
and heart inflammation. And I was getting calls from parents who were really distressed
and just saying, “There’s the potential risk of heart inflammation in young people. I don’t
know if I should vaccinate my child, I don’t know what to do. How safe is this vaccine?”
They were in angst about—they wanted more information. And at that time, the Center for
Disease Control and the FDA had put a warning on their fact sheet about rare cases of
myocarditis.
Some parents in Manitoba thought, you know, Manitoba should be doing the same for their
fact sheet on Pfizer because that was the only one that was authorized in Canada for those
twelve and older. They had sent letters to the province, the health minister, public health
officials, and they shared all these documents with me. So I pitched this story on the June
3rd meeting, and I was given the go-ahead and I interviewed several parents.
And I approached this story like I would approach any other story: Is this true? The
government and the manufacturer are saying it’s safe and effective, and yet we’ve got
parents worried about some evidence that’s emerging that there could be some health
concerns. So I set out to news gather, investigate, do the research, and find the answers to
the questions people were asking.
And for me, this story was reflective of that 60 per cent where people were saying, “This is
what we’re concerned about.” So I thought, great, we’re going to do a story that the public
has a right to know. And these were some of the things that parents said to me on the
record. They said, “Giving youth a drug that’s still in the trial phase is a terrible idea. It’s
dangerous.” They wanted to know “who would be responsible if their child had an adverse
reaction?” Most troubling in their opinion was that some of these children didn’t need to
have their parents’ consent to get the shot. “Why was the state taking control of their
children?” They were asking me this. This is all credible and legitimate questions. They
were fed up with their kids being threatened and bullied in and out of school for not being
vaccinated.
I’ll tell you one story. There was a rural community, and this mother phoned me and there
were two families. One family was vaccinated; one wasn’t. And the daughters were best
friends. And one of the daughters said, “Well, you know, if you want to get the shot, you can
come over to my house on the weekend and my mom will take you. And your mother never
has to know.” So that was the end of that friendship. That was the end of that. And it
divided the whole community.
And these people were questioning, they were asking me, they were saying, “Well, if this
vaccine is safe, then why does someone who’s vaccinated have to be afraid of someone
who’s unvaccinated?” Very logical questions. And they were angry with the CBC. They
expressed that to me. They said, “Why was the CBC and the media cheerleading the
government’s message that the vaccine was safe and effective?” because they weren’t
convinced by it.
[00:30:00]
So that’s basically what they said to me on the record.
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And most of them had referenced and voiced their support for a body of scientific research
that was put forward by the Canadian COVID Care Alliance [CCCA]. Specifically, by Byram
Bridle, a world-class immunologist from the University of Guelph. And the Alliance had
been raising flags about the safety of the vaccine based on scientific studies. They’d even
filed a petition with the federal government, and they were calling the feds to suspend the
use of the vaccines in children, in youth, in adults, in women of childbearing age until there
would be long-term and short-term safety trials that were completed and this would be
published in peer-reviewed journals. Many of the parents I spoke with had signed this
petition. Certainly, this was newsworthy and something the public had a right to know.
These were Canadians that were voicing a different or dissenting voice, and up until now,
all we were airing and publishing were experts aligned with the government’s view. This is
a story I thought that would bring some fairness and balance to our one-sided coverage,
and it would punch a hole in the narrative.
I contacted the Alliance, and I spoke with a scientist by the name of Stephen Pelech. He’s a
highly reputable scientist. He’s a professor of neurology in the Department of Medicine at
the University of British Columbia. He had been doing COVID research in his lab for two
and a half years. He also published more than two hundred scientific papers over the
course of his career. He praised the parents I interviewed and he said, “You know, they’re
wise. They’re wise to question this narrative” because he had serious concerns with
vaccinating children with this new vaccine.
He shared with me the Pfizer data that showed with children, there’s the least amount of
data from testing on whether there’s a long-term or short-term side effect. So according to
the document I was looking at from Pfizer, it was just over 1130 adolescents between 12
and 15 in the U.S. were vaccinated in phase III trials. And in his opinion that was
problematic. He said the tests were done on a very small number of children and the test
wasn’t powered enough: so what that meant is there wasn’t enough participants to
determine if, let’s say, there was a reaction of one in five thousand, that wouldn’t have been
picked up by Pfizer. So I had Pelech on camera; I had these parents all lined up. And I told
you what my workflow was like prior to COVID. But it changed with this story.
When it came to this story, I never had more hands in the vetting of this story. While it was
cleared by the Manitoba managing exec and the director, a local web writer flagged it. And
she said, “You know, maybe we should get a response from Pfizer.” I said, “No, I think we’ve
heard more than enough from Pfizer.” Then she said, “You know, I don’t think the vaccine is
still in the trial phase.” And I produced a document saying it is until 2023. But she sent out
an internal email to several people in the newsroom, and she decided that my story should
be forwarded to the Toronto Health Unit. Now this is a special unit within the CBC, and she
wanted them to do a final vet of my story. So now the CBC Toronto Health Unit was in
charge of my story. It was the end of June, and I was really getting anxious over how long
this was taking because as I mentioned before, I was used to turning stories around in a day
or two. But to me, it was critical timing because the rollout was ramping up for the
vaccination of young people in Manitoba. It was in full swing. Finally, five weeks later on
July 8th—
Shawn Buckley
Five weeks?
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Marianne Klowak
Five weeks. Remember, I could turn around stories in two or three days—this was five
weeks. So I think they were sitting on the story. Maybe they were just hoping that I would
go away and not persist in doing this story.
But five weeks after, July 8th, I pitched the story, I was called into a meeting. Well, this was
on Zoom because we were all working from home by then, and they had a verdict from
Toronto. And you know, I should mention to you that over three decades at the CBC, I’d say
30 to 35 per cent of the stories I did were health stories. Never had I had a story that had to
go to the Toronto Health Unit. And never was a story given this level of scrutiny.
Shawn Buckley
So I just want to emphasize this because you had told us earlier that basically things
changed at COVID. So what you’re saying is, for your thirty-five years as a journalist
[00:35:00]
like, 35 to 40 per cent of your stories were health stories. So you knew what it took to run a
health story and that never before had it been sent to this Toronto Health Unit or no story
in your career had ever been put under this much scrutiny.
Marianne Klowak
Never. Like I had mentioned, it was one producer, and the story was put through and it was
published. And all of a sudden now, there were all these hands in the story.
And what I want to mention to you, which is key to know here, is that before I tell you what
happened, that none of the facts, none of the data, none of the research, nothing I put
forward in that story in terms of any of the information was contested. It was rock solid
journalism. And I knew that I could put my name to that and defend every word I had
written.
They raised two concerns that was an issue for them: Did I know that the Alliance
promoted ivermectin? And did I know that some of the members of the Alliance chose to be
anonymous? Those were their two concerns. So my thought was, okay, now the story is
being blocked further up the chain.
I did know they supported ivermectin, but that was not the focus of the piece. And I had
been sending for weeks links to management from medical journals about the success of
ivermectin in treating COVID. I got no response. I said, We should be having a debate about
ivermectin on air and hear from experts who support its use. But that was not the focus of
this piece.”
As for members being anonymous, I was confused by that because, I thought, I interviewed
Stephen Pelech. He went full-face on camera with his credentials. So there was no
anonymity there. And I could only guess that maybe some were choosing to be anonymous
because they wanted to be able to continue to practise without fear of being disciplined
anyway.
But what came next left me just speechless. I was just astonished. They said, “While there’s
a story to be told about the parents’ concerns, the Canadian COVID Care Alliance was
problematic.” I should “drop them out of the story, keep the parents’ concerns in, but
13
interview two experts that CBC Toronto was recommending.” And of course, I did my
research, “Well, who are these people?” One of them was a pediatric immunologist who
told me both of her kids were vaccinated. She had worked with the federal government. She
chaired a national committee overseeing the approval process of COVID-19 vaccines in
Canada. I was being told to drop Pelech out of the story who was raising flags about safety
concerns and put this woman in.
I was just stunned. I was shocked. I could not believe that they were asking me to do this. I
said, “This is unethical. This is immoral. You’re violating all our 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.” The parents I had on tape, I’d
interviewed, they were backing the science of Bridle and to include them in the story but
leave the Alliance out, to me, defied logic. It didn’t make any sense. We were effectively
censoring people in the scientific community with impeccable credentials because they just
didn’t fall in line with the narrative.
I said to the managing editor, “I’m standing down. I’m walking away from this story. I’m not
going to do what you’re asking me to do. I’ve invested too much in this. I’m not going to sell
these people out. And why should I have to include two doctors that Toronto has picked
out?”
And then I think, you know, what if this story had made it through and it went national?
Wouldn’t that have changed the narrative across the country? If parents had been armed
with this information, would we have seen fewer vaccine injuries?
Shawn Buckley
Can I just stop you. Because another thing just kind of occurred to me when you were
sharing that story and you mentioned how they were actually critical of the CCCA—and I’m
thinking, well just wait, just so people that don’t know the term—so that stands for the
Canadian COVID Care Alliance. My understanding is, I mean, if it’s not hundreds, it’s
thousands of scientists and doctors. Like we’re talking very credentialed people that have
formed an organization to basically look into COVID issues objectively and to provide fair
and balanced information.
[00:40:00]
And you know if that leads them in a direction that goes against the government narrative.
But isn’t the fact that that group formed and exists, itself, a story that should be covered, let
alone cutting them out of a story. I was just thinking that in itself is somewhat fantastic and
likely would be a story.
Marianne Klowak
And they formed specifically because of COVID and to give an alternative perspective. And I
had pitched, “Let’s do a story on them,” but it was like, they weren’t interested in it. They
weren’t interested in hearing what these people have to say because they figured they
supported ivermectin. So they didn’t want to do any of those stories.
Shawn Buckley
And just to give perspective—because I know when we had a conversation and likely you’ll
get to it—like, a reporter will go to a demonstration on an issue where there’s twelve
14
people and report a story. But when tens of thousands of people show up for a
demonstration, that might not be covered if it’s going against the government narrative
now. So, just kind of along those veins, like just even the size of the CCCA itself is quite—
Marianne Klowak
The numbers.
Shawn Buckley
Yeah, and it’s quite something.
Marianne Klowak
The fact that they had filed this national petition was to me huge. They were saying, “No, we
need to stop, we need to pause, we need more information before we roll this out across
the country for young people,” and that story was shut down.
Shawn Buckley
And that was a petition backed by scientists and medical doctors citing peer-reviewed
evidence.
Marianne Klowak
Correct.
Shawn Buckley
Okay.
Marianne Klowak
So the day that that happened to me, which was July 8th, it’s burned in my memory because
for me, part of me died that day with that story. And that was the death of journalism for
me, July 8th, 2021. Instead, we were clearly pushing propaganda.
So I had to call back everyone. And I thought, how am I going to handle this? So I apologized
and I told them the truth. And it was shameful and it was humiliating because these people
had put themselves on the line to tell me their story. And I said, “This is why I can’t do it.
This is why I won’t do it, and it wouldn’t see the light of day.” And I said, “I’m sorry that I
have failed you and I have let you down.”
I didn’t go to work the next day because I thought I have to strategize. How am I going to
deal with this? Do I quit right now? Do I stay and try to push stories through even harder?
The following day I asked for a conference call with the managing editor, the exec, and the
witness and I said, “Here’s the deal.” I say, “You know that story was solid journalism. I’m
asking you to publish it. You have that power.” And I said the timing was key as the
province was ramping up the vaccinations of young people. It was urgent that this critical
information get out there. And I said, “I’m asking you to do this despite what Toronto has
said.” And if they wouldn’t, I could no longer continue to work in this environment. They
didn’t publish it.
15
It was also at that time I decided I had to start reaching out to other journalists because I
felt like I was just losing my mind. Surely other people were seeing what I was seeing. And I
did reach out. I reached out locally to a competing network. I also talked to someone south
of the border. Through internal email at CBC, I sent out notes saying, “This is what I’m
seeing. What are you seeing?” And I didn’t hear back from anybody.
So I thought, you know, I’m going to call the CBC Union. I called the CBC Union and they
said, “Oh yeah, we’re getting all kinds of calls about people concerned about our biased
reporting.” And I said, “Well, where are they? Put me in touch with them.” And she said, “Oh
no, they’re not, it’s staying with the union. They’re not going to go past the union.” I say,
“What does that mean?” And she says, “Well, they’re not prepared to do what you’re doing.
They’re not prepared to go all up the ladder and call power to account.”
So then I reached out to somebody. And I guess, you know, I understand that because I was
sort of at the end of my career, but a lot of the journalists that were calling the union were
midway in their career and they were afraid of losing their jobs. I contacted a senior
reporter from a competing network and I said to her, “What are you seeing?” She said, “Oh,
I’m seeing the same thing, you know, why has the media become the mouthpiece of public
health?” Then I managed to contact a reporter who worked for The New York Times who
told me what was happening to me was exactly what was happening to him. His stories
were being shut down: he was being blocked. As he saw it, we had two options. One of them
was quit and be a whistleblower,
[00:45:00]
or to stay and fight it out and keep trying to push those stories through. He also gave me
some advice. He said, “document everything that’s happened to you, as you would cover a
news story. Who said what, when, who was present and the date.” I was just reeling from
all this because I thought, you know, we have betrayed our audience on a massive scale,
massive.
And even the CBC acknowledged that erosion of trust in a blog that was written by the
editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon in March of 2021. Forty-nine per cent of Canadians think
journalists are purposely trying to mislead them. About half of the fifteen hundred people
of the Canadians surveyed felt the CBC was more concerned with supporting an ideology or
a political position than informing the public. And that the media was not doing well at
being objective. How is the CBC going to rebuild trust in journalism?
In 2019, it became a member of the Trusted News Initiative—so that brings together news
organizations from all over the world and tech platforms to combat coronavirus
disinformation: to identify and stop the spread of it, false claims, half-truths, conspiracy
theories, basically, a way to filter news through its own filter system. I saw it basically as a
mechanism to “call people out” who disagreed with the narrative and to label them
dangerous and extreme.
Why do you need a trust filter system if you’re consistently telling the truth? Why are tech
platforms involved in combating disinformation? And who are these people in this
Initiative? Are they journalists? Are they scientists? Is artificial intelligence involved? Who
is the Trusted News Initiative? This was an effective way to stop the flow of information: to
censor one side, skew reporting, and label opposing opinion and thought as disinformation.
Sometime after signing on with the Trusted News Initiative, there was a shift in the lens of
how we saw news. It was no longer from the bottom up—it was from the top down.
16
Let me give you a specific example of how this played out in the newsroom in another story
that I was blocked in doing. I’d gotten a tip about a peaceful protest in Winnipeg about
vaccine mandates, and it was in September of 2021. There was about two thousand people
out on the street. We didn’t cover it because it was decided at the editorial level these
people were spreading disinformation. This was just unbelievable. I was stunned because I
had been sent in, you know, to cover stories and do live hits from protests with twelve
people present. But we were going to ignore a group this large and not send a camera and
find out what these people had to say. I thought not only is the size of the group
newsworthy, it was the fact that it was both vaccinated and unvaccinated people were
walking together and they were united in their opposition to vaccine mandates.
I had gotten a call from someone on the protest line who says, “Where’s the CBC? There’s
people here that are cutting up their vaccine passports as a show of solidarity against the
mandates.” And I thought, wow, this is a great story. This is great visuals. This is a powerful
story of people at the grassroots uniting. Why wasn’t the CBC there? It was a decision made
at the top level rather than looking at the news that was unfolding on the ground.
When I asked why we weren’t there, I didn’t get an answer. It wasn’t worthy of covering
because in the CBC’s eyes, these people were disseminating disinformation. How could we
say that if we never even spoke to any of them? We ran a few lines of copy that day saying,
“More than 250 people in Winnipeg held a protest against mandates.” That was misleading
and it was a half truth. There was at least 2000 people. By saying more than 250, we were
trying to minimize, in fact, how large it was. And to me, we missed the story entirely, which
was people uniting against a cause.
Instead that day, I was assigned a story about a cricket infestation. No one was sent to
cover the protests, and the cricket story went national.
[00:50:00]
But there was nothing about the Manitoba protest.
Shawn Buckley
So, Marianne, just so that we have contrast because you’ve told us about, listen, there’s this
protest, 2000 people. The real story is that both sides are coming together, that people with
the passport are so concerned about the mandate, they’re cutting that up. So tell us about
the exciting cricket story that became national news in Canada. What was the story, just so
we’re not left in suspense?
Marianne Klowak
That people’s back lanes and garages and houses are being filled with crickets. And I’m
thinking, really, we’re going to tell that story, and we’re going to basically ignore two
thousand people walking through the city uniting in a cause. We are just going to ignore
these people. To me that was just unconscionable.
Shawn Buckley
And was the cricket story urgent? Like—
17
Marianne Klowak
No, I don’t— Well, I guess if you were living in a house full of crickets, it might be, but that
was not the story to be told that day. But that was the story they decided should be told
that day. Later that month, I pitched another story, and it was shut down.
Shawn Buckley
Can I just stop and I’m sorry. So we have, literally, vaccinated people and not vaccinated
people coming together against the mandate. And we have crickets from the CBC. I’m sorry
I couldn’t resist.
Marianne Klowak
It’s shameful.
Shawn Buckley
That was just too easy. So okay, and I’m sorry to interrupt, I just truly couldn’t resist.
Marianne Klowak
So later that month, I pitched another story that was also shut down. And it was about what
vaccine mandates were going to look like at universities in Manitoba. I had a professor
lined up, an immunologist lined up from Ontario. They were on a committee there helping
to draft the rollout of mandatory vaccines at the University of Guelph and McGill. They
talked about students having less freedom on campus: There’d be more security, more
policing of students. Those who refuse to wear a mask could be hauled off by campus
police. I also had an ethicist lined up who was willing to talk about his concerns over
mandatory vaccinations for students.
And both the experts were saying they were worried about the mental health of students
that were going into a second year of restrictions. Both were getting contacted by parents
and students who just were not in support of this. And I thought this would be an excellent
discussion to have in Manitoba with faculty and parents and students for our audience to
hear because it was already rolling out in Ontario, and it was going to be coming into
Manitoba; they were ahead of us. And I also said I had spoken with two legal firms that
were fighting mandatory vaccines on campuses, and they felt the court ruling in Ontario
could set a precedent for the rest of the country. There was no response to what I pitched
that day. Instead, I was assigned another story about an infestation. This time it was
bedbugs in a local housing complex. And no one else had been assigned to that story that I
had pitched.
So I interpreted that as I was quickly becoming silenced and cancelled for trying to get the
other side of the story out. I was battle weary. I was exhausted from fighting. I never felt
more alone in my profession. And as a veteran journalist who is usually fearless and
outspoken, I no longer felt it was safe to pitch stories that I knew that we should be telling.
And I quickly felt that my existence there was becoming null and void. But I wasn’t done
yet.
In September, I decided I’m going to go directly to Toronto to voice my concerns about our
editorial direction. And I was going to tell them what I was experiencing. I started sending
emails to Brodie Fenlon, CBC’s editor-in-chief, and Paul Hambleton, who was the head of
Journalistic Standards. Now he’s no longer with the CBC, he left a month after I did. I shared
18
with them what I’d documented about what was happening with my stories, specific details
what was going on in the newsroom in Winnipeg, the language that was being used. How
we had created this culture of hate and division, feeding people’s fears. And why were we
so hostile to people who had an opinion that was different from ours? And while I
applauded the CBC’s initiative of diversity and inclusiveness in hiring people of different
cultures and ethnic backgrounds,
[00:55:00]
I said, “Where is our diversity in thought? Where is that?”
Again, I was hearing the word “anti-vaxxer” being used in the newsroom, and this is already
a year and a half into the pandemic. We’d failed to create a safe environment for people to
speak to us on the record so their voices could be heard. I told them we had violated all our
journalistic standards. We’d broken the public trust. And we withheld information the
public had a right to know, and we were guilty. I asked to have a conversation with them
before I left. And Brodie Fenlon emailed me back. He thanked me for what I sent, said he’d
be happy to talk to me. But with the federal election going on, could we schedule a time
afterwards in October, and he would invite Paul Hambleton into this discussion as well. I
was pleased he had responded.
At that point like I knew, I had my end date. I’d spoken to HR; I knew when I was going to
be leaving the CBC, but I had one more story in the queue I wanted to get out. And it was
about a woman who was vaccine-injured. I had several calls and conversations with people
who had contacted me about they had been vaccine-injured, they knew someone who had
been vaccine-injured, or there was a family member.
One of them was the mother of a teenage boy. He was an elite athlete, he had gotten the
shots, he had chest pain. He was told he was going to have to spend his summer lying on a
sofa recovering, and he could not do any sports that summer. A woman called me who got
her first shot and she was really sick. And she was anxious because she went for medical
help, and she was told that she should still get the second shot, but maybe she should be
admitted to hospital to get the second shot in case she had a worse reaction. This to me was
madness, was madness. The rest were afraid that they wouldn’t be believed because of, you
know, the media mantra we were putting there, “safe and effective.”
The way I saw it, we were gaslighting these people. You know, let’s say you have a refugee
coming into the country, and you know they’ve suffered trauma and they’ve been through
hell. How do we treat them? We treat them with mercy and compassion and kindness. And
yet these people who were being injured—we were gaslighting them. One man who had an
adverse reaction said to me, it had to be him, “It’s got to be me. There’s got to be something
wrong with me because it’s safe and effective.”
So getting back to the woman I did the interview with. She had had an adverse reaction
after her first shot in May of 2021. It took me weeks to gain her trust, for her to go on the
record. She was thirty years old. She was an avid runner and she worked with the federal
government. She had no previous heart condition. The very next day after getting the shot,
May 27th, she had chest pain. Then she said she was short of breath. She felt like she had
this huge weight sitting on her chest. The pain got worse, she had trouble breathing. She
described it as the feeling like there was thick smoke in her lungs, but she wasn’t a smoker.
She knew something was really wrong.
19
She went to emergency at St. Boniface Hospital where she was diagnosed with pericarditis.
And that’s inflammation of the tissue around the heart. She shared her written medical
report with me from the emergency room doctor. Since her shot in May—within the next
month—she’d been to emergency five more times with increased chest pain. She could no
longer run. She was winded from walking up a flight of stairs. And she said she thought that
she was dying. And I had interviewed a cardiologist as well who told me, “if there’s damage
to heart cells as an adult, they don’t regenerate. The damage is permanent.” And yet we
were running stories saying, “Take a couple of Advil, and there shouldn’t be any lasting
symptoms from heart inflammation.” This woman was on anti-inflammatory medication
for months. She was battling depression and anxiety because she was no longer the
outgoing, active, happy-go-lucky person she used to be.
She also told me how difficult it was to get someone to document what happened to her as
an adverse reaction. She said the first doctor who diagnosed it was hesitant to put it in
writing. Some doctors didn’t know how to fill out the form. Finally, a nurse had filed it for
her, and that was another story I pitched.
The problems with doctors reporting adverse reactions in Canada.
[01:00:00]
They have to download a PDF, takes about fifteen minutes to fill it out. The doctor has to
sign it. Then it goes to a health authority who has to approve it. And some of the doctors
were telling me that their reports were getting rejected. And I was hearing more and more
about the problems with reporting these adverse reactions in Canada. And there was even
a period during the pandemic that the line that they used to report these adverse reactions
was down, the link wasn’t working. Surely, this was newsworthy. No interest in that story.
But getting back to the woman, I interviewed. I stayed in touch with her. After doing her
own research, she connected with three other women who were diagnosed with heart
inflammation after being vaccinated. I wrote her story. Here was my first line based on
what she told me. This was the original before it was edited: “A 30-year-old Winnipeg
woman says she’s not confident the COVID-19 vaccine is safe for everybody and is advising
people to do their research. She admits she was hesitant at first to get the shot, but she felt
pressure from people posting online that she was selfish if she didn’t.” Two words the
editors didn’t like in there: “vaccine” and “hesitant.” Again, several hands were in this story,
several. A managing editor, two web writers, another producer, and I fought several edits
that were made. By now at this point, I was sort of afraid because I thought if I pushed them
too hard, they could pull the story entirely.
Okay, here’s the story the CBC published on July 12th, 2021. This is my story, and this is
what they changed: “Winnipeg woman shocked by heart lining inflammation after COVID
vaccine, but experts say the risk remains low.” Look at the first line. “A 30-year-old
Winnipeg woman says she was shocked to be diagnosed with the condition involving
inflammation of the lining around her heart days after she got her COVID-19 vaccination in
late May.”
The changes that they made didn’t reflect what she was saying to me about the safety
concerns. It was propaganda editing to change the meaning entirely. Any reference to
vaccine hesitancy was taken out. I fought the web writer on that first sentence. He says,
“Well, no, we can’t say that; we don’t want to scare people.” I say, “That’s not journalism.” I
said, “Maybe we should be concerned, look what happened to her.” And I said, “We can’t
negate her personal lived experience: her story is one of caution and to do research.”
20
And if you look at the next sentence which says, “But a Winnipeg cardiologist says despite
concerns about heart inflammation, vaccines are preventing illness from COVID-19.” Why
would anyone read any further in my story. Basically, the message was it happened to her,
it’s too bad, it’s unfortunate, but vaccines are still doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
But there were medical experts who were disputing this, but they had been cancelled by
the CBC because according to the CBC, they were spreading disinformation. The fact she
was an avid runner was taken out of the story, and I fought to have that put back in. I say,
“No, I think that’s important. You know, she was a runner and now she can barely walk up
the stairs. It shows what happened before and after the shot.” And she never got the second
one because her reaction was so severe after the first. And I also didn’t think there should
be experts or stats negating what she was saying. Because we’d heard more than enough
from all of the experts. It should be just a straight-ahead 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—it was sanitized.
I lost sleep the night before that story was published. I knew we didn’t do justice to her
story. I spoke with her the next day, and she was so traumatized she couldn’t read the
story. I should also tell you I contacted her five months after I left the CBC, and she was still
suffering from health problems, blood clots. That story was the breaking point for me. I was
waiting for that final exit meeting with Fenlon and Hambleton in October. And when I had
it, I told them what had happened to my stories. How devastated I was to be leaving the
CBC after spending three decades in a career that I loved.
I asked them what’s the makeup of the CBC Toronto Health Unit, like who are these people:
“Are they journalists, are they scientists, like who are they?”
[01:05:00]
I was basically told they were experts who are really good at what they do. But I still don’t
know who they are. Then I brought up the issue of mandatory training and seminars for
journalists that we had to take on what was called conscious and unconscious bias. We had
to sign off on this training. It was to identify any bias we may have in doing a story. And to
be aware of it, to make sure it doesn’t impact the story that we’re doing and that we are
more inclusive. I said, “You know what, we the CBC have a glaring bias, both conscious and
unconscious, when it came to stories involving experts opposing the narrative and with
those who were unvaccinated, we had a glaring bias.” I said, “I was worried about the next
generation of journalists. They’re young, they’re inexperienced. And that the editorial
meeting is not a safe place to have a different opinion. Why are we so mean and hostile to
people with different opinions?”
And I said, “Did you know how we were being branded outside the walls, the corporate
walls of the CBC?” I’ve seen those protests; I’ve seen those signs. We were being known as
the Canadian Brainwashing Corporation or in faith circles, the Christian Bashing
Corporation. Some of my final words to them, as I saw it, I said, “The CBC is morally and
ethically culpable of the narrative that it pushed to the public, and we are going to be held
accountable. We failed to hold power to account, and no one was holding the media to
account. We failed to serve the public. We broke their trust.”
I told them, “You can silence and cancel scientists with impeccable credentials, you can
even cancel me.” But I said, “My solace is that the truth will come out; it will come out.”
Brodie thanked me, and he said he was sorry that it had ended this way and that he didn’t
think the CBC had done all that bad. He wished me well. Hambleton, who is the head of
21
journalistic standards, he was still on the screen, and he told me, that the most heat that he
took during COVID was over ivermectin. People calling and writing with letters with no let
up. I said, “The CBC should have listened on many fronts. The truth will come out.” That’s
what I said in October 2021.
So here we are a year and a half later, the truth has come out. Even though people still do
not want to believe the truth. According to Health Canada’s own website up and to
including March 3rd, a total 427 deaths were reported following vaccination, 427. Each and
every one of those deaths was worthy of a story. Where was the CBC? Where was any
media on this? And is that number accurate? The same Health Canada website posted more
than 10,000 serious injuries for the same time period. Are those numbers accurate? Are
they higher because of all the problems with reporting adverse reactions in Canada? Who
are the injured? What are their names? What are their stories? What are they suffering?
Lawsuits are going on, and there’s a few people of the vaccine-injured who are getting
settlements. We have one before the courts right now in Manitoba involving a young man
from Steinbach.
If reporters were doing their jobs, we would not be here today in this forum, funded by
citizens, telling our stories. Mainstream media would have done it. Where are they? Where
are they?
On February 27th of this year, papers with hundreds of profiles of suspected COVID vaccine
injuries and deaths were plastered onto the doors and windows of CBC Toronto. I had a
really hard time looking at those pictures because that to me was proof and evidence that
the public had trusted us and they had listened. And some of them paid dearly for it. I
waited to see, is CBC going to cover this? Is any media going to cover this? How could you
ignore this? It was just unconscionable and appalling that nobody covered it. I thought, I
wonder how employees felt that day when they came to work and they saw that—those
posters on the outside of the building. Did they stop? Did they look? Did they read? Did they
look at the names, or did they just go into the building and carry on with work that day?
The same thing happened in Winnipeg on a smaller scale.
[01:10:00]
Again, no media coverage.
And as mentioned earlier, CBC decided to pause its Twitter activity after it was labelled
“government-funded media” by Elon Musk. Brodie Fenlon had responded by publishing a
piece saying, “Journalistic independence is the cornerstone of who we are as a public
broadcaster.” Then that tweet was removed. CBC is not impartial—it is not independent. I
think what I shared with you gives witness to that.
There was some excitement over the fact CBC Manitoba covered the NCI when it stopped in
Winnipeg in mid-April. Maybe, finally, the CBC was going to report the other side. But it was
a low-impact piece in that it didn’t talk to anyone who was vaccine-injured. It didn’t delve
into any of the Pfizer data. And it didn’t talk about safety concerns or side effects.
