CBC blames teleprompter for guest anchor declaring that ‘Israel started the Hamas war’

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) went to a long-unused X account to proclaim that the guest host of the network’s “Power & Politics” didn’t mean to say, “Israel started the Hamas war.”

It was all the teleprompters’s fault, according to Canada’s state media.

“To clarify:  There was a teleprompter glitch that cut off part of the prepared script, which read:  ‘That's just the latest protest taking place in Canada, since Israel declared war on Hamas following the October attacks that left 12-hundred dead.’ The error was not intentional,” CBC declared in a post that has since disappeared from the site.

Guest host J.P. Tasker revised the historical record during a recent broadcast of CBC’s daytime current events program.

CBC began covering the war in Gaza amid controversy by issuing an internal editorial memo that ordered its correspondents to never use the word “terrorist” to describe the activities of Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

MP Rachael Thomas (CPC-Lethbridge), the Conservative critic for Canadian Heritage, said that means the CBC is "on the side of terrorists."

The broadcaster receives $1.3 billion in taxpayer money every year and Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to defund the Crown corporation if he becomes the next prime minister. 

CBC President and CEO Catherine Tait has remained in the news and is expected to soon appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Heritage – which monitors CBC’s activities and expenditures.

The committee would like to know why Tait has announced 600 job cuts at CBC while still entertaining $16 million in corporate bonuses for the media outlet’s elite.

CBC and Radio-Canada, its French-language counterpart, revealed a massive series of programming and job cuts because of “budget pressures.” That adds up to about 600 current positions and 200 planned positions.

CBC explained that it is expecting to lose $125 million in FY 2024-25 as a result of "rising production costs, declining television advertising revenue and fierce competition from the digital giants."