Veteran CBC news anchor Ian Hanomansing.KC ARMSTRONG/CBC
Ian Hanomansing had a very bad week that was supposed to be a very good week.
Though his name is mud with many patriotic Canadians at the moment, I can’t help but feel for the veteran CBC news anchor.
On Sunday, Hanomansing was the face and voice of a special edition of the TV/radio call-in show Cross Country Checkup that left a large chunk of the country cross. More than 1,000 e-mails of complaint about “51st State: A Cross-Border Conversation” were sent to the public broadcaster or its ombudsman, according to CBC’s head of public affairs, Chuck Thompson.
The whole debacle was entirely foreseeable and should have been prevented.
One root cause: Hanomansing, the sixtysomething anchor with the most neutral voice on television, and until now one of its most trusted, is being overworked by his employers.
Rewind your PVR to a week ago: Tues., Feb. 18. That’s when Hanomansing launched a show airing each weeknight on CBC News Network built around his usually calming, deadpan persona.
Hanomansing Tonight, which takes the place of an ill-fated program called Canada Tonight that couldn’t keep a host, is version 2 of an earlier show the journalist fronted from 2012 to 2017 on the 24-hour news channel.
It marked the welcome return of live CBC News Network programming to Vancouver, and reunited Hanomansing on air with correspondent Sarah Galashan, who had baked a cake for the occasion.
The top news story last Tuesday was still the crash at Toronto Pearson Airport – a disaster with eye-catching, fiery footage to chit-chat over, but also a miracle with no fatalities. So baked goods were not out of tune. A solid start.
Instead of letting Hanomansing settle into this new gig and giving him some time off from hosting Checkup on Sundays (when he also anchors The National), however, the powers that be at CBC News decided to make one of his other jobs more stressful than usual by upending its long-standing format.
In a programming move that came together in less than two weeks, CBC co-produced an edition of Checkup with an American show, called The Middle, that airs on NPR stations. The topic was Donald Trump’s repeated threats to use “economic force” to annex Canada into what he calls “the 51st state.”
The hastiness with which the special was put together was immediately apparent when it was announced Friday. The question callers were invited to respond to was: “What would Canada as the 51st state mean to you?”
Online, Canadians responded immediately with social-media fury at the title and how a discussion about recent attacks on our country’s sovereignty was being framed using the aggressor’s language. It was, indeed, shocking to see the CBC so completely disconnected from the national mood after Canada’s win over the United States in the 4 Nations hockey tournament final the night before.
No, a CBC call-in show did not commit treason
What happened next on Friday was Hanomansing made the mistake of responding on social media – defending the broadcast.
That meant that on Saturday – his one day off – he had to log in again to backtrack. On Bluesky, his preferred platform, he announced that the framing question had been changed after “lots of thoughtful social media criticism.”
The new one – “What do you think of Trump’s comments about Canada becoming the 51st state?” – did little to quell social media criticism both fiery and fair, however.
This is when the folks who employ and/or care about Hanomansing should have told him to turn off his phone.
Instead, the anchor started responding to insults and arguing online. By evening he was back on the defensive, complaining about being “hammered on social media for a program we haven’t done yet.”
It started to look like a mini-meltdown when he ended up in a back and forth with an Anglican minister – responding to a fair criticism with: “Have you listened to our show before? When have we fallen short on a serious topic?”
Unfortunately, Checkup then did fall short.
During the second hour of the broadcast on Sunday (which I tuned in to while making dinner), Hanomansing still sounded defensive. Even worse, he came across as bored when a caller brought the issue of international law into the conversation; that neutral tone of his suddenly read as cold and uncaring.
Next, he let reality TV huckster Kevin O’Leary – neither expert nor representative of the hoi polloi – go on a factually dubious rant about the “Trudeau peso.”
Neither Hanomansing nor American co-host Jeremy Hobson had numbers on hand to counter O’Leary’s claims; their producers left them seeming underprepared in the predictable areas of exchange rates and inflation.
The episode reached its nadir when Hanomansing took a call where false assertions were made about labour mobility across the U.S.-Canada border. “I don’t know if that’s true,” the journalist said. “People can do their fact checking online after the program.”
CBC editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon penned a blog post on Monday, not to belatedly fact check the program, but to brag about how well he felt it had come together despite the criticism.
Here are some questions Fenlon should ask his newsroom once he comes back down to earth.
Who okayed Hanomansing launching a TV show and pulling together a special in the same week? And why is he working a six-day week in the first place?
Why has CBC failed so often at grooming and retaining a new generation of anchors – the last two hosts of Canada Tonight come to mind – who might lighten the burden on the big names who, like Hanomansing, have been there close to 40 years?
On Monday’s episode of Hanomansing Tonight – just one week after it started – the poor guy looked like he’d been run over by a truck (maybe one of the AI-powered driverless 18-wheelers he did a segment about on Sunday’s edition of The National.)
Hanomansing’s voice was as neutral as ever, but it now came across as depressed.
Mercifully, he was cut short after about 30 minutes by the French-language Liberal leadership debate. Like I said, I feel for him.
