The Glenn Greenwald story that brought down Jian Ghomeshi [View all]

Last Tuesday evening at CBC's Toronto headquarters, CBC News editor-in-chief Jennifer McGuire played host to maverick reporter Glenn Greenwald. Shortly after her introductory remarks to a crowd of journalists at Glenn Gould Studio, former CBC News content director David Walmsley (now editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail) sat down with Greenwald for an admiring interview about journalistic bravery, exposing State surveillance and standing up to government pressure. A standing ovation followed.

At no point did Walmsley ask Greenwald about government surveillance in Canada by Internet spy agency CSEC. It's a topic that Walmsley, Greenwald, and McGuire all know far more about than the crowd they stood before, or the Canadian public they serve as journalists.

CANADALAND has learned that last year the CBC acquired NSA documents describing a major CSEC surveillance program, but the public broadcaster has been sitting on this news for over nine months, with no immediate plans to publish. In an interview with CANADALAND, Glenn Greenwald has revealed the "shocking reluctance" of veteran CBC reporter Terry Milewski to inform the public about CSEC spying, an indifference eventually revealed to be actual ideological opposition on the part of a reporter to exposing government surveillance programs.

http://www.canadalandshow.com/article/exclusive-cbc-stonewalled-snowden-story-says-greenwald

Jesse Brown, the freelance writer from the blog Canadaland started working on the Jian Ghomeshi story, and when he realized the story was too big for him in regards to liability he took it to the Toronto Star. Jesse Brown and the Star lead investigative reporter Kevin Donovan confronted Ghomeshi and his lawyers about it in June, he of course denied it and in turn went to CBC management and shared the accusations with them. Time went by, and nothing happened with the story because The Star had decided it was too risky to run with only anonymous accusers. But Jian didn't know this and was watching the Star and Canadaland and waiting. On Jesse Brown's Oct 20 podcast, "Why I Hate Talking About Israel", he talked about a monster story that was going to be very embarrassing for somebody and which he was going to bring out soon.

That podcast prompted Jian to go to CBC and show them material he hadn't shown them before, purportedly him at a BDSM club among other confessions, hoping that the CBC would stand by him. Instead they fired him.

But the thing was, Brown wasn't even talking about Jian Ghomeshi on that podcast. He was talking about CBC reporter Terry Milewski, and his sitting on the CSEC surveillance program story.

After he got fired, Jian figured that Brown was still going to come out with the story, so he ran that Facebook confession warning his fans about the coming smear job that he was still expecting from Canadaland. Once he went public, the Star could too. Because he published, they published. If he hadn't, they wouldn't have.

Listen to the explanation in more detail at the end of this podcast:
http://www.canadalandshow.com/podcast/we-all-knew-about-jian

You couldn't make this stuff up.