The CBC show The Fifth Estate last night was about…Jian Ghomeshi.
Imagine the awkwardness! Ghomeshi was a CBC star, his show was a CBC show, his bosses were CBC bosses, the institution that fired him was the CBC, the institution that didn’t fire him sooner was the CBC – and there was Gillian Findlay on The Fifth Estate discussing the whole mess.
It makes for a fascinating program, which is frequently squirmy to watch. The Executive Director of CBC radio, Chris Boyce, is deeply uncomfortable to watch. He’s also terribly familiar. There are so many echoes in this whole show, and especially in what Boyce says. Findlay asks him why he didn’t act sooner, and he says with great earnestness: “Jian told me he didn’t do it.”
Did it really not occur to him that Ghomeshi might be saying he didn’t do it because he preferred not to deal with the consequences of being known to have done it? Did he really think that if Jian said he didn’t do it that meant he in fact didn’t do it? Was he really not aware that Jian had an obvious motivation for telling his boss that he didn’t do it?
But at the same time, it sounds so familiar. Have we not all heard it a thousand times over the past year and a half or so.