The Ombudsman thinks that I am concerned about Health Canada's position on the drug:
"the CBC covered the introduction of Mifepristone into Canada over a period of time and on multiple platforms and programmes. Many of those did adequately represent the position of Health Canada and its reasons for the regime required for use of the drug in Canada."My complaint made no mention of Health Canada. Yet the Ombudsman talks about their story being balanced as regards to Health Canada, which I never mentioned in my complaint. Rather my complaint was about the fact that the CBC chose only ever to ask an abortion doctor her opinion as to why the drug was being dispensed this way [by doctors and not pharmacists]. The CBC did not ask that question of a pro-life doctor. Why not? If the CBC had asked a pro-life doctor, I'm pretty sure they would have received quite a different answer.
The Ombudsman said my complaint was not about the safety about the drug but rather accessibility of the drug. My point was that you cannot properly discuss the accessibility of the drug, if you don't also discuss its safety. That is because accessibility is directly related to the fact that the drug is so dangerous. What part of this does the CBC not understand?
The person the CBC chose to interview on accessibility is an abortion doctor who naturally has a vested interest in abortions. And RU-486 is abortion. The CBC did not interview a pro-life doctor on accessibility, and I can guarantee if they had, that doctor would have brought up the important issue of the dangers of the drug. But the CBC did not do this. And as I already pointed out in the first installment on this, the CBC didn't do this over time either. Nearly all their reporting on this drug has been biased for abortion as they only ever interview people from the abortion industry.
Why doesn't the CBC interview someone not from the abortion industry and let the reader make up their own mind?
Let's look at another controversial issue which is currently being debated and a recent decision made this week by the government: pipelines. CBC interviews people on both sides of that debate, those who oppose the proposed pipelines and those who support them. The CBC would never think of interviewing only those people who support pipelines or only those who oppose pipelines when covering the government's decisions regarding the Kinder Morgan and the Northern Gateway pipelines. Like pipelines, RU486 is controversial. Both involve government's decision whether to approve or not and both involve regulations if/when they are approved, Those who oppose pipelines will be more likely to focus on the negative things that result from allowing the pipelines to be built; those who support pipelines will be more likely to downplay the negative aspects of the pipelines and highlight the positive. Surely the CBC can see that if they interviewed only people who held the former position, or only those who held the latter, they would be biased. No different with RU-486: If someone supports RU-486 in the first place, their views on accessibility will be coloured by that, as will someone who opposes it.
The Ombudsman also seems to issue with my calling Dr. Norman an "abortion doctor":
"You describe her as an “abortion doctor”. As Ms. Hiscox mentioned in her introduction her qualifications are extensive in the field of public health as well as family planning. According to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (the federal funding agency for health research) website, she is also the Applied Public Health Chair of that organization."That's because:
"Dr. Norman has been a family physician since 1985 and has practiced exclusively in the area of abortion since 1997". (emphasis added)More later...
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