Have "Fort," Will Travel

The Toronto Star's Martin Knelman doesn't much care for The Tower of Babble, the new book by Richard Stursberg which excoriates the CBC. (Stursberg was hired by the Ceeb in 2004 "to solve the problem of declining audience share," but "was fired in 2010 by [Ceeb chief Hubert] Lacroix.") Knelman, you won't be surprised to learn, thinks Stursberg's expose lacks "balance," and slags it as "the Gospel According to Richard."

How droll and original, no?

One of the things that especially irks Knelman is the term Stursberg came up with to describe the elitist and seige mentality of the Ceeb's news division, then helmed by egregious Zion-loather Tony Burman:

Burman, Stursberg writes, personifies the worst traits of CBC News, which the author sarcastically refers to as Fort News — its “combination of defensiveness and self-regard.”

It quickly became apparent, Stursberg recalls, the he would have a fierce battle if he pursued his plan to reverse the slide of CBC News into irrelevance and boost its ratings.

“Fort News did not believe in management,” he writes. “Any attempt to change the news department was fraught with peril.”

When Stursberg proposed that he could have a desk on the newsroom floor, or listen in on news meetings, Burman replied: “That’s a terrible idea.”

Eventually for Stursberg the problem with Burman came down to “how to get him out. If we fired him, he would become a martyr to Fort News.”

In mid-2007, Burman retired.

“Farewell parties were organized,” Stursberg notes. “Somehow I never made the guest list.”

(In 2008, Burman started a two-year stint as managing director of Al Jazeera English. Since then he has landed in the journalism department at Ryerson University and writes a weekly column for the Star.) 

Sounds to me as though "Fort News" is easily transportable, and isn't a fixed location so much as it is a permanent state of mind.