Senator’s report that Radio-Canada too Quebec-centric could be fodder for critics who see it as haven for sovereigntists

You may not think, as some critics do, that Radio-Canada, the CBC's French-language TV and radio service, is a nest of Quebec sovereigntists.

But a study released on the eve of Radio-Canada's licence-renewal hearings before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) next month indicate it spends too much of its time reporting about Quebec, giving its francophone audience a distorted view of Canada.

The Canadian Press reports the study of Radio-Canada's main newscast Le Téléjournal, conducted by a researcher from Carleton University, found 42 per cent of its coverage focused on Quebec, one third on international news and only 20 per cent on Canadian "national" news.

Regional Canadian stories took up only six per cent of the coverage during a one-month sampling period in 2010.

That compares with English-language CBC's The National, which devoted 37 per cent of its newscast to Canadian national news, 36 per cent to international stories and 27 per cent on stories from the provinces and territories, CP reported.

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The study, commissioned by Liberal Senator Pierre de Bané, said the paucity of Canadian news suggested Quebec viewers may not be getting an accurate picture of Canada outside their borders.

"The findings of this study suggest there was a sharp imbalance in the national edition of Radio-Canada's Le Téléjournal coverage of the different geographic regions of Canada in 2010," concluded study author Vincent Raynauld.

"Canadians tuning in to the national edition of Le Téléjournal are generally exposed to a partial and potentially unrepresentative image of the Canadian reality."

In his submission to the CRTC for the upcoming licence-renewal hearing, de Bané argues Radio-Canada is not meeting its mandate under the Broadcast Act to "reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences," nor is it contributing to "shared consciousness and identity," CP reported. He's recommending conditions be attached to its licence renewal.

The broadcaster said it will respond to de Bané's claims when it appears before the CRTC panel, but noted Radio-Canada has staff in 19 communities across Canada, from Halifax to Vancouver.

"Using one program, in this case the Telejournal, as the measure of Radio-Canada's representation of regional news is spurious," McKinnon said in an email to CP.

"CBC/Radio-Canada has countless news programs on many platforms which serve the needs of specific regions as well as sharing regional stories with national audiences."

Though it focuses specifically on levels of coverage, the report is bound to be fodder for those who think Radio-Canada has been a haven for soverignty advocates as far back as Parti Quebecois founder René Levesque, a famed broadcaster.

In an unsigned post on the anti-sovereigntist blog No Dogs or Anglophones, notes that Pierre Duchesne, the TV correspondent at the Quebec National Assembly, quit to run for the PQ in the Sept. 4 provincial election (and won). There's evidence, the writer says, that Duchesne was discussing his candidacy with the party before he officially quit Radio-Canada last June.

"Journalists joining political parties isn't such a big deal, I don't recall any national stink when Mike Duffy, who covered Canada's Parliament, left his job to be appointed to Canada's Senate, representing the Conservative party," the poster writes.

"That separatist journalists leave Radio-Canada to become PQ militants doesn't bother me at all, but the fact that so many militant separatists are working in Radio-Canada certainly does!"

Then there's Conrad Black, who in an Oct. 5 National Post column about the eclipse of Montreal by Toronto as Canada's premier city, complained that a comment he made on a CBC program that Radio-Canada is "a notorious infestation of separatists" was edited out of the show before it aired.

But if the de Bané study is correct, it suggests at the very least that Radio-Canada's approach to coverage helps fray the ties between Quebec and the rest of Canada.

CP noted the complaints about Radio-Canada's Quebec-centric approach aren't new. Raynauld's research pointed to previous studies dating back to at least the 1970s that found news coverage was heavily weighted towards Quebec.