CBC's The National interviewed a Nazi and tried to cover it up

Egregious behaviour from the flagship program of our public broadcaster.

During a CBC interview with a Ukrainian military officer training recruits for the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, the officer’s right forearm is blurred for the vast majority of the clip. However, a failure in the editing causes the blur to disappear for a few brief frames…revealing that the CBC hid a swastika on the officer’s forearm, and opted not to mention it to their audience. | Copyright © CBC, licensed under fair dealing.

For Canadians living under a rock, or for my international audience who don’t actually live here, The National is the flagship English news program of our public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, while Le Téléjournal fills the same role in French on Radio-Canada.

Airing in prime-time (21h00 ET on CBC News Network, 22h00 ET on local CBC stations), The National is in all likelihood the most prominent evening news program in the country. It has always been popular, but in recent years The National grew their audience at the expense of CTV National News, after public outrage from women towards CTV over their choice to fire well-reputed anchor Lisa LaFlamme for being a woman with grey hair.

I try to watch The National as many nights as I can, anchored by Adrienne Arsenault from Monday to Thursday, Erica Johnson on Friday, and Ian Hanomansing on Sunday; there is no Saturday program. When I don’t watch The National with my family, it’s likely because I am instead listening to Your World Tonight, the equivalent program on CBC Radio.

And that brings up an important point: While the producers of the news programs at the CBC make editorial decisions on what stories to cover, they are largely slicing and dicing the same interviews over and over, taking material collected by local field reporters. You can frequently see the same interview covered on multiple CBC News Network programs in the same day, and any story on Your World Tonight will usually also be on The National.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some people get their news from the TV, some get it from the radio or podcast, and some read it, like you’re doing right now! The important thing is that regardless of medium, our public broadcaster makes factual reporting available to as wide an audience as possible.

But what happens when the reporting is wrong? What happens when both the field reporter and the producer for the program make an egregious editorial decision, and the news being reported has been shaped to fit a subjective narrative over the objective truth?

Well, we’re about to find out the answer to that question. Because if you read the headline, and saw the photo at the top of this column, then you know exactly what’s the problem is:

A CBC reporter interviewed a Nazi in Ukraine, and then attempted to obscure the fact that he is a Nazi from their audience, portraying him as a normal military officer and not an extremist with Nazi iconography permanently embedded into his skin. You may be asking yourself, “why would the CBC do such a stupid thing?”

Good question! Perhaps because the facts uncovered by the reporter conflicted with the narrative he was presenting. Isn’t that cool? Isn’t it totally awesome when journalists selectively display and occlude facts to shape public narratives! Who cares about the truth! Who needs journalistic ethics!

Let’s start from the beginning. Ben Makuch is an “award-winning national security reporter” who has spent an extensive amount of time covering the Russo-Ukrainian War on the ground since 2016. As such, I expect him to have a fairly robust understanding of the subject of his coverage.

Recently, on October 8^th for the Wednesday episode of The National, one of the producers included a piece by Mr. Makuch, covering the recruitment of civilians by both Russia and Ukraine to carry out covert warfare against each other. At the beginning of the piece, he visits a training facility for Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.

This brigade was formed out of the volunteer Azov Battalion, which is deeply rooted in white nationalist sentiment and uses Neo-Nazi symbols such as a variant of the wolfsangle. The founder of the Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletsky, is on the record as saying the following:

“The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival…a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

So, he’s an honest-to-God Nazi, unless I’m misunderstanding his desire to lead white people in a crusade against “Semite-led Untermenschen.” Azov transformed into the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade with Biletsky still in command, but he has now recently been promoted, and as a colonel now commands the entire 3rd Army Corps above his former brigade, as an officer in the Ukrainian Ground Forces.

Again, he’s a Nazi, and the “training facility” that Mr. Makuch visited is directly linked to his Nazi military unit. But none of this is mentioned in the piece. Mr. Makuch proceeded to interview one of the training officers instructing the recruits to the 3rd, who he refuses to name because of “Ukrainian military protocol”.

When the officer comes on screen for the interview, you can notice that a blur effect has been applied to a portion of his tattoo sleeve on his right arm. However, at roughly 40 seconds into the clip, the CBC accidentally left a frame without the blur effect. And would you guess what was tattooed on this gentleman’s arm?

Come on. You saw the header photo. You all know what you saw. He has a fucking swastika tattoo on his forearm, in plain sight for anyone and everyone to see.

Let’s be frank here: somebody at the CBC saw that swastika tattoo, whether Mr. Makuch noticed it on-site or the producer noticed it in post. And rather than disclose all of this extremely important context behind the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, they made a choice to blur the swastika, without mentioning what was being blurred or why it was being blurred.

I compare this to later in the piece, where Mr. Makuch makes explicit note of Russia using white nationalist groups such as The Base as a proxy force in Ukraine. And this is completely true. It is fully accurate to say that Russia is using white nationalism as a recruiting tool.

But so is Ukraine. We literally see a man with a swastika on his arm training Ukrainian military recruits, and nobody says a word about it! I have been ardent in my support for Ukraine against Russia during this war. I have frequently said that we are not providing Ukraine with enough weapons to defend themselves.

And yet as a Jew, I didn’t think I needed to say the obvious caveat out loud: I only support people who don’t want to kill me. I support the majority of Ukrainians, who believe in racial equality and merely want to live in their democracy without Russian violence. But I do not support these Nazi chuckle fucks, and indeed I don’t really care if they get hurt!

Canadians should rightly be outraged that the CBC, our public broadcaster, is manipulating their coverage of this war. This story was written and edited blatantly to provide a misleading picture of the news, and that is fundamentally unacceptable under basic journalistic ethics.

So, if you’d like to ask the CBC why they did this, I encourage you to contact the CBC Ombudsperson, either by email at ombud@cbc.ca, by phone at (416) 205-2978, or by postal mail addressed to CBC Ombudsman at P.O. Box 500 Station A, Toronto, Ontario, M5W 1E6.

And if you do choose to reach out to the Ombudsperson, please be respectful. I am not trying to summon an internet hate mob. Taking public complaint about issues in reporting is the Ombudsperson’s entire job.

Do not harass them for taking the time to listen to you…but do take the time to give them your thoughts. Because this kind of behaviour from our tax-funded public broadcaster should disturb every Canadian.