BOB WAKEHAM: Remembering the heyday of CBC journalism and the void left behind

Pleasant encounters this past week with two former CBC colleagues of mine, both of whom left auspicious marks in the making of documentaries in this province, reminded me, rather sadly, of the profound loss of provocative, long-form television journalism that has taken place — that has been allowed to take place — in the corporation’s Newfoundland and Labrador programming agenda over the last couple of decades.

I hadn’t seen Bill Gillespie in over 30 years, but a brief trip from his home in Toronto to St. John’s allowed us to spend a few hours over a feed of fish ‘n chips and a cup of coffee reminiscing about the several years we spent working on the weekly program, On Camera.

Bill was the host, the on-air talent, and I was the producer, but we were a team, a couple of good friends with a healthy amount of eclectic experience in the journalism trenches, and, if I say so myself, a reputation for reportorial moxie.

Those factors and trusting local managers resulted in near-absolute freedom to produce whatever documentaries or other methods of journalism output we felt would allow us to fulfill the mandate of the public broadcaster to provide alternative programming, as it was often called, that viewers could rarely get anywhere else.

And we delivered. Big time. With high ratings and both controversial and human interest offerings.

There was, for example, a decision on our part to explore the sensitive issue of denominational education through a scientific poll to determine how the population felt about a system that allowed tax dollars to fund religious schools, those operated, in particular, by the Roman Catholic Church; it was, in the minds of critics, a segregated structure that fostered religious bigotry, but one that Newfoundland politicians refused to tackle for fear of electoral backlash.

The hiring of pollsters by media outlets was rare back then (the mid-80s), and Gillespie and I had to fight vigorously with CBC management in Toronto to take such an approach, but our bosses upalong, perhaps tired of our constant harangues, finally relented, with a proviso that the poll be carried out in a professional manner that would not provide an opening for anyone to question its methodology and accuracy.

And, indeed, we did just that, put together a team that worked like the devil (or so many of the religious types probably thought) to conduct the poll, one that reflected the somewhat surprising result that a majority of voters had no reservations about getting rid of publicly funded denominational education.

Much public debate ensued, including contentious panel discussions moderated by Gillespie on our show, but I honestly believe the unprecedented On Camera poll was a factor in influencing government to hold a referendum, and eventually eliminate denominational education; many religious zealots thought Bill and I were destined to head down the road to Perdition, but we were justifiably proud of our work.

On another occasion, we noticed a court story about the molestation of young girls by a United Church minister on the west coast, Dr. Stephen Collins, had been given little coverage in the media (a few paragraphs in Corner Brook’s Western Star). So we took a unique approach to publicize the case by producing a docudrama; we utilized excerpts from the trial transcript, hired actors, built a minimal set in the CBC studios, and taped a two-part series; at the time, it was a unique journalistic exercise.

We were initially condemned in many quarters because of the graphic nature of the testimony we aired and of accusations that this was “yellow journalism” at its worst; but the vast majority of the public ultimately concluded that the docudrama was not sensationalism, but an important piece of revelatory journalism (as reflected in the hundreds of phone calls we received, the most the local CBC received on any program it had ever aired).

For another documentary, Gillespie and I tracked down Tom Burgess, a potential kingmaker in the 1971 election, on a farm in Maryland where he had remained largely incognito for many years, and he transfixed us and our eventual audience with stories of being offered a fortune by John C. Doyle, a Smallwood henchman, to help the Liberals win the election and keep Smallwoodian skeletons buried forever.

I should note that On Camera crews before and after our tenure also produced fine work, until the show was eventually axed unceremoniously by Mother Corp bean counters.

The other former colleague I met up with this past week was Azzo Rezori, a tremendous journalist who put feathers in my Here and Now executive producer hat by working tirelessly to produce documentary after documentary within the supper hour show format.

I met Azzo at a book signing event where his fascinating autobiography, ”Euromutt Blues,” a “memoir of a refugee, adventurer and accidental journalist,” was on display in a booth occupied by his publisher, After Books (an admittedly cheap plug here for both).

And, similar to my conversation with Gillespie, Azzo and I yakked nostalgically about a time he described in his book as a “golden era” when he was able to exploit his storytelling prowess to deliver tremendous documentaries to an audience with a healthy appetite for such work.

It was an easy call on my quarterbacking part to give the documentary ball to Azzo and let him run freely to countless journalistic touchdowns. (And not to be understated is the fact that we also became good friends).

Later in my career, when I was producing, along with John Furlong (an estimable journalist in his own right), a show called “Soundings,” we utilized Azzo’s talents on several documentaries, and he always came through.

“Soundings” was on the air for four seasons, during which Furlong and I produced close to 25 documentaries, all of them of a provocative nature, dealing with everything from the scandals at Belvedere Orphanage and Mount Cashel Orphanage (both of those pieces utilizing the multi-talented journalist, Deanne Fleet) to the Ocean Ranger disaster, the Arrow Airline crash at Gander, and other subjects as diverse as the incarceration of mentally ill individuals and a profile of certain members of the infamous Druken family.

As I say, those were heady journalistic times, and I and many others — the Gillespies, Rezoris and Furlongs — thought naively they would never end.

But end they did, in shameless fashion.

Granted, there is still some fine work these days being done by CBC investigative reporters like Rob Antle and others; and Land and Sea with host Jane Adey trudges on with its focus on rural Newfoundland and Labador.

But the demise of the hard-core documentaries dealing with stories often difficult to tell has left a permanent hole in the journalistic landscape of Newfoundland.

And that’s an absolute pity.