Canada’s Global News television network has fired veteran investigative reporter Bruce Livesey, apparently because he talked to the CANADALAND media show about the network’s decision not to air his documentary on the billionaire Koch brothers and their ties to Canada.
The show “was set for broadcast on Global News’ 16×9 investigative newsmagazine, only to be pulled from the broadcast schedule and scrubbed from Global’s website shortly before it was set to air,” CANADALAND reports. In February, Global said the story had just been postponed to next season, but “CANADALAND has since learned that this is not the case,” Brown writes. “Global News fired Livesey, killing his Koch piece along with two other investigations they had commissioned from him.”
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Livesey said Global News manager Ron Waksman told him he’d been terminated for talking to CANADALAND. A Global statement attributed the decision to “journalistic responsibility,” stating that Livesey’s work “didn’t meet our standards for balance.” But Livesey says no such concerns were raised in the months he worked on the documentary, and the piece was cleared by the program’s executive producer and Global’s libel lawyer.
Moreover, after cancelling The Koch Connection, Global reran another documentary that had also been produced by Livesey.
