Frum known for thoughtful and direct interviewing style in career that spanned 2 decades
courtesy CBC News Posted: Jun 27, 2017 6:03 PM ET
Barbara Frum is seen in studio for CBC Radio’s newsmagazine As It Happens in the late 1970s. She was co-host from 1971 until 1981. (CBC)
Barbara Frum, known best to Canadians as co-host of CBC Radio’s As It Happens and later for CBC Television’s The Journal, has been inducted into the CBC News Hall of Fame.
On hand for the ceremony Tuesday were several friends and colleagues, along with members of her family.
Peter Mansbridge, chief correspondent for CBC News and anchor of The National, introduced speakers including her producer and longtime friend, Mark Starowicz, and read part of Starowicz’s written tribute:
“Barbara was half Lois Lane, half Jewish mother. People would confess everything to her. This woman was incorruptible. This was an honest woman.”
Starowicz remembered when Frum announced — despite battling a bad case of the flu — that she was ready to go on air for The Journal the night of the bombing of Baghdad was about to begin on Jan. 17, 1991 and how she had to be replaced because her voice was too hoarse.
After Bill Cameron took over the on-air duties, Starowicz said Frum spent two hours distributing wire bulletins to “every producer and researcher.
“The single most distinguished journalist in Canada was delivering coffee and wire copy on the night of the biggest story she wanted to cover,” he said, adding, “one way or another she was going to be there.”
During a career that spanned two decades Frum was known for an interviewing style that was both thoughtful and direct.
Interviewed Mandela after prison release
One of her most famous interviews included a sit-down with South African anti-apartheid legend Nelson Mandela the day he was released from prison on Feb. 14, 1990.
Another notable exchange came in March 1979 during a phone interview with Harold Ballard, the fiery owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who told her that women on the radio are “a joke.”
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She was an outspoken feminist that demanded that women be promoted to on-air and management positions in the CBC.
Imagine her delight now, in 2017, where there is an almost total absence of men, particularly white men in the taxpayer supported CBC. I’ve never thought I would be hearing myself advocating the privatisation of this organization, but since it no longer represents the “face” of Canada – sell it off or SHUT IT DOWN!
My tax dollars should not be used to support the careers of the visually repulsive with faces better suited to radio, simply because they have an alternative lifestyle or are born with skin of a colour other than white.
They are my tax dollars as well and I fully support the CBC. Whaddaya think of them apples? As for the remainder of your rant just another smh moment.
Feminism is Marxism in a dress.
It is not about gender equality but about female privilege, the right to demand equality (um really gender based affirmative action) when they want it but to also use female privilege to shame and abuse men when these females play the victim card.
Funny how their idea of gender based affirmative action is only in once male dominated jobs/careers these feminist think they may want. Not too many of them fighting for affirmative action in heavy industries, physical jobs in civil infrastructure, military and the likes. For the few that do they make demands to have a lower physical standards to help the few percent that do get in and to help them advance faster. They play the female privilege card well here.
On this planet there is no more privileged group of humans who live in the western developed world as women are. They get their way in such 99.9% of the time but they cry female boo hoo tears to try get the last .1%. Meanwhile they in the Marxist ideology as feminism is burn western society to the ground. They abandon their own biological female drive and emotions, long evolved in thousands of human generations thinking if they THINK like men, force society to treat them like men (accept when it is better for them to pull out the girl card ) that they will find their own bliss… Well more and more info comes out that most women of this ilk in the west are more miserable today than pre 2nd wave feminism (the 1960’s/70’s rise). Yet they try to double down on more man blaming… IT’S PATHETIC!
Except for most beta males, men will MAN UP and yes sometimes reluctantly accept their mistakes, poor choices and faults, for all that men get pissed on by cultural- Marxists, 3rd wave feminists and the pathetic excuse of men in white knight, beta males or err more just boys.
If the west does in the end fall it will be Feminists, SJW’s and all Marxists who will bring it all down. Funny thing is THEY will suffer most from doing so.
I’d love to do a test. Have for one week maybe 10 days all men GO ON STRIKE and stop doing any and all jobs/careers they do in society, just sit at home eat Doritos and drink beer. Watch how quickly society will fall apart, 7 to 10 days will probably do it.
Then set up the same where for 7-10 days all women go on strike in any jobs/careers they do. Watch to see the difference.
Women go on strike will cause social disruptions and will have to have men work quickly to solve, parse and prioritize the disruptions to keep society functioning ok. Don’t forget most men can get along in life in pretty miserable conditions as we figure things out in this 7-10 women’s job/career strike.
Now what will happen if men went on strike for 7-10 days? Life as we know it in the western world will virtually come to a halt and likely fail.
Truth is society was and is built by productive men. Women contribute in what they are biologically predisposed to do. Family life, child rearing, nurturing keeping a proper home being a good wife and partner to her husband and having a healthy social structure especially among women.
NO AMOUNT OF FEMINISM WILL CHANGE THIS! The sexes are different and if social structure works well THEY COMPLIMENT EACH OTHER! Of course there are exceptions. but for ever Margaret Thatcher there are 99 women who can’t be like her. In fact not all men have that strongest of dominant drive . For every Ronald Reagan, JFK, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison etc. there are 60-65 males who do not have that level of drive. But most males in a healthy society can and will better be a good Ward Clever, or even Archie Bunker (BTW he was now seen as right 99% of the time) Masters of their own houses, caretakers and true life partners of their strong but still feminine wives who will then of themselves be good mothers to their children.
In ending I know this, if I am trapped and hurt in a building on fire, flames licking at my body and I see a female firefighter coming to me, I will likely know I’m soon to be dead all 190lbs of me. F**K your affirmative action and your toxic feminist B.S. I want a damn male fire fighter coming to my aid.
FACTS TRUMP YOUR FEELINGS!
She was a ground-breaking, intelligent broadcast journalist and it is too bad the award comes long after her death. So sad about the butt-hurt posters above. Too bad her son isn’t half the man she was.
So the CBC has a “News Hall of Fame?” Who’s in it, Frum and Lorne Greene?
Barbara Frum probably wasn’t that far ideologically from the political perches adorned by son/neoconservative scribe David and daughter/Tory Senator Linda. Their mother was very adept at keeping her own beliefs hidden and stuck to being a first-rate interviewer. A well deserved honour.
P.S. to Bud: I, too, used to unfavourably compare David to his mother. But, in this Age of Trump, David has impressed me as a consistent conservative in opposing the populist/incoherent paroxysms of The Donald. In that regard, he joins George Will, Ross Douthat, Bill Kristin and fellow Canadian Andrew Coyne as conservatives of conscience.
Barbara Frum was a great radio journalist and got into the hall of fame, not because of her “feminist beliefs,” but because she was one of the best news interviewers in the business. Even though I tend to make jest of the “lesbians” at CBC, I grew up on Barbara Frum and admired her to the point that I respected her, immensely. In fact, Barbara Frum was one of the few female journalists at CBC that I respected, period. It doesn’t matter if one is “gay” “lesbian,” or transsexual, if you are a GREAT talent. Time to accept that reality, old codgers !