Award-winning journalist and author hopes his departure will save behind-the-scenes jobs.
Linden MacIntyre, co-host of CBC’s the fifth estate for the past 24 years, will leave the program at the end of the summer.
MacIntyre, who has won 10 Gemini Awards and an international Emmy, said he’s leaving in an effort to help save other jobs.
“If by stepping aside now I can create a little comfort zone for the survival for another year or two of younger people, then it’s worth whatever inconvenience this will cause to me and the show,” MacIntyre told the Star Wednesday.
In April, CBC/Radio Canada announced it will lose at least 657 employees over the next two years as part of $130 million in cuts needed to balance the 2014-15 budget. MacIntyre says many of the cuts will affect behind-the-scenes staff.
“What people might not register is that there’s 657 of me, people whose jobs are now disappearing. . . . The vast majority of these people are essential employees that no member of the public who pays for them would ever have heard of. I think the public should be aware,” he said. “Just because people know who I am doesn’t mean I’m any more important than them.”
The well-known journalist is also an accomplished author of fiction who won the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize with his novel The Bishop’s Man. He said he will continue to write fiction and has another novel in the works.
Lynden lives up to his high moral and ethical standards once again! Thank goodness he is continuing to write. We need to hear more, not less of Canadian voices like Lynden . Best wishes to him.