In a year full of stories about sexual assault, Jian Ghomeshi’s stood out. He was no anonymous abuser, like the perpetrators in the much-maligned UVA story. Nor was he a celebrity past his heyday, like Bill Cosby and Woody Allen arguably are.
Rather, Ghomeshi, 47, was at the height of his fame earlier this year when allegations surfaced that he abused women–allegations he dismissed as forms of violent sexual play.
He was the host and co-creator of the radio show Q, one of the most popular shows in the history of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, aired on more than 180 public radio stations in the US. Ghomeshi was fired in October and now faces four counts of sexual assault and one of choking to subdue his victim, which carries a life sentence.
Now, what to do with Ghomeshi’s legacy at Q is the subject of fierce debate, one that pits the wider public interest against those of Ghomeshi’s victims.
The CBC announced on Monday that Q archives featuring Ghomeshi would be taken offline, as part of a push to move past the scandal.
The backlash to that announcement was fast and biting. “Just so the @CBC knows, the Q Archives are the property of the taxpayers of Canada,” one Twitter user decried. Another wrote, “The CBC continues not to get it–scrubbing the Q archives isn’t just wrong, it’s suspicious, guys.”
Even the freelancer who helped break the scandal, Canadaland’s Jesse Brown, denounced the move. The archive still holds valuable information about Ghomeshi for journalists and academics studying the scandal, Brown wrote. Furthermore, the public can still benefit from its content.
“This is why the show exists: to promote and feature Canadian art and culture,” he wrote. “Why should our artists pay for Ghomeshi’s sins?”
For victims, though, the erasure serves another purpose: no more stumbling over old recordings of their attacker’s voice.
Therein lies the conundrum. Journalism is ostensibly the business of revealing information, not concealing it. But rare exceptions are made to protect witnesses or to prevent the re-victimization of assault survivors. Should the Q archives be one of those exceptions?
Unlike NPR, its public broadcasting counterpart in the United States, the CBC is a state-owned “Crown corporation.” Simply erasing content invites unflattering comparisons with state censorship–and with it, echoes of historical wrongs, like Stalin erasing his foes from photographs, as if they never existed. The CBC is already fielding blame for allegedly dismissing the harassment claims of one radio producer, choosing instead to rally around Ghomeshi.
The CBC, for its part, simply said it is “focusing on the future.” It also noted that archival material is regularly deleted from its online stores after two years–meaning Ghomeshi would sooner or later pass into oblivion anyway.
And the CBC has openly invited its audience to weigh in on what the fate of the archive should be, even showcasing some of the backlash on its blog.
The CBC’s actions aren’t unprecedented. In 2012, the BBC faced a tsunami of criticism after revelations that its late TV and radio personality Jimmy Savile had left behind four decades worth of sexual abuse victims.
Like Ghomeshi, Savile was a minor celebrity in his own right, even earning a knighthood. And like the CBC, the British public broadcaster took measures to purge the archives of Savile. It wasn’t a foolproof tactic; BBC2 accidentally aired an old video of Savile earlier this year, where he leers over a young woman.
“This is an insult not only to Savile’s victims, but also the general public. I think they should destroy all footage they’ve got of him,” Deborah Cogger, a survivor of Savile’s abuse, told the Daily Mail. “Why anyone would want to keep it for posterity, I’ve no idea.”
The possibility of similarly stumbling across Ghomeshi, either by an innocent click on a webpage or an accidental Savile-style rebroadcast, can be paralyzing to survivors.
“I was constantly reminded… Every time we hear Jian on television or commercials for CBC or anything, I have to turn it off quickly,” one anonymous victim told CBC’s As It Happens. “I can’t understand why this man who–he’s such a great TV personality and radio personality–has this dark, dark side to him. It’s been hard. I’ve just had to suppress it.”
If the CBC were to leave the Q archive online, the dilemma would remain. Maybe the archive would continue to propagate Ghomeshi’s popularity as an interviewer, transporting the listener to a time before the scandal erupted. Or maybe the archive would serve as a reminder of how a man so powerful exploited those around him. But to pull down those Q archives could send an equally potent message that the acceptance Ghomeshi enjoyed is now over.
Ordinary radio hosts would eventually be forgotten by the amnesia of time anyway. But to be purposefully erased from memory? That’s an extreme act, one that’s ironically memorable in the depths of its condemnation. After all, erasure too can leave a mark.
Allison Griner is a freelance multimedia journalist currently based in Beijing. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera Magazine, Esquire, and The Washington Post. Follow her on Twitter @alligriner.