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Jian Ghomeshi may be a disgraced ex-CBC star, but he could be forgiven for wondering what the hell happened to all his admirers inside and outside Mother Corp who once treated him with all the gooey adulation reserved for A-list celebrities.

One of Ghomeshi’s many admirers was Heather Conway, the head of CBC’s English programming. These days, Conway and other CBC executives are frantically re-writing history as they try to save their jobs in the wake of allegations that Ghomeshi effectively used the public broadcaster as a hunting ground for women to satisfy an alleged appetite for violence — and that the CBC knew this for a long time and did little or nothing about it.

Under siege, CBC brass hats are now using every imaginable vehicle to extinguish whatever shred of empathy Ghomeshi still may enjoy among Canadians — a surprising number of whom suspect (if social media is an accurate gauge) that the former Q host is a casualty of a politically motivated cabal intent on silencing “progressive” voices at the CBC.

Given the stakes, the CBC’s desperate gambit is not surprising. But what’s disgraceful is the way that once venerable institution is systematically going about gutting the remnants of Ghomeshi’s public persona — a persona that, for years, it celebrated and championed.

Simply put, the CBC loved Ghomeshi until it realized, belatedly, that it had hated him secretly all along and would have to destroy him.

Still, in its quest to crush Ghomeshi, the broadcaster needs to be reminded that the CBC is a public institution and not a private instrument that a powerful few can employ as a means to salvage their careers.

Last Friday, Conway appeared on The National and As It Happens in a bid to justify her and the network’s nonsensical and suspiciously limp response to the disturbing allegations. (Ghomeshi has denied the allegations and has not been charged.)

These interviews — along with a piece in the ever-agreeable Globe and Mail — were a coordinated attempt by hapless CBC PR types to seize control of the ‘narrative’ by appearing to ‘come clean’ on the whole lurid mess while, at the same time, painting the most damning portrait possible of Ghomeshi.

(The interviews were also timed — like those late Friday afternoon ‘news dumps’ in Ottawa — to monopolize the news cycle over the weekend and prevent less compliant independent media from questioning the official version of events.)

It’s also important to note that Conway went public with her exculpatory musings just days after she announced that a so-called “outside” investigator had been hired to probe the sexual harassment allegations. How’s that for poisoning the well? (Crucially, the investigator will be not be asking CBC bigwigs about what they knew, when they knew it and what they did about it.)

For some unknown reason, senior CBC executives tolerated this ‘moody … demanding’ and ‘difficult’ tyrant and his destructive, bullying ways until Brown and the Toronto Star wrote a front-page story about him a few weeks ago. Remarkable.

In any event, Conway used her chat with Peter Mansbridge, in particular, to lay every ounce of the blame for the metastasizing scandal on you-know-who. Like any accountability-allergic politician, Conway repeatedly pointed an accusatory finger at Ghomeshi, saying, in effect, that she and the CBC were unsuspecting victims of his deceit.

Conway said Ghomeshi had “misled” the CBC and that, when confronted with the allegations, he “categorically denied” them. She added that CBC launched what she described as a “HR” investigation only after Canadaland host Jesse Brown emailed the CBC asking for comment about a story he was working on concerning Ghomeshi. She said the “investigation” turned up nothing.

So let’s get this straight. The CBC’s position is that Brown — the pesky scribe the network once dismissed as an insignificant blogger — was able to find on his lonesome at least four women who described, in detail, how they were allegedly choked, punched and beaten by the public face of CBC Radio — and absolutely no one at the CBC could locate and talk to these women? Did it ever occur to anyone at the CBC to ask Brown if he could put them in touch?

The CBC’s new, self-serving attack line is that Ghomeshi wasn’t really the lovable saint the network’s vast PR apparatus had, until recently, been serving up to audiences in Canada and abroad. It turns out that Ghomeshi was an “egomaniacal … tyrannical” bully who was the architect of a toxic work environment at CBC that amounted to a “culture of fear.”

Yet, for some unknown reason, senior CBC executives tolerated this “moody … demanding” and “difficult” tyrant and his destructive, bullying ways until Brown and the Toronto Star wrote a front-page story about him a few weeks ago. Remarkable.

It’s also instructive to note that in his infamous Facebook post, Ghomeshi suggested that the CBC gave him the option to resign, rather than be fired, in order to cover all the ugliness up. “I was given the choice to walk away quietly and to publicly suggest that this was my decision,” Ghomeshi wrote.

To my knowledge, Conway wasn’t asked about the alleged ‘let’s-hush-it-up’ offer during her recent spate of interviews with all those handpicked reporters. But perhaps the former hipster darling is lying about that, too.

And who was tasked by CBC to deliver the coup de grâce to Ghomeshi? Why, none other than that exemplar of ethics, Rex Murphy — who devoted his soliloquy on The National last Friday to giving Ghomeshi a verbal thrashing.

For Murphy to lecture anyone about using marquee billing on CBC as “a great lever” is beyond nauseating. The CBC’s preacher-in-residence appears to have conveniently forgotten that he leveraged his prominent place on the ‘people’s network’ — with CBC News editor-in-chief Jennifer McGuire’s blessing — to cash in on the lucrative speaking gig circuit.

It’s no wonder, then, that — loyal soldier that he is — Murphy spared the CBC the rod and parroted the broadcaster’s attack lines almost to the letter, describing Ghomeshi as a “bully” and a “celebrity” that believed he was “above the rules.”

The CBC still doesn’t get it. It’s clear that the ethical rot inside the broadcaster extends far beyond Jian Ghomeshi.

Try as it might, the CBC can no longer control the fallout from this squalid story. The network missed that opportunity months ago. It’s inevitable that other mandarins inside the CBC are going to lose their jobs before this corrosive scandal passes over.

Andrew Mitrovica is a writer and journalism instructor. For much of his career, Andrew was an investigative reporter for a variety of news organizations and publications including the CBC’s fifth estate, CTV’s W5, CTV National News — where he was the network’s chief investigative producer — the Walrus magazine and the Globe and Mail, where he was a member of the newspaper’s investigative unit. During the course of his 23-year career, Andrew has won numerous national and international awards for his investigative work.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.