Peter Mansbridge needs to step up.

The time has come for the CBC’s ‘chief correspondent’ to convince a growing number of skeptics that his title means something — that isn’t just a facile way to burnish his journalistic credentials with viewers who tend to see him merely as the man reading the teleprompter.

I’m challenging Mansbridge because CBC News is embroiled in a growing controversy over conflict of interest claims linked to the energy industry — claims triggered, in large part, by columns I have penned for iPolitics. Now that the same questions are being directed at him personally — now that we know he was paid by one of Canada’s most powerful lobbies, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, to give a speech at a CAPP symposium in 2012 — his audience is owed an explanation.

Anyone who has worked at the CBC, or is even remotely familiar with how CBC News’ cumbersome bureaucracy functions, understands that this powerful anchorman effectively runs The National and calls many of the critical editorial shots.

And despite the CBC’s limp and silly efforts (which Mansbridge has been party to promoting) to dismiss the whole business as the inconsequential product of a gaggle of “bloggers” working in concert with those scheming, money-grubbing environmentalists at the Sierra Club, this controversy isn’t about to fade. Pressure is building inexorably — largely driven by journalists working outside the so-called ‘mainstream’ press — for CBC News to take concrete, substantive, intelligent and long-overdue steps to address the issue.

At first, the conflict of interest charges were aimed at Rex Murphy, a regular contributor to The National. In several columns, I have called on the Cross Country Checkup host and CBC News to disclose to their audiences that Murphy has been paid to give speeches in which he champions the oilpatch and the petroleum industry generally. Murphy has often used his high-profile forum on The National to disparage, dismiss and ridicule — with his signature corrosive contempt — opponents of the proposed Keystone pipeline and the science of climate change itself. Under the circumstances, full disclosure is the responsible and ethical thing to do.

If the intent of Mansbridge’s speech for CAPP was ‘outreach’, then why did Mansbridge get paid for his efforts when he’s already earning a healthy stipend from the public broadcaster itself?

But Murphy, who appears to have taken his cue from Mansbridge and senior CBC PR types, claimed in his recent column that he is the victim of a cabal of “vicious” bloggers intent on shutting him up. This is nonsense, of course. With unconvincing invective and hubris, Murphy is trying to duck the issue.

It’s clear that the CBC, Mansbridge and Murphy weren’t giving this seminal journalistic issue a lot of thought until people started asking questions about it. Notwithstanding the CBC’s public musings about revisiting the network’s disclosure policy governing ‘freelance’ and staff journalists, Mansbridge and company have been handling this ethical quandary like politicians, not journalists. I’m convinced CBC news executives are grasping at the vain hope that, since the controversy hasn’t yet seeped onto the pages of a ‘major’ newspaper or two, they can ride out the passing storm.

That’s a fond hope. Clinging to it would be a miscalculation — for a couple of reasons.

First, complaints have been registered with the network’s ombudsman about the conflict of interest allegations. Unless there is an institutional decision to not pursue or to thwart those complaints, the ombudsman will be compelled to make some sort of finding. Given the largely deferential track record of the CBC’s ombudsman, I don’t think she will side — even in a qualified manner — with the complainants.

Second, the conflict of interest controversy has now ensnared Mansbridge himself. CAPP boasts that it is among the nation’s most influential lobby groups. A CBC spokesperson confirmed to the Huffington Post that Mansbridge was paid to deliver the keynote address and suggested that his appearance was part of “an outreach initiative in place for many of our hosts that ensures CBC News and in this case our Chief Correspondent is talking to Canadians in communities across the country.”

I’m sorry … outreach? If that was the intent, then why did Mansbridge get paid for his efforts when he’s already earning a healthy stipend from the public broadcaster itself?

And as Jesse Brown, a Toronto-based media critic and host of the Canadaland podcast, has rightly pointed out, “the oilsands is perhaps Canada’s most controversial and divisive news topic, with competing interests constantly vying for positive media exposure and public sympathy. As the CBC’s chief correspondent and anchor of their flagship national news broadcast, Mansbridge exerts undeniable influence over what oilsands stories The National covers and how it covers them. The fact that he has been moonlighting for the energy industry is a clear (and undisclosed) conflict-of-interest.”

It’s all getting rather messy. And there is just one person at the CBC who can finally take tangible steps to clean it up. His name is Peter Mansbridge.

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.