Tamara Taggart blasts ‘boys’ club’ media industry, double standards in new podcast
Credit to Author: Postmedia News| Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2020 18:23:40 +0000
Longtime Vancouver media personality Tamara Taggart is not holding back on sexism in the media industry in a new podcast appearance.
In the latest episode of Mo Amir’s This Is Vancolour podcast, the former CTV anchor and one-time Liberal MP hopeful reflects on her time in media, nearly two years after being ousted from CTV alongside her former co-anchor Mike Killeen.
“I needed that space. That two years has provided me with a new perspective on what that was like outside of the bubble. And let me tell you, it’s really difficult to think about all the things I’ve experienced,” she said, noting that she now feels “positive for the first time in a long, long time.”
Without naming specifics, Taggart goes on to discuss toxic work environments: “When you are in the middle of that hurricane, you don’t know. So it’s not until you get out of it, and spend time away from it, and then talk to other people that were in there with you and you can together go, ‘Oh my gosh.’
“There was a lot of trauma in there for a lot of people in this hurricane,” she tells Amir.
Taggart also called out the media industry for being “a boys’ club” where “all the big decisions are being made by men,” and highlighted the double standard for men and women in broadcast.
Tamara Taggart on the set of CTV’s flagship news show with co-anchor Mike Killeen in 2014. The pair was fired two years ago.
“The white male broadcaster has a very long life. Very long life,” she said, adding that men don’t deal with the same level of public criticism as women do about physical appearance, clothing and hair.
“As a matter of fact, you can wrinkle up and lose all your hair and gain a bunch of weight and you will still get to retire on air. Women? Not so much.”
Taggart argues that it’s been ingrained into our culture “that women have to look pretty and attractive and well put together” whereas, “there have been plenty of dishevelled men on air.”
“It makes him, you know, eccentric,” she said.
“It’s definitely a tougher road for women in media still, and I’d like to think that if women had been in charge this entire time, newsrooms would not be shrinking.”
Other topics covered in the hour-plus-long podcast touch on Taggart’s 2012 cancer scare and her experience running for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party during the most recent federal election.
PM Justin Trudeau introduces Tamara Taggart as the Vancouver Kingsway Liberal candidate at a rally on Sept. 11, 2019. Taggart would fail to unseat Don Davies in the NDP stronghold in the October election.
“That experience of nearly dying was truly what changed it for me, because there was a moment when the surgeon was talking to me in pre-op and I remember thinking to myself, there’s a very good chance I’m not going to wake up from this. There’s a very good chance this is it,” she said, adding that her last CT scan is scheduled for June 2020, after which she hopes to “break up” with her oncologist.
“Gosh, I don’t want to get emotional here but, you know what, that doesn’t leave you. I don’t think about cancer every day or nearly dying every day. I don’t have to because I have this — something in me changed in that moment.”
Taggart first landed at CTV, then known as Vancouver Television, in 1997. She later spent time on CTV’s weather desk before being named a CTV News at Six co-anchor with Killeen in 2011. The pair were fired from CTV in 2018.
This is Vancolour’s Episode 64 featuring Taggart can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher or on the official website.
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