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Amanda Lang

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Amanda Lang
Amanda Lang at the Public Policy Forum's Canada Growth Summit, in 2016
Born (1970-10-31) 31 October 1970 (age 53)[1]
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
EducationSt. Mary's Academy
Alma materUniversity of Manitoba
Occupations
Known for
SpouseVince Borg (div.)
ChildrenJulian Borg
Parent(s)Otto Lang and Adrian Macdonald
RelativesAnthony Merchant (uncle)
Sally Merchant (grandmother)
Vincent Reynolds Smith (great-grandfather)

Amanda Lang (born 31 October 1970) is a Canadian business journalist, and host of Taking Stock, a weekly business news program on CTV, BNN Bloomberg and CP24.[2] Previously, she was the host of Bloomberg North on Bloomberg TV Canada.[3] Lang was formerly senior business correspondent for CBC News, where she anchored The Exchange with Amanda Lang daily on CBC News Network. Prior to her work with CBC, she worked as a print journalist for Canadian national newspapers and was an anchor for CNNfn and BNN.

Early life/Personal Life

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Lang's father is Otto Lang, a Liberal party MP and federal cabinet member during the 1960s and 1970s. Lang's stepfather, Donald Stovel Macdonald, was also a federal Liberal Cabinet member.[4]

Lang is one of six siblings, including her identical twin sister, Adrian. She is an avid reader, runner and cyclist.[5]

Lang attended St Mary's Academy, a private Catholic girls' school in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She later studied architecture at the University of Manitoba.[4]

Journalism career

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Early Career

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Lang began her journalism career in print at The Globe and Mail in the InfoGlobe unit.[6]

She then moved to the National Post (then Financial Post) as their New York correspondent.

Switch to television

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She got her start in television with what was then RoBTV (now BNN) in 1999, in New York, before moving to CNN in 2000 where she reported from the New York Stock Exchange for American Morning, and anchored programs on CNN's then-financial network, CNNfn.

In 2002 she returned to CTV and RoBTV, before anchoring Squeezeplay with Kevin O'Leary and The Commodities Report in 2003.

Lang left SqueezePlay and BNN in July 2009.[7]

Move to CBC

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In 2010, Lang and O'Leary moved to CBC and launched the Lang & O'Leary Exchange. Upon O'Leary's departure in 2015, the show was rebranded as The Exchange with Amanda Lang.

While at the CBC, Lang's coverage ranged from the Occupy Movement, [8] to the high-profile NSA leak by Edward Snowden,[9] to questions of increasing wealth inequality.[10]

In 2010, Lang won a Gemini award in the category of Best Host or Interviewer in a News Information Program or Series. Other nominees included Heather Hiscox of CBC News Now and Erica Johnson of CBC News: Marketplace.[11]

During her time at CBC Lang also worked as Senior Business Correspondent reporting for the National.  

Her book, The Power of Why,[12] came out in 2012. Already touted as Peter Mansbridge's successor on The National,[13][14] the 42-year-old Lang made Toronto Life's 2012 '50 Most Influential People in Toronto' annual list.[15]

Bloomberg

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Lang became a host of Bloomberg TV Canada's Bloomberg North in early-2016.[16] Following the September 2017 wind-down of the network, Bell Media hired Lang once again for Business News Network (which had announced that it would become a co-branded franchise of Bloomberg Television, BNN Bloomberg), where she now co-hosts Bloomberg Markets as part of a co-production arrangement for the program.[17]

Community Involvement

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Chair, Covenant House

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Lang served as a member of the board of directors at Covenant House from 2017 to 2024, including as board chair.

Covenant House is the largest agency in Canada serving homeless and at-risk youth, working to provide care for young people who have experienced homelessness and sex trafficking. The charity has supported more than 100,000 young people since its founding in 1982.[18]

During Lang’s board tenure, the charity expanded its support of education around human trafficking and undertook a major strategic review of its priorities.[19]

Munk School

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Lang is a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, which primarily offers master’s degrees in global affairs and public policy.[20]

Writing

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In 2012, Lang published her first book, The Power of Why: Simple Questions That Lead to Success. In the book, she argues that curiosity can be harnessed to drive innovation and change not just in business, but in our personal lives. The book received positive reviews with high-profile individuals like Peter Mansbridge and David Chilton offering praise.[21]

In 2013, the book was shortlisted for the National Business Book Award.[22]

In 2017 she published her second book, The Beauty of Discomfort: How What We Avoid Is What We Need, where she argues that successful people tend to embrace and seek out discomfort. She illustrates this theory with stories of a wide range of successful individuals including business leaders and professional athletes.[23]

Conflict of interest controversies

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NDP

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In 2011, Lang hosted a panel on CBC's The National where she was assigned to determine the credibility of then NDP leader Jack Layton's election platform. It was not disclosed to the viewing audience that Lang's brother was, at the time, running against Layton for the Liberal Party in the riding of Toronto—Danforth. CBC's Ombudsman reported that, “There was nothing problematic about Lang’s reporting in the campaign,” however the report raised concerns about perceived conflicts, stating that, "it was not possible to compartmentalize Lang's reporting on NDP policy from Layton's qualities as a leader and credentials to be supported as a candidate. Any of her campaign reporting even indirectly intersecting with the Liberals or NDP could have been perceived as conflicted."[24]

According to the Ombudsman’s response, Mark Harrison, the executive producer of The National, noted that, “the feature in question did not focus on Layton, but was a broad segment on how the NDP was going to finance its promises.” He also noted that “the reporting decision was not Lang’s, but the program’s senior editors.”[25]

Manulife and Sun Life

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In December 2014, media website Canadaland reported evidence that earlier that year Lang had provided favorable CBC coverage to two companies, Manulife and Sun Life, without disclosing to viewers that each company had recently paid her for speaking engagements.[26] Lang’s speaking engagements were disclosed on the CBC’s website.[27]

Royal Bank of Canada

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In January 2015, Canadaland ran stories noting that Lang participated in the coverage of the Royal Bank of Canada during its temporary foreign worker program scandal, including interviewing the then-CEO of the bank Gord Nixon, while having done speaking engagements at RBC sponsored events, promoting her own book, which featured a back cover endorsement from Nixon without disclosing she was in a relationship with a board member of the bank.[28]

In the wake of the RBC stories, George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian, wrote on 20 January 2015, "It amazes me that [Lang] remains employed by CBC."[29] John Doyle, a columnist for the Toronto The Globe and Mail, wrote on 23 January "It's time for Lang to get down off her high horse and go away. This is about the CBC's reputation, not hers, which is already in tatters."[30]

On 22 January 2015, the CBC announced it had banned on-air talent from accepting paid speaking engagements.[31] Later that day, Lang conceded in a piece in The Globe and Mail that she should have made on-air disclosures about her connection to RBC and stated that she agreed with the speaking engagement ban.[32]

Jennifer McGuire, the general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News, launched an investigation of Lang's reporting on RBC that analyzed her coverage since 2013. The review showed no evidence of bias. Ms. McGuire also noted that, according to an external review conducted by Cormex, a media research firm, Lang's coverage of the banking sector showed "no evidence of partiality."[33][34]

Publications

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  • The Power of Why (2012)
  • The Beauty of Discomfort: How What We Avoid Is What We Need (2017)

Filmography

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Television

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Year Title Role Notes
2011-2012 George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight Herself 4 episodes
2013 CBC News: The National Herself - Senior Business Correspondent 2 episodes
2013-2014 The Lang & O'Leary Exchange Herself - Host 131 episodes
2018 The Marilyn Denis Show Herself 2 episodes
2022 Question Period Herself - BNN Bloomberg 2 episodes
2023 Power Play with Vassy Kapelos Herself - Host of BNN Bloomberg's Taking Stock Episode: "Fall Economic Statement"
2022-2023 BNN Bloomberg's Taking Stock Herself - Host 22 episodes
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References

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  1. ^ Lang, Amanda (31 October 2012). "Birthday post". Retrieved 16 September 2015 – via Twitter.
  2. ^ "Taking Stock with Amanda Lang". www.newstalk1010.com. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  3. ^ "Bloomberg TV Canada". Archived from the original on 18 May 2016. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
  4. ^ a b Burnside, Chelsey (Summer 2012). "The Amanda Lang Exchange". Ryerson Review of Journalism. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  5. ^ Bradshaw, James (15 August 2014). "CBC's Amanda Lang: The accidental business expert". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
  6. ^ The Power of Why Archived 9 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Chapter 3, page 5 (e-book)
  7. ^ "Lang leaps to CBC". Playback. 28 July 2009. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  8. ^ VeritasNewsNow (20 March 2014). Occupy Canada Featured on CBC's The Lang and O'Leary Exchange. Retrieved 11 June 2024 – via YouTube.
  9. ^ CBC News: The National (18 February 2015). "Citizenfour" | Oscar-winner Laura Poitras on Edward Snowden. Retrieved 11 June 2024 – via YouTube.
  10. ^ Matt Hudson (22 January 2014). Kevin O'Leary says, "I'm wonderful to see it happen". Retrieved 11 June 2024 – via YouTube.
  11. ^ Burnside, Chelsey (1 May 2012). "The Amanda Lang Exchange | [ ] Review of Journalism : The School of Journalism". Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  12. ^ The Power of Why, Harper Collins Canada, 2012 http://www.harpercollins.ca/books/Power-Why-Amanda-Lang/ Archived 9 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ "Shinan: The Lang of it". National Post. 11 December 2012. Archived from the original on 18 January 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2015.
  14. ^ Houpt, Simon (13 October 2015). "Amanda Lang leaving CBC". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
  15. ^ "50 Most Influential 2012: a ranking of Toronto's top tycoons, backroom operators and supersize egos". Toronto Life. 3 December 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  16. ^ Gallant, Jacques (15 October 2015). "Amanda Lang to host new show". Toronto Star. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  17. ^ "BNN to rebrand as 'BNN Bloomberg' through new Bell Media-Bloomberg Media partnership". BNN. 8 January 2018. Retrieved 11 January 2018.
  18. ^ "Our Impact". Covenant House Toronto. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  19. ^ "Strategic Plan". Covenant House Toronto. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  20. ^ "Amanda Lang | The Munk School". munkschool.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  21. ^ Lang, Amanda (9 October 2012). The Power Of Why: Simple Questions That Lead to Success. Collins.
  22. ^ Award, National Business Book. "Chrystia Freeland wins National Business Book Award". www.newswire.ca. Retrieved 11 June 2024. {{cite web}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  23. ^ TEDx Talks (2 April 2018). The Beauty of Discomfort | Amanda Lang | TEDxQueensU. Retrieved 11 June 2024 – via YouTube.
  24. ^ "Conflict of Interest". 5 July 2011. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  25. ^ LaPointe, Kirk (August 2012). "Office of the Ombudsman Annual Report 2011-2012" (PDF). CBC. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  26. ^ "Amanda Lang took money from Manulife & Sun Life, gave them favourable CBC coverage". 22 December 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
  27. ^ Craig, Sean (22 December 2014). "Amanda Lang took money from Manulife & Sun Life, gave them favourable CBC coverage". CANADALAND. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  28. ^ "Amanda Lang tried to sabotage a CBC story that scandalized RBC, who paid her". 11 January 2015. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  29. ^ "Our 'impartial' broadcasters have become mouthpieces of the elite". The Guardian. 20 January 2015. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  30. ^ Doyle, John (23 January 2015). "CBC's Amanda Lang problem should end with this: Resign". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  31. ^ "Amanda Lang Fallout: CBC On-Air Talent Barred From Taking Paid Speaking Gigs". 22 January 2015. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  32. ^ "Public Trust Matters More Than Speaking Fees". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. 22 January 2015. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
  33. ^ "Amanda Lang leaving CBC". The Globe and Mail. 13 October 2015. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  34. ^ Nagler, Jack (March 2015). "Journalistic Review: Conflict of Interest and CBC News coverage of RBC and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program" (PDF). CBC. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
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