State celebrity, institutional charisma and the public sphere: managing scandal at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Abstract

This article investigates the rise and scandalous fall of celebrity host Jian Ghomeshi within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We draw upon Althusser’s conception of the Ideological State Apparatus to analyse how the CBC made use of Jian Ghomeshi as a state celebrity to ‘hail’ the audience/citizen and contribute to the CBC’s ‘institutional charisma’. The discussion also demonstrates the dependence of the CBC on types of legitimate authority in its efforts to manage the scandal and invoke its cultural and moral authority in the Canadian national–cultural context. We demonstrate that the CBC made use of its status as a rational–legal employer and as a moral guardian of the public sphere to compartmentalize itself against scandal and retrench as a public institution.

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