Amanda Lang

Amanda Lang
Born	(1970-10-31) 31 October 1970
Alma mater	University of Manitoba
Occupation	news presenter
Children	two
Parent(s)	Otto Lang and Adrian Macdonald
Relatives	Anthony Merchant (uncle) Sally Merchant (grandmother) Vincent Reynolds Smith (great-grandfather)

Amanda Lang (born 31 October 1970) is a Canadian journalist. Formerly senior business correspondent for CBC News, she anchored the daily The Exchange with Amanda Lang on CBC News Network. Prior to her work with CBC, she was an anchor for Business News Network where she hosted SqueezePlay and The Commodities Report.

Early life

She is the daughter of Otto Lang, a Liberal party MP and federal cabinet member during the 1960s and 1970s. Her stepfather, Donald Stovel Macdonald, was also a federal Cabinet minister. Lang has an identical twin sister, Adrian.

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

Journalism career

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

She was later the New York correspondent for the National Post (after it acquired the Financial Post).

Switch to television

She got her start in television as an anchor and reporter with CNN in New York where she reported from the New York stock exchange for American Morning, and anchored programs on CNN's then-financial network, CNNfn.

Moving back to Canada, she became an anchor for Business News Network and was host of both SqueezePlay and The Commodities Report.

Lang left SqueezePlay and BNN in July 2009.

CBC

Starting on 26 October 2009, Lang and Kevin O'Leary began anchoring The Lang & O'Leary Exchange, a new business program on CBC News Network airing weekdays (as of 1 March 2010) at 7 pm Eastern Time, on which she has interviewed people such as Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Canada.

By now well established on the Canadian media scene, in February 2012, Lang hosted a lavish party for a friend and former BNN colleague Ali Velshi's How to Speak Money: The Language and Knowledge You Need Now book launch. Held at a Forest Hill home Lang shared with then-husband, mining executive Vincent Borg, the event was attended by prominent individuals on Canada's and Toronto's media and business scenes such as Moses Znaimer, John Tory, Kevin O’Leary, Andrew Coyne, Howard Wetston, Roots Canada founder Michael Budman, fashion editor Suzanne Boyd, gossip columnist Shinan Govani, etc. Her book, The Power of Why, came out in 2012. Already touted as Peter Mansbridge's successor on The National, 42-year-old Lang made Toronto Life's 2012 '50 Most Influential People in Toronto' annual list.

On 13 October 2015, CBC announced Lang was leaving the broadcaster effective October 16 for what was described as “a new opportunity outside the CBC in television.”

Lang will be host of Bloomberg TV Canada's new show Bloomberg North in early 2016.

Conflict of interest controversies

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 ruled in July 2011 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."

In December 2014, media website Canadaland presented 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.

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, and without disclosing she was in a relationship with a board member of the bank.

In the wake of the RBC stories, George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian, wrote on January 20, 2015, "It amazes me that [Lang] remains employed by CBC." John Doyle, a columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, wrote on January 23, "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."

On January 22, 2015, the CBC announced it had banned on-air talent from accepting paid speaking engagements. 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.

On March 5, the CBC announced an internal report conducted by one of its own news employees had determined Lang met its journalistic standards. However, in a blog post and in a letter to CBC viewers who complained about Lang's alleged RBC conflicts of interest, CBC News General Manager Jennifer McGuire stated that the CBC did not disclose the majority of its report on Lang to the public, including the parts concerning Lang's alleged conflicts of interest: “Let me state out front that only a small portion of that review was made public: analysis of the content that we broadcast and published. Other sections which cover the equally important questions about conflict of interest were not released because of obligations we have to keep them confidential... Any discipline carried out in accordance with that collective agreement is also confidential.”

Toronto's NOW Magazine reported on January 16, 2015 that Lang "came to the defence" of Barrick Gold, a mining company that had employed her then husband, in an on-air CBC segment.

Personal life

Lang was married to Vincent Borg, who since 1991 performed various roles at Peter Munk's gold mining company Barrick Gold including executive VP of corporate communications until August 2010. They separated in August 2012 as she moved out of their Forest Hill home and soon got divorced.

Since January 2013, Lang has been dating W. Geoffrey Beattie, a member of the Royal Bank of Canada board of directors since 2001.