Amanda Lang (born 31 October 1970) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

business journalist Business journalism is the part of journalism that tracks, records, analyzes and interprets the business, economic and financial activities and changes that take place in societies. Topics widely cover the entire purview of all commercial acti ...

, currently employed by

BNN Bloomberg BNN Bloomberg (formerly Business News Network and Report on Business Television) is a Canadian English language specialty channel owned by Bell Media. It broadcasts programming related to business and financial news and analysis. The channel is he ...

. Previously, she was the host of ''Bloomberg North'' on

Bloomberg TV Canada Bloomberg TV Canada was a Television in Canada, Canadian English language Category B Services, Category B specialty channel, television channel owned by Channel Zero (company), Channel Zero. It was a localized version of the U.S. financial news cha ...

. Lang was formerly senior business correspondent for CBC News, where she anchored '' The Exchange with Amanda Lang'' daily on

CBC News Network CBC News Network (formerly CBC Newsworld) is a Canadian English-language specialty news channel owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). It broadcasts into over 10 million homes in Canada. As Canada's first all-news channel, it is th ...

. Prior to her work with CBC, she worked as a print journalist for Canadian national newspapers and was an anchor for

CNNfn CNNfn (fn = financial news) was an American cable television news network operated by the CNN subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner from December 29, 1995, and of AOL Time Warner until December 15, 2004. The network was dedicated to ...

and BNN.

Early life

Lang's father is

Otto Lang :''see also Otto Lang (film producer) and Otto Lang (actor)'' Otto Emil Lang, (born May 14, 1932) is a Canadian lawyer and former politician. Life and career Lang was born in Handel, Saskatchewan. In 1961, he was appointed Dean of Law at th ...

, a Liberal party MP and federal cabinet member during the 1960s and 1970s. Lang's stepfather,

Donald Stovel Macdonald Donald Stovel Macdonald (March 1, 1932 – October 14, 2018) was a Canadian lawyer, politician and diplomat. Macdonald was a long-time Liberal party Member of Parliament and Cabinet minister. In the early 1980s, he headed a royal commission ...

, was also a federal Liberal Cabinet member. Lang has an

identical twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two ...

sister, Adrian. She attended

St Mary's Academy ST, St, or St. may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Stanza, in poetry * Suicidal Tendencies, an American heavy metal/hardcore punk band * Star Trek, a science-fiction media franchise * Summa Theologica, a compendium of Catholic philosophy a ...

, a private

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

girls' school in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749 ...

Manitoba , image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg , map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada , Label_map = yes , coordinates = , capital = Win ...

and later studied

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

at the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.The Globe and Mail'' in the InfoGlobe unit. She was later the New York correspondent for the ''

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with ...

'' (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 City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

where she reported from the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...

for ''American Morning'', and anchored programs on CNN's then-financial network,

. Moving back to Canada, she became an anchor for

Business News Network BNN Bloomberg (formerly Business News Network and Report on Business Television) is a Canadian English language specialty channel owned by Bell Media. It broadcasts programming related to business and financial news and analysis. The channel is he ...

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 Terence Thomas Kevin O'Leary (born 9 July 1954), also known as Mr. Wonderful, is a Canadians, Canadian businessman, Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur, and television personality. From 2004 to 2014, he appeared on various Canadian television shows. ...

began anchoring '' The Lang & O'Leary Exchange'', a new business program on

airing weekdays (as of 1 March 2010) at 7 pm Eastern Time, on which she has interviewed people such as

Brian Mulroney Martin Brian Mulroney ( ; born March 20, 1939) is a Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician who served as the 18th prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993. Born in the eastern Quebec city of Baie-Comeau, Mulroney studied political ...

, former prime minister of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. Her book, ''The Power of Why'', came out in 2012. Already touted as

Peter Mansbridge Peter Mansbridge (born July 6, 1948) is a British-born Canadian retired news anchor. From 1988 to 2017, he was chief correspondent for CBC News and anchor of '' The National,'' CBC Television's flagship nightly newscast. He was also host of C ...

's successor on '' The National'', the 42-year-old Lang made ''

Toronto Life ''Toronto Life'' is a monthly magazine about entertainment, politics and life in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ''Toronto Life'' also publishes a number of annual special interest guides about the city, including ''Real Estate'', ''Stylebook'', ''Eati ...

s 2012 '50 Most Influential People in Toronto' annual list. On 13 October 2015, CBC announced Lang was leaving the broadcaster effective 16 October for what was described as "a new opportunity outside the CBC in television."

Bloomberg

Lang became a host of

's ''Bloomberg North'' in early-2016. Following the September 2017 winddown of the network,

Bell Media Bell Media Inc. (French: ) is a Canadian company formed by the amalgamation of several companies. Establishment (2011–13) On December 9, 2011, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan announced the sale of its majority stake in Maple Leaf Sports ...

hired Lang once again for Business News Network (which had announced that it would become a co-branded franchise of

Bloomberg Television Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network focusing on business and capital market programming, owned by Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, reaching over 310 million homes worldwide. It is he ...

, BNN Bloomberg), where she now co-hosts ''Bloomberg Markets'' as part of a co-production arrangement for the program.

Conflict of interest controversies

NDP

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 John Gilbert Layton (July 18, 1950 – August 22, 2011) was a Canadian academic and politician who served as the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) from 2003 to 2011 and leader of the Official Opposition in 2011. He previously sat on T ...

'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 Toronto—Danforth (formerly Broadview—Greenwood) is a federal electoral district in Ontario, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada since 1979. It lies to the east of Downtown Toronto. Its best-known MP was N ...

. 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."

Manulife and Sun Life

In December 2014, media website '' Canadaland'' presented evidence that earlier that year Lang had provided favorable CBC coverage to two companies,

Manulife Manulife Financial Corporation (also known as Financière Manuvie in Quebec) is a Canadian multinational insurance company and financial services provider headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The company operates in Canada and Asia as "Manulife" an ...

and

Sun Life Sun Life Financial Inc. is a Canadian financial services company. It is primarily known as a life insurance company. Sun Life has a presence in investment management with over CAD$1.3 trillion in assets under management operating in a number ...

, without disclosing to viewers that each company had recently paid her for speaking engagements.

Royal Bank of Canada

In January 2015, Canadaland ran stories noting that Lang participated in the coverage of the

Royal Bank of Canada Royal Bank of Canada (RBC; french: Banque royale du Canada) is a Canadian multinational financial services company and the largest bank in Canada by market capitalization. The bank serves over 17 million clients and has more than 89,000& ...

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. In the wake of the RBC stories,

George Monbiot George Joshua Richard Monbiot ( ; born 27 January 1963) is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a regular column for ''The Guardian'' and is the author of a number of books. Monbiot grew up in Oxford ...

, a columnist for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'', wrote on 20 January 2015, "It amazes me that angremains employed by CBC." 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." On 22 January 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 5 March 2015, 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 A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations ...

, 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 regarding her personal life: "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."

Barrick Gold

Toronto's ''NOW Magazine'' reported on 16 January 2015, that Lang "came to the defence" of

Barrick Gold Barrick Gold Corporation is a mining company that produces gold and copper with 16 operating sites in 13 countries. It is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It has mining operations in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Côte d'Ivoire, Democrati ...

, a mining company that had employed her ex-husband, in an on-air CBC segment.

Publications

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lang, Amanda 1970 births Living people Canadian television journalists Writers from Ottawa Writers from Toronto University of Manitoba alumni Canadian television talk show hosts The Globe and Mail people CBC Television people Journalistic scandals Journalists from Toronto Canadian architects Canadian women television journalists Canadian business and financial journalists Women in finance Canadian business writers Canadian twins Women business and financial journalists Women business writers 21st-century Canadian women writers 21st-century Canadian non-fiction writers 21st-century Canadian journalists