Amanda Lang

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
Education	St. Mary's Academy
Alma mater	University of Manitoba
Occupations	Journalist news anchor author
Known for	The Exchange with Amanda Lang Bloomberg North
Spouse	Vince Borg (div.)
Children	Julian Borg
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 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[edit]

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]

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

Journalism career[edit]

Early Career[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

• 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 was nominated for a Gemini award in the category of Best Host or Interviewer in a News Information Program or Series. Other nominees she won the award over include 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[edit]

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[edit]

Chair, Covenant House[edit]

• 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[edit]

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[edit]

• 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[edit]

NDP[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

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]

Barrick Gold[edit]

Toronto's NOW Magazine reported on 16 January 2015, that Lang "came to the defence" of Barrick Gold, a mining company that had employed her ex-husband, in an on-air CBC segment.^[35]

During this CBC segment, Lang’s guest, Jon Allan of Occupy Canada accused Barrick Gold of committing crimes in Tanzania. Lang interrupted him to disclose that her then husband had worked at the company and invited another panelist to debate Allan.^[36]

Publications[edit]

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

Filmography[edit]

Television[edit]

External links[edit]

• Amanda Lang at IMDb
• Amanda Lang on LinkedIn

References[edit]