Gord Martineau

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Please improve this article if you can. (August 2007)

Gord Martineau (born September 23, 1948 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian television journalist.

Martineau is the senior co-anchor of Citytv's CityNews (formerly CityPulse) newscast in Toronto. He has been with the station since its inception, except for a few weeks in 1980 when he moved to Global Television Network as a news co-anchor for CIII. The job did not work out, so Martineau returned to CityPulse. He also briefly worked for CFTO-TV in Toronto around that time, and before coming to CITY, he was the weekend anchor of Pulse on CFCF-TV in Montreal.

Martineau has also appeared in a few movies as a news anchor, including Undue Influence, Dirty Work, and Urban Legend.

In April of 2007, Gord Martineau received a lifetime achievement award for 40 years in broadcasting. 30 of those years were at his current home, Citytv Toronto.

Noted for outstanding charity work, Gord Martineau has been associated with the Kidney Foundation, the Kid's Helpline, the Fred Victor Centre, the Breast Cancer Foundation, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Ireland Fund and most notably, the Herbie Fund where he has personally escorted children in need of life-saving surgery from countries as far away as the Philippines to superlative care at the Hospital for Sick Children.

[edit] Video of Martineau

In 2004, this[1] CityPulse news clip was anonymously released on the internet, in which Martineau made a number of crude sexual remarks—including referring to Roch Voisine as a Pepsi (an outdated derogatory term for French Canadians) and a "homo", and asserting that Martineau's penis was more newsworthy than an item on Ontario's first pancreas transplant recipient—while taping a news bumper with co-anchor Anne Mroczkowski.

Martineau and Stephen Hurlbut, CHUM Limited's vice-president of news programming, issued a statement[2] regarding the tape. Martineau said:

“

I'm personally mortified some tired, silly and inappropriate comments I made might damage the stellar reputation that Citytv has earned. I apologize. I'm so proud to be part of a news team that has always been instrumental in making a difference, and still leads the way in effecting positive change. I ask and hope that you'll judge me based on the work I've been part of for the last 30 years and not on a regrettable incident.

”

Martineau never apologized on air, or ever mentioned the incident on the daily broadcast.

Newsroom professionals, however, commiserated with Martineau, noting that "gallows humour" is par for the course, "de rigueur" in dealing with the gritty, dirty and heart-wrenching news stories daily confronted by journalists.