Spring 2007 - Canadian Association of Journalists

Transcription

Inside: NOT HAVING IT ALL: Motherhood and a career
in national television don’t mix
RARE
:
G
N
I
T
H
G
SI
Look quickly because this is one of the rare occasions
you’ll find Prime Minister Stephen Harper talking to
journalists on the Hill
THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS SPRING 2007 • VOLUME 13, NUMBER 1 • $3.95 L’ASSOCIATION CANADIENNE DES JOURNALISTES–
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Spring 2007
Volume 13, Number 1
I N S I D E
4
5
DEPARTMENTS
First Word
JournalismNet
Business
Editor
David McKie
The imbalance at The National between work and family.
Books Editor
Gillian Steward
Hunting for videos and information on social network sites such as MySpace can be
tricky. But there are ways to make your searching more efficient.
Legal Advisor
Peter Jacobsen
(Bersenas Jacobsen Chouest
Thomson Blackburn LLP)
CanWest's decision to cancel its liaison with Canadian Press won't be the end of the
wire service — not by a long shot!
Designer
Bonanza Printing
& Copying Centre Inc.
By David McKie
By Julian Sher
6
Publisher
Nick Russell
By Scott White
8
Update
When the Edmonton police chief was fired after a sting operation that targeted
Edmonton Sun columnist Kerry Diotte, that should have been the end of the
controversy. Hardly.
By Mike Jenkinson
10
Inside Ottawa
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a "pathological hatred" of journalists
on Parliament Hill.
By Richard Brennan
FEATURE
14
16
CAN WOMEN SUCCEED
IN NATIONAL TELEVISION?
Not if you happen to be a mother of young children.
TAKE YOUR PICK
Being a national television reporter — sadly — means making a choice between
family and career.
By Hélène Buzzetti
By Catherine Ford
DEPARTMENTS
18
Opinion
The media outlets may have let the Harper government off the hook on the
childcare issue.
By Dianne Rinehart
20
Legal affairs
The British House of Lords' decision may help Canadian journalists seeking
the public interest defence in defamation cases.
By David Crerar and Michael Skene
22
The fine print
A new weapon in the fight against defamation suits. The Canadian courts should
follow the British lead and allow "responsible journalism" as a legitimate defence
in libel suits.
By Dean Jobb
23
Computer-assisted reporting
Google now offers a spreadsheet program that's worth testing out.
24
Writer’s toolbox
You should always keep your listeners, viewers and readers in mind when
writing stories — not your sources.
By Don Gibb
26
Ethics
Media outlets should be sensitive to concerns over coverage in the Pickton trial,
but they must not let that concern drive the coverage.
By Stephen J. A. Ward
30
The Last Word
Should journalism be a profession? The answer to this question is being debated
by some of the top thinkers in the business.
By Alan Bass
By Fred Vallance-Jones
Printer
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Editorial Board
Chris Cobb,
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Catherine Ford,
Michelle MacAfee,
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Rob Cribb,
Rob Washburn
Advertising Sales
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Administrative Director
John Dickins
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E-mail: [email protected]
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Cover Photo
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FIRST WORD
BY DAVID MCKIE
Balancing work and family
The dilemma has always been the same
for many women who choose to become journalists
t's difficult to open a newspaper or listen to a
program these days without hearing
references to the need to balance work life and
family. Indeed, working life for many Canadians
has become busier. The extra leisure time that
some experts had predicted has yet to materialize.
For executives, it may be a case of working long
hours and weekends, having little time to indulge
in healthy hobbies. For workers in the lower
ranks, it may also mean putting in the extra
hours, either to get ahead or to keep pace with the
demands. Career ambition, it seems, is still
dominating the centre stage, except when it
involves young women attempting to balance
child care with the exigencies of deadlines in the
world of journalism.
In her piece about women who have left CBC
Television's The National, Hélène Buzzetti
discovered first-hand the incompatibility between
the program's deadlines and child-rearing.
Buzzetti, an Ottawa-based Parliamentary
correspondent for Le Devoir and herself a young
mother, spoke to a number of high-profile women
at The National to find out the exact nature of the
problem that seems to be more pronounced than
it is at other networks in French and English
Canada.
"… exactly why are so many female reporters
running away from The National after becoming
mothers?" she wonders. "The answer is contained
in one word: schedule. About every person
interviewed for this story, in Ottawa and
throughout the country, would only talk
anonymously. They left because of the crazy
hours they were asked to put in to be part of The
National's team."
In light of Buzzetti's anonymous conversations,
we asked Media editorial board member
Catherine Ford to reflect on what the women had
to say. Ford, who is a retired columnist for the
Calgary Herald, begins her piece by pointing out
that when it comes to young women attempting to
balance home life and work, nothing has really
changed.
"Feminism brought equality of opportunity,
but being female means there is no equality of
child bearing. To do both — have children and
aspire to one of the top media jobs in television
— is still almost impossible. And I say 'almost' in
recognition there have always been so-called
superwomen who can, and do, have it all."
I
MEDIA, SPRING 2007 PAGE 4
Shifting from the pressures faced by some
women to the business pressures endured by
media outlets, we examine the relationship
between Canadian Press and CanWest. The latter
is ending its association with CP. There was a
time, argues Scott White, when this decision
would have been devastating, prompting panic,
soul-searching and massive layoffs. No such
thing. CP's editor-in-chief argues that while the
pull-out will have an impact, it will not be as large
as people think.
"A quiet revolution has been going on at CP
over the last five years, which has meant not only
a transformation in the way our reporters do their
"Feminism brought
equality of opportunity,
but being female means
there is no equality of
child bearing."
jobs but a major ground shift in the co-operative's
finances and customer base."
The business of journalism has also been the
focus of the courts in London and some media
lawyers as of late. For the first time in a while, we
have decided to give a little bit of extra space to
matters of the media and the law. In his column,
Fine Print, Dean Jobb draws our attention to a
recent decision of Britain's House of Lords in the
case of Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd. that
could have an impact in Canada when it comes to
defamation suits. The British top court ruled that
"responsible" journalism can be a legitimate
defence against companies, governments, or
individuals pursuing journalists for defamation.
The ruling is not binding on Canada's courts
but media lawyers here have begun citing
Reynolds-based defences as part of their
responses to defamation suits, writes Jobb. "The
process may take time but our courts should
import the responsible journalism defence. Solid
journalism on important issues of public interest
deserves a legal refuge."
Vancouver based media lawyers David Crerar
and Michael Skene carry that argument forward
in their assessment of the decision's potential
impact on Canadian journalism.
And speaking of defamation, Edmonton Sun
columnist Kerry Diotte is suing that city's police
force. The defamation suit stems from an
incident that occurred on the evening of Nov. 18,
2004, at a Canadian Association of Journalismsponsored event in Alberta's capital city. Diotte,
who had recently written columns in the Sun
critical of the force, became the target of a sting
operation in which the police seemed
determined to catch him driving home drunk
from a bar called Overtime. There was public
outrage, the force's police chief was fired, and
that should have been the end of the matter. But
it wasn't. Diotte's former colleague, Mike
Jenkinson, updates the continuing saga. In his
piece, Jenkinson tells us about the public and
police reaction to a story Diotte wrote about the
force's questionable actions involving aboriginal
sex-trade workers. The feedback included letters
from readers who felt Diotte was biased against
the police.
"Wrote one reader in a response typical of the
negative reaction: 'It's obvious to me that all of
your police bashing stories are simply due to the
fact that your panties are still in a bunch over the
Diotte/Overtime thing, and you are only out for
petty revenge.'"
And finally, a word about our cover: Prime
Minister Stephen Harper holding court with
journalists on Parliament Hill. The scene is rare,
as strange as that may seem. It turns out that not
much has changed from the spring of 2006 when
we first drew your attention to the sad state of
relations between Harper's "new" government
and the press gallery.
In his update, Parliamentary press gallery
president, Toronto Star reporter Richard
Brennan, tells us that journalists are subjected
to bullying and intimidation. So we thought it
was worth drawing your attention to this issue
by, once again, putting it on the cover.
As usual, we have on offer a wide variety of
stories. If you have any comments about what
you've read, or suggestions on topics we should be
covering, feel free to contact me at
[email protected].
In the meantime, happy reading.
JOURNALISMNET
BY JULIAN SHER
Searching YouTube and MySpace
There are tricks to hunting for information
on these popular sites
received an e-mail recently from an NBC
producer who needed to find Iraq videos from
his network that had been posted on YouTube.
It's a common problem.
YouTube and similar sites have muscled into
the domain of traditional web news sites. Just
think of how YouTube helped spread the cell
phone footage of Saddam Hussein's execution. Or
how U.S. politicians are already using YouTube for
their presidential campaigns.
Meanwhile, social networking sites like
MySpace, Facebook or Friendster are becoming
important resources for finding people for news
stories or leads.
Each of these sites has its own internal search
engine, of course, but they can sometimes be
clumsy or inaccurate
There is no perfect solution to these new
challenges for web searching. But let's look at
some tools and tricks you can use.
I
DOMAIN SEARCHES
The easiest solution for all these sites is to use
Google's powerful domain search feature in
Google Advanced. (See Media Magazine,
Fall 1999, Vol. 6, No. 3).
Go to www.google.com/advanced_search.
Put in whatever keywords you want — for
example:
NBC Iraq
Next, scroll down to the ninth line labeled
DOMAIN. (highlighted in yellow above)
This allows you to narrow your search to one
web site or domain. Put in www.youtube.com (it is
important NOT to put in the "http://"
You will then get results of all of the YouTube
postings that use the words NBC and Iraq in their
descriptions. Now, this does not mean those
words will appear in the video, but it is usually a
good bet someone's description of their posted
video will be reasonably accurate.
VIDEO SEARCHES
You can also use search engines that
specifically look for videos. These tools search for
descriptions and sometimes for the words
encoded in the video file descriptions. (A few are
also trying to develop the ability to scan for the
words used in the video, but this is still
preliminary.)
One Japanese-based site has been set up
expressly to search YouTube and similar video
sites, with the neat name Qoogle. (It is at
video.qooqle.jp.)
Google itself, of course, has its own video
search term at video.google.com — and Google
conveniently owns YouTube.
You often get different results using the same
keywords in different video search engines and in
Google Advanced, so it pays to try various
searches on different sites.
SEARCHING MYSPACE
Everyone from rock groups to lonely teenagers
to BBC reporters have MySpace pages. There are
more than 100 million accounts — and some of
them may be the people you need for a story.
Again, MySpace has its own fairly decent search
engine but I always start with a domain search at
Google Advanced. (The same trick applies to
Facebook, Friendster and other social networking
sites; just put in their web address in Google's
domain box.)
There are also specialized search engines that
try to favour MySpace. One of these, shown below,
is IceRocket at www.icerocket.com:
For other blog-type searches, you can try web
sites such as Podzinger.com and other s e a r c h
tools
listed
on
my
site
at
www.journalismnet.com/blogs.
Julian Sher, the creator and webmaster
of Journalism Net (www.journalismnet.com),
does Internet training in newsrooms around
the world. He can be reached by email at
[email protected]. This article and other
columns are available online with hot links
on the Jour nali smNet Tips page at
www.journalismnet.com/tips
YouTube and similar
sites have muscled
into the domain
of traditional
web news sites.
BUSINESS
BY SCOTT WHITE
Pulling out won’t cripple us
CanWest’s decision to withdraw from The Canadian Press
cooperative will hurt — but not as much as people think
he current media landscape is a confusing,
complex and tumultuous environment.
The public's appetite for information is
insatiable and the technology exists to feed it
every moment of the day.
But what kind of information do people want?
And what technologies are their preferred
choices for getting that information? Does a
Blackberry necessarily make a newspaper
obsolete? Do iPods mean people will eventually
tune out radio or will future generations of iPods
do for news and information what they've
already done for music? Do a million bloggers
typing a billion words bring new definitions and
expectations to the traditional journalistic
standards of trust, accuracy and objectivity?
Like all news organizations, those of us at The
Canadian Press have been pondering these and
many other questions lately.
CP celebrates its 90th anniversary this year.
Born out of necessity in the First World War
because Canadians needed information about
their soldiers who were dying overseas, CP has
moved steadily over the years from the telegraph
age to the satellite age to the Internet age.
Technology has been the driving force for a
more recent change at CP, but this one has
nothing to do with the way the news co-operative
delivers its stories and photos. Rather, it's the
technology shift in the way people "consume"
their news and information that has resulted in
unprecedented changes at the national wire
service.
A quiet revolution has been going on at CP
over the last five years, which has meant not only
a transformation in the way our reporters do
their jobs but a major ground shift in the cooperative's finances and customer base.
There has been a lot of talk within the
journalism community about CP's future ever
since Canwest announced last year its intention
to withdraw from the co-operative after June 30.
When Southam Inc., Canwest's corporate
predecessor, made a similar announcement a
decade ago, there were legitimate fears that CP
would die. To respond to Southam demands for a
scaled-down service, CP was forced to cut its
workforce by 25 per cent and drastically drop the
membership fees it charged newspapers.
Ten years later, the Canwest decision has
caused none of the same tumult. The reasons can
T
PULLING OUT: CanWest Global Communications vice-president, David Asper,
addresses the Global Business Forum in Banff, Alberta.
One of his business plans for CanWest is doing without the services of CP.
be explained by the changing media landscape
that CP now serves.
In 1996, Southam newspapers made up more
than 50 per cent of CP's membership and about
40 per cent of its revenue. Now, Canwest has only
11 newspapers in the co-operative and revenue
from those papers represent just nine per cent of
CP's budget.
Beyond the Canwest issue, there has been a
gradual shift in the way CP generates the finances
necessary to provide comprehensive editorial
coverage of such a large and diverse country. Ten
years ago, CP relied on newspapers for two-thirds
of its revenue. Today, newspaper revenue
represents just one-third of CP's budget.
More and more of CP's financial success is tied
to non-newspaper sources — broadcasters,
business and government clients and, of course,
online news sites. The Canadian Press is the
largest supplier of online news in Canada. Last
year, CP stories were "clicked" more than 250
million times on member newspapers' sites
alone. If you add commercial sites, the number
jumps significantly.
PHOTO CREDIT: CP PHOTO/Jeff McIntosh
All of this explains the changes in the way our
journalists do their jobs. Over the last five years,
CP's newsrooms have undergone something
known internally as the "integration project."
Initially, this meant bringing together the two
traditional arms of the service — Canadian
Press and Broadcast News. Now it includes
adding online video to CP's newsgathering.
This means that in some cases, a CP journalist
is writing a story for online sites and
newspapers, filing audio for radio stations and
shooting online video. Being a multimedia
journalist is a demanding task and CP's
reporters and editors deserve tremendous credit
for their willingness to take on new
newsgathering skills to meet the changes in the
media landscape.
That changing landscape was addressed last
year in a strategic review of CP's editorial
service conducted by senior newspaper editors,
broadcasters and online producers. The final
report by this diverse group, which included
Canwest representatives, started with an
impressive opening statement:
"The Canadian Press is in the process of
transforming itself from a traditional newspaper
service — and information wholesaler — into a
more agile, multi-platform service with a wide
range of traditional and new media customers. It is
critical that CP has the ability to respond to news
wherever it happens in Canada and provide that
news and information in the various formats
required by its members and clients.
We think it's crucial that the entire organization
and its stakeholders embrace the notion that CP is
no longer simply a third-party provider of content;
rather it is a multimedia company that could bring
considerably more value to its members and clients
than currently realized. There is the capacity in the
organization to enhance members' revenue, reduce
their costs and improve their products if some of
the old strictures and ways of thinking are reevaluated."
The transformation in our newsrooms hasn't
come without challenges. But it has also been
rewarding. Integrating our newsgathering has
allowed us to shift resources from news to add
reporters in business, health, entertainment and
sports. The change has also helped promote a
culture of discussion within our newsrooms
where journalists and supervisors speak more
freely than ever.
Beyond the Canwest
issue, there has been a
gradual shift in the
way CP generates the
finances necessary to
provide comprehensive
editorial coverage
of such a large and
diverse country.
Ten years ago, CP
relied on newspapers
for two-thirds of its
revenue. Today,
newspaper revenue
represents just one-third
of CP's budget.
Planning stories from a multimedia standpoint
has resulted in stronger journalism for all of our
various services. For example, CP recently
produced a multimedia project called Missing
Lives on the 26 women Robert Pickton is accused
of killing. Profiles of the victims were transmitted
for CP's newspaper service. BN clients received
audio profiles of each victim, as well as a 20minute documentary.
As CP marches towards its centennial over the
next decade, there will be more challenges ahead.
But the strong, platform-neutral editorial work by
our reporters, editors and photographers and CP's
ability to respond quickly to the rapid industry
changes bodes well for the venerable and
independent wire service.
Scott White is CP's Editor-in-Chief.
You can help
Honour
His memory
The Don McGillivray Prize
for
Explanatory Journalism
Is being established at Concordia University,
where he taught for many years.
He was one of the most clear-headed journalists of his generation.
He was a magnificent teacher.
He was a pillar of the CAJ for many years.
Help us to encourage the kind of journalism he did so well.
Cheques should be payable to Concordia University; donations and any
questions should be sent to:
Linda Bell
Development Officer, Faculty of Arts and Science
7141 Sherbrooke St. West
Room AD-322
Montreal, Quebec H4B 1R6
See what he meant to journalism and to the CAJ; visit...
http://caj.ca/history/don-mcgillivray-tributes and
http://www.caj.ca/mediamag/awards2004/cajAwards/theAwards/McGillAward
UPDATE
The controversy that won’t go away
On Nov. 18, 2004, Edmonton Sun columnist Kerry Diotte
got a tip. Police were attempting to catch him driving home
from a Canadian Association of Journalists-sponsored
event to see how much he had been drinking. The sting
operation led to public outrage, a lawsuit and the firing of
the Edmonton Police Service's chief of police. Now, Diotte's
former colleague, Mike Jenkinson, updates us on the
scandal that still has people talking
he smouldering ashes of the Overtime
scandal burst into flames in Edmonton
again this past February, despite the fact
there was absolutely nothing in the news about
the elaborate, failed drunk-driving sting
conducted by the Edmonton Police Service on
Nov. 18, 2004, at the Overtime Broiler and
Taproom, that tried to nail Edmonton Sun
columnist Kerry Diotte. (See Media, Winter 2005,
Vol. 11. No.1)
In early February, Diotte got tipped off that
aboriginal sex-trade workers were recruited to get
high on drugs so they could be studied by cops in
a training exercise.
Diotte ran the allegations by the officer in
charge of corporate communications for the
police service. The response was that the police
could say very little about it, lest the EPS
jeopardize the internal investigation.
The column was so good that the Edmonton
Sun decided to make it the paper's line story. And
the reaction was stunning, but for all of the wrong
reasons. A number of local radio talk show hosts,
aided and abetted by a bevy of police officers,
rushed to the airwaves to declare not just that the
story was wrong, but that Diotte was so antipolice that he made it all up!
Some of the public reaction was the same. The
Edmonton Sun received numerous letters to the
editor and phone calls from readers who were
convinced that the story was entirely invented by
a columnist who carried a vendetta against the
police. Wrote one reader in a response typical of
the negative reaction: "It's obvious to me that all
of your police bashing stories are simply due to
the fact that your panties are still in a bunch over
the Diotte/Overtime thing, and you are only out
for petty revenge."
(One of the letters came, unsurprisingly to Sun
editors, from a police officer who took part in the
Overtime sting and is a fairly regular
correspondent to the Edmonton Sun, but only
T
when he is complaining about Diotte's supposed
bias against the cops.Vendetta? Really, now.)
Funny thing, though — a day after the police
service declared it couldn't talk about the story,
the deputy police chief held a news conference —
when he wasn't slagging the Edmonton Sun for
THE PROBLEM THAT WON'T GO AWAY:
The sad episode showed the degree to which
the Overtime scandal has harmed Diotte's
reputation as a journalist in Alberta's capital.
misrepresenting the story — to confirm
everything that had already been reported. He
even added more details to the story.
In other words, Diotte had an entirely
legitimate story that was in the public interest. But
instead of the public questioning the ethics of the
police in recruiting hookers and drug addicts as
guinea pigs, the story became about Kerry Diotte
and his anti-police bias.
The sad episode showed the degree to which
the Overtime scandal has harmed Diotte's
reputation as a journalist in Alberta's capital.And
that's because Overtime has gone from a scandal
so serious that it cost the police chief his job, to a
complete non-event in which the cops have
convinced the public their actions were entirely
justified.
They've managed to do that by ensuring none
of their members involved in the drunk driving
sting were punished.
Last June, the final police officer who faced
disciplinary action related to the Overtime fiasco,
Const. Jim Smyth, was given the lightest possible
sanction — a written reprimand. Not for the
botched and embarrassing sting operation,
though. No, he received a written reprimand for
using bad language on the police radio during the
operation!
By that point, however, the pattern had been
well established. Staff Sgt. Bill Newton had already
received a written reprimand for running Diotte's
name through a police database.
Insp. Bryan Boulanger was completely cleared
of discreditable conduct charges. Boulanger had
issued a news release after the failed sting, saying
that the police officers at the Overtime bar had
been targeting "intoxicated" individuals. Neither
Diotte, nor Martin Ignatiuk, the then-head of the
police commission who also got caught up in the
cop dragnet that night, were drunk. But that didn't
stop the police from concluding that two highprofile members of the community were drunk
and were going to drive home. (Both took cabs
home after being tipped off by other media
members assembled at the bar for a Canadian
Association of Journalists mixer for journalists
and candidates running in the provincial
election.)
This was a serious scandal which made
headlines in Edmonton and across Canada. It
eventually resulted in the police commission
firing police chief Fred Rayner and large amounts
of public outrage over the incredible abuse of
police powers in targeting two high-profile critics
of the police service for political purposes.
Despite that (or more likely, because of that),
the internal disciplinary hearings determined
that the Overtime affair was entirely on the upand-up. It was hardly surprising, then, that the
cops involved came out of their hearings denying
they had done anything wrong.
Smith declared that the Overtime operation
had "no improper purpose and no evil intent"
even though it was set up on the strength of a tip
that Diotte was a habitual drunk driver. (It's ironic
that for all the times the EPS illegally accessed
Diotte's file in the police computer, the cops never
noticed that he had never been picked up for
drunk driving. And Diotte's colleagues at the Sun
all know that he regularly takes cabs from bars
when he has been drinking.)
Boulanger and Newton similarly defended
their actions, saying they had done nothing
wrong. Diotte has sued the police for defamation
of character, and has gone on record as saying he
would settle out of court for a formal apology.
At an editorial board meeting with the
Edmonton Sun last October, Chief Mike Boyd
hinted that there might be some developments on
settling Diotte's lawsuit, saying that there would
be something happening "soon." So far, there has
been no movement on that front.
Former Edmonton Sun editor-in-chief Paul
Stanway, in a column for the newspaper last year
on the Law Enforcement Review Board's hearings
into the Overtime affair (which continue this
spring), wrote that he'd known Diotte for a long
time, and characterized him as a serious
journalist with a thick skin. "But the public
hammering his reputation has taken over the past
two years has exacted its toll."
Just how much of a toll was shown in February,
when his well-sourced and corroborated column
on the police drug training program was
dismissed out of hand as being just the invented
rantings of a columnist with an ax to grind.
The police got away with an incredible abuse of
power in the Overtime affair. None of the officers
involved were held accountable. And the
reputation of one of Edmonton's finest journalists
has been shredded.
Overtime has gone
from a scandal so
serious that it cost the
police chief his job, to a
complete non-event in
which the cops have
convinced the public
their actions were
entirely justified.
Mike Jenkinson is the former Comment editor of
the Edmonton Sun.
OPSEU Ad repeated
INSIDE OTTAWA
BY RICHARD BRENNAN
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
doesn’t like journalists
on the Hill
How else would you explain the treatment they receive?
HARPER SIGHTING: It has been a rare sight these days when Stephen Harper talks to reporters after question period.
The Prime Minister has taken to sneaking out the back door instead of going up the steps to his office at the west end of Centre Block.
t had been a good morning for Prime
Minister Stephen Harper.
I
It was national flag day and the students at
Ottawa's Lester B. Pearson Catholic high school
had been a splendid crowd, waving their tiny
Canadian flags with enthusiasm, while paying
rapt attention to Harper's speech, which of course
addressed Canada's role in Afghanistan.
When it was over the Prime Minister paid his
respects to the teachers in the hallway and was
whisked away by security and his zealous handlers.
With noon quickly approaching, the television
crews, radio and newspaper reporters and
photographers were keen to file their video,
photos and stories.
Two RCMP officers had other plans.
They put their shoulders to the door of the
gymnasium and refused to let the media out. It
was a game of push and pull that went on for
several minutes. By now Harper was long gone.
This is what passes for press relations in the
nation's capital. For whatever reason Harper has a
pathological hatred of the Parliamentary Press
Gallery, and of course the staff in the Prime
Minister's Office (PMO) take their lead from him,
which results in poor or non-existent relations
with the Gallery members.
While there may be many reasons, real or
imagined, the consensus is that Harper doesn't
think he was treated with the proper amount of
respect when he was opposition leader and now
PHOTO CREDIT: CP PHOTO/Tom Hansen
that he is Prime Minister he has a chance to get
even.
It didn't take him and his close advisers long
to come up with the so called "list" where the
PMO decides who gets to ask Harper questions.
It was put to the various bureau chiefs that the
new government was going to "control you
guys."
As you might imagine, it didn't sit well with
some of the media companies, the Canadian
Press, The Globe and Mail, CBC television and The
Toronto Star, who agreed with their respective
Ottawa bureau chiefs that they should rightly
boycott the list and have done so for a year or so.
There may be signs of a thaw in relations but it's
far too early to tell.
Anyway, some reporters covering the Hill have
also learned that if they do stories the government
doesn't like or go ahead and write stories the PMO
has tried to block there is price to pay.
At least one Gallery member continues to be
persona non grata for having the temerity to write
a story about a legislative assistant in the PMO
who was disbarred — albeit many years ago —
for bilking clients and was subsequently jailed.
The clear message: don't mess with the Harper
gang.
The fact is the penalty is not that severe since
Harper, whose style is more presidential than
prime ministerial, rarely makes himself available
to the media, particularly the great unwashed in
the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Harper's disdain for the media was driven
home during his three-day trip to France in April
to mark the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy
Ridge.
During his three-day trip, not once did he meet
with the Canadian media contingent that was
travelling with him. Parliamentary media
veterans had a hard time recalling the last time a
Prime Minister travelled abroad on a foreign trip
in such a bubble.
Instead, the trip was a carefully staged series of
photo-ops: Harper attending Easter Sunday
church Sunday with wife Laureen and his two
children; touring a World War I cemetery hand in
hand with his daughter; sharing a stage with the
Queen at the commemoration service.
But it all played like a silent movie — visuals
but few sound bites, at least none outside of his
carefully scripted speeches.
There was lots to chat about — the prospect of
a spring election, Canada's latest casualties in
Afghanistan, even a dad's pride in having his two
children join him on a pilgrimage to a place where
Canadian history was made.
At the G8, prime ministers going back to Brian
Mulroney's days always had a lengthy press
conference at the end of the summit. Under
former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul
Martin, there were some years featuring daily
pressers by the Canadian PM, not to mention
extensive daily briefings by somebody senior.
In St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir
Putin held press conferences every night, while
Harper had only one real press conference at the
end. At it, his aide went around and asked who
wanted to be on the list of questioners, saying that
Harper was going to take a lot of questions, so
everyone who got on the list should get a question.
Harper came out, took maybe five questions
and walked away. None of the Russian reporters
got a question and were rightly ticked.
And just recently because the Conservative
government has been getting a rough ride over the
possible mistreatment of detainees in
Afghanistan, cabinet ministers are refusing to
come to the microphones in the foyer following
question period. Harper has taken to sneaking out
This is what passes for
press relations in the
nation's capital. For
whatever reason Harper
has a pathological
hatred of the
Parliamentary Press
Gallery, and of course
the staff in the Prime
Ministers' Office (PMO)
take their lead from
him, which results in
poor or non-existent
relations with the Gallery
members. The consensus
is that Harper doesn't
think he was treated with
the proper amount of
respect when he was
opposition leader and
now that he is Prime
Minister he has a
chance to get even.
the back door after question period instead of
going up the steps to his office at the west end of
Centre Block.
On top of all this the PMO announces at the
very last minute Harper's schedule, hoping
Gallery members will decide not to follow him
when he goes out of town. It's all part of the catand-mouse game.
And not since being sworn in as Prime
Minister has Harper held a press conference in the
National Press Theatre.
No question, the Prime Minister can do what he
likes. If he doesn't want to talk to reporters there
isn't a heck of a lot anyone can do about it.
But governments come and governments go
and like Prime Ministers before him he will be
relegated to the history books complete with an
asterisk: did not like reporters.
Oh well.
Richard Brennan, a Toronto Star reporter, is
president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. He
was also president of the Queen's Park Press Gallery
for eight years.
Student Journalist
Hong Kong Fellowship
Exploring Hong Kong – Asia’s world city
Application
Deadline:July
May
2007
Application Deadline:
31,31,
2007
Hong Kong, Asia’s world city, is a Special Administrative
backgrounds. The winning student journalists must publish
Region of the People’s Republic of China, run by Hong Kong
or broadcast at least three stories about Hong Kong within
people under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle.
six months upon completion of the trip in the local media or
Situated at the southeastern tip of China, Hong Kong is
in their university/school journals or newsletters, but they will
one of the most open, externally oriented economies in the
have complete editorial freedom.
world. It is also considered the best springboard to trade and
investment in the growing China market.
The award is open to any journalism student who is currently
in a recognized university or college level journalism program.
Hong Kong has been rated the world’s freest economy by the
Applicants must be a paid-in-full member in good standing
Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and Fraser Institute.
of the CAJ. Non-members may take out membership upon
making an application. For application procedures, please visit
What makes Hong Kong tick as a great world city and a world
the CAJ website at www.caj.ca
class financial and business centre are: its unrivalled location;
its free and liberal investment regime; its low and simple tax
Selection of the successful candidates will be made and
regime; its transparent common law legal system and rule of
announced in mid-June. The visit program must be completed
law; its world class infrastructure; its free flow of information;
before the end of March 2008.
its entrepreneurial spirit; and a truly international lifestyle.
Application must reach:
Student journalists, who are interested in knowing more
The Canadian Association of Journalists
about Hong Kong and seeing Hong Kong to gain first-hand
Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology
insight, are invited to apply for the “Student Journalist
1385 Woodroffe Avenue, B-224
Hong Kong Fellowship”, organized by the Hong Kong
Ottawa, ON, K2G 1V8
Economic and Trade Office (Canada) in association with the
Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ).
Two winning student journalists will be awarded a package
each, including a 5-day official visit with an economy class air
ticket and hotel accommodation. When in Hong Kong, the
winners will have the opportunity to visit various points of
interest, and meet with people of diverse views and cultural
Tuesday, July
31,31,
2007
By Thursday,
May
2007
For enquiries, please contact Mr Stephen Siu, Assistant
Director (Public Relations) of the Hong Kong Economic &
Trade Office at (416) 924-7374 or email: stephen_siu@
hketotoronto.gov.hk or John Dickins, Executive Director,
CAJ at (613) 526-8061 or email: [email protected]
Dateline Hong Kong Fellowship 2007
A Working Fellowship for Canadian Journalists
Application Deadline:
Application
Deadline:July
May31,
31,2007
2007
Hong Kong, Asia’s world city, is a Special Administrative
Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, run by
Hong Kong people under the “One Country, Two Systems”
principal. Hong Kong is one of the most open, externally
oriented economies in the world, built on free enterprise
and free trade.
With China’s unprecedented economic growth, Hong
Kong has been used as the gateway to the robust China’s
Mainland market. It has also served as the springboard for
the Mainland companies to go overseas. Hong Kong has
been rated the world’s freest economy by the Heritage
Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Fraser Institute.
Working journalists are invited to experience Hong Kong at
first-hand and write or report on various aspects of
this great city by applying for the “Dateline Hong Kong
Fellowship 2007” organized by the Hong Kong Economic
& Trade Office in Canada in association with the Canadian
Association of Journalists (CAJ).
Winning journalist(s) will be awarded a package with a
5-day official visit program with business class air travel and
hotel accommodation. When in Hong Kong, the
journalist(s) will have the opportunity to visit various
points of interest and meet with people of diverse views
and cultural backgrounds.
Neither the Hong Kong SAR nor the CAJ will have any
control over or rights to the work of the participating
journalist(s) and they will enjoy full editorial freedom.
Each application must include a resume, a written
statement of support, including a letter of intent from
the editor/producer of designed media outlets to publish/
broadcast at least three Hong Kong stories within six
months upon completion of the trip in the respective
newspaper, magazine, or electronic media as they
deemed appropriate.
The proposal can concentrate on any area of life in
Hong Kong, including but not limited to business, trade,
politics, infrastructure development, IT, tourism, housing,
education, culture and environment, etc.
Selection of the successful candidates will be made
and announced in mid-June. The visit program must
be completed before the end of March 2008.
Application must reach:
The Canadian Association of Journalists
Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology
1385 Woodroffe Avenue, B-224
Ottawa, ON, K2G 1V8
By Thursday,
Tuesday, July
31,31,
2007
By
May
2007
For enquiries, please contact Mr Stephen Siu, Assistant
Director (Public Relations) of the Hong Kong Economic &
Trade Office at (416) 924-7374 or email: stephen_siu@
hketotoronto.gov.hk or John Dickins, Executive Director,
CAJ at (613) 526-8061 or email: [email protected]
FEATURE
BY HÉLÈNE BUZZETTI
Mamma non grata at The National?
Network television doesn’t seem to welcome young mothers
he scene took place last fall. A new CBC
recruit was requesting a Parliamentary Press
Gallery accreditation to cover federal politics
in Ottawa. At the sight of the picture of the young,
pretty and female reporter, someone asked
spontaneously: "Does she know she won't be
allowed to have kids?" You think such a meanspirited comment would only come from an old
boy's club member who refuses to adapt? Think
again. It was the sarcastic and disillusioned
expression of another young female national
reporter who, like more and more these days, is
starting to wonder if it is possible to be a mother
and work for the CBC's The National.
Indeed, over the past years, a significant number
of female Parliamentary correspondents have left
the CBC's flagship show soon after becoming
mothers. In 2006, it was Jennifer Ditchburn and
Christina Lewand who quit a few months after
returning from maternity leave. In both cases, it
was their first child. Ironically, they began working
at The National in 2001, replacing Susan Harada
and Susan Bonner, on leave after having children.
The situation doesn't seem to be limited to
Ottawa. In Winnipeg, Jo Lynn Sheane has
reluctantly agreed to switch her beat to consumer
issues — six months after she returned from
maternity leave. At least one male CBC reporter has
recently declined a National job because he shared
custody of his kids. It seems only Natalie Clancy in
Vancouver and Loanna Roumeliotis in Toronto
have succeeded in staying in their National job
after becoming mothers, obtaining a four-day
week. While the "four" in four-day week seems to
be only a vague suggestion at best, (Ms Clancy
claims to have worked a fifth day for 20 weeks in
2005. Ms Roumeliotis will only say that she needs
to be "flexible"), they both are extremely grateful to
the CBC for getting it.
It is a matter of public record that Susan Bonner
and Susan Harada had asked in 2001 to share the
working week. There was no openness, as the
management claimed it was necessary to ensure
continuity in the coverage. Harada left journalism
altogether in 2001; Susan Bonner stayed at the
CBC, accepting a job of less importance, but
nonetheless tailored for her. Christina Lewand also
left journalism. She had asked for a four-day week.
But there was one catch. She had to work the weekend shift.
But exactly why are so many female reporters
running away from The National after becoming
mothers? The answer is contained in one word:
T
MAKING THE CHOICE: Jennifer Ditchburn returned to The Canadian Press after leaving the CBC.
The long hours made it too difficult to spend quality time with her daughter, Gabriela. She doesn't want
to blame the CBC... nor to abandon the fight! "…maybe the time has come in our society," she says, "to
re-think work-life balance issues and see how to accommodate parents with young children because
having different kinds of people in a workplace makes it a richer environment."
schedule. About every person interviewed for this
story, in Ottawa and throughout the country, would
only talk anonymously. They left because of the
crazy hours they were asked to put in to be part of
The National's team.
All stories for The National must not only be
vetted in Toronto, but also viewed by a desk person.
The problem, though, is that there is usually
nobody free during the crucial filing hours to
actually watch the items. Therefore, reporters must
very often wait for their story to be aired at 9 on
Newsworld. Changes are sometimes requested for
the 10 o'clock edition.
The reporters I spoke to talked about the
"nightmare" of waiting in studios, doing absolutely
nothing, to be "good-nighted" by host Peter
Mansbridge. Mom (or Dad for that matter) comes
back home at around 10, well past bedtime. With
an average of three stories a week, it's easy to
understand why maintaining such a pace and
spending more time at home is nearly impossible.
"If you file early, you should be allowed to leave
early," says Jo Lynn Sheane, who admits being a bit
bitter. The consumer beat, after all, "was not
everything I dreamed of, no question about that."
The CBC refuses to be labeled as an "antifamily" organization. "The CBC and myself try to
be as flexible as we can," says George Hoff,
managing editor of the Parliamentary bureaus for
radio and television. "But there's a reality. TV news
is now a 24-hour operation and The National goes
on air at 9." Hoff recalls his own personal
experience as a Washington correspondent for six
years and a father. "My family didn't see me from
Monday to Friday. That's the business we're in. If
one wants to work and appear on The National,
those are the hours. The National is our most
important program. An employee can make a
choice."
But the French side of the CBC is living proof
that things can be done differently. Generally,
political correspondents at Société Radio-Canada
fare better. The vetting of their story takes place
somewhere between 6 and 7:30. The "live"
conversations with host Bernard Derome (Peter
Mansbridge's French-language counterpart) are
usually pre-taped and reporters are not requested
to stay until the entire editing is completed.All this
makes it possible for them to leave almost two
hours earlier than their English-language
counterparts. "There is no obligation to stay if the
job is completed," confirms Ottawa bureau chief
Patrice Roy who himself is a father of young twins.
At TVA, the biggest private network whose
newscast draws up to 900,000 spectators (by far,
the largest television audience in francophone
Québec), reporters are usually home by 7.
All reporters interviewed think it would be easy
to improve the situation, by hiring someone in
Toronto to watch the items as they come in at the
end of the day. George Hoff disagrees, arguing that
such a reorganization is neither feasible, nor
desirable.
"There will always be more stories than desk
editors. Someone, somewhere will have to wait. I've
heard of this problem before. Well, it's not a
problem.That's the way we work.The best TV news
is at 10 o'clock, on CBC. We don't want to make
mistakes, we don't want to rush. Our reputation is
at stake."
And four-day weeks? Hoff admits he is no fan,
for continuity issues. He thinks Clancy and
Roumeliotis got theirs because they are in
situations slightly different from that of being in
Ottawa. "For a manager, it's not ideal."
"Things won't change," predicted one person I
spoke to. "At the CBC, they consider working for
The National is a privilege. Thousands of people
would like your job. So why change anything?"
Another one adds: "It's geared for people who are
willing to say 'I will not have a life'."
Jennifer Ditchburn, who returned to Canadian
Press after leaving the CBC, doesn't want to blame
the CBC... nor to abandon the fight! "If you accept
a job on national TV, it's like becoming a lawyer or
a deputy minister. You know there will be long
hours, both for men and women, mothers and
fathers. So that makes it difficult for me to
criticize the CBC because I knew when I accepted
the job how it would be . But in all those cases,
including lawyers and deputy ministers, maybe
the time has come in our society to re-think worklife balance issues and see how to accommodate
parents with young children because having
different kinds of people in a workplace makes it
a richer environment."
Julie Van Dusen agrees. This energetic
Parliamentary reporter had a shot at the National
in 1995, while her three kids were all under the age
of six. She survived 18 months. "When you accept a
job, you have to accept what comes with it." At the
same time, though, she recognizes it was
frustrating to stay at work until 9 to do the same
job she now completes for the 6 o'clock show.
But other people interviewed for this story say it
is characteristic of systemic "discrimination." By
telling you from the start of its existence,the bosses
are in a way shielding themselves from future
criticisms.
To be fair, the CBC is not the only network to
impose such exhausting schedules. At CTV, too,
reporters stay usually until 9:30. Some female
reporters still make it. Rosemary Thompson is one
of them."CTV has always been good to me,offering
me promotions when I got pregnant." She says she
even got the four-day week. But still, she admits
this was also made possible thanks to an
understanding husband and a fantastic mother-inlaw.
Every case is different and every reporter
interviewed for this story provided a slightly
different explanation for their resignation. Still, a
lot feel a bit guilty: they wish they had stayed and
fought against a system which refuses to adapt.
Others were disappointed by the lack of solidarity
among female reporters. "It's like teenage sex. No
matter how often you're told you could get
pregnant, you don't believe it until it happens to
you!" Most of them thanked me for writing about
such a sensitive issue everybody is whispering
about.
Bitterness is tangible among the "Ex's" of The
National. "I find it sad and ironic that the CBC does
so many stories about daycare systems, working
women and a vast array of social issues on a daily
basis when it has its own internal barriers for
women and parents of young children that it has
failed to address," said one person.
Says another: "We are image makers. And the
image we send is the wise senior veteran
correspondent who reads the news with the young,
enthusiastic, energetic, talented, beautiful women.
And what happens to those women when they age?
They go away!"
Editor's note: Hélène originally wrote this piece
for trente, the French-language magazine for
Quebec-based journalists. She kindly agreed to
translate the article for Media magazine.
Hélène Buzzetti is a political correspondent for
the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir.
She has been a member of the Parliamentary
press gallery for 7 1/2 years, and served as its
president in 2003-2004. Hélène also has a three-year
old daughter.
But exactly why are so
many female reporters
running away from The
National after becoming
mothers? The answer is
contained in one word:
schedule.
Every case is different
and every reporter
interviewed for this story
provided a slightly different
explanation for their
resignation. Still, a lot feel a
bit guilty: they wish they
had stayed and fought
against a system which
refuses to adapt.
FEATURE
BY CATHERINE FORD
Women in the media can’t have it all
The choice still comes down to raising children
or making the early evening deadline
Plus ça change . . . the more things stay the
same.
oo bad. Most women would have believed
that after almost 40 years of feminism, child
care would still not be regarded as primarily a
female employee's responsibility. But wishing won't
make it so and young women are discovering they
still can't have it all, at least not without something
or somebody suffering.
The ideal, that women should not have to choose
between children and career, remains as elusive
today as it has been since women were first recruited
in 1875 to work as secretaries on the eight-year-old
invention, the typewriter.
What Hélène Buzzetti reports (on page 14) about
young working mothers at the CBC in general and at
The National in particular, should not surprise
anyone. The CBC isn't much different than other
media outlets when it comes to demands on its
journalists that the story should come first.
T
Young women reporters, a number of whom
dismiss the title "feminist" with what approaches
contempt, must be the children or grandchildren of
first- or second-wave feminists. Should they thus
believe every job should be theirs for the asking,
without any consequences? Reality tells another
story. Feminism brought equality of opportunity,
but being female means there is no equality of child
bearing. To do both — have children and aspire to
one of the top media jobs in television — is still
almost impossible. And I say "almost" in
recognition that there have always been so called
superwomen who can, and do, have it all. Mostly,
those rare women merely pissed off the rest of us
who just couldn't do both.
What being female in the mass media (still
among the most conservative businesses around)
means for most of us is choice, albeit still limited.
Many of us who started in the business in the
middle 1960s knew the choice was stark: career or
children.In the world in which I was raised,the only
women who worked were young and single,spinster
schoolteachers, nuns or war widows. Married
women and mothers — usually the same people —
stayed home, whether they were emotionally or
psychologically equipped to do so.
As the years went by, it got easier to do both, but
there are still jobs where the stark choice is one or
the other. Today, it is the rare and privileged woman
who doesn't have to at least attempt to do both. The
dual income family is the statistical norm.
If every Canadian woman who works stayed at
home to protest the lack of social support for their
double-duty lives, the economy would shut down.
But that's merely a fantasy, borne out of the
realization that while feminism brought us choice, it
also delivered an obligation to do it all.And while we
were busy teaching the younger generation that little
girls didn't have to marry doctors, they could be
doctors themselves, we somehow "forgot" to adjust
the social infrastructure to allow for the stark fact
that it is still the women who bear the children and
NOT HAVING IT ALL: Feminism brought equality of opportunity, but being female means there is no equality of child bearing.
MEDIA, FALL 2004 PAGE 16
PHOTO CREDIT: CBC.ca
"While feminism
brought us choice,
it also delivered an
obligation to do it all."
still the women who have the prime responsibility
for their care.
(Prime Minister Stephen Harper's $100 a
month is little better than an insult for anyone
who needs outside child care. Maybe it keeps
stay-at-home mothers quiet, because they don't
seem to be laughing the federal Conservative
government out of its daydream that $1,200 a year
provides for child care. Those women who are at
home, who can already afford to be home, would
still be there regardless of the government's
stipend. Please see Dianne Rinehart's story on
page 18)
If the men who run Canada's corporations were
to be faced with the choice of being CEO or being
Dad, their own companies would rapidly become
more family friendly. It's no surprise only about
five percent of the top money makers at Fortune
500 companies are women.
Some media companies have tried, but few
have succeeded. (One woman colleague said to me
years ago that the only obvious benefit of trying to
make the company more family friendly was that
the men were now praised for leaving meetings to
go to hockey or soccer practice.) The Calgary
Herald and the Edmonton Journal remain the only
two Canadian newspapers — at least the only two
I could find — with on-site day-care centres. One
would have thought the success of both would
have convinced other private businesses to follow
suit. Alas, such staff benefits — expensive to run
and expensive to use — are still rare.
When plans for the Calgary Herald's new plant
(it opened in 1981) were being unveiled to the
staff for suggestions, the building contained a
spacious auditorium, to be available for the public
to use. Staff members asked about a running
track and a patio outside the cafeteria. I stood up
and asked where the day-care centre was. The
editor at the time chuckled and asked: "Why,
Catherine, are you planning on needing one?"
Great yuks and guffaws ran through the audience.
I sat down and the Herald built its three-storey
plant on one of the foothills outside of Calgary's
downtown.
After the move, it became obvious that few
people in downtown Calgary wanted to meet in
what was then an industrial park at the
intersection of Memorial Drive and Highway 2.
A few years later, a more enlightened publisher
and human resources manager turned the
unused auditorium into a day-care centre. I have
never had to use it, but that was my personal
choice. Along with that choice not to raise
children was also the recognition that my
colleagues had a right to both work and child
care. But such rights are not absolute.
In 1998, Giselle Culver wrote in the Ryerson
Review of Journalism that newsrooms are full of
women who "face a difficult juggling act as they
try to balance the competing demands of career
and family, ambition and the desire to be there
for their children. As they find ways to cope, they
are part of a slow evolution in the pattern of
work — an evolution that recognizes the
realities of modern family life." One of the
journalists Culver interviewed said — maybe
with a certain wistfulness — that to be a great
mother meant making some other career choice.
Almost 10 years later, women are still making
those hard career choices. The Why is simple:
News doesn't conform to a family's dinner hour
and to expect to be able to get home in time to
tuck the kids into bed is unrealistic. This doesn't
mean the mass media is no place for mothers,
but that young women cannot expect to have it
all, automatically, because this is 2007.
To do both — have
children and aspire
to one of the top media
jobs in television — is
still almost impossible.
Some things won't change: a reporter in the
field, whether for television or newspapers, can't
expect the story to conform to his or her family
schedule.
The media can make more changes than they
have — certainly they can adjust to the reality of
modern life — but the big story always runs on
its own timeline.
Catherine Ford is a retired Calgary Herald
national columnist and the author of Against The
Grain: An Irreverent View of Alberta. She is a
member of the editorial board for Media.
OPINION
BY DIANNE RINEHART
Pass the beer and popcorn
Why did reporters fail to tell Canadians the real story
about the Conservatives’ childcare policy?
s it possible that a 30-second sound bite about
beer and popcorn gave the federal
Conservative Party a free ride from media
analysis on their Universal Child Care Benefit
policy in the last election?
More than a year later, it's time to reassess the
scrutiny journalists on Parliament Hill gave to the
$2.5 billion program that delivers $100 monthly
cheques to families for each child under six.
During the election campaign Paul Martin aide
Scott Reid infamously said: "Don't give people 25
bucks a week to blow on beer and popcorn. Give
them child-care spaces that work."
"Everyone went kind of berserk on that," notes
NDP MP Denise Savoie in her analysis of the
I
media coverage during the campaign. It became
"a look at a 30-second clip rather than a real
discussion of substantive issues," such as the fact
there actually was nothing to guarantee, as Reid
pointed out, that the money go to childcare.
Others involved in the childcare debate describe
media coverage of the Tory plan as "shallow,"
lacking in both critical analysis and basic
information.
So what went wrong? Did journalists allow
Prime Minister Stephen Harper to "frame" the
policy as one of choice, and fail to remind readers
of the facts? Or did columnists buy the Harper
spin and inadvertently help reinforce his
message?
You be the judge. As of mid-April:
was still no plan in place for the
✘ There
125,000 new child-care spaces the Tories
pledged under a business tax incentive plan.
There was no sense from business leaders,
said Canadian Federation of Independent
Business president Catherine Swift, that they
felt they were responsible for child care
spaces.
fact, there still was no government
✘ Inresponse
to recommendations put forth last
December by the task force the Conservatives
established to study how businesses could be
encouraged to create childcare spaces,
something the former Conservative Ontario
government under Mike Harris already knew
from experience would be challenging: Not
one new space was created under their earlier
tax incentive plan.
parents who have been receiving
✘ Meanwhile,
their monthly cheques since last summer
realized that they had to pay tax on the
money. This was a message they apparently
missed from the media coverage — despite
the fact it was initially reported when the
programs were announced. Or perhaps the
message got lost in a deluge of information
and political messages about "choice."
government was
✘ AsclawingthebackConservative
the childcare money, it was also
ending the Liberal's childcare program, four
years earlier than expected.
there was this surprise: after the
✘ And
election, perhaps to help finance the new
childcare plan, the Tories announced they
were canceling another family support
program, the Canada Child Tax Benefit,
which critics say went to parents who
needed the money the most.
the kicker? The Harper government
✘ And
spent $123,205 on a study that informed
KISSING BABIES: The Conservatives' childcare policy was sold to Canadians as being about choice.
But how much choice did parents of more modest means really have?
These are some of the questions journalists failed to ask.
PHOTO CREDIT: CP PHOTO/Adrian Wyld
them that — you guessed it — Scott Reid
may have been right: "The general consensus
was that the $1,200 will not have any real
impact on child-care choices and instead will
be used to help with the next bill.... No one is
So what went wrong?
Did journalists allow
Prime Minister Stephen
Harper to "frame" the
policy as one of choice,
and fail to remind
readers of the facts?
Or did columnists buy
the Harper spin and
inadvertently help
reinforce his message?
POINT PERSON: Rona Ambrose became one of the daycare plan's main salespeople during the
election. The infamous "beer and popcorn" quote allowed her to go on the attack rather than
field legitimate questions about the viability of Harper's plan.
going to be in a position to go back to work
or stay at home to raise children because of
the $1,200."
Maybe that's why the government announced
in its mid-March budget speech, that instead of
trying to encourage businesses to build spaces, it
would provide the provinces with $250-million a
year to create spaces — less than the $1-billion a
year the Liberal plan would have delivered, but a
welcome reprieve to provinces as the Liberal
funding dried up.
So why did the Tory childcare plan, that the
Conservatives were forced to shore up one year
later, get such an easy ride from journalists?
Childcare advocates have weighed in with their
assessment.
They point out that worse than the media focus
on the 30-second sound bite on beer and
popcorn, was an acceptance by journalists that
the plan was really about choice. How many
people decided to stay home to take care of their
kids, or to enroll them in daycare, because of the
$1.2-billion mailed out so far? According to the
Conservatives' own $123,205 study, likely no one.
"If you're spending a lot of money on a program
you kind of want to know whether it actually does
provide what is promised," says Martha Friendly,
coordinator of the Childcare Resource and
Research Unit. In fact, "there's nothing to link it to
childcare or even children. The only link is that it
goes to families."
Don Giesbrecht, president of the Canadian Child
Care Federation, doesn't know of any cases where
child-care centres received calls from parents
saying the $100 cheques were enabling them to
sign their kids up for day care. What he is hearing,
is parents telling him they didn't realize, until they
started filling out their tax forms, that the cheques
would be taxed. "The media didn't play that up."
Worse, he says the media were fearful of pursuing
the story because "they're so afraid of their
relationship with this government that they don't
want to offend [them]."
Ottawa Citizen political reporter Norma
Greenaway, who covered the campaign, is
perplexed at the surprise parents were expressing
this spring that they had to pay tax on the $1,200
annual credit, and that the program, in the end,
wasn't about choice.
"Most mothers I know knew it was taxable, and
though the [political] focus was on choice, to me it
was so clear it wasn't going to provide choice."
Greenaway thinks part of the problem was the
two opposing childcare plans were both
complicated, that the election wasn't about
childcare — it was "an election that revolved mostly
around scandal and charges of Liberal corruption."
She says the Liberals didn't do a good job of
presenting their policy,and some voters appreciated
PHOTO CREDIT: CP PHOTO/Fred Chartrand
the fact the Tories targeted "every-day parents."
Finally, she argues, the Liberal plan didn't get the
boost it needed from the provinces, who were
concerned they were signing on to an expensive
program, like health care and education, that they
may end up holding the bag for down the road.
But those suggestions are unlikely to dissuade
critics in their assessment of the media's coverage.
For instance, they wonder why journalists ignored
figures the Caledon Institute of Social Policy
released during the campaign. The institute's
analysis concluded that families earning $30,000 to
$40,000 were the least likely to benefit from the
Conservatives' campaign promise.The news wasn't
much better for parents in a slightly higher income
bracket:A family with two children,with one under
six, earning $36,000 would only net $388 a year for
the child out of the $1,200.
Families who most benefit from the "choice"
plan, then? Those with incomes of more than
$200,000 with one parent already at home.In short,
those who benefit the most are the families that
have the choice of having one parent at home. The
Caledon study shows they'll get to keep $1,076 of
the $1,200 annual amount and spend it anyway
they choose.
Dianne Rinehart is a freelance columnist, writer
and editor, who covered the 1993 campaign as a
reporter with CP's Ottawa bureau.
LEGAL AFFAIRS
BY DAVID CRERAR AND MICHAEL SKENE
Public interest in the
pursuit of defamation
Canadians may be able to look to British courts
for additional protection
nevitably, in the pressure of a newsroom,
otherwise responsible journalists can get their
facts wrong from time-to-time. Journalists
endeavouring to investigate and publish
information in the public interest can now find
some relief that their responsible-yet-erroneous
reports will not result in a costly court judgment.
The Jameel v. Wall Street Journal Europe SPRL
[2006] UKHL 44 decision from the House of
Lords offers a positive and important protection
to media defendants in defamation actions:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200
506/ldjudgmt/jd061011/jamee.pdf
In Jameel, Britain's highest court clarified and
confirmed that its earlier decision in Reynolds v.
Times Newspapers Ltd., [2001] 2 A.C. 127
provided a significant new "public interest
defence" available to persons (including
reporters, newspapers, broadcasters, and
presumably Internet broadcasters) that have
published articles on matters of public interest
that turn out to contain incorrect and harmful
statements.
I
THREE-STEP ANALYSIS FOR
RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM
The Reynolds/Jameel defence essentially
assesses whether the actions of the media
defendant exhibited "responsible journalism". In
carrying out this assessment, the court will ask
three questions:
1. Was the subject matter of the article a matter of
public interest?: In answering this question,
the court must consider the article as a whole,
and not isolate the defamatory statement.
2. Was the inclusion of the defamatory statement
in the article justifiable?: Did the statement
that turns out to be untrue contribute to the
article, or was it unnecessary or gratuitous?
3. Was the defendant journalistically responsible?:
Were the steps taken by the media defendant
to gather and publish the information
responsible and fair? The media defendant
must show that it met the expected standard
of "care that a responsible publisher would
take to verify the information published."
INDICIA OF RESPONSIBLE
JOURNALISM
(6) The urgency of the matter. News is often a
perishable commodity.
The earlier case of Reynolds set out 10 points
for the court to consider in assessing whether the
defendant exercised journalistic responsibility
such that public interest defence should apply:
(7) Whether comment was sought from the
plaintiff, although this may be unnecessary,
impractical or obviously futile.
(1) The seriousness of the allegation; the more
serious the charge, the more the public is
misinformed and the individual harmed if
the allegation is not true.
Although the decisions
of the House of Lords
are not binding upon
Canadian courts,
Canadian courts place
considerable weight on
them. Reynolds has
already been endorsed
and applied in a number
of Canadian cases.
(2) The nature of the information, and the
extent to which the subject matter is of
public concern.
(3) The source of the information: reliance on
hostile, biased, interested or ignorant
sources can misinform the public.
(4) The steps taken to verify the information.
(5) The status of the information: the allegation
may have already been the subject of an
investigation which commands respect.
(8) Whether the article contained the gist of the
plaintiff 's side of the story.
(9) The tone of the article; a newspaper can
raise queries or call for an investigation
without adopting allegations as statements
of fact.
(10) The circumstances of the publication,
including the timing.
Jameel emphasizes that this list is nonexhaustive; the weight and applicability of these
considerations will depend on the facts of the
individual case; these considerations are to be
applied in a "flexible and practical manner."
Importantly, the 10 factors are not to be applied
as 10 "hurdles" such that if a media defendant
fails to establish one, the defence will be denied.
Although Reynolds was greeted with celebration
when it was released in 1999, trial courts had
since applied that case in a restrictive manner,
such that the "public interest defence" rarely
succeeded. In essence, if the plaintiff was able to
show that the journalist failed in or fell short in
any of the 10 factors, the defence would be lost.
The court in Jameel was very critical of this
restrictive approach.
Equally importantly, the House of Lords
confirmed that these principles will apply not
only to newspapers but to all reportage on matters
of public interest, presumably including
television, radio and the Internet: as stated by
Lord Hoffman, "the defence is of course available
to anyone who publishes material of public
interest in any medium."
RESPECT FOR PRESSURES AND
PROFESSIONAL DECISIONS OF
EDITORS AND JOURNALISTS
The House of Lords endorsed and showed an
understanding of the professional decisions that
responsible journalists and editors must make
under pressure. Lord Hoffman noted that
"allowance must be made for editorial judgment,"
and that "the fact that the judge, with the
advantage of leisure and hindsight, might have
made a different editorial decision should not
destroy the defence." Lord Bingham similarly
held that "weight should ordinarily be given to the
professional judgment of an editor or journalist in
the absence of some indication that it was made
in a casual, cavalier, slipshod or careless manner."
POST-9/11 STORY OF
OBVIOUS PUBLIC INTEREST
Applying these principles to the facts of the
case, the House of Lords allowed the appeal. The
Lords confirmed that the Reynolds defence should
protect the defendant Wall Street Journal from a
defamation action brought by the Abdul Latif
Jameel group and related companies. The article
in question, published five months after the
September 11, 2001 attacks, alleged that the
Jameel plaintiffs were under investigation by the
Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority for acting as
conduits for financing terrorists. This turned out
to be untrue.
The Journal had spoken to a representative of
the Jameel companies the night before
publication. The representative declined to wake
up Mr. Jameel for comment, but asked that the
article be postponed by 24 hours. The Journal
declined, and advised that the article would state
that representatives for the Jameel companies
"were unavailable for comment." The two lower
courts had found that the Journal's refusal to delay
publication deprived it of the Reynolds defence.
The House of Lords disagreed: it did not find that
this approach violated responsible journalistic
practices, and would not have found the
journalist's action to be fatal to the defence.
In reaching the decision, the Lords noted the
serious and unsensational tone of the article and
of the high importance of the subject matter. As
stated by Lord Hoffman, "[i]t was a serious
contribution in a measured tone to a subject of
very considerable importance." As noted by
Baroness Hale, "[i]f ever there was a story which
met the test, it must be this one….if the public
interest does not succeed on the known facts of
this case, it is hard to see it ever succeeding".
IS JAMEEL THE LAW IN CANADA?
Although the decisions of the House of Lords
are not binding upon Canadian courts, Canadian
courts place considerable weight on them.
Reynolds has already been endorsed and applied
in a number of Canadian cases.
Canadian media outlets and journalists can
probably assume that a Canadian court would
apply the Reynolds public interest defence, as
clarified in Jameel, to offer wide protections to a
media defendant that reports on a matter of
public interest, in good faith, and behaves in a
journalistically responsible manner. The court
will likely take pains not to second-guess or
rigidly or artificially impose a test of perfect
hindsight on editorial decisions. In this, Jameel
offers a vital reassurance to journalists, publishers
and editors grappling with the pressures and
duties of delivering vital information to the public
day after day.
Sources_AD
David Crerar is a partner in the Vancouver office
of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, and serves as an
adjunct professor at the University of British
Columbia Faculty of Law. He is a graduate of the
University of Toronto Faculty of Law. In addition to
media and defamation law, Mr. Crerar practises
and has published in the areas of banking
litigation, injunctions, class proceedings, and
protection of trade secrets.
Michael Skene is a partner in the Vancouver
office of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. He holds law
degrees from the University of Cambridge and the
University of Toronto. Mr. Skene practises in the
areas of construction and surety law, and
commercial litigation. He has extensive experience
in all aspects of media and defamation law,
including pre-broadcast and pre-publication
advice, obtaining access to court documents, setting
aside publication bans, and pursuing and
defending libel claims.
TRAUMA
AND
JOURNALISM
RESEARCH PROJECT
Call for Participants
If you are a journalist or
photojournalist who is or
was exposed to trauma or
disaster events in the
context of your work and
would like to contribute to
a study that aims to
understand the impact of
these experiences:
Please contact:
Dr. Patrice Keats
Simon Fraser University
778-782-7604
[email protected]
This study is sponsored by the
Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada
THE FINE PRINT
BY DEAN JOBB
A new weapon in the fight
against defamation suits
Britain’s highest court recognizes “responsible journalism”
as a defence to libel. Our courts should follow suit to protect
solid journalism and the public interest
inutes before deadline in a Canadian
newsroom, a reporter and her editors
huddle around a computer. On the
screen is the final draft of a story accusing a
restaurant inspector of taking bribes in return for
ignoring food-safety violations.
Police confirm they are looking into the
allegations but refuse to identify the inspector.
Two unnamed city hall sources confirm his name
and say he has been suspended. The mayor
promises to take steps to ensure diners are not
being served tainted food. The reporter has called
the inspector's office and home five times seeking
comment, but to no avail. The editors decide to
publish and the story, naming the inspector, runs
on page one under the headline, "Bribe probe
prompts health fears."
The police do their work but no charges are laid
and the inspector is reinstated. The allegations
turn out to be false; public safety was never at
risk. The inspector, his reputation sullied, sues the
newspaper for libel.
As our law of defamation stands, the
newspaper can do little to defend itself. Truth is a
defence, of course, but the story is not true. News
reports are poor candidates for the defence of fair
comment (which is designed to protect opinions)
and, in any event, a factual basis is required. A
judge might conclude that the newspaper had a
duty to alert the public about a potential health
hazard; if so — and that's a big "if " — the report
could be considered privileged and the lawsuit
dismissed.
But thanks to Britain's top court, Canadian
journalists may have a new weapon to ward off
defamation suits, even when a story turns out to
be false. And that weapon is the defence of
"responsible journalism."
The House of Lords created the defence eight
years ago, in the case of Reynolds v Times
Newspapers Ltd. It requires judges to assess the
tone of an article, the reliability of its sources, the
efforts made to interview those defamed and
seven other factors to determine if a story was
published in the public interest.
M
The Law Lords revisited the issue last fall in a
ruling that offers further protection for the media.
In Jameel v. Wall Street Journal Europe, they
reminded lower courts that the "Reynolds
privilege" is designed to liberalize the law and
ensure important stories are brought to light
(both rulings are available online at
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/
ldjudgmt.htm).
Thanks to Britain's
top court, Canadian
journalists may have
a new weapon to ward
off defamation suits,
even when a story turns
out to be false: the
defence of "responsible
journalism."
Not long after the September 2001 terror
attacks in the United States, the Wall Street Journal
reported that U.S. law enforcement agencies had
asked Saudi Arabia's national bank to monitor the
accounts of the country's leading businesses. The
intention was to prevent the accounts from being
used — perhaps without the businesses'
knowledge — to fund terrorism.
Abdul Latif Jameel Group, one of the
businesses named in the report, and its president
sued and a jury awarded damages of £40,000 —
about $90,000 Cdn. The House of Lords, however,
faulted the trial judge for setting up the Reynolds
factors as "hurdles" for journalists to clear before
being able to claim the defence.
A "respected, influential and unsensational
newspaper," as one Law Lord put it, had published
a story on an issue "of undoubted public interest"
— the fight against terrorism. The report was
based on unnamed but highly placed U.S. and
Saudi sources but, given the secrecy of the Saudis,
could not be verified. A reporter phoned Jameel
Group's president, but he was out of the country
and unavailable to comment.
The House of Lords saw no need to delay
publication until the businessman could
comment. They also felt it was proper to name
Jameel Group and other businesses being
monitored, as this gave the Journal's article
credibility.
What mattered most, the Lords said, was that
the story dealt with an issue of public
importance and the journalists acted
professionally, tried to verify the information
and contacted those involved for comment. To
claim the defence, in the opinion of Lord
Bingham, a journalist must have "taken steps as
a responsible journalist would take to try and
ensure that what is published is accurate and fit
for publication."
Jameel is a major precedent, extending the
concept of reasonable conduct at the heart of
medical malpractice and other negligence
lawsuits to the legal minefield of defamation.
Journalists' codes of ethics can be used to
determine whether conduct constitutes
responsible journalism, Lord Hope noted,
providing "a standard which everyone in the
media and elsewhere can recognize."
The ruling is not binding on Canada's courts
but media lawyers here have begun citing
Reynolds-based defences as part of their
Continued on Page 25
COMPUTER-ASSISTED REPORTING
BY FRED VALLANCE-JONES
Google now offers a spreadsheet
Though lacking in some of the features of programs such
as Microsoft Excel, Google’s product is worth testing
ast time in this space I talked about
Microsoft's latest upgrade of its .Office suite.
L
Since all's fair in love and war, I figured this time
I'd give equal space to Google, Microsoft's primary
competitor in the battle-to-rule-the-world.
As I mentioned in passing, Google now offers a
free spreadsheet program, not to mention a word
processor, to anyone who cares to sign up for a
Google account (also free, by the way).
Unlike the worksheets created by Microsoft
Excel, you don't store the result on your hard drive,
but rather on Google's server. That means you can
revise or edit your work from any computer with an
Internet connection, and even allow others to use
the same document.
The potential here is enormous, both for
newsrooms on a budget that would like to give each
reporter access to basic spreadsheet software, and
for joint projects, where several journalists will add
or modify data.
The only question is whether it works.
Well, after taking a quick test drive I can say that
while the Google version lacks many of the more
sophisticated bells and whistles of the Microsoft
product and has a rather Spartan look, it functions
well.
Once you have a sheet open on your computer, it
behaves pretty much like any other spreadsheet.
There is sometimes a tiny delay in displaying the
result of a formula, but not long enough to be a
bother.
Four tabs at the top of the screen give you access
to screens to format your sheet, sort it by a single
column,and enter formulas.I was surprised to find
an impressive array of available functions,
including many that journalists would need. There
is no autosum button, but by clicking 'sum' at the
top of the screen, you can quickly start a sum
formula, and then complete it by clicking on cells
just as you can do in Excel. The basics, such as an
equal (=) sign starting a formula, and a colon used
to indicate a range in a formula, are exactly the
same.
You can also create rudimentary graphs and
charts.
Saving and reopening a document works
smoothly, and allowing someone else to view or
work on your spreadsheet is as simple as entering
their Google e-mail address.You can 'publish' your
spreadsheet on the Internet so anyone can see it,
and engage in online chat about it.
One of the nicest features of the Google
spreadsheet is the ability to export your sheet to
Excel, pdf or text format. Google does the
conversion for you before the file downloads to
your computer. This means you can start a sheet
on the road, and then download it to your
After taking a quick test
drive I can say that while the
Google version lacks many
of the more sophisticated
bells and whistles of the
Microsoft product and has
a rather Spartan look, it
functions well.
computer to work on it some more in Excel,Access
or any other program that can open a text or Excel
file.
Probably the single biggest downside to the
program is its apparent need to have an active
Internet connection. I found that when the net
connection failed, everything but the most basic
functionality disappeared as soon as I tried to
move from one tab to another.This was frustrating,
and might limit the ability of those with dialup
connections to use the service.You will also be out
of luck if you are on the road and your hotel doesn't
provide net access.
I think the jury is still out as to whether this kind
of remote-server program is really the way of the
future. But it certainly has its advantages.You don't
have to crowd your hard drive with bloated
software and you'll never lose your files if your
drive fails.
On the other hand, you put yourself at the mercy
of someone else's storage, and take the risk that
policies such as the current free access might
change. You could suddenly find yourself paying a
monthly service charge or per-use fee, which could
quickly add up to more than the cost of buying a
conventional spreadsheet program.
All these things said, Google's spreadsheet
application provides a useful alternative to Excel,
Quattro Pro and other similar products, especially
if you want to easily access your sheet from any
computer or share it with others. It's worth taking
for a test drive. Just go to Google.com and follow the
links to sign up.
Fred Vallance-Jones is a reporter and weekend
editor at The Hamilton Spectator. You can contact
him at [email protected]
WRITER’S TOOLBOX
BY DON GIBB
Write for your audience...
...and not for your sources
eporters just want to be loved. By their
bosses, other reporters, editors (well,
maybe not so much), by their sources …
even their spouses and children.
We may seem a tough breed, but we're really
not.
Which leads me to an unscientific theory
(probably accurate one time out of 20, with a
plus or minus margin of error of 97 per cent).
Reporters too often write for the people they are
writing about. They give more thought to what
their sources, their editors and their reporter
friends will think about the story rather than
their readers, viewers and listeners — the very
ones they are trying to lure into their stories.
However, with a little adjustment in thinking,
reporters can dramatically alter the stories they
write and the impact they will have on their
audiences. Learn to write for your audience.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about.
A reporter has been sent to the local hospital to
cover a press conference announcing training
for emergency medical attendants (EMAs) who
ride the ambulances. Those who called the press
conference have an agenda. Fair enough. So do
most of the people we interview.
In this case, a spokeswoman goes to great
lengths to explain how EMAs will soon gain the
status of paramedics — just like we see on TV.
The reporter dutifully listens to the explanation
and writes down how delighted hospital
personnel are to take on training that will result
in better qualified EMAs.
Back in the newsroom, the reporter opens his
story with a few paragraphs explaining the
transformation from EMA to paramedic. The
lead: "They are often referred to as paramedics
by many people, probably based on what they
see so often on television, but the people riding
the ambulance out of the health sciences centre
are actually emergency medical attendants."
As a feature, maybe that's the way to go, but
here's what's buried. Within a few months,
EMAs would have the training to actually treat
patients on the ride to hospital — treatment
that could save lives. These words are in the
story and these words speak directly to the
reader. The reporter offers examples to back up
the comment — giving aspirin to a heart attack
victim, hooking a patient up to intravenous,
treating a person with an allergy to bee stings.
R
What the ambulance attendants call
themselves is secondary to the story of
administering life-saving techniques on the way
to hospital.
Reporters need to attend such events with an
agenda, too, and that should be the readers'
agenda. Their job is to ask questions they
believe readers would ask or would want
answered. What effect does the story have on
their readers? What's the impact — good or
bad? What do readers need to know? Why
should readers care?
Reporters…
give more thought
to what their sources,
their editors
and their reporter
friends will think
about the story
rather than
their readers.
The headline on the previous story was, EMAs
will soon be paramedics. The headline should
and could have been, EMAs receive training to
save lives. Which one grabs your attention?
By focusing on readers, reporters will ask
more focused and more challenging questions.
Reporters shouldn't ignore the agenda
presented by those they cover, but they should
bring along one of their own that focuses on the
readers' needs.
The real problem, as I see it, is getting caught
up in the person's or group's agenda and
devoting too much energy to understanding and
explaining it without leaving time to explore the
impact of the story — what it really means.
Reporters need to determine the story focus
early. Writing coach Don Murray, of the Boston
Globe, offers this sage advice: Most good stories
say one thing. "They tell not of a battle, but of a
soldier." Write not of the internal details of
switching from the role of an EMA to a
paramedic, but of the impact of the change —
saving lives.
Here's another example of the agenda taking
priority where the message is never properly
translated for those most affected. Let's look at
the lead, the agenda and the buried message that
speaks to your readers.
It has been two weeks of work to rule by
elementary school teachers in the Napa
District School Board.
Work to rule measures were
implemented Jan. 4 after contract
negotiations failed between …
The next two paragraphs quote a teachers'
representative attempting to explain the
complicated formula by which the education
department determines its "funding formula."
And then we get to the heart of the story. The
first work-to-rule measure to affect our readers
— children and their parents — appears in
paragraph five. Teachers will not be writing
comments on student report cards to be sent
home next week.
First, the lead. It offers nothing new to readers.
Next week's lead could say, "It's been three
weeks …" followed by "it's been a full month
since …" The lead needs to focus on the main
element of the story.
Then, the reporter fell into the trap of trying
to toss in all of the background before he
reported what's new. The teacher's quote and the
funding formula were not the story on this
particular day; the story was the impact of the
work to rule on parents and their children,
bringing us back to the all-important question:
What effect does the story have on your readers?
Answer: Next week's report cards will be
missing the comments of your child's teachers.
And here's another question to add to the
reporter's arsenal: What makes this story
different? Court stories can always lead with the
judge's verdict. Accident stories can always lead
with the fact a 34-year-old local man and his two
TIPS FOR KEEPING YOUR
AUDIENCE IN MIND
Continued from Pg. 22
A new weapon in the fight...
responses to defamation suits. (Please see the
article by David Crerar and Michael Skene on
page 20) The process may take time but our
courts should import the responsible journalism
defence. Solid journalism on important issues of
public interest deserves a legal refuge.
Would such a defence help the newspaper that
published the story on the restaurant inspector?
Let's apply the Reynolds factors:
1)
During the researching, reporting and writing process, constantly ask yourself: What's my
story? What does it mean to readers? What questions would the reader ask? Can I approach
the story from a different angle? What's new?
2)
Remember: You are not writing the story for the people you are writing about. Their
agenda or message is important, but it is not the full story. What impact their agenda or
message has on other people is often more important.
3)
Always pursue all sides of a story. A one-source story is rarely, if ever, acceptable.
4)
Show readers specifically how a story affects them. Avoid generalities. For example, cutting
bus routes is important, but telling readers they'll have to wait longer for the bus is more
specific and focused.
bribery allegation was clearly a matter of
• the
public interest
5)
Translate jargon. Avoid using words and phrases that are specific to a profession, but
exclude readers. Understand the jargon and technical language so that you can report it in
plain language to a wide audience.
• the sources were solid
reporter tried hard
• the
information
6)
Why should readers care? It's an important question to ask yourself on every story. "I don't
know" is not a good answer.
7)
Ask lots of follow-up questions so that you can write with confidence and with a clear
focus.
8)
Tell stories. Read your story aloud to see if that's how you would tell it in a conversation
with a friend.
9)
Find people who represent or are affected by the dull, dry, factual statistics you need to
report and use those people to combat our heavy reliance on talking-head experts.
10) Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions. It's better than risking a story with lots of holes
and trying to explain yourself to your editor.
11) What struck you about the story? What impressed you, saddened you, made you laugh,
made you cry, made you curious? That's often the story.
12) Try writing without your notes. Eventually you can turn to them to clarify a comment or
quote, but writing what's in your head allows you to write more conversationally without
being tied down by the constraints of your notebook.
children, five and three, died in a head-on crash. But
if reporters look for what makes this court story or
this accident story or this drug bust different,they will
get beyond the obvious.
Here's a drug bust lead … and what was buried
that was different.
A mountain of the island's No. 1 cash crop
filled a storage room in the local police
detachment, the yield from another policesponsored marijuana harvest.
Jump to paragraph three. It seems that marijuana
was growing "just up the road" from the local police
detachment and it was discovered by a police officer
out for a jog. Different? I'll say. It takes the story from
a routine marijuana discovery to a story readers will
talk about.
Here are two openings to the same story. Based on
the lead, which one would you read?
A 32-year-old woman and her four-year-old
son died after their vehicle skidded off the road
into a canal.
Terror-stricken Cassandra Reed screamed
into her cellphone and begged a 911
emergency operator for help as her SUV
drifted and sank into the icy waters of a canal
near Bradford north of Toronto Saturday night.
The second one might be a bit long — removing
the unnecessary "terror-stricken" won't hurt because
we can see the terror — but it is more compelling
than the first one. Change the names, the ages, the
location in the first one and you have a lead that can
appear on any accident story.
Don Gibb teaches newspaper reporting at Ryerson
University's School of Journalism.He can be reached at
[email protected]
to verify her
allegations had some substance and were
• the
under police investigation
was urgency in publishing — people's
• there
health might be at risk
were made to interview the inspector
• efforts
(the House of Lords acknowledges, however,
that seeking such comment may be
"unnecessary, impractical, or obviously
futile")
story was not sensationalized
• The
allegations were not reported as fact.
and
The Reynolds's test considers the
circumstances behind the story, including the
timing of publication, which would seem to
favour the newspaper. The story came up short
on two fronts — it did not reflect the inspector's
side of the story, and the seriousness of the false
allegation compounded the damage to his
reputation.
With eight of ten Reynolds bases covered, the
newspaper should be able to claim the defence of
responsible journalism.
In Jameel, Baroness Hale declared that Britain
needed more "serious journalism" of the kind
practiced by the Wall Street Journal, "and our
defamation law should encourage rather than
discourage it."
So should Canada's.
Dean Jobb is author of Media Law for
Canadian Journalists (Emond Montgomery
Publications) and co-author of Digging Deeper:
A Canadian Reporter's Research Guide (Oxford
University Press). He is an assistant professor of
journalism at the University of King's College in
Halifax.
ETHICS
BY STEPHEN J. A. WARD
“Call-in-Ethics”: The Pickton trial
and offended audiences
Media outlets must be sensitive to the concerns of their
audiences, but those concerns over too much detail or too
little shouldn’t drive the coverage
he start of the Pickton trial in New
Westminster, B.C., in late January placed
news organizations between audiences that
demanded extensive coverage and people who
demanded limited or cautious coverage.
Vancouver newsrooms were flooded by angry email and phone messages accusing the news
media of sensationalism, over-the-top coverage
and making money from a terrible tragedy. Some
callers even suggested that the new media
shouldn't cover the trial at all.Others threatened to
cancel newspaper subscriptions.
Everyone demanded "responsible" coverage.
But there were enormous differences on what
responsible coverage meant. It was the classic
dilemma: Report and be damned; don't report
and be damned.
The Pickton trial raises a general problem for
journalism ethics that is increasingly important
in an age where news organizations seek to
maintain audience share and bend over
backwards to "interact" with readers, viewers and
listeners. The problem can be formulated as a
question: How should journalists make decisions
on their coverage?
One possibility is that journalists should "serve
the public" by adjusting their coverage to majority
(or vocal minority) opinion. Perhaps
accountability means adopting a "call-in ethics"
— adjusting coverage according to the reaction
from audiences. Thorny ethical issues could be
settled by surveying what audiences want.
If journalism was only a matter of selling a
consumer product, then "call-in ethics" might be
plausible. Why should a shoe store do anything to
offend its customers? But journalism is also a
democratic practice of informing citizens,
investigating social issues and critiquing
institutions. Journalists serve the public, not
simply by pleasing their customers, but also by
fulfilling a vital democratic role that may offend
some people.
There are many situations where members of
the public may want journalists to compromise
their role as critical public informers. For
example, in times of war, a majority of the public
may want reportage to be uncritical and patriotic,
T
bordering on propaganda. Journalists have a duty
to continue to report in an independent and
truthful manner, and not act as propaganda for
government — despite angering a substantial
number of people.
The fact that someone (or some group) is
"offended" by certain types of news coverage is
not sufficient, by itself, to justify a change in
coverage. Other factors must be taken into
Journalists serve the
public, not simply by
pleasing their customers,
but also by fulfilling a
vital democratic role that
may offend some people.
account. Journalists do some harm and cause
some offence with almost every story. The
question is not "Does this offend?" but rather,
"Should this seriously offensive material enter the
public domain?" What people find offensive must
be treated with some scepticism given the
subjectivity of such judgments. One person I
know finds it offensive to see gays kissing in TV
news reports and thinks such pictures should be
censored by editors.
Sometimes, journalists must offend audiences
to make sure that an otherwise reluctant society
faces up to a dark social problem. In the late
1980s, I and other reporters covered the Mount
Cashel Orphanage inquiry into the physical and
sexual abuse of young male orphans by Catholic
Christian Brothers in St. John's, Nfld. Throughout
this sad event, I and other reporters were accused
of sensationalism, of exaggerating the problem, of
undermining institutions. It was only the
constant, day-to-day coverage of the sickening
details of the abuse that finally prompted people
to stop blaming reporters and admit that the case
indicated a serious problem at the heart of
Newfoundland society.
In the case of the Pickton trial, what struck me
was how many critics focused on the negative
duty of journalists not to report certain facts and
testimony. Few considered that journalists also
may have a positive duty to report certain facts
and testimony.
To argue that journalists have a "duty to offend"
in certain circumstances does not justify the view
that journalists shouldn't try to avoid
sensationalism and to minimize harm. Journalists
should listen to their audiences. Journalism is not
a licence for arrogance. But they should remember
that they have to balance such opinion against a
broader social responsibility challenge society
where wrongdoing occurs.
The goal of coverage of the Pickton trial should
be sober, accurate, non-harassing coverage of what
goes beyond news updates and delves into the
deeper social and human aspects of this trial. If
that sort of coverage is deemed offensive, so be it.
Here are some ethical issues to keep in mind:
1. Proportionality: What amount of coverage is
needed to serve the public? What is too much,
or too little?
2. Framing of the facts and testimony: How
does the news media portray the case, the
victims and their families? Are the central
figures portrayed as humans, with dignity,
names and real lives?
3. Beyond emotionalism and sympathy:
Although (2) requires sympathy, the coverage
should not be overtaken by emotion.
Journalists need to ask tough, disturbing
questions about our social system and its
institutions.
4. Graphicness: How graphic should the
coverage be? If the testimony is that women's
body parts were cut up and placed in
containers, that fact will be reported. But what
level of description should be used? How many
gory facts are required for the public to
understand what happened?
NO PLACE FOR THE FAINT OF HEART: Forensic investigators make their way back to work,
carrying buckets after a lunch break at the Port Coquitlam pig farm owned by accused serial killer Robert Pickton.
Coverage of the trial has raised many ethical questions.
5. Potential harassment: The news media should
avoid harassing the families of victims, citizens
of the Downtown Eastside or the relatives of
Robert Pickton in search of pictures or
interviews. Some of these people want to speak
to the news media. Others will not wish to speak
and that wish should be respected. A respectful
process for requesting interviews is essential.
6. What measures have been put in place to help
journalists and others deal with trauma due to
attendance at this trial?
Responsible Pickton coverage requires
conscientious
reporters
and
editors
determined to make the most reasonable
decisions possible and to make sure that
PHOTO CREDIT: CP PHOTO/Chuck Stoody
editorial processes are in place to monitor,
correct and balance their coverage as this long
trial unwinds. It also requires reporters and
editors willing to endure the wrath of upset
audiences.
Stephen J. A. Ward is the director of the UBC
School of Journalism.
THE CAJ GLOBAL CONFERENCE
The Canadian Association of Journalists would like to extend a big "Thank You" to all the
delegates who attended the 4th Global Investigative Journalism conference.
More than 600 delegates from more than 40 countries gathered for an inspiring lineup
of 146 speakers, including keynote addresses by Lowell Bergman, Ayann Hirsi Ali and
Sally Armstrong. The buzz was palpable, from the interactive opening as delegates took
up their Jembe (African drum) and connected to each other in the universal language
of music, through the powerful opening plenary with Maher Arar, who challenged
journalists to continue the debate on anonymous sources, to
to the
the celebration
celebration of
of
excellence and the first-ever Global Shining Light award.
www.marketwire.com
Your newswire is getting
rewired.
Bigger. Better. Same nice folks.
is now called
LAST WORD
BY ALAN BASS
Should journalism become a profession?
It’s time to seriously debate this issue
f journalism is in a state of crisis in North
America — and there seems to be an
overwhelming consensus that it is — to what
extent are journalists responsible?
And what can they do about it?
Often, the answer to that question pins the
responsibility for upholding good journalism
practices on individual journalists and individual
newsrooms. This is sometimes called the "heroic"
approach because it demands a journalist be
prepared to quit rather than submit if put in a
situation that violates journalistic principles.
Or the answer doesn't involve journalists at all
— the onus is put on media owners and managers
to make sure the journalists they employ can do
their jobs properly. This particular approach is
often accompanied by demands that governments
break up media conglomerates and encourage
local or non-profit ownership.
Journalism's current crisis has spawned a
significant cottage industry devoted to studying
media and the news business and producing
reports recommending change. In most cases, the
recommendations still tend to focus on these two
themes, calling upon individual journalists and
newsrooms to do a better job or suggesting
journalism will magically improve under different
media-ownership structures.
However, a third theme is emerging, one that
asks journalists to take responsibility for
journalism as other professions take responsibility
for their work — by defining it, setting standards
and criteria for doing it, making sure practitioners
are qualified and committed to the goals of
journalism and outing those who are not.
I'm talking about professionalization.
This, to be sure, is a concept guaranteed to turn
many journalists apoplectic — as anyone who
belongs to the CAJ listserv knows. We've had a
number of discussions about professionalizing
journalism over the years and there's no doubt the
majority opinion views the idea as an apostasy.
I think the majority opinion is dead wrong.
Increasingly, it seems, I'm not alone.
Recent proposals for professionalizing
journalism have come from some surprising
sources. Philip Meyer, one of North America's
most-respected journalism academics, recently
wrote a book called "The Vanishing Newspaper:
Saving Journalism in the Information Age." His
main purpose is to persuade media owners that
good journalism can be profitable. But in the
concluding chapter, his argument takes a
surprising turn.
I
MEDIA, FALL 2004 PAGE 30
"Maybe the bean counters will get religion,"
Meyer writes. "Maybe the suits who run media
corporations will give more attention to social
responsibility. Let's not sit around and wait."
The challenges facing journalism today, Meyer
argues, "will slowly but irreversibly force it to move
from craft to profession. It is time to band together
for self-protection …"
More recently, Geneva Overholser — whose
journalism credentials include Washington Post
ombudsman, New York Times editorial board
member and editor of the Des Moines Register —
authored a document published by the Annenberg
Public Policy Center entitled "On Behalf of
Journalism: A Manifesto for Change." She reviewed
proposals for journalism reform put forward
during an Annenberg-sponsored conference in
2005. A section that focused on what journalists
themselves can do included a discussion of
professionalization.
It conclude d: "Whether throug h
professionalization or a recommitment to mission,
an agreement on core standards or enhanced
accountability measures … journalists need to
reinvent their social contract with the public."
The notion of professionalization has even
edged onto the agendas of some journalism
organizations. A proposal to professionalize
journalists was debated at a conference of La
Fédération Professionnelle des Journalistes du
Québec a few years ago.
In 2005, a discussion paper suggesting British
journalists consider become a self-regulating
profession was published by the Professional
Training Committee of the National Union of
Journalists.
In both cases,as might be expected,the idea was
swiftly rejected.
However,minds can change.John C.Merrill,who
wrote the book "Existential Journalism" and has
been the leading critic of professionalization for
decades, recently did a complete about-face. In a
2005 article published in The Global Media Journal,
Merrill said he had come to realize that relying on
individual ethics is not enough to prevent the
public service mission of journalism from being
overwhelmed and distorted by powerful
commercial and government interests.
"Worldwide, it is in danger of becoming either a
government bulletin board or an advertising
platform, with a surfeit of entertainment to make
them acceptable," Merrill wrote.
"... To create an elite body.And that is considered
a bad thing for the media. But to have a profession
of journalism — a true profession — would assure
journalistic freedom and institutional autonomy
and at the same time would create a structure to
ensure high quality and morality among the
professionals."
This is a difficult concept for most journalists.
Many strongly believe any move to regulate
journalism, even by journalists, would be a gross
violation of freedom of the press.
But this way of thinking is based on a confusion
of terms. Journalism and freedom of the press are
not synonyms.
Freedom of the press gives anyone the right to
publish or broadcast without censorship. But
journalists by definition accept significant
restrictions on what they publish — in particular,
they accept the responsibility to find, verify, report
and analyze the truth in an open, accountable and
independent manner so citizens can make wellinformed decisions about their lives and their
communities.
Freedom of the press and journalism are
inextricably linked. Freedom of the press is a precondition for journalism — journalism could not
exist without it. But they aren't the same thing. If
there's anything we can guarantee in the Internet
age, it's that clarifying and enforcing standards for
journalism won't stop anybody else from
publishing anything they want.But it will be harder
to disguise propaganda,marketing,public relations
and mistruth as journalism.
No one I've quoted above would deny the
incredible challenge posed by bringing journalists
together and getting them to agree to a definition of
journalism, a common code of ethics and an
acceptable method to determine who meets the
criteria and standards required of journalists. It
will require diplomacy of the highest order. It will
also require innovative thinking because there's no
question journalists will need to develop principles
and mechanisms of self-regulation that are
different from those of lawyers, doctors and other
professions.
Indeed, I would argue, the longer journalists
refuse to consider professionalizing, the more they
betray themselves, their colleagues and the public.
Over time, I suspect more journalists will reach the
same conclusion.
Professionalism may not yet be an idea whose
time has come, but its time is coming.
Alan Bass is an assistant professor at the School of
Journalism, Thompson Rivers University, and comoderates the CAJ listserv.
WE’RE THE
HORSE’S MOUTH.
CNW has been delivering direct-from-source, full-text news for over 46
years. We've had some recent additions to our network of services we'd like
to tell you about:
• CNW now distributes all Business Wire and PR Newswire content in Canada,
meaning all news via the world's two largest newswire networks will be
available to you through your CNW feed
• CNW has recently added Podcasting to our suite of digital tools. You can
now download CD-quality MP3 files of webcasts and other audio files at
your convenience.
• CNW's photo archive is available to accredited media at no cost. Simply sign
up and you will have access to thousands of print quality images.
You can find more information on these and other CNW services such as the CNW
Media Daybook, Portfolio-email and Hot Topics buttons at www.newswire.ca or
contact Sylvia Kavanagh at [email protected], 1-866-805-9530

Spring 2007 - Canadian Association of Journalists

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