Fall 2004 - Canadian Association of Journalists

Transcription

Plus: What kind of legacy did Conrad Black leave in Canadian journalism?.
GOING,
GOING...
GOING
..
NOT SO
FAST!
7
72006 86194
6
04
Paul Martin’s
Martin’s victory
victory in
in the
the
Paul
last federal
federal election
election defied
defied
last
the pundits,
pundits, the
the pollsters
pollsters
the
— and
and journalists
journalists
—
THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS FALL 2004 • VOLUME 10, NUMBER 4 • $3.95 L’ASSOCIATION CANADIENNE DES JOURNALISTES–
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Fall 2004
Volume 10, Number 4
I N S I D E
Publisher
Nick Russell
Editor
David McKie
Books Editor
Gillian Steward
DEPARTMENTS
4
First Word
It seems as though we still haven't learned how to cover federal elections in this country.
By David McKie
5
JournalismNet
Search engines are improving the way journalists can find news.
By Julian Sher
6
Writer’s toolbox
Hard-pressed and deadline-conscious reporters are tempted to find people for their stories,
even when such a search is unnecessary. Writing coach Don Gibb has some advice on
avoiding the warm-body syndrome.
FEATURES
Legal Advisor
Peter Jacobsen
(Paterson McDougall)
Designer
Bonanza Printing & Copying
Centre
Printer
Bonanza Printing & Copying
Centre
8
POLL MANIA
Our addiction to polls skewed the coverage of the recent federal election campaign.
By Chris Cobb
11
MINORITY GOVERNMENT
ROULETTE
The country is unlikely to experience another federal election anytime soon, so members of
the Parliamentary Press Gallery had better get on with writing about policies that matter to
voters.
By Anthony Westell
14
NOVA SCOTIA’S
HIGH-WIRE ACT
Political reporters in Nova Scotia have grown accustomed to reporting on that province's
minority government. The legislative reporter for the Halifax Daily News, Brian Flinn, has
some words of advice — and caution — for his colleagues in Ottawa.
16
LACK OF ACCESS TO
INFORMATION
There is increasing evidence that the federal government is violating the rights of journalists
who use the federal access to information law. Journalists should fight back.
By Alasdair Roberts
Advertising Sales
John Dickins
18
SPIN CONTROL
There's no denying that media outlets depend too heavily on spinmeisters for their news. The
proof is contained in a new study.
By Trudie Richards and DeNel Rehberg-Sedo
20
PROFILE
Kathryn Welbourn has been called "a strong, active, fearless newspaper editor" — but not by
those who take offence to her stories.
By Jeff Green
Administrative Director
John Dickins
(613)526-8061 Fax: (613)521-3904
E-mail: [email protected]
Editorial Board
Chris Cobb,
Wendy McLellan,
Sean Moore,
Catherine Ford,
Michelle MacAfee,
Lindsey Crysler,
John Gushue,
Rob Cribb
23
Photojournalism
Maclean's chief photographer, Peter Bregg, has travelled the country and the globe using his lens
to chronicle the human condition. He tells us the stories behind some of his most recent pictures.
MEDIA is published three times
a year by:
Canadian Association of
Journalists,
1385 Woodroffe Avenue., B-224
Algonquin College
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2G 1V8
26
Ethics
The superficial way in which we cover elections threatens to distance citizens even further
from politics.
By Stephen J.A. Ward
Reproduction without the written
permission of the publisher is
strictly forbidden
27
Ethics
Whether you want to call it plagiarism or a breech of intellectual integrity, stealing the words
of other people and calling them your own is a problem that media outlets and journalism
schools must take more seriously.
By Judith Ince
30
Point of view
Conrad Black always craved attention. And now, unfortunately, he's getting his wish.
By Gillian Stewart
Media is a publication of the
Canadian Association of Journalists.
It is managed and edited
independently from the CAJ and its
contents do not necessarily reflect
the views of the Association.
32
Foreign affairsc Canada
Millions of people may be dying in Africa. But dying people aren't as visually exciting as
bullets flying in the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
By Michelle Stirling-Anosh
Subscriptions: $14.98
(GST incl.) per year,
payable in advance
34
The Fine Print
Warning: Don't say or do anything when dealing with the police that you are not prepared to
have exposed, at some future date, for all to see.
By Dean Jobb
35
Workplaceor freedom of
Two journalists reflect on how they were able to secure good jobs in a field that can be
difficult to break into.
By Chris Richardson
36
Computer-assisted reporting The push towards greater privacy protection could spell bad news for greater access to
DEPARTMENTS
records in electronic form such as databases.
By Fred Vallance-Jones
38
The Last Wordor freedom of The temptation to fabricate the people in medical stories may be heightened by the pressure
on journalists to find real-life victims.
By John Gushue
Indexed in the Canadian
Periodical Index.
Canada Post Publications Canadian
Mail Sales Product Agreement No.
182796
ISSN 1198-2209
Cover Photo
Maclean’s/Peter Bregg
FIRST WORD
BY DAVID MCKIE
The horse-race that produced
the wrong winner
The coverage of the recent federal election produced
more of the same: stories that failed to take voters much
past the win-loss column
he casual consumers of news could be
forgiven for being shocked on the evening of
Monday, June 28, when the results began
filtering in from a hard-fought and sometimesnasty federal election.
Just days before that evening's results, vulturelike media outlets began writing the Liberals'
political obituary. Polls and seat projections were
giving the Tories a minority government.
Speculation was rife about Paul Martin's future.
The verdict seemed to be reached: his campaign
was a disaster; his days as a politician were perhaps
numbered.
Days before people went to the polls, many of the
stories focused on the deals that the governing
Conservatives would have to make with the Bloc
Quebecois, and whether such alliances were
tantamount to breaking bread with the separatist
devil.
So, how do you explain the election night result?
The explanation could be found in the Globe and
Mail headline the next morning: "Ontario Rescues
Martin." Or this Ottawa Citizen headline: "Tory-shy
Ontario gives PM a break." It was only on the eve of
the election that the Citizen declared in its abovethe-fold, front-page story: "Tories set to win 115;
Liberals, 106."
To be fair, other media outlets also ran similar
prognostications.
Take Maclean's, for example. Two weeks before
the election, the magazine ran a cover of a smiling
Conservative leader with the superimposed,
presumptive caption: "Prime Minister Stephen
Harper?" A week later, Paul Martin made an
appearance on the cover with the less-flattering
caption, which read in part: "GOING GOING…
Gone."
These headlines seemed to make sense because
the polls were predicting dark days for the oncemighty media darling Paul Martin. And media
outlets were taking those polls seriously.
To say that election coverage is driven by polls is
a tired cliché. But even more tiring are the promises
of media executives to reduce their reliance on polls
and focus on substantive issues such as health care;
in other words, a commitment to cover issues that
contribute to the political knowledge of an
increasingly disengaged electorate.
T
MEDIA, FALL 2004 PAGE 4
To be sure, there were exceptions. My employer,
the CBC, did vow to stick to the issues.And for the
most part, the stories and coverage avoided the
polls and projections of the Conservatives' margin
of victory, or the severity of a Liberal loss.
But the overall tone of the coverage, including
that of the CBC's, was influenced — some would
say tainted — by the polls. Stephen Harper even
began believing the headlines, and the coverage
reflected that growing confidence, which came
back to haunt the now-humbled Conservative
leader.
So we've come through another election
decrying the use of polls. But will it be any
different when Canadians do it all over again
within the next year, two or three, when Paul
Martin returns to the electorate for a more
decisive mandate? Who knows?
Reformists in the United States have repeatedly
and vehemently lamented that country's polldriven coverage of presidential elections. Little
appears to have changed — in the U.S. or Canada.
And it is with that sad reality in mind that the
Ottawa Citizen's Chris Cobb kicks off Media
magazine's exploration of the Canadian election
coverage with his sobering post mortem. He
writes: "To be charitable, it is possible that all the
polls were accurate when the surveys were
conducted. However, when you're dealing with
horse-race polling, that isn't good enough."
Staying on the theme of politics, we look ahead
to the current Parliamentary session. As former
Hill bureau chief, columnist and journalism
professor, Anthony Westell, points out, Canada
has had a history of minority governments. "In
the past half century, there have been six previous
minority governments," he writes. "Three were
defeated in a vote of confidence in the Commons,
precipitating an election — but in one of those,
the government arranged its own defeat because
it wanted an election, and in another the
government invited defeat because it was
confident the opposition would not dare. So it
could be argued that only once has a minority
government been driven into an election against
its will."
So if, as Westell suggests, we're stuck with a
minority government for the foreseeable future,
what does that mean for our coverage of federal
politics? Will there be a continuous and tedious
deathwatch? Will coverage be dominated by
breathless accounts of those inevitable internal
negotiations between parties about what pieces of
legislation they will support, or tactics they may
employ to keep Martin and his crew honest?
Brian Flinn, the legislative reporter for the
Halifax Daily News, has been down this road
before, having covered successive minority
governments in Nova Scotia. Media magazine
asked him to proffer some advice to his colleagues
in the nation's capital.
That advice can be summed up in one phrase:
don't waste your time circulating the Peace Tower,
vulture-like, waiting for imminent death. He
suggests that journalists covering federal politics
find news in places that they've ignored in the
past. Places such as committee meetings.
We move beyond the world of political coverage
to the business of journalism. Specifically, the
business of staying alive in the unforgiving world
of newspapers. As we have seen with the travails
of Conrad Black, survival is difficult. It takes
business acumen, hard work, a bit of luck, and an
abiding love for the craft.
Those are among the qualities you'll find in
Kathryn Welbourn, a feisty publisher at the helm
of The Northeast Avalon Times, a monthly that
covers a small geographic region near St. John's,
Newfoundland. Jeff Green introduces us to
Welbourn in his engaging profile of a woman who
characterizes the Times as the "biggest friggin'
gamble" of her career.
Another publication that arguably started out
as a gamble was the National Post, which went
head-to-head with the Globe and Mail in 1998.We
have two very different treatments of the National
Post in this issue.
The first treatment involves a study conducted
by Trudie Richards and DeNel Rehberg-Sedo,
professors at Mount Saint Vincent University's
public relations department. The two academics
began wondering about the extent to which major
media outlets in Canada depend on institutions
for their news content. Put less charitably, they
Continued on Page 38
JOURNALISMNET
BY JULIAN SHER
There are new and better ways
to find news
It's just a matter of using the right search engine
inding news is what journalism is all
about, and the Web keeps coming up with
new and better tools to help you do just
that. It's hard to keep up with all the latest
developments, so here is a quick rundown of
some of the hottest sites.
F
NEWS SEARCHES
Of course, the best tool is still Google News at
news.google.com (which we looked at extensively
in Media, Fall/Winter 2003,Vol. 10, No.2) with the
widest selection (4,500 news sources) and the
highest precision. Formerly available only in
English, Google News has now branched out into
French, Italian, German and Spanish. You'll find
links to these languages at the bottom of the main
Google News page.
But there are new kids on the block worth
looking at as well:
Newsblaster from Columbia University is the
most promising (at www1.cs.columbia.edu/ nlp/
newsblaster). The folks at Columbia have come up
with a better way to search the news, instead of
just a mishmash of headlines. Every night, the
system crawls a series of Web sites, downloads
articles, groups them together into "clusters"
about the same topic, and summarizes each
cluster. The end result is a Web page that gives you
a sense of the day's major stories, which means
you don't have to visit the pages of dozens of
publications. You get story comparisons and the
site also offers a timeline, indicating when the
stories were updated.
NewsInEssence (www.newsinessence.com) is a
similar "clustering" tool developed by Columbia's
rival, the University of Michigan. NewsInEssence
finds and summarizes clusters of related news
articles from multiple sources on the Web,
including the CBC, CNN, and the International
Herald Tribune.You can create your own clusters
as well.
Daypop (www.daypop.com) is trying to become
the Google of blogs, those increasingly-popular
Web diaries. It offers you the choice of searching
just for news, or just for blogs, or both. It also
monitors hot words and trends in newspapers
and weblogs. (See other blog tools at
www.journalismnet.com/blogs)
Sometimes, instead of a search by keywords,
you just want to know what's out there about a
specific country, a health topic, an industry or
even a company. IHaveNet.com gives you a
chance to stroll through a library of topics, instead
of restricting yourself to keywords. Select any one
of dozens of categories and sub-categories on the
left-hand side margin of this site, and you get
instant news by topic.
You'll find most of these sites on JNet's main
page and also in JNet's Find News section at
www.journalismnet.com/news.
SEE THE NEWSPAPERS
Nothing beats folding the pages of your
favourite newspaper on your lap while sipping a
cup of coffee. Web sites for newspapers are great,
but you can't really see what the paper actually
looks like. Two new sites give you a chance to do
that on the Web.
Today's Front Pages (at http://www.newseum.org/
todaysfrontpages) is brought to you by the folks
at The Newseum, an American foundation. It
provides a snazzy quick look at the front pages
of more than 300 papers. A simple click also
takes you to that paper's web site. The papers
are organized in alphabetical order by country,
but if you click on the link at the top
labeled "page list," you can select the world region
as well.
PressDisplay at (www.pressdisplay.com) offers
only a peek at the front pages for free. The rest you
have to pay for, but you get 200 newspapers from
50 countries. You can also search by country or
language, and the archives go back two weeks for
most of the papers.
Both these sites give you a graphic display of
the newspapers, but you can't search the
newspapers for keywords and they only have a
selection from various continents.
So, if you want to find any newspaper Web site
in the world — and look at newspapers as they
appear on the Web, not in real life — the two best
tools are Paperboy and ABYZ.
Paperboy (at www.thepaperboy.com) allows
you to search by city or town: Just put in the name
of the town you want to search … and you get a
result, most of the time.
Let's say you come up empty — or you want
more than a town; you want to find many of the
small papers in northern Alberta. Then try ABYZ
Newspapers (at www.abyznewslinks.com) which
allows you to find all the newspapers in a region,
a country, and even a state or province.
You'll find these and other tools at
www.journalismnet.com/papers.
NEWS ALERTS
Why not set up your own news clipping service?
In previous columns (please see Media,
Fall/Winter 2003, Vol. 10, No.2 ) we looked at one
of the best of these services — Google News
Alerts at www.google.com/newsalerts. For free,
Google will send you an e-mail when news
articles appear online that match the topics you
specify. You can ask for as many as you want, and
you can request that they be sent once a day or as
news happens.
Yahoo has a similar service at http://alerts.yahoo.com.
You can type in any number of keywords and also
narrow down the publications, though I have never
found this service to be as efficient as Google's.
The major news organizations, of course, offer
their own news alerts. The New York Times has now
switched to a pay-for-use service, but it's still free
at CNN (at www.cnn.com/EMAIL/) and the BBC
(at www.bbc.co.uk/email). The BBC has also recently
launched a new desktop alert system.Once installed,
an alert box will appear on your PC whenever
an important story breaks. It's available for
a free download at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/
3533099.stm.
You can also get fast news through a variety of
news tickers — instant news that scrolls across
your screen. That will be the topic of a future
column.
In the meantime, you can get a list of some of
the best at www.journalismnet.com/choose/
newstickers.htm
Julian Sher, the creator and webmaster of
JournalismNet (www.journalismnet.com), does
Internet training in newsrooms around the world.
He can be reached by e-mail at
[email protected]. This article and many
other columns from Media magazine are available
online with hot links on the JournalismNet Tips
page at www.journalismnet.com/tips
WRITER’S TOOLBOX
BY DON GIBB
The warm body syndrome
There are ways to inject your stories with people
who add substance to the narrative
J
ust as I was writing this column, along came
an e-mail request from an old friend, Ottawa
freelance writer Randy Ray:
I am researching a story about retired
persons who have re-joined the workforce
and who now work for their sons or
daughters.
The retirees could be the owners of a
business that was taken over by their children
or retired persons who simply want some
gainful employment …
This request for real people goes out daily in
newsrooms across the country. Every reporter is
looking for someone through whose eyes to tell
the story. Editors demand it. Reporters demand it
of themselves. Find a face for the story. Be a
storyteller.
Of course, this is admirable. Human interest —
real people — allows us to bring colour into our
stories and add credibility. They "show" rather
than "tell" readers the story.
Stories are often better when told through the
eyes of those affected by the policies of big
business or the statistics of big government. But
deadlines and a demand to always have people in
our stories can lead to settling for anyone who
breathes. Does anyone know someone who had
purchased a wedding dress over the Internet? Do
you know anyone who has thought of purchasing
a wedding dress over the Internet? Anyone who
has dreamt of buying one via the Internet? Anyone
who has used "wedding dress" and "Internet" in
the same sentence!
September's hostage crisis in Russia brought
home again how desperate we are to find real
people to tell a story. A TV reporter interviewed
Russians living in Canada. None came from the
town of Beslan and none said anything that any
person — Russian or otherwise — wouldn't have
said. They expressed shock and horror. They
added nothing to the story except their ethnic
background.
In spite of the importance of getting human
interest into stories, we need to protect ourselves
from trivializing the personal element and
resorting to the same old formula in every story.
The closer we get to deadline, the more we are
tempted or forced to settle for any warm body to
serve merely as a prop — a one-dimensional
character — to get readers, viewers or listeners
into the story.
There are options to giving a dull story life, but
they require courage and a conscious effort to
avoid the routine. Here are a few thoughts.
DON'T SETTLE FOR THE OBVIOUS
In a recent discussion with a group of reporters,
someone asked how to enliven a story about
Stories are often
better when
told through the
eyes of those
affected by the
policies of big
business or
the statistics of
big government.
But deadlines
and a demand
to always have
people in our
stories can lead
to settling for
anyone who
breathes.
statistics. We picked a topic — rising divorce rates
in Canada — and talked about having an hour or
so to capture the human angle.
So the obvious person for our example was
someone going through a divorce or recently
divorced. But it became pretty obvious that a single
person could not illustrate such a wide-ranging
statistical story on divorce. Such a randomly
selected person might add only a predictable quote
here and there.
These stories are always the same: Mary has
gone through a messy divorce,"but she is not alone"
(see how often you find that sentence after a
superficial introduction of the warm body). Or:
Mary is "among one million Canadians who were
granted a divorce in the last 24 months."
The discussion with the reporters produced a
number of standard options — talking to divorce
lawyers, priests, a visit to divorce court. The one I
liked best took a back-door approach —
interviewing a young couple contemplating
marriage about how they expect to overcome the
odds.
Still,the option most overlooked is to go with the
news value of the statistics.Not every story benefits
from bringing in the human element, especially
when a single person cannot represent the whole.
Audiences would be better served if journalists
reported what the information means to them. If
teachers are on a work-to-rule campaign, what
impact does that have on parents and students? It
could mean they won't receive report cards this
term,the field trip to Quebec is cancelled and afterschool clubs are on hold. When you don't employ
the human element, then look beyond the obvious
for the tension, conflict, relief or joy in your story.
Writers must make a conscious effort not to
accept the obvious and patented human interest
lead all the time.
CONSIDER SOMETHING OTHER
THAN A PERSON
A Globe reporter used an inanimate object —
a car piston — as the thread through his story to
show the traffic delays at the Detroit-Windsor
border crossing after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
Here is how he opened his piece:
The journey of a humble piston
demonstrates how much the auto industry
— and a major chunk of Canada's economy
— depends on a smoothly functioning
border crossing between Windsor and
Detroit.
The piston starts its trip at a DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc. factory in western
Toronto, then travels along Highway 401 and
across the border to an engine plant in
Trenton, Mich., southwest of Detroit. There, it
becomes part of a 3.3 litre, V-6 engine that
comes back across the border into Ontario to
the automaker's Windsor Assembly Plant.
… Three times the lower piston traverses
the world's busiest border crossing. Three
times it runs the gauntlet …
In a story about a redundant building, you
could deal with the rich history, what it has meant
to the community and the famous or infamous
people who have passed through its doors. In a
medical story, your thread could be how the
disease works its way through the body. The
disease rather than the person becomes the
character.
When Halifax was hit by Hurricane Juan in
September, 2003, a writer could have told the
story of a single tree to highlight the loss of
thousands of trees in this, the "city of trees."
Charlotte leaves the doctor's office and
spends the next two days getting herself
tested. She goes to the lab, the pharmacy and
the MRI clinic … She received prompt service
everywhere she went …
Charlotte tells her husband over supper
that evening how lucky they are to live in
Canada where the public health system takes
such good care of them.
•
•
It is the "where" of stories that is too often
overlooked because reporters are mesmerized by
the "who."
Readers need to know where they are in a
story and writers need to take more time to make
them familiar with the surroundings. Place can
be a colourful alternative to character.
A story about Vancouver's imbalanced citywide electoral system used place to illustrate how
city council was dominated by those from the rich
side of town:
CONSIDER AN AVERAGE (TO
REPRESENT A DEMOGRAPHIC
GROUP) OR A COMPOSITE
It can be overdone, but I saw it used effectively
to illustrate a Kingston Whig-Standard story on
the extent to which Canada's health care system is
delivered by the private sector.
The reporter could not have found one person
to illustrate every element of the story, so she
used a fictional character to take readers through
the health care system step by step. Her
"character" gave readers a quick and clear picture
of the public-private health care argument.
•
•
CONSIDER PLACE AS A FOCUS
RATHER THAN PEOPLE
Anyone driving east along King Edward
Avenue notices that past Main Street,
splendour gives way to squalour. Lush,
manicured gardens grow small and mangy.
The centre-lane boulevard, with its towering
fir trees, comes to an end and the street
narrows. Large stucco and wood-frame
homes shrink, as do their property values.
Like a curtain drawn across the city, Main
separates Vancouver's haves from its havenots so abruptly that the two areas might as
well be two different cities.
• Be
•
"Why assume that anybody at all is more
interesting than an idea? The word 'humanize'
doesn't mean simply to use something animate
instead of inanimate; the word means to
capture some human feeling, drama or
condition. Sometimes facts and figures
capture that drama."
— U.S. writing coach, Paula LaRocque
She couldn't be more wrong.
Charlotte, a fictional character who was
created to make a point, was indeed lucky to
experience the rosy side of Canada's healthcare system … Virtually every health agency
Charlotte visited — or had a prescription to
visit — was delivered by the private sector.
WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN YOU
DO USE A PERSON
When you do have someone to illustrate your
story, be sure not to give the person short shrift.
The person should be an integral part of telling
your story. Here are some suggestions on avoiding
the warm body syndrome:
sure to develop your human-interest
element beyond name, age and occupation. Let
your audience get to know and be engaged by
those you bring into your story.
When you use a person, don't eliminate her
after the first three paragraphs. Let her
comment throughout the story on different
issues or topics you raise. Make the person a
central part of the story, but be careful not to let
the person dominate to the point where you
lose the theme or purpose of your piece. In
other words, it's not a profile.
Make sure your person is a perfect fit for the
story theme. The person has to know what she
is talking about beyond clichés and
generalizations.
Don't allow someone into your story simply
because you talked to him. Or worse, because
you have no one else.A person who has nothing
to say to advance your story should be omitted.
Ask yourself these questions: Does the person
add to my story? Does the person help readers
see and feel the story? Does the person answer
questions you would expect readers to ask? Do
I need this person?
Try to avoid the standard open-with-theperson, end-with-the-person. It's a nice
technique, but it's better to bring the person in
throughout your story. Why? Stories often bog
down in the middle with too many statistics
and too many talking head experts.
U.S. writing coach Paula LaRocque once
said: "Why assume that anybody at all is more
interesting than an idea? The word 'humanize'
doesn't mean simply to use something animate
instead of inanimate; the word means to
capture some human feeling, drama or
condition. Sometimes facts and figures capture
that drama."
The simple fact is that reporters have to have
the courage to avoid the perils of the warm
body human-interest angle. Even under
deadline pressure, they must challenge
themselves to get beyond the obvious and, if
necessary, let the facts speak for themselves.
Footnote: My friend Randy sent out
about 50 e-mails. Initially, his request
produced four potential subjects. One man
in British Columbia didn't want to be
interviewed and another in Ontario wasn't
the right fit. "The folks in Quebec were
perfect — a mother who worked for her
daughter's gift store and a father who
worked at his son's winery." Seems like good
digging on a story that had a clear focus and
people who were a perfect fit.
Don Gibb teaches reporting at Ryerson
University's School of Journalism. He, too, has
written the standard human-interest lead too often,
but is beginning to see the light.
FEATURE
BY CHRIS COBB
Poll mania
Our addiction to polls skewed the coverage of the recent
federal election campaign
Polls predicted a Conservative minority, even though most potential voters seemed to favour Paul Martin for prime minister.
He was photographed here at the beginning of the campaign waiting for a television interview to start.
ederal election 2004 was not a stellar event
for opinion polls. News media's need for the
superficial ruminations of pollsters, and a
new breed of political soothsayer who claim to be
able to predict the number of seats each party will
receive, reached new levels of addiction for which
F
the pollsters seemed ever ready to supply the
quick fix.
The CBC decided to opt out of the horse-race
stakes and although the public broadcaster's
motives were undoubtedly noble and in the public
interest, it would be optimistic to claim that even
PHOTO CREDIT: CP/Tom Hanson
its election coverage was not tainted by the orgy of
polling that was occurring elsewhere.
However well intended, news organizations
can't live in a bubble, especially during a federal
election campaign. It was an unusually complex
campaign for both journalists and pollsters.
Reporters travelling with Stephen Harper — pictured here at a rally in Edmonton a day before the election — were puzzled by his apparent
disengagement from the campaign in the final couple of days. News media, after all, were still considering him a serious contender for the
prime minister's office in a too-close-to-call race. Harper obviously had a different picture of reality.
The electorate was faced with a new political
party led by a man they did not know and did not
fully trust, while simultaneously angry at the
corrupt antics of the ruling Liberals and quite
ready to boot them out of office.
Was Prime Minister Paul Martin to be trusted?
He was part of the Chrétien crowd, after all. But he
crushed the deficit, didn't he? And this guy Jack
Layton. He's got some good ideas but he's NDP
and you know how those guys like to spend.
Conservative leader Stephen Harper seems like
the only viable alternative to Martin, but he
wanted to send troops to Iraq and is threatening
to change the Charter of Rights because he
doesn't like what we've done about gay rights,
abortion and all those other social issues that
define Canada …
In short, there was a lot going on, and the
electorate was anxious and confused. More than a
quarter of voters seemed to be undecided for the
whole campaign and too many of the rest couldn't
make up their minds, and didn't, until the final
hours. A depressing number decided to opt out
altogether.
Opinion polls are snapshots of a brief period in
time and predictors of nothing, as anyone with a
Horse-race polls offer a brief, passing glimpse of
what's happening in the minds of the ever-shrinking
portion of the electorate engaged in the process, but
they can mislead as easily as they can inform.
whit of knowledge about survey research
understands.Yet in the lust for a screaming frontpage headline in the midst of dull, repetitive
election campaigns, we readily and knowingly
invest these horse-race election polls — which
party is going to win and by how much — with an
importance and authority they simply don't
possess.
Horse-race polls offer a brief, passing glimpse
of what's happening in the minds of the evershrinking portion of the electorate engaged in the
process, but they can mislead as easily as they can
inform.
Newsroom managers on tight budgets like
them because they are inexpensive and for
campaign-weary voters and innumerate
journalists (are there any other sort?), they are
relatively easy to understand. And if we faithfully
record that margin of error as being so many
times out of 20, we can take comfort in having
validated the poll and provided our readers,
viewers and listeners with the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth.
PHOTO CREDIT: CP/Adrian Wyld
Continued from Pg. 9
Poll mania
It's an illusion, of course, but as George Perlin,
a polling specialist and political scientist at
Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, suggested
more than a decade ago, we journalists might
mean well but, "the degree of polling literacy is
not high among journalists. We assume that
reporters covering the stock market or some
financial area have knowledge of the subject. That
doesn't apply to reporters reporting on polls."
Back then, margins of error were routinely
omitted from stories because they were viewed by
some editors as an admission that a poll may not
be totally accurate. It's that word "error" that they
didn't like.
As journalism entered the mea-culpa era and
admitting mistakes became a badge of honour
rather than an admission of weakness,
corrections began appearing across the land and
margins of error became fashionable.
(The word "error" in margin of error is not a
mistake in the accepted sense, but the
inevitability that opinions represented by any
small sample of potential voters will never
accurately portray the opinions of every voter 100
per cent. For such accuracy, a pollster would need
to interview 100 per cent of potential voters.
Although sampling error can never be totally
eliminated, it can be minimized by ensuring that
the sampling group is as representative of the
total population as possible. Also lumped into
margin of error are the pollsters' own sins: poorly
worded and badly ordered questions, ill-trained
interviewers and mistakes in analyzing the data.)
Midway through Campaign 2004, media
pollsters were offering up the very real prospect of
a Conservative majority government, which led to
front-page stories speculating who might be
included in a Harper cabinet.
Later, polls predicted a Conservative minority,
even though most potential voters seemed to
favour Paul Martin for prime minister. The
inaccuracy and inconsistency highlighted two
other stumbling blocks for pollsters: culling
respondents who are willing to be interviewed but
refuse to vote; and the timing of polls.
These were both uncommonly huge factors in
the 2004 campaign.
To be charitable, it is possible that all the polls
were accurate when the surveys were conducted.
However, when you're dealing with horse-race
polling, that isn't good enough. It's significant that
an election-day poll conducted for Global by
COMPAS was the most accurate media horse-race
poll of all. COMPAS surveyed for news media later
than other firms, but the party's own pollsters
may have also captured the final reality.
Reporters traveling with Stephen Harper were
puzzled by his apparent disengagement from the
campaign in the final couple of days. News media,
after all, were still considering him a serious
contender for the prime minister's office in a tooclose-to-call race. Harper obviously had a
different picture of reality.
News media and pollsters have long had a
symbiotic relationship that, for the most part, is
not always in the best interests of news
consumers.
Simply put, editors don't like to pay too much
for their polls, so get what they pay for. Pollsters
hold their noses and oblige, not because they
like the science, but because they want the
exposure and apparent legitimacy that only
news media can provide. That, in turn, leads to
serious money contracts from industry and
government. None of that is news but it
continues to be reality.
One of the problems with superficial polling
during an election campaign is that the parties
are spending copiously and constantly for deep
and detailed research. They have a significantly
clearer understanding of what the electorate is
thinking because they pay their pollsters to drill
down into the crevices of public concern.
Limited horse-race polling has some worth,
agrees COMPAS president Conrad Winn, but
news media either need to spend more on
polling or use resources differently.
"One horse-race poll a week may be valuable,"
he says, "but it seemed we had one or more a
day. An occasional blood test is great but if you
had the choice between more blood tests and
some serious analysis, what would you choose?"
During the course of the campaign,Winn says
it's likely that all the published polls were
accurate at the time the surveys were conducted.
"But being accurate is not the same as being
adequate," he adds. "They were not adequate
because they didn't explore undercurrent of
misgiving, anxiety or worry among electorate.
There was only one detailed poll in the
campaign — early on in the campaign. All other
polls were variations on the horse-race
question. When polls are inadequate as opposed
to inaccurate, the blame has to be shared."
And timing, agrees Winn, was crucial. "If the
COMPAS-Global poll is valid," he says, "then the
lion's share of all changes among voters took
place within 24 hours of balloting."
Chris Cobb writes for the Ottawa Citizen, and for
the past five federal elections has written about
polling and other aspects of political
communication. Cobb is also a member of Media
magazine's editorial board.
FEATURE
BY ANTHONY WESTELL
Minority government roulette
If members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery are counting
on Paul Martin's minority government going down in
flames, they had better read the history books
he Parliamentary Press Gallery likes
nothing more than an election — unless it
is a dramatic political crisis leading into an
election: a lease on the front page or the top of the
newscast for weeks, gigs as commentators, lots of
chummy travel with the party leaders (preferably
earning travel points), and reserved rooms in
grand hotels across the country.
That's why many in the gallery are delighted
with the election of a minority government. They
hope it will soon be defeated in a cliffhanger
confidence vote, leading to another campaign,
and perhaps even another minority government.
Sorry, but it's not likely to happen anytime
soon.
In the past half-century, there have been six
minority governments. Three were defeated in a
vote of confidence in the Commons, precipitating
an election. However, in one of those, the
government arranged its own defeat because it
wanted an election, and in another, the
government invited defeat because it was
confident the opposition would not dare.
So, it could be argued that only once has a
minority government been driven into an election
against its will.
In all three cases, the political circumstances
were quite unlike those today.
But, then, the circumstances are almost always
different, and to grasp just how different and how
minority government politics can play out, it's
useful to take a quick look at the recent history of
minority government governments.
T
1957
The Liberals had been in power for more than
20 years when Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent
called an election. His government had just
railroaded through the Commons legislation
enabling construction of a trans-Canada gas
pipeline, using closure ruthlessly to overcome
Opposition delaying tactics. There was uproar in
the Commons; the Speaker was impeached for
partisanship; and the editorial pages proclaimed
the death of parliamentary democracy.
But when St. Laurent — the reassuring "Uncle
Louis" — went calmly ahead and called an
election, it was widely assumed that the Liberals
would be re-elected anyway. Maclean's, then a
monthly, was so certain it went to press before
What more could Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe win in another election? Above, he is
photographed one day before the last election with 14-month-old Raphaelle Lambert who would rather
retreat to the comfort of her mother's arms than cooperate for a political photo opportunity.
voting day with a cover assuming the Liberals had
won — one of the classic goofs in Canadian
media history. The editors had not counted on the
new Progressive Conservative leader, John
Diefenbaker, a Prairie messiah who set the
country afire in the closing days of the campaign.
The PCs won 112 seats, the Liberals 105, the
CCF (forerunner of the NDP) 25, Social Credit (an
Alberta-based conservative populist party and a
forerunner of the Reform party) 19.
Diefenbaker became prime minister at the
head of a minority government, and prepared for
the next election, in which he hoped to ride his
popularity to a majority. But he had no reason to
call an election … that is, until the Liberals played
into his hands.
Their new leader, Lester Pearson, was a former
diplomat with little political experience. His
advisers did not want an election until the party
had had a chance to reorganize, but they had to
PHOTO CREDIT: Jacques Boissinot
appear to attack the government, and came up
with an outlandish motion calling on the
government to resign and hand them power.
There was no danger it would pass because the
CCF would not support it. Diefenbaker, however,
contrived to accept it as serious and announced a
new election in 1958. After he won in a landslide,
Pearson's acid-tongued wife, Maryon, who had
never wanted her husband to enter politics,
remarked to a friend: "It's a disaster. We even won
our own seat."
1962
Diefenbaker had long since lost his enormous
popularity when he called a regular election. He
was an old-fashioned Western populist in a time
of rushing modernity.
Minority government roulette
He was cool to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec,
was anti-American when John F. Kennedy was
popular, and was paranoid, always sniffing for
plots against his leadership.
Pearson and the Liberals, meanwhile, had
modernized their party and their image. The
election reduced Diefenbaker to leader of a
minority government, with 116 seats. The
Liberals had 99; Social Credit (which had
attracted Quebec nationalist support) 30 and the
NDP (which had succeeded the CCF in 1961, with
Tommy Douglas as leader) 19.
Diefenbaker became even more indecisive.
Senior ministers actually plotted his removal. The
end came in 1963 when, during a crucial vote on
nuclear weapons, he managed to lose the support
of both the anti-nuclear NDP and the cautiously
pro-nuclear Liberals.
The election that followed was the only one in
the last half-century in which a minority
government was clearly forced into an election
that it lost.
1963
Pearson and the Liberals won the subsequent
election (Liberals 129; PCs 95; Social Credit 24;
NDP 17), but with only enough seats to form a
minority government. However, 20 of the Social
Credit members were from Quebec, and they
became a separate party, the Ralliement des
Creditistes, largely rural and nationalist.
Diefenbaker's strength was in the West and the
small towns, and his party was split between his
supporters and big-city Tories. He refused to step
down as leader, but his party did not want to fight
another election under his leadership. The Liberal
government should have enjoyed considerable
momentum despite its minority, but almost at
once it was diverted by the first of a series of
scandals.
1965
Assured by Walton Gordon, the minister of
finance and party chairman, that the Liberals
could convert a minority into a majority, a
hesitant Pearson called an election. But as a
campaigner, he was no match for Diefenbaker,
who made it sound as if the Mafia were running
the government.
The Globe and Mail and other major dailies,
which had endorsed the Liberals in 1963, reverted
to their normal Tory position, and Pearson again
came up short of forming a majority: Liberals
131; PCs 97; NDP 21; Creditistes 9; Social Credit 5.
Diefenbaker again refused to step down as
leader, and a civil war in the party produced a
leadership convention in 1967, in which Robert
Stanfield emerged as leader. With the opposition
thus occupied, it should have been relatively safe
sailing for Pearson, who announced his intention
to retire in 1968 and took off for a rest in the
Caribbean. Finance Minister Mitchell Sharp's
budget had been approved in principle, and he
was piloting the legislation through one evening
when the Tories ambushed him, rushing enough
members into the Chamber to outnumber the
available Liberals and defeat a clause.
I was Globe bureau chief at the time. My friend
and close working partner, Geoff Stevens, was on
duty in the gallery. He called me at home to tell me
the startling news: the government had been
defeated on its budget, and would have to call an
election.
He was about to file the story, but I asked him
to hold off and hurried up to our office in the
National Press Building.
I knew that defeat on a budget would normally
be regarded as a vote of no-confidence, but
experience had given me another perspective. As
a young reporter, I had covered the "Mother of
Parliaments" at Westminster, and had seen
government bills defeated on several occasions —
usually on a Friday afternoon when many MPs
had left for the weekend — without any
disastrous consequences. The votes had obviously
not been a test of confidence in the government.
So, I insisted that night in Ottawa that we take a
cautious line. Geoff and most other people in the
gallery and on the editorial pages did not share
my view. The following day, Geoff and I wrote
side-by-side columns on the two views.
Not surprisingly, Pearson shared my view and
hurried back from the beach. He was at his best, as
a diplomat and persuaded the Creditistes they had
not really intended to vote no-confidence. Their
support was enough to carry a motion of
confidence. The crisis was over.
The Liberals went on to choose Pierre Trudeau
as their leader and prime minister. He called an
election in 1968, and won a comfortable majority.
The era of minority government — three in a row
— seemed over.
But Trudeau could not satisfy the expectations
of his fans who thought they had elected a radical,
but discovered that he was a constitutional lawyer
with a systems-management approach to
government.
1972
When Trudeau called an election after the
customary four years, he did not help his cause by
running a campaign as he might have a tutorial.
With the vapid slogan of "The Land is Strong," he
declined to engage the opposition leaders, who
were blasting away at unemployment. Instead,
Trudeau went around the country educating
voters about problems and choices as he saw
them.
Stanfield and the NDP's David Lewis made
headlines with attacks and promises. The Liberals
clung to power with a two-seat edge over the
Tories: Liberals, 109; PCs 107; NDP 31; the
Creditistes 15.
In Larry Zolf 's quip, Trudeau was transformed
from Philosopher King into Mackenzie King —
that is, a wily politician. Trudeau was dangerously
vulnerable, the god that had disappointed, while
across the aisle sat a new opposition leader
waiting for his chance.
Trudeau recognized that his new style of
politics had not worked and, if he was to remain
in power, he would have to play by the old rules,
promising whatever was necessary to win the
NDP's votes while he rebuilt his popularity.
1974
Trudeau was ready. This time, he arranged to be
defeated in the Commons and went again to the
voters. The charisma was back, and PC leader
Robert Stanfield made the mistake of proposing
wage-and-price controls to beat inflation. Instead
of being forced to defend his own record, Trudeau
spent the campaign ridiculing Stanfield's plan
and won back his majority: Liberals 141; PCs 95;
NDP 16; the Creditistes 11.
Having lost three elections in a row, Stanfield
retired and the PCs chose a new leader, the
amiable but little-known Joe Clark — or Joe
Who?, as The Toronto Star famously called him.
The NDP also had a new leader, Ed Broadbent.
With new faces across the aisle and a separatist
government in Quebec, Trudeau's own popularity
was slipping and he toyed with retiring. When he
decided to stay, he insisted he would fight the
coming election on national unity, although the
economy was in trouble.
1979
The Liberals lost a string of by-elections and
Trudeau put off the national election as long as he
reasonably could. When he faced the voters in
May of that year, he lost and Clark won, narrowly:
PCs 136; Liberals 114; NDP 26; the Creditistes 6.
Clark thought he was surfing a conservative
wave and announced he would govern as if he had
a majority, introducing a "pain now, gain later"
budget which, among other things, raised the gas
tax. He was in effect challenging the Opposition to
defeat him, which it did.
He went to the country early in 1980, believing
he would return with a majority, and lost. Trudeau
regained his majority.
ANOTHER ROUND
This brief history of minority governments
shows they usually survive until both they and the
Opposition are ready for another round.
In this new Parliament, that won't be for at least
a year, probably two. Prime Minister Paul Martin
needs time to build a record and dim the
Sources_AD
NDP leader Jack Layton, photographed talking to reporters a day before the election, would have
nothing to gain and much to lose from an early election, which would look like a run-off between
Paul Martin and Stephen Harper.
memories of scandals past. Conservative leader
Steven Harper may seem to be poised on the edge
of victory, but he needs time to reassure voters
about his party's social conservatism. The NDP
would have nothing to gain and much to lose
from an early election, which would look like a
run-off between the Martin and Harper.
I have not discussed the Bloc Quebecois
because it was not a factor in past minority
governments, but what more could it win in an
early election?
So, the media should forget about an early
election and focus on policy issues.
One reservation: Heading a minority
government, a prime minister needs to play a
clever game of politics.
PHOTO CREDIT: CP/Andrew Vaughan
One mistake in judging the intentions of the
opposition parties, or even in counting heads, and
it has happened (see above), and there can be an
election nobody wants. Martin so far has not
demonstrated political skills.
Anthony Westell was the Ottawa bureau chief for
The Globe and Mail from 1965 to 1969: national
affairs columnist for The Toronto Star from 1969 to
1972; The Star's Ottawa editorial page columnist
from 1972 to 1987; professor of journalism at
Carleton University from1969 to 1991; and school
director for his last two years at the journalism
program. Westell has also won three national
newspaper awards, and is a member of the
Canadian News Hall of Fame.
FEATURE
BY BRIAN FLINN
Nova Scotia’s high-wire act
Reporters on Parliament Hill could learn about keeping
minority governments in line from reporters doing just
that in Halifax
inority government is beyond the
experience of many members of the
Ottawa press gallery. Some reporters on
the Hill are too young to even remember the
short-lived Progressive Conservative government
of Joe Clark, let alone understand how it was
covered. (Please see page 12)
Here in Halifax, there was not a single
journalist, politician or voter with experience to
fall back upon when the NDP emerged from
obscurity to tie the Liberals in 1998. During 150
years of democracy, Nova Scotia had never
elected a minority government.
Now on our second minority in six years, we're
getting used to the political high-wire act. It's
rarely graceful, but it's entertaining to watch
parties feeling their way through the risky and
unrehearsed performance.
Here are a few hints of what journalists
unfamiliar with minority rule will be in for, based
on what has been unfolding on the East Coast.
M
1. THE END IS ALWAYS NEAR
I used to work with a reporter who was
assigned to write an obituary for one of our more
colourful local politicians. A rumour was
circulating that the old gentleman — who always
looked sickly — was close to death.
When we got new computers at the Halifax Daily
News five years ago,the obit was still an active file in
the old system after the better part of a decade, but
the retired politician was still being spotted at
several funerals each year, never his own.
With a minority government, the temptation is
to tee up the political obituary with each bill, and
especially each budget. I doubt the most
important part of a reporter's job is to predict the
future, but we do seem to devote a lot of time to
alerting voters about some upcoming day of
reckoning.
A deathwatch becomes tiresome for the
journalist, and must turn off the public if it goes
on for very long. How many stories were filed
about the impending departure of former prime
minister Jean Chrétien before he finally quit?
Reporters began writing that Nova Scotia
Premier John Hamm's government was living on
borrowed time immediately after voters took
away his majority in August 2003. Now we're
learning to relax. Few take seriously the threat
The time will come to ratchet up the deathwatch, but it's probably not at the beginning of a
minority mandate. And it's not an activity that Conservative leader Stephen Harper,
pictured here during the recent election campaign, seems to have in mind.
that the government could collapse this fall. Some
opposition MLAs are telling me they see little
benefit in forcing an election even next spring.
The time will come to ratchet up the
deathwatch, but it's probably not at the beginning
of a minority mandate. In Halifax, we need two
parties to decide on the right moment and the
right issue to fight another election.
In Ottawa, it must be the consensus of three out
of four opposition groups — the Conservatives,
Bloc, NDP and independent MP Chuck Cadman.
The government could last for years.
2. IT COULD GET A LOT WORSE
It's been fun watching Nova Scotian MLAs
learning that there are worse things than minority
government.
Our first minority in 1998 saw the Liberals hold
onto power for 14 months while the New
Democrats voted against each bill. Cheated by one
seat from being asked to form government for the
first time ever, the NDP wanted desperately to
return to the polls and finish the job.
The trouble for them was that their predictable
voting pattern gave the Tories the hammer. The
PHOTO CREDIT: CP/Jonathan Hayward
Liberals had to turn to the third party to get
anything passed, and that allowed John Hamm's
Conservatives to look important and reasonable.
In the end, it was up to Dr. Hamm to choose the
timing for the government's defeat in the House.
A fiscal conservative could ask for nothing
better than to campaign against a budget deficit.
Hamm encountered this winning condition in the
Liberal budget of 1999, and it vaulted him from
third place to first place.
The NDP appears to have learned from that
episode. Back in official Opposition, now behind
the Tories, they sometimes support the
government. For the first time in their history, the
party voted in favour of a budget last spring after
winning concessions.
There is no coalition in Nova Scotia. Premier
Hamm has also made deals with the Liberals to
get legislation passed. The situation is far more
fluid than the 1998 minority government, and
also more stable. Each party has a share in power.
The governing Tories have by far the biggest share,
but the opposition parties are getting elements of
their agendas through the House.
Defeating a money bill requires opposition
parties to gamble their own shares of power when
they know they could find themselves losing an
election and giving a rival a majority.
3. OPPOSITION AIN'T WHAT IT
USED TO BE
If Paul Martin is going to get even a single bill
through Parliament, he has to make a deal with
some opponents. After a generation of seeing
power increasingly coalesce in the PMO, the shift is
going to be dramatic. Other cliques will be
consulted on important decisions.
The new dynamic will have an interesting effect
on those close to the prime minister who are used
to the idea of governing as they choose. The effect
could be even greater on the opposition parties
that co-operate with them.
It has been difficult to get used to the Nova
Scotia NDP as government collaborators. This
used to be a small and noisy caucus led by Alexa
McDonough, who used the words "shocked and
appalled" so often they became a catch phrase for
editorial cartoonists.
Since the late 1990s, the New Democrats have
become increasingly effective at research and
criticism in the Nova Scotia legislature. The media
came to rely on them as a source of stories and a
voice speaking out against the government.After it
chose to support the 2004 budget — probably the
day it was tabled — it made no sense for the NDP
to find fault with the government's spending plan.
With the leaderless Liberals in disarray and the
NDP saying mostly pleasant things, the budget
debate set a new standard for boredom.
4. SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF
During the slow demise of Jean Chrétien as
prime minister, it was fascinating to follow the
increased coverage of the inner workings of the
Liberal caucus. The obedient drones who
appeared to populate the back benches during
the government's first two terms turned out to
be actual humans with their own ideas, points
of view and eccentricities.
This chronically dissatisfied crowd will play
an even more important role in a minority
government, because every vote counts and
cabinet will have to keep caucus on-side while
it's trolling for support on the opposition
benches.
The Nova Scotia government has less of this
dynamic — the Tory caucus includes only nine
backbenchers, but they sometimes do speak
out. Recently, three of them helped to write a
committee report that put the government in an
awkward corner by calling for radical gasoline
regulations.
Committees have emerged as one of the best
places to watch minority government work in
Nova Scotia. During a majority regime,
committees are often a snore. They tend to serve
as alternate forums for opposition rhetoric,
where compliant backbenchers rubber-stamp
government positions. During a minority, they are
opposition-dominated, and the new bosses use
them to shape and even kill legislation.
In one case last spring, Nova Scotia's
opposition parties ganged up to shelve a mild
gasoline regulation bill that would have sailed
through committee if the Tories had been in
control. This was an outward sign of the
government's failure to build consensus on the
issue and gave us a taste of what will happen on a
future money bill.
Minority government is all about muddling
through.Among political parties, those that adapt
best will probably have the most luck; the same
goes with those of us who are paid to explain
what's happening to the voters. The best stories
could come out of the least likely places.
Brian Flinn is a reporter with the Halifax Daily
News and a member of the Nova Scotia press gallery.
JOIN US FOR THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS
NATIONAL CONFERENCE AND AWARDS GALA EVENING IN WINNIPEG
May 13-15 - Fort Garry Hotel
The CAJ is welcoming all journalists, freelancers and seasoned veterans to attend
the National Conference May 13-15, 2005 in Winnipeg. The goal of this cross-border conference
will be to help improve your writing and investigative skills. Don't miss this opportunity to
meet other journalists, share information and network with some of
North America's greatest professionals.
You're also invited to the CAJ awards gala evening, which will celebrate
the best of investigative journalism for 2004!
Special room rates for all CAJ conference delegates have been arranged with the Fort Garry Hotel.
For more information on the Conference, visit www.caj.ca.
The Manitoba gang looks forward to showing you a bit of Prairie hospitality.
See you in Winnipeg!
ACCESS TO INFORMATION
BY ALASDAIR ROBERTS
Singled out for special treatment
Journalists should complain about unequal treatment
under the country's federal access-to-information law
here's growing evidence that the federal
government is systematically violating the
rights of journalists under the Access to
Information Act (ATIA)— and possibly violating
their privacy rights as well. The common practice
of disseminating information about the
occupation of citizens who make requests for
information under the ATIA means that
journalists' requests can be pulled out for special
— and often worse — treatment.
The practice also makes it easier for
government officials to guess the actual identity
of requesters, perhaps in violation of the federal
Privacy Act.
To appreciate the problem confronting
journalists, you must first understand a little
about the law. The federal Access to Information
Act provides Canadians with a right to
government documents, subject to certain
restrictions. The law does not say that some
Canadians are entitled to receive more
information than other Canadians, or that some
Canadians are entitled to receive information
more quickly than others. It's the same right for
every Canadian.
For this reason (but not only for this reason),
the identity of a requester is not supposed to be
shared outside the office within each federal
agency that is responsible for processing ATIA
requests. The identity of the requester, his or her
occupation, and the motivation for the request are
all supposed to be irrelevant to the handling of the
request.
As the 2002 report of a task force examining the
ATIA said, the law must be applied "fairly and
without bias. Neither decisions on disclosure nor
decisions on the timing of disclosure may be
influenced by the identity or profession of the
requester." (I've added the emphasis, for reasons
that will be clear later.)
Another government study from 2001
reinforces the point: "It would be a substantial
change in the principles of the Act to make the
identity of the request or the purpose of the
request a relevant consideration" in processing
requests for information.
That's not all. Journalists, like all other
Canadians, also have rights under the federal
Privacy Act. As the federal Privacy Commissioner
has said, the right to privacy is a fundamental
right, not to be treated lightly. The Privacy Act
requires government agencies to be cautious in
T
their handling of personal information. This
provides another reason why the identity of
individuals using the ATIA should not be
disclosed outside a department's ATIA office: it's a
needless violation of your privacy.
This view is generally accepted. In his annual
report for 2000, Information Commissioner John
Reid warned federal agencies that the disclosure
of a requester's identity to ministerial and
In his annual report for 2000, Information
Commissioner John Reid warned federal
agencies that the disclosure of a requester's
identity to ministerial and communications
staff so that they could brief the minister would
violate the Privacy Act.
communications staff so that they could brief the
minister would violate the Privacy Act. When
senior government officials questioned the need
to protect the identity of requesters in 2001, the
task force charged with reviewing the ATIA
reminded them that this was a requirement of the
Privacy Act, not the access law.
In sum, journalists have two rights — a right to
equal treatment under the ATIA, and a right to
privacy under the Privacy Act. These rights are
supposed to be protected by limiting the
distribution of irrelevant information about ATIA
requests within government. As Commissioner
Reid said in 2001, ATIA offices must take "all
reasonable precautions not to disclose the identity
of an access requester, the reason for a request or
the intended use of requested information."
In practice, federal agencies regularly flout this
rule.As Ann Rees reported in the Toronto Star last
fall, several major ATIA offices routinely provide
ministerial and communications staff within
their departments with lists of incoming requests
from journalists or members of political parties.
The name of the requester is withheld, but the
category of requester — labelled as MEDIA or
PARLIAMENT — is revealed, thereby disclosing
the intended use of the requested information.
Media requests are likely to be tagged for special
treatment, including review by the minister's staff
and preparation of "communications products"
that anticipate controversies that might arise after
disclosure. This process is sometimes known as
"amberlighting".
Information about the occupation of requesters
is also distributed throughout the federal
government — to central agencies and other
government departments. Treasury Board policy
requires departments to log details about new
ATIA requests into the Coordination of Access to
Information Requests System (CAIRS), a
centrally-run database established by the
Mulroney government in 1988, and overhauled by
the Chrétien government in 2000. Although the
specific identity of requesters is not logged,
requests from journalists are again coded with the
keyword, MEDIA.
Staff in the ATIA offices of the Privy Council
Office, Treasury Board Secretariat and other
federal departments have the ability to search the
CAIRS database, printing out details of incoming
requests. They can search by the "media"
keyword, thus selecting only those incoming
requests that come from journalists. And they are
free to distribute their printouts of incoming
media requests to other officials in their agencies.
A question for close consideration: Why does
anyone in the Privy Council Office need to know
that a new request to another government
department has been submitted by a journalist?
One reason may be the desire of central agencies
to flag requests that are likely to have
"communications implications" that affect the
whole government, rather than a single
department. In 2002, a former Liberal Party
insider told The Globe and Mail that the PCO's
"communications coordination" committee spent
much of its time "discussing ways to delay or
PHOTO CREDIT: Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
thwart access-to-information requests." This task
is made easier by the ability to filter media
requests within CAIRS.
The practice of identifying media requests
within departments and through CAIRS has a
clear effect: added delay. In a 2002 study that
examined the handling of two thousand ATIA
requests by Human Resources Development
Canada, I found that media requests took three
weeks longer to process, even after other factors
— such as the breadth of the request and type of
information sought — were taken into account.
Responses to media requests were also more likely
to be delayed past deadlines set by the ATIA.
In a follow-up study soon-to-be published in
the journal Public Administration, I examined
data on 25,000 ATIA requests handled by eight
federal departments over three years. In five of
these departments — Citizenship and
Immigration Canada, the Canada Customs and
In 2002, a former
Liberal Party insider
told The Globe and
Mail that the PCO's
"communications
coordination"
committee spent
much of its time
"discussing ways
to delay or thwart
access-to-information
requests."
Revenue Agency, the Department of Foreign
Affairs, Transport Canada, and the Department of
Justice — media requests were again likely to
suffer additional delays. (Both studies are on my
website, www.aroberts.ca)
Here, then, is the bottom line. Official policy
says that ATIA offices should not disclose the
purpose for which a request is made, and that
decisions on disclosure or the timing of disclosure
should not be influenced by the profession of the
requester. In reality, things work very differently:
the purpose of a request is, in effect, disclosed;
and there is a close connection between the
timing of disclosure and the profession of the
requester. There is strong evidence that the right
to equal treatment under the ATIA is routinely
violated.
So much for the ATIA. What about the right to
privacy? We have no evidence that the identity of
requesters is disclosed either to ministerial staff,
communications offices, or central agencies. But
that may not be the end of the story. By disclosing
the occupation of the requester, ATIA offices may
provide enough information for other
government officials to guess the identity of
requesters — thereby producing a constructive
violation of privacy rights.
Guessing the identity of a journalist is not as
hard as it might seem. Recently, I tallied all of the
stories in Canadian newspapers written over three
years that were based on documents released
under the ATIA. The majority of those stories
were written by only a dozen journalists. This
confirms what you may have already suspected:
the number of journalists who regularly use ATIA
is small.
There are other clues that can reveal a media
requester's identity. Requests with a regional
interest are likely to be filed by a small pool of
reporters in that region. ATIA requests are
frequently filed by journalists who have written a
preliminary story on the same topic a day or two
before. In addition, journalists may have recently
made inquiries to departmental staff, and
departmental staff may then connect those
inquiries to a later "media" request.
I've conducted tests to test how easily a
requester's identity can be identified. In one case,
I randomly selected a media request received by
the Department of Foreign Affairs that related to
the development of a national identity card. Using
LexisNexis, I found that Joan Walters of the
Hamilton Spectator had written a story on that
topic the day before the request was filed. Walters
has also written other stories based on ATIA
material. I contacted Walters, who confirmed the
accuracy of my guess.
In another case, I selected a media request to
the Department of Foreign Affairs that involved
the Canadian government's lobbying efforts on
the softwood lumber controversy. A LexisNexis
search showed that James Baxter of CanWest
News had written several earlier stories on the
subject. Baxter had also written other stories
based on documents released under ATIA. Again,
Baxter confirmed my guess. (He also noted that
the request had been made on his behalf by
Ottawa-based ATIA specialist Ken Rubin. Still, the
file was labelled as a media request.)
This technique was not always accurate. On the
other hand, my tools were rough: I don't have the
detailed day-to-day knowledge that is available to
most ministerial and communications staff. It's
also true that I — or any insider — could have
undertaken this guessing game even if the
occupation of the requester was not known. But
the revelation of occupational data made the
game much easier, by dramatically narrowing the
pool of suspects.
Journalists who are troubled by the federal
government's practices can take some important
TRACKING FEDERAL INFORMATION REQUESTS
Since 2001, Professor Roberts has
maintained an online database that
allows Canadians to search for
information requests submitted to federal
departments under the Access to
Information Act. But bureaucratic
resistance has proved an ongoing threat
to the database's existence.
Roberts says that his database
(http://track.foi.net) is a "crude mirror" of
an internal government database, CAIRS,
that was established by the Mulroney
government in 1988. CAIRS allows
officials in central agencies to search for
recent requests submitted by journalists to
all federal government departments.
Central agencies can then tell
departments that they want to review
documents before they are sent to
requesters.
Roberts makes a monthly request for
data on new ATIA requests that have been
logged into CAIRS. Canadians can search
his database, and ask for a duplicate set
of records already released in response to
earlier requests.
Roberts says the process of making a
duplicate request should be quick and
inexpensive.
Unfortunately, Roberts' own experience
in getting CAIRS data has often proved
difficult. In the last two years, the federal
Information Commissioner has begun six
different investigations about the
government's slowness in providing data
and its refusal to provide data in a usable
form.
Roberts' latest troubles came in July
2003, when the government told him that
it would begin providing the monthly
report as a PDF file made from scanned
pages. The format would have made
Web-posting difficult, and searching of
the data impossible. The government
reversed its decision two weeks later,
following unflattering news coverage in
the Ottawa Hill Times and complaints by
users of the database.
Roberts says that the government can
avoid these problems by activating a
public-access feature that was built into a
2001 overhaul of the government's CAIRS
database. However, the government has
balked at allowing the public to access
CAIRS directly.
There are also signs that the CAIRS
itself may be dramatically overhauled.
Last January, Treasury Board Secretariat
asked other departments for its views
about CAIRS, as the first step in an
internal review of its approach to the
"coordination" of government responses
to ATIA requests.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
BY TRUDIE RICHARDS AND DENEL REHBERG-SEDO
Journalists rely too heavily
on spinmeisters
And the proof of this dependence is partially
contained in a new study
J
ournalists have long lamented how public
relations practitioners manipulate the news:
PR types spin information in their favour, they
withhold information they don't want publicized,
they work against reporters' deadlines rather than
with them, and they sometimes even lie to gain
advantage.
And all of that, sadly, is true — some of the
time.You'd think, then, that journalists would run
the other way when they see a public relations
initiative coming.
Not so. Journalists rely on public relations for
so much of their work that it's difficult to see the
relationship as anything less than a partnership of
convenience.
Thirty years ago, an American media scholar
by the name of Leon Sigal wrote a book called
“Reporters and Officials”. At that time, he
assumed "which stories make the news and which
do not can affect what officials as well as citizens
… know about current political developments."
He also believed media reports "can often shape"
government policy.
Sigal surveyed The New York Times and The
Washington Post to establish just how frequently
reporters relied on official sources — usually
public relations initiatives — for their news.
In the light of significant changes in the media
landscape here in Canada, we decided it was an
appropriate time to re-visit Sigal's methodology
and observations, but in a Canadian context.
Leon Sigal examined the front pages of The
New York Times and The Washington Post. He
chose, at random, two weeks from each of the five
years: 1949, 1954,1959, 1964 and 1969.
He selected the front page. From that process,
Sigal gathered 499 stories from The Times, and
547 from The Post, for a total of 1,046 stories.
For the purposes of our research, we accepted
his assumption that the most important stories
usually appear on the first page. We chose, on a
scientific basis, completely at random, the same
number of newspapers, over a five-year period,
from the National Post and The Globe and Mail.
For obvious reasons (given that the Post began in
1998), we chose five consecutive years. The years
were 1998 - 2003.
Our search yielded 152 stories from the Post,and
149 stories from The Globe,for a total of 301 stories.
We followed Sigal's guidelines, when it came to
defining sources. He had three categories:
• Routine channels were official proceedings:
police and the courts, legislative committee
meetings, news releases, news conferences,
speeches, information from "official
spokespeople" and the like.
combined equal 88.8%. The percentage of stories
that originated from the reporter's initiative at the
Post was 11.2%.
At The Globe, 65.3% of the stories originated
through routine channels, and 21.5% from
informal channels, for a total of 86.8%. At The
Globe, reporter initiative accounted for 13.2%.
According to our survey, then, at the National
Post, almost 89% of the stories originated from
official sources; at The Globe and Mail, the
number was almost 87%.
(Just by way of comparison, in Sigal's survey,
the numbers for both The Washington Post and
The New York Times combined, were 58.2% for
routine and 15.7% for informal, for a total of
73.9%. Back then, enterprise reporting accounted
for 25.8% of the stories.)
WHAT DO THE RESULTS MEAN?
Thirty years ago, an American media scholar by
the name of Leon Sigal (photographed above)
wrote a book called "Reporters and Officials". At
that time, he assumed "which stories make the
news and which do not can affect what officials
as well as citizens … know about current
political developments." He also believed media
reports "can often shape" government policy.
•
Informal channels were such things as
background briefings, leaks, association
meetings, interviews with other reporters or
information from other news sources.
• Enterprise channels were the more original
ones: independent research, interviews
conducted at the reporter's initiative,
spontaneous events the reporter actually
witnessed, and the reporter's own analysis.
At the Post, reporters relied on routine sources
72.2% of the time. They relied on informal
channels 16.6% of the time. Both channels
connect to official sources. The two numbers
It's almost a cliché to suggest that the Fourth
Estate invigorates a democracy on behalf of
citizens by the extent to which powerful interests
are held accountable. Sadly, it is also true that the
media often reflect, unchallenged, the interests of
the powerful, with the result that citizens are not
as well-informed as they should be.
We hear about how media outlets set the news
agenda and determine what becomes news. As
Leon Sigal suggested, those choices quite likely
affect what citizens think, and what they think
about.
The trouble is, from our perspective, it appears
official sources are in fact the gatekeepers.Almost
90% of the time official sources — and not media
outlets — determine the news agenda.
We are worried about the results of our
research, to date. Media scholar Lance Bennett
suggested that "the news provides, at best, a
superficial and distorted image of society." He
continued:
"From the tremendous number of events
occurring each day, the typical news fare covers
only a narrow range of issues, from the viewpoints
of an even narrower range of sources."
Although Bennett was writing about the
American media, we believe the situation may be
similar in Canada. As professor David Taras of the
University of Calgary put it, "media reporting
fixates almost exclusively on the views of political
and economic élites."
There is some evidence to suggest that there is
a tremendous disconnect between what media
outlets and citizens consider important. That
might explain, from our point of view, why
Canadians say they don't mind paying higher
taxes to maintain a secure social safety net. And
yet content in the mainstream news media always
assumes that tax cuts are a good idea. Hence,
surveys repeatedly suggest citizens don't trust the
media, or their news.
U.S. media critics Noam Chomsky and Edward
Herman suggested that "the élite domination of the
media … occurs so naturally that media news
people, frequently operating with complete integrity
and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that
they choose and interpret the news 'objectively' and
on the basis of professional news values." The critics
defined the "propaganda model," in which the
powerful have designed a media system intended to
"manufacture consent."
It is arguable that news today is essentially
propaganda that is generated by the public relations
industry to promote and protect the interests of the
status quo.
As you can understand,our research is in its initial
phases.We want to explore other issues,such as:Why
it is that in Sigal's survey,he came up with over 1,000
stories; and yet,when we look at the same number of
newspapers, the tally was 301. Was it because of the
layout of the paper? Advertising? Was it because of
photographs? Length of stories? Some combination
of the above?
We would also like to establish how many of those
official sources related to stories tackling specific
subject areas such as politics and business.
It would also be interesting to establish what other
kinds of stories,initiated by official sources,typically
appear on the front page.How many are stories about
labour, culture, social issues, or from a perspective
other than an élite's vested interest?
There are other official sources from whom we
hear a great deal less. These sources include
advocates who speak for workers, the homeless, or
poor children; or advocates who ask that businesses
be accountable for the environmental degradation
they cause, who lament the extraordinary rise in
tuition fees, or who actually think taxes are not high
enough for some of us.
These advocates are also public relations sources,
to be sure, but their voices are silent in the
mainstream media.
In further research, it would also be interesting to
determine if there was a time period, say when the
National Post first began publishing, when
investigative and enterprising reporting was more
prominent than it is today. We will be continuing our
research over the next year.
We would like to survey reporters, and to
interview them, too, to see if it's possible to
establish a connection between corporate
concentration in the media, and this apparent
increased reliance on public relations initiatives.
Previous surveys have suggested that the
relationship between official sources and the
media demonstrated a heavy reliance on
government, on executives, and on men. We'd
like to establish whether that continues to be the
case. We'd also like to explore whether reporters
are becoming frustrated with the formula, and
what they might like to do about it.
If you're interested, we'd like to hear from
you. You can reach one of us at either:
Tr u d i e . R i c h a rd s @ m s v u . c a o r
[email protected]
Trudie Richards is the Chair of the Public
Relations Department at Mount Saint Vincent
University. Dr. DeNel Rehberg-Sedo is an assistant
professor at the same institution. Rehberg-Sedo
recently completed a PhD in Communication from
Simon Fraser University. Her primary research
interest can be summed up in two questions: Whose
voices are heard? And why are they heard?
Editor’s note: The following is a partial
reading list of books that explore the themes of PR
and the media: PR! A Social History of Spin, by
Stuart Ewen; Trust Us, We're Experts, by Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber; Spin Wars, by Bill Fox;
For subscription
information:
Call: 1-613-526-8061
or
E-mail: [email protected]
PROFILE
BY JEFF GREEN
The gamble that has paid off
Kathryn Welbourn has been called a "strong, active,
fearless newspaper editor" — but not by those who take
offence to her stories
t took balls," Kathryn Welbourn quips
before breaking into a loud heavy laugh. "It
really did but it has worked — so far!"
The 41-year-old journalist is referring to what
she affectionately calls the "biggest friggin'
gamble" of her career. Four years ago, Welbourn,
an award-winning magazine writer and radio
producer, took a risk and did what at least some
journalists only dream of — she started her own
newspaper and became her own boss.
At first, her 12-page monthly exclusively
covered her hometown of Portugal Cove-St.
Philip's, a growing bedroom community on the
outskirts of St. John's, Newfoundland and
Labrador.
Within a year, though, Welbourn realized she
needed to expand to cover other surrounding
communities for a larger advertising base and
better stories. She re-launched the paper and
christened it The Northeast Avalon Times.
Today, the monthly covers a huge geographic
region, with nearly 15,000 residents, and includes
six diverse municipalities, all of which face a
variety of issues ranging from the rights of
farmers to how to keep the fishery alive.
The Times is the first successful newspaper in
the region exclusively producing hard news.
Welbourn is also Newfoundland and Labrador's
only female publisher of a community newspaper.
Moreover, she's also the editor, reporter,
photographer, copy editor and distributor. And,
she helps sell ads.
On average, 5,300 free copies of The Times are
placed in local stores, gas stations and town halls
each month. Bundles are also placed in a handful
of stores in St. John's and at the provincial House
of Assembly.
"It's a lot of multi-tasking. I'm the queen,"
Welbourn says, laughing. "I sound insane, but I'm
just quietly doing my thing."
All jokes aside, she's the first to admit her job is
hard work, but she's also quick to point out she
doesn't regret taking the plunge. Welbourn runs
one of the few independent newspapers still left in
the province since Transcontinental Inc., bought
Optipress, which owned a string of weeklies. Now
the giant owns most of the newspapers in the
province, including two dailies, the Western Star
and the Telegram. (Several other independents
exist in the St. John's area including, the Sunday
"I
"I'm still here. Most new papers last a year. I'm not in debt and it's always made some money
and it's got a pretty good reputation and I'm not making any moves until I'm absolutely ready."
Independent, Current, Le Gaboteur and the
Shoreline).
The Times has emerged into a gutsy, feisty
publication that tackles major issues with the
same stamina as a major news outlet. In fact, the
St. John's-based Telegram, CBC Radio and VOCM
News, a private radio station, often pick up on
stories initially covered in the paper.
"I have found that they've been okay in
crediting this paper for stories but I don't care,"
says Welbourn. "What I really don't like is when
they get a story in this area and I don't have it."
But she says that rarely happens.
Welbourn and her freelancer reporters (she's
had several over the years) usually have the
region covered extremely well. They attend
municipal and school council meetings, public
hearings and special events.
Welbourn is also proud of her contingent of
columnists. Memorial University researcher Bill
Montevecchi writes a bird watching column;
freelancer Ivan Morgan keeps on eye on politics;
the Whitaker family writes about farming; Doug
Bird provides the political cartoons and a strip
called "Pickle Harbour;" and Robin McGrath, an
PHOTO CREDITS: Brian Jones
award-winning and respected novelist and poet,
writes about books.
Then, there's Ray Guy — an icon in Canadian
journalism — whom she brought on board two
years ago. Guy, winner of the Stephen Leacock
Medal for Humour, is known for his legendary wit
and satirical commentaries.
Welbourn says her columnists crank out some
of the best copy she's ever read. She's particularly
proud of having Guy as part of her paper. "It is a
thrill of a lifetime," Welbourn gushes. "I think Ray
Guy is the best columnist in Newfoundland and
possibly Atlantic Canada and I was absolutely
honoured when he said yes. He wasn't writing
anywhere at that time."
Under Welbourn's careful editorial eye, the
Times has become one of the most respected
papers in the province.
"It is a great community newspaper; by far the
best such paper in the province," says veteran
journalist Geoff Meeker, now a vice-president
with CCL Milestone, a public relations firm in St.
John's. Meeker knows first-hand the heartaches
of running a publication. He's former managing
editor of the Newfoundland Herald, the
Newfoundland Signal and the acclaimed Sunday
Express.
"It has been successful for two reasons: first
Kathryn has kept her overhead down by keeping
costs under control, in particular by doing much
of her work herself," he explains. "And second, by
producing a top-quality publication that people
want to read." Welbourn is proud of the praise,
but says she never thought she'd end up running a
paper.
Born in Montreal, she grew up in the Toronto
area and graduated from Ryerson University. She
worked for a couple of years with News North
before moving to Newfoundland. She worked at
the Telegram for a while but was fired for
"insubordination," after she wrote a series of
stories about insurance scandals. "The company
called and threatened to sue," recalls Welbourn. "I
was told to be careful [but] I had made no
mistakes thus far. I wrote another story. An editor
put it on the front page because it was a very good
story. A headline writer made a mistake in the
headline. The managing editor, Bill Callahan, got a
call from the insurance company saying they were
suing and I got fired." Welbourn took the issue to
the Telegram's union lawyer. "I was given a nice
settlement," she says.
She got the inspiration for the paper after she
missed an important deadline four years ago. At
the time, she was freelancing full-time, doing
documentaries for CBC Radio and writing articles
for magazines such as Equinox and Harrowsmith.
She was also raising two young boys — a sixmonth-old and a three year-old — with her husband
Brian Jones, who is now the Sunday Editor at the
Telegram. Suddenly one day, Welbourn confesses,
she did what every journalist fears.
"I missed a deadline. I realized that I couldn't
do that and I didn't want to become a person who
misses deadlines," she explains. "So I thought I
would try and start a paper on my own. At the
time there were a bunch of little newsletters in the
area that I cover, and they all kind of ended. So I
phoned them up and made sure they were
through."
When she had enough ads to offset her printing
and production, Welbourn made the plunge.
Immediately it was a success, and the following
year she expanded the paper. Journalistically, she
says, there were better and more important stories
to cover compared to just one community.
Economically, there was just more money to be
made covering the larger region. As well, no other
newspaper was serving the area, so there was a
window of opportunity.
"I thought that if I were going to expand, I
better do so right now," she says. "I knew it was an
area that was growing and I felt that I better get
my hand in there before somebody else."
The Times is available free in local stores and
Welbourn makes money solely from advertising.
She has a solid base of customers who run their
ads each month. Welbourn says she made more
money freelancing but still manages to bring
home a decent "part-time salary" each month.
"The paper pays everyone else freelance rates,
too, which should be higher but are not much
lower than other community newspapers," she
explains. "It also pays for the company truck and
computers."
The mandate of her paper is to report
objectively on the issues throughout the region
while following decisions being made by
municipal leaders. She says the towns in her area
were never regularly covered by the mainstream
media until she came along.
"The thing about the Times is that it does real
news in a serious way. I think people care about
what's going on their little part of the world and
they should," says Welbourn. "The stuff that
happens in your municipality is the stuff that
affects you right away."
Welbourn wouldn't be able to do small-town
stories if she was working for a large daily, says
Kathryn Welbourn writes and edits The
Northeast Avalon Times from her home
in Portugal Cove-St. Philip's which overlooks
Conception Bay, Newfoundland.
her longtime friend Robin McGrath, who believes
she'd be constrained by time, commercial
demands and political agendas. "Here she is in a
small pond but she can go after the biggest shark
in the pool," McGrath says. She thinks Welbourn
has always felt a need to tackle a story — no
matter how large or small the issues.
"She's compassionate and sensitive with
bereaved parents, frightened seniors, irate
pensioners, and utterly fierce with the town
council, politicians, anyone with power," says
McGrath. "Municipal politics stinks in most of the
small towns around here. It's a thankless job, so
often the only people who take it on are those who
see something in it for themselves, but not around
here. Thanks to Kathryn, they are challenged and
it's improved the quality of the councillors and the
council as a whole."
McGrath says Welbourn is not anti-council but
rather she considers her friend a "strong, active,
fearless newspaper editor," who tries to make
municipal leaders accountable for their actions.
That huge passion for journalism and
storytelling has helped set Welbourn apart from
other reporters and editors, say several of her
longtime colleagues. Roger Bill, former executive
producer of radio and current affairs with CBC in
Newfoundland and Labrador and producer with
the network's national flagship program Sunday
Morning, has known Welbourn for more than a
decade. He's now the editor of Current, an
alternative monthly newspaper in St. John's. He
first met Welbourn when she was working as a
researcher and documentary maker. He noticed
immediately that she's driven to tell thoughtprovoking stories.
"What I recall about her was her passion for the
story. Some people just go through the motions,
but Kathryn had some heat," says Bill. "I don't
think she has changed one bit since she started
the paper."
Bill admires Welbourn for having the audacity
to launch her own publication. "Owning your own
paper is something a lot of journalists dream
about, but not many take a run at," he says.
Radio documentary producer Chris Brookes,
who has partnered with Welbourn on a number of
projects over the past 10 years, thinks she started
her own paper because there's more "meaningful"
journalism in small towns and because of her
desire for residents to understand the issues
affecting them.
"She has a strong commitment to a story," says
Brookes, whose St. John's-based Battery Radio,
has won more than 30 awards.
He says Welbourn often takes a strong position
in her stories and then backs it up. "I first worked
with her on a radio piece she called 'Outport
Outlaws,'" he says.
"Her view was that rural Newfoundlanders
were being marginalised in favour of tourists, biggame and lumber operators, and powerful fishing
industry interests. On the one hand, government
was cutting back on social services and support to
rural areas; on the other hand, it was regulating
them out of subsistence survival. I think what
outraged her was that people were being
disenfranchised of their rights."
For her part, Welbourn says she's motivated by
covering issues that affect her family and
neighbours. "I really love the place that I live in
and I'm interested in its development," she says.
"I'm interested in how people feel about that, too."
The 41-year-old journalist affectionately calls The Northeast Avalon Times
"the biggest friggin' gamble" of her career.
The gamble that has paid off
But running a community paper hasn't been
easy. Welbourn has faced a bevy of challenges,
including raising enough capital to cover her
printing costs, which average about $1,200 a
month. She admits that being both a reporter and
salesperson for the same paper is a huge
headache. She has had several salespeople over
the years but hasn't been able to nail down a
permanent worker.
"You have to sell ads to fund the paper and
that's the thing that I didn't know," she concedes.
"There's always that tension in journalism
between ads and stories."
Welbourn tries to keep both departments
separate but says things can get awkward at times.
Her rule, though, is to never compromise a story
for advertising. "I'd close the paper right away,"
she says."I always hated that kind of conflict when
working at newspapers. I'm not putting up with it
at my paper."
Another obstacle has been trying to obtain
certain details from the town councils the paper
covers, that are not covered by provincial
freedom-of-information laws. "I find that just
appalling," Welbourn says. "Some of the councils
are just terrific [but] getting information out of
some others is just virtually impossible."
One council in particular has actually denied
interviews with The Times and has boycotted the
paper after a story Welbourn wrote about a
controversial decision made by the mayor. The
local politicians didn't like the serious, hard news
stories Welbourn wrote about their actions.
"They thought I was going to write nice profiles
and happy pieces about the town," she says with a
chuckle. "In one of the first issues I wrote that the
mayor had decided to make plans to perhaps
move the town's war memorial, which actually
belonged to the community, to the main road and
change it for a tourist attraction."
That story led to a public meeting and lots of
angry shouting, which fuelled the council's
decision to not speak with Welbourn.
"Kathryn has been targeted by [the] town
council for applying serious journalistic
standards to small-town reporting," adds
McGrath. "They expected her to be bland and
boring … instead of which she's called them to
account for some of their practises and decisions.
Since then, they've been downright uncooperative
and unkind."
Nevertheless, Welbourn says she takes those
situations with a grain of salt. She's experienced
enough to let it roll off her back. There are days,
though, when she does have a love-hate
relationship with the paper. She's happy she's been
able to work from home and care for her two young
children, but admits a home office can be tricky.
Then are the late nights editing and writing her
stories; in one recent issue Welbourn banged out
10 stories and her monthly editorial, plus copyedited every single sentence before it was laid out
by a friend and then brought to the printers.
The long hours usually leave her strained and
hollow-eyed. "I have to get the kids to bed and
then I have to start [writing]," she says. "I'm really
slow at night. So I end up getting up at five o'clock
in the morning and finishing."
Welbourn says mistakes are rarely made,
pointing out that The Times has only had to
publish one official correction. "We printed the
wrong year's budget in a story. I am simply very
careful," she says. She says on average there's only
one typo in the paper each month. She's quick to
credit her writers for submitting good copy. "I
only hire and use people who are professional and
I trust," she says.
"Our rule to writers is no boring and no libel; so
far, no major errors.Part of my goal is to put out the
kind of newspaper I like to read — a journalist's
newspaper that includes no factual errors."
In the end, though, it's worth it. She's usually
satisfied when the paper comes out, despite the
phone calls from angry readers taking issue with
an article. "I had a lady, who was upset about
something but didn't want to go on the record, say
to me: 'Have you ever stuck your head out?' And, I
said: 'Yes, my dear. I own a small-town
newspaper,'" Welbourn says.
"I try and handle the residents who live in a
small town with kid gloves. A lot of them have
never spoken to the media before and I have been
fairly gentle with some of the councils. But they
are all used to having a newspaper here now."
And, Welbourn doesn't plan on disappearing
any time soon. The Times is established now, she
says, and her readers look for it each month. She
doesn't feel threatened, either, by Transcontinental.
In fact, she has a great relationship with the
company — it prints her paper.
"They've actually given me a discount," she
says. "They know that if there's a paper that's wellread and has reader loyalty, which my paper does,
then you just can't come in and take it over. I've
been a steady customer and I always pay on time."
Her colleague, Roger Bill, doesn't think small
papers such as The Times are threatened by large
chains. He says small independents give readers
greater choice. "The Telegram is like Wal-Mart and
Kathyrn's paper is like a mom-and-pop, fish-andchips business. If it vanished tomorrow, I doubt
that the Telegram ads sales would register a blip,"
he says.
Welbourn says she plans on remaining at the
helm of The Times for at least the next few years.
She's enjoying the position, her career and the
type of journalism she's dong. She'd like more
time to do freelance work. She recently did a
one-hour documentary called "Out of
Commission," which examined Newfoundland
and Labrador through the lens of the 1933 and
2003 Royal Commissions. She also had a feature
published in Chatelaine. But, she says she has no
major plans to change the format of The Times
or sell the paper.
"My policy has been slow and steady. I think
that works," she says. "I'm still here. Most new
papers last a year. I'm not in debt, and it's always
made some money and it's got a pretty good
reputation and I'm not making any moves until
I'm absolutely ready."
"Besides," she says laughing, "I'm not that good
about having a boss anymore. I'm used to saying
what I think. I don't know what I would do
without the paper. I really don't. I'm thanking my
lucky star, that's all."
Jeff Green, a graduate of the University of King's
College School of Journalism in Halifax, is
originally from Newfoundland and is currently
based in Charlottetown, PEI. His work has
appeared in Downhomer, the Catholic Register
and Saltscapes. He was a freelance reporter for The
Northeast Avalon Times for more than three years
and has worked for VOCM News and CBC Radio.
PHOTOJOURNALISM
BY PETER BREGG
The words in pictures
Maclean's chief photographer, Peter Bregg, has travelled
the country and the globe using his camera lens as an
electronic pencil to portray the human condition.
Here, Bregg tells us the stories behind a few of
the recent photographs he has taken
A machine gun fires blanks during a 48th Highlanders exercise.
WEEKEND WARRIORS
ast winter, Maclean's writer Danylo
Hawaleshka and I spent some time with
some "weekend" soldiers of the 48th
Highlanders of Canada.
It was raining in Toronto when our buses left,
but it was a blizzard around midnight when we
arrived near Meaford, Ont., about 150 km
northwest of Toronto.
L
Master Cpl. Clifford Farr, 26, drew the short
straw and had to baby-sit Hawaleska and me for the
weekend. We were assigned to his tent, along with
three privates and a corporal.
The tent was designed to sleep five.We slept sideby-side,occupying every inch of the tent.There were
seven of us. That made me wonder how crowded it
was for the guys in other tents sleeping eight.
We hiked on Saturday night to an area where we
positioned ourselves with a couple of soldiers with a
C6,a general-purpose machine gun capable of firing
up to 16 rounds per second. The night's darkness
concealed the machine-gunner and soldier feeding
the ammunition. But when they opened fire, orange
bursts of flame from the weapon's muzzle lit us up
so that I could shoot the photograph without a flash.
There's no life like it, and at the tender age of 55, I
think that life is best suited for the 20-somethings.
Sacha Trudeau is escorted by young men watching their neighborhood in the slums of Cité de Soleil, Port au Prince, Haiti.
BRIBERY IN HAITI
n a trip to Port au Prince, Haiti, with
Maclean's writer Alexandre (Sacha)
Trudeau last fall, I visited Cité de Soleil,
the infamous slum. This is a shantytown where
taxi drivers won't go. The police won't go there
unless they have backup.
O
As we arrived, we met a man named
Fosseur, who told Sacha we had a choice to
make: to pay one person for "protection" while
there, or pay many. So Fosseur became our
guide, along with a few of his henchmen.
As we made our rounds, we attracted a
number of young thugs. One of them told us
his name is M.C. Couteau, and that he kills
people who won't give him money. A bit of
bravado to instill a little fear in the visiting
journalists.
As we prepared to leave, Sacha offered
Fosseur $5, in local money. The young man
balked. We increased the amount to $8. Our
concession was enough for him to show his
buddies that he was in charge.
CHILDREN RAISING CHILDREN
hey lost their parents to one of two
scourges: genocide or AIDS. Now, many of
Rwanda's orphans are living in households
headed by siblings.
The children of Rwanda have witnessed
unspeakable horrors. During the 1994 genocide,
many lost their families and were subjected to
violence and rape. Some were forced to commit
atrocities themselves.
When the bloodshed ended, 95,000 had been
orphaned. Added to that is the continuing death
toll from AIDS.
The result? Rwanda has one of the largest
percentages of households headed by children:
42,000 of them, accounting for some 101,000
children. Earlier this year, I spent time with
orphaned survivors of the genocide.
T
Nineteen-year-old Rosine Nzakarawita is a single mother whose parents and two of her sisters were
killed by Hutus on the morning of April 8, 1994. She lives in a three-bedroom house just north of Kigali,
the capital, with four siblings and her two-year-old son Didier.
Orphans in Kigali, Rwanda, are now raising siblings as they reach adulthood following the genocide that saw their parents murdered. Some of them now
have babies of their own. Twenty-two year old Paciphique is pictured in the foreground. Her 12-year-old sister, on the right, Maxine was preparing
to make a two-kilometre trek to fetch water.
ETHICS
BY STEPHEN J. A. WARD
The moral imperative of
better election coverage
The superficial way in which we cover elections threatens
to distance citizens even further from politicians
uring a national election, the obligations of
Canadian news media to citizens are in
plain view. Embedded in the campaign,
journalists are the arteries though which the body
politic communicates.
The public stirs itself to consider and vote, and
even world-weary journalists experience a frisson
of excitement as they report on this sea-to-sea-tosea democratic exercise.
Running beneath such noble feelings, however,
is a darker reality. Increasingly, the public sphere
labours under the weight of apathetic or
disillusioned citizens served by a ubiquitous,
entertainment-focused media. In such a climate,
high-minded election talk of the "people's choice"
and journalism's solemn "democratic duty"
begins to sound quaint, nostalgic — perhaps
even illusory.
Nonetheless, a renewed commitment to public
journalism and democratic engagement — oldfashioned or not — is the only way out of this
malaise.
But, that said, where do we start with reforms,
when the problems of public life seem so
enormous, amorphous and intertwined?
One place to start, for journalists, is to ask what
our fundamental editorial purposes should be.
Once we have our normative bearings, we can
evaluate election coverage as a special case.
A national election is a major test, not just of
political leaders, but also of the country's news
leaders. An election reveals whether the news
system, as a whole, has the resources, expertise
and will to explore the issues fully, intelligently
and fairly.
D
(c) to adopt an impartial "public stance" when
engaging in (a) and (b).
These imperatives constitute the core of
responsible public journalism. Journalists should
attempt to satisfy (a), (b) and (c) within the limits
of journalism and their circumstances.
The news media, of course, do many things
other than satisfy these weighty imperatives, such
A national election
is a major test not
just of political
leaders, but also of
the country's news
leaders. An election
reveals whether the
news system, as a
whole, has the
resources, expertise
and will to explore
the issues fully,
intelligently
and fairly.
THREE IMPERATIVES OF PUBLIC
JOURNALISM
I call public journalism any effort by news
organizations to serve the public with the
information they need to be a self-governing
collective. The ethical purpose of public
journalism can be summarized as the
conjunction of three imperatives: (a) to inquire
factually and truthfully into important events in
an independent, verified and comprehensive
manner; (b) to inquire into vital social and
political issues so as to assist reasonable public
deliberation and to hold officials accountable; and
as entertaining readers, viewers and listeners, and
providing sports scores. But these activities are
not the essential democratic functions of
journalism.
The first imperative states that journalists are
to be truth-seeking inquirers into the most
important events and trends of public life. They
should not squander limited editorial resources
on a daily overdose of trivial stories.
The second imperative indicates that the
provision of important information, by itself, is
not sufficient. Journalists also need to help society
deliberate about the facts that reporters uncover.
They need to promote reasoned, inclusive and
tolerant discussion of issues.
The third imperative means that the primary
allegiance of journalists is not to a specific cause
or group, but to the public good, at large.
Journalists, whether they are news-making or
opinion-making, should adopt the public stance:
to act as an independent public communicator
who speaks to the public, for the public, and from
the impartial perspective of the public good. The
aim is the democratic well-being of the public.
ELECTION COVERAGE
What would a commitment to these
principles entail for the coverage of elections?
Here are a few ideas:
The first imperative of truth-seeking implies
that news organizations should reduce the
parties' control and manipulation of election
news. Coverage should not be heavily
dependent on daily press releases or the staged
activities of leaders. Ignoring what leaders do
or say is not possible. But journalists must
protect their editorial independence by
rejecting manufactured news, critiquing claims
and conducting their own investigations into
issues.
The second imperative means not allowing
"horse-race" coverage, via opinion polls or
otherwise, to overwhelm the analysis of issues.
There is no escaping some horse-race coverage.
After all, an election is a race. Two things are
crucial: First, that reports question polls and
place them in context. Second, that the analysis
does not rehash the horse-race coverage.
Journalists also should question the way in
which leaders and major interest groups are
trying to frame issues to their advantage. Here,
a critical Socratic attitude is crucial.
Journalists need to look for other angles on
issues, unearth contrary facts and be wary of
biased interpretations. They need to monitor
the diversity of their sources as the campaign
unwinds.
The second imperative insists that issues be
discussed in a manner that encourages wideranging, rational discussion, and reduces the
risk that emotional ranting and ideologues will
hijack the discussion. Coverage of complex
issues should not be reduced to the predictable
partisan comments of dominant groups, or to a
shouting match between talking heads.
Moreover, the discussion of issues should not
be equated with unfair commentary
masquerading as "attitude" or "edge." Public
journalism favours commentary that is clearly
distinguished as such, and has the force of facts
and logic — not the force of bombastic opinion or
sarcasm.
Election coverage, in an attempt to appear
connected with ordinary Canadians, can easily
degenerate into a faux public journalism.
For example, one is not practicing robust
public journalism by constantly inviting
audiences to call your phone-in line with their
"reaction." A news organization is not necessarily
"connected" because it spends thousands of
dollars to rent a bus for its TV anchor, who then
drives into the scary wilds of small-town Canada.
During the last federal election, much of Global
Television's "bus" coverage was unenlightening,
and patronizing. Often, it amounted to the anchor
exclaiming, live, something to this effect: "Gee,
look at us, out here with the hoi polloi."
To practice true public journalism takes
money, resources, careful planning and
intelligence. It requires a commitment throughout
the year, not just during elections. The need for
public journalism never takes a holiday.
ARE WE DREAMING?
Despite this tour of the ethical landscape, we
return to our departure point — those doubts
about a darker reality. The realist will ask two
questions: What are the chances that
newsrooms are going to invest heavily in such
high-minded journalism? And, worse still, how
do we know that the majority of the public will
support it?
Are we dreaming?
To these questions, I have no magic answer. I
cannot predict, in an era of profit-driven media,
whether the practice of public journalism will
decline or revive. I do know that if public
journalism declines, then election coverage will
suffer and journalism will lose its soul.
In the end, probably nothing less than major
reform of both the news media system and our
democratic institutions will re-invigorate
democracy. Good journalism and an engaged
public are partners in this dance of democracy.
They will thrive or wither together.
If these are the stakes, then our task is clear.
Journalists have a collective responsibility to
defend those principles, which articulate the best
elements of our craft.
Stephen J.A. Ward is a columnist for Media
magazine. He also teaches at the University of
British Columbia's School of Journalism. He is on
sabbatical this fall as visiting professor of ethics at
the Free University of Brussels.
ETHICS
What’s in a name?
Whether you call it plagiarism or a breech of intellectual
integrity, Judith Ince argues that schools of journalism
must take more steps to tackle the issue
n epidemic of plagiarism felled journalists
across the continent last year. Other
professions were not immune from the
disease, either; stories of journalists stricken with
dishonesty jostled with others about plagiarizing
pastors, politicians, students and university
presidents.
As a journalism student, I watched the
casualties pile up with morbid fascination, but as
a former university instructor, I was astonished by
how little the media — or the sometime reporters
who taught at my J-school — seemed to
appreciate the motivations of cheaters and the
potential solutions to the scourge of intellectual
dishonesty. And, no one seemed ready to swallow
the systemic medicine that might eliminate
journalistic dishonesty of all kinds.
Although journalism schools and news
organizations would likely agree with the ethics
guide of The Washington Post, which describes
plagiarism as "journalism's unforgivable sin,"
they also tend to characterize it as a uniquely
individual failure of moral fibre. Universities
tended to take a similar view until an explosion of
cheating in the 1980s prompted experts in
organizational behaviour, psychology, education
A
and ethics to re-examine the issue. These scholars
investigated the personal characteristics of
cheaters and developed strategies that might
deter them.
After almost three decades of research, much
empirical evidence reveals that academic fraud
declines only when a systems-wide solution is
found to confront it. Editors, publishers, and Jschool instructors may benefit from addressing
intellectual dishonesty as a problem requiring the
attention of the entire institution.
Plagiarists in both the media and academia are
adept at self-justification, and the most common
— if least believable — excuse I have heard is "I
didn't understand that what I was doing was
plagiarism."
If this is true, then universities and newsrooms
are doing a poor job of explaining it. Plagiarism, a
pamphlet produced by Indiana University, is pithy
and clear: "Plagiarism is using others' ideas and
words without clearly acknowledging the source
of that information."
Heeding this definition should make plagiarism
easy to avoid. Writers should provide a source for
both direct quotations and paraphrases.
Quotation marks should be used to denote direct
quotations. Failing to use quotation marks around
a direct quotation is considered plagiarism even
if, somewhere else in the article, reference is made
to the original source.
Paraphrasing seems to perplex some, but the
basic rule is that in addition to giving the original
source credit, a paraphrase must abandon the
phrasing, vocabulary and voice of the original
author.
Plagiarism gives the following examples of
acceptable and "unacceptable paraphrases, using
an extract from Lizzie Borden: A Case Book of
Family and Crime in the 1890s", by Joyce
Williams, et al.
The original reads:
"The rise of industry, the growth of cities,
and the expansion of the population were
the three great developments of late
nineteenth century American history. As
new, larger, steam-powered factories
became a feature of the American landscape
in the East, they transformed farm hands
into industrial laborers, and provided jobs
Plagiarism, a pamphlet produced by Indiana University, is pithy and clear: "Plagiarism is
using others' ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information."
What’s in a name?
for a rising tide of immigrants. With
industry came urbanization the growth of
large cities (like Fall River, Massachusetts,
where the Bordens lived) which became the
centers of production as well as of
commerce and trade."
But this paraphrase is actually plagiarism:
"The increase of industry, the growth of
cities, and the explosion of the population
were three large factors of nineteenth
century America. As steam-driven
companies became more visible in the
eastern part of the country, they changed
farm hands into factory workers and
provided jobs for the large wave of
immigrants.With industry came the growth
of large cities like Fall River where the
Bordens lived which turned into centers of
commerce and trade as well as production."
Plagiarism notes this passage violates the rules of
academic honesty because no credit has been given
to the original source, and the writer has only
mixed up sentence order and changed some words.
But here's a paraphrase that credits sources
and uses the author's own words:
"Fall River, where the Borden family
lived, was typical of northeastern
industrial cities of the nineteenth century.
Steam-powered production had shifted
labor from agriculture to manufacturing,
and as immigrants arrived in the US, they
found work in these new factories. As a
result, populations grew, and large urban
areas arose. Fall River was one of these
manufacturing and commercial centers
(Williams 1)."
Writers who use a person's theory, research,
opinions or ideas must credit them. Likewise,
graphs, maps, statistics, drawings, diagrams,
tables, or any other information that is not
common knowledge must be attributed.So what is
common knowledge? Facts that are known by
most people, and available in many different
sources do not need attribution. Examples of
common knowledge where sources do not need to
be given are: "Paul Martin is the prime minister of
Canada, a country of almost 30 million people."
While some journalists, students, or
instructors may plagiarize because they have a
frail grasp of the concept, most are motivated by
a constellation of personal and cultural factors.
PHOTO CREDIT: Gauntlet/Chris Tait
Linda Klebe Treviño, who teaches business ethics
at Penn State University, says people cheat in their
professional lives "for the same reason they cheat
in other parts of their lives — usually because
they think it will help them to get ahead or
because they feel that they are under pressure."
Aaron Bolin, a psychologist who has researched
academic dishonesty, says journalists, students
and academics who plagiarize are likely
motivated by two of the seven deadly sins, greed
and sloth: "They want to get more articles
published but they don't want to work."
Research by Bernard E. Whitley, Kevin L.
Blankenship and Patricia Keith-Spiegen at Ball
State University has sketched out a psychological
profile of college cheaters, and it's not a pretty
picture. As a group, these students are ready to
justify dishonesty ("I didn't hurt anyone"),
normalize it ("everyone does it"), and view deceit
as a pervasive social norm. Unsurprisingly, they
also have a prior history of cheating. Dishonest
students expect success, and believe it will bring
them huge rewards. But their behaviour outside
the classroom would seem to set them up for
failure: college cheaters abuse alcohol and drugs,
steal, take risks while driving, and are personally
less reliable than non-cheaters.
But a student's moral evaluation of academic
deception is even more important than these
personality factors in predicting who will cheat.
In research done at Arkansas State University,
Bolin assessed students' perception of academic
fraud by asking them to evaluate statements
about it. Self-reported cheaters were likely to
agree with such statements as, "Students should
go ahead and cheat if they know they can get away
with it."
This view is often endorsed by the broader
culture, Bolin says. "Our culture has changed and
it's seen as acceptable to cheat. It's a downward
spiral: the culture says it's acceptable, and that
reinforces cheating, which reinforces the cultural
attitude that says, 'if you're going to compete,
you've got to cheat.'"
Despite the disheartening spectacle of students
and professionals who plagiarize, editors and Jschool deans can reverse the slide into ethical
muck by taking some relatively common-sense
actions — ones that have also been demonstrated
to work. Treviño outlines the strategies that
reduce dishonest practices. "Make everyone
(students, faculty, administrators) part of an
honour system that becomes baked into the
culture of the school. This takes ongoing effort
and commitment from all involved."
By promoting integrity as an institution-wide
issue, many colleges have been able to curb
academic dishonesty. Whitley and Keith-Spiegel
AVOIDING PLAGIARISM:
have found that academic integrity policies that
are developed by representatives of all interest
groups on campus — administrators, staff,
faculty and students — are most effective. The
best integrity policies contain a statement about
After almost three
decades of research,
much empirical
evidence reveals that
academic fraud declines
only when a systemswide solution is found
to confront it.
the importance of honesty, detail the specific
practices that are dishonest, and document the
responsibilities of students, faculty and
administrators in upholding the honour code.
Instructors play a vital role in breathing life
into integrity policies by discussing them. Linda
Klebe Treviño says, "Teachers who make a point of
addressing academic integrity expectations in
their classes influence students in a positive way.
Most students want teachers to set standards and
hold cheaters responsible. Teachers can become
ethical role models for their students."
In addition, Whitley and Keith-Spiegel urge
instructors to create a classroom that is warm,
supportive and fair: these environments have
been shown to encourage ethical behaviour.When
students feel disrespected, overworked and
unfairly graded, they are more likely to cheat by
using the justifications of vigilante justice. "The
prof. gives us way too much work and marks
unfairly, so why should I play by the rules?"
Donald McCabe and Gary Pavela, directors of
the Center for Intellectual Integrity at the Kenan
Institute for Ethics at Duke University, observe
that, "Faculty members who ignore or trivialize
academic dishonesty send the message that the
core values of academic life, and community life
in general, are not worth any significant effort to
enforce." Two years ago, McCabe found about half
of the 2,500 faculty he surveyed had ignored at
least one suspected incident of cheating, while
only a third included information about
INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY
RESOURCES AND HINTS
ACADEMIC AND JOURNALISTIC
INTEGRITY
RESOURCES
The Center for Academic Integrity: Provides
information about encouraging and
maintaining intellectual integrity.
www.academicintegrity.org/ index.asp
SOME HINTS
• Keep meticulous records when doing
research in order to give credit to the
appropriate source: differentiate your own
insights into the topic from your sources'
ideas, and enclose direct quotations in
quotation marks.
• Credit all sources, whether directly quoted or
paraphrased.
• When paraphrasing, rely on your memory,
not the original text. This ensures that you
have thoroughly grasped the information in
the original, and reduces the chance your
words will be a close echo of your source's.
• Scour paraphrases to ensure that they only
retain the information of the original-but not
the same phrases or sentence structure as
the original. Comparing the original and the
paraphrase helps.
• Common knowledge is something most
people would not have to look up in a
reference book. Conversely, it's information
that would be found in many different
sources. Most guides suggest that if it's in
three to five commonly available
publications, it's common knowledge.
PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism. An annotated bibliography by
Sharon Stoerger, MLS, MBA, www.webminer.com /plagiarism
Plagiarism: What it is and How to Regognize
and Avoid it, Writing Tutorial Services, Indiana
University. www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/
plagiarism.shtml
Avoiding Plagiarism. Purdue University
Online Writing Lab. http://owl.english.purdue.
edu/handouts/research/r_plagiar.html
Ethics Resource Center: Practical materials
on individual and organizational ethics.
www.ethics.org/
Center for Study of Ethics in the Professions
(Illinois Institute of Technology). A
compendium of media ethics guides and
systems for instituting them is available at
www.iit.edu/departments/csep/PublicWWW/
codes/media.html
Avoiding Plagiarism: Mastering the Art of
Scholarship. Student Judicial Affairs,
University of California, Davis.
http://sja.ucdavis.edu/ avoid.htm
The PressWise Trust. www.presswise.org.uk.
Includes a searchable database of international
codes of ethics for journalists, as well as
information on how-and why-to implement
one.
Guide to Plagiarism and Cyber-Plagiarism.
University of Alberta. www.library.ualberta.ca/
guides/plagiarism/
Ten Principles of Academic Integrity by
McCabe and Pavela, www.collegepubs.com/ref/
10PrinAcaInteg.shtml
Academic Dishonesty: An Educator's Guide, by
Bernard E. Whitley, Jr. and Patricia Keith-Spiegel
(eds.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
POINT OF VIEW
BY GILLIAN STEWARD
Revisioning Conrad
The once-mighty newspaper baron craved attention.
Now he's receiving it — but for all the wrong reasons
t has become an article of faith, a credo of
sorts. Call it what you will but it's now a given,
particularly in downtown Toronto, that
Conrad Black's National Post elevated the practice
of newspapering and journalism in this country
to such lofty heights we should get down on our
knees and thank the gods, for we will never see the
likes of such brilliance again.
That's certainly the message relayed over and
over again by publishers, editors and journalists
quoted in Ego and Ink, Chris Cobb's detailed
account of the launching of the Post and the
subsequent newspaper war that gripped Toronto
and even managed to shake up Ottawa a bit.
But it seems a tad too early to come to such
firm conclusions about Conrad Black's influence
on Canadian newspapers and journalism. The
recent rash of allegations that point to Black's
"righteous and aggressive looting" of his flagship
company — Hollinger International Inc. — casts
a new light on his media ventures.
And since Black was at the helm of the National
Post for only three years, he didn't really have time
to leave an enduring legacy. When he abandoned
ship in 2001 and left his loyal oarsmen to fend for
themselves, it became a much weaker newspaper.
There's no question that the three years during
which Black spent lavishly, recruited aggressively
and bragged constantly about the Post are
remembered fondly by a lot of journalists,
particularly those who whirled at the centre of the
vortex.
But in hindsight (which is getting clearer all the
time), one has to wonder if the outcome was
worth all the millions of dollars spent by the Post,
as well as the millions spent by The Globe and
Mail and the Toronto Star to combat the Post (by
Cobb's estimate a total of almost $1 billion).
The Post almost succeeded in matching the
Globe's circulation and edged ahead of it in British
Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba. But the Globe
never had brisk circulation in those provinces and
the Post had the advantage of sister publications
in Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton and Calgary
that could flog the Post (often free of charge) to
their subscribers.
This was promoted as a bonus for subscribers
but it diminished the local newspapers, which
came to be seen as the little sisters of the
generously funded national publication.
As well, reporters were often instructed to write
for the earlier Post deadlines so it could break the
I
Since Black was at the helm of the National Post for only three years, he didn't really have time
to leave an enduring legacy. When he abandoned ship in 2001 and left his loyal oarsmen to
fend for themselves, it became a much weaker newspaper.
story. Thus, once-proud, and independent, local
newspapers became little more than outlying
bureaus for the National Post.
This mattered little in downtown Toronto,
which was always the main battleground of this
brief, but dirty, war. But what did it really
accomplish in the end?
Are Canadian newspapers and (journalism in
general) better off because of it? Or have they all
been weakened by Black's self-indulgent
spending spree? Will they be cutting back on
budgets for years to come in order to recover from
the binge? And what about the rest of the
newspapers in the Southam/Hollinger/CanWest
chain? Profits from newspapers such as the
Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Herald were
poured into the Post instead of into their own
operations.
PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Bregg
And what about the Post itself? It may have
been a dream newspaper for some journalists but
it has never attracted enough readers or, more
importantly, advertisers, to make it financially
viable. And while there is obviously a segment of
the population that likes the hard-right editorials,
columns and story angles that are the Post's
trademark, is that segment large enough to keep
the paper going?
Clark Davey, former publisher of the Ottawa
Citizen, and a fan of the Post in its early days,
thinks it is positioning itself outside the
mainstream market. "It's right-wing edge has
gotten even harder," he says. "It's just full of
outright support for (George) Bush and the
Republicans."
Indeed, the Saturday after the Republicans'
national convention in New York, the Post's main
editorial page featured a hymn of praise to George
Bush by columnist Andrew Coyne; Elizabeth
Nickson's breathless paean to Fox News' coverage
of the convention, especially when compared to
the (sneering) CBC coverage; and a rant against all
anti-Americans by Robert Fulford.
The rest of the newspaper doesn't offer much to
leaven the hard-edged ideological rigidity. "It used
to be an odd mix of the serious and the quirky,"
says Davey. "They used to actively recruit young,
out-of-the-box writers, but I don't see that
happening now."
And with so many of the Post's stars — Christie
Blatchford and Roy MacGregor to name but two
— now writing for The Globe, The Star or
Maclean's, the newspaper just doesn't have the
draw it once had.
I can't help but think of Alberta Report, the
notorious newsmagazine that tilted far right and
eventually went under. Like Conrad Black, Ted
Byfield, the founder and hands-on editor of
Alberta Report, is a legendary, iconic figure. He
didn't have the money Black has (or had), but he
stuck with the publication through years of tough
sledding.And yet, Alberta Report could never rally
enough subscribers and advertisers to make a go
of it. Even in Alberta.
Towards the end of his first book — Shades of
Black: Conrad Black and the World's Fastest
Growing Press Empire — Richard Siklos writes:
"Words are Conrad Black's currency, selected with
precision, and delivered with force."
Since Black granted Siklos several interviews,
he is quoted at length talking about himself. And
it's true, no matter what he says, he verbalizes it
with verve underscored by the meticulousness of a
wordsmith. Perhaps this is why he mesmerized so
many journalists, and others: he spoke their
language.
There's a quote attributed to Black on the front
cover of Ego and Ink, that perfectly illustrates the
point: “the Post gelignited the fetid little media logrolling and back-scratching society in Toronto!”
We now know Mr. Black knew more than a
thing or two himself about back scratching and
logrolling. The recently-released report by U.S
Securities watchdog Richard Breeden, prepared on
behalf of the remaining directors of Hollinger
International, details the many and varied ways in
which he allegedly helped himself, and his friends,
dip into the piggy bank at the expense of
shareholders.
The convoluted but brazen ways in which
Black and his right-hand man David Radler
apparently sucked up Hollinger profits are mindboggling. And to think, all this was happening as
Black, and so many others at the Post, righteously
bragged about how they were going to shake up a
complacent media and thereby make Canada an
infinitely better place. As if they were doing us all
a big favour and that without them we would
remain adrift in a sea of muddled ignorance.
It's galling to discover that when the Post was
harping on about former Prime Minister Jean
Chrétien and his alleged wheeling and dealing
with a hotelier in his riding, its publisher was
supposedly helping himself to shareholders'
money. And I couldn't help but feel for former
Post editor, Kenneth Whyte, when I read in Cobb's
book how important "democratic accountability
in Ottawa" was to him and the newspaper.
Democratic accountability is important but
about Black's alleged devious, self-serving ways,
it's difficult to believe anything he says.
Since Black is so tied to the Post, even though
he has nothing to do with it anymore, his legacy
may indeed be darker than originally envisioned.
Will it ever be known as anything else but
Conrad's vanity project? Will it ever be able to
shake the association with Black?
Clark Davey says it probably doesn't much
matter to the average newspaper reader. But a
friend of mine — a news junkie, but not a
journalist — says most people she knows still
think Black owns the National Post. To them, it's
Black's newspaper.
I can't help but think that in the long run we
will look back on the great newspaper war as a
skirmish that did great damage to newspapers
and journalism in Canada. Whether or not the
Post survives is the least of our worries. Whether
Black's successors, the Asper family, can
reinvigorate the newspapers they bought from
him also remains to be seen.
But there's no question that Black's duplicitous
ways will haunt the newspaper industry for some
time to come.
Of course, this is far from the last word on
Conrad Black. There is a new Monty Pythonesque
documentary called Citizen Black, a made-for-TV
movie, and a new book by Richard Siklos.
Another book, Lord Black: The Biography by
Montreal writer George Tombs, has already hit
the stands and been excerpted in the CanWest
newspapers. In addition, Globe and Mail business
reporters Jacquie McNish and Sinclair Stewart are
finishing up a book about Black.
He should be pleased. He always did crave lots,
and lots, of attention.
READING LIST:
Ego and Ink: The Inside Story of Canada's
National Newspaper War by Chris Cobb.
McClelland & Stewart, 2004, 350 pages, $34.99
Shades of Black: Conrad Black and the World's
Fastest Growing Press Empire by Richard Siklos.
McClelland & Stewart, 1996, $19.99.
There's no question that Black's duplicitous
ways will haunt the newspaper industry for
some time to come.
Conrad Black seems to have made a mockery of
it.
In fact, Black has made a mockery of much of
what the Post did in its early days. It appeared to
be the official organ of the "unite-the-right
movement" but Black told Cobb that he was never
that keen on using the newspaper to promote a
new political party. He also regretted that the Post
came to be perceived as pro-American and antiCanadian. Trouble is, now that we know more
PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Bregg
Shades of Black: Conrad Black, His Rise and
Fall by Richard Siklos. McClelland & Stewart,
2004 (November), $36.99.
Lord Black: The Biography by George Tombs.
BT Publishing, 2004, 380 pages, $39.95.
Life in Progress by Conrad Black. Key Porter,
2002, $32.95
Big Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad
Black and Barbara Amiel by Maude Barlow.
Stoddart Publishing, 1998, $18.95.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
BY MICHELLE STIRLING-ANOSH
Some thoughts about why
we tend to ignore Africa
Media outlets should rethink the way
they cover the world
was prompted to voice this opinion from my
base here in Israel about the lack of coverage
of the humanitarian disaster in Darfur,
Sudan, when I read a brief circulated by Tikkun
magazine, a publication that calls itself a
"bimonthly Jewish and interfaith critique of
politics, culture, & society."
The magazine's article protested the
unbalanced coverage of this African tragedy
compared to the on-going, tit-for-tat IsraeliPalestinian conflict. The article reasoned that
the "American economic interests" may be a
partial explanation for why there is so much
coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
In large part, though, the article boiled the
unbalanced coverage down to the
disproportionate number of foreign press based
in Jerusalem. I initially wrote an op-ed piece
about this argument for the Calgary Herald. It
was a big surprise to me that the Herald cut this
important argument out of my original article
(which I am sure few people are aware of —
even those in the media).
So I'd like to take another crack at it with this
column for Media magazine.
Global news coverage, especially television
coverage, should be much more diversified and
far-reaching with all the new technologies. It
“should” be able to generate responsible world
reactions.
But let's look at how lopsided things are in the
media world today.
An estimated 70,000 people have died in
Darfur and more than one million people have
been displaced from their homes. Hundreds of
thousands are still at risk.
Yet what gets more ongoing media coverage?
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which a
fraction are dead, few are displaced and nothing
is new.
Jerusalem is a global media hot spot. It's a
very clubby yet exotic spot with most of the
comforts of home. But it's an expensive bureau
to operate and you've got to get some ratings
and some return on investment (ROI). These
realities skew the coverage.
Jerusalem is a terrific place for a journalist or
camera crew. When you go out to report, the
army protects you, the Palestinians give you one
of their people to make sure you file their story
I
right (or else), there is lots of action, some of it
very predictable. You don't have to (it's actually
preferable NOT TO) do any investigative
reporting. For this, you're paid well and
considered to be a hero around the globe.
Darfur is a harsh, big and dangerous place —
a region about the size of France. (Israel is the
size of the U.S. state of Delaware.) Darfur offers
boring visual imagery. Unlike the many rooftop
venues in conflict zones in Israel and the
territories, it's not likely that one will be able to
find a safe stand-up point wherein the
cameraman can pull focus past the reporter to
Dying people are
boring on TV … By
contrast, intifada-style
fighting is visually
exciting.
Jerusalem, describing how the sheer volume of
foreign press in Jerusalem is completely
disproportionate to the problem.
“Israel, in quiet times, plays host to one of
the largest foreign press contingents in the
world, with some 350 permanently
accredited news organizations stationed in
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. According to the
Israeli Government Press Office, an
additional 700 journalists flocked to the
country at the height of the 1987-88
Palestinian uprisings. That influx
amounted to one foreign correspondent for
every 6,100 Israelis. That is the equivalent
of roughly 36,000 foreign correspondents
suddenly descending on Washington, D.C.”
Well, we know there are not 36,000 foreign
correspondents in Washington or Darfur.
Isn't it time the media addressed this
inequitable coverage? Isn't it time — especially
in these days when terrorists gleefully use the
media as a tool to propagate fear world-wide —
for the media to be a bit more responsible…and
perhaps a bit more flexible?
BE RESPONSIBLE
the janjaweed actually killing or raping
someone in the background.
Dying people are boring on TV — they just
lie there. You can't get a good sound bite from a
dying, starving Darfurian who doesn't speak
English and can't breathe.
By contrast, intifada-style fighting is visually
exciting, especially those low-angle, point-ofview shots from below and behind a tank and
towards a group of small boys throwing rocks at
the big tanks and armed soldiers (David and
Goliath — archetypal drama). All those TV
people eagerly go off to videotape and report on
events that the home bureau “has to” broadcast
in order to justify having a reporter/crew there.
Thomas Friedman eloquently described the
media imbalance in his book From Beirut to
Editors? Is the story always headline news, or
are you trying to justify that expensive bureau in
Jerusalem (or wherever)?
Reporters? Who is using you? Example: The
BBC Radio World News recently reported on
mass demonstrations in Sudan in which
“thousands” of people demonstrated against
foreign armed intervention. The reporter said
that “many” of the people decried the United
States and they were prepared to die for Sudan if
the U.S. intervened.
Excuse me. How do you quantify the term
“many” when there were “thousands” of
demonstrators? And if this was a demonstration
organized by the government of Sudan, weren't
media outlets just puppets for the Sudanese
government? The BBC blithely fell into that
government's PR trap and at the same time
continued publicizing the old saw about the
United States being a global meddler that is only
chasing power and money.
If you believe that, just check out the site of
the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) and read what it has to say about
Darfur. The USAID site has this to say about the
conflict: “According to the United Nations, the
crisis in the western Sudanese region of Darfur
is currently the worst humanitarian and human
rights catastrophe in the world.”
BE FLEXIBLE
on Main Street. And get your sales force to find
responsible sponsors with global interests who
want to bridge cultural gaps in the world.
Encourage viewers to learn more by
publicizing relevant web site addresses
(http://sora.akm.net.au/index.php;
ht t p : / / w w w. u s a i d . g o v / l o c a t i o n s / s u b saharan_africa/sudan/darfur.html) and make
use of existing Web site materials in your own
broadcasts. Why not create co-operative newsstudy programs with local and regional
educators so that we teach our children to
think about the world they live in.
WHY BOTHER?
The answer is simple. We live in a global
village and journalists have the power to make
it a better place to live.
Michelle Stirling-Anosh is a TV producer/writer
living in Israel.
It is expensive to operate bureaus around the
world. There aren't very many “real” journalists
who are willing to go to difficult and dangerous
assignments like Darfur; the likelihood of
death or kidnapping has shot up dramatically
with the expansion of terrorism. So as a
compromise why not use technology and other
sources far removed from the region to report
about new developments?
If it's okay to have on your 6 o'clock news
some “report” by a local in your city (or other
“man-on-the-street-turned-celebrity” ploy),
maybe broader global news coverage could also
come from real people working in aid
organizations, given the simple, high-tech
communication tools that exist today.
Perhaps there can be a “pool” of
technological resources by major western
networks to be distributed equally to global
venues. The incoming reports could be
packaged as a weekly/bi-weekly global news
tour. This type of program might use
travelogue-type imagery to heighten viewer
interest, but alongside would package the “hard
news” from the reporter-citizen-aid worker on
the ground.
To say that these reports would not be
“objective” enough is a bit of a joke since every
editor and reporter inserts his or her own
subjectivity into their reports anyway — at
least we would have real reports from people
who are really there and who don't cost a lot of
money. The news agency could provide a
donation to the aid group in return for the
service.
BE EDUCATIONAL
Provide “news.” A few short lines about who
is dead or what blew up does not always make
for real content. The media have tremendous
power to influence the world for the better —
and that puts an onus upon reporters, editors,
producers, news bureaus and broadcasters to
use their power to communicate useful
information. Don't cop out with talking
heads.
Instead of investing in overseas bureaus,
maybe invest in some innovative news
production that does catch the eye of the viewer
and that does make the story of Darfur almost
as relevant to him or her as the traffic accident
An estimated 70,000 people have died in Darfur, Sudan, and over a million people
have been displaced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are still at risk.
Yet what gets more ongoing media coverage?
FINE PRINT
BY DEAN JOBB
Be wise with your words
Your conversations with police could find their way into
court. So make sure your actions stand up to scrutiny
ew journalists have heard of the
Stinchcombe ruling, and that's not
surprising — the case has nothing to do
with media law. Yet it has plenty to say about how
journalists do their jobs.
R. v. Stinchcombe is the Supreme Court of
Canada's landmark 1991 ruling on the disclosure
of evidence to defendants in criminal cases. The
court has decreed that a person charged with a
crime has the right to see any information the
police have collected — witness statements,
investigators' notes and logs, forensic reports and
the like — that may be relevant to the charges.
A wide net is cast, and information that points
to innocence as well as guilt must be disclosed. In
the words of one of the court's follow-up rulings
on the issue, the Crown has a “constitutional and
ethical duty to disclose all information in its
possession reasonably capable of affecting the
accused's ability to raise a reasonable doubt
concerning his innocence.” The goal is to uphold
every citizen's Charter right to make full answer
and defence to charges, ensuring defendants are
not ambushed with a surprise witness or kept in
the dark about evidence that might exonerate
them.
Such trial tactics were once common. But in the
late 1980s, a Nova Scotia inquiry into Donald
Marshall Jr.'s wrongful murder conviction —
which was based in part on the suppression of
evidence implicating the real killer —
recommended new laws to require disclosure.
When Ottawa was slow to comply, the Supreme
Court took matters into its own hands and used
its Stinchcombe ruling to make disclosure the law
of the land.
As journalists who cover the courts can attest,
disclosure has become a major battleground in
many criminal cases, as defence lawyers demand
more information and judges are called on to
decide what evidence is relevant and what is not.
Police forces keep meticulous records of what they
find as an investigation unfolds and, if charges are
filed, the defendant has a right to see who was
interviewed and what each person said. This right
of disclosure applies to other types of
prosecutions that may involve a company charged
with polluting a river or a stockbroker accused of
insider trading.
And that's why journalists need to understand
how the Stinchcombe ruling affects the way they
deal with police and other investigative agencies.
F
Any information you exchange with a police
source — no matter how informal the setting or
trivial you may consider the information — could
wind up as evidence in a court case or in the
hands of a defendant with a score to settle with
the media.
The law of disclosure gave Edward Greenspan,
the lawyer for embattled lobbyist Karl-Heinz
Schreiber, the RCMP records he used last fall to
attack investigative journalist Stevie Cameron
Any information you
exchange with a police
source — no matter
how informal the
setting or trivial you
may consider the
information — could
wind up as evidence
in a court case or in the
hands of a defendant
with a score to settle
with the media.
over her dealings with the police during the
Airbus investigation. Other journalists have
endured the discomfort of having their actions
and motives questioned in the courtroom, based
on police files disclosed to the defence. Some of
the reporters who investigated allegations of
sexual misconduct by Gerald Regan found
themselves on the hotseat a few years ago when
the lawyer of the former Nova Scotia premier —
Greenspan again — put the police on trial.
Cameron spoke to a symposium at the
University of King's College School of Journalism
in Halifax last spring and offered journalists some
blunt advice: "Never talk to the police." (Please see
Media magazine, Spring 2004, vol. 10, no. 3) She
said she has adopted that credo as she researches
her latest book, on the case of accused B.C. serial
killer Robert Pickton.
But abstinence is not always an option. A
journalist investigating organized crime or a
major political scandal is unlikely to get very far
without cultivating good police sources. Reporters
on the crime or court beat deal with the police on
a daily basis; it's the only way to keep tabs on
investigations, searches and arrests.
The Stinchcombe ruling does not mean that
journalists should avoid the police. It's our job to
ask questions, and no one will be surprised if a
report surfaces that shows reporters were
pumping the police for information about a case.
The real risk is in sharing information, even
information that's already on the public record,
with police or other investigators.
There are solid ethical reasons to avoid helping
— or appearing to help — the police. It's the
reason media organizations shell out tens of
thousands of dollars in legal fees to challenge
search warrants and subpoenas when the
authorities come after journalists' notes and
tapes. As Nick Russell notes in his textbook
Morals and the Media,“journalists do not exist to
make the work of the police easier” and it would
be “highly detrimental for the media to be seen as
an arm of the law.”
Last April, a committee of the Canadian
Association of Journalists produced a code of
ethics for investigative reporters, which calls on
journalists to maintain “strict independence”
from the police, justice officials and governments.
An exception is made if a journalist becomes
aware of an “impending public risk” and, like any
other citizen, has a duty to warn the authorities.
But few journalists will ever stumble upon a
terrorist plot or get wind that a murder is about to
be committed — information that would
obviously fit the definition of an “impending
public risk.” For any other dealings with the
police, the lesson of Stinchcombe is simple: don't
say or do anything that you are not prepared to
have exposed, at some future date, for all to see.
Wolfville, N.S.-based freelance journalist Dean
Jobb teaches media law and investigative reporting
at the School of Journalism, University of King's
College in Halifax. He is writing a legal guide for
Canadian writers.
WORKPLACE
BY CHRIS RICHARDSON
Breaking into the field
Two journalists reflect on how they created
opportunities to find good jobs
hen my girlfriend finishes medical
school, she is virtually guaranteed a
well-paying, steady job for the rest of
her life. After J-school, though, it's a completely
different story.
As most people in the field know, finding a
journalism job in Canada — especially a wellpaying, steady one — is a considerably difficult
task. Between Victoria and St. John's, there are
thousands of journalism students, with hundreds
of them graduating every year. This makes it easy
W
Deirdre Hanna, editor of Salon magazine, is
pictured above in a photograph she had shot
for a first-person feature on women's hockey
she wrote for the April 2004 edition of
Saturday Night.
for media outlets to fill the positions they have
with the top few candidates, but it also leaves
many not-so-lucky J-school grads wondering
where they went wrong.
To anyone thinking about entering the
business, the numbers can seem overwhelming.
According to the Web site schoolfinder.com, there
are currently 71 journalism programs for postsecondary students in the country. These include
21 bachelor programs, 48 certificate/diploma
programs and two masters' programs.
Journalists and editors I've talked to say
slightly more than half of their colleagues are J-
school graduates. The others either have degrees
in different fields or no degrees at all. So what do
you have to do to get a job in journalism?
Greg Fulmes and Deirdre Hanna are two
Canadian journalists who have struggled through
hard times to get where they are today. They
talked to me about their experiences breaking
into the field and have some advice for students
and recent graduates hunting for jobs.
Deirdre Hanna, currently the editor of Salon
magazine, juggled two jobs “more or less
simultaneously” after she graduated with an art
history degree from Queen's University. By day,
she worked in public relations and administration
for a modern dance company. By night, she wrote
for NOW magazine.
Photojournalist Greg Fulmes says he has
worked "more seven-day, 100-hour weeks" than
he cares to remember. He is now the
night/weekend photo editor for the Calgary
Herald.
After graduating from the Southern Alberta
Institute of Technology's journalism arts
program, Fulmes got his start working for a chain
of weekly and biweekly newspapers in southern
Alberta. “During that time, I spent five months
following a couple through their first pregnancy,”
recalls Fulmes. “I was fortunate enough to have
been there documenting their journey when their
son was born. During that photo essay, I went
from being a news photographer to a
photojournalist.”
After Fulmes had worked on his student
portfolio in Alberta and Hanna's stories were
published in a few magazines, both began their
careers in journalism working long and often
difficult hours. The hard work paid off.
Soon after Hanna's dance company contract
expired, she continued working full-time for NOW
magazine. She heard about an opening at the
magazine from an artist she was interviewing for a
story. “I sent the publisher a polite and timely letter
along with my glossy magazine clips (from previous
freelance work) and got the initially once-a-month
gig,” she says. Then she became the magazine's fulltime art editor. “I was too darned tired to notice
exactly when I became a real journalist. I just did.”
Hanna says the key to her success was finding a
niche to develop her skills.“Somehow, I hit on the
brilliant notion of becoming an art critic,” she
says. “I decided to specialise and give myself a
beat to cover.
“You'd be crazy to follow my career path,” she
says.“It has been a little idiosyncratic and it’s not
like I'm living in Rideau Hall.”
Despite the long hours and the lack of adequate
financial compensation, the two journalists seem
content. Standing out enough to get hired in the
first place, then continuing to excel even after they
found jobs, seem to be what has helped them
succeed.
Paul Woods, director of human resources at
The Canadian Press, says experience is what gets
Photojournalist Greg Fulmes says he has
worked "more seven-day, 100-hour weeks"
than he cares to remember. He is now the
night/weekend photo editor for
the Calgary Herald.
people in the door. “It doesn't matter whether
you're a first-year student or (a
graduate)…People with a passion for
(journalism) are generally the ones who have a
large amount of experience,” Woods says.
Writing and editing at student papers is the
typical leadership experience he looks for when
hiring. Woods has been in the business for 24
years and has seen all sides of the occupation. He
says it was his strong editing skills and ability to
work under constant deadline that helped him
COMPUTER-ASSISTED REPORTING
BY FRED VALLANCE-JONES
Let’s keep it a secret
Governments' slavish devotion to privacy chokes
off information that really should be public
he last time I wrote in this space I was about
a case in Ontario's Divisional Court with
important implications for data access in
Canada. A Toronto collection agency was fighting
with MPAC, the Municipal Property Assessment
Corporation, for access to an electronic copy of the
assessment roll for the province.
The roll contains, among other things, the
assessed value for taxation purposes of every
property in the province, as well as the names of
the property owners, whether the owners
support Roman Catholic or public schools, and
so on.
An adjudicator with the office of Ontario's
information and privacy commissioner had
ordered the records released, saying he was bound
by a previous Divisional Court decision directing
the City of Toronto to release a database of
political contributions to a Toronto Star reporter.
But MPAC asked the court to review the order.
While collection agencies don't have the best
reputation, and a request for the entire provincial
roll to pursue bad debtors seems on its surface
repugnant, I felt the principles at stake went far
beyond such base emotional reactions. This was
an important test case in the ongoing struggle for
the access to public data.
Alas, the court disagreed and in May it ordered
the data withheld. It was just one of a couple of
disappointing court decisions about that time;
another decision clamped the lid on a series of
drug-approval records that had previously been
routinely available from Health Canada.
In the assessment case, the three-judge panel
reasoned that while there is a specific statutory
authority in Ontario that allows for the paper
record to be viewed at municipal halls, no such
authority exists to force MPAC to release the
electronic version.
The decision is both good and bad for those of
us interested in access to the electronic versions of
public registries containing information about
individuals, which also include land titles records,
corporate filings and political contribution records.
On the one hand, the court ruled on specific
and limited facts, rather than making broad and
general findings. It continues to accept that there
are circumstances under which bulk versions of
the registries can be released.
And the court also made it clear that the
identity of the requestor could make a difference,
noting that in this case the purpose was purely
T
commercial. The court left the door open; it might
view a request made in the public interest
differently.
On the other hand, the court seemed to accept
without much question MPAC's argument that
bulk release of the data would constitute an
unacceptable invasion of personal privacy.
In their decision, the judges wrote: "The
commissioner ordered MPAC to hand over to
"If the entire content of these registries is
readily accessible in electronic format, the
personal information of citizens can be easily
retrieved, searched, sorted, manipulated and
used for purposes that have no connection
to the original purpose for which the
information was collected."
— Ontario information and privacy
commissioner, Ann Cavoukian
(Security Recovery Group) an electronic record
containing the personal information of millions
of Ontarians, essentially free of charge."
The court said that in the circumstances, MPAC
was within its rights to refer requestors to
municipal halls to view the paper roll.
In essence, the court accepted the notion that
even though this information is and always has
been public, the form that it takes makes a
difference. Even though technology has marched
on, our access is to remain as it has always been,
to a static paper record.
In her 2003 annual report, tabled in the
legislative assembly in June, Ontario's
information and privacy commissioner Ann
Cavoukian once again waded into this issue.
Noting that before the Toronto Star case, her
office had attempted to restrict access to such
registries and she called on the Ontario
government to address this issue.
"If the entire content of these registries is readily
accessible in electronic format, the personal
information of citizens can be easily retrieved,
searched, sorted, manipulated and used for
purposes that have no connection to the original
purpose for which the information was collected,"
she wrote.
"Our Acts [Ontario has parallel municipal and
provincial acts] need to be amended to deal with
this issue, and that can only take place after the
various interests are identified and balanced
appropriately."
Alberta already prohibits access to any records
derived from public registries, and a few years back
the Canadian Association of Journalists joined with
other public interest groups in an unsuccessful
effort to block an amendment to Manitoba's act
banning bulk—i.e., electronic—disclosure of
personal information in public registries.
A move to bring in a similar provision in
Canada's largest province would almost certainly
be sold on the basis of protecting individual
privacy, but the effect would be to deny the public
and journalists access to important sources of
information.
We could be left without the ability to properly
scrutinize political contributions or to analyze
assessment records to find slum landlords.
Ideally, if something is public, it should be
public in all forms. Otherwise, we are left with the
profoundly unfair situation whereby records
collected at public expense for public purposes
are only available to those with enough money to
pay for them, either by taking the time to scan or
copy paper records, or buying the electronic
versions at whatever price agencies such as MPAC
dictate.
At the very least, any restrictions must include
exemptions for legitimate journalistic inquiry. A
move to clamp down on public registries would
represent the largest rollback to date of traditional
access rights.
GOING TOO FAR
TO PROTECT PRIVACY
Canada already has some of the most
restrictive privacy laws in the world. While
privacy itself is something none of us would
question, Canada's laws go far beyond keeping
private lives private.
From the beginning, lawmakers chose the most
restrictive definition for privacy protection,
deeming any information about any individual to
be out of bounds.The laws contain some exceptions
to that broad definition. However, the exceptions
tend to be applied and interpreted narrowly. The
benefit of the doubt always goes to bureaucrats who
administer freedom-of-information laws, who
argue that personal details, and even information
that could help lead to the identification of an
individual, should be withheld.
Equally distasteful is the fact that journalists
are sometimes unable to obtain information
about criminal matters that have already been
dealt with in court, because that would reveal
details of a person's history with the law.
Similarly, we are not allowed to know which
property owners aren't paying their taxes, because
that would reveal details of their financial history.
This slavish devotion to privacy chokes off
information that really should be public. In my
mind, criminals and scofflaws are not owed a debt
of privacy to shield their activities from public
scrutiny, yet that is what the law allows.
I much prefer the approach of U.S. states, which
deem all such records public unless they are
specifically, by name, exempted. This approach
allows for the protection of information that
should be withheld from the public, and the
release of the rest. The push towards broad, allencompassing privacy protection in Canada has
led to what we face with public registries.
Don't make the mistake of thinking it will stop
with the electronic versions. Once those are safely
sealed off, it will only be a matter of time before
we see calls to tighten access to the paper
versions, perhaps by limiting their use to specific
purposes. Don't be surprised to hear an official
say, "No looking at the assessment roll unless you
can prove you are doing it to support a property
tax appeal."
This doctrine of intended use already pervades
the rationale that supports greater privacy, and if
taken to its extreme would make many things
reporters do impossible.
Journalists and news organizations would do
well to pay attention to Ontario's privacy
commissioner and participate in this debate
before it is too late.
Fred Vallance-Jones is a reporter at
The Hamilton Spectator and webmaster
of CARinCanada.ca, which launched
September 20. Contact him at [email protected].
We could be left
without the ability
to properly
scrutinize political
contributions
or to analyze
assessment records
to find slum
landlords. Ideally,
if something is
public it should
be public in
all forms.
OPSEU Ad repeated
The horse-race that produced the wrong winner
wanted to know how frequently outlets such as
the National Post and the Globe and Mail fall prey
to spinmeisters, arguably the real controllers of all
that is fit to print or broadcast? According to the
study, still in its initial stages, the answer is
disturbing, but sadly not that much different from
what' s happening in the United States.
The second treatment involves Conrad Moffat
Black, a man Media magazine profiled in its
inaugural edition. The National Post has also been
in the news of late because of the shenanigans of
the paper's former owner, a.k.a. Lord Black of
Crossharbour. In her analysis of Black's continued
fall from grace and his legacy in Canadian
journalism, Gillian Steward concludes that
"since Black was at the helm of the National Post
for only three years, he didn't really have time to
leave an enduring legacy. When he abandoned
ship in 2001 and left his loyal oarsmen to fend for
themselves, it became a much weaker newspaper."
That's an opinion, along with many others
expressed in this edition of Media, that some
would — perhaps should — throw open for
discussion. So we encourage your feedback, as it is
healthy for us to be debating these issues.
Feel free to tell us what you think about the
pitfalls of political coverage, Lord Black or
anything else you read by contacting me at:
[email protected]
Singled out for special treatment
steps. The first is to ask the Information
Commissioner to investigate the apparently
systemic mishandling of media requests. It isn't
necessary to prove that your own request has been
mishandled. Section 30(1)(f) of the ATIA gives
the Information Commissioner a broad authority
to investigate patterns of behavior that appear to
undermine rights established by the ATIA. The
remedy would likely be a ban on the practice of
divulging the occupational category of requesters,
either within departments or through CAIRS.
A second step: Ask the Privacy Commissioner
to investigate whether the disclosure of
occupational information is tantamount to the
disclosure of a requester's identity, given the
circumstances and other knowledge available to
government officials. The Privacy Commissioner
also has broad authority to investigate such
complaints. Unless government agencies can
show a legitimate interest that is served by the
disclosure of occupational data, the remedy might
again be a ban on the distribution of such
information.
Journalists who use the Act can also monitor
how departments handle their requests. ATIA
requests can include a request for the "ATIPflow
activity sheet," an internal document that shows
which offices within the department were
involved in the processing of a request. Journalists
could also request the "processing file" for an
earlier request, as well as "communications
products" prepared in response to that request.
Over time, federal agencies have developed
sophisticated — and sometimes opaque —
procedures for minimizing the disruptive
potential of the Access to Information Act.
Elsewhere, I've argued that federal officials have
created an "internal law" on access, under which
media requests for information routinely receive
second-class treatment. The media community
needs to develop more sophisticated techniques
for dealing with these threats to openness.
Alasdair Roberts, a Canadian specialist on access
to information, is an associate professor of public
administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse
University. His Web address is www.aroberts.us.
Journalists rely too heavily on spinmeisters
Spin Cycle, by Howard Kurtz; The Media
Monopoly, by Ben Bagdikian; News: The Politics of
Illusion, by Lance Bennett; Rich Media, Poor
Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious
Times, by Robert W. McChesney; Reporters and
Officials: The Organization and Politics of
Newsmaking, by Leon Sigal; Power and Betrayal in
the Canadian Media, by David Taras ; Democracy's
Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News, by
James Winter.
Websites: Centre for Media and Democracy
(www.prwatch.org); Spinwatch, the C e n t r e ' s
equivalent in the U.K. (http://www.spinwatch.org/)
What’s in a name?
expectations for academic integrity in their
course outlines.
Fostering an ethical culture is one part of the
equation, Treviño says, but the other part is
appropriately responding to ethical breaches. It
is important to respect the rights of the accused
violator, she says, because "the person who
engaged in the alleged misconduct has a right to
procedural justice — a carefully conducted
investigation and careful consideration of the
facts. But, if misconduct is found, it is in the best
interest of the rest of the school community to
deal with that misconduct with sanctions that
are appropriate to the seriousness of the
violation, including dismissal if the violation is
egregious."
Colleges that have been most effective in
combating dishonesty have students sitting on
committees investigating ethical breaches by
their peers. Students rise to the challenge of
being fair but tough judges, and can be effective
educators on the importance of academic
integrity, according to McCabe and Pavela.
Although many news organizations have
statements of ethical conduct, many more do
not. Even so, as the research on academic
dishonesty shows, an arbitrary, demanding,
unsupportive and top-down environment — the
kind of newsroom that many reporters say they
work in — breeds contempt for whatever rules
are in place. And every time another Angèle
Yanor or Jayson Blair is exposed as a plagiarist or
a fabricator, the public's already considerable
contempt for our profession solidifies.
But if the experience on college campuses is
relevant for journalism, the way out is clear: the
crimes of unethical journalists must be recast as
not only individual moral failings, but also as an
opportunity for the entire system — publisher,
editors, journalists, personnel managers — to
interrogate its commitment to an ethical culture,
and to the expenses in time and money that will
support it.
Judith Ince graduated from Langara College's
journalism certificate program this spring. She
does freelance research, and writes on education
for The Tyee.
Breaking into the field
move up. “You either have it or you don't,” says
Woods.
He says most people get in through summer
hiring at CP, which takes six to 10 people out of a
couple of hundred applicants each year. Reporters
with lots of story ideas and the ability to execute
them are the ones who “make a good fit,” says
Woods.
Hanna attributes her success to a few simple
things. “I worked hard, met deadlines, always
returned phone calls, and remembered to say
'thank you' on the many occasions when sources
helped me. I was never afraid to state my mind
with confidence and conviction,” said Hanna.
“I became a writer because I had a vocation,
rather than a journalist pursuing a career
trajectory. Had I chosen the latter path, I would
have lived a very different life.”
This column is for answering your questions
about breaking into the field of journalism. Please
send your questions and/or ideas for the next issue
to Chris Richardson at [email protected]
Chris Richardson is a student representative in
the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Association of
Journalists. He is also an active member of the
organization Journalists for Human Rights. Chris is
a second-year journalism student at Ryerson
University's school of journalism.
LAST WORD
BY JOHN GUSHUE
Rethinking the human element
It may seem profane to say so, but sometimes
science-based journalism tries too hard
to be reader-friendly
've never met Brad Evenson, but I did read his
work … at least, that is, until the National Post
fired him.
This summer, the Post abruptly announced that
Evenson had engaged in that dark stain of the
craft, fabrication.
The Post, in a brief "note to readers,"
underscored that no names and comments from
the medical profession had been falsified.
Instead, Evenson appeared to have made up
ordinary people with various health conditions, or
at least taken actual comments he found online
and attributed them to sources that didn't exist.
I'm as rattled as anybody about fabrication and
plagiarism, but the Evenson affair led me to think
about another, and rather benign, element of
reporting that doesn't get discussed very much:
our preoccupation with finding ordinary people
for stories that involve science or research.
Here's a scenario I'm sure you've often seen, on
air, read in print or heard on the radio. The story
opens with a little colour, involving a person or a
family coping with a medical affliction, whether
common or rare.
Then follows a clip or quote, often of a generic
nature; for example, "The pain can be intense."
Then comes a bridge — a line of text or voiceover
that takes us to what the story is really about,
namely the facts of some research that has just
been published in a particular journal.
It's a template, and I'm familiar with it, because
I've used it plenty of times over the years, in print
and broadcast.
A critical look will often show that the ordinary
person at the beginning of the piece bears no
direct connection to the research itself, apart from
being a mere hook.
Several years ago, I made my living writing
primarily about medical research. You get to
know, or at least know of, other writers in the
same area, and that's how I came to watch for
Evenson's byline.
I found that Evenson had a pointed style, one
that obviously caught his editors' eyes, as his work
often got splashy play in the Post.
The Post did not reveal which of Evenson's
stories contained fabrications. Nor do we know
why he was tempted, as it has been suggested, to
lift comments he had read in Internet chatrooms
and the like, and attribute them to sources he
concocted.
I
Let me make this point clear: I am not in any
way condoning plagiarism or fabrication. It's a
poor excuse to say workloads and deadlines can
lead you to invent your own sources.
But the episode made me wonder why we feel
such an obligation to add that human element to
If we do
choose to cover
some new research,
let's not be afraid
to let the story
stand on its own
from time to
time. If an
ordinary soul
fits into the
storytelling for
all the best
journalistic
reasons,
go for it.
a story, even when it so often proves to be mere
window dressing.
Much of the medical research that gets
reported comes under embargo, through services
such as EurekAlert. The deal is that journalists are
given access to research a few days before it's
published, or enough time to read the material
and arrange interviews with the authors and
others who can comment on it.
For years, editors and producers have been
pushing reporters to find human faces to make
their stories more accessible. This makes a lot of
sense, especially when stories are dry or
institutional.
But how often have I seen medical reports in
which the supposed human element is nothing
more than an unrelated ornament to the story, or
a storytelling technique that contributes
surprisingly little? I have to confess I've been as
guilty of doing this as anyone.
I think part of this is a fear of letting scientists
speak for themselves, or at least by themselves. It
may also have to do with our anxieties about
tackling material we're not sure we understand.
Let's also consider just how much time and
effort go into finding these sorts of elements, as
unconnected as they often turn out to be. I'm sure
I'm not the only one who has sent out a blanket
e-mail to friends and coworkers, appealing for
help to find someone, anyone, to talk about a
given illness. (Please see Don Gibb’s column on
page 6)
Don't get me wrong: I'm not arguing that we
should avoid putting lay people in health
journalism. Far from it. In fact, much of the best
medical journalism is done well beyond the lab,
and involves the human drama of sickness and
health.
The thing is, those kinds of stories are usually
unconnected to the process pieces that are
generated by research published in scientific
journals or presented at conferences. Instead,
these stories require a completely different
approach, in which the subject, truly, is the
subject.
My point is that if we do choose to cover some
new research, let's not be afraid to let the story
stand on its own from time to time. If an ordinary
soul fits into the storytelling for all the best
journalistic reasons, go for it.
But searching for a human face that adds
nothing of journalistic value is a sign that
something ails the story.
John Gushue lives in St. John's, and works for
CBC. He has written medical and health stories
over the last 15 years. Gushue is also a member of
Media magazine's board of directors.
OBC
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Fall 2004 - Canadian Association of Journalists

Transcription

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