WHY DID ASHLEY SMITH DIE? - Canadian Association of Journalists

Transcription

MEDIA
T H E C A N A D I A N A S S O C I AT I O N O F J O U R N A L I S T S • W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 • V O L U M E 1 5 , N U M B E R O N E
MEDIA
WINTER 2012 • VOLUME 15, NUMBER ONE
A PUBLICATION OF
THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS
EDITOR
David McKie
EDIOTORIAL BOARD
Chris Cobb
Catherine Ford
Michelle MacAfee
Lindsay Crysler
John Gushue
Rob Cribb
Rob Washburn
WHY DID ASHLEY SMITH DIE?
CBC TELEVISION’S THE FIFTH ESTATE WANTED TO KNOW WHY FEDERAL PRISON
GUARDS STOOD BY WHILE SMITH STRANGLED HERSELF TO DEATH.
by Marie Caloz and Lynette Fortune
LEGAL ADVISOR
Peter Jacobsen, Bersenas
Jacobsen Chouest Thomson
Blackburn LL P
ADVERTISING SALES
David McKie
1-613-290-7380
ART DIRECTION and DESIGN
David McKie
CONTRIBUTORS
David McKie, Don Gibb, Éric Grenier,
Ken Gray, Fred Vallance-Jones, Glen
McGregor, Dean Jobb, Kelly Toughill,
Lucas Timmons, Simon Doyle, Stephen
J.A. Ward, Tina Pittaway, Steve Buist,
Bruce Cheadle, Jonathan Charlton,
Marie Caloz, Robert Cribb, Steve
Bonspeil, Scott Dippel
COVER PHOTO: Ashley Smith was a troubled teen who got bounced around from prison to prison. But when guards inexplicably stood
by while she took her own life in her cell, the CBC’s fifth estate began asking questions. The answers are troubling. At a time when
the system is bracing for more inmates due to the Conservative government’s new crime law, the Ashley Smith case shines a spotlight on the lack of services for treating mentally-ill inmates.
PHOTO AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE: The recent Ontario election re-ignited yet another debate about the use of polls. Some pollsters
had the three main party leaders -- Liberal leader and Premier, Dalton McGuinty, NDP leader Andrea Horwath, and Conservative
leader Tim Hudak -- either far apart, neck-and-neck or the NDP holding the balance of power.
MEDIA is published four times a year by the Canadian Association of Journalists. It is managed and edited independently of the CAJ
and its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the association.
2MEDIA
http://www.caj.ca/?p=391
MEDIA
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45 Update CAJ-award winner, Tina Pittaway, takes the risk out of transferring sick patients.
47 Review By David McKie - An updated media law book is a must-read.
Table of contents
CAJ AWARD WINNERS
15 Telling the award-winning story
COLUMNS
It takes vision, collaboration -- parking your ego at the door! By Don Gibb
6 First Word By David McKie - Celebrating some of the best of 2011.
17 Open newspaper category and the Don McGillivray Award for Investigative Journalism
7 Writer’s toolbox By Don Gibb - Obituaries are best written after face-to-face contact.
Mapping misery – The Hamilton Spectator
10 Opinion By Éric Grenier - Are some pollsters really “snake-oil” salespeople?
19 SCOOP category
The Pardon of Graham James - The Canadian Press
13 Social media By Ken Gray - The Sad Triumph of the Tweet.
21 CAJ/CNW Student Award of Excellence category
31 Data Journalism By Fred Vallance-Jones - There’s no reason to “lock” PDF image files.
Terminal Disease – University of King’s College Investigative Workshop
33 Mapping By Glen McGregor - There’s lots of data behind searchable, online interfaces.
23 OPEN TELEVISION (greater than 5 minutes) category
“OUT OF CONTROL” & “BEHIND THE WALL” : Ashley’s Story – the fifth estate
35 Fine Print By Dean Jobb - Responsible journalism is the best defence against libel.
25 PRINT FEATURE category
37 Behind the numbers By Kelly Toughill - A new course gives journalism the business.
The Outsiders – The Toronto Star
39 Net tips By Lucas Timmons - Learn Google’s Fusion tables in a few, easy steps.
27 OPEN RADIO NEWS/CURRENT AFFAIRS category
Power, Parties and the Paranoia at ENMAX – CBC Radio News – Calgary
41 The future of news By Simon Doyle - The CBC fends off critics while thinking digital.
29 COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER category
43 Ethics By Stephan J.A. Ward - You won’t believe the people calling themselves journalists.
3MEDIA
Eviction letters - The Eastern Door
WINTER 2012
4
FIRST WORD
Celebrating the best of 2011
A
2012
Call for Entries for
Canadian Journalists
The Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy is an award designed to further the
tradition of liberal journalism and commitment to social and economic justice
fostered by Joseph E. Atkinson, former publisher of The Toronto Star.
The Fellowship is open to experienced, full-time Canadian journalists in
print or broadcast media who have achieved some distinction in reporting on
policy issues.
It will be awarded for a one-year research project on a topical public policy
issue, culminating in the publication of results in a series of articles in the
Star, which the journalist is then free to develop into a book.
The Fellowship includes a stipend of $75,000. As well, a budget for research
expenses of up to $25,000 is also available. The research year begins on
September 1, 2012.
1. To be considered, all that is required is a THREE PAGE maximum
LETTER of INTENT, along with your curriculum vitae, that
summarizes your topic, its importance, brief outline of proposed
articles, and treatment/approach to be received by Monday,
January 16, 2012.
2. The Fellowship Committee will choose three to five Finalists who
will be invited to submit a full proposal for consideration for the 2012
Fellowship award. Each finalist will receive an honorarium for submitting
a proposal.
Please e-mail and send 4 copies of your Letter of Intent and CV to:
Christine Avery Nunez
Coordinator, Atkinson Fellowship Committee
The Atkinson Charitable Foundation
1 Yonge Street, Suite 702
Toronto, ON M5E 1E5
s we enter a new year, it’s worth pausing to acknowledge some of 2011’s best example of journalism.
Though there are many organizations that run contests, we’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at some of
the Canadian Association of Journalist’s (CAJ) award-winners, with a special nod to the story that also won this
year’s ultimate grand prize: The Michener Award. Some of the winners have kindly agreed peel back the veil to
tell us how they got the story, some of the obstacles they faced, and the impact there tales had. You should find
these accounts truly inspiring.
These journalists have told stories about everything such as the inexplicable circumstances surrounding the
death of Ashley Smith, to the unique project in Hamilton that saw that city’s daily newspaper team up with an
epidemiologist to explain that where Hamiltonians live will determine their level of poverty, probability of sickness and timeliness of death. The series was aptly named, Mapping misery, and took the CAJ’s top prize.
Our writing coach, Don Gibb, kicks off Media’s awards coverage with some tips for writing the investigative piece. When asking
him to write the special column, I pointed out that sometimes reading, listening to, or watching an investigative piece is akin to eating
porridge: good for you, but not necessarily tasty. Though the analogy may offend porridge fans, the idea shouldn’t. I know from personal
experience that stories suffer because we spend too much of our time in research mode, and too little time in storytelling mode. As a
matter of fact, we should be in storytelling mode all the time. These award-winning stories, I must say, are well-told. Don’s friendly
reminder, as not only a writing coach, but an experienced judge, is something that we should all keep in mind.
What all these examples show is that in an age of social media and short attention spans that the Ottawa Citizen’s Ken Gray writes
about, there are ways to do the kind of work that makes a difference. And as we’ve seen with issues such as the crisis in the Northern
Ontario First Nation of Attawapiskat has demonstrated, we need more journalism that can force politicians and bureaucrats to tackle
long-standing problems: in this case, the Third World conditions of many First Nations communities.
But before you think I’m being too critical of social media, people didn’t start paying attention to the housing crisis in the Northern
Ontario reserve until NDP MP, Charlie Angus, posted video footage of the poor housing conditions on Youtube. You can read more about
how the crisis came to national attention in an excellent Globe and Mail piece, entitled called Marketing the Aboriginal housing crisis.
So here’s the challenge for the New Year. Let’s think out-side-the-box like the Hamilton Spectator did and tackle some of the larger,
long-standing problems that inevitably fade from the headlines: Third World conditions on reserves and poor neighborhoods in cities;
the growing gap between rich and poor; the seemingly shrinking pool of jobs that pay a decent, living wage; the dysfunctional state of
politics, especially at the federal level; and a health care system in need of urgent and innovative fixes.
Admittedly, this is a long-and-far-from-exhaustive list that could keep us busy forever.
But let’s just start with 2012.
Have a safe holiday and we’ll catch up in the New Year.
David McKie, Editor
For more exclusive content, stories, interviews
about journalism turn to Media by visiting
http://www.caj.ca/?cat=4
You can also find issues that go all the way back to
416-869-4584 telephone
416-865-3619 fax
[email protected]
the spring of 1998
AtkinsonStar_11110_8403
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WINTER 2012
6
DEATH OUTSIDE THE WIRE: An Oct. 29 suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, caused casualties among
Afghan civilians and NATO soldiers, including the death
Canadian soldier, Master Cpl. Byron Greff (inset). In the
main photograph, soldiers move people away from the
blast site.
Writer’s Toolbox
The final word on a life lived
Obituraries are best written after face-to-face contact
PHOTO CREDIT: Muhammed Muheisen/AP
Don Gibb
He
saw the news clipping in my
hand and wanted to know if it
was the story my newspaper had run when
his son died a year earlier on Victoria Day
weekend.
It was, and I had to agree when he said
it was a stark and impersonal four paragraphs.
The usual: A 21-year-old London man
was killed when his motorcycle …
Dead is …
“Why didn’t a reporter call me?” he
asked.
“Would you have wanted to talk to a reporter?” I replied, somewhat surprised by
his question.
“I don’t know, but I would have liked
the call.”
What brought me to his house was an
assignment to write a Victoria Day weekend piece reminding readers to be careful
on the highways. The first long weekend of
the year always produced too many deaths
on the road.
So he had agreed to talk to me as a father
who had lost a family member in a highway
accident the previous May 23 weekend.
His comment – “why didn’t a reporter
call me?” -- stuck with me and changed
my approach to tackling one of the most
dreaded assignments in a newsroom: Get a
“pickup” -- a picture of a victim of a car
accident, murder, drowning or any other
catastrophe.
Granted, social media have made the
task easier today because they allow reporters to avoid knocking on someone’s door or
phoning the family of a victim. However, it
is a poor substitute, in my view, for visiting
and talking to those closest to the victim.
Still, the practice of doing “pickups” has
always divided newsrooms and reporters
into two camps – those who believe it is an
invasion of privacy and exploits people at
a time when they are most vulnerable and
those who believe it is part of our job. But,
no matter how tough the assignment, we
need to look at why we should do it.
Too often we settle for the bare facts of
a police report, choosing to ignore – largely
because of our own discomfort – that the
people we are writing about had lives.
The collapse of the World Trade Center
towers was about people who were loved,
who had achievements and who had future
goals. The New York Times wrote 200-word
profiles on more than 2,400 individuals
who died on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s important
to note that their families were willing to
share their stories.
Titled Portraits of Grief, Times reporters
spent more than a year compiling the profiles. Days after the attack, the profiles began filling one or more pages daily for four
months. Not every family chose to talk and
sometimes survivors of a victim could not
be found. But of the roughly 2,800 people
who died, 86 per cent of their families willingly spoke to reporters.
If families chose not to participate,
Times reporters respected their wishes and
did not go elsewhere to pursue a profile.
Like Sept. 11, the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building 16
years earlier was about people. “You have
to put a face on something like this,” the
news director of a local TV station said at
the time. “Otherwise, what you would see
is a bombed building with a lot of steel and
concrete. That’s not what this story is about
at all. It’s about the people who were affected. There is no way to comprehend the
toll of human life if you cannot connect
with another person.” In Oklahoma, 168
people were killed in the explosion.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whether for political or personal reasons, imposed a policy of privacy in April 2006 for
Canada’s returning dead from Afghanistan.
It took only a month for his government to
overturn this policy after the father of one
dead soldier, Capt. Nicola Goddard, used
his eulogy to criticize Harper for barring
media from covering repatriation ceremonies. “I would like to think Nicola died to
protect our freedoms, not to restrict them
… Ours has been a very public grief.”
From that point on, families decided
whether to allow media access.
A former reporter once told me when she
was sent to do a pickup, she simply drove
around in a cab, then returned to the office
to tell her editor the family declined. Others
have chosen to face the wrath of their editors by saying “no” to doing a pickup.
I once asked two young reporters to tell
me about their first pickup. There were
common threads in their responses. The
fact their stories involved the death of children made the experience even worse for
them.
“A lot of people think a reporter must be
heartless to knock on a door and be so uncaring as to ask for a picture. Nothing can
be father from the truth,” one wrote.
“It’s like writing a tribute to someone
and sometimes it’s appreciated by the family. I guess that’s how I reconcile with the
intrusion I make,” said the other.
In both cases, the families made a point
of expressing their appreciation. A brother,
who had been leery of his sister talking to
a reporter, thanked the reporter for writing
about his dead, six-year-old nephew.
Of course, others prefer their privacy
or need more time before talking to a reporter. But families should not be shunned
simply because reporters find the task of
approaching them too uncomfortable or, in
their minds, intrusive.
Contined on page eight
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Continued from page seven
It is an invasion of privacy when families say it is an invasion of privacy – not
when reporters draw their own conclusions. Families have as much right to speak
– if they so choose -- as police officers,
ambulance attendants, coroners and others
who are part of an accident or crime scene.
After my interview with the father of
the 21-year-old motorcycle accident victim, I was more at ease with the pickup
assignment. I would tell family members I
thought I owed it to them to call because I
was writing a story about their loved one. I
was turned down, but not often. Reporters
should not deny them the right to decide.
Our goal is to get all sides of a story –
and tragedy is no different.
In the days before social media,
Rick Mofina, a former crime reporter at
The Calgary Herald and now a celebrated crime novel writer, would write or fax
letters to survivors, asking to speak to them
about the death of a family member. Sometimes he even asked police detachments to
deliver his requests.
Cynics will conclude that he was simply
trying to get a story. But Mofina wanted his
stories to be a reflection of a person’s life
beyond the clinical notes of a police officer. He was writing about a life lived rather
than an accident where one car was northbound and the other car was southbound
when they collided on a local highway.
In one example, if Mofina hadn’t contacted the family for a picture and comment, his story would have sounded like
so many others involving the death of
a 19-year-old and his father when their
truck crashed and burned on a trip to British
Columbia.
Instead, he wrote this:
Calgary teen Bryan Schmidt dreamed
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of serving as a missionary – but he died
never knowing his church had chosen him
for the work.
Just after he left on the Vancouver trip,
his bishop called to say Schmidt had received his mission.
Later, the newspaper’s ombudsman
wrote: What lifted Mofina’s story of the
accident out of the ordinary “was his description of the lives and ambitions of the
victims.”
Schmidt’s brother wrote a letter thanking Mofina for his handling of the story.
“The Schmidt families are so very grateful
that you approached us and wrote a story
of the tragic loss of two members of our
family … We all have more gentle and kind
feelings toward the media … You are telling the community this is what we lost.”
Mofina told the ombudsman that in
writing such stories, “you aim to find the
most human qualities about the person you
are writing about, the things that people
will remember them for. Because what you
are doing, what you should be doing, is
celebrating their life through their death.”
Everyone deserves this opportunity.
Suggestions on how to handle grief assignments.
It is best to meet face-to-face on such a
sensitive assignment. If this is not practical, send an e-mail to see if someone will
talk to you by phone. An e-mail gives you
a chance to explain what you are doing and
why someone should talk to you.
We owe it to survivors to contact them.
They have as much right to comment as
those who investigate deaths. They also
have the right to decline comment, but reporters at least need to give them the opportunity. I found an easy introduction: “My
name is and I’m calling from. I thought I
owed it to you to call because I’m writing a
story about …”
Stay away from the hackneyed “how do
you feel” question. How do you think? The
answer will be predictable.
Make sure the tone of your questions fits
this occasion. Respect family members and
give them time to answer. Don’t bombard
them with your questions.
Don’t tell a person you “know how they
feel.” You don’t and your attempt to offer
such support doesn’t help.
Do not harass.
If you are turned down at the door, leave
your business card or phone number in the
mailbox or attached to the door in case
someone has a change of heart.
Find your comfort zone – a way to
make you feel better about doing one of the
newsroom’s least popular assignments.
Use social networks, but not as your
sole source. They should not become an
excuse to avoid contact with survivors in
person or by phone.
Try not to get emotionally involved. It
will interfere with asking the right questions to tell a person’s story. Not that you
should be detached. Show empathy, but
concentrate on the details of a person’s life
and death.
Your story is the final word on a person’s life. It likely will end up in a religious
book or scrapbook. Make sure you get everything right, especially a person’s name.
Should you cry later, consider it normal. Lots of reporters have done this after
covering and writing about tragedy.
Don Gibb was a reporter and city editor at The
London Free Press from 1968-88. He taught reporting at Ryerson’s School of Journalism from
1988 until his retirement in 2008. He can be
reached at [email protected]
8
Opinion
Are some pollsters “snake-oil” salespeople?
Eric Grenier says we must discuss our use of polls – especially during elections
P
Visit online for details about
how to apply and enter.
michenerawards.ca
9MEDIA
olls are an ever-present part of the
political landscape, and with good
reason.
They provide one of the few times in
an election campaign when journalists can
point to a sort of truth. Whether a party
leader is scoring hits or a platform plank is
failing to resonate with voters can only be
assessed using scanty anecdotal evidence
or gut-feelings without the help of polls.
And readers clearly like polls. Nothing
sets the blogosphere on fire like new numbers, particularly if the results are unexpected. Often articles on polls are the most
popular stories on a news outlet’s website.
Reader comments come fast and furious.
But as popular as polls are, they are not
without their critics. Criticizing individual
polls, polling methodologies, or the entire
industry is a Canadian sport. The arguments are often valid, but too often naysayers are ready to throw the baby out with the
bath water.
The Ontario election began with a heat-
WINTER 2012
ed exchange between some of the country’s major pollsters. After a few surveys
released early in the campaign showed
some conflicting results, Darrell Bricker
and John Wright from Ipsos-Reid wrote
an op-ed to Ontario’s media, warning them
of “hucksters selling methodological
snake-oil.”
In particular, Ipsos-Reid was targeting
IVR polling by Forum Research and online polling from Abacus Data. Ironically,
on election night Ipsos-Reid had the worst
results of the pollsters reporting in the final
days. The best two pollsters? Forum Research and Abacus Data. Generally speaking, the other firms using IVR, online, and
telephone pollsters clustered together with
decent results as well.
Elections are important times for pollsters. It is their one opportunity to show
clients that their methods work. There is
no way to definitively prove that customers prefer one kind of toothpaste to another,
but an election gives pollsters the chance to
A RACE BETWEEN THREE: Ontario Liberal
Leader Dalton McGuinty (left), NDP Leader
Andrea Horwath and PC Leader Tim Hudak
participated in the Leaders Debate in Toronto on Tuesday, September 27, 2011. At
one point during the campaign, the race
was deemed too close to call.
PHOTO CREDIT/THE CANADIAN PRESS/
Frank Gunn
put up their estimates against real results.
There is very little money to be made
selling political polls to the media, and
there are many cases of pollsters offering
their data free of charge. It is an opportunity for pollsters to promote themselves
and their business. Though Ipsos-Reid’s
concerns were based in fact, it should also
come as no surprise that pollsters can be
merciless competitors.
Continued on page 11
10
Continued from page ten
We’ve... seen a disturbing trend... in which
questionable polls find their way into an outlet’s coverage
because they appear to match an editorial line, or present a
counter-intuitive perspective. After all, if a poll is wrong
it’s easy to throw the pollster under the bus and walk away
with clean hands.
-- Darrell Bricker and John Wright, Evaluating the Polls: an Open Letter
to Ontario’s media outlets
As the Ontario campaign ended, most
polls reported a wide margin between the
Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives, with the New Democrats poised to
make large gains. While the race was close
between Liberal leader, Dalton McGuinty,
and Conservative leader, Tim Hudak, the
talk was of minority government. When
that gap widened, most were expecting
the Liberals to cruise to their third majority. This left many surprised when the
Tories held in tight and kept the Liberals to
a minority.
Though almost every single poll underestimated Tory support, for the most part
the polls were within their respective margins of error. Whether it was because of
greater motivation, party organization, or
the “shy Tory” effect, the Progressive Conservative vote came out in greater numbers
than expected. The difference between the
general population and the voting population will always be tricky to nail down, particularly when turnout is so low.
Polling discrepancies
In the other provinces that held elections
in October 2011, no one firm or methodology stood out above the rest. An online
poll nailed Manitoba’s election. Telephone
polls did better in Prince Edward Island and
Newfoundland and Labrador. As should be
expected when working with margins of er-
ror and probability, the results of the various firms resembled more of scatter-shot
than a sniper’s bullet.
But despite the uncertainty that exists
in polling by design, focus during the Ontario campaign quickly turned to why the
polls were different, rather than what they
had in common. Most of the discrepancies
between individual polls could be chalked
up to the margin of error, as in many cases
the results overlapped when that margin
was taken into account. But differences
in voting intentions numbers, rather than
the differences in polling methods and,
most importantly, polling dates were rarely
considered. Two polls taken over different
days can tell different stories and still be
accurate.
Instead, trends that can be discerned
over several polls by the same firm should
be the focus. Whether a party is at 31% or
34% is less important than the fact that it
used to be over 40%. Polls consistent in
showing leads for one party in a particular region of the country or province and
consistency on views of the leaders’ performances and promises across different polls
are useful as well.
And when the polls are contradictory,
it is perhaps more a sign of a volatile, undecided electorate than one pollster selling
“snake-oil” and another incontrovertible
truth. Recognition that a poll may simply
When the polls are contradictory, it is perhaps more a
sign of a volatile, undecided electorate than one pollster
selling “snake-oil”.
be an outlier, and that outliers happen, may
also be worth pointing out.
Directly, polls seem to have little influence on a campaign. More than threequarters of Canadians told EKOS Research
that polls during the federal election had no
influence on their voting decisions, while
less than 1–in-10 said polls had a major
impact. But how a poll can indirectly influence an election is up for debate. Undoubtedly, a party that is soaring in the polls will
receive different attention than a party that
is floundering.
Democracy is not just the sum of millions of individual opinions. We discuss
politics with our friends and family. We
elect representatives to speak for communities. The choices made in an election are
just as much a collective decision as they
are individual. In that sense polling is a
useful extra piece of information for engaged voters.
In a political world where communications are becoming increasingly controlled
and centrally coordinated, 19 times out of
20 polls speak truth to power. Love them or
hate them, they are here to stay.
Éric
Grenier
is
the
author
of
ThreeHundredEight.com (http://www.threehundredeight.com/ ), a site about Canadian politics
and polling. He is also writes for The Globe and
Mail, The Huffington Post and is a columnist
for The Hill Times.
Related links
Pollsters did better – but still missed
mark – in Ontario (Éric Grenier)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/
politics/ontario-election/pollsters-didbetter-but-still-missed-mark-in-ontario/article2194382/
Ipsos-Reid op-ed piece
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/
pressrelease.aspx?id=5336
The 41st Election: A Polling Retrospective (Ekos Research)
http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/41st_election.pdf
Forum Research Inc. (billed as Canada’s largest survey firm)
http://www.forumresearch.com/home.
asp
Abacus Data Inc.
http://abacusdata.ca/
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12
Opinion
The Sad Triumph Of The Tweet
Perhaps people favor the medium because they have
little to say beyond 140 characters
The Internet was supposed to bring us to a nirvana where depth,
space and immediacy would meet… but for now and the foreseeable
future, the web has brought us mountains of the superficial.
AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Gay Talese arrives to a special screening of Gonzo: The Life and Work of
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson on Wednesday, June 25,
2008, in New York.
By Ken Gray
G
ay Talese doesn’t tweet, doesn’t
Facebook, doesn’t blog
Talese, now 79, is one of the journalism’s great writers. He walks among the
icons of New Journalism — Tom Wolfe,
Truman Capote, Joe McGinniss, Joe
Eszterhas, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton — who in the 1960s and ’70s brought
the novel to the newspaper, formulating
the writing style that helped shape modern
feature writing.
Talese believes in taking time with his
writing and, in doing so, puts his readers
inside fascinating situations. His article
“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” was dubbed
the finest story Esquire magazine ever published by the magazine’s editors.
In his 2010 anthology, The Silent Season of a Hero: The Sports Writing of Gay
Talese, he relates how the best writers,
people of depth and knowledge, were having trouble getting published because, even
as early as the mid-’90s, the media were
primarily interested in celebrity, scandals and the story of the minute. Imagine
Talese’s dismay as these publications struggle
today simply to survive in a world overtaken by social media rather than well-crafted
writing.
Talese had been commissioned in 1996
to write Ali in Havana, by the Nation, the
story of Muhammad Ali’s trip to meet
Fidel Castro and the piece the writer believes is his greatest. But the Nation didn’t
like the opening of two men bartering
mentary. The man whom Wolfe called the
inventor of New Journalism feared he was
over the hill. His old home, Esquire, wanted to take out the first part of the article, but
eventually relented, burying the entire story
in the back of the magazine. Subsequently
an anthology of the best non-fiction writing
of the year published the work, raising its
profile and reputation markedly.
But the writing is on the wall for the
long-form printed word. The Association of
American Publishers reported a 34.4-percent year-over-year decline in adult print
book sales in February 2011. It is reaching
the point where book publishers’ core business might be in jeopardy. And the plight
of traditional media has been documented
repeatedly. Where is the place for the great
writers such as Talese in the new digital
world where fitting a thought in a tweet is
the new art form? Books? Magazines? Will
society need to subsidize the media so that
great writing and journalism can survive
just as governments pour grants into the
orchestras of the world to preserve the live
performance of Mozart and Beethoven?
Perhaps part of the answer is blogging.
It is cheap and the space is unlimited.
Blogging doesn’t need to be subsidized.
However, the U.S. Pew Research Center
reported a 50-per-cent decline in blogging
among youngsters from 2006 to 2009. Still
one wonders if that is because blogging is
work, unlike tweeting, or the writers have
little about which to write. In fact, blog-
blogging, in 2011 what we’re really seeing is the rebirth of the blog as something
new: focused, small, long-form and with a
dedicated (if reduced) community.” Serious journalists such as the New York Times’
Paul Krugman make great use of it.
Nevertheless, good information and art
have yet to handle the online world.
Now many journalists, in an effort to fill
acres of space tweeting, blogging and storywriting, have reverted to covering press releases and news conferences from the very
people two decades ago they would have
been investigating. They don’t have time
to do otherwise. The public agenda is now
controlled by the politicians, businessmen,
and the public-relations types because economic circumstances and ambitious new
media platforms have left a lack of shoes
on the ground to do the tough-slogging of
hard-news reporting. Perhaps we tweet because we know little more than 140 characters of information. New media have
brought us unlimited space, but space for
what? The superficial and the orchestrated
have triumphed over good information.
“Get rid of your laptops,” Talese told an
audience of Indiana University students recently. “Go out and see the world. What I
do is actually old-fashioned journalism. It’s
being there. It’s hanging out, doing serious
research.”
Easy for Talese to say when media
managers — through circumstances beyond their control — are trying to stretch
New media have brought us unlimited space, but space for
what? The superficial and the orchestrated have triumphed
over good information.
cigars and took a pass. So did the New
Yorker, GQ, Sports Illustrated, New York
Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and Com-
ging might turn into a new kind of journalism. As Navneet Alang says in the online
publication TECHi: “far from the death of
resources in times of economic uncertainty
13MEDIA
PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Kramer/ Associated Press
Related links
Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
Techi
http://www.techi.com/
Small Change: Why the revolution will
not be tweeted
By Malcolm Gladwell
h t t p : / / w w w. n e w y o r k e r. c o m /
reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_
gladwell
The New Digital Divide
By Susan P. Crawford
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/
opinion/sunday/internet-access-and-the-new-divide.html?_
r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all
The Natural
A review of Gay Talese’s collection of
sportswriting called “The Silent Season of
a Hero,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/
books/review/Marino-t.html
Continued from page 13
and staggering electronic competition. Instead, information is tweeting, Facebooking and quick hits. And without good information, society suffers.
The Internet was supposed to bring us to
a nirvana where depth, space and immediacy would meet. And it might do that over
time, but for now and the foreseeable fu-
WINTER 2012
ture, the web has brought us mountains of
the superficial.
No wonder Gay Talese doesn’t tweet.
Ken Gray is a former member of the Citizen editorial board. He writes a daily blog,
The Bulldog, on ottawacitizen.com. His
column appears on Wednesdays. E-mail:
[email protected]. This article appeared in the Ottawa Citizen.
14
SOMALIA-AFFAIR CHARGES DROPPED: In September 2008, the
Canadian Forces announced that they had dismissed charges
against former Saskatchewan soldier, Clayton Matchee. He
was accused of brutally torturing and killing a Somali teenager, Shidane Arone, in 1993 during a deployment of Canadian
peacekeepers in Somalia.
CAJ Award Winners Tips for telling the award-winning story
PHOTO CREDIT/Canada.com
It takes vision, collaboration, parking your ego at the
door – and hard work
By Don Gibb
I
t was a terrific piece of journalism.
Winner of a National Newspaper
Award. Winner of several Canadian Association of Journalists’ awards. Winner of a
B’nai B’rith award.
But what I remember most about Peter
Cheney’s Canada … Canada story was the
collaboration between writer and editor.
The story showed the dark underside
of Canada’s airborne regiment assigned
to peacekeeping duties in Somalia back in
the 1990s. In graphic detail, Cheney documented the rituals, hazings and racism of
the regiment – background that led into
the murder of a Somali teenager, Shidane
Arone, who had snuck into an abandoned
compound next to the Canadian base.
Cheney’s editor, Greg Smith, once recounted his experiences in working with
Cheney. He even accompanied him to CFB
Trenton and CFB Petawawa. His hope,
Smith said, was to cement a writer-editor
trust that was building between them.
It clearly worked. In a recent interview,
Cheney said Smith brought focus and crosschecking to a project that had tremendous
legal pitfalls. “He helped me navigate my
mass of notes and material.”
Cheney felt privileged to have an editor
work with him on a continuous basis. Rare,
indeed. In fact, Cheney said it has been the
only time in his career an editor has been
dedicated entirely to working on only one
project.
For his part, Smith said Cheney shaped
and wrote the piece while he did what all
editors should do – refine it. The biggest
hurdle as deadline approached was excising about 150 inches of copy.
Creative minds collided, but together
15
– and with the help of others such as page
designers and art directors -- they produced
a story well researched, well written, well
edited and well presented. Cheney said,
``We created something together.”
So what helped create or produce such
award-winning journalism? It began with
a passionate writer and a dedicated editor.
Smith said the keys were writer-editor trust
and respect, being given the time necessary
to follow a major project from beginning to
end, and commitment from management.
Cheney said institutional support was
crucial. He had to get his managing editor’s
authorization to work on the project for as
long as it took. “Because you have been
given the institutional go-ahead, you also
have tremendous pressure on you.”
The pressure for writers or broadcasters
is to engage readers through their skillful
use of the right tools. Their job is to tell
stories. Clearly. Succinctly. Interestingly.
In his book On Writing Well, William
“But the final advantage is the same one
that applies in every other competitive
venture. If you would like to write better
than everyone else, you have to want to
write better than everybody else. You must
take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft.”
It takes hard work to keep an idea on
track. It takes hard work to keep the energy
level and commitment high.
Sometimes some of the so-called big
projects fall flat, in spite of a journalist’s
impressive legwork. David McKie, editor
of Media magazine and an award-winning
CBC journalist, says such stories are “a
little like eating oatmeal: good for you, but
not necessarily very tasty.”
Unless editors, producers and writers
work together at every stage of a project,
oatmeal stories are inevitable. Perhaps not
everyone bought into the idea or committed
themselves to the project in the first place.
Perhaps the writer is afraid, too proud, or
Editors need to listen, encourage,
consult, foster creativity... and offer
direction without taking control.
Zinsser reminds us that writing is incredibly hard work, but it has no new discoveries to spring upon us. New technologies
can help us, but we’re still all working with
the same words and the same principles.
“Where, then, is the edge? Ninety per
cent of the answer lies in the hard work of
mastering the tools. Add a few points for
such natural gifts as a good ear, a sense of
rhythm and a feeling for words.
too confused to ask for help. Perhaps editors are juggling too many assignments.
Perhaps dwindling resources in newsrooms
make failure of such projects inevitable.
In too many cases, writers meet with
an editor or producer at the beginning of
the process and not again until they turn in
the “finished product.” What’s turned in –
MEDIA
Continued from page 15
oatmeal? – likely runs or goes on air because no one wants to invest more time to
make the story better.
And sometimes, as one reporter confided, time is the enemy. Editors want the
story now. However, as part of collaboration and trust, writers and editors need to
negotiate the time required to produce a
worthy piece of journalism rather than having to constantly feed the beast.
This was initially an issue with
Canada … Canada. “We need the story
today. That happens all the time,” Cheney
said. “Again and again, you’ll start out a
story that has all this promise and the editor
will just throw cold water on it. They’ll say
they don’t have room for it or they need it
for next week. Such negative energy is a
reason people quit on such big stories.”
The commitment of editors or producers – as well as top managers -- is crucial
to a project’s success. They might be called
upon to sell or defend the story when it’s
time to present it for publication or airing.
There might be outside forces trying to kill
the story; there might be other editors or
producers who don’t care about the story
or don’t have enough air time or space to
devote to it. So the story editor or producer
is the front-line advocate for the writer.
Writers need editors who will fight for
them. They also need editors who are brutally honest when they struggle with when
to stop interviewing, when to offer a clearer explanation, when to cut, where to cut,
when to add.
Journalistic excellence is achieved when
WINTER 2012
creativity is allowed to flourish. Writers
need to be inspired and pushed to achieve
their best, but a good editor knows when to
step back and allow the writer to write.
Collaboration also requires editors to
put rank aside and writers to park their
egos. Difficult, but not impossible if the
goal is to produce the best story possible.
Writing excellence or award-winning
journalism means removing the obstacles
that writers often claim hinder their creativity. They should be encouraged to take risks
without fear of reprimand. This doesn’t
mean getting their organizations and bosses
into needless legal, ethical or accuracy issues. It means growing and maturing their
own writing … with permission.
Editors need to listen, encourage, consult, foster creativity, provide clear and
constructive criticism, and offer direction
without taking control. They also need to
be diplomatic, win trust and respect, be
honest and be fair.
Reporters need to listen, accept constructive criticism, leave their egos at the
door, check in at various stages during a
project, and ask for feedback. They need
to avoid taking things personally. And they
must show commitment to and passion for
the assignment.
In an environment where journalists
have often joked that as communicators,
we do a lousy job of communicating among
ourselves, these are tough goals to achieve.
But when you witness a fine piece of
journalism -- and a writer thanking his or
her editors – the task is not impossible.
While working on Canada … Canada,
Smith said Cheney allowed him access to
his notes, drafts and even his thoughts. “In
my experience,” Smith said, “few writers
have had the confidence in themselves to
allow an editor to be privy to their innermost thoughts regarding a story.”
Reporting and writing skills are obviously essential to create award-winning
journalism. But writers also need a track record for being able to produce such stories,
Cheney said, if the newspaper or broadcast
outlet is going to invest big money for a big
story. And they need to show editors where
a story might go, constantly developing an
outline to show how they plan to achieve
their goal.
Journalistic excellence relies on a dynamic combination of elements that include trust, respect, time to do a proper job,
and a commitment by everyone from the
writer to managers.
Don Gibb has been a judge of media writing competitions for 20 years. His judging has
included categories in the National Newspaper
Awards, the Ontario Newspaper Awards and the
former Thomson Newspaper awards. He is a
visiting writing coach at The Globe and Mail.
Don can be reached at [email protected]
Related links
“Canada... Canada”, Toronto Star, July
10, 1994
Click here to download Peter Chainy’s
story.
16
CAJ Award Winner BAD BLOOD: Cameron Smith, 4, on left, with his brother
Owen, 6, no longer showed elevated levels of lead in his
blood. A public health study found that less than 1 per
cent of children in a portion of Hamilton’s lower city have
significant levels of lead in their blood.
Don McGillivray Award/Open Newspaper
The Hamilton Spectator - Code Red - Steve Buist
PHOTO CREDIT: Kaz Novak/The Hamilton Spectator
Code Red was a unique project that merged science with journalism. A finding? Residents in some
parts of the city live in Third World conditions
C
ode Red represents a landmark
project in Canadian journalism,
combining a scientific approach to investigative journalism with crisp narrative
writing.
Code Red began as a seven-day, 22page series in the Hamilton Spectator, with
an additional significant-sized interactive
web component. Additional components
focusing on education and the connections
between voter turnout and poverty were
published in June and October, 2010.
The idea for Code Red was first born
back in 2006 when Spectator editors turned
to investigative reporter Steve Buist to seek
advice on conducting environmental testing in Hamilton. Buist’s academic background is in science, having earned a human biology degree from the University of
Guelph. After thinking about the issue for
some time, Buist decided it might be a better project to look at where people live and
whether that has an impact on their health.
The project was a collaboration between
Buist and Neil Johnston, a professor in McMaster University’s Department of Medicine that dates back to January 2007.
An application was made to the Canadian Institute for Health Information and St.
Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton for access
to emergency room visit data and hospital
admission records for the period April 1,
2006 to March 31, 2008 for every person
listing Hamilton as a home address. The
records are rendered anonymous prior to
release and do not include personal information that would allow the identities of
individual patients to be revealed.
Nearly 400,000 records were turned
over to Johnston, a health research faculty
member at McMaster University, who is
also associated with the Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health, St. Joseph’s
Healthcare. He also runs the Ontario Physician Human Resources Data Centre for the
17
CODE RED: Neil Johnston, left, and Steve Buist take part in an open forum about the
findings of The Hamilton Spectator’s Code Red series.
PHOTO CREDIT: Cathie Coward/The Hamilton Spectator
province’s health ministry.
An application was also made to Service Ontario for access to more than
12,000 death records from 2006 to 2008,
which were used to calculate average age
at death by neighbourhood.
Johnston agreed to collaborate with the
Spectator on a pro bono basis for this proj-
Each health record includes the age and
gender of the patient, the date of the emergency room or hospital visit, the length of
stay, the precise medical codings for every
procedure performed and a geographic
marker.
Because of the geographic markers,
the anonymized health records could then
Code Red involved mapping the health
of Hamilton down to the level
of neighbourhoods.
ect. He maintained exclusive control of the
health records and the raw data throughout
the project.
be grouped into larger geographic areas,
called census tracts, which are used by Statistics Canada to measure a wide variety
MEDIA
of social, economic and health variables
within urban regions of Canada.
There are 135 census tracts in the amalgamated city of Hamilton, and they match
up well with the city’s traditional neighbourhoods. Because of data suppression,
small population sizes or missing data, five
census tracts could not be used for mapping purposes. Johnston assembled the
raw data into spreadsheets that examined a
number of health variables by census tract.
The spreadsheets were then turned over to
Buist, who converted the health information into specific tables and rankings for
each census tract. He was also responsible
for producing the spreadsheets and census
tract rankings for the social and economic
variables pulled from Statistics Canada
2006 census data.
Selected health and socioeconomic
tracts into quintiles. Each quintile represents 20
per cent of the
130 census tracts,
from highest to
lowest for the
variable
being
measured.
The maps, rankings and rates were then
analyzed to examine the connections that
exist between health and socioeconomic
variables in Hamilton’s neighbourhoods.
Code Red involved mapping the health
of Hamilton down to the level of neighbourhoods. They also produced maps
showing various socioeconomic outcomes at the census tract level to show
the connections that exist between health
and socioeconomic factors. As you may
know, there are strong connections between health and wealth, even if those
connections aren’t fully understood.
The maps produced are quite striking in
appearance and the connections shown are
stronger than even Buist and Johnston had
hoped to see. What’s most notable -- and
discouraging -- are the huge variations that
exist across the city from best to worst. It’s
It’s not an exaggeration to say that they
discovered some parts of the city with
Third World health conditions.
rankings were then forwarded to Patrick
DeLuca, a mapping and statistics expert in
McMaster’s Centre for Spatial Analysis.
He also agreed to collaborate for free.
DeLuca created a total of 26 main maps
- 12 for health variables, 12 for socioeconomic variables, one death statistics map
and one overall map, which provided a
cumulative ranking for each census tract
based on the 24 health and socioeconomic
variables.
The maps distribute the 130 census
WINTER 2012
not an exaggeration to say that they discovered some parts of the city with Third
World health conditions and Third World
life spans. From a journalism standpoint, The
Spectator is tremendously excited about
this project and its potential impact on the
community for years to come. The Spectator believes this is groundbreaking work.
No other newspaper has studied the health
of a city down to the neighbourhood level.
Readers are able to look at the maps and
say “I live here, what is the health of my
neighbourhood?” There is also a massive
Internet component to this project. Academics and health care experts have been
encouraged to use the information to come
up with their own projects and ideas for solutions. In response to the Code Red series
and its findings, the City of Hamilton actually created a new staff position to implement neighbourhood initiatives that will
help improve conditions in some of the
poorest-performing neighbourhoods.
From a public policy and community
outreach standpoint, Code Red is viewed as
the most important journalism project ever
conceived and carried out at The Spectator. Nearly 14 months after the series first
started, Buist is still giving public talks on
the Code Red series, including the Crossing the 49th: Investigative Journalism on
Both Sides of the Border, a unique investigative journalism conference co-hosted by
the U.S.-based Investigative Reporters and
Editors and the Canadian Association of
Journalists’ Educational Foundation.
Related Links
Code Red
http://www.thespec.com/topic/codered
The smallest babies face the
biggest risks
http://www.thespec.com/news/local/
article/630263--the-smallest-babiesface-the-biggest-risks
Born addicted is a tough way
to start life
http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/630072--born-addicted-isa-tough-way-to-start-life
Study quiets alarm over lead
http://www.thespec.com/news/
local/article/599972--study-quietsalarm-over-lead
18
CAJ Award Winner Scoop
The Canadian Press - The Pardon of Graham James - Jim Bronskill
and Bruce Cheadle
STILL GUILTY: Graham James was
tracked down by CBC News in Guadalajara, Mexico, in early 2010, months
before he was arrested on the latest
charges.
Disgraced hockey coach Graham James is still making headlines. Bruce Cheadle explains how
they got a story that took the country -- and his victims -- by surprise
I
t may have been the Canadian buzz
story of the year -- one that dominated water-cooler conversations when it
broke and continues to resonate today.
Acting on a tip, The Canadian Press
confirmed that former hockey coach
Graham James had been quietly pardoned
three years earlier.
An initial piece, swiftly composed over
the Easter weekend, topped newscasts,
commanded front-page space, dominated
websites and set call-in show phones ring-
story, including a first-person account from
a new alleged victim.
One story pointed out how easy it was
for convicted sex offenders to elude scrutiny by changing their names. Another
looked at flaws in the criminal screening
system used by volunteer groups. Finally,
we pointed out that the government’s own
best-practice guide for screening volunteers lacked key information.
The revelation of James’s pardon
prompted federal legislation to reform the
PHOTO CREDIT: CBC
of crimes than others, given that ‘certain
types of criminals cannot be rehabilitated.’
Maybe so. If he can show that the system
of pardons is putting children at risk from
sex offenders or others, he should strengthen that system,” said an April editorial in
the Globe and Mail.
“But surely the government knew that
sex offenders are already being treated as
a separate class of ex-convicts, and are being given pardons. The government’s expressions of horror and disgust are a touch
.... it illustrated an uncomfortable truism that journalism can
have a life of its own: once a piece is published, it can be a catalyst
for change that may -- or may not -- be in the public interest.
ing. The news triggered a national debate
about the pardon system, highlighting the
fact virtually all offenders – including serial sex offenders facing high-profile allegations of unresolved crimes -- are pardoned
if they meet basic criteria.
But that was really just the beginning of
the story. And it illustrated an uncomfortable truism that journalism can have a life
of its own: once a piece is published, it can
be a catalyst for change that may -- or may
not -- be in the public interest.
We did four, follow-up pieces over the
next week that exposed other aspects of the
19
system. The changes, which are now in
place, require the parole board to assess
the behaviour of pardon applicants from
the time of their conviction to ensure granting a pardon would not “bring the administration of justice into disrepute.” It also
sparked more debate about the best means
of protecting society from predators. Along
the way, many have questioned whether
the government was simply exploiting the
case.
“Should sex offenders be singled out
further? Mr. Toews said he wants pardons
to be more difficult to obtain for some types
melodramatic. The Graham James case
should not be such a surprise.”
Indeed, the government put forward a
second bill to eliminate pardon eligibility for all Canadians who have committed
more than three crimes, not just sex offenders. It also scraps the term pardon, replacing it with the phrase “record suspension”
with the aim of better reflecting the measure’s purpose.
The legislation has drawn fierce opposition from critics who point out how easy it
was for offenders to rack up multiple convictions, making them forever ineligible to
MEDIA
The changes also set in motion a push by the Parole Board of Canada
to increase the cost of a pardon application to $631 from $150.
receive a pardon.
But federal moves to tighten the system
struck a chord with some.
“A pardon system in which barely one
per cent of applicants are rejected is clearly
flawed,” the National Post wrote in May
2010. “Applicants should have to justify
the benefit they seek, and prove that they
can stay out of trouble for than a mere three
to five years.
Our pardon system needs to work in the
interest of all Canadians, not just offenders. Parliament should pass this legislation
as an important first step toward achieving
that goal.”
Advocates argue that pardons are a public good that benefit society as a whole -not just reformed offenders – by promoting
continued, law-abiding behaviour. Statistics showing how few pardons are revoked
due to new criminal charges tend to bear
this out.
The changes also set in motion a push
by the Parole Board of Canada to increase
the cost of a pardon application to $631
from $150. The increase was intended to
help cover the additional cost of scrutinizing pardon applications in detail to ensure
offenders met the stiff new criteria. Just
months earlier, the fee had tripled from $50
to $150.
All of this touched off a flurry of protest
as those who work with people coming out
of prison argued it would simply price a
pardon out of reach for many, seriously endangering efforts to turn their lives around.
Bruce Cheadle is a reporter with The
Canadian Press
Postscript: Graham James recently
pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two
players he coached in the 1980s and early 1990s, including former NHL players,
Theoren Fleury.
Related Links
Ex-coach Graham James pardoned for
sex abuse that rocked NHL
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
news/national/ex-coach-grahamjames-pardoned-for-sex-abusethat-rocked-nhl/article1522464/
singlepage/#articlecontent
Globe editorial
The pardon of Graham James
news/opinions/editorials/the-pardonof-graham-james/article1524279/
Graham James pleads guilty to sex
assaults
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/
story/2011/12/07/mb-graham-jamescourt-winnipeg.html
For more exclusive content, stories, interviews about journalism turn
to Media by visiting
You can also find issues that go all the way back to the spring of 1998
WINTER 2012
20
CAJ Award Winner CHRONICLING HER ADDICTION: Brenda
Hurlburt points to a page in the three-ring
binder from her treatment program that
helped break her 15-year VLT addiction.
CAJ/CNW Student Award of Excellence
University of King’s College Investigative Workshop
PHOTO CREDIT/University of King’s College Investigative Workshop
Terminal Disease
Eleven of Nova Scotia’s First Nations have agreements
that allow gambling. Most of the people wiling away their time in
front of the VLT machines are non-natives from nearby communities.
Gambling is big business, bringing in tens of millions of dollars. But
the prosperity comes at a cost, which is what former King’s student
Jonathan Charlton and his award-winning team discovered.
T
he first of many, many meetings
consisted of me, instructor Fred
Vallance-Jones and deputy editor Alan Hale
cramped around a small table at a Halifax
coffee shop. We were trying to make some
sense of the task before us.
Based on Fred’s initial research, we decided to investigate Nova Scotia’s video
lottery terminals.
Fred’s information showed VLTs accounted for the province’s biggest slice of
gambling revenue. Most of the gamblers
were VLT users and their addiction was
feeding the government’s coffers.
This source of government revenue
seemed at odds with its own gambling
strategy, which is to reduce dependency. So
we saw another angle: the failure or lack of
will to solve the problem.
We also knew the gaming rules were
far more lax on native reserves, which had
their own deals with the province. So
more stories emerged: Nova Scotia’s stab
at tackling gambling addiction was undermined by gamblers simply driving a few
minutes to poorly regulated reserves. And
the gambling was having a negative effect
in some First Nations communities.
But without people, stories about rules,
21
regulations and red tape are boring. We
needed gambling addicts.
In slightly more than six weeks, we
sifted through the mountains of paperwork,
scoped out the reserves, conducted the interviews, built a website, figured out multimedia content, learned how the machines
worked.
Though we had a lot of ground to cover,
we couldn’t have everyone running off in
their own directions.
So we made three groups: One would
tackle the story on the human toll of gambling addiction; the second would trace the
history of the government regulations; and
the third would cover the impact of VLTs
on reserves. The remaining members of the
team would have specialized assignments
such as writing, copy-writing and building
the website.
We started, in classic investigative form,
from the outside in, interviewing people at
the outskirts of the story. We learned how
the machines work, met the people who
interact with them the most, and learned
more about the rules than even the government. At the end, we planned to interview
the premier and head lottery officials.
Part of that meant actually going out of
the school, to the courthouse for records,
to Cape Breton and Yarmouth to interview
former addicts and to a legion hall to examine and film a VLT in action.
An absolutely critical part of our story
was going to the reserves. We researched
what we could, then cold-called businesses
to find out if they had VLTs. There was no
complete list available.
What we found
We made several trips to reserves, with
no idea of what we would find, but recognizing the need to see them and their VLTs
for ourselves. The Indian Brook reserve
shocked us. Just about every gas station or
convenience store has a back room with at
least a half dozen VLTs, sometimes many
more. The reserve was in obviously bad
shape. Sources there, while not always
agreeing to go on the record, told us about
more people we should talk to, which led
to new leads.
In one case a reserve was located right
within the Halifax metro area in Cole
Harbour. This satellite reserve of the
Millbrook First nation has a building
dedicated to VLTs, with more of those machines than gas pumps.
MEDIA
Related links
There had been stories about VLTs and
gambling addiction before, but they lacked
the depth of our stories.
Owing to their proximity to large urban populations and highways, Millbrook,
and the Membertou First Nation in Sydney
have prospered using VLT money, something that is not the case in Indian Brook
and many other reserves without such geographic advantages. This fact led to our
“Tale of Two Reserves” story.
Lessons learned
There are some clear lessons to take
away for other journalists who want to do
something like this.
Assess how much time and effort the
project will take at an early stage and make
sure your school or publication will commit
to it. There could be travel and freedom-ofinformation costs. There will be setbacks
and dead ends. Not every lead will pan out;
not every interview or document will have
the answers you need.
A project like ours will take weeks,
probably months from the kernel of the idea
to the finished product. Ideally journalists
should have the leeway to work solely on
the project without daily reporting respon-
WINTER 2011
sibilities, at least for a few days per week.
And ideally many journalists would be
working together. We had the luxury of being the largest dedicated news team in the
province, focused on one story.
There had been stories about VLTs
and gambling addiction before, but they
lacked the depth of our stories. Before we
published, the true nature of the problem
seemed hidden. Only lottery officials, researchers and gambling addicts knew the
extent of the problem.
When hours in meetings, gallons of
coffee, a few road trips, many interviews,
hundreds of pages of documents and weeks
of rolling copy coalesced into a remarkable story, we felt incredible satisfaction.
Our work was published online as “Nova
Scotia’s Billion Dollar Gamble” and in the
Coast newspaper as “Terminal Disease.”
Jonathan Charlton, a graduate of the
one-year Bachelor of Journalism program,
was the deputy editor of the King’s 2010
investigative project. He is now a reporter
and interim editor at The Eastern Graphic
newspaper based in Montague, P.E.I.
VLTs: Nova Scotia’s Billion Dollar
Gamble
http://gambling.kingsjournalism.com/
Doing Business with the Devil: Land,
Sovereignty, and Corporate Partnerships in Membertou Inc. (The Atlantic
Institute for Market Studies)
http://www.aims.ca/site/media/aims/
membertou.pdf
Gambling mania: Lessons from the
Manitoba experience (the British
Journal of Psychology)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
doi/10.1111/j.1754-7121.1996.
tb00116.x/abstract
Electronic gaming machines: are they
the ‘crack-cocaine’ of gambling? (the
British Journal of Psychology)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2005.00962.x/
abstract
2007 Adult Gambling Prevalence
Study (government of Nova Scotia)
http://www.gov.ns.ca/hpp/publications/Adult_Gambling_Report.pdf
The Alcohol and Gaming Division
of Service Nova Scotia
http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/access/
22
CAJ Award Winner DIED TO SOON: Ashley Smith
was 14 when she was sentenced to
one month in juvenile detention. She
ended up spending most of the next
four years in the system, before killing herself in solitary confinement
when she was 19.
PHOTO CREDIT: Canadian Press
Open Television (Greater than five minutes)
“OUT OF CONTROL” & “BEHIND THE WALL” - the fifth estate
fifth estate producers, Marie Caloz and Lynette Fortune explain
how the CBC Television show dug for the truth behind the death
of Ashley Smith, a troubled New Brunswick teen who choked
herself to death in a prison cell -- while guards watched!
From the first to the last day of her short
life, Ashley Smith pushed Canada’s justice
system to its limits. She was a difficult child
locked up in juvenile detention for throwing crab apples at a postman at the age of
15. The troubled teenager finally took her
life in federal prison after spending more
than three years in a solitary confinement
cell. Seven guards looked on, under orders
not to intervene, as she choked herself to
death with a strip of her prison gown. Our
investigation into what happened to Ashley
Smith opened the door to a world few Canadians know about behind the walls of our
federal prisons.
We wanted to find out how it all could
have gone so terribly wrong inside one of
Canada’s finest penal facilities. Smith was
just one of the estimated 25 percent of federal inmates who suffer from a mental illness. Her death was only one of a growing
number of disturbing deaths in Canada’s
correctional system. Smith was neither a
killer nor a hardened criminal. We wanted to know how her 30-day sentence had
stretched to more than three years. Why
had a mentally ill teenager been locked in
solitary confinement without the barest of
necessities for years on end? Why was she
transferred across Canada from prison to
prison more than 17 times in the last year
of her life? Why had there never been any
meaningful mental health treatment inside
prison psychiatric facilities?
In the months after Ashley died, Correctional Service Canada – CSC – conducted an internal inquiry to try to answer
some of these questions. Prison authorities concluded nothing could have been
done to save Smith’s life. CSC refused to
23
make public any of the internal investigations, documents or videotapes pertaining
to Smith’s case. The fifth estate tried to
obtain these records when they were filed
as court exhibits after Smith’s guards were
charged with criminal negligence in her
death. When those charges were dropped,
the court refused to release evidence. We
appealed the ruling, and pursued our own
investigation.
Without access to Ashley’s prison file,
we developed sources inside Canada’s
prison system. We used New Brunswick’s
Freedom of Information and Protection of
Privacy Act to obtain prison records and
cell video documenting Ashley’s treatment
in the juvenile facilities where she began to
serve her sentence. Our first documentary
cidents of self-harm by prisoners and use of
force by correctional officers had increased
dramatically since Smith’s death. After
Out of Control was televised, we focused
our investigation on the treatment of other
mentally ill prisoners in federal prisons.
Prison walls don’t just keep prisoners
in, they’re also good at keeping information from coming out. But it turned out the
people who work inside federal penitentiaries were also troubled by Ashley Smith’s
death.
We convinced several guards and
mental health workers to break the
code of silence and talk to us. In
exclusive interviews, they painted
a disturbing picture of how poorly
Canada’s
penal
system
‘treats’
The precedent set by the fifth estate’s case
has made it possible for other journalists to
obtain previously restricted… court exhibits.
on Ashley Smith, Out of Control aired on
January 8,2010. It made public for the first
time chilling video showing Smith being
pepper sprayed, tasered and bound for hours
at a time in a full body restraint they called
The Wrap. Shortly after he appeared in our
broadcast, Canada’s correctional investigator -- Howard Sapers -- issued a public
report questioning the deaths of
several inmates in the custody of
Correctional Service Canada.
He also revealed that the number of in-
mentally ill inmates.
These
revelations
became
the
foundation
of
our
second
documentary – Behind the Wall on November 12, 2010.
Success in court
By November, 2010, the fifth estate’s judicial appeal on the right to obtain the Ashley Smith court exhibits had finally made
its way up to Ontario’s Court of Appeal.
Smith’s mother strongly supported our bid
MEDIA
Ashley Smith has become a symbol of our justice system’s inability
to humanely treat the mentally ill... The last chapter of her story has
yet to be told.
to make prison video and documents associated with her daughter’s death public.
Just days before Behind the Wall was
scheduled to air, the judicial panel issued
their landmark ruling. All along Correctional Service Canada had maintained that
an open justice system merely entitles the
media to be present and report on what is
said in court, not to broadcast exhibits filed
in a case.
The court’s unanimous decision set
aside arguments put forward by Corrections Canada and ruled that media have
the right to unfettered access to all exhibits before the court. As a result, the court
released excerpts of federal prison footage
recorded by Ashley Smith’s guards to the
fifth estate.
The video segments show Smith being
repeatedly subdued by guards, peppersprayed, restrained and confined in inhumane conditions. The video included the
dramatic final hour of Ashley’s life in a
Kitchener segregation cell. Guards videotaped while Smith strangled herself to
death, unable to intervene because they had
been ordered not to go into her cell until
she stopped breathing.
Our second installment
Behind the Wall looked beyond the
prison gates and revealed secrets locked
behind cell doors. In the wake of the fifth
estate’s investigation, the scope of a pending inquest into Smith’s death was widened beyond the last 13 weeks of her life
to examine her treatment over the elevenWINTER 2012
and-a-half months she spent in other federal penitentiaries, including the Regional
Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon that was
featured in our story. Another direct impact
of our investigation has been in the courtroom. Journalists are frequently and summarily denied access to court exhibits. The
precedent set by the fifth estate’s case has
made it possible for other journalists to obtain previously restricted evidence.
Access to exhibits can only be denied
if there is strong evidence it would cause
a serious risk to the administration of justice and if the benefits of denying access
outweigh interests such as freedom of expression. We now have another legal tool
to hold government and other organizations
and individuals accountable.
Prisons were built to uphold the law.
More than three years after her death,
Ashley Smith has become a symbol of our
justice system’s inability to humanely treat
the mentally ill and Corrections Canada’s
unwillingness to hold itself publically accountable for Smith’s death. The last chapter of her story has yet to be told. The long
anticipated inquest into Ashley Smith’s
death was halted when CSC demanded the
coroner restrict the media’s access to prison
video exhibits. Lawyers for the CBC and
other media organizations are making motions at the inquest arguing against limitations on our ability to report on a public
proceeding. “At the end of the day, if this
is to be a public hearing,” Julian Falconer,
the lawyer for the Smith family said to
Postmedia News outside coroners court,
“(CSC has) to be willing to fully air what
they did to Ashley Smith. This is all about
them hiding from what they did to Ashley
Smith… This is all about, at the end of the
day, them denying responsibility.”
Marie Caloz and Lynette Fortune are producers
with the fifth estate.
Editor’s note: the fifth estate’s coverage of the Ashley Smith story garnered the
Governor General’s Michener award last
June. The Michener Award is presented annually for impact journalism.
Postscript: The Ontario coroner’s office shut down the inquest into Ashley
Smith’s death in September. A new one has
been ordered.
Related links
Out of Control
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/
out_of_control/
Behind the Wall
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/behindthewall/
Ashley Smith inquest shut down
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newbrunswick/story/2011/09/30/tor-ashleysmith-inquest.html
CBC’s the fifth estate -Winner of
the 2010 Michener Award
http://www.michenerawards.ca/english/picgroups2010/cbc.htm
24
CAJ Award Winner Print Feature
SUPPORTING A DREAM: Olga and Anatoly Garilov live in
Chekhov, an hour outside of Moscow. They have suffered
financial strain at the expense of putting their son Artem
through hockey, but want nothing more than for him to
succeed at the sport. “We want Artem to follow his dream,”
Olga says.
The Outsiders - The Toronto Star
PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Cribb/Toronto Star
Robert Cribb explains how his idea went from
interesting feature to a tale with the universal
themes of hope, despair – and corruption
S
mall town kids’ hockey isn’t generally fertile ground for stories about
international intrigue.
And that’s certainly not what I was looking for when I discovered aunique junior
hockey team based in Shelburne, Ontario.
The hook was simple enough: The team,
comprised almost entirely of Russian teens
and early 20-somethings, was, by anyone’s
estimation, the first foreign hockey team
ever based on Canadian soil.
The novelty of it justified a weekend
feature and little more – or so I thought.
Then, I visited the town, spent time
with the Russian players, spoke with local
families who billeted them and the town’s
hockey organization officials who viewed
it all with a wary gaze.
And a totally different story emerged.
It would take several months, numerous
trips to Shelburne, near daily contact with
sources there and visits to Moscow and St.
Petersburg to tell it.
Giving dreams a chance
The Shelburne Red Wings are the brainchild of an influential Russian businessman
and hockey devotee who had a unique idea:
To give young Russian hockey players
with hopes of making the National Hockey
League a chance to get training and experience in the one place they believe their
dreams could be made real: Canada.
Strict Hockey Canada rules dramatically limiting the number of foreign juniors
who can play here effectively keep out all
but a tiny handful of the European players.
So the Red Wings and the renegade
league in which they play created a loophole: Existing outside the control and
sanctioning of Hockey Canada, they
demolished any limitations on foreign
imports.
In the Red Wings’ inaugural season last
year, 18 young Russians paid more than
$20,000 each to spend the year playing
hockey in the small town, hoping to improve their game and catch a scout’s eye.
I spent dozens of hours interviewing the
young Russians about their single-minded
hockey aspirations, their homesickness and
the sacrifices some of their families made
to send them here.
Only because I spent so much time in
Shelburne was I able to uncover the story’s
backbone -- that Hockey Canada didn’t
want the Russian Red Wings or its “outlaw” league to exist at all. Anyone in the
community -- which lives and breathes
hockey -- who got involved with the team
was banned from participating in any
Hockey Canada program. Even a 10-yearold waterboy was threatened. The fear was
tearing the town of Shelburne apart.
Those revelations instantly transformed
the story from a report on a novel hockey
idea to a more character-driven exploration
of universal themes such as hope, resentment and the limitlessness of parents’ need
to support their children.
In Moscow and St. Petersburg the families of several players opened up about their
hopes for their sons, the hardships they’ve
endured to give them a chance, and their
views of Canada and our national pastime.
Further research there dug into the ageless problem of corruption in the country’s
hockey system that gives players willing to
engage in bribery and under-the-table payouts to coaches improved prospects over
those with more talent.
In all, the Red Wings provided a remarkable prism through which a complex array
of international and sporting issues -- and
FLYING WING: Defenceman Maxim Prikhodchenko, right, throws his 6-foot-5
body around in the Shelburne Red Wings home opener against Bradford. The
Wings won the game 7-6.
PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Russell/Toronto Star
with their dramatic human impact -- could
be viewed in a unique context.
Readers in Canada responded by
the thousands, most accusing Hockey
Canada’s policy of being misguided and
“unCanadian.”
For the first time ever, Hockey Canada
agreed to attend a public town hall called
by the mayor of Shelburne to explain
the policy, concede its shortcomings and
acknowledge changes could come.
Meanwhile, we discovered the federal government was quietly investigating
whether Hockey Canada’s policy is anticompetitive.
Most heartwarming, perhaps, was the
response of readers whose financial donations poured in to cover the outstanding bills of Artem Gavrilov, a 19-year-old
whose family invested the bulk of their
savings to get him to Canada.
Thousands of dollars in donations from
across Ontario and as far
away as Chicago helped
the Russian teen stay in
Shelburne to chase his
dream.
“My life has been
changed,” he said in the
aftermath. “Canada has
been too kind to me and my family.”
Robert Cribb is an award-winning investigative reporter at the Toronto Star.
Cribb is past president of the Canadian
Association of Journalists, current president of the CAJ Educational Foundation,
a lecturer at Ryerson University’s School
of Journalism and co-author of Digging
Deeper: A Canadian Reporter’s Research
Guide Second Edition (Oxford University
Press). He is on a Massey Journalism Fellowship to study at the University of Toronto this year.
Related links
Young Russians chase hockey
dream in small-town Ontario
http://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/article/901645
The Shelburne Red Wings photo
gallery
http://www.thestar.com/fpLarge/
photo/901489
Star reporter wins 4th national
investigative award
http://www.thestar.com/news/
article/991746--star-reporter-wins-
OFF-ICE WORKOUTS: Right winger Artem Gavrilov works out
at the World Hockey Centre in Shelburne. Garilov and his family (pictured above) are struggling financially to keep him playing hockey in Canada.
PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Russell/Toronto Star
25
MEDIA
WINTER 2012
26
CAJ Award Winner SECRET EARNINGS: Enmax CEO Gary Holden earned $2.7 million in base pay and bonuses in 2009,
CBC News learned.
Open Radio News/ Current Affairs
PHOTO CREDIT/CBC
Power, Parties and the Paranoia at ENMAX
CBC Radio News – Calgary
The CEO of Calgary’s electrical company made $2.7 million in 2009,
had a car and driver. The company paid for parties at his house with rock
stars. Scott Dippel wanted to know “what’s wrong with this picture?”
T
he lesson behind Power, Parties and
the Paranoia at ENMAX is: always
keep an open mind, look for more sources
and never second-guess where a tip might
lead.
This series of stories started from tips
from two sources. Someone phoned me
to complain that no one in the media was
interested in looking into what’s going on
at ENMAX, the City of Calgary’s electrical utility.
That same week, I was covering a forum
for the mayoral candidates in Calgary’s fall
election and a source said I should look
into two specific things: the hefty salary
of the CEO at ENMAX and why extravagant company parties with rock star entertainment were held at his house. Both elements intrigued me. I couldn’t recall any
media stories about either issue.
Some initial research revealed that although ENMAX CEO Gary Holden held
a high-profile job as the head of the City’s
largest asset, his salary was in fact not publicly known. A quick sampling of members of city council revealed a wide range
of guesses as to how well Holden was
paid. My research led me to interviews
with two Calgary aldermen who also sat on
ENMAX’s board of directors.
Neither one would confirm that Gary
Holden made more than $2 million a
year, substantial in his field, especially
when compared to other electrical industry CEO’s who ran bigger companies and
yet took home less money. However, one
of those elected officials was surprised
to learn that I knew that one of Holden’s
perks was a private car and driver, some-
27
thing the alderman didn’t even know as a
board member. He also said that perk was
inappropriate.
In time, I confirmed from well-placed
ENMAX insiders that, indeed, Holden
made more than $2 million in 2009. I
also confirmed from several sources that
Holden had thrown at least two parties at
his house where Canadian rock stars Gord
Downie of the Tragically Hip and Tom
Cochrane provided the entertainment.
For accountability and balance, it was
time to ask Holden about his salary and
why a company owned by Calgarians
should pay for these parties at his house.
ENMAX refused to make Holden available, but it did allow Cliff Fryers, the chair
of ENMAX’s board of directors, to do an
interview.
Faced with questions that showed I had
done the research, Fryers confirmed that
Holden made $2.7 million in 2009; that
ENMAX did provide a car and driver to its
CEO; and that the company had paid for
panels installed at the CEO’s house.
Fryers, a friend of former Reform Party
leader Preston Manning, seemed offended
by my questions. He couldn’t fathom why
any of this would be news, saying this was
stuff that only “people like you” would be
interested in. He said that as a public company, ENMAX couldn’t offer stock options
like its competitors so it had to fully compensate its top man. In fact, Fryers said if
Holden ever left, ENMAX would have to
pay even more to recruit a suitable replacement.
As for the parties, Fryers said they
were held at the CEO’s house to showcase
the energy-saving devices installed there.
Booking the rock stars to perform was
Holden’s idea to get people in the door.
The first story aired in the final weeks
of the municipal election campaign, generating considerable public debate. A business ethicist said the big salary and the parties were highly unusual for a city-owned
company.
Getting someone fired or in trouble was
never my goal. Revealing secrets and letting
Calgarians know what was going on in their
utility was my motivation.
the parties with rock stars. He said the parties were to promote energy-saving technologies like micro-generators and solar
A former TV anchor who was running
for mayor in Calgary candidly admitted
to me she had attended one of the parties
MEDIA
at Holden’s house -- although it was never
explained why a then-TV anchor was invited to an electricity industry party. The
candidate who actually won the mayoral
election, Naheed Nenshi, said the salaries,
perks and parties at ENMAX were out of
line. He declared that the utility has a governance problem.
The perils of deregulation
Over the past decade, I had told dozens of stories about problems in Alberta’s
electrical industry. After the provincial
government deregulated part of the industry, there were price spikes, blackouts and
scandals over new power lines and plants.
Those years of stories generated many
sources. Some of those people were helpful but some ENMAX insiders and a number of plain brown envelopes from sources
unknown generated more stories of great
public interest.
As the controversies mounted, Holden
refused all interviews. But he did respond
in another way: by issuing a rambling fivepage memo to his 1,600 staff. Of course,
someone at ENMAX leaked me a copy of
the memo. I did a story on that, too.
In the memo, he criticized the media
stories as “untruths”, defended his “handsome” salary and the parties, and even declared he knew who was leaking the information. (He was wrong, but I still don’t
know who he was blaming.) Further, he
vowed ENMAX would hunt down the
source of the leaks and stop them.
The new mayor was appalled, declaring there would be no witch hunts. Nenshi
also said: no more rock stars at company
events. Naturally that only encouraged
sources to tell me that Blue Rodeo was
booked months before for ENMAX’s company Christmas party. The booking was
promptly cancelled. Of course, other media outlets scrambled to catch up.
The stories kept coming. Holden, ENMAX’s board of directors were also earn-
WINTER 2012
ing whopping raises. The board chair made
more than the mayor – for working parttime! As that story broke in December
2010, Forbes magazine produced one of
its annual year-end Top-10 lists. Under the
category of Worst CEO Screw-ups of the
Year, Holden’s memo to his staff came in
at number five.
The former CEO of BP (whose company was responsible for the horrific Gulf of
Mexico oil spill), Tony Hayward, finished
atop the list. Some members of city council said “who cares what Forbes thinks?”
But others said ENMAX was making news
for all the wrong reasons.
A short time later, ENMAX did something it had never done before: issued a
full report on its executive compensation,
including details of signing bonuses for
new hires at the top. It has pledged to make
this an annual report, just like other major
corporations in Canada have been doing for
years.
My stories unleashed a new torrent of
leaks and yielded the perhaps the biggest
one in the public’s mind: that Holden had
accepted a free trip from software giant
SAP to attend the Monaco Grand Prix. I
knew that SAP had secured a multi-million
dollar contract from ENMAX for its new
billing system.
Some research showed that SAP had
a track record of flying business execs to
Monaco in past years, generating controversy in other countries.
Confronted with my knowledge of
Holden’s trip, SAP confirmed it all.
ENMAX’s code of ethics forbade such a
lavish gift. Its annual report indicated that
no exemptions from its code were requested and none was granted. When comment
was sought from Calgary’s new mayor,
Naheed Nenshi called ENMAX’s board
chair to discuss what he called a serious
situation.
My story went to air on our morning
news run in late January of 2010. Again,
our competitors scrambled to match it, but
they didn’t have the sources. All they could
do was talk about the CBC’s report and that
Mayor Nenshi was demanding answers.
Hours after my story first aired, ENMAX’s
board fired Holden.
Controversy continued as it was revealed weeks later that he was given more
than $5 million in severance and pension
payments as a result of being dismissed
without cause.
Getting someone fired or in trouble
was never my goal. Revealing secrets and
letting Calgarians know what was going
on in their utility was my motivation. But
then, I certainly had no way of knowing exactly what would happen when I first started calling people about those tips so many
months before.
Scott Dippel is a reporter with CBC News –
Calgary.
Related links
Enmax CEO paid $2.7M in 2009:
Perquisites include car and driver,
parties with rock stars
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/
story/2010/10/11/calgary-enmaxholden.html
Enmax CEO accepted free trip to
Monaco
http://www.cbc.ca/eyeopener/episode/2011/01/21/enmax-ceo-accepted-free-trip-to-monaco/
ENMAX announces President and
CEO Gary Holden’s departure
from the company (ENMAX news
release)
http://www.enmax.com/
Corporation/Media+Room/
Current+News+Releases/01_2011_
ceo.htm
ENMAX CEO Gary Holden quits
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/
Canada/Calgary/1305515274/
ID=1757767597
28
CAJ Award Winner Community Newspaper
STAYING PUT: Daryl Leclaire said he had nothing to hide and challenged the
Mohawk Council to prove that he was “breaking Mohawk Law” by living in the
community.
Eviction letters - The Eastern Door
PHOTO CREDIT: STEVE BONSPIEL/THE EASTERN DOOR
When Steve Bonspiel found out that certain members of his First
Nation community were facing eviction, he began writing stories
T
he Mohawk Council of Kahnawake
(MCK) was ready to show the door
through a series of eviction letters to nonNatives living on the reserve who had ‘no
ties’ to the community.
It was sold by the Council like this:
these people had no right to live here, they
do not have ties here and they are living in
houses that could be used by community
members, among other excuses.
The reality, however, was much different.
The non-Natives on the list were all in
relationships with community members,
Some individuals had children. Some
had been living in the community for 10 or
15 years. All had strong ties to Kahnawake
– a fact the Mohawk Council conveniently
left out.
We broke the story, first with an anonymous source who was too afraid to go public. Other stories followed.
One involved an ex-chief. He had handed out similar eviction letters in the 1980s.
Though the ex-chief changed views and
now supported the non-Natives, he was
still at target of the same expulsion rhetoric
he once delivered along with those eviction
letter did not live there, while others simply
refused to answer.
Out of 30-plus eviction notices handed
out, first by a chief, then with the help of a
bailiff, seven or eight responded, some of
whom actually left.
One story was that of a paraplegic man
whose girlfriend was there to help him do
everyday things: feed and bathe him to take
care of his needs.
She received a letter demanding that she
leave. The couple refused. Their defiance
made the front page of our newspaper.
One chief even told me off the record
While running these stories, we received threats, anonymously,
through email or by phone.
living in their own private homes.
They were deeply in love, they had become a part of the community and they
were not doing any harm by living here.
Some even had children, which the Council
initially denied.
The hard part was finding out who these
people were.
The list was not exactly made public, although a few of the MCK chiefs threatened
to do so, as a way to ‘force’ the non-Native
people living here to leave through community coercion (see mob rule).
Using my sources and process of elimination, I confirmed the identity of about
three-quarters of the 35 people who received eviction letters.
29
letters.
CBC Radio, thanks to an online subscription, picked up the story. It went national, and then international. Everyone
wanted to know more about the issues and
I acted as a conduit to the outside to make
sure their stories were heard.
Each person who received a letter,
which often had misspelled names attached
to them, was given 30 days to leave. This
was in early February, the dead of winter.
The MCK relied on anonymous phone
calls from community members with
names of non-Natives who were ‘living illegally’ in the community.
Many of the eviction letters were refuted because the person who was given the
that another chief said “I don’t give a shit
if he is in a wheelchair, she doesn’t belong
here.”
While running these stories, we received
threats, anonymously, through email or by
phone. The heat was constantly on us because of the strong stance we took through
our defiant editorial position firmly against
the eviction letters.
But we also received an amazing level
of support.
We felt we were giving a voice to those
who did not have one because of how
scared people are to talk about membership
in the community and who has the ‘right’ to
be a resident.
My wife started a weekly women’s
MEDIA
Our traditions... tell us that we should
adopt others, non-Natives as well as Natives,
and welcome those who are willing to
accept our ways.
group that met to deal with the issues of
membership, and a petition was presented
with over 140 names (there are 8000 people living here), demanding the MCK stop
its actions.
Meanwhile, an MCK anonymous source
(a chief who feared backlash) came forward to say that the chiefs were divided.
Some disagreed with the eviction letters.
This individual was attacked in the local media, at the MCK table, in the MCK’s
own television program -- at every turn.
But this individual was also lauded for
standing up to the Council, albeit it anonymously, and for speaking out against a
divisive decision taken by a Council that
lacked compassion.
The driving force behind the eviction
letters was another MCK chief, Carl Horn.
He pushed the envelope so hard that he received threats from people who called his
house at night and questioned his strongarm tactics, threatening him and his family.
They called him, and his family, including his children, out on the radio with thinly veiled threats and below-the-belt insults.
Finally, after almost 10 months of battling in the public and with a fairly smallbut-strong portion of the community fight-
WINTER 2012
ing the notices, the MCK relented and
stopped sending eviction notices.
The Council halted its activities, which
at one point included hiring an outside bailiff to deliver the letters. He was a nonNative guy. Oh, the irony!
When the announcement was made at
a community meeting that the Mohawk
Council was giving the issue over to the
community in the relatively new way of
forming laws – the Community DecisionMaking Process – at least two chiefs admitted that the letters were never enforceable,
and that any further efforts would not work.
Who would they get to enforce this
‘law’? The police? The answer was obvious – the MCK had no power to evict
anyone.
MCK Chief Carl Horn stepped down
from the membership portfolio a month
later, admitting defeat.
The only thing these eviction letters did
was to create a deeper divide within the
community.
The MCK was using ‘Mohawk Law’,
which was passed in the early 1980s. But
the problem was only 100 or so people
actually said yes to it back then at a community meeting that was stacked in favour
of the yes side. It was hardly indicative of
what the community thought as a whole.
It dictated that anyone residing in
Kahnawake needed to be a member of the
community, registered on the Kahnawake
Mohawk registry.
Our traditions however, tell us that we
should adopt others, non-Natives as well
as Natives, and welcome those who are
willing to accept our ways.
There are a large number of non-Natives
living in the community at present, some
of whom received exemptions by the MCK
because they could ‘no longer procreate’ or
they had been married with kids for so long
that throwing them out would cause more
of a backlash than anything. Almost all of
the chiefs said they had no intent on breaking up families.
In the end, the MCK learned the hard
way that although Mohawk Law is technically on the books, the intent of it is not
something many community members
would stand behind blindly.
Steve Bonspiel is the Editor/Publisher of
The Eastern Door newspaper, which serves
the community of Kahnawake, Quebec, to
the tune of roughly 2000 copies per week.
Steve and his wife Tracey Deer bought
the paper from former publisher Kenneth
Deer in July 2008.
Originally from Kanesatake Mohawk
Territory, Steve graduated from Kahnawake’s high school and is very familiar
with local issues, politics and personalities.
This investigative series was nominated
for a Michener award this year.
Related Links
Eviction Letters - stories in the series
30
Data journalism
WHO DONATED TO PARTY
THESE LEADERS? Liberal Leader
Nova Scotia’s chief electoral officer has gone
Stephen McNeil, New Democratic
Party Leader Darrell Dexter and thenPremier Rodney MacDonald, left to
right, debated each other days before
the June 2009 provincial election. The
province’s electoral officer is making
it harder for journalists to analyze political donations.
too far
There’s no reason to “lock” PDF image files
PHOTO CREDIT/THE CANADIAN PRESS/
Andrew Vaughan
Fred Vallance-Jones
O
ne of these years I’m going to reach
a point where I don’t feel it necessary to climb up on my hobby horse and
talk about all the ways governments are unwilling to walk the talk on open data. But
those same governments keep doing really
dumb things and I just can’t resist the temptation to climb on up. So here goes.
The latest absurd assault on the idea of
free and open data comes courtesy of the
chief electoral officer in Nova Scotia who
recently came up with the clever idea of
posting the annual list of donors to political parties in a kind of Fort Knox of PDF
image files.
As those who have followed my rants
know, PDF image files are essentially pictures of data that a user can print — if the
creator allows printing — or look at on the
screen. That’s about it, unless one uses an
OCR (optical character recognition) program to convert the images back to real
text, a somewhat involved and error-prone
process.
Now, Nova Scotia’s electoral officer has
taken it a step further, slapping rigid password security on the file so that even OCR
is impossible. She justified this in a statement to Nova Scotia blogger Parker Donham as necessary to protect privacy and
prevent “data mining.”
She wrote, “There is no requirement
under MPEDA to make it available in a
searchable or downloadable form for the
convenience of journalists or others. In
fact, the Nova Scotia government website privacy policy expressly forbids bulk
downloading of personal information from
31
a government website.”
MPEDA stands for the Members and
Public Employees Disclosure Act. It requires that the residential address of contributors be included as part of the annual
disclosure of contributors.
For a number of years, the full document has been posted as an ordinary PDF
that could be run through an extraction
program such as Able2extract to produce
an Excel file for further analysis. There
was no public outcry that I can recall. But
for the 2010 contributions, the electoral officer suddenly switched to posting the Fort
Knox file.
This particular file was particularly
clever in that it had images on top of images which made any attempt to get useful
text out of it extremely difficult, though not
impossible. One of Donham’s readers was
able to crack the file and Donham posted
it to his site. I myself discovered that if I
first extracted the images from the puff into
But while it’s wonderful that journalists,
hackers and others can cooperate to defeat
such tactics, it doesn’t change the fact that
a public official posting public information
mandated by law has gone to great lengths
to try to exert iron control over how people
can use it.
The electoral officer seems to be of the
opinion that allowing people to view the
files is enough. But without the ability to
sort, filter and map the donation information, most of the potential to understand
patterns in the data is lost.
It all reminds me of the practice of federal departments, highlighted again in the
2011 Newspapers Canada FOI audit (full
disclosure: I was lead researcher on that
project), of releasing data as image files
even if requested in electronic format.
But at least the federal practice has produced files that can be extracted to data
form, with some work. What Nova Scotia’s chief electoral officer has done is take
The Nova Scotia solution takes a flamethrower approach to privacy protection in
which all useful access has to be denied and
tough tomatoes to anyone who objects.
a folder, I could then perform OCR on the
images rather than on the whole document.
So workarounds could be found.
the practice to a new and more obnoxious
level.
But good on her, some might say. Home
MEDIA
addresses are rather personal, so why
should a journalist or other interested person be able to scoop up the addresses to
put to who knows what use? There is some
merit to that argument, notwithstanding the
fact that addresses have been available for
years to no apparent ill-effect.
But there would be a simple way of addressing it, such as in Ontario where donations posted online have the addresses
stripped away. Federally, postal codes of
contributors are available, but not the actual addresses.
These approaches deal with the privacy
question without depriving people of the
ability to make sense of the information
and republish it in different forms.
The Nova Scotia solution takes a flamethrower approach to privacy protection in
which all useful access has to be denied and
tough tomatoes to anyone who objects.
Nova Scotia is considered the birthplace
of freedom of expression in Canada, making this that much more embarrassing.
With that, I’ll climb off my horse. Until
next time.
Fred Vallance-Jones is assistant professor of
journalism at the University of King’s College
in Halfax and co-author of Computer-Assisted
Reporting, A Comprehensive Primer, from Oxford University Press. He can be reached at [email protected]
WINTER 2012
Related links
The Chief Electoral Officer responds
http://contrarian.ca/2011/09/06/the-chiefelectoral-officer-responds/
Election data freed at last
http://contrarian.ca/2011/09/08/electiondata-freed-at-last/
2011 FOI Audit (Newspapers Canada)
http://www.newspaperscanada.ca/publicaffairs/FOI2011
Elections Ontario (political contributions)
http://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/Tools/
FinancialStatementsandContributions/RealTimeDisclosure.htm
Elections Canada (Financial Reports)
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/webpep/
fin/welcome.aspx?lang=e
Election data freed at last (Contrarian Parker Donham)
http://contrarian.ca/2011/09/08/electiondata-freed-at-last/
Elections Ontario
http://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/Tools/
FinancialStatementsandContributions/RealTimeDisclosure.htm
Elections Canada
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/webpep/
fin/welcome.aspx?lang=e
Free PDF Text Reader 1.1
http://www.ctdeveloping.com/
PDFUnlock
http://www.pdfunlock.com/
PDFill PDF Editor 5.0
http://www.pdfill.com/
The Chief Electoral Officer responds
(Contrarian - Parker Donham has pdf
cracked)
http://contrarian.ca/2011/09/06/the-chiefelectoral-officer-responds/
Docsplit (a command-line utility and
Ruby library for splitting documents
into their component parts)
http://documentcloud.github.com/docsplit/
Able2Extract
http://www.investintech.com/prod_a2e.htm
Cometdocs( Free online file conversion)
http://www.cometdocs.com/
32
Mapping
WEB SCRAPING: It helped create Face-
Scrape your say to happiness
book. Mark Zuckerberg smiles at his
Behind every online interface that allows searches is
Calif., in this Feb. 5, 2007, photo.
company headquarters in Palo Alto,
PHOTOCREDIT/AP Photo/Paul Sakuma
By Glen McGregor
I
n the film The Social Network, an
early scene shows how Mark Zuckerberg extracted pictures of other Harvard
students from the university’s web servers
to run head‑to‑head beauty contests on his
own website.
The beer‑fuelled project got Zuckerberg
in trouble with Harvard administrators and
vilified by students, but ultimately inspired
the creation of a little site that eventually
went on to be called Facebook.
The technique the Zuckerberg character
demonstrated was called “web scraping” or
“screen scraping.” It is the use of computer programs to robotically download large
amounts of data from the web that could
not easily be obtained manually. Pointing‑and‑clicking the link to every student’s
photo and saving the file would be impossibly slow and boring for a human. For a
computer, the job is child’s play.
Web scraping is commonly used by
programmers to extract records from other
websites. If you’ve ever Googled for the
best price on airfare to Florida, or a deal
on an LCD television, you’ve probably
come across comparison sites that rely on
price quotes scraped from, say, American
Airlines and Air Canada, or Best Buy and
putting data online. But rarely do they provide the data in a way that can be downloaded in raw form, the way journalists like
to use data ‑‑ to analyse in Microsoft Excel,
crunch in a MySQL database or upload to
a Google Map.
Usually, the data is hidden behind a web
interface that the ministry or agency has
created and that allows searches on a particular term.
Type Toyota into search function of
Transport Canada’s database of vehicle recalls and you’ll find the matching records.
But nowhere does Transport Canada allow
you to download all recall records for all
makes and models of vehicles for all years.
(Editor’s note: This would have come in
handy after stories broke in 2010 about
problems with Toyota’s massive recalls in
Canada and the United States.)
If your story can wait 30 days or longer,
you might be able to get the same electronic data by filing a freedom-of-information
or access-to-information request. However, there’s a chance the agency will turn it
down, sometimes claiming the data is already available through their web interface.
Even if you get the data, it starts to get
stale the moment it’s burned onto a CD.
Web scraping assembles electronic records
to find stories that could not be easily
obtained otherwise.
Amazon.
For data journalists, web scraping can
be a powerful tool that allows them to assemble electronic records to find stories
that could not be easily obtained otherwise.
Government agencies are increasingly
But by web scraping, journalists can
extract the data using their own custom
programs that will send repeated search
requests (to use our example) to Transport Canada’s server, for not just Toyotas,
but Hondas, Fords, Chevies, Ferraris and
the hundreds of other vehicles in their database. The script will capture the results
returned and save them in a nice, tidy text
file on your hard drive that will load into
Excel. And it will keep doing it right up until publication.
Another example: the City of Ottawa
posts restaurant health inspections online.
You can search by the name of the restaurant to every inspection, good and bad. The
current design of the EatSafe database,
however, doesn’t allow searches based on
other criteria. One cannot see, for instance,
all the restaurants on Somerset Street, near
to the city’s downtown core, that failed inspections during a particular period.
Using web-scraping techniques, the
Ottawa Citizen in 2010 extracted all the records in the EatSafe database ran a series
of stories that explored the concentration of
health problems in Chinatown and the high
failure rate of shawarma spots. A similar
script was used to download lists of Order
of Canada recipients, resulting in a story
about under‑representation of Westerners
in the national honour. A scrape of crime
reports showed the areas of Ottawa with
the most stolen bicycle complaints.
Scraping Craigslist’s local “Missed Connections” (http://www.wordle.net/show/
wrdl/2774031/Craigslist_%22Missed_
Connections%22_for_Ottawa,_Canada )
page led to a blog post that showed men
were searching for lost love far more than
women ‑‑ and mostly on the bus.
Every online data set is configured differently, so each requires a unique approach
to scraping.
Options for doing it?
Some data can be grabbed with something as simple as DownThemAll!, a free
plug‑in for the Firefox web browser that
will download all the linked files on a page.
It can be configured using filters for file
33
MEDIA
names and types, so one could capture only
JPEGs with the word “Harper” or PDFs
called “report.”
In The Social Network, the Zuckerberg
character refers to open‑source software
called Wget, that runs from the command
line on Mac or PCs and has powerful customization options. It can extract files based
on an itemized list of file names. You’ll
need to play around with the command line
functions to learn how to use Wget.
Web-scraping is the ultimate
But the best way and most effective approach to real web‑scraping is to write your
own custom computer scripts. Often, these
are the only way to extract data from online
databases that require user input, such as
the vehicle recalls list or restaurant inspections site.
To do this, you will need to learn a little
bit of computer programming using a language such as Python, Ruby, Perl or PHP.
You only to need to choose one.
Python, named after Monty not the
snake, is my favourite for its simple syntax
and great online support from Pythonistas.
Ruby is also popular with data journalists.
Most Chapters stores have entire
shelves devoted to programming guides,
with lots of great entry‑level stuff. You can
also work through free online tutorials that
will guide you from installation to writing
complex routines.
Once you’re comfortable writing simple programs, also called “scripts”, you
can soon graduate to using web interfaces
available for these languages to download
online data.
A program to scrape the vehicle recalls
database would be written to submit a
search term to the Transport website from
a list of vehicle makes. It would capture
the list of links the web server returns, then
another part of the program would open
each of these links, read the data, strip out
WINTER 2012
all the HTML tags, and save the good stuff
to a file.
Depending on the number of records
and the speed of the server, it might take
hours to run the program and assemble all
the data in a single file.
(For journalists not inclined to learn
a computer language, Scraperwiki.com
brings together programmers with people
who need scraping work done.)
Some websites can be difficult to scrape,
even for skilled programmers. Many use
cookies, session IDs or captchas that can
complicate attempts to scrape.
Watch that scene in The Social Network
to get a sense of the variability and unique
problem solving required for each site.
Keys to success
The key to effective scraping is to understand how your web browser communicates with the web server. You can eavesdrop on this communication using another
Firefox plug‑in called Firebug, or other
similar utilities available for the Google
Chrome browser. These show the instructions passed back and forth with each
search request. Your scraping script will
need to replicate these to work effectively.
Make no mistake, learning to web scrape
is time consuming in a way that doesn’t always show up in your published or broadcast story. Your editor will be baffled when
you start describing why you need to do it,
so you’ll probably have to learn to scrape
on your own time.
But if you can develop web scraping skills, no longer will you have to rely
solely on freedom-of-information laws to
get data. You take the data governments
already put online and leapfrog over their
clumsy interfaces to create your own
copies.
When the media relations flack won’t
give you electronic records (please see
Fred Vallance-Jones column on page 32 for
yet more problems with data horders) you
need and instead directs you to the online
search engine, you can scrape the data out
and start reporting on it immediately.
Glen McGregor is a national affairs
reporter with the Ottawa Citizen. He is
available to give web-scraping and datajournalism seminars to your newsroom or
classroom. Contact sushiboy21@gmail.
com
Related links
Road Safety Recalls Database (Transport Canada)
http://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/saf-sec-sur/7/
vrdb-bdrv/search/Search.aspx?lang=eng
Restaurant Inspections (City of Ottawa)
http://www.ottawa.ca/cgi-bin/search/
inspections/q.pl?ss=home_en&qt=fsi_en
Food for thought; One-in-four Ottawa
restaurants had ‘critical
deficiencies’ (The Ottawa Citizen)
Food for Thought_1.pdf
Order of Canada misses Westerners;
Citizen study finds Atlantic Canada
almost twice as likely to get medal (The
Ottawa Citizen)
Food for Thought_2.pdf
Craigslist “Missed Connections” for
Ottawa, Canada (Wordle)
http://www.wordle.net/show/
wrdl/2774031/Craigslist_%22Missed_
Connections%22_for_Ottawa,_Canada
ScraperWiki
https://scraperwiki.com/
Firebug
http://getfirebug.com/
34
The Fine Print
RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM: Canada’s highest court has ruled
in two decisions that publishers can escape liability if they can
show that they tried to verify the facts and the published material is a matter of public interest.
Responsible journalism goes to court
PHOTO CREDIT: CBC
A high level of professionalism is your best defence
Dean Jobb
O
ne win, two losses in two years.
That’s the media’s track record in
the courtroom to date when battling libel
claims with a new legal weapon – the defence of responsible communication on
matters of public interest.
The Supreme Court of Canada created
the defence in December 2009, importing
the concept of “responsible journalism” developed in the British courts and giving it
a Canadian twist by making it available to
anyone who “communicates” information
on important public issues, including bloggers and citizen journalists.
A review of court rulings and news
reports shows journalists have used the
defence (or its predecessor, responsible
journalism) in at least three cases decided
since 2009. Each one offers insights into
Cusson, 2009 SCC 62, the Supreme Court
sought to modernize the law and promote
free speech by protecting defamatory statements and allegations – even erroneous
ones – on issues the public should know
about.
The defence applies to stories on any
subject of public interest. Judges in the
three recent cases ruled that allegations
of police brutality and fraud, and a report
on a fraud alert issued by police, meet this
definition.
The next step is to examine whether
the journalist acted responsibly. Are the
sources solid and unbiased? Was it urgent
that the story be told, perhaps before all
the facts could be known? Was it necessary
to include the defamatory statement? Did
the journalist strive to be fair, present both
While the first case predates the rulings
in Grant and Quan, the judge applied the
similar responsible journalism test and his
findings illustrate what the courts expect of
journalists. In 2003, the now-defunct Kootenay Chronicle in Nelson, B.C., published
articles accusing two RCMP officers of assaulting a man who was under arrest. The
newspaper lost and the officers won a total
of $42,000 in damages (Reaburn v. Langen, 2008 BCSC 1342, upheld on appeal,
2009 BCCA 465).
The judge found the stories came up
short on several fronts. The main source
of the allegation was the arrested man, and
the reporter “failed to recognize in him a
person with an axe to grind.” Worse, there
was “nothing at all neutral” about the story,
which “did not simply raise questions, but
“A journalist cannot succeed in his defence of responsible journalism
by the rote use of the term ‘alleged,’ where the whole thrust of the
article is written as fact.”
how judges and juries are interpreting the
new defence and what reporters and editors
must do to demonstrate they have acted responsibly.
The defence is designed to take some of
the “chill” out of libel, shifting the focus
from what was published to the steps taken
to produce a fair, accurate and balanced report. In overturning libel awards in Grant v.
Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, and Quan v.
35
sides of the story and seek out the person
defamed for comment?
There is also a “reportage” facet to the
defence – statements and allegations will
be protected if the public interest lies in
knowing they were made, rather than establishing whether they are true. To qualify, a news report must not present allegations as fact and must convey both sides of
a dispute.
adopted allegations as fact.” The judge also
criticized the journalist’s use of “inflammatory phrases,” including describing the
“heavily armed” officers as having “the
weight of the establishment on their side”
and a prediction that “the dust of the circling wagons” would prevent justice from
being done.
B.C.’s Court of Appeal agreed, reminding journalists there’s no magic in using the
MEDIA
Stick to the facts and avoid trumped-up words and descriptions.
Report that unproven allegations are just that – unproven. Be fair and
present all sides of the story.
word “alleged” and allegations must not be
reported as if they are proven or true. “A
journalist cannot succeed in his defence of
responsible journalism by the rote use of
the term ‘alleged,’ where the whole thrust
of the article is written as fact.”
The second case, also from B.C., arose
from articles published in The Peak, the
Simon Fraser University student newspaper.
In 2010, the province’s Court of Appeal
upheld an award of $30,000 in damages to
an administrator accused of mishandling
the finances of a students’ union (Hansen
v. Harder, 2010 BCCA 482, upholding
Hansen v. Tilley, 2009 BCSC 360).
The trial judge rejected the defence of
responsible journalism (the responsible
communication test had been created by
the time the appeal was heard; the appeal
court applied the new defence but it, too,
failed). The courts faulted the student journalists for relying on second-hand information and the results of a forensic review that
contained serious errors.
The paper also published a report – with
the in-your-face headline, “Busted!” – implying the police were investigating the administrator for suspected fraud. This turned
out to be false, and the appeal court said the
paper should have made “every effort” to
contact the administrator before publishing
such a serious allegation.
While the reporter involved insisted he
sent emails and left voice messages seeking
comment from the administrator, the trial
judge and the appeal court were not conWINTER 2011
vinced and expected to see a record of all
phone calls and emails.
Finally, the defence of reportage failed
because the articles did not present both
sides of the issue fairly or indicate that the
allegations had not been proven.
SooToday.com, an independent local
news site based in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.,
won the lone victory. After a two-week trial
in 2010, a jury found the responsible communication defence protected its report on
a fraud alert issued by police. The alert revealed that a businessman who planned to
use two local resorts to run conferences and
programs for charitable organizations had
been convicted a decade earlier of fraud.
Trial evidence showed SooToday.com
was thorough in its research – it commissioned an independent analysis of the resort plan, consulted more than 20 sources
and tried to locate the businessman for
comment.
Teaching moments?
What are the lessons for journalists
tackling stories that could attract a libel
suit? Stick to the facts and avoid trumpedup words and descriptions. Report that unproven allegations are just that – unproven.
Be fair and present all sides of the story.
Make every effort to contact the target of
an allegation and keep a record of each
attempt.
That’s the kind of advice you can get
from any textbook on journalism ethics.
And it’s clearly the level of professionalism the courts expect of a responsible
journalist.
Dean Jobb, an associate professor of journalism
at the University of King’s College in Halifax,
is author of the newly updated reference guide
Media law for Canadian Journalists (Emond
Montgomery Publications 2011). His website is
www.deanjobb.com
Related links
New libel defence allowed: Supreme
Court
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2009/12/22/supreme-courtlibel-responsible-journalism-citizenstar.html
Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009
SCC 61
http://scc.lexum.org/
en/2009/2009scc61/2009scc61.html
http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/
doc/2009/2009scc61/2009scc61.html
http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/
doc/2009/2009scc62/2009scc62.html
http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcca/doc/
2009/2009bcca465/2009bcca465.html
http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcsc/doc/
2009/2009bcsc360/2009bcsc360.html
http://sootoday.com/
Ontario news website wins responsible journalism libel verdict
http://j-source.ca/article/ontario-newswebsite-wins-responsible-journalismlibel-verdict
36
CREATING AN AUDIENCE: Benjamin Day’s New York Sun pioneered
a new business model. The low price created a huge audience, which was
attractive to retailers in the booming cities.
Behind the numbers
Selling out or saving journalism?
THE PIONEER: Benjamin Henry Day (April 10, 1810 –
December 21, 1889[4]) was an American newspaper publisher
best known for founding the New York Sun, the first penny press
newspaper in the United States, in 1833.[5]
A new course at the University of King’s College
gives journalism the business
By Kelly Toughill
M
ost journalism schools teach three
baskets of skills: critical thinking,
primary research and storytelling.
That’s been the heart of the curriculum
in North America and Europe for more
than 100 years. New technologies like the
telegraph, telephone, radio and television
altered the ‘how’ of journalism and journalism education, but never the ‘what.’
That’s about to shift, and not everyone
likes the change.
Some universities have added business
development skills to the core baskets of
journalism education. Just two years ago
this concept was treated as a form of heresy. Those who advocated teaching journalists how to start and run businesses
were denounced at academic conferences
in Canada and the United States. Introducing business disciplines into the newsroom
would violate the critical separation of
editorial and advertising, argued the critics.
They worried that journalists-cum-publishers would pander to advertisers and focus
on profit instead of public service.
The critics are largely quiet now. Waves
save journalism, not sell it out.
Faculty members at the University of
King’s College School of Journalism went
away in 2008 to ponder one question: What
skills will journalists need to lead the profession in 10 years?
We came up with three answers. The
first was obvious. Journalists will need the
same three baskets of skills they have always needed. They will need to know how
to think, research and tell stories.
The second answer was also intuitive.
Journalists will need new tools in the baskets of research and storytelling. They will
need to tell more stories in multimedia
forms. They will also need deeper research
skills to differentiate themselves from the
legions of ambitious amateurs with smartphones and the sense to be where news
happens.
The third answer was more complex.
The web has not just changed how stories
are researched, told and distributed. It has
changed the business model that sustains
journalism across all platforms.
Our age is similar to the mid-1800s,
fund journalism primarily with advertising
dollars.
That business model didn’t just change
who read the paper and who paid for it. The
business model had a profound impact on
the very nature of journalism itself. The papers wanted the largest audience possible,
so they stripped out partisan content and
segregated opinion in a special section to
avoid alienating any readers.
Many media historians think it was the
business model of the penny press that is
responsible for establishing fairness and
neutrality as a core value in responsible
journalism. In other words, we strive for
objectivity today because advertisers demanded it 80 years ago.
The pioneering media barons of the 19th
century started out as printers and reporters, not business people. Benjamin Day
and his competitors figured out the new
business model because they were the ones
who understood the value of the craft.
The question is whether we can find,
train or foster the pioneering journalists
today who will lead the innovations of to-
The reason journalists should learn to identify market strategies,
develop financial scenarios, raise funds and manage people is to save
journalism, not sell it out.
of lay-offs in traditional media have encouraged all of us to consider novel methods to rescue the industry.
Those who opposed the new basket of
skills for journalists missed the point. The
reason journalists should learn to identify
market strategies, develop financial scenarios, raise funds and manage people is to
37
when the penny press was invented in North
America and Europe. Benjamin Day’s New
York Sun pioneered a new business model.
He hired children to sell newspapers on the
street and sold the paper for one penny instead of six. The low price created a huge
audience, which was attractive to retailers
in the booming cities. Day was the first to
morrow. That is what King’s set out to do
when it joined Dalhousie University to
create two new Master of Journalism programs, one in new ventures and a second
in investigative reporting. The first cohort
will graduate in May.
King’s was one of the earliest to take
this path, but it is not the only one.
MEDIA
Source: Wikipedia
The City University of New York has
also developed a graduate program in entrepreneurial journalism. The two universities developed their curriculum in isolation, but came up with surprisingly similar
frameworks designed to foster the innovation.
Both programs have courses in business
models, in business basics, in social media
and multimedia journalism. Both have a
capstone project.
Both have built flexibility into their program so that they can adapt to innovations.
(The iPad didn’t exist and there were
only half a million people on Twitter
when King’s first discussed its degree in
New Ventures. Today more than 200 million people use Twitter and more than 50
million tablets have been sold around the
world.)
King’s and CUNY aren’t the only evangelists for entrepreneurial journalism.
University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and
Journalism, the Walter Cronkite School
of Journalism and Mass Communications
at Arizona State University, the American University School of Communication, Film and Journalism and the Philip
Merrill College of Journalism at the
University of Maryland all offer limited programs in entrepreneurial journalism, and scores of universities in Europe
and North America are developing new
courses.
The venerable Poynter Institute runs two
workshops a year on entrepreneurial journalism at its Saint Petersburg headquarters,
and a rash of specific modules on marketing, mobile media and advertising through
its online education system, Newsu.org.
Universities in Arizona and Maryland are
staging conferences for journalism educators on how to teach entrepreneurship.
Joseph Pulitzer was one of the big advocates of journalism education in the United
WINTER 2012
States. He was also one of the media barons
who argued strongly for a wall to protect
journalists from the business side of newspapers.
He would probably be appalled by what
King’s and CUNY and other parts of the
ivory tower are trying.
Some contemporary critics still think
that that we are overreacting, that we don’t
need new business models and that everything will settle down soon.
Gee, I hope they are right.
Just in case they aren’t, we plan to double our student intake this year.
Kelly Tough is the director of the University of
King’s College School of Journalism.
After 25 years in
“
broadcast journalism,
assigned to more
than a hundred different
countries, I did not feel
I had much left to learn.
Wrong! This program
is a must.
”
Stephen puddicombe,
master of Journalism student,
class of 2012
Extend your skills and develop new ones:
core skills in mobile and digital journalism
with specialization in either Investigative
Reporting or New Ventures.
Master of Journalism
www.ukings.ca/master-journalism
38
Net Tips
Basic mapping with Google Fusion Tables
CBC News Network
is the most watched
news network in Canada.
Within minutes, you can help your audience see important trends
F
By Lucas Timmons
usion Tables is a free online data management and data visualization tool created by Google in 2009.
It allows users to visualize large amounts of data using pie charts, bar charts, line and scatter plots,
timelines and maps. It is a powerful tool that is not that much more difficult to use than Excel.
In this tutorial, you will create a basic map of public parking garages in Ottawa from a spreadsheet you make
in Excel. You will be able to style the map and embed it in an html file to put online.
For this tutorial you will need Internet access, Microsoft Excel and a Google account.
There are five steps to getting your data online.
1. Prepare your data
2. Import your data
3. Geocode your data
4. Map your data
CBC News Network
5. Deploy your map
audience share is up
Driven by the
To download and follow the tutorial, please click here.
success of
40%
*
sustaining its position as Canada’s
#1 news network.
* Source: BBM Canada 2010/11 regular season (weeks 1-31) English audience share,
confirmed data, compared with 2009/10 regular season.
39
MEDIA
WINTER 2011
40
TAKING OI THE CRITICS: CBC President
Hubert Lacroix shot back at critics in
November arguing the broadcaster is
accountable for the money it spends.
The Future of News
A public broadcaster in peril?
PHOTO CREDIT: SeanKilpatrick/
Canadian Press
Taking heat for being too secretive and facing
certain cuts, the CBC stays focused – and the future is
digital
By Simon Doyle
A
bout every week, it seems, we’re
confronted with what the CBC is
going to do with its money.
How is CBC/Radio‑Canada going to
use its money, we wonder, to get its pro-
communications companies in the country for the rights to major league sports.
That’s why Robert Rabinovitch, the former
head of the CBC, has predicted that the
ever‑popular Hockey Night in Canada will
was painfully evident this summer when
the broadcaster acknowledged it was way
off track in efforts to meet the regulatory
requirements of the country’s transition to
digital television.
Lacroix told a parliamentary committee... as part of its emphasis on
digital, the CBC will switch up to 500 positions from its radio and TV
divisions to support digital platforms.
gramming, including news and information, out to as many Canadians as possible?
After all, under the Broadcasting Act,
the CBC’s programming is to be “made
available throughout Canada by the most
appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose.”
But we are regularly reminded of the
broadcaster’s budget.
In the fall of 2010, Hubert T. Lacroix,
the president and CEO of CBC/Radio‑Canada, addressed a roomful of CBC employees and members of the public in Ottawa
at the broadcaster’s annual public meeting.
Lacroix said the most common question
he gets asked is whether he has plans to obtain the broadcasting rights to French‑language Montreal Canadiens games. He
hopes to see the CBC bidding for the games
when Bell Media’s rights expire at the end
of the 2012‑2013 season, he said.
But the reality is that the CBC is expected to become a bit player in NHL
broadcasting. In an age of on‑demand TV,
live sports has become the most valuable
programming on television, and the CBC
cannot justify competing with the biggest
41
be “toast.”
It boils down to costs, which the CBC
is under pressure to cut. Right now, managers at the broadcaster are surveying all
areas for possible reductions in production
costs and other budget “efficiencies.”
The search for savings comes as the
Conservative government conducts a
strategic and operation review process,
through which it plans to find $4 billion
in annual savings so that it can balance the
federal budget by 2015. The government
has asked all departments and agencies to
come up with spending cut proposals of
five and 10 per cent.
The CBC, of course, is included in the
process, and the government may lean
closer to 10 per cent than five. “Everyone
has to do its part, which means CBC has to
do its part as well,” James Moore, the heritage minister, told reporters in September.
That means the CBC is facing a significant budget reduction of $55 million
to more than $100 million of the $1.1 billion that it receives in annual parliamentary
appropriations.
The CBC’s sensitivity about cost saving
The Canadian Radio‑television and
Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
had imposed Aug. 31 as a deadline for all
television stations to convert their transmitters in major markets from analog broadcasting to digital. The private broadcasters
made the deadline, but the CBC could only
switch 27 transmitters to digital, failing to
convert another 22 that were supposed to
be digital‑ready by Aug. 31.
The CBC said it was a question of dollars. At about a cost of $1 million per new
transmitter, the broadcaster couldn’t afford
the upgrade, and the government, aiming
to reduce its revenues, wasn’t stepping in
to help.
Going digital
Such is the broadcaster’s situation. But
in an effort to reduce costs and reach more
ears and eyeballs, the CBC is smartly emphasizing digital media. That was the case
this summer when residents in London,
Ontario, expressed concern that their local, over‑the‑air CBC signal could be lost
entirely if the analog signal shut off and,
as planned, the CBC couldn’t upgrade its
MEDIA
A local website and radio station can connect to the CBC’s news and
information network and provide information to a community more
cheaply than a television station.
local tower to digital.
In response to the concerns, Lacroix wrote a letter to London Mayor Joe
Fontana that noted people can get the CBC
on multiple platforms.
“Rather than investing in transmitters
that serve fewer people as the over‑the‑air
usage continues to decline, our strategy
consists of enhancing our regional programming offer on multiple platforms,”
Lacroix wrote.
In February 2011, the CBC released a
new, five‑year strategy that stressed the importance of reaching more people, and doing so through the less expensive means of
radio and the web. At the time, some critics even suggested it was a sign the CBC is
leaning more towards what it does best—
being a public broadcaster.
A local website and radio station can
connect to the CBC’s news and information network and provide information to a
community more cheaply than a television
station.
The strategy involves doubling the
broadcaster’s existing spending on digital media, developing regional, local and
hyper-local websites, and expanding its
online platforms. The CBC has so far announced that it intends to launch new ra-
WINTER 2012
dio and online services in Kamloops, B.C.
(spring 2012), Kitchener‑Waterloo, Ont.
(fall 2012), and London, Ont. (fall 2012).
It says more local TV, radio and online
news services are also coming to Calgary
(winter 2012), Edmonton and northern Alberta (spring 2012), the Maritimes (spring
2012), Ottawa (spring 2012), and Newfoundland and Labrador (spring 2012).
More announcements are in the works.
Lacroix told a parliamentary committee
in October that, as part of its emphasis on
digital, the CBC will switch up to 500 positions from its radio and TV divisions to
support digital platforms.
Say what you will about the CBC’s budget issues, but the broadcaster is making
some significant, strategic changes at a
time when its costs are under close scrutiny. And as journalists, seeing the CBC emphasize the dissemination of its news and
information content, especially locally and
on 21st century platforms, is good news.
You could even say the broadcaster
is distributing its content using the most
“efficient means and as resources become
available for the purpose.”
The CBC’s digital media strategy may
not be the kind of digital broadcasting we
were talking about on Aug. 31, but it’s
probably keeping regulators happy—not to
mention a growing number of Canadians
with smartphones.
Simon Doyle is the editor of The Wire Report
in Ottawa, covering Canada’s telecom, broadcasting and digital media sectors. He can be
reached at [email protected]
Related links
CBC head defends broadcaster on
access to info
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/
story/2011/11/24/pol-cbc-ethics-committee-lacroix.html
CBC reluctantly turns over internal
documents
news/politics/cbc-vows-to-turn-oversome-but-not-all-requested-files-tomps/article2235594/
CBC’s Lacroix attempts to elevate
debate on public broadcaster
http://www.nationalpost.com/related/
topics/Lacroix+attempts+elevate+d
ebate+public+broadcaster/5778633/
story.html
42
Ethics
Fighting for journalism’s soul amid imposters
My state of Wisconsin is a testing ground for a partisan
assault on journalism. If this activist model works here, these
groups are prepared to establish similar services across the
country as they prepare for a 2012 presidential election By Stephen J.A. Ward
T
he question, “Who is a journalist?”,
has special importance in an era
where citizens can commit random acts of
journalism with the flick of a computer key.
However, after several years of debate,
people tire of the question. Is this just semantics – how you define the word ‘journalism’?
I think not.
Recent developments in the United
States show that if journalists are unable
to define who they are and how they differ
from other media users, the public sphere
will be filled by political partisans, bogus
news organizations, and imposters claiming to be journalists.
Across the United States, right-wing
nonprofit foundations such as the Franklin
Center for Government & Public Integrity
are setting up Internet “wire services” and
web sites that claim to do journalism – to
cover politics while pushing for free mar-
These partisan groups take advantage of
the reduction in mainstream reporters who
cover state legislatures. They know that
newsrooms with fewer staff will be tempted
to use their stories. Therefore, partisan sites
are increasingly successful in getting their
stories into newspapers, or in having their
editorials discussed on radio talk shows.
The mainstream outlets that pick up
their reports often don’t explain that partisan groups constructed the stories. Also,
the partisans deny that they are partisan,
although they are reluctant to name their
donors. They claim to be doing ethical and
objective journalism. Some claim to follow the code of the Society of Professional
Journalists.
My state of Wisconsin is a testing
ground for this partisan assault on journalism. If this activist model works here, these
groups are prepared to establish similar services across the country as they prepare for
The web site is sponsored by the Franklin Center founded in 2009 as a national
organization “to train and support investigative journalism and journalism endeavors.” Franklin is supported by the libertarian Sam Adams Alliance and Foundation
(www.samadamsalliance.org).
Consider another example, the rightwing activist web site, Media Trackers,
(http://mediatrackers.org). It describes itself as a “conservative non-profit, non-partisan investigative watchdog dedicated to
promoting accountability in the media and
government across Wisconsin.” A ‘donate’
button on the site indicates that it is supported by the Virginia-based, right-wing
American Majority. Donations will help
develop conservative activities and support
potential conservative political candidates.
In Wisconsin, supporting free markets and keeping government accountable means supporting Tea Party protests,
You can’t say that you are a watchdog when you watchdog only one
entity -- the party that opposes your ideology.
ket and libertarian policies.
The foundations train activists to use
media. They hire journalists to cover state
legislatures and apply for membership
in state press galleries. At the beginning
of 2011, the Franklin Center established
www.wisconsinreporter.com; earlier, it set
up the the Illinois Statehouse News http://
illinois.statehousenewsonline.com.
43
the 2012 presidential election.
This is not a question of semantics. It is
a battle for the soul of journalism.
Who are these guys, anyway?
Take, for example, www.wisconsinreporter.com. The site’s “about” page
lists the names of three reporters with
journalism experience. But dig deeper.
attacking the Democrats, and supporting
conservative Governor Scott Walker’s controversial opposition to unions’ collective
bargaining rights, among other things.
The trouble with challenging these partisan ventures is that they justify what they
do in standard journalistic terms. They
claim they are acting as watchdogs on
elected officials. They are digging up facts
MEDIA
My objection to these new wire services is not political. I’d be as
troubled if left-wing groups participated in the same charade.
that keep elected officials accountable.
Spokespersons for these sites say ‘look
at our reporters’. Many come from mainstream news media. Examine our stories.
They report facts. Jason Stverak, founder
of the Franklin Center and former Republican activist, rejects the idea his reporters
are ideologically driven. It’s not “conservative” to challenge officials, he says.
Others are not so sure. Dave Zweifel,
editor emeritus of Madison’s Capital Times
recently wrote an article (www.wisconsinreporter.com ) with the headline: “News
service just a wolf in disguise.” He accused
the web site of conservative-biased stories
that pretend to be straight news reports.
Replying to the partisans
How should journalists reply to partisans who claim to be doing journalism?
The only way journalists can distinguish
themselves from impostures is to appeal to
their ethical aims, standards, and practices.
First we need to change the question.
The question is not: “Is this journalism?”
since almost any public commentary can
count as an act of journalism. A better question is: Is this good or bad journalism in the
public interest? We adopt a normative approach. We ask whether journalism-like
associations are following the standards of
non-partisan public journalism.
What standards are those?
They include:
Public journalists are true public servants, not activists: Public journalism organizations are committed to serving the
public at large with impartial information
and perspectives. Their allegiance is not to
a specific group, ideology, or cause, which
they advance at every turn. Public journalists are not actors (or activists) in the
public sphere insisting that officials follow
WINTER 2012
their ideological principles. Public journalists stand among contending groups; they
do not stand with (or work for) a political
group. Public journalists inform the public
on what the groups say about issues.
Public journalists are truly impartial
and objective: Being impartial or “nonpartisan” means much more than reporting
facts. Being non-partisan has to do with
how journalists select the facts, and what
stories they do or ignore. Non-partisan
journalists follow all the facts to wherever they lead, without the straightjacket of
ideology.
Public journalists are truly independent: Truly independent reporters do not
self-censure. They feel free to do stories
that go against the political leanings of employers or funders.
Public journalists are truly transparent:
Nonprofit, non-partisan journalism organizations are willing to let the public know
who pays for their news and who donates
to their organizations. They allow the public to assess the integrity of the journalism.
To be a true public journalist you can’t
pick and choose among these standards.
You need to satisfy, as much as possible, all
of these values. You are not a public journalist because you satisfy one standard:
e.g. you report facts. You can’t say that you
are a watchdog when you watchdog only
one entity -- the party that opposes your
ideology.
Journalism organizations satisfy this
family of standards to varying degrees.
However, these right-wing wire services
and statehouse websites fail these standards
so miserably that we cannot take seriously
their claims to do independent, objective
and non-partisan.
Fuzzy lines
Blurring the line between journalism
and political activism means that the public
may be unable to distinguish between partisan groups that use journalistic techniques
for their own ends, and journalists who use
journalistic techniques to impartially inform the public.
My objection to these new wire services
is not political. I’d be as troubled if leftwing groups participated in the same charade. Nor do I think it is wrong for these
political groups to promote their causes.
But I object when these groups claim to be
non-partisan journalists.
For centuries, activists have expressed
themselves through journalism. But that is
different from trying to hoodwink the public about one’s identity and aims. The truth
is that the agenda of these foundations is
not to do objective journalism, but to train
writers as foot soldiers for their political
causes, and to gain an ideological victory
over political opponents.
Their claim to be a public watchdog or
to do objective reporting is a shameful appropriation of journalistic values.
Let’s hope this trend does not take root
in Canada.
Stephen J. A. Ward is the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and
Mass Communication.
Related Links
The Franklin Center
http://www.franklincenterhq.org/
WisconsinReporter
http://www.wisconsinreporter.com/
Illinois Statehouse News
http://illinois.statehousenewsonline.
com/
Sam Adams Alliance
http://samadamsalliance.org/
Media Trackers
http://mediatrackers.org/
45
Update
“Those fuckers nearly killed my kid”
Review
Freelance journalist Tina Pittaway received the 2010 CAJ Award in the Open Radio News/Cur-
The updated version of media law textbooks still a must-read
rent Affairs category for her investigative documentary Risky Business. Her investigation focused
Media Law for Canadian Journalists, Second Edition
on disturbing, and at times life-threatening practices, occurring within Ontario’s unregulated
non-emergency patient transfer industry, a network of privately-owned and operated companies
that move an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 patients a year between hospitals and long-term care
facilities.
I
first heard about this industry from
my brother, Tom. He had taken a job
with a patient-transfer service in Newmarket, Ontario, after he had completed paramedic training in 2008.
Many of Tom’s colleagues were not
trained paramedics, holding perhaps a basic CPR certificate or standard First Aid.
All were paid about $11 per hour, slightly
above Ontario’s general minimum wage.
Within weeks of starting with this company, Tom was truly disturbed by the kinds of
things that were occurring aboard the emergency service vehicles.
I was shocked to learn that the Ministry
of Health had no oversight of these companies and that there were no minimum
requirements for staff training. I had seen
these vehicles in Toronto, but, like many
people I interviewed, thought they were
ambulances staffed by paramedics.
I couldn’t tell a story based solely on my
brother’s experience. So I looked for other
sources. In interviews with workers from
three companies, I learned that there was
a pattern of negligence and abuse of patients and workers. There was little infection control. Staff failed to change linens
on stretchers between patients.
To save money, companies loaded
patients with contgious infections like
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus and C. difficile into vehicles with im45
mune-compromised. Staff worked without
gloves, gowns, or masks to protect them
from infectious patients.
Many vehicles were in an abysmal state.
One worker described his truck catching
on fire with the patient aboard. In another
incident, the lug nuts sheared off a wheel,
again with a patient aboard. Air conditioners were routinely broken, and in the dog
days of summer patients, many of whom
were elderly and suffering from respiratory
diseases, struggled to breathe during long
journeys in which the inside cab temperature reached almost 40 degrees Celsius.
Since the industry is unregulated, there
is nowhere for patients to complain other
than to hospitals, which often told them to
contact the companies.
Many of the patients exposed to infections would never have known they were
at risk of getting sicker. If they were infected, they would have been unaware of the
source of their infection.
I began looking into this story in January of 2009. In October of that year, I spoke
to friend and CBC colleague, Kathleen
Goldhar, about my difficulty finding a key
voice for a story on this industry in general, and a company called AmbuTrans in
particular.
“Those fuckers nearly killed my kid!”
Kathleen said. I had found my missing
voice.
Expansing an unreglated service
Three years earlier Kathleen’s fourmonth-old son nearly died as a result of a
transfer from Sick Kids Hospital to Toronto
East General. He was supposed to be on
oxygen throughout the journey, but the untrained workers – both of whom sat in the
front of the truck, leaving Kathleen, Nate
and Kathleen’s mother unattended in the
back – did not administer any oxygen.
Nate began to choke and turn blue. He
was near death when he arrived at Toronto
East General. Too caught up in Nate’s resulting health crisis, Kathleen, like many
individuals exposed to negligent care, did
not complain. Instead, she assumed the
company would deal with the incident
internally. She also took for granted that
the workers in the vehicle were trained
paramedics.
Expanded service
These services expanded drastically under the Conservative government of Mike
Harris, which in 2000 introduced changes
to the Ambulance Act, the provincial legislation that oversees land ambulance services. The changes removed non-urgent
transfers from the Act, forcing hospitals to
use private companies. The main motivation was to shift the costs of these patient
transfers from the province, which was
covering 50%, onto municipalities, patients
MEDIA
These services expanded drastically under the Conservative
government of Mike Harris, which in 2000 introduced changes to
the Ambulance Act, the provincial legislation that oversees
land ambulance services.
and hospitals.
I tracked down Ontario Auditors General Reports and Standing Committee reports
online that dated back years. The reports
urged the government to develop standards
and regulations. One source contributed to
a report commissioned in 2002 by then-Ontario Ministry of Health under Tony Clement, now the federal minister in charge of
overseeing massive cuts in the federal civil
service.
Back then, Clement’s health ministry
wanted to learn how these non-emergency
patient transfer services were performing.
What that report found was similar to what
I discovered nearly 10 years later: The absence of standards and training were “putting lives in peril.” The 2002 report was
only made available through a provincial
freedom-of-information request.
Promises to take action
Risky Business aired on CBC Radio’s
The Sunday Edition in December, 2009.
Minister of Health Deb Matthews’ office re-
WINTER 2012
leased a statement saying that the ministry
had undertaken previous reviews of these
services and they were confident that Ontarians were safe. But as the months went by, I
continued to hear from patients, their family
members about more disturbing incidents.
I suggested to two families that they complain to the Office of the Ombudsman of
Ontario. They did, but were turned away
by frontline complaint officers who mistakenly believed that this was an emergency
services issue. In Ontario, hospitals are outside the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction.
In August, 2010, I sent the material I
discovered to the Ombudsman’s office. I
also explained that this was not a hospital
issue, per se, because these were unregulated, privately-owned non-emergency,
patient-transfer companies.
The Ombudsman’s office opened a
preliminary inquiry in September, 2010.
About 16 months later it was expanded to a
full inquiry led by the Special Ombudsman
Response Team, which is assigned to investigate high-profile issues affecting large
numbers of people.
In May, Ontario Ombudsman André
Marin stopped the investigation, met with
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and
asked him to take immediate action.
About six months later, the Ministry of
Health announced that it would introduce
legislation to set industry standards for
safety and training of staff. For its part,
the Ministry of Transportation promised to
develop legislation to regulate the vehicles
transferring patients.
Marin says he will be watching what
happens next. I will be, too.
Tina Pittaway is a Toronto-based freelance
journalist, who plans to relocated to Ottawa to
cover federal politics. You can read her material
at http://tinapittaway.com
Related links
Risky Business
http://tinapittaway.com/2009/12/riskybusiness-transcript/
46
Review
Special Offer from Emond
Montgomery Publications
The updated version of media law textbooks
still a must-read
Order copies of Dean Jobb’s
Media Law for Canadian
Journalists, 2nd Edition before
December 30th and get 20%
off the regular price! Go to
www.emp.ca/medialawpromo
to purchase your copies.
Reviewed by David
W
hen Dean Jobb produced the first
edition of his media law textbook,
I was asked to write a review and happily
obliged. Acquainted as I am with Dean’s
Media Law for Canadian Journalists,
Second Edition
By Dean Jobb
440 pp. Emond Montgomery Publications
www.emp.ca
writing as Media magazine’s columnist on
all things legal, it came as no surprise that
his book would be a must-read for journalists, and perhaps even more importantly,
their editors and producers who assume
ultimate responsibility for the publishing,
broadcasting and posting of content.
Since the first edition was published, the
digital revolution has continued to transform journalism at a dizzying pace. Supreme Court judgments in the cases involving former National Post reporter Andrew
McIntosh and Globe and Mail reporter
Daniel LeBlanc, as well as the legitimization of the Internet as a publishing venue
made a second edition to Dean’s book as
inevitable, as it is necessary.
After reading the content, my assessment remains the same: a must-read.
Here’s why.
With journalism’s migration to online
venues such as blogs and social media
sites including Facebook and Twitter, we
continue to witness the democratization of
information, which can become news or
newsworthy. Now, virtually anyone with
something to say can call themselves a
journalist. While the fourth estate will continue to debate the merits of this phenomenon and its impact on traditional notions
of journalism, there’s no doubt that the
digital universe is growing in significance.
So much so that in a ruling that Dean writes
about in chapter four’s Defamation: How
47
to Beat Libel Chill, the high court judges
use the term responsible communication as
opposed to responsible journalism to signal that the defence is available to anyone
“who publishes material of public interest
in any medium.”
However, we’re not only talking about
individuals who blog or tweet. Journalists
working for mainstream outlets like mine,
the CBC, are encouraged to expand their
digital footprint, and by extension, the corporation’s brand. Fretting about libel is of
no little use when tweeting inane thoughts
or harmless reflections. Concerns deepen
when venturing into controversial territory such as a cabinet minister’s expenses,
a professional athlete’s extra-curricular
activities, or a public figure’s indiscretions. Journalists need guidance on ways
to use due diligence in gathering information from documents, databases, privileged
venues such as legislatures or courts, and
then reporting the findings engagingly, yet
responsibly.
The acceleration of the news cycle,
combined with the proliferation of evershrinking newsrooms make it even more
important for journalists to seek ways
to ensure due diligence. Chapter four’s
themes of beating libel chill and avoiding
trouble while still managing to stay aggressive provide invaluable blueprints.
This piece of advice for journalists
using Twitter: “No matter what form the
postings take, journalists should only publish material online if they would be comfortable publishing the same material in the
traditional news media.”
Or this piece of advice for journalists
posting online queries in search of information or sources: “Such requests must
be drafted with the same care as if they
were destined for a traditional form of publication, and journalists must guard against
making allegations or disparaging remarks
about individuals or corporations.”
In chapter five, there is also good advice
for dealing with sources, in the wake of
the May 2010 and October 2010 Supreme
Court of Canada rulings involving Andrew
McIntosh and Daniel LeBlanc, respectively, to which I alluded at the beginning of
this review.
What to remember when dealing with
sources: “The clear message in the National Post and Globe and Mail rulings is that
journalists should avoid making promises
that could land them in legal hot water –
and leave them facing a fine or jail time.
In the words of veteran Vancouver media
lawyer David Sutherland: ‘Don’t make
unqualified promises and, if you do, bring
your toothbrush.’”
As was the case in the first edition, what
helps elevate the material in this latest offering is crisp writing devoid of stultifying
legal jargon, and the use of well-known anecdotes such as the “Shawinigate” and the
sponsorship scandal that helped Stephen
Harper achieve power in 2006.
Not only do the anecdotes imbue the
advice and lessons learned with life and
meaning, but the stories provide invaluable
reference points for students, journalists, or
scribes who publish their work online.
The fear has always been that institutions and individuals with money would
use their considerable resources to keep
aggressive journalism in check. Sadly, that
happens. But as Dean rightly points out, the
best way to fight back and ensure that important information reaches a broader audience is to be diligent, fair and reflective, the
tenets of good journalism.
This might all sound like conventional
wisdom, advice that any knowledgeable
journalist or blogger should instinctively
know. Such is not the case. If it was, textbooks would be unnecessary.
The second edition of Media Law for
Canadian Journalists deserves to be within
easy grasp on your bookshelf.
MEDIA
Price $68 Special Offer $54
ISBN 978-1-55239-504-2
For more information on this
book, email [email protected].
“Extraordinarily complete.” — Kirk Makin, The Globe and Mail
“[Jobb] helps make sense of the legal world journalists inevitably
encounter.” — David McKie, CBC
For more exclusive content, stories, interviews about journalism turn to Media by visiting
You can also find issues that go all the way back to the spring
of 1998
WINTER 2012
48

WHY DID ASHLEY SMITH DIE? - Canadian Association of Journalists

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