Tag Archives: journalism ethics

Gazette food critic Lesley Chesterman unveils herself

April 25, 2013 – 9:00 pm| Posted in Media
Lesley Chesterman does her debut column on Radio-Canada's Cap sur l'été on Wednesday.

Lesley Chesterman does her debut column on Radio-Canada's Cap sur l'été on Wednesday.

Restaurant critics have the best and worst jobs at newspapers. They get paid to eat at fancy restaurants all the time, and have the power to make or break them with a review. On the other hand, they're not recognized in the street because they can't have their picture in the paper. They have to toil in obscurity so they can remain anonymous while reviewing.

At least, this is the way it used to be. Lesley Chesterman, the fine dining critic for The Gazette, came out and abandoned her anonymity in last Friday's paper. She did so because she had accepted to become a contributor to the Radio-Canada television talk show Cap sur l'été, which would necessarily put her face in public.

That was the tipping point. But as she explains in her piece, anonymity had already become difficult to maintain:

No doubt, the anonymous approach to restaurant reviewing is desirable, but as the years wore on, it also became less and less doable. A constant challenge was that I knew some chefs long before I began reviewing, and once a waiter has you pegged, he will blow your cover every time you show up in a new restaurant (waiters move around a lot). Also, as a freelance writer, my articles are not just limited to restaurant reviews. I write many feature stories about chefs for several publications, and though I often interview by phone, I have to meet chefs face to face as well.

However, the greatest challenge to anonymity that is unmasking countless critics at a rapid pace is social media. Unlike in the early years, today I have little control over who takes my picture and posts it on the Internet. Though I have asked people many times to delete pictures of me from websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., eventually you don’t even know who to contact to remove an image. I accepted the fact that anonymity is a pipe dream, but I still strove for it.

Despite this, she'll still at least try to maintain some sheen of anonymity, reserving places under fake names and paying in cash. But being recognized will be an unavoidable consequence:

Chesterman's first appearance on Cap sur l'été, doing its "Un monde de saveurs" column, was taped on Friday and aired on Wednesday. You can watch it here and marvel at her impressive command of the French language.

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It’s hard for journalists to turn down free gifts

December 6, 2012 – 1:30 am| Posted in Media, Opinion

No free gifts.

It's a simple rule, really. It seems so easy to understand, so hard to get wrong. In the past few months, as we've heard stories about Quebec politicians and civil servants getting free things from construction companies, we've become collectively outraged. How could people not realize how obviously unethical this all is? How could people be so stupid?

The assumption, of course, is that they're not stupid or naive, but evil. They've done wrong because they want to be corrupt, they want to profit from their positions and screw the taxpayer for personal gain.

Frii böoz

Last week, as the Charbonneau Commission was getting yet more scandalous detail of the too-cozy relationship between government officials and the companies they hire, a story came out of Winnipeg that raised a few eyebrows among the journalistic community. Ikea, the Swedish retailer, opened a store in the Manitoba capital, and invited media and bloggers to a party the night before, where they were given free alcohol, gift bags and a 15% discount (CBC's video shows the crowd cheering as the latter is announced, though it's unclear how many of the cheering fans were journalists and how many were bloggers, marketers and other invited guests).

CBC Winnipeg apparently didn't like this whole thing, and focused a story on the ethical problem. (The story doesn't make it clear who brought up the ethical issue in the first place, leaving me with the impression that it was the CBC itself - and that it hid this with the use of the passive tense in its headline and lead paragraph. Marc Weisblott also points out that CBC itself regularly gives out freebies during its media events.)

The CBC story got picked up by a media ethics blog, which took aim at a couple of bloggers bragging about the swag they got.

It's not that an Ikea opening in a city like Winnipeg isn't news. But a lot of the news surrounding it has been of the fluffy variety (quizzes, anyone?). A Winnipeg Free Press story, which reads almost like an advertisement, has three bylines. The Free Press also provided this bit of "investigative journalism" (in their defence, used with tongue in cheek) about how long the walk is in the store. Dozens of stories have been written on this store by the FP alone, most of them in a positive light.

At the Winnipeg Sun, the event was important enough to send a handful of journalists, who livetweeted the event, taking pictures of themselves with the merchandise and even bragging about the free wine they were getting.

Imagine, for a moment, government officials bragging on social media about all the free stuff they were getting from construction companies.

Now, I'm not saying that all these journalists are on the take, or that the free stuff they got prompted them to be more positive about Ikea when writing their stories. But I wonder if this opening would have gotten this much media attention if Ikea hadn't been so ... welcoming ... to journalists.

Tough decisions

As I've become more known in this industry, I've been invited to more of these kinds of events. There was The Beat's exclusive first anniversary party, and a party (mainly for advertising clients) at Astral's new radio studios, both of which I went to more as a way to chat with the people I cover than because of the music or free food and booze. It's always kind of awkward when I have to come up with an excuse for why I'm not drinking away their promotion budget like everyone else.

It's hard to say no when things are offered to you. Much of journalism requires getting access to people and places that normal people aren't allowed or have to pay a price to reach. Journalists - particularly those in entertainment - get free swag sent to them all the time, usually in the form of cheap branded stuff, stuff they don't really have much use for.

I myself haven't been perfect. I let a certain radio DJ entice me into stocking up on candy. I've let a couple of sources pay for a (modest) meal we've shared, mainly to avoid the awkwardness of getting into an argument on principles. In these borderline cases I've relieved my guilt by making an equivalent donation to the Gazette Christmas Fund at the end of the year, but I should probably be more firm about these kinds of things.

It's hard to set a clear line between what's acceptable and what's not. You can be fundamental like the New York Times and say no gifts whatsoever. You can be practical like other companies and say no gifts over, say, $20, to distinguish the silly swag junk from the stuff that people really crave.

What's important, I think, is that journalists understand why they're being given free stuff. Companies aren't stupid. They know that giving free stuff to people in media works, if not to ensure positive coverage then at least to ensure some attention (which means free advertising).

And not to get too far into Media Ethics 101, but rewarding this activity discriminates against those without the big budgets. Those mom-and-pop businesses that don't have a social media strategy or an event planner who can ensure journalists get nice gift bags. Hell, many of them don't even have the time or money to send out a press release to all the mainstream media in town. Think about that too when you're getting all this attention from the people with lots of money.

Journalists are always going to be a special class. They'll have free access to events they're covering when everyone else has to pay. They'll get to meet celebrities that everyone else can only dream of getting an autograph from. They'll get their requests for information quickly upgraded to a higher priority. And often they'll get special treatment just because.

These are great privileges, in some cases necessary to do their jobs properly. But it's up to journalists to ensure that these privileges aren't abused.

What happened in Winnipeg is an example of such abuse. A minor one. I'm not calling for anyone's head. I just ask that these journalists think a bit more next time and look their gift horses a bit more squarely in the mouth, and not to be excited at the prospect of shiny things being put in front of your faces. Not to let your sources get you drunk. And certainly not to brag about that to your less privileged audience.

Unfortunately for us, it's the stuff that we want the most that is the most unethical to take.

And if Quebec politics has taught us anything, it's that "c'était Céline Dion, quand même" isn't an excuse people will accept for something that looks so much like quid pro quo.

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The journalistic fraud of “exclusive”

November 26, 2012 – 9:00 am| Posted in Media, Opinion

I'm going to tell you a secret about journalism. Some of the most thoroughly-researched reports, the ones splashed across the front pages of newspapers and magazines and given top billing in newscasts, take a gamble on the truth.

It's not just the sensationalist media like Sun News or the Journal de Montréal, it's La Presse, The Gazette, Le Devoir, CTV, Global, CBC. It's almost everyone (I'm hedging my bets here - I don't know of any media that outlaws this practice by policy).

It happens almost every time journalists or their editors use the word "exclusive".

Now, it's very rare that they get this wrong. It's like betting that Université Laval wins the Quebec football championship (says the frustrated Stingers fan). And when it does go wrong, it's not the end of the world. Nobody gets sued, nobody loses their job, it's just a bit embarrassing when someone points it out.

La Presse reports as "exclusive" a story that also appeared in Le Devoir the same day.

Take this story. It happened a year ago. La Presse finds out that Bixi is expanding to Longueuil, and presents it as an exclusive. But Le Devoir also found out, and published its own story that same day. Le Devoir didn't use the "exclusive" label, but did write "a appris Le Devoir", which is, of course, correct.

I tweeted about it, and there were some giggles, but that was it. No scandal here.

So how does this happen?

For most journalism, particularly for the mainstream media, the source of stories is easy to figure out. Some stories come from the police media spokespeople, reporting on the car crashes and crimes and other events that required emergency services. Some stories come through press releases or other ways that companies push the media to talk about them in a good light. Some stories come out of things said publicly by politicians or published by government bodies. Some come at prearranged sporting events, or special screenings given to journalists. Some stories are stolen from other media ("matched" is the term - crediting the other media only when the story has facts that can not be confirmed).

But then there's the rest. The stories that require real work. The ones that require months of investigation through talking to sources and filing access to information requests. That ones that come because a journalist is the only one paying attention to a story when it breaks. And the ones that are handed to journalists on silver platters by people who may or may not have personal agendas wanting to see secrets exposed.

When these stories are published, the question comes up: Is this an exclusive? Does some other journalist have this? Could anyone else also possibly be reporting on this?

For long investigations, the answer is almost always no. I mean, what are the chances that another journalist has also been working for days, weeks or even months on this same story and is going to publish it the same day? Virtually impossible.

For stories based on polls, exclusivity is contractual. Exclusive polls are paid, with the understanding that the company or companies that pay for it get first dibs at reporting its results. And even if another poll comes out that reports the same thing, a newspaper can still say that their particular poll is exclusive to them.

Stories that are leaked to journalists, however, are more likely to suffer the embarrassment of being proved wrong. After all, if someone wants to leak something, they might tell more than one journalist about it. In these cases, journalists are extra careful, relying on how much they trust the source when that source says that he or she hasn't told any other journalist about this story.

"Exclusive", at its very basic, is the statement that "no other media is reporting this story". But it's impossible to prove this kind of negative. Even if you could poll every single news outlet that might have an interest in a story (and there are a lot of them out there), they're not going to tell their competitors about a major investigative story they're working on.

So it's a gamble. The journalist asks "what are the chances that someone else has this?" and if the answer is "infinitecimally small", then the "EXCLUSIVE" label is slapped on. And fingers are crossed that the infinitecimally-likely doesn't become true.

Sun News bills the translation of a two-year-old TV interview as "EXCLUSIVE" and "BREAKING" (the story online has since been updated)

Redefining "exclusive"

This week, there was a less ambiguous abuse of this term by Sun Media. It published a story on Thursday afternoon reporting "exclusively" about comments Justin Trudeau made about Albertans running the country.

They knew about the comments because Trudeau made them two years ago on an episode of Les Francs-Tireurs, a current affairs series on Télé-Québec. They just haven't been reported much in English until now (though the segment's end, with Trudeau demonstrating how to fall down stairs, did go a bit viral).

The Sun story (which was also referred to as "breaking" in the hours after it came out) was uniquely about Trudeau's comments. It had no new exclusive information. So was it an exclusive? Can publicly-available information be considered exclusive if you're the first to report on it in your language? Arguments could be made either way.

It's one thing to argue that information contained in a publicly-accessible government database, compiled by a reporter, could be considered "exclusive" even though others could have just as easily found that information. But that's a far cry from re-reporting information contained in a publicly-broadcast television interview.

What's worst about this is that public mocking of the Sun News "exclusive" hype detracted from the story, which is perfectly fair game. Trudeau's comments are newsworthy, and seem to fit the narrative of a politician pandering to Quebec by demonizing another part of the country. Trudeau predictably walked the comments back and apologized for them, and the situation rightly got coverage in mainstream media. But none of that required Sun News to call the story an "exclusive."

It's particularly sad that the story is by David Akin, one of the more respectable figures associated with Sun News Network. I'm hoping that the decision to play this as an exclusive wasn't his but an editor's, and his loyalty to his employer is preventing him from contradicting them on it.

I'm not sure how Akin and Sun found this story, either. Did a Conservative opposition researcher leak it to him because the Tories were worried about losing Monday's by-election in Alberta? Or was Trudeau's past researched in light of his decision to enter the federal Liberal leadership campaign? Or do Sun Media journalists just spend their downtime looking through Télé-Québec video archives?

Explaining process is important in journalism, because transparency builds trust. But too often, these kinds of stories don't explain process. They don't explain what turned a journalist onto a story, even if that might be very revealing. And they don't explain why they think a story is exclusive to them, because often they can't explain it.

So next time you see someone say a story is an "exclusive", ask yourself how they know that. Chances are, it's just a (really good) guess.

And I'm telling you that exclusively.

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CJAD and Bain: Calmez-vous

September 21, 2012 – 12:31 am| Posted in In the news, Opinion, Radio

It seems everyone was up in arms on Thursday after hearing that CJAD radio had given Richard Henry Bain, the man accused of killing a man at Metropolis on the night of the election, a 40-minute interview in which he was given free reign rein to spout his political views, and on top of that deciding to schedule the interview to coincide with the same moment that Pauline Marois was announcing her new government.

Of course, much of the previous paragraph isn't true, but that shouldn't stop us from being outraged, right?

What happened

Here's what happened on Wednesday, based on what we've heard from station management and CJAD staff during interviews since then:

Just after 9:30am on Wednesday, the CJAD newsroom received a phone call. Trudie Mason, who does morning newscasts, took the call. The man at the other end at first wouldn't identify himself, but eventually said he was Richard Henry Bain and that he was calling from the Rivière des Prairies detention facility. By this point, Mason was recording the phone call.

Mason and the main identifying himself as Bain spoke for 38 minutes. Mason repeatedly asked him to comment on what happened the night of Sept. 4, when Denis Blanchette was shot dead and Dave Courage severely injured in what some suspect may have been a politically-motivated attack on premier-elect Pauline Marois. But the man wouldn't answer questions on that subject, instead preferring to discuss his political views, including his opinion that Quebec should be split up into its sovereignist and federalist regions.

Throughout the day, CJAD worked to verify that the man speaking was, in fact, Bain. They held on to the story while they tried to verify the caller's identity. In the meantime, there was a significant amount of discussion - more than Mason said she has ever had in her career on an issue like this - about how to handle the story. Newsroom staff checked the caller ID and asked people who knew Bain to identify the recorded voice. Eventually the confirmation came, from Bain's lawyer, a bit before 3:30pm: The man in the recording was, indeed, Bain.

The next newscast being at 4pm, CJAD decided to break the story then. Care was made to restrict the amount of audio that went to air. In the end, less than a minute of audio from that 38-minute conversation was broadcast, and 10 seconds of that is just Bain saying his name and where he's calling from.

There was a very basic discussion of Bain's political views - and by that I mean there was about enough time to read out the slogan on a bumper sticker. Details were cut out and not aired. The first airing of the news story was immediately followed by a discussion between Mason and Aaron Rand on his show, that went into the process of reporting this story. You can listen to that discussion on this podcast, beginning around the 16-minute mark.

At the same time, a written version of the story was posted on CJAD's website, with a timestamp of exactly 4pm. The written version includes no direct quotes from Bain, and no link to audio.

CJAD's sister stations at Astral, NRJ and Rouge FM, also used French-language clips from Bain in their newscasts. You can hear their news story here and an excerpt of audio about a minute long of Bain talking in French.

Blind outrage

Unfortunately, most of this nuance never reached the Twittersphere. All many heard was that CJAD had aired an interview with the man accused of a politically-motivated killing. And so the condemnation was quick and severe. There was even a new hashtag created for the occasion, #NouvelleÉmissionCJAD, in which heinous criminals discuss subjects that their victims would no doubt find highly offensive.

But reading much of those comments, it was obvious how many of them came from people who had not heard the news story. (Many said so when I asked, even adding that they didn't want to and should not have to hear what was aired in order to judge it wrong.) Comments on social media said the decision to air the interview was a slap in the face to victims, that it was dangerous, and even that it was intentionally scheduled to air at the same moment Marois was presenting her new cabinet as part of some vendetta the anglophone community has against the PQ leader. From the information presented, it's very hard to come to either conclusion.

Far too many of those comments came from people who should know better than to condemn something they had not witnessed.

The outrage caused Astral to send out a press release Wednesday afternoon re-explaining itself.

It's called journalism

There are some, when challenged on their outrage about this, who say that affording even 10 seconds of airtime to Bain is wrong, that people should not be hearing his political views. I'm sympathetic to that argument, and clearly CJAD was as well.

But the problem is that Bain's motivations (assuming he's guilty of what he's accused of) are, in fact, very important and newsworthy. The man is already being described as an anglophone, even though he has what sounds like a francophone accent and seems to speak French well enough. And people assume this was an attempt on Marois's life, even though there's no evidence yet to suggest this.

It may be distasteful for journalists to interview (presumed) bad people, whether they're convicted murderers or third-world dictators. But what they think does matter, even if we think those views are dangerous. They should be treated with care, perhaps even sanitized and heavily censored, but they should be reported.

So much of what makes this story important is based on the presumed motivations of the man accused of this killing. What the man accused of it says about his views becomes important as a result.

CJAD couldn't pretend Bain never called them. It had to report the story. It did so carefully and deliberately. I might hesitate to say it was done "with restraint" as Dan Delmar tweeted, since the station did promote the story and slapped an all-caps EXCLUSIVE label on it when it was published. But what actually made it on air was tame.

Unanswered questions

There are some serious questions to ask about this case. The main one is how a man who is sitting in a detention facility had access to a phone for more than half an hour. It was a question that CJAD itself asked on air right away.

And there might be questions to ask of CJAD as well, about whether it was right to air even short clips of Bain's political views rather than just explaining that Bain called the station and leave it a that.

But if you're going to criticize them for something they did, please make sure you first have a clear idea of what it is exactly that they did.

Because, like with the shooting itself, context is everything.

Coverage

Unfortunately, I can't find audio of the actual news story on CJAD's website. But in addition to the Rand show link above, you can also hear about this from this podcast of the Andrew Carter morning show from Thursday morning.

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Journalists need to leave the echo chamber

April 24, 2012 – 7:59 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

Journalism Strategies panel, from left: Moderator Mike Finnerty, Tony Burman, Kai Nagata, Dominique Payette, Judy Rebick

Last week, I attended a panel discussion about the future of journalism, and specifically about public policies to support journalism and whether we still need professional journalists. I resisted going to such a discussion, but decided to go anyway because the panel had some interesting members. Tony Burman, the former CBC and Al-Jazeera executive; Kai Nagata, the disillusioned former CBC and CTV journalist; Dominique Payette, creator of a report calling for accreditation of professional journalists in Quebec; and Judy Rebick, activist and creator of rabble.ca.

If you missed the panel, there's a video of it online. It's about two and a half hours long, including questions.

I was excited by the idea that there would be some interesting debate from people with different perspectives on how journalism should be done. But sadly, none of the debate I wanted to see materialized.

It became clear to me as the discussion went on how one-sided it all was. There was no representation, either on the panel or in the audience, of opinions from the right or even the centre-right. There was lots of discussion about the student strike and how the media was covering it, but no one questioned whether the strike itself was a good idea. There was discussion of Quebecor's battles with Transcontinental in the community weekly war and how it has changed since the lockout at the Journal de Montréal, but nobody saw fit to defend the empire, or even point out that starting a bunch of new newspapers adds to the number of journalism jobs. There was condemnation of openly right-wing activist media like Sun News Network, but no corresponding condemnation of openly left-wing activist media like The Tyee or Rabble.ca.

I say this not because I want to become a Quebecor apologist or student-basher, but because as a journalist the last place I want to be is an echo chamber where everyone agrees on a set of facts that suit their agenda. I want to be challenged on my preconceptions, I want the most unpopular ideas to get a fair chance at being heard and considered. I want people who disagree on fundamental issues to discuss their opinions with each other instead of putting their hands over their ears.

There's a reason I put the term "open-minded" in the headline of my review of Sun News Network. Open-mindedness is something I find too many journalists lack. And a closed mind is often the biggest reason why a journalist can't be completely honest with news consumers.

Dominique Payette

Dominique Payette is a former Radio-Canada journalist, now an academic, who was invited on the panel because of her report into journalism in Quebec. It called for the establishment of a "professional journalist" title that would be given out (and could be taken away) by some quasi-government body. I was among many who argued against it because I'm uncomfortable with the government, no matter how arm's length the distance, deciding who can and can't be a journalist.

Payette expressed disappointment, perhaps even annoyance, that her report has essentially been shelved. That's mainly due to the fact that two groups - the FPJQ, which is an association of Quebec journalists, and the Quebec Press Council, which acts as an ombudsman for Quebec media - both want to be in charge of deciding who gets to be a journalist in Quebec. Faced with a journalistic community divided over how to proceed, the government wasn't about to start legislating what could be a very controversial issue.

But Payette's interpretation of the reaction was different. According to her, there was a language divide at play. Anglophone media were largely against the report while francophone media largely supported it. She's right on the first part - anglo media were just about entirely against the idea, for ideological reasons but also because of some of Payette's other recommendations, like that all journalists be tested in French language skills. But many francophones also came out against the idea.

Payette also cited a language divide in the coverage of the student protests. Apparently francophone media were largely on the students' side, while anglophone media were largely on the side of the government. This confused me, until I remembered something she said earlier in the evening.

"I don't read the Journal de Montréal because it has become a right-wing newspaper"

A journal de droite, she said, in case there's some debate over my translation. According to Payette, there were no longer journalists working there.

Now, there's definitely debate to be had about journalistic ethics at the Journal, but it stunned me to hear that a person who considers herself an expert on Quebec media refuses to read its largest newspaper. Not only that, but she then analyzes Quebec media as a whole by conveniently ignoring one of its major players. The Journal de Montréal and other Quebecor media were against the licensing of journalists and highly critical of student protesters, but rather than acknowledge that different media have different opinions on important issues, she ignored media she disagreed with and simply resorted to generalizations and caricatures.

Not that there were too many people in the audience to call her on it. I heard only one question that came close, wondering why, if media working for "social change" was such a good thing, right-wing media like Fox News working for their own social change was so bad. The question wasn't really answered by the panel, who instead pointed out that Fox News viewers are ill-informed and that the opinions it advocates benefit only a small number of people.

It's sad to see a group of people, who apparently hold quality journalism so dear, seem to take the stance that activist journalism is okay so long as it's activism on the left. It's sad to see a crowd that's interested in journalism openly applaud leftist activist sentiment.

Sun News personalities speak of the "consensus media" where journalists assume the same (left-wing) opinions as all the other ones, perhaps through peer pressure and a desire to fit in, or for some other reason. Coming out of a discussion like this, it's hard to disagree.

I don't want to suggest that the crowd thought with one mind. There were some in the audience (which had representatives from many media outlets, including CTV, CBC, CJAD, The Gazette, OpenFile, Sun Media, Presse canadienne, Projet J and probably others whose faces I didn't recognize) who pointed out to me privately afterward how disappointed they were in the political bias. I myself didn't speak up, which might have given others the idea that I endorsed the sentiments being expressed.

But I don't endorse them. Nor do I endorse the opposite opinions. I believe most divisive political issues aren't nearly as black and white as many people make them out to be. I don't believe that people who disagree with me are either evil or stupid. I don't believe that journalists should embrace bias simply because the ideal of objectivity is unreachable.

And I don't believe that discussions in which everyone agrees with each other do much to further enlighten anyone.

(Then again, I could be wrong about this. I like to keep an open mind, after all.)

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Bienvenue, Huffington Post Québec

February 10, 2012 – 7:13 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

I suppose I should say something about Le Huffington Post Québec, the new website that is supposed to, as Patrick White writes, "transformer la vision du monde des Québécois."

It launched this week amid what's been called "controversy". It's funny how easy it is to create a controversy. Just get one person to write something on a blog or in a column, have a bunch of people post links to it on Twitter and Facebook, and then get journalists to ask them for their reaction. Voilà: a controversy.

In the case of the Huffington Post, it started with a blog post from Voir's Simon Jodoin, accusing people of volunteering their services as writers for the sole profit of the giant AOL empire. (A feeling echoed by La Presse's Nathalie Collard.) The fallout from that led to some people who had agreed to blog for free (notably Québec solidaire's Amir Khadir) to change their minds. But not all.

The word "controversy" appears in many stories about HuffPost Québec. The Gazette, Les Affaires (and again), Radio-Canada (and its Triplex blog), CTV, Canadian Press, Branchez-Vous. Bad PR, for sure, but Arianna Huffington dealt with it well when she was surrounded by journalists jumping over each other to talk to her.

(You can read more about Le Huffington Post at Projet J, which visited its offices and covered its launch.)

Read More »

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Bell Let’s Talk Day: “This is why we do it”

February 8, 2012 – 2:30 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

Bell Let's Talk national spokesperson Clara Hughes in an interview with TSN Radio in Toronto (Bell Canada photo)

Today is Bell's Let's Talk Day, a day in which Canada's biggest telecom company raises money to help treat mental illness, and helps bring the issue out into the spotlight at the same time.

Until midnight Pacific time, Bell is donating five cents for every long-distance call and text message sent using its network, as well as every (non-robot) retweet of its Twitter account, to this charitable cause.

I was reminded of this campaign when I watched CFCF's noon newscast today. It was hard to miss it. Half of the first 15-minute block was devoted to it, with a story by a local reporter profiling someone with mental illness, and an interview with the campaign's spokesperson, Olympian (and national sweetheart) Clara Hughes.

It didn't stop there. Later, a health news story about the potential causes of suicide (probably a coincidence because the study just came out), a sit-down interview with an expert on mental illness, and a chat with reporter Tarah Schwartz about a special report on depression airing on Thursday. That's not including the commercials devoted to the subject and all the other programming that's airing on CTV, including a special at 7pm.

A year ago, I asked similar questions about this campaign, and whether the perfectly laudable cause justified the apparent intrusion of Bell Canada into the editorial decisions of CTV's newsrooms. (One could argue that many have simply decided to join this cause without being ordered to, which is possible, but there's a reason we're not seeing as much coverage of this on CBC and Global, and do we really think it would get so much airtime on CTV if this was, say, a Telus campaign?)

There are also questions to be asked about Bell's motives in this. Every large company puts profit ahead of anything else, and it makes sense for a company whose reputation is as poor as Bell's to spend millions of dollars making it seem more human. And it sends the message that if you really want CTV News to pay attention to your cause, no matter how positive it is, you need to get Bell onside.

But rather than rehash all that, I'll share an email that was forwarded to me by someone from Bell Media, who I'm guessing saw my tweets critical of the campaign today or was directed to last year's blog post. It was sent from a viewer of CTV's Marilyn Denis show, which also devoted segments to mental health today, including one on postpartum depression.

He added only: "This is why we do it."

I've redacted the person's name since it's not important.

Subject: Thank you thank you thank you

Hello Marilyn

My name is ***, mother of 4 girls 8,6,4 and 5 months.

I started my last pregnancy with depression and it is becoming a giant battle!

I feel darker and darker and the show today made feel good and thank to CTV, let's talk day. It is good to know that I will talk and search for help.

What a show thank you again.

There are a lot of thing behind my depression, I have in Canada for 17years no status, with 4 children provide a good life. Being a great mother and wife. Keeping on packing weigh. Being there sometimes became a burden etc....but I do it because I love my family.

Well I just wanted to say thank to you and CTV for this day Let's talk.

I never wrote to a show but the one today saved my life.

By the grace of God!

There are worse reasons to abuse one's power.

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Ethics don’t matter on TV

April 7, 2011 – 2:23 am| Posted in TV

A couple of disturbing stories have come to light recently about Quebec television broadcasters' attempts to censor things that might affect their bottom line.

The first was the revelation from La Presse's Hugo Dumas that producers of dramatic programming for TVA were being asked to not show characters using iPhones. This, apparently, because Quebecor owns both TVA and Videotron and Videotron doesn't offer the iPhone to wireless customers.

That prompted a reply from Quebecor VP Serge Sasseville that actually admitted Dumas's story was true, but said that this was simply a case of a sponsor (Videotron) wanting its products depicted in the programming it sponsors. He offers the example of Ford sponsoring Radio-Canada's series 19-2, and seeing Ford vehicles being driven in the show.

Dumas in turn replied to the reply, saying the argument seemed to suggest that Videotron sponsors all of TVA's programming, and calling that reasoning preposterous.

Interference from a broadcaster into dramatic programming for business reasons is bad enough. But as Sasseville's comparison points out, we're well past that point already.

The second story is the decision of RDS to refuse to show a commercial from comedian Mike Ward that makes fun of the Canadiens. To be precise, they refused to show the ad during Canadiens games.

Their argument, and it's a really stupid one, is that RDS is the official broadcaster of the Canadiens, and it's unacceptable that an ad that runs during Canadiens games makes fun of them.

Some have noted that RDS is now owned by Bell, which is a stakeholder in the Canadiens and owns the naming rights to the Bell Centre, among many commercial deals between the telecom giant and the hockey team.

Both of these moves are ridiculous, and both reek of giant media empires abusing their ownership powers to mold programming in one area so it matches the business interests of another.

It's not that many steps from this to each media giant having its own imaginary universe, each with its own set of maybe-true facts.

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Is selling out okay for a good cause?

February 9, 2011 – 4:28 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

Clara Hughes is the spokesperson for Bell's Let's Talk campaign to raise awareness about mental illness

Let's talk.

The phrase, and the face of Canadian Olympic star Clara Hughes, are all over the media today in a campaign organized by Bell Canada. It's planning to spend $50 million over five years on this program, and today it's giving five cents for every text message and long-distance call by a Bell customer to mental health initiatives.

To promote this, the campaign has pulled out all the stops, and has ... partnered ... with news organizations to spread the word. CTV, which Bell is in the process of purchasing, has devoted just about everything it can - including TSN and MuchMusic - to the campaign, forcing each one to mention it somehow. Hughes has been doing non-stop interviews today. She was on Canada AM. She was on CP24's breakfast show. She was on the Marilyn Denis show. She was interviewed on CFCF. And that's just daytime. There's an entire channel online devoted to this stuff.

And, of course, during the actual commercials, Hughes appears again - over and over - in ads paid for by Bell talking about the campaign.

It doesn't stop with CTV, though. My own newspaper The Gazette has two pages devoted to this subject today, one of which has a giant ad featuring Hughes and the Bell logo. I'm sure it won't be hard to find other examples in other media.

Fighting mental illness is a laudable goal. No one with even a trace of a soul can stand up and say they oppose this campaign. I salute Hughes and Bell for their efforts, and wish the campaign success (though I'm not quite sure what that would mean - they've already said they're spending $50 million over five years, so are the donations in excess of that, or did they just estimate how much it'll cost them? UPDATE: The money from this event - more than $3 million - was in fact in addition to the $50 million they'd already pledged)

This also isn't the first time that a big, rich company has bought news for a good cause. Newspapers often have pages devoted to issues chosen by advertisers. They have various names for this, referring to them as "partnerships" or "joint ventures". "Directed content" is my favourite term. A step beyond the advertorial, the content is presented as news, it doesn't talk about the advertiser directly, and the advertiser has no say in the content of the news pieces themselves, other than their subject.

Oral B and Listerine sponsor coverage of oral care. Big oil companies sponsor articles about the environment to greenwash their image. Banks and other financial institutions sponsor entire sections on the importance of RRSPs. It is, in the eyes of the publishers and advertisers, a win-win: the news outlet gets much-needed advertising money, the advertiser gets to see its logo all over the place, and the issue gets public exposure.

The only drawback is the crumbling wall between editorial and advertising. The precedent is established that an advertiser can get all sorts of journalistic outlets to contribute to its campaign, provided it's for a good cause (or something that can be interpreted as a good cause), and that big media companies will use the power of convergence to please those advertisers, if given enough money.

Most importantly, it means that issues advertisers want to bring up - whether because they want to appear charitable or because it is in line with their business interests - get more exposure than those nobody wants to spend money on. People who want their causes to get news coverage are better off pleading to large corporations' marketing departments than to journalists. And good luck getting anyone to pay attention to a cause that puts one of those big corporations in a bad light.

To be clear, I have nothing against this cause. Bell is spending a lot of money it could have just as easily given to its shareholders or spent on ads lauding its services. I don't think the good PR that will come from this will bring in more than $50 million in new subscribers. And I hope the campaign is very successful and helps a lot of people.

But I think it sets a bad precedent when a company like Bell can simply dictate to all its divisions, including news, that a certain topic is covered on a certain day. It's hard not to think of that as a slippery slope.

UPDATE: A response from Bell worth reading. And another blog post that goes a bit farther than mine, suggesting this is more of an advertisement for Bell than a campaign for mental health.

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Evolution of a Habs scoop

June 9, 2010 – 4:17 pm| Posted in Media

Back in journalism school, one of my teachers put the class through a simulated process of editing a breaking news story for a multi-edition newspaper. A story would be written and edited, then new details emerge and get corrected, forcing a rewrite, and then the process would repeat itself.

I thought the exercise was a bit silly. I didn't think real newspapers would function in such a way. As it turns out from five years working at a real, multi-edition newspaper, the exercise was surprisingly accurate.

Working as the late sports editor on Monday night, I went through this process with a relatively minor story.

Guy Boucher is the head coach of the Hamilton Bulldogs, which is the farm team of the Canadiens. The Bulldogs play in the American Hockey League, and its players are routinely called up to Montreal to fill in for injured players.

There was a report that Boucher had gotten an offer to jump to the big leagues (even though he'd spent only a year with the Bulldogs, his first professional hockey team), becoming the head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets. On Monday came word that Boucher had turned down that offer.

Since the Bulldogs are related to the Canadiens, and Boucher is considered one of the candidates to replace Canadiens head coach Jacques Martin if he's ever fired or quits (we don't suspect either is imminent), this story was going to become the lead brief in Tuesday's paper.

As the night went on, we received news from the Columbus Dispatch that the Blue Jackets had gone with their second choice, Manitoba Moose coach Scott Arniel. The brief had to be rewritten (it started off with "The Columbus Blue Jackets are still looking for a new head coach..."), but that was easily accomplished before first edition.

The scoop

At 10:59 p.m. Monday night, about a half hour after first edition, Rue Frontenac's Martin Leclerc published a scoop that Boucher had accepted an offer to become head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning. It referred to three unnamed sources as confirming the news.

This news spread quickly, even at this late hour. A post on Habs Inside/Out was updated to reflect the new news, crediting Rue Frontenac. Habs-crazy broadcasters RDS and CKAC were reporting it, also offering credit where it was due.

Ironically, I learned about the story through a Canwest News Service report, also quoting Rue Frontenac. A Gazette editor later called to make sure I was aware of it.

Again, the brief had to be torn up and rewritten, starting with the latest news, but including the rest. (At this point there are three stories merged into one - Boucher turning down Columbus, Columbus hiring Arniel, and Boucher going to Tampa Bay.) An online story was also put together, crediting and linking to the Rue Frontenac report.

Few things are as embarrassing to a journalist - and a journalism organization - than having to admit you've been scooped. Because the report doesn't list its sources - and because it's late at night when usual sources are unavailable - there's no way to independently verify the report. There's no choice, really, you have to credit the news organization that broke the story. Otherwise, you're putting your organization's own reputation on the line if the story turns out to be false. It doesn't matter how respected the other organization is, if they're your only source you have to say so.

The multiplication of unnamed sources

Here's where it gets a bit tricky. Rue Frontenac is the website published by locked-out workers of the Journal de Montréal, a Quebecor publication. To say there's animosity between these two publications is putting it mildly. There appears to be a policy at Quebecor's news outlets that the term "Rue Frontenac" is never mentioned, even when they put out a scoop like this.

But Quebecor, the Journal and its Agence QMI couldn't ignore the story and let everyone else report it. So while RDS, CKAC and The Gazette prominently referenced Rue Frontenac, an Agence QMI story referred to "certaines sources". A different Agence QMI story credits the Tampa Bay Tribune for the scoop.

Except when you look at the Tampa Bay Tribune story, it credits "Montreal sports television outlet RDS". And RDS, you'll recall, credits Rue Frontenac.

Later in the night, TSN managed to get what seemed like a confirmation on the story. But by then, many news stories were already referring to "multiple sources" (say, "RDS and CKAC are reporting..."), even though all those sources led back to the same source.

That's a journalistically dangerous problem when it comes to these kinds of reports. Improper sourcing leads to the impression that news outlets have gotten independent verification of a story, which leads to more news outlets reporting on it with increasingly vague sourcing. Eventually everyone is reporting it because everyone else is reporting it, and it becomes common knowledge. Readers, viewers and listeners are left with the impression that everyone has verified the report, when in fact it's just one guy who's said something on the Internet.

In this case, it seems the story was true, so all the news outlets win their gamble. Nobody has to make any apologies for getting it wrong (and Quebecor doesn't have to say it relied on a report from its own locked-out journalist while refusing to credit him).

The next time this happens, they might not get so lucky.

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Does “Special Information Feature” clearly mean “Advertisement”?

February 12, 2010 – 12:00 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

The Sierra Club of Canada is complaining about a series that appeared in Canwest newspapers over the past few weeks sponsored by Shell Canada about the environment and the oil sands in Alberta. (The series also ran in the Toronto Star.)

Coverage by Canadian Press, Fast Forward Weekly, Marketing Magazine.

Shell ad in The Gazette last Saturday

Their complaint is that the advertisement, like most advertorials, tries to pass itself off as news. It's got headlines and sidebars just like a newspaper page. It's not obviously trying to sell anything, but instead is presenting information in a journalistic sense. And the word "advertisement" doesn't appear anywhere.

Instead, it's described as a "special Canwest information feature on climate change, in partnership with Shell Canada", lending Canwest's name (and, presumably, its journalistic integrity) to the advertorial.

What's interesting to me is that the Sierra Club isn't complaining to Canwest or to a press council or the Canadian Association of Journalists or Canadian Newspaper Association. Instead, they're complaining to Advertising Standards Canada.

In other words, they're not arguing that the newspaper acted unethically. They're arguing that the advertiser acted unethically, and they're appealing to the advertiser's code of ethics.

It really says something, I think, when an advertiser is expected to have better journalistic ethics than a major newspaper chain.

The Sierra Club's complaint is essentially one about labelling. It's not labelled as an advertisement or advertorial, but as a "special information feature", which could mean anything and isn't clear.

Canwest's response, to Canadian Press and others, is this:

Canwest communications director Phyllise Gelfand said the stories were printed in a different typeface and laid out in a different style than the rest of the paper. Shell's "partnership" was referred to at the top of the page.

"That's enough," she said. "The average reader would notice the difference."

I don't agree. I'm a (former) newspaper editor, and a media critic, and it's tough for me to understand sometimes what is editorial and what is advertising.

Advertisers and newspaper publishers have come up with all sorts of euphemisms to refer to advertorial content (the word "advertorial" itself, for one). Special information feature. Advertising feature. Marketing feature. Joint venture. Advertising section. Do any of these really clearly say "advertisement" to you, the average reader?

(And the argument about it being in a different typeface holds in print, but not online, where it looks like any other news story except for the byline and the Shell ad)

Of course, if clarity were the goal, it would just come out and say "advertisement". But the goal isn't clarity, it's confusion. It's for the advertiser to piggyback on the journalistic integrity of the publication and convince readers that the publication somehow endorses what's being said.

And newspapers are only to happy to comply, sacrificing their integrity bit by bit for short-term financial gain.

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Série Montréal-Québec: Flawless, says Journal

January 26, 2010 – 3:56 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

On Sunday, TVA debuted its newest Sunday-night populist attention-getter, the Série Montréal-Québec, in which 16 players from each city (each including two women, one guy over 40 and one guy over 50) compete in a meaningless eight-game tournament to determine which city is superior to the other.

I switched back and forth a bit between the TVA broadcast and an actual sporting event that actually mattered. What little I saw of the show consisted entirely of long, drawn-out American Idol-style (or, if you prefer, «Star Académie»-style) player introductions. It's one thing when you're introducing two or three people you've never met, but it gets old after the first few dozen.

Thankfully, I wasn't the only one to notice that. Le Soleil's Richard Therrien and La Presse's Hugo Dumas showed an inspiring example of Quebec-Montreal unity by panning the show and its presentation devoid of any energy. The review from Dans ma télé's Annie Fortin was lukewarm at best, with similar criticisms.

But then there's the Journal de Montréal.

Journal de Montréal - Jan. 25, 2010

I find it ironic that Quebecor's new Agence QMI put together an article (one written like a ninth-grade book report or the minutes of a school board meeting) that was good enough for both 24 Heures in Montreal and the Journal de Québec website, but the Journal de Montréal decided it needed to have one of its few remaining journalists- Michelle Coudé-Lord - write a redundant story reviewing the show (one, I should add, that was reprinted verbatim in the Journal de Québec - in fact, the latter had an identical two-page spread, only in black and white).

Then again, Coudé-Lord's story has plenty of adjectives that the Agence QMI story was lacking, and her impression was so diametrically opposed to everyone else's (including mine) that I can only conclude that she was in a different universe at the time or has become disconnected from reality:

La Série Montréal/Québec sera rassembleuse comme le fut Star Académie. On n'abandonne pas une recette gagnante. Attendez-vous à ce que le Québec se divise en deux au cours des prochaines semaines. Les joueurs sont attachants ...

Guy Lafleur a résumé fort bien ce qu'allait être cette série : «le hockey est un jeu qui nous rend heureux».

La présentation des joueurs a donné le ton. L'émotion sera au rendez-vous. Stéphane Laporte et Julie Snyder, le concepteur et la productrice de cette série, savent faire de la télévision pour et par le monde. Et encore hier soir ils en ont fourni la preuve.

Le portrait de chaque joueur nous le rendait fort sympathique. ... C'était même touchant de voir les parents applaudir dans les estrades ...

Loco Locass a interprété avec enthousiasme l'hymne national de Québec ...

Montréal commence fort avec une gardienne de but ... Ça promet.

Belle initiative de Guy Carbonneau ...

Éric Lapointe a donné du chien à l'équipe de Carbo avec une interprétation enlevante de l'hymne national de Montréal.

Une belle réalisation de Michel Quidoz ... Marie-Claude Savard, l'animatrice, fut solide et a su laisser place à l'évènement. ...

That's 16 separate praises by my count, and not a single criticism of the show. I would have reprinted the entire article here if I could do so without fear of a copyright infringement lawsuit. It's surreal.

If I ever get married, I'm having Michelle Coudé-Lord write my vows. By then she'll probably be a public relations specialist.

PR is about the only way I can explain both Journals taking two colour pages to present players from both teams.

Hell, it makes Jeff Lee (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Quebecor-owned Videotron) look tame in his video blowjob.

Despite what some conspiracy theorists might think, Quebecor-owned media were not unanimous in their praise. Roxanne Tremblay of 7 jours didn't hold back on criticisms, and followed it up with a second-day story about the show's problems.

But still, even though I'm skeptical of theories about media owners directly affecting editorial content on a day-to-day basis, I can't help wonder if Coudé-Lord's article is what Pierre-Karl Péladeau envisions for his newsroom of the future - one where unionized journalists don't stand in the way of Quebecor's self-interest with their silly journalistic ethics.

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When TMZ gets it wrong

December 29, 2009 – 4:49 pm| Posted in Media, Opinion

I hate TMZ. I hate everything it stands for. I hate the idea that someone who was on U.S. television for 30 seconds has suddenly lost the right to go to the pharmacy without being harassed by some guy with a camera asking a bunch of questions. I especially hate that TV show they have (it comes on after the Colbert Report, and sometimes I'm slow at changing the channel), which seems to consist mainly of running into random celebrities on the street with a video camera and asking them how they're doing.

I don't blame TMZ, though. They're filling a demand, just like all the other gossip mags. Instead, the blame rests squarely on the people who consume this content: You. If everyone was as disinterested in celebrity gossip as I am, TMZ and its ilk would have no readers, no revenue, no money to pay photographers, stalkers and other scoop-chasers.

In fact, I respect TMZ. There are few worlds as cut-throat as celebrity gossip, and that brand appeared out of nowhere to suddenly own it. It broke the Michael Jackson story, it broke the Brittany Murphy story, and a bunch of lesser-known ones as well.

Love it or hate it, when the Jackson story broke this year, everyone as frantically reloading TMZ.com looking for an update. And its record has brought it to the point where it can report something and mainstream media will re-report it, citing TMZ as their only source.

It was just a matter of time before TMZ would fall face-first into its own pile of crap. And it happened Monday morning on what it thought was a huge exclusive story: A photo of John F. Kennedy, taken before he became president, partying with some naked girls on a boat. The significance, it argued: If the photo had come out in the 1950s, it would have sunk Kennedy's presidential campaign and probably "changed history."

TMZ went through due diligence in authenticating the photo. It got a forensic photo expert to say that the photo showed no evidence of digital manipulation, and said other unnamed "experts" also looked at the photo and said it appeared to be authentic. The story focused heavily on the authentication process itself, partly to convince people it was legitimate, and partly to leave open the possibility that it might not be.

Early comments on the story argued about whether or not it was fake, discussing everything from shadows to 1950s fashion. Most called people who disagreed with them names, and complained that they were not experts.

Within hours, The Smoking Gun, another website that has built a reputation for itself of being thorough researchers, posted a story saying TMZ had fallen for a hoax, that the photo in question is actually from a 1967 Playboy photo spread, and that the man in the photo was an actor, not JFK.

TMZ later posted another story, saying questions had been raised about the photo's authenticity. Later it confirmed what The Smoking Gun had said, and concluded the man in the photo was not JFK.

Soon, the mainstream media was piling on. Google News lists 766 articles, including one by the New York Times, which points out that both TMZ and The Smoking Gun are owned (through different subsidiaries) by Time Warner.

Quoted by the Times, TMZ executive producer Harvey Levin said "We’re not happy about it, but this is part of journalism."

He's right. Journalists get suckered like this all the time. And TMZ was right about the photo not being Photoshopped - Photoshop hadn't been created when the photo was taken. It's just that nobody bothered to check old issues of Playboy.

Comparisons with "Rathergate" - the Bush document scandal that got Dan Rather knocked off CBS - are apt here. Both involve documents that were authenticated but later turned out to be fakes. Both were good-faith, well-researched stories (that would probably be protected under a recent Canadian Supreme Court decision on libel), but both ultimately failed because the drive for a controversial story overpowered the need to get it right, and because a journalist interpreted an expert's opinion that they couldn't find anything wrong with a document as some sort of guarantee that the document must be authentic.

Still, TMZ will recover from this embarrassment. It will continue to break stories, and while they may be more cautious, or include more disclaimers, the mainstream media will keep re-reporting them.

My only major gripe with TMZ, though, is that the original story is still there, with no update, no correction, no indication at all that the story has been exposed as a hoax. I realize that failure to update old stories online is a problem in print media (Craig Silverman mentions it often), but even the most technologically-inept of publications knows that if you put up a story that turns out to have been false, you have to update it to say so.

Fix that, and my respect grows back a bit.

But no matter what, I still hate TMZ.

UPDATE (Jan. 19): Basem Boshra has similar thoughts in his Gazette column.

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The special section

December 15, 2009 – 12:37 am| Posted in Media, Opinion

Le Devoir's Stéphane Baillargeon laments the lack of prominence given to reporting about poverty in the media these days, even through a serious recession.

The reason, of course, is simple: poverty doesn't pay.

It's one of those unfortunate realities of the media that, no matter how many barriers you put up between editorial and advertising, there will always be pressure for the latter to affect the former, and a tendency for that wall to slowly crumble.

One prime example of this (and it's not a recent development) is so-called "special sections". Long ago, some newspaper advertising department genius discovered that you're more likely to attract advertising if the editorial content appeals to the advertiser.

Because automotive companies have among the largest advertising budgets, special sections related to cars are among the most prevalent. In fact, most newspapers have multiple automotive sections every week, even now despite their shrinking sizes. Other attractive topics include sports, employment, real estate, investing, travel, health, home electronics and fashion.

In some cases, the idea of editorial freedom is chucked out the window completely and the section designated "advertorial" (or the more nuanced "special advertising section" or other euphemisms for such). In others, that wall between editorial and advertising is maintained, and the advertisers have no say in the content, except, of course, that it be on a certain topic.

And that's the problem, because not all topics have big-money advertisers willing to bankroll newspaper sections. Books sections are disappearing from newspapers because book publishers don't have large advertising budgets. Poverty doesn't have a financial backer, which is why you never see special sections about it. Homeless shelters don't have large advertising budgets (that won't change no matter how many people subscribe to this blog), and neither do so many issues that don't involve people buying expensive things. Forget reporting on international issues, human relationships, political corruption, the food industry, philosophy, science or other matters that don't involve excess consumption. Instead, they all have to share space in the cramped, overworked general news section, along with the political horse-race stories and cop briefs.

The environment is a bit of an exception to this. A lot of advertisers are pushing green initiatives, either because they think they'll make money off of it or just because they're trying to drum up some good cred. But otherwise, money is a more important factor than importance. That's why there's no special section on science but two on RRSPs and one on golf.

The problem is only getting worse as newspapers cut back. Choosing between a books section that loses a lot of money and an automotive section that pays for itself, newspapers will keep the latter.

Contrast the special sections in commercial newspapers with the special sections in student newspapers and the differences show clearly. The student paper I worked for had special sections on gender, sexuality, disability, poverty, and all sorts of other topics that don't usually get special attention in the mainstream media.

Mainstream media, that is, except Le Devoir. That's why it's so small. It could make a lot of money filling its pages with advertiser-friendly fluff, but it has chosen to build a stronger wall to protect its editorial side. Either that, or it's just being particularly hoity-toity about the type of content it produces.

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The journalist-politician

August 18, 2009 – 2:09 am| Posted in Media, Navel-gazing, Opinion

Le Soleil's Julie Lemieux has become the latest journalist to turn to the dark side... no wait, that's PR. The other dark side: running for office. She's joining the party of Quebec City mayor Régis Labeaume.

Oh wait, she's not the latest. Looks like that's Sue-Ann Levy, the Toronto Sun city hall journalist who's running as a provincial Tory (causing some panic on the other side of the aisle). Her column is "on hiatus" during the election campaign, which I guess means she'll go back to being a journalist if her life as a politician fails.

The list of journalists who have turned politician is so long I could spend days compiling it. But among the highlights:

  • Bernard Drainville, former Radio-Canada host and journalist, now a PQ MNA
  • Mike Duffy, former CTV News political anchor and now a Conservative senator
  • Joan Fraser, former Gazette reporter and editor and now a Liberal senator
  • Peter Kent, former Global News anchor and now a Conservative MP
  • Christine St-Pierre, former Radio-Canada political reporter and now a Quebec Liberal MNA

The stories all sound the same. The journalists - usually on the politics beat - decide that they can do more in office than as a sideline commentator. Party leaders, desperate for some semblance of integrity and trustworthiness, prey on the journalists in order to suck out as much of it as they can in an election campaign.

In each case, there were (or should have been) serious questions: did the offers come with strings attached? Did the journalists go easy on the parties they would later join? Will they leak sensitive government documents to their journalist friends? Will they back away from critical comments they may have made about the parties they have now joined?

When I was in university, reporting on the student union for the student newspaper, I was drafted into a political position. The student union was in the middle of a political crisis and had no executive at the time, so someone thought it would be fun to appoint me as a vice-president. (I attended more council meetings than most councillors, and probably knew the issues better, so I'd be good at the job, they reasoned.) I didn't consent to the appointment, but they didn't seem to care. As my journalist colleagues wondered what the heck was going on, I was handed an executive key by the president, who asked for me to stay on. I didn't. After peeking around at a few things I now had access to for the first time, I returned the key.

I've always thought journalists have more freedom than politicians. Compare what Bill Maher gets to say to what Barack Obama gets to say. Though it's tempting to ponder what might happen if you actually had the power to change the system for the better, the freedom to call a spade a spade has always appealed more to me. I'm not sure which would help society more.

Of course, my job as a journalist isn't permanent yet, and my industry is in a death spiral. So just in case, I should probably say some nice things about our political parties here.

Only I can't think of any.

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