The most famous editorial cartoon in Canadian history is pretty basic. It was printed in the Montreal Gazette in the fall of 1976 and depicts the two leaders of Quebec politics of the time, Liberal leader Robert Bourassa and Parti Quebecois leader René Lévesque, the latter of whom had just been elected the country’s first separatist premier.
“Okay everyone, take a Valium,” says the Lévesque caricature, stubby finger pointing at the reader.
The cartoonist was Terry Mosher, who uses the name of his daughter Aislin as his preferred nom-de-plume. “Everybody take a Valium” became an instant meme of Canadian politics in the 1970s and helped cement the 34-year-old Mosher’s rising reputation as one of the great chroniclers of the Canadian story. As the decades went on, and he stayed at the Gazette, Aislin slowly became one of those guys a certain sort of person in the eastern provinces would effortlessly dub a national treasure.
Good old Aislin, they’d say, right up there with Pierre Berton and Peter Gzowski. They showered him with awards and prizes, including a spot in the Canadian News Hall of Fame and an Order of Canada in 2002. They made a documentary about him that won a Gemini. His 47th book came out recently.
The career of Terry Mosher is a wonderful case study of how far mediocracy can take you in Canada. Strip away all of Aislin awards, praise, and reputation, and you’re confronted with an inescapable reality: his cartoons aren’t very good.
Nearly 40 years after the Valium cartoon, the 73-year-old Mosher is still at the Montreal Gazette. To say he is still “drawing,” however, would be charitable, given these days his cartoons often consist of little more than a jumbled assortment of Google image search results with some crude text slapped on top (possibly in MS Paint).
But don’t take my word for it. Feast your eyeballs on some recent Aislin classics:
#gallery-1 {
margin: auto;
}
#gallery-1 .gallery-item {
float: left;
margin-top: 10px;
text-align: center;
width: 100%;
}
#gallery-1 img {
border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
}
#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {
margin-left: 0;
}
/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
Editorial cartoons don’t always have to be funny, but, as one of my friends put it, Aislin’s comics always contain a joke: “this got published.”
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by Canadian editorial cartoons and spent hours at the library poring through old collections. I was impressed by some of Mosher’s work in the 1970s, not for the humor, which was often uninspired and obtuse, but his beautifully grotesque caricatures and the elaborate fountain pen cross-hatching in which they were rendered.
But as I gradually waded my way through his collections, which he seemed to churn out at a rate of at least once a year, it became obvious that as he aged his talents were either starting to fade or he was just getting lazy. His drawings became cruder and sloppier, and eventually hand-drawn art was rarely seen at all. His commentary drifted away from offering any pretense of political insight, and instead descended into sub-Andy Rooney hot takes on the weather, sports, and (of course) These Damn Kids. Today Mosher is, by any objective standard, producing some real garbage, but insulated by endless nostalgia and praise, he seems to suffer no professional consequence for it.
I’ll cheerfully confess to sour grapes. I tried for many years to make a go at being an editorial cartoonist myself, only to find that there is virtually no market demand for what is now, increasingly, regarded as a dead art. Newspapers are hemorrhaging cash and have zero interest investing in something no one cares about. Cartoonists are being fired, not hired.
But it’s important to realize the ignoble death of Canadian editorial cartooning was not natural or inevitable. Millennials tend to regard editorial cartoons as stiff, unfunny, and clichéd, and they’re usually correct in doing so. For decades, a Canadian editor’s preferred approach to editorial cartooning was to hire a single white guy and let him draw until he died, senility be damned. This was the same model used by newspaper strips, and it certainly appeased a certain segment of the boomer readership who feared change above all else, but had the simultaneous counter-effect of informing the generations beneath that Canadian newspaper cartooning was not a remotely meritocratic enterprise. Seeking competent satire, they learned to look elsewhere.
Old cartoonists like Mosher are endlessly feted with praise about their bravery and savagery, “cutting the powerful down to size with their acidic pens” and so on. It went into particularly high gear in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. But the sad reality is that most of the editorial cartoonists employed in Canada today are neither heroic nor clever. Increasingly, they’re barely even coherent. What they are is merely one more culpable party in the decline of traditional media, whose leading players have done their best to ensure their absence will not be noticed, let alone mourned.
***
@JJ_McCullough
The Liberal government has contracted a think tank called the Public Policy Group to research the possibility of providing subsidies or other considerations to the collapsing news industry.
CANADALAND accepted an invitation to participate in the research project by attending a roundtable discussion between media owners. We were also asked to provide a written statement articulating our position on the proposals discussed. Here’s what we sent them:
Dear Public Policy Forum,
At the request of Taylor Owen, the following is a statement of our position on the possibility of public policy intervention in the Canadian news industry.
I am the publisher of CANADALAND, a small digital news organization that specializes in podcasts. Podcasts drive our revenue. We sell advertising on our podcasts, and we direct listeners to our crowdfunding page largely through our podcasts.
We produce the most popular Canadian podcasts for Canadian listeners. Our shows are focused exclusively on Canadian topics, with an emphasis on media, policy, culture, and public life. We do original and investigative reporting and have broken many national news stories in the few years we’ve been around.
Increasingly, we have competition: the Globe and Mail just launched a podcast. The CBC has many and sells ads to the same companies we do. Maclean’s, The Toronto Star, The National Post, The Walrus: all of them have dabbled in podcasts or are currently publishing competing podcasts.
We welcome the competition. Canadian advertisers are still largely in the dark about the medium and there are plenty of listeners to go around. New entrants could evolve the medium and help establish podcasts as an industry in Canada, as it is now in the US and abroad. Many legacy media podcasts, most notably the CBC’s, pre-date our launch, and we rose above them by virtue of our content. On an even playing field, we are winning.
What we do not welcome is government subsidies for our competitors. Too often in Canada, tax breaks, funding and other programs intended to help small startups and innovators like ourselves get hijacked by legacy players. It’s a trivial matter for a newspaper to launch a digital lab or project for the sole purpose of tapping these funds, leveraging their brand and status to take the lion’s share of the subsidies. At this point, with their efforts underwritten by the government, our competitors could conceivably undercut us on advertising rates and push our revenues down to the point where we would no longer be profitable. We run our organization on a budget lower than the annual salary of one top Postmedia or CBC executive. As sustainable as we are, we are also vulnerable to market interference.
In short, we are asking that no subsidies or considerations of any kind be made available to Canada’s legacy news organizations.
We support the removal of obstacles preventing philanthropic organizations from practicing journalism.
We support a review of the CBC’s mandate and support a prohibition of advertising on CBC’s podcasts and other digital content.
We take no position on the creation of subsidies directed exclusively to benefit legitimately independent small digital media companies.
I will point out that we do not ask for or expect subsidies for CANADALAND.
Sincerely,
Jesse Brown
Publisher
CANADALAND.news
***
jesse@canadalandshow.com
He gets over $1.1 million per year and a pension of over $500,000 from the CBC for the rest of his life
After seven months walking the picket lines journalists at the Halifax Chronicle Herald are left to wonder how a paper in supposedly dire straits can afford paying thousands of dollars to an out-of-town private investigator.
A Vancouver-based private investigations firm has been following striking Herald journalists, and has collected upward of $400,000 from the paper, according to the Halifax Typographical Union. The union said the paper is paying Mitigation Partners more than $500 a day, every day, to follow and photograph striking workers.
That’s not leaving the journalists on strike feeling particularly good, according to HTU vice-president Frank Campbell. “For a lot of our members it makes them feel uneasy,” He said. “But, even more it makes us feel kind of angry. You’re telling us you can’ afford to negotiate a fair contract with us, but you can afford to pay these people to follow us around?”
Campbell couldn’t say who told the union how much the investigators were being paid, saying only it was someone they considered reliable.
In a Facebook post Tuesday, the HTU said its estimates put the Herald’s private investigator spending in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. “We estimate the Herald has been spending $12,000 per week on security and private investigation. By our math, they have now spent about $400,000.”
The union said the paper is also covering regular flights between B.C. and Halifax, as well as expenses for rental cars and lodging.
The post identifies one of the PIs as Chris Van Luven, and included a photo. The image seems to match with several public social media accounts under Van Luven’s name, who lists himself as the principal and lead consultant in Mitigation Partners on his LinkedIn profile.
Campbell said Van Luven and others had been following union members for some time.
“We’ve seen this from a long, long time ago,” he said. “I don’t know if it was their own security or private investigators, but I remember early in the strike we went to outside the city and we could see there were people there taking photos of us.”
Requests for comment sent to Mitigation Partners and to management at the Chronicle Herald were not returned. Should we receive a reply, we’ll update the article.
When the strike was only in its third month, Campbell and other HTU members were still hopeful it would end reasonably. That hope is still there, but it may be diminished. Private Investigators recording the striking workers hasn’t exactly bred good will.
“How it bodes for negotiations going forward, I don’t know. I would hope that this doesn’t have much of an impact on that,” Campbell said. “But, you know, it’s hard for our people not to say, ‘Well, [what about] the financial implications? You can’t negotiate a fair deal with us, but you can afford to bring in these people from British Columbia to do your security work.’”
***
@rob_hiltz
PHOTO courtesy: Trevor Beckerson – Foundry Photography
An email sent by Toronto Star reporter Raveena Aulakh to her estranged romantic partner Jon Filson, then a senior Star editor, suggests that workplace issues were a major concern for her in the weeks leading up to her suicide.
On May 2, Aulakh sent senior editor Jon Filson an email in which she suggested that, years prior, he sabotaged the hiring of an intern he had a sexual relationship with. In 2007, the young woman was interviewed for a permanent position at the paper.
This is what Raveena Aulakh wrote to Filson about her:
“For all this time, I protected you. I never told anyone about us. I never told anyone that you had also been sleeping with [REDACTED] when she was an intern and she told people about it. You then nudged Lynn McAuley into not hiring [REDACTED]. Remember how you freaked out when you found last fall that Michael Cooke wanted to hire her?”
The email also mentions that Aulakh was willing to take her claims to Paul Woods, a senior editor at the Star. Aulakh wrote that because Filson has allegedly sabotaged another woman, she had a reason to be afraid: “Yes, I don’t feel safe at work. Especially knowing how you treated [the former intern].”
Speaking with the Financial Post, the former intern said she didn’t tell management about the affair, but she felt “bullied and trapped” by Filson. Here’s what the Post reported:
“I was a 22-year-old employed through the Star’s internship program, and (Filson) had direct oversight over me and my work. I broke off the relationship while I was still an intern,” she said in an emailed statement.
The woman left the Star when her contract expired in 2007. She never informed management of the alleged affair.
“I felt bullied and trapped in a bad situation and, looking back, lacked the personal experience and professional resources to know how to handle it at the time,” she said.
CANADALAND has reached out to Jon Filson as well as his lawyer and brother Ryan Filson in an attempt to get comment. We have not heard back. Michael Cooke and Lynn McAuley did not respond to detailed requests for comment. Should we hear back from anyone, this story will be updated.
***
editor@canadalandshow.com
Last week, Postmedia’s Vancouver Sun published an editorial called, “May must renounce anti-Israel resolutions.” It was then promptly removed, after a group called Independent Jewish Voices Canada sent Postmedia a legal letter claiming the editorial defamed IJV, according to their blog post.
UPDATE: Postmedia posted an apology and retraction to Sun website for running the editorial last week. The apology also appears in the Ottawa Citizen, and the Calgary Herald, where it ran online. The full text of the apology can be found below.
Here is the removed editorial, in full:
Canada’s Green Party can thank Elizabeth May for slowing its descent into a sinkhole of irrelevance and disrepute. By choosing to remain as leader, May, who represents the B.C. riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands and is the party’s only elected member of Parliament, provides a patina of purpose over a caucus that has lost its way.
Two resolutions supported by a majority of Green delegates at the party’s biennial convention this month singled out the only liberal democracy in the Middle East — and a century-old Jewish organization — for abuse and opprobrium. Members passed a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that seeks to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel in the hope that its activities will bring about, not peace, but the country’s demise.
Another resolution calls on the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund, an organization founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Palestine, which was controlled by the Ottoman Empire from 1517 to 1917 and under the British Mandate from 1918 to 1948. The JNF invests in research in forestry, watershed management, carbon sequestration, alternative energy sources, animal and plant reintroduction and arid land management problems. Of all organizations for the Green Party to attack, this seems an odd choice.
Although May says she opposed the BDS resolution, she is listed as one of 29 co-sponsors of the JNF resolution. She said the resolution was brought forward by Corey Levine, a member of Independent Jewish Voices, an anti-Israel group that uses the fig leaf of Jewishness to lend support to Iran, deny the Holocaust, participate in anti-Semitic Al-Quds protests, encourage terrorism against Israelis and promulgate lies about Israel’s history, society and policies.
That a majority of Greens have bought into IJV’s false narrative is disturbing but perhaps not surprising. May welcomed anti-Israel activists Paul Manly and Dimitri Lascaris into her shadow cabinet knowing both support the BDS movement.
And May herself voted against a parliamentary motion in February that condemned the BDS movement, citing free speech concerns. It passed with a 229 to 51 vote.
It seems clear that the Green Party has drawn marginalized groups expounding extreme anti-Israel and anti-Jewish views. Notwithstanding her own ambiguous position, May must insist that such views have no place in Green Party policy. Otherwise, she risks leading a fringe party into oblivion.
The apology:
A Vancouver Sun editorial published on Aug. 25 titled “Green Party Lost Its Way” made certain statements about Independent Jewish Voices and, by association, Corey Levine, based on reports from other media and advocacy groups. In particular, based on new information provided by IJV, the Vancouver Sun retracts its statements that IJV denies the Holocaust, supports Iran or encourages terrorism against Israelis. The Vancouver Sun apologizes for not providing proper attribution and to IJV and Corey Levine for the unsubstantiated statements.
***
editor@canadalandshow.com
Last week, the Financial Post published revelations about the Toronto Star’s newsroom and the suicide of Raveena Aulakh, one of its reporters.
Aulakh took her own life earlier this summer and since then questions about the Star have been circling, despite the paper’s internal investigation, which concluded that “the company provided all reasonable support and assistance to Raveena.”
Sean Craig’s lengthy article tells a different story. Over the course of his investigation, Craig (formerly of CANADALAND) spoke to over a dozen sources and reviewed emails Raveena Aulakh sent before her death.
Up until now, we knew Raveena Aulakh had been in a relationship with her then colleague Jon Filson, a senior Star editor in charge of the Star Touch project. The relationship broke down and Filson was also in a relationship with Toronto Star managing editor Jane Davenport. In the wake of Aulakh’s death, Filson and Davenport ceased working in the Star newsroom. Filson was seemingly terminated, while Davenport is still employed by the Star, who have not clarified in what capacity.
Unifor, the Star’s union, called for an external investigation of the Star’s working environment. At first, the Star resisted, having conducted their own internal investigation, but eventually agreed. The Star then once again put the external investigation on hold because it couldn’t agree on the parameters with the union.
Craig’s piece explored lingering questions about the Star’s newsroom, and what he found was quite shocking. Here are the main points:
Jon Filson had a reputation for bullying and “preying” on female colleagues
Two former interns at the Star have said they felt bullied by Filson. One described having a sexual relationship with him while he had direct oversight over her work, while Filson was married. Twenty-two at the time, the intern said she felt “bullied and trapped” by him and left the paper after both the relationship ended and the contract with the Star expired.
The second intern said the culture at the Star “was the most toxic newsroom I’ve ever worked in and eventually led to my decision to leave journalism altogether.” She said Filson bullied her, and his behaviour extended beyond interns.
Neither of the women reported Filson to management, but the second woman said she was discouraged from telling the union.
A student newspaper discouraged students from interning for Filson
By 2008, Ryerson University’s paper, the Eyeopener, heard accounts of Filson’s behaviour. General manager Liane McLarty said young women were warned against interning at the Star because of several incidents involving Filson. This, it seems, is more preventative action than the Star ever took.
Raveena Aulakh wanted to complain about Filson to senior management but her boss was unwilling
Days before her death, Aulakh wrote this her direct superior Lynn McAuley “I’m happy/grateful to go with you if I ever have to talk to [Toronto Star manager of labour relations] David Callum. Whatever you think and say, I will do that.”
It seems this was not the first time the issue came up with McAuley. A few weeks earlier, Aulakh wrote this about McAuley: “She said she likes Jane (Davenport) a lot and won’t say anything unless Jon (Filson) makes life miserable for people and Jane still protects him”.
She was also discouraged from reporting her concerns to her union
From the Post’s piece: “On May 13, Aulakh wrote that McAuley told her ‘not to say anything to the union’ about the relationships between her and Filson and Filson and Davenport.”
But McAuley knew from others that Filson was a problem
Lynn McAuley wrote this about Jon Filson: “I’m alarmed he has this pattern… Completely unrelated to your relationship with him and his preying on interns … three managers today asked me in private how he can be stopped.”
The Post said McAuley tried to provide Aulakh with support, “checking in on her regularly during her free time when the reporter was on sick leave.” Outside of formal channels, it seems McAuley did everything she could to support Raveena Aulakh. But she chose not to pull any of the levers available within the company, which raises questions about how effective these protocols are and why she chose not to pursue them.
Before her death, Aulakh reached out to people in the newsroom which she perceived as an unhealthy environment. “I used to love that newsroom, it was my refuge. Now I’m scared of coming in — I feel emotionally unsafe.”
TorStar Chairman John Honderich allegedly declined emails from a source that would implicate the Star
John Honderich is the most senior figure at the Toronto Star. A former Star employee told the Post that she emailed Honderich to offer help with the Star’s internal investigation. According to her, Honderich turned her documents away, saying that the investigation was only looking at the impact of the relationships on the work that the people involved produced. But (as she would later read in the press) the Star’s investigation was actually intended to also look at how Aulakh was supported by her colleagues, which the emails directly addressed. Honderich did not deny this allegation.
Management likely knew about Filson’s behaviour before Raveena Aulakh’s death
Aulakh sent several emails to newsroom staff, including management, about what was happening. Filson had a pattern of alleged bullying that many senior staff were aware of. The Eyeopener’s general manager said complaints regarding Filson went eight years back. Still, Filson kept getting promoted into senior positions, from features editor to, eventually, a leadership role in Star Touch.
Raveena Aulakh expressed despair over the loss of a safe workplace
Many have assumed that this tragedy was primarily about interpersonal relationships gone sour. Toronto Star Public Editor Kathy English referred to Aulakh as a “clearly heartbroken reporter.” But emails from Aulakh herself reveal that her despair had much to do with a different kind of loss. “I used to love that newsroom,” she wrote of the Star. “It was my refuge. Now I’m scared of coming in – I feel emotionally unsafe.”
Read the full Financial Post story here.
***
editor@canadalandshow.com
Lawsuit names former CBC host Evan Solomon
This week, CANADALAND published an article by Farnia Fekri outlining how diverse the CBC is compared to the Canadian population. One of Fekri’s sources was Adrian Harewood, a long-time anchor at CBC Ottawa. Fekri contacted many CBC employees, but Harewood was the only one who agreed to speak on the record.
Absolutely awed by the brilliance and bravery of @AdrianHarewood , who’s quoted in the piece. (2/7)
— Farnia Fekri (@f_fekri) August 17, 2016
I contacted dozens of PoC at the CBC, and while many were nice, it shocked me how many didn’t want to talk (anonymously). (3/7)
— Farnia Fekri (@f_fekri) August 17, 201
Today, Harewood explained on Twitter why he decided to speak out and why many others can’t. This is his Twitter essay.
1. I get why many of my friends & colleagues at CBC were reluctant to speak to @Canadaland about race & diversity issues at the corporation.
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
2. I think there are questions,whether justified or not, as to whether @Canadaland has a particular animus towards the CBC -an axe to grind.
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
3. But I think what is more troubling is that some folks at CBC are reluctant to talk about “race matters” at the corp. out of fear.
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
4. That fear is real. Whenever one talks about race in a professional context in Canada there is always concern about the repercussions.
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
5. The fear is that one will be labeled or pigeonholed as a whiner;a troublemaker; as an amateur or incompetent who “uses the race card.”
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
6. Whoever you are regardless of the environment in which you work no one wants to be labeled or deemed “unprofessional.”
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
7. The fear then is that to discuss race matters which may be real to you,is to court career suicide & be regarded as an unfit & unserious
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
8. I realize that as someone who has worked as a host @ CBC for a decade that I occupy a position of relative power & privilege.
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
9. That power & privilege is not unlimited but it is real & it means that I can utter things that others may not feel powerful enough to say
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
10. It doesn’t mean I don’t have fear. I too don’t want to be labeled. I want to be seen as the complex individual that I know myself to be
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
11. Media organizations demand accountability from national institutions, as they should. It’s their job to ask tough probing questions.
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
12. But media organizations like CBC also need to be scrutinized. They need to be held accountable for their actions & inaction.
— Adrian Harewood (@CBCAdrianH) August 19, 2016
***
editor@canadalandshow.com
Despite a federal mandate to reflect the “multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada,” around 90% of staff at Canada’s public broadcaster are white.
According to survey results obtained by CANADALAND and released through an Access to Information request, only 453 CBC employees self-identified as a Person of Colour (not Caucasian or Aboriginal) on the internal CBC HR site between 2011 and March 2016.
While the survey results referred only to voluntary employee responses in 2011–16, the CBC has been surveying its employees since the 1980s. The corporation’s latest numbers reported there were 563 visible minority and 100 Aboriginal journalists at the corporation by 2015. This amounted to 9.8% of CBC employees at the time.
The CBC couldn’t say how many employees it has currently, but in March 2015 there were 7,440. This means 90–93% of employees are white. In contrast, Statistics Canada reported that one in five Canadians is a visible minority and 4.3% of Canadians identified as Aboriginal.
CBC spokesperson Alexandra Fortier said there’s been “an increase in representation for members of visible minorities.”
In 2011, 8% of CBC employees identified as visible minority or Aboriginal. By Dec. 2014 this number went up to 9.8%. “We [also] continue to exceed industry availability for women,” Fortier said, acknowledging there are areas where the CBC could do better.
According to the 1991 Broadcasting Act, the CBC has to release a yearly report on employment equity statistics, but there have been no new reports since 2014–15. The 2015–16 one will be live by Oct. 22, Fortier said.
CBC Ottawa anchor Adrian Harewood, who has been a full-time employee for 10 years, said the discussion about racial diversity isn’t always loud enough at the CBC and depends mainly on regional managers.
“I think that there is a little bit of chatter about diversity [in Ottawa] — certainly one of our bosses (Ruth Zowdu) … is committed to bringing change to the organization and has made, in my mind, a sincere effort to do it. But I am not sure if that same commitment exists amongst managers across the country,” he said. “I think we absolutely need more producers and managers of colour in the ranks of CBC.”
Harewood said the positive shift in hiring more women (who made up 46.9% of CBC employees at the turn of 2015) shows how much management commitment can impact newsroom diversity.
“If you look at leadership at CBC … a lot of the people who are in the leadership positions are women. White women. It’s not as if that can’t change — there’s no reason why the CBC could not set a goal of achieving more diversity by 2025 and reaching it, but the organization has to be serious about it,” he said.
“I think a commitment has to be made to broadening the pool of producers and managers at CBC. It is not acceptable in 2016 given the ethno-racial makeup of the population that this reality is not reflected in our national institutions.”
For Harewood, part of the problem is the industry itself and a shortage of young, racialized students who go to journalism school. He said the CBC could collaborate with universities and colleges, and work with communities to encourage careers in journalism by establishing workshops and scholarships.
“I don’t think the CBC’s doing enough, and the CBC should be a leader, I think, when it comes to these issues — because it’s not as if it’s unaware of it. We’re often doing stories about these very issues in other institutions, and we hold other institutions to account.”
He added that the CBC could also do more to bring in qualified people of colour, in the same way that it made positive steps toward covering more Aboriginal issues by establishing CBC News-Aboriginal.
“I think that there has been definite change in trying to bring more Aboriginal journalists into CBC, and to invest more resources in covering the Aboriginal file, and I think that’s noticeable and it’s admirable. With other racialized communities, I don’t think there’s the same focus … or investment,” he said.
The CBC uses CBC News-Aboriginal and CBC North to report mainly on Aboriginal issues, but Aboriginal people accounted for only 100 jobs of all full-time and part-time employees in Dec. 2014.
In an interview with CANADALAND, a former CBC North employee and Aboriginal journalist, who asked to stay anonymous to protect future career opportunities, said the number of Aboriginal employees at the CBC is “poor.”
“We need more representation in the news to tell our own stories,” they said, adding that racial diversity in the newsroom has worsened in the past few years.
“I think that they have one person there representing each language. And that person, I believe, is responsible for finding stories in their region or their communities that are relevant to their radio shows, and that could potentially be pitched as a news story.
“But then it would usually be a news story that would be told by one of the white reporters, or whatever diversity reporter happens to be there,” they said. “There are a lot of southern (white) journalists being pulled in, now more so than ever, since a lot of [the Aboriginal] people have aged and left the CBC.”
Fortier said, “almost half [of] CBC North’s current staff is Indigenous.” To help recruit and retain Aboriginal journalists and other “diverse candidates,” managers are given access a $175,000 annual fund for “internships and development opportunities,” she said.
Aside from the fund, the voluntary survey, the Inclusion and Diversity Plans, and the employment equity and Canadian Multiculturalism Act annual reports, the CBC uses new employee questionnaires and on-air programs to track its diversity.
The Inclusion and Diversity Plan said that in 2011, none of the 11 senior managers belonged to Aboriginal or visible minority groups. By Dec. 2014, one of eight senior managers was reported as a Person of Colour.
In 2006, less than 6% of CBC employees were People of Colour. Almost a decade later, this number has gone up by less than 3 percentage points. Aboriginal representation has fared even worse: in 2009, 1.4% of CBC employees were Aboriginal, and five years later the number changed to 1.5%. In both cases, that’s about half of the industry availability for Aboriginal journalists.
But according to a CBC Toronto employee, who asked to stay anonymous for fear of repercussions, these surveys and reports don’t shift the numbers enough to make a real difference in the newsrooms.
“The priorities of the executive … don’t necessarily change the day-to-day culture,” he said, adding that the only tangible difference in the CBC Toronto newsroom has been an increase in racially diverse interns, not managers. “The higher up the chain you go, the worse it gets.”
***
@f_fekri
The CBC provides a list of its reports and plans, including its equity reports, here.
