This opinion piece first appeared on Robert Hiltz’s blog. It is republished here with his permission.
If a tree falls on a grizzly bear shitting in the woods, known exclusively to CBC, but later it turns out it was a black bear shitting in a tree that did not fall, does anyone bother to correct the record?
This may seem like a tortured metaphor in search of a problem, but here we are after several arduous revolutions of the galactic temporal gears and there is still a CBC report online stating:
“The federal government’s much-anticipated Syrian refugee plan will limit those accepted into Canada to women, children and families only, CBC News has learned.
Sources tell CBC News that to deal with some ongoing concerns around security, unaccompanied men seeking asylum will not be part of the program.”
Which seems all well and good. A few days before the government is set to announce the details of their plan, CBC’s star political journalist and host of the political chat show Power & Politics, Rosemary Barton, has a scoop! Sound the klaxxons! Warm up the graphxinator! “CBC News has learned” something!
Well, nuts to that. Turns out this story is, shall we say, no longer with merit. It was revealed as inaccurate a few days after the CBC report came out with — poof! — actual details about the plan. And, bingo-bango, wouldn’t you know it, unaccompanied men will be accepted! If they fear persecution because of their sexual identity, or if they are sponsored privately, or if they are with their parents, the government will accept them into Canada, assuming of course they meet all the other required criteria of being a refugee.
So, what’s all the fuss then? Well, this was all first picked up on by BuzzFeed Canada, and they asked the reporter, Rosemary Barton, about it. She told BuzzFeed, “I just don’t happen to think what I reported was wrong.” Which is interesting, because the facts have since gone counter to what she reported.
There are a number of other details in the initial CBC report, including the overall cost, that don’t match up with how things played out.
And BuzzFeed reported this more than a week ago. After writing the story, political editor Paul McLeod then went on Canadaland to talk about it there.
Yet still, the CBC story sits online, two weeks later. Uncorrected and without any link or notation to otherwise suggest that, following the actual announcement of the actual plan, the facts are different than what was first reported.
This is part of a trend in media, particularly old-stock media, to hem and haw and avoid at almost-all-costs issuing a correction.
Now, I don’t think all that many people — if anyone — are finding this particular file as their only source of information. It’s not on the CBC homepage, you have to search to find it. But it’s still live and it’s still incorrect.
Besides, this is about something more fundamental. CBC, an erstwhile purveyor of facts, which is to say news, has not acknowledged that the information they were given by unknown, un-named “officials” is wrong. Nominally their reputation is intact, as they did not have to issue a correction, therefore, the newsroom logic goes, they were not incorrect. They reported what they were told. That the facts changed from what they were told to what actually happened is the cost of doing business, and enough of a cover for most news organizations to duck around issuing a correction.
But, there’s more to it than CBC issuing a correction or not. The really pernicious thing about this story is that it sets the narrative.
You see, CBC was the only one that had these details out of the gate, so other outlets have to follow up with something, so in their stories for refugees on this or that day, so in sneaks a paragraph talking about the government planning to exclude “unaccompanied males.” Then, the day the government said it will be taking certain lone men, you can read in the National Post this line as part of a story detailing the difficulties of confirming the sexual orientation of refugees:
“Under Canada’s just-released plan to accept 25,000 refugees as ‘quickly as possible,’ single adult men are disqualified unless they are accompanying their parents or can prove ‘membership in an LGBTI community.’ ”
It’s worth saying this explicitly: Single men are not excluded from coming to Canada as refugees. They are not going to be a priority, and won’t be getting government sponsorship unless they are particularly vulnerable, but that a fair leap from saying they are “disqualified” from being accepted.
In this Post report, we’re no longer talking about “unaccompanied males” instead, we’re talking about “single adult men” and whether they are “accompanying” their parents. But, we’re still talking about the issue on the same terms from the initial CBC story. A report the journalist stands by, that has little relation to what is actually going to happen. A post that is still online that set a narrative we’re still somewhat hewing to.
This wouldn’t be a problem if modern news organizations were less reluctant to issue corrections. It’s long obvious the news can often be wrong. This is especially true of breaking news, but, as we’ve seen here can just as easily apply to scoops. For all kinds of reasons, news is susceptible to, for lack of a better term, wrongness.
Being right all the time is no longer possible, not when we’ve decided — not explicitly, but by convention — to focus so heavily on being first, to signal we have unique content.
It’s time we we found a way to accept that, and to err more frequently on the side of correcting ourselves. If we’re more open about when we were wrong, and how we were wrong, maybe the public would trust us all just a little bit more.
***
@robert_hiltz
On October 30, 2014 Vice Canada and Rogers Communications announced a $100-million, three-year partnership. On November 17, 2014 Vice Canada published an article by freelancer Carly Lewis, “Inside the CBC’s Sexual Harassment Problems.” It was pitched and commissioned as a piece about incidents of sexism and harassment throughout Canadian media, and originally contained examples of alleged sexism at Rogers publishing and CTV. But by the time it was published, it dealt only with problems at the CBC.
John Furlong’s accusers are asking the federal government to listen to them.
In an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and two cabinet ministers, Cathy Woodgate and seven others who say Furlong abused them as children call for Trudeau to ask Furlong to step down from Own the Podium, a government-created and government-funded non-profit sports organization. John Furlong is the chair of its board of directors.
Woodgate et. al call the organization “Share the Podium” in their letter, a change which was made deliberately, CANADALAND is told.
Five of the undersigned have also written sworn affidavits detailing the abuse they say they endured. None of their claims have been tested in court and Furlong has denied all allegations.
CANADALAND presents the open letter, in full:
Burns Lake First Nations People and John Furlong
On Friday, CANADALAND published a story headlined “How a Politician’s Childhood Helped Shape Freedom of Information Reform” and political geeks in Newfoundland and Labrador flipped out.
Individually, nearly every piece of information in reporter Jacob Boon’s story is correct.
Unfortunately, taken as a whole, the story is spectacularly wrong.
Read our follow-up to this piece here.
True, north, strong and free, Canada is worse at releasing public information than Mexico, Russia or Nigeria. We’re ranked 59 out of 102 countries, according to global access-to-information ratings by the Centre for Law and Democracy. Only two points separate Canada from Afghanistan.
We’re so bad at this that even governments within Canada are ranked higher.
If Newfoundland and Labrador was its own country, it would be 15th in the world for the right to information. Thanks to sweeping reforms the province passed back in June, Newfoundland is now one of the strongest global examples of access to information.
A lot of that can be traced back to Steve Kent’s childhood.
Kent is currently Deputy Premier with the province’s Progressive Conservative government, and was the Public Engagement minister who oversaw the recent overhaul of Newfoundland’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
He’s also adopted. Fourteen years ago, Kent applied for access to records in his adoption and child welfare file. He wanted to know his own past; where he had been in foster care, and who had been there with him. Instead, he ended up fighting the province for several years to ultimately end up with only a small portion of his own records.
“It was really about piecing together some of my own history,” Kent said. “Which, obviously, an individual should have the right to do.”
When reporters talk about ATIP problems, we’re usually speaking from personal experience. We’re self-centered like that. Navigating Canada’s obfuscated ATIP bureaucracy isn’t an immediate problem for most of the public, but it’s a daily challenge for journalists. But access to information goes beyond the media. This is a matter of national importance that Canada is utterly failing at, and it affects everyone right down to one Newfoundlander’s adoption.
“I know firsthand that access is important to individual citizens as well,” said Kent. “My own real life experience has helped me look at it through a unique lens, I guess.”
Every reporter has a horror story about a FOIPOP or ATIP request gone to hell. Months, if not years, waiting for a reply and exorbitant processing fees all to end up with a bundle of heavily-redacted pages. A recent audit by Newspapers Canada said the country’s access-to-information law is “effectively crippled.” Environment Canada, for example, took two months to release a list of the department’s Twitter accounts.
Why is Canada so bad at this? Partially, because we were so quick to adopt modern ATIP legislation. The Access to Information Act came into force in 1983. We were the 11th nation in the world to enact modern right-to-information laws. The standards and the world has since moved on, but Canada hasn’t.
“It’s great that we were an early adopter, but you then have to keep pace as the world moves forward,” said Michael Karanicolas, a senior legal officer for the Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy. The Centre works all over the world helping to draft access-to-information legislation and protect freedom of speech. They regularly update their global Right to Information Ranking, which scores 102 countries on 61 indicators broken down into seven categories. It’s that scoring system that places a nationalized Newfoundland at 15th, and Canada at 59th.
“This is an important democratic indicator,” said Karanicolas. “If Canada was 59th on gender equality. If Canada was 59th on environmental protection. I mean, these are core issues and I think the public would be outraged about it and we should be outraged here.”
Given that the top 10 countries in the CLD’s ratings all adopted their legislation after 2000 (many within the last five years), Karanicolas said Canada’s antique ATIP system is long overdue for an overhaul. There are too many exceptions, too many loopholes for non-disclosure and too many overly broad definitions for the Access to Information Act to be effective.
Compare and contrast with what’s happened in Newfoundland and Labrador. The newly passed ATIPPA legislation eliminated applcation fees and drastically reduced costs for access requests. Time frames shrunk from 30 calendar days to 20 business days and all readily available records need to be released in 10 business days.
The new law also expanded the powers of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Extensions can now only be applied if the Commissioner believes them to be reasonably required. All formal appeals have to be dealt with in 65 business days, and should the public body disagree with the Commissioner’s recommendations it must seek a declaration from the courts stating that it is not required to comply.
The new regulations haven’t made everyone comfortable. Politicians know very well the challenges that come with more accountability, more access to information. Stronger legislation means you’re more likely to be caught, and more ammunition for your opponents.
“It is against their interests to have strong transparency laws,” said Karanicolas. “You see political parties promising the world, promising to enact this stuff…when they’re campaigning, and then completely forgetting that promise when they get into office.”
With that said, Karanicolas and Kent are both optimistic about the new federal government’s promises. The Liberals’ campaign platform pledged to update ATIP standards in Canada, including eliminating all fees save the initial $5 filing charge and expanding the Act to apply to the Prime Minister’ and Ministers’ Offices. They also promised to undertake a full legislative review of the Act every five years.
Should all that actually happen, Justin Trudeau will be the first Prime Minister to update Canada’s Access to Information Act since it was enacted by his father’s government.
On a smaller scale, Newfoundland’s example could pressure other provinces to reform their own legislation. Steve Kent hopes it will. He’s committed to open government, having experienced the opposite firsthand while trying to unearth his past. Closure isn’t the right word for the result of that endeavor, he said, but he did find some answers. It just “shouldn’t have been a battle.”
The Deputy Premier is now dealing with fights beyond his adoption records. He’s currently facing Liberal challenger Randy Simms for the Mount Pearl North riding in Newfoundland and Labrador’s November 30 election.
Win or lose, Kent’s helped ensure a more open and accountable government for every Newfoundlander. Now the rest of Canada just needs to catch up.
“The good and the bad and the ugly; regardless the public has a right to know,” he said. “All Canadians should have equal access, and all governments in our federation should be open by default.”
One evening in December 2014, Simon Ash-Moccasin, an Indigenous playwright, actor and activist, was walking home through inner city Regina when he was stopped by police officers. After refusing to tell them where he was going (“I didn’t have to tell him where I was going because I know my rights,” he later wrote), he was pushed against a wall, handcuffed and shoved face-first into a police cruiser only to be released soon after without charge.
The officers never read him his rights. He documented minor injuries in a doctor’s report the following day. Ash-Moccasin filed numerous complaints with the police department, police college and other public bodies, and wrote about his experience in Briarpatch Magazine.
“I felt like I was being harassed and that I was being racially profiled,” he wrote. “I’ve listened to countless similar stories about those same cops, and other cops too, that have gone against protocols.”
In an open letter published in May 2015 in response to community activists who raised concerns about police brutality, the Regina Police Service stated: “The Regina Police Service does not engage in racial or youth profiling although the Service maintains (as mandated) detailed records of incidents of reported crime and investigations.”
So, wherein lies the truth? Is Ash-Moccasin’s experience part of a larger trend of racial profiling Indigenous people in cities like Regina, as he believes? The answer is, we don’t know. And neither do the police.
These are the questions our team of reporters and data journalists at Discourse Media set out to investigate in September, in collaboration with Maclean’s associate editor Nancy Macdonald, who authored an explosive cover story calling Winnipeg the most racist city in Canada. While reporting in Regina and Winnipeg, we heard many anecdotal stories about similar police conduct — but were they isolated incidents?
Inspired in part by Toronto Star investigations and Desmond Cole’s Toronto Life story about the impact of “carding” on black Torontonians, we began investigating whether Indigenous people are more likely than non-Indigenous Canadians to be stopped or detained in western Canadian cities. After consulting social scientists who have studied racial profiling, we asked police departments in Regina, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver to provide racial data related to public intoxication and drug possession — offences that are not consistently enforced, leaving enforcement up to the discretion of officers.
Many weeks later, we have no police data to help us understand what is happening on the street in these cities — and little hope of ever obtaining any. Not one of the eight Freedom of Information (FOI) requests we sent turned up a viable source of data. The Edmonton police estimated that preparing the data would cost us $7,693, a figure out of the reach of our small journalism startup. (The Toronto Star obtained carding data from police after a years-long legal battle, a scenario that is increasingly less likely as fewer and fewer resources are available for investigative journalism.)
Sadly, our experience is all too common. A study published in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society shows police routinely suppress racial data when reporting annual crime reports to Ottawa. The research, led by Nipissing University assistant professor Paul Millar (who advised our investigation), calls the practice “whitewashing.” The few journalists who have succeeded in accessing data through the FOI process have waged lengthy and expensive battles.
So why is racial policing data so difficult to obtain when it is crucial for understanding whether police are treating minorities in an equitable way?
For one, police officers are not required to collect information about suspects’ race or ethnic group, and are therefore inconsistent in noting this information when they stop or detain an individual. This makes systematic data collection nearly impossible. Alberta, for example, does not collect any ethnicity-related information for public intoxication tickets. Ethnic information is noted in some cases of drug-related offences, but not all. Individuals’ criminal records kept at the Edmonton Police Departments identify their race only 13 per cent of the time.
Other police departments refuse to participate in the FOI process altogether.
In a letter from the Regina Police Service in response to our FOI request, a legal counsel explained the service is exempted from the Saskatchewan Local Authority Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act because the definition of a “local authority” does not include police. In other words, the Chief of Police gets to decide whether to respond to an FOI request, or not. He instructed the service to decline our request.
But why suppress this information? If police departments are serious about efforts to prevent or curb racial profiling, as the Regina Police Service argued in its statement, shouldn’t they track this information? At the very least, wouldn’t understanding as much as possible about who is engaged in criminal activity help police do their job?
A spokesperson for the Edmonton police department said racial data doesn’t significantly inform their policing work, and that they don’t see racial profiling as being an issue on their force. But how can a police department claim no racial profiling exists without data to show one way or another?
Even Statistics Canada can’t access reliable racial data from police. The agency gathers data to inform policy making and community policing program planning. The Uniform Crime Reporting Survey has been collecting a crime census from over 1,200 separate police detachments since 1962, including criminal incidents, clearance status and information about the people involved, including Aboriginal status. We contacted the statistics department to access their available data, but we were told that the indicator of Aboriginal status is so inconsistently collected by police departments that it is effectively impossible to ensure an accurate count.
Despite the lack of reliable data, incidents like Ash-Moccasin’s are not unique to Regina. In September 2015, two First Nation Chiefs in Edmonton decried racial profiling for undermining reconciliation efforts.
And yet, officials continue to dismiss allegations as isolated events.
“We would not presume to argue with the individual experiences and feelings of another person,” read Regina Police Chief Troy Hagen’s open letter to the community, “However, we also know these negative experiences make up a very small percentage of the total number of interactions we have with the public each year.” But do they really know? Journalists certainly can’t substantiate that claim.
***
The full findings, based on surveys conducted by Discourse Media with the support of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, will be published as part of Nancy Macdonald’s investigation into the justice system in Maclean’s in December.
John Furlong, a man accused of abusing aboriginal children, is staging a comeback. His accusers, now grown, have been excluded from national media coverage of his return to public life.
In what has become a battle between John Furlong and Laura Robinson, the voices of eight First Nations individuals have been excluded, omitted and ignored. Yet none of them have recanted their allegations.
CANADALAND presents their words now.
A Moose Jaw Times-Herald reporter has resigned over her article being killed by the paper. It alleged that Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski called a woman an “NDP whore,” but he claims he used the word “horde” instead.
Mickey Djuric said she wanted to write a story about a video she took at a rally, but after assuring her the piece will be published, the Times-Herald staff changed their mind.
Djuric said she knew she was going to resign as soon as she was told the story will never see light of day. Djuric originally pitched it Thursday and said her higher-ups had no problem with the idea. But when she came in on Tuesday to file it, plans have already changed.
At first she was told the story was pushed back to avoid getting lost in the coverage of Brad Wall’s refugee announcement, but then it was killed altogether.
“I told him the public has a right to know that this video exists, let the public be the jury on this matter,” Drujic said in a phone interview. “We all heard in our newsroom that he said, ‘NDP whore.’ There were 30 people who listened to it and we all heard the same thing. I told him that if we felt uncomfortable about being sued, if we appoached it in the right way we wouldn’t be liable.”
We were unable to get comment from the managing editor of the Times-Herald, but CANADALAND has obtained an email outlining reasoning for the decision.
“I kind of knew in that moment that my ethics and morals as a journalist were asked to be compromised and I didn’t want to be part of that,” she said.
She came in early this morning to clean her desk and get everything ready for her resignation. She told Managing Editor Craig Slater that she is quitting, effective immediately. “And he was like, ‘Wow, ok’ and that was it,” she says. You can read the resignation letter in its entirety on Djuric’s website.
When the video was taken Tom Lukiwski, who has made homophobic comments previously, was speaking in support Greg Lawrence of the Saskatchewan Party. Lukiwski told Djuric he said “horde” not “whore.”
CANADALAND has reached out for comment to both Tom Lukiwski and Craig Slater. The phone calls and emails were not returned as of time of publication.
The Canadian News Hall of Fame has no hall, no wall, and many people in it are not that famous. A CANADALAND investigation reveals that we are at least 60% sure it actually exists.
You might not be able to visit it (and really, let’s take a sober moment and imagine the visitor count if it existed), but for a cool $250 you can attend a gala and watch the organization welcome two more veteran media journalists into its fold.
Where do you even start with the ‘canadian news hall of fame.’ pic.twitter.com/XTvnNOIBV1
— Josh Visser (@joshvisser) November 10, 2015
At least, we’re pretty sure you can. A look into the Canadian News Hall of Fame, inspired by the above poster, brought up more questions than it answered. Where is the hall of fame? Does it have a website? Who are the men running it? And why is one of the email addresses quaich@bell.ca? Is the Toronto Press and Media club even real? We tried to get to the bottom of it.
It turns out that next Tuesday, CBC’s Peter Mansbridge and Postmedia’s Paul Godfrey will be inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame at its annual gala in downtown Toronto. If the 160-person, sold-out event is anything like years’ previous, it promises to be a real party. Last year’s event, sponsored by the Toronto Star, honoured Torstar chair John Honderich and CTV chief political correspondent Craig Oliver, and had the newly elected Premier Kathleen Wynne as a celebrated guest. This year’s main sponsors are Postmedia and RioCan.
Paul Godfrey “soon to be installed in the Canadian News Hall of Fame for his contribution to Canadian journalism” — LOL, as the kids say
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 10, 2015
Mr. Godfrey, soon to be installed in the Canadian News Hall of Fame for his contribution to Canadian journalism’ Why? Who votes for this?
— gnomeoffender (@gnomeoffender) November 9, 2015
Our efforts to find out more about the organization first led us to its website with the hope of learning how the winners are chosen. It gives an error message (a Facebook post from last year says a new site is under construction), but longtime organizer and president of The Toronto Press and Media Club, Ed Patrick, said in an email that the selection process is simple. The group invites nominations and those nominations are distributed to a list of selectors where they are ranked and awarded points. The two nominees with the highest number of points are selected for induction that year.
“It has always been done in this fashion,” he said.
“The selectors are mainly retired journalists and members of the News Hall of Fame. Current selectors include: Murray Burt, Trina McQueen, Lloyd Robertson, Andy Walsh, Boris Spremo, Les Pyette, Craig Oliver and John Honderich,” said Patrick. “At one time we had selectors from almost every province, but as they passed on they were not replaced by a suitable candidate in their province.”
About time! RT @CTVNationalNews: Craig Oliver Inducted into Canadian News Hall of Fame http://t.co/mo8pTfumlU pic.twitter.com/km252cyQMF”
— Taylor Curley (@tay_curley) October 16, 2014
The Canadian News Hall of Fame has been a thing since 1965 and has honoured over 100 important Canadian journalists and media contributors in that time, although it took a break from handing out plaques in the early aughts — at the same time as it grappled with hard times in the organization and its founding club, The Toronto Press Club (now known as the Toronto Press and Media Club).
In 2011, the organization’s founder and president, Ed Patrick, who is also in charge of a malt whiskey appreciation society, the Quaich, faced backlash from outside journalists over how the Hall of Fame was being run. The drama included an article in the Toronto Star, which, according to a release on Patrick’s website from October of last year, led to Patrick launching libel action against the Star and winning a retraction and apology in 2014. The dispute was over the facts of the article itself. According to the press release, it was “full of mistakes.”
Here’s what Patrick tweeted after his libel victory:
Celebrating winning an apology from Stacey Chopak in a libel action. Moral: Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers!
— Ed Patrick (@CanadaQuaich) October 8, 2014
Shortly after celebrating his libel action against the Star, Patrick was celebrating at the Canadian News Hall of Fame 2014 Gala sponsored by the very same paper. The awards had been back on since 2012, even though there still wasn’t a wall of fame.
The lack of a way to view the plaques still irks veteran journalist John Miller, author of The Journalism Doctor blog and writer of a 2011 post questioning the future of the Canadian News Hall of Fame. Miller was a member of the ad hoc committee of journalists that tried to shake things up at the organization that same year.
“We were not members of the press club, just journalists concerned that the hall of fame was packed away in someone’s closet and hadn’t installed anyone for years,” said Miller in an email Tuesday.
“[I do not] have any confidence that members of the public will ever be able to view plaques or visit the Canadian News Hall of Fame, thereby rendering it useless,” he said.
He said his group tried to get the organization to “be more active and accountable to the journalistic community,” but the group stopped meeting after a “hostile” reception by Patrick and his colleagues.
Miller also questioned the legitimacy of the awards. “It is not clear how new members are chosen. I have no evidence that convinces me that these awards are legitimate at the present time. None of the organizers appear to have any journalistic credentials that qualify them to choose new members,” he said.
But “at least they are adding people again,” said Miller.
Patrick dismissed Miller’s criticism, noting “John Miller was part of the group that wanted to take over the News Hall of Fame. They were mightily pissed off when the TPC declined to hand it over to them.”
Patrick said the organization is raising money through the gala so it can eventually have a physical space to showcase the Canadian News Hall of Fame plaques and other historical artifacts. He refutes the suggestion that the organization was ever in disarray and said the group would continue to operate the News Hall of Fame until it found a sponsor and a suitable location for the hall.
“At one time, INCO Ltd. was the sole sponsor of the Hall and paid all the costs of running it,” said Patrick. “When the Ontario Club folded, we lost our press club room, which housed the hall plaques. These have been in storage ever since, while we hunted for a new location. Ideally, it should be housed in a Downtown Toronto location where journalism students and the public at large would have access to it. The City of Toronto and Ryerson University were unable to offer us space for it. We continue to search for a sponsor and a suitable location. White Knights are few and far between these days.”
2015 News Hall of Fame Leaflet
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@AnnaKillen
Did you see Peter Mansbridge’s report on Justin Trudeau? Yes, the one where they ride on a bus.
