Lisée: Le droit au monologue

2023/04/11 Leave a comment

A noter:

Ce n’est pas tous les jours que 388 professeurs, auteurs et personnalités se donnent la peine de signer une lettre commune, publiée mardi dans Le Devoir (« Ce ne sont pas que des mots »), pour nous avertir de « dérapages inquiétants, de plus en plus nombreux » dans le débat public au Québec.

M’étant plusieurs fois exprimé, y compris dans ces pages, sur la nécessité d’un débat qui, s’il peut être robuste, doit toujours être respectueux, j’ai été étonné que ma signature n’ait pas été sollicitée. J’ai compris pourquoi une fois avoir soigneusement examiné de quoi il était question.

Les signataires nous y aident en donnant, au total, quatre exemples de ce qui leur paraît intolérable. Il s’agit d’abord d’une entrevue donnée à Stéphan Bureau par Léa Clermont-Dion. Elle y décrit son groupe social d’origine à Rawdon comme étant du « White trash ». Une expression dure, rarement utilisée au Québec, mais courante aux États-Unis pour désigner une population blanche marginale, peu éduquée. Bureau lui demande si elle oserait aussi parler de « Black trash ». « Ben non, ça marcherait pas », dit-elle.

L’échange a été capté par un chroniqueur de Québecor, Mathieu Bock-Côté (MBC), qui y a vu un exemple de « racisme anti-blanc ». (Détail savoureux : ce sont les esclaves noirs du sud des États-Unis qui ont inventé le terme pour dénigrer ces Blancs). L’argument du deux poids, deux mesures se tient, mais la charge de MBC est un peu lourde, d’autant que Clermont-Dion s’amende, dans l’entretien, d’avoir utilisé le terme. Puis, le reproche lui en a été fait sur les réseaux sociaux. J’y reviens.

Les signataires renvoient ensuite à un gazouillis où une autrice et éditrice écrivait ceci : « Les élections et leurs hochets habituels — et même certains dont nous croyions qu’ils appartenaient à un vieux Québec ranci et révolu : l’immigration, l’identité, le vilain étranger, les maudits intellectuels ». Je ne la nomme pas parce que les signataires s’insurgent que de tels propos entraînent une riposte ad hominem, mais surtout parce qu’elle a retiré la publication. Le gazouillis serait passé inaperçu si MBC n’avait pas jugé dans son blogue qu’il « est difficile de trouver un propos plus méprisant à l’endroit des centaines de milliers de Québécois qui prennent la question identitaire au sérieux ».

Pour moi, c’est clair : les deux positions ont droit de cité dans notre débat public. L’autrice a le droit de penser et d’écrire que ces thèmes reflètent un « Québec ranci et révolu », d’autres ont droit de répliquer que cette opinion suinte le mépris.

Le troisième cas concerne l’auteur et vice-président de la Ligue des droits et libertés, Philippe Néméh-Nombré. Dans Seize temps noirs pour apprendre à dire kuei, (Mémoire d’encrier), il écrit : « Une autopatrouille qui brûle est une promesse. » Ce qui lui vaut, toujours par MBC, une accusation de glorifier la violence antipolicière. Cette phrase est prise « hors contexte », écrivent les signataires. Je suis allé le lire. J’ai bien trouvé cet autre extrait : « Détruire des ordinateurs, fracasser des vitrines, brûler des autopatrouilles, bloquer des ponts, des voies ferroviaires. » Mais je n’ai trouvé aucun contexte qui puisse laisser entendre que ces phrases ne doivent pas être prises au premier degré. Il s’agit, au mieux, d’une normalisation de la violence, au pire, de sa glorification. Que les signataires estiment que cela devrait passer comme une lettre à la poste laisse songeur.

Finalement, la lettre nous emmène en 2018, dans la foulée de l’attentat à la mosquée de Québec. Dans un texte publié dans La Presse, la prof et psychiatre Marie-Eve Cotton estime troublant que certains se montrent empathiques envers les troubles psychiatriques de l’accusé, Alexandre Bissonnette, mais n’en fasse pas autant envers les tueurs islamistes qui ne sont, écrit-elle, « pas moins désespérés, apeurés, perdus, et habités d’une colère qui cherche un objet sur lequel se déverser ». Cette fois, c’est Richard Martineau qui monte au créneau, estimant qu’il faut distinguer « un massacre perpétré par une personne déséquilibrée et dépressive et un attentat sanguinaire commis au nom d’une cause par un terroriste qui revendique fièrement son geste ». Ici encore, les deux positions doivent avoir droit de cité. (Je trouve pour ma part des parcelles de vérité dans les deux textes.)

Les signataires se plaignent que la force de la riposte est disproportionnée, de deux façons. D’abord, parce que des chroniqueurs et animateurs ont des tribunes dont l’empreinte est très large; ensuite, parce que leurs critiques entraînent sur la Toile un flot de commentaires souvent haineux qui traumatise l’auteur du texte critiqué. Personne n’est préparé pour le torrent de réactions qu’une première déclaration tranchée peut provoquer. Mais tous ceux qui mettent le petit orteil dans le débat public doivent savoir que cette tempête permanente existe. Il n’y a que deux façons d’y survivre : pour les menaces, on appelle le 911, pour toute violence verbale, on bloque jusqu’à ce que la racaille disparaisse de nos fils.

Mais la lettre ouverte appelle les propriétaires de médias à mettre leurs chroniqueurs et animateurs en laisse. Ils devraient s’abstenir de relever qu’untel parle d’un « Québec ranci » et que tel autre sourit à la vue d’une autopatrouille en flamme. Au nom de quoi, exactement ? Du droit de ne pas être contredit ? Du droit au monologue ?

Je remarque, dans la liste des « victimes » citées et les signatures, des gens qui, à répétition, ont écrit que ceux qui n’étaient pas de leur avis sur la question de la laïcité étaient, nécessairement, des opportunistes et des racistes. On comprend que, du haut de leur certitude d’être les seuls porteurs de la raison, ils voudraient que leur intolérance et leur irrespect de l’autre ne soient relevés par personne, ou alors qu’on taise leurs noms dans les répliques, même lorsqu’ils persistent et signent dans l’insulte.

L’argument de la disproportion des voix aurait de la valeur si l’espace médiatique québécois n’était pas si diversifié. Toute personne outrée peut publier sa prose sur son blogue ou ses réseaux avec l’appui et le relais de sa communauté de vues. Des lettres ouvertes sont acceptées dans tous les médias. J’admets qu’il manque de signatures et de tribunes, disons, « woke », à Québecor, mais ce n’est pas le cas dans ce quotidien-ci, ni à La Presse ni à Radio-Canada.

On pourrait débattre, chiffres à l’appui, de la présence médiatique relative des deux grandes tendances intellectuelles qui s’affrontent. Il faut cependant savoir qu’en politique comme dans le débat d’idées, chacun est toujours convaincu que l’autre camp a trop de visibilité.

J’ai jugé particulièrement significatif de constater que le signataire principal de cette lettre, Mathieu Marion, dénonçant le manque de retenue et de respect et les attaques ad hominem, un prof de l’UQAM, a affirmé quelques jours auparavant sur Twitter que la pensée de MBC s’apparentait à de la « pink slime » — cette viande artificielle dont la vue lève le cœur. Ce qui me rappelle vaguement une histoire de paille et de poutre.

Source: Le droit au monologue

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Crawford: Size doesn’t matter? A small population may enhance Canada’s media — and its democracy

2022/12/01 Leave a comment

A new angle to me:

The federal government’s recent announcement that it would boost annual immigration to half a million people per year by 2025 coincides with conflicts over Ottawa’s Online News Act and the Competition Bureau’s blocking of a proposed mergerbetween telecommunications giants Shaw and Rogers. 

While these developments may appear to be unrelated, they aren’t. They raise questions about how Canada’s population growth might affect the changing media landscape and its ability to inform and underpin our democracy.

Few policy prescriptions have more transformative potential than the deceptively simple idea of doubling or tripling our population. 

An influential slice of elite opinion — represented by a non-profit group called the Century Initiative — was echoed in a 2017 report by the federal government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth and detailed in the book Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough by journalist Doug Saunders.

It urged Canadians to consider increasing our immigration rate by as much as 50 per cent and to aim at having a population of 100 million by the year 2100. This, we are told, will mean more economic growth, more innovation, more domestic autonomy and more international clout. 

But is bigger better for the truth? In particular, is it conducive to the kind of shared truths about basic facts and norms, spread through the media, that make meaningful discussions about public policy possible? 

‘Thin on the ground’

In Canada, Saunders argues those in Canadian media, publishing, the arts and broadcasting are the most acutely aware of the limitations of under-population. 

A dispersed population stretched across 10 provinces in six time zones means that “we have never had the size of audience to support the level of culture that befits a G7 nation … we are very thin on the ground as far as our ability to talk to ourselves.” 

A bigger Canada would have the economies of scale to facilitate “national conversation” and “our ability to talk to ourselves” — and that surely spells more and better democracy, right? 

Unfortunately, not if the American experience is any guide. 

The current media ecology in the United States has allowed extreme and false conspiracy theories to become normalized, with disturbing implications for the legitimacy of political and civic institutions. 

That’s because media silos are big enough to incubate people like Donald Trump, the Q-Anon movement and baseless voter fraud allegations without having their “truths” tested and effectively disproven in a common national forum. 

Operating in a larger country did little to save America’s newspaper industry, with its accumulated expertise and generally high standards of investigative reporting. The number of working journalists has been cut in half over the past 25 years. 

If anything, more resources and greater economies of scale on the internet and in think-tank networks have merely facilitated the growth of news and information silos.

They cater to what some citizen-consumers like to read (ideologically slanted analysis or partisan infotainment carefully micro-targeted to appeal to cognitive biases) or what powerful advertisers or devious hackers want them to read (news that is more congenial to foreign powers or economic elites) rather than what they need to read (quality, fact-based journalism). 

The enhanced ability to “talk to themselves” takes place in the proverbial echo chamber of as much as half of the country , plus countless smaller ones. That makes a truly national conversation more difficult to achieve, not less.

Public broadcasters

PBS and NPR offer a quality of national programming that is comparable to the CBC at its best, without regular commercial interruption. 

But they’re simply too small relative to the size of the marketplace to provide the influential standard-setting function that the CBC has historically provided for Canadian broadcast journalism or that public broadcasters have achieved for the United Kingdom, France, Australia and other nations. 

There are concerns about our cultural institutions’ dependence upon public subsidy, yet public funding has arguably enabled the CBC to serve as an authoritative national forum that has no equivalent in the United States.

How the question of scale might be intersecting with technology and public policy right now can be illustrated by the attempts to provide “alternative” news and sources of policy-relevant information and opinion here in Canada. 

Consider the failures of the Sun News Network to achieve its goal of becoming “Fox News North” or of its online successor, Rebel Media, to become Canada’s Breitbart News. 

The Sun News Network tried to get around the problem of a small market for its product by obtaining a basic cable licence across the country. The CRTC did not oblige them.

Rebel Media then suffered from its mistake of having a reporter provide favourable live coverage of the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right rally that spun out of control, killing a counter-protester and injuring 19 others.

Larger markets aren’t always beneficial

Some progressive nationalists have been self-congratulatory about these setbacks, surmising that Canada’s political culture is essentially different from America’s in being less receptive to extreme right-wing politics. 

Yet supporters of the Sun TV model and Rebel Media can plausibly argue that all they really need to do in order to be more successful is to wait for an increase in the size of their potential audience. A more favourable political environment could also enable them to achieve a larger market share.

This serves to remind us why a larger domestic market for political news would not necessarily yield an improved public sphere. Social cohesion — and the encouragement of dialogue and debate in a good faith common effort to arrive at the truth — are public goods that require something more than demographic or economic growth to survive.

These qualities may even be easier to come by in a smaller Canada.

Paying closer attention to the dangers of growth, especially the modern threats to democracy posed by the internet, allows us to best plan for a brighter future — not just a bigger one.

Source: Size doesn’t matter? A small population may enhance Canada’s media — and its democracy

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UK, Islam and media: This is bullying, not journalism

2021/12/03 Leave a comment

Of note. Similar to other countries:

Watching and reading news on Muslims and Islam is not always a pleasant experience. At least one-fifth of all articles on the topic pertain to terrorism and extremism. This was among a number of concerning facts and figures that I and others at the Centre for Media Monitoring found when we analysed more than a year’s worth of material from British newsrooms that referenced Muslims and/or Islam.

This included around 48,000 online news articles and 5,500 clips that aired between October 2018 and September 2019, giving us a clearer picture of how Muslims are reported on and where the problems lie.

Certain publications – the same ones that lambaste ‘cancel culture’ – often target individual Muslims or organisations

The right-leaning media, which includes most of the country’s heavyweight publications, fared worst across our rating metrics. Using a methodology designed alongside seasoned academics who have studied how Muslims are represented in the media, we pinpointed everything from the reproduction of tropes, to the misrepresentation of Muslim beliefs, to problematic headlines and imagery.

A disproportionate number of articles were biased on the subject of religion, with discussions around Islam mired in Orientalism. Islam was repeatedly framed as a hostile threat to the West, as right-wing pundits trotted out tropes with impunity, while Muslim characters in fictional dramas were shown as intolerant – and were often played by non-Muslim actors.

Around half of the news articles and clips we examined associated Muslims with negative aspects and behaviours. While this might not seem alarming given that news generally tends towards the negative, we did not discriminate between items that were predominantly about Muslims or those that contained only a passing mention, which is a cause for concern.

Platforming marginal figures

Our study was not just about identifying what was bad; we also found pieces that were fair and balanced, punching up against those in power, rather than punching down against Muslims, as is so often the case. Examples included the BBC’s John Sudworthreporting on the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China, and the Spectator’s Stephen Daisley opining on the Birmingham schools affair, even as his publication was frequently rated poorly across our metrics.

I am often asked whether reporting on Muslims and Islam is getting better over time. But this is difficult to assess, as much depends on the news cycle and which subjects or events are in focus.

We have, however, seen a return in recent days by British tabloids to platforming marginal and unrepresentative figures as the face of British Muslims. In addition, certain publications – the same ones that lambaste “cancel culture” – often target individual Muslims or organisations, in an attempt to delegitimise and de-platform them.

Our report features close to a dozen instances in which individual Muslims were misrepresented in the media; in some cases, the victims spent years of their lives on a quest for justice and an apology. Some of the cases involved neoconservative organisations feeding information to newspapers who appeared happy to lap it up, targeting Muslims in the public space.

This is not journalism. It is bullying, and it impinges on the civil rights of British Muslims, ultimately aiming to silence them.

Willingness to change

Our report also looked at how words are used to delegitimise Muslims, such as by describing any Muslim organisation or individual in the public sphere as “Islamist” or practicing “Islamism”. Such terms have been used in a scattershot fashion, targeting everyone from Islamic State fighters, to democratically elected leaders, to schoolchildren who eat halal food at lunch.

Muslims cannot, and most do not, expect special treatment from the media. What they do expect is fairness

Producing a report as detailed as ours was an arduous task, and not always a pleasant one. But it was done in good faith, with the hope that it will inform and guide members of the media.

Better reporting on Muslims and Islam is not an impossible task, as shown by Daily Express editor Gary Jones, who in 2018 lamented that past front pages at the newspaper had contributed to an Islamophobic environment. He has worked to change that, setting an example for others.

Another encouraging sign came from the editors of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Times, who welcomed our report, even though it criticised some of their coverage. This suggests that there is a willingness at the highest levels to produce better journalism – and we welcome that.

Muslims cannot, and most do not, expect special treatment from the media. What they do expect is fairness and to be treated no differently than any other community. As the former chair of the Independent Press Standards Organisation pointed out a couple of years ago, Muslims have been treated differently by British newspapers. Our findings would agree with him, and it’s up to news editors and journalists to change that.

Faisal Hanif is a media analyst at the Centre for Media Monitoring and has previously worked as a news reporter and researcher at the Times and the BBC. His latest report looks at how the British media reports terrorism.

Source: UK, Islam and media: This is bullying, not journalism

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The election showed we don’t know how to cover the far right

2021/09/28 Leave a comment

Hard to handle, this coverage issue:

Unlike episodes of “Seinfeld,” elections are never about nothing. While our 44th general election might have felt like it didn’t accomplish much in light of the final seat count, it is false to suggest that this vote doesn’t hold valuable lessons for regular Canadians and politicos alike in the future.

One of the major underpinnings of this campaign is that it exemplified just how unprepared our media and political chattering classes are when it comes to dealing with the rise of the far right in this country, and acknowledging the role misinformation plays in our current discourse.

While many political journalists and commentators are quick to dismiss Maxime Bernier and his ilk as being wholly disconnected from the larger conservative media and political network, the actual evidence would suggest otherwise. Bernier’s descent from Harper-era cabinet minister to conspiracy-theory-peddling zealot shouldn’t be viewed as some sort of one-off event, but should rather be seen as emblematic of an ecosystem that allows an alarming degree of misinformation in its mainstream discourse.

It’s incredibly easy to write off those who were protesting hospitals and claiming to be fighting against permanent lockdowns as cranks that are completely detached from reality. It’s much more difficult to question what role mainstream publications and commercial AM talk radio have in shaping some of these views. From columns in print media arguing that climate change lockdowns are in our immediate future, to talk radio hosts explicitly calling the prime minister a “globalist” who will destroy our country, Canadians don’t need to go to far-right online outlets like The Post Millennial or The Rebel to be misinformed.

In a lot of ways, Bernier and the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) are simply the next step in the evolution of the conservative movement in this country, as sitting Conservative MPs regularly peddle all sort of conspiracy theories. One might try to convince themselves that this is relegated to the Conservative back bench, like Cheryl Gallant echoing the climate change lockdown conspiracy or saying that Liberals want to “normalize sexual relations with children.” But in doing so, one would have to actively ignore Conservative front benchers like Pierre Poilievre, who recently tried to fear monger around the notion of a “great reset.”

The PPC was able to more than double their vote share in this election, garnering just over 800,000 votes this time around. Certainly not every single PPC voter is an avowed white supremacist, but it would be a mistake to ignore the clear ties the PPC has to far-right, extremist groups. And yet, this very salient detail often seems to be lacking in the media coverage surrounding the PPC. For example, columns and news coverage alike failed to acknowledge that the PPC riding president who was charged for throwing gravel at the prime minister had well-established, explicit ties to the white nationalist movement.

This past week Bernier published the contact information of journalists who had reached out to the PPC to ask questions, and called on his followers on Twitter to “play dirty” with the journalists Bernier had targeted. What happened next was predictable: journalists were sent racist messages along with death and rape threats by hordes of PPC supporters, Twitter reacted too slowly to take down Bernier’s tweet, and Bernier’s call very quickly ended up on a white supremacist forum.

It is irresponsible, and arguably journalistic malpractice, to cover the PPC as if it were any other mainstream political party in this country. And yet that is exactly how much of our political media is treating them.

It’s easy for an overwhelmingly white media and political class to dismiss the rise of the far right in this country, and the role misinformation plays. After all, they do not have to deal with the repercussions of mainstreaming hate and misinformation in the same way that their BIPOC colleagues do. But as the Americans have shown us, there is a fundamental danger posed to democracy itself if far-right forces are downplayed, ignored or placated. Let’s just hope we do a better job in the next election than we did in the last one.

Source: The election showed we don’t know how to cover the far right

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Latinos vastly underrepresented in media, new report finds

2021/09/23 Leave a comment

Of note (not surprising):

Latinos are perpetually absent in major newsrooms, Hollywood films and other media industries where their portrayals — or lack thereof — could deeply impact how their fellow Americans view them, according to a government report released Tuesday.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office to investigate last October.

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, has made the inclusion of Latinos in media a principal issue, imploring Hollywood studio directors, journalism leaders and book publishers to include their perspectives.

Castro says the lack of accurate representation, especially in Hollywood, means at the very best that Americans don’t get a full understanding of Latinos and their contributions. At worst — especially when Latinos are solely portrayed as drug dealers or criminals — it invites politicians to exploit negative stereotypes for political gain, Castro said.

That could engender violence against Latinos, like the killing of 23 people in El Paso in 2019 by a gunman who was targeting Hispanics.

“None of this has been an effort to tell people exactly what to write, but to encourage that media institutions reflect the face of America. Because then we believe that the stories will be more accurate and more reflective of the truth and less stereotypical,” Castro said in an interview with The Associated Press. “American media, including print journalism, has relied on stereotypes of Latinos. If the goal is the truth, well that certainly has not served the truth.”

The report found that in 2019, the estimated percentage of Latinos working in newspaper, periodical, book and directory publishers was about 8%. An estimated 11% of news analysts, reporters and journalists were Latino, although the GAO used data that included Spanish-language networks, where virtually all contributors are Latino, and those employed in other sectors of news, not just necessarily news gatherers. That could inflate the figures significantly.

The report also found that the biggest growth among Hispanics in the media industry was in service jobs, while management jobs had the lowest representation.

Ana-Christina Ramón is one half of a team that has been collecting data on diversity in Hollywood for a decade, and began publishing annual reports in 2014. Ramón is the director of research and civic engagement at the UCLA College of Letters and Science.

Latinos account for only about 5% to 6% of main cast members in TV and film, despite being roughly 18% of the U.S. population, her research has found.

“It’s a bit of a ceiling. It doesn’t go over that percentage,” Ramón said, although she added that TV has made much bigger strides in significant roles for Latinos than movies have.

For years, Hollywood executives argued that films with diverse leads don’t make money. Ramón found that they do.

“There’s this idea that Hollywood has that ‘Oh, we can’t do too much diversity, it will scare off the white people.’ Well, it has not scared off the white people,” Ramón said.

Cristina Mislán, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia, was not surprised by the figures the GAO found, and noted that much of the growth in Latinos in media professions stems from the service industry.

“It’s important because the more representation we have of diverse cultures and peoples does allow for more opportunities to have richer, more complicated stories being told,” Mislán said.

Source: Latinos vastly underrepresented in media, new report finds

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How the White Press Wrote Off Black America

2021/07/13 Leave a comment

Good historical account:

Newspapers that championed white supremacy throughout the pre-civil rights South paved the way for lynching by declaring African Americans nonpersons. They embraced the language once used at slave auctions by denying Black citizens the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs. and referring to them in news stories as “the negro,” “the negress” or “the nigger.”

They depicted Black men as congenital rapists, setting the stage for them to be hanged, shot or burned alive in public squares all over the former Confederacy. These newspapers entered their bloodiest incarnations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inciting hellish episodes of violence during which white mobs murdered at will while sometimes destroying entire Black communities.

African Americans who fled these Southern horrors found the white Northern press only marginally less hostile. Yankee papers that congratulated themselves for opposing lynching in the abstract justified it in practice by depicting the victims as naturally disposed toward heinous crime.

As the historian Rayford Logan writes in his iconic study of this period, the white Northern press cemented the stereotype of the Negro barbarian by making Blackness synonymous with crime. Headlines included phrases like “Negro ruffian,” “colored cannibal,” “dissolute Negress” and “African Annie.” By portraying Black people as less than human, the white popular press justified the reign of terror that the South deployed, while stripping African Americans of the rights they had briefly enjoyed during the period just after the Civil War known as Reconstruction.

Since the early 2000s, historically white newspapers in Alabama, California, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and North Carolina have apologized with varying degrees of candor for the roles they played in this history. When read end to end, these statements of confession attest to blatantly racist news coverage over a more than century-long period that encompasses the collapse of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, the two world wars, the civil rights movement, the urban riots of the 1960s, the Vietnam era and beyond.

The Raleigh News & Observer in North Carolina has admitted to engineering a landmark episode of racial terrorism — the 1898 white supremacist coup that overthrew the government of the majority-Black city of Wilmington. The Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama, once the voice of the Confederacy, acknowledges being complicit in racial terrorism through the 1950s. The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky could well have spoken for hundreds of newspapers when it confessed that it had “neglected” to cover the civil rights movement at a time when that movement was changing the face of the country.

The Orlando Sentinel touched on a familiar theme of the struggle for racial justice when it repented for supporting the wrongful prosecution of Black defendants, known as the Groveland Four, who were charged with rape in 1949. The paper was known as The Orlando Morning Sentinel when its bloodthirsty coverage featured a front-page editorial cartoon that depicted four empty electric chairs under the headline “No Compromise!” A threatening editorial warned that “innocent Negroes” might suffer if civil rights lawyers sought to free the defendants based on “legal technicalities.”

The Los Angeles Times apologized for being “an institution deeply rooted in white supremacy” for most of its history and admitted to a record that included indifference and “outright hostility” toward the city’s nonwhite population.

The Kansas City Star confessed that it had “disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians” and “robbed an entire community” of “dignity, justice and recognition.” While showing keen interest in military operations abroad, the paper noted, it remained silent when bombs exploded in the homes of Black people not far from its own offices.

The Star shut out even world-famous Black Kansas Citians like the saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, who did not get a significant headline in The Star until he died, in 1955 — “and even then, his name was misspelled and his age was wrong.” When a flood devastated the city in 1977, The Star and its sister paper focused on businesses and suburbs, all but ignoring the fact that the flood had also swallowed homes of residents in Black areas. The newspapers showed more concern for missing pets than for Black citizens whose lives had been swept away in the torrent.

The apology movement is historically resonant on several counts. It offers a timely validation of the besieged academic discipline known as critical race theory — by showing that what news organizations once presented as “fair” and “objective” journalism was in fact freighted with the racist stereotypes that had been deployed to justify slavery. It lays out how the white press alienated generations of African Americans — many of whom still view the leading news outlets of the United States as part of a hostile “white media.”

The movement illustrates what President Lyndon Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders — also known the Kerner Commission — was talking about in 1968 when it criticized the press for writing and reporting “from the standpoint of a white man’s world.” It also vindicates the hundreds of African American men and women who established anti-racist newspapersduring the late 19th and early 20th centuries and engaged in open combat with the white press over how Black life would be represented.

The white press in the South dictated how anti-Black atrocities were viewed all over the country by portraying even the most grotesque exercises of violence as necessary to protect a besieged white community. White news organizations elsewhere rubber-stamped this lie. The editors of small, struggling Black publications often risked their lives to refute what they rightly saw as white supremacist propaganda masquerading as news.

Ida B. Wells of the fiery Memphis weekly known as The Free Speech was the best known of these Black press paladins. Her investigations showed that mobs regularly lynched innocent victims as part of a terror tactic that was intended to keep the Black community on its knees. Her most explosive finding was that the Black men who were charged with raping white women were often involved in consensual relationships with them.

Her editorial calling the common rape charge a “threadbare lie” conveyed more truth than the white aristocracy could bear. The white-owned Daily Commercial called for the writer of the editorial to be lynched without using the term. The Evening Scimitar presumed the editorial writer male and called for him to be tied to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Streets, his forehead branded with a hot iron and castrated “with a pair of tailor’s shears.” Ms. Wells was fortunately out of town when a mob destroyed the Free Speech office.

John Mitchell Jr. of The Richmond Planet, a Virginia weekly, had been born into slavery, as had Ms. Wells. He was known in his time as the “the fighting editor” — a posture that The Planet reflected with a logo depicting a muscular Black arm whose clenched fist radiated lightning bolts. During the late 19th century, Mr. Mitchell was acutely aware of the connection between the lynching fever that was sweeping the former Confederacy and the fact that Southern cities were filling their public squares with monuments to Confederate soldiers who had plunged the country into war with the goal of preserving slavery.

Speaking of a monument erected in Richmond to the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, Mr. Mitchell said that it would “ultimately result in handing down to generations unborn a legacy of treason and blood.” He foresaw more than a century ago that this and other monuments to white supremacy might not stand in perpetuity. Speaking of the African American labor used to erect monuments, he said of the Black man, “He put up the Lee Monument, and should the time come, he’ll be there to take it down.”

Mr. Mitchell and his Virginia contemporaries were no doubt watching when the white press in North Carolina began to campaign for the interracial government of Wilmington to be overthrown. On the eve of the coup, the majority-Black city was a stronghold of African American economic and political success and home to a thriving community of Black craftsmen and businesses owners, as well as African American public servants who included aldermen, magistrates and mail carriers.

The News & Observer rallied the white press beyond the carnage by relentlessly equating Black voting rights with corruption, anti-whiteness and, inevitably, the rape of white women. The paper ran infamous editorial cartoons like the ones depicting a giant Black foot crushing a white citizen and another showing a Black vampire bat labeled “Negro Rule” hovering over the state.

This toxic campaign yielded fruit on the morning of Nov. 10, 1898, when a mob marched into the city and burned the offices of The Wilmington Daily Record, widely thought to have been the only Black-owned daily newspaper in the United States at the time. The vigilantes swept through the streets shooting some African Americans and exiling others, along with their “white nigger” allies, from the city.

The New York Times referred obliquely to the overthrow of the Wilmington government as necessary for restoring “law and order.” The Richmond Planet — under the headline “Horrible Butcheries at Wilmington” — made clear that the coup was aimed at removing Black officeholders and restoring white control of the city.

The Planet described unarmed Black people being shot dead in the streets or driven into the woods, making clear that the carnage had resulted from “a concerted conspiracy which has been underway for several weeks,” with the goal of securing “the reins of the city government by treasonable practices.” In his characteristically acid tone, Mr. Mitchell admonished President William McKinley for failing to restore the legally elected government of the city and observed that the “good white people” of the Wilmington vicinity had either acted as “aiders and abettors of murder” or fallen “painfully silent” in the face of a treasonous attack on democracy.

A similar scenario — complete with distorted news accounts — played out two decades later after the massacre of Black sharecroppers in Elaine, Ark. The sharecroppers had angered their white landlords by banding together to demand a fair price for the crop. After a shootout instigated by whites, as the historian David Levering Lewis has written, “enraged white planters and farmers chased down Black men and women in the high cotton of Phillips County in a frenzy lasting seven days, until the count of the dead approached 200.”

It was widely — and falsely — reported in the white press that the sharecroppers had intended to kill every white person they could and take control of the county. The African American press pointed out soon after the bloodletting that the sharecroppers had been slaughtered for contesting a form of slavery under which white overlords swindled them out of their earnings.

The white Southern press degraded African Americans in a variety of everyday ways. One of the humiliations that continued into the 1950s involved denying Black adults the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs., and referring to them by first name only, at a time when African Americans could be beaten or even lynched for addressing white people in this fashion. By identifying married Black women by their first names, instead of as Mrs., white newspapers denied the legitimacy of African American marriage and reinforced a racist slander that labeled women of color morally “loose.” Jim Crow society used this defamation to justify the rapacious conduct of white men who targeted Black women for sexual assault.

Black newspapers like The Baltimore Afro-American, The Chicago Defender and The Pittsburgh Courier served as a haven against white press hostility, while incubating and advancing the early civil rights movement.

At a time when African Americans had to commit crimes to appear in the white press, The Defender and its sister papers filled their society pages with scenes of the Black middle class succeeding at business, convening civic organizations or taking their leisure at tony vacation spots. In other words, the Black press was a century ahead of the news media generally in discovering the African American middle class as a marketable subject of journalism.

Black news organizations started to wither as segregation eased and the white press became interested in the civil rights movement. Nevertheless, it would take decades for that interest to extend beyond stories about crime. The Kerner Commission underscored this problem when it admonished the news media to “publish newspapers and produce programs that recognize the existence and activities of the Negro, both as a Negro and as part of the community.”

News organizations that were not moved to address this problem when the business represented a license to print money have come to see things differently since the business model began its collapse. The apology movement represents a belated understanding that these organizations need every kind of reader to survive. The challenge is that the gap news providers are eager to close is vast and was generations in the making.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/opinion/sunday/white-newspapers-african-americans.html

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

CNN, MSNBC Insiders Shudder at Idea of Hiring MAGA Mouthpieces

2020/11/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

If soon-to-be former Trump White House officials were hoping to snag paid talking-head roles at the major television networks, they may be in for a rude awakening.

It’s become a political ritual every four years: After each presidential election cycle, cable and broadcast news executives race to woo outgoing administration officials or top figures from the winning and losing campaigns for cushy roles as talking heads.

Not this time. With Trump’s top aides and advisers all taking their sycophancy to perilous new heights, actively participating in the outgoing president’s efforts to undermine the integrity of the vote, their utility as political pundits may have expired.

The Daily Beast spoke with executives and insiders from many of the top cable and broadcast news networks including CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, and ABC News, and most relayed the same message: Unless they retreat to the comforts of Fox News or even far-right outlets like Newsmax or One America News Network, the former Trump officials who have repeatedly lied to or denigrated reporters shouldn’t expect to land a network paycheck.

CNN, in particular, has traditionally been a safe landing spot for former top campaign officials, regardless of party affiliation. Just days after he exited Trump’s 2016 campaign team, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski landed a commentator gig at CNN, despite his at-times physically aggressive relationship with the press and the fact that he had a non-disparagement agreement preventing him from speaking freely about the president. His colleague, Trump 2016 spokesman Jason Miller, was also hired by CNN, until being canned in 2018 over allegations (which he vehemently denied) that he impregnated a woman and secretly slipped her an abortion pill.

But the post-2020 outlook for former Trump campaign and administration officials will likely not be as friendly.

“Most of us probably are hoping that we will be seeing very little of these people—unless they are willing to be more honest,” a well-placed CNN insider told The Daily Beast. “The ones that are still out there who are well-known creeps like Jason Miller and Boris Epshteyn—nobody is going to be hiring these people.”

People who work with CNN chief Jeff Zucker relayed that he has been personally offended by the frequent and vicious attacks on CNN from Trumpworld figures, who’ve flamed any and all news outlets reporting remotely negative information on the president. Throughout the Trump era, the network became increasingly emboldened in taking the fight back to a hostile administration. Aside from on-air chyrons fact-checking various Trump lies in real-time, some of the network’s top news personalities have been publicly critical of the administration, in some cases abruptly ending interviews mid-broadcast when Trump officials refuse to substantively engage with the questions, and instead launch ad hominem attacks against journalists.

CNN insiders who spoke with The Daily Beast said there would likely be internal discontent if network bosses decided to pay ex-Trump officials who’ve repeatedly denigrated the network and are now working to undermine the 2020 election on behalf of the outgoing president. There seems to be zero interest, these sources said, in trying to poach even the most visible Trump campaign and White House staffers like Hogan Gidley and Tim Murtaugh—who both have extensive comms backgrounds in D.C.—or Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, a career right-wing pundit with previous stints at Fox News and CNN.

But Zucker himself may not be a part of the network’s future for long. It’s widely known in media circles that the CNN boss is unhappy with parent company WarnerMedia’s restructuring moves, which reduced his role, and has not yet re-upped his soon-to-expire contract. It’s possible that a CNN without Zucker—who personally meets with and vets many on-air contributors—could be more receptive to some ex-Trump officials, sources cautioned.

Unlike CNN, MSNBC does not have the same extensive history of paying partisan contributors for on-air appearances, though throughout Trump’s term the network cultivated a stable of so-called “Never Trump” Republicans. Multiple network insiders said the liberal-leaning, Comcast-owned cable network is unlikely to welcome any high-profile Trump loyalists, even gratis, to share their insights into the ongoing failures of a Joe Biden presidency.

“If you’re a person who was a career government official who happened to serve the Trump administration—somebody like Mark Esper or Elliott Abrams—we might have them on,” said an MSNBC insider, “but it’s likely that if Kayleigh McEnany has a book she’s selling, she will definitely be blacklisted. The same goes for someone like Hogan Gidley.”

But it’s not as though they aren’t already trying to get back into the professional pundit class. Even as top Trump officials entertain the president’s “voter fraud” delusions, one agent told The Daily Beast, “They’re all emailing saying, ‘Can you come meet up next week?’” Fox News reported on Wednesdaythat Trump’s communications director Alyssa Farah has been interviewing TV agents, pursuing a job after her White House exit. (Farah declined to respond to The Daily Beast on the record.)

Another MSNBC insider suggested that some shows like Morning Joe would consider booking less aggressive Trump supporters like former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, currently a contributor at ABC News, “because he has had enough access to be in the room for Trump’s debate prep and get COVID, but at least he’s rooted in reality.”

Meanwhile, predictions that MSNBC’s and for that matter CNN’s ratings are likely to decline under the relative normalcy of a Biden administration might be inoperative if Trump—as seems likely—continues to exert political and cultural influence and presides over a kind of resistance shadow presidency after leaving the White House on Jan. 20.

MSNBC, for one, found a solid business model over the past four years in the relentless narrative, especially in primetime, that Trump was a malevolent force whose presidency was apt to end at any moment in impeachment.

It’s possible, said one cable-news executive, that Trump could still drive ratings even when out of office. “It remains to be seen whether that would compel people to watch obsessively every day like they’ve been doing for the last four years,” the exec said.

Some networks also now have the added concern that Trump-loving contributors could use their perch to feed inside information to anti-media activists as part of Trumpworld’s ongoing efforts to discredit any and all of his critics.

“As a news org, how do you allow someone in your news organization who could James O’Keefe you in a second?” one network executive wondered, referring to the founder of Project Veritas, a right-wing group that uses hidden-camera footage to attempt to show bias at media organizations.

Of course, lack of network interest likely won’t stop some of the most high-profile Trump White House and admin figures from ever popping up again on television.

Gidley, McEnany, Murtagh, and others already get top billing when they appear on Fox News, where they could well join former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who regularly appears on-air and has a network contributor contract. Other former administration officials like Sean Spicer have found gigs at Newsmax, while others like Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon—the federally indicted (for alleged fundraising fraud) former White House chief strategist—have expended their talking-head energies in right-wing radio and podcasting.

“Can I see Mark Meadows appearing as an analyst on MSNBC? No, but on Fox News, yeah, for sure,” one network executive remarked, singling out Trump’s pugnacious chief of staff. Another cable-news insider suggested Fox News might look to hire several MAGA officials to boost its suddenly lagging credibility with Trumpkins angry with the network for calling the election for Biden and not fully playing along with the president’s baseless voter-fraud allegations.

And for networks like CNN and MSNBC—self-styled guardians of democratic norms and civil discourse—President-elect Joe Biden’s reconciliatory Saturday evening victory speech may loom large over decisions on whether to extend an olive branch to ex-Trump henchmen and women.

“Let’s give each other a chance. It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again,” he implored. “To listen to each other again. To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans.”

“Obviously there are 71 million people who voted for the president and there should be someone that represents their views and can talk about the political landscape,” another network executive told The Daily Beast.

And the networks are already seeking workarounds for representing conservative views on their air without hiring toxic ex-Trump officials. One TV industry insider said there has already been interest from various outlets in hiring the Republican Senate candidates who lost this year, as well as other outgoing GOP members of Congress. Like former Sen. Rick Santorum—a CNN contributor who essentially acts as a the network’s pro-Trump punching bag—these outgoing conservative lawmakers would likely be expected to speak about Republican politics as well as the ravings of the soon-to-be former president and his devoted base.

But some cable-newsers are skeptical that even the most repulsive ex-Trump officials will be totally shunned from a career in punditry.

“I won’t be surprised if some of the folks who were most reviled by mainstream media, Democrats, the resistance, etc., find pretty good jobs when this is over—in the media and in Washington—because ultimately politics is transactional,” said one CNN insider. “And the impulse to punish people leaving the Trump administration will be overshadowed by the impulse to profit off the people leaving the Trump administration.”

Source: CNN, MSNBC Insiders Shudder at Idea of Hiring MAGA Mouthpieces

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Elsewhere they get it but the Australian media is still living in White Australia

2020/08/19 Leave a comment

Haven’t seen anything as comprehensive with respect to Canadian media although there have been partial samples showing underrepresentatioon:

Few would argue that Australian media does well at representing cultural diversity. Certainly not in a way you’d expect when we are a multicultural society, often trumpeted as the most successful of its kind in the world.

Now, for the first time, we have the numbers that show us just how representative – or rather, unrepresentative – the state of play is.

In our report, Who Gets to Tell Australian Stories?, we gathered data to provide the first comprehensive picture of who tells and produces stories in Australian television news and current affairs. We examined about 19,000 news and current affairs items broadcast on free to air television during two weeks in June 2019.

In their frequency of appearance on screen, we found that more than 75 per cent of presenters, commentators and reporters have an Anglo-Celtic background. While about 18 per cent have a European background, only 6 per cent of those on screen have an Indigenous or non-European background. Within our sample, none of the commercial networks had more than 5 per cent of presenters, commentators and reporters who have a non-European background.

Compare this with the Australian general population. Based on the 2016 Census figures on ancestry, the Australian Human Rights Commission has previously estimated that 58 per cent of Australians have an Anglo-Celtic background, 18 per cent have a European background, 21 per cent have non-European backgrounds, and 3 per cent identify as Indigenous.

It has been nearly five decades since an official multiculturalism was adopted in Australia. Yet that has had limited visible impact on our media.

To be fair, Australian media isn’t the only arena where this is the case. Anglo-Celtic and European backgrounds dominate the leadership ranks of politics, business, the public service and our universities. Our institutions fail to make the most of the talents within our society.

Diversity is often embraced only in name, and not in norms. If there’s a glass ceiling that many women in work hit, then those from minority backgrounds hit a cultural one. According to a survey we conducted as part of our research, more than 85 per cent of non-European background journalists believe having a culturally diverse background represents a barrier to career progression.

Representation, though, matters. It particularly matters for our television media: the medium shows us who we are as a people and as a culture. News and current affairs media have a special role in identifying and telling stories about issues of importance to all Australians.

Yet it’s overwhelmingly journalists who have Anglo-Celtic backgrounds who report, select and produce these stories. The result? Too often, media does a poor job of covering race issues.

For example, just about every time there’s a panel discussion about racism on commercial breakfast television, it involves an all-white panel that has minimal understanding of what has happened. Worse, commercial breakfast television currently seems to thrive on stoking prejudice. For sections of the media, racism is part of their business model.

Even our public broadcasters have their blind spots. For the past 10 years, the ABC’s Insiders program had no journalist who was a person of colour on its panel – something it has only rectified last month. Multicultural broadcaster SBS has recently been criticised for how it treated Indigenous journalists, and for the lack of cultural diversity within its senior management.

It’d be unthinkable for any television network to have a football commentary team on air, where not a single commentator would have experience playing the sport. By the same logic, networks should understand it’s a problem, in a multicultural society, when there’s little or no diversity within its news and current affairs.

Media elsewhere seem to get it. Indeed, Australian media lags significantly behind English-speaking counterparts. What we look like on screen can seem decades behind the United States and the United Kingdom. While they are themselves far from perfect, US and British media organisations have better collection and monitoring of data on their diversity. They’ve also been bolder at setting targets for minority talent.

For change to happen here, Australian media organisations will need to take similar steps. But more than that, there needs to be a cultural change in mindset. Too often, there is unwarranted defensiveness about criticisms concerning diversity. People can wrongly feel that a critique of systemic patterns of under-representation amount to personal attacks, or even a form of “reverse racism”. Deflections and denials come all too easily.

Talk about diversity and race will always spark debate. But it’s hard to argue with the evidence. In the case of our media, the numbers tell us we are still living in a White Australia, even if the White Australia policy was dismantled nearly 50 years ago.

Source: Elsewhere they get it but the Australian media is still living in White Australia

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Calls grow for news outlets reporting on systemic racism to address own failures

2020/07/10 Leave a comment

Of note. Ironically, and perhaps not surprising, on Wednesday, watched a Star panel on equity. Including the moderating, 4 women, 1 man, 4 visible minorities, much more diverse than others I have watched:

Journalists have not had to go far to uncover searing stories of racism in Canada — they’re finding them in their own newsrooms, among their co-workers and involving their bosses.

All while reporters increasingly turn their attention to detailing institutional discrimination in nearly all other facets of society, including justice, politics, health care and education.

For the similarly flawed media industry, a long-standing problem has suddenly become harder to ignore: Many outlets striving to inform the public of widespread racial bias do so with stories that are assigned, reported and analyzed by predominantly white editorial staff.

The not-so-surprising result? They’re failing, say industry watchers and a growing number of staff members risking their jobs to speak out. And while many media organizations are expressing renewed commitments to diversify their newsrooms and coverage, those journalists say it will take more than pledges to create meaningful change.

A SERIES OF MISSTEPS

Revelations have emerged in recent weeks of racial indignities suffered at multiple news outlets, where current and former employees are attempting to lift the curtain on how and why tensions persist.

Corus Entertainment faced a public lashing by rank-and-file staff over claims of toxic workplaces for people of colour; the National Post endured a newsroom revolt over contentious columns that denied the existence of systemic racism in Canada; CBC suspended and disciplined star Wendy Mesley for twice quoting a racial slur in editorial meetings and CBC Radio’s “Yukon Morning” host Christine Genier resigned over the lack of Indigenous representation in Canadian media.

While there might be an increase in the number of on-air personalities who are people of colour, that’s not an accurate measure of success, says diversity consultant and former journalist Hamlin Grange, whose firm DiversiPro Inc. was recently hired by Corus Entertainment to review its operations.

“It’s the people who are behind the scenes, the decision-makers that really matter and that’s where the media in this country have failed.”

It’s not for lack of trying, of course.

Over the years, there have been recruitment efforts, training sessions, and diversity pledges, just as there have been in other business sectors.

But anything that fails to dismantle systemic and structural barriers are superficial measures that don’t achieve meaningful change, says Brian Daly of the Canadian Association of Black Journalists.

MORE EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS

The CABJ and Canadian Journalists of Colour have partnered for a joint call to action that includes: regular disclosure of newsroom demographics, more representation and coverage of racialized communities (in part through hiring), and proactive efforts to seek, retain and promote Black and Indigenous journalists and journalists of colour to management positions.

They also suggest regular consultation with racialized communities on news coverage, identifying and addressing systemic barriers, targeted scholarships and mentorship opportunities, and encouraging journalism schools to lay the groundwork with diverse faculty and more focus on how to cover racialized communities.

Many on the ground agree conditions won’t improve without system-wide changes.

An expressed desire to address diversity is not enough, says TSN’s SportsCentre anchor Kayla Grey, who weathered blowback and sparked a Twitter hashtag when she criticized white freelance journalist Sheri Forde for using the N-word in a Medium blog post that ironically detailed Forde’s efforts at building racial awareness.

“Companies and newsrooms are showing their ass right now,” says Grey, the first Black woman to anchor a national TV sports show in Canada.

“I’m seeing people fumble and it’s clear that they just don’t have those voices in those rooms that check them in the first place. Or they might have those voices in the room, they might have that representation, but are they listening clearly to those voices? And have those voices felt empowered to speak out about such issues?”

THE IMPACT ON STAFF

The National Post met condemnation both within and outside of its newsroom for several inflammatory commentaries, most notably one from Rex Murphy on June 1 that declared, “Canada is not a racist country.” The online link now features an apology for “a failure in the normal editing oversight” and points readers to a rebuttal by Financial Post writer Vanmala Subramaniam.

Nevertheless, Murphy defended the piece in another column June 16 and Post founder Conrad Black added his denials of systemic racism in columns June 20 and 27, the latter of which dismissed the current reckoning with racial injustice and systemic racism as an “official obsession” causing “an absurd displacement for other concerns.”

A few frustrated staffers began withholding bylines from their own stories shortly after that first Black column, growing to involve more as the week wore on.

Editor-in-chief Rob Roberts would not comment on the byline strike, only saying: “We stand by our columnists’ right to state their opinion.”

Phyllise Gelfand, vice-president of communications for Postmedia, says in an emailed statement that the company is revisiting its diversity and inclusion programs and that diversity training for its newsrooms will roll out “immediately.”

Daly says it would be harder to dismiss the lived experiences of Black people if they were welcomed into newsrooms and their leadership.

“Allow people of differing worldviews and differing lived experiences to coexist in a newsroom environment, and then you’re going to get a healthy newsroom,” says Daly, a TV producer for the CBC in Halifax.

Throughout a 25-year career spanning five provinces, Daly has worked at CBC, CTV and Global, plus The Canadian Press and the former QMI Agency, and says he has never had a manager of colour. He recalls just three full-time colleagues who were Black.

NEXT STEPS

In June, the CABJ penned an open letter to Corus Entertainment urging improved supports for Black voices and staff while expressing solidarity “with Black employees at Global News who have grappled with feelings of defeat” over repeated microaggressions.

That was followed last Thursday by another open letter to Corus and its Global News division signed by more than 100 hosts, producers, reporters, editors and camera operators with similar demands. “If we are to expect accountability of others, we must demand it of ourselves,” they wrote.

Corus has hired Grange’s agency, DiversiPro Inc., to review the entire organization, while its executive vice president of broadcast networks, Troy Reeb, says in a statement it’s “acting immediately” at Global News to increase representation, remove systemic barriers to retention and promotion, and consult with marginalized communities on news coverage.

Grange, who wouldn’t discuss details of the review, notes an enduring lack of diversity in the broader media industry when it comes to those who decide which stories are covered and how they’re told.

Entire communities and perspectives are at risk of being ignored or distorted when coverage is filtered through a predominantly white lens, says Daly.

And when that happens, news coverage can effectively uphold the status quo, sustain systemic barriers and actively deepen racial inequities, adds Anita Li of the Canadian Journalists of Colour.

“That’s actually bad for democracy because if people don’t see themselves reflected in the news they’re less likely to vote, to trust their neighbours, to engage civically,” says Li, whose career has included stints with CTV Ottawa, CBC, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.

These are not new problems, she adds, suggesting recent scrutiny rather than genuine insight has spurred some organizations to declare serious plans to address race-related failings.

Li notes the CABJ and CJOC issued their joint calls to action in January but the response from legacy organizations “was crickets.”

“We didn’t hear anything from them until these mass protests started happening,” she says of widespread demonstrations against anti-Black racism and police brutality.

Grange, too, says the majority of his clients have not traditionally been media. But that’s changing.

“Suddenly, we’re getting them. It’s kind of interesting.”

THE GROWING RESPONSE

Despite recent high-profile transgressions, the media industry does appear to be confronting its role in upholding white bias, says Li, pointing to emerging outlets, major media unions and larger organizations that have publicly committed to the calls to action.

She says they include the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail union, Global News, and the Walrus.

The Canadian Press says it has met with the CABJ and CJOC on the recommendations and is working to ensure it has the proper infrastructure in place to fully enact them.

“I actually feel like there’s genuine traction being made and there’s actual, candid conversations about the barriers that journalists of colour are facing,” says Li.

The conversation is long overdue at the Winnipeg Free Press, editor Paul Samyn wrote July 3 in an opinion piece titled, “An apology for marginalizing people of colour; and a promise to atone for our past.” The article admits the paper has, “at times, been part of the problem, not the solution,” while promising to better reflect and serve marginalized communities.

Measures there include the addition of four full-time reporters of colour, a special news project examining race and racism, and plans to close online commenting as of July 14 because it too-often served as a magnet for racist commentary.

Li acknowledges that dwindling ad revenues, dropping readership and fragmented audiences amid a plethora of free online competitors make it financially difficult for many outlets.

But investing in diversity and inclusion pays off in the long run, she says, noting Canada’s immigrant and racialized population is growing.

“So you’re just increasingly missing a bigger and bigger portion of Canadian society,” she says of ignoring change.

“Sooner or later these folks, these communities that are being overlooked, are going to go to alternative sources of media.”

Li encourages journalists and outlets to guard against feeling defensive when forced to acknowledge failures.

“For me it’s about calling them in, not calling them out,” says Li.

“The only way we can solve this issue is collaboratively together, with all hands on deck. It’s not just the responsibility of people of colour or journalists of colour. It’s the responsibility of the entire industry.”

Source: Calls grow for news outlets reporting on systemic racism to address own failures

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Time to act on newsroom inequality

2020/06/16 Leave a comment

From the Star’s Public Editor:

“For years, we at The Star have talked about, sometimes in terms of despair, the need to reflect the changing nature of this city… Our coverage has not been inclusive enough. One obvious solution would be to hire more reporters and editors of all colors and cultures. New perspectives and new contacts would clearly improve the breadth and scope of our coverage.”

1995: Toronto & the Star: Report of the Diversity Committee

How can it be that a generation – a quarter century — has passed and still the Toronto Star and newsrooms throughout North America have not come to terms with the reality and repercussions of predominantly white newsrooms that look nothing like the communities they seek to serve?

Certainly, journalists at all levels of news organizations have seemingly long understood that a more diverse newsroom can provide more representative, more accurate and more complete news coverage that is necessary in a just and equitable society. Yet, after all these years, the truth of this matter is found in statements released earlier this year by the Canadian Association of Black Journalists and Canadian Journalists of Colour.

“Canadian newsrooms and media coverage are not truly representative of our country’s racial diversity. We acknowledge that journalism outlets have made efforts to address this worrying gap, but glaring racial inequity persists.”

I am not the first person to note that the brutal police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent global protests against systemic equality and for racial justice have presented journalism with something of a “#MeToo” moment – a seemingly rapid and revolutionary recognition of the need for change and broad refusal to accept the status quo of a long simmering situation.

Indeed, as Canadians confront the broader realities and repercussions of systematic anti-Black and Indigenous racism in our own country, it is well past time for a “reckoning” within journalism, a time to listen, to learn and to examine journalism’s role in the damaging prevalence of systemic racism.

As many have also made clear, this is most of all, a time for action. To its credit, the Star and its parent company, Torstar, committed this week, in a statement sent to all staff, to “taking concrete measures to address inequality, exclusion and discrimination.”

That was followed by a memo to the newsroom from Star editor Irene Gentle, who endorsed well-justified calls to action by the CABJ and CJoC that hold newsrooms to account for racial equality in Canadian media.

“Calls on behalf of Black, Indigenous and journalists of colour are founded in principles of anti-racism, justice and accountability this newsroom has long stood for in its reporting but did not live up to in its internal make-up, organization and, at times, judgment,” Gentle said. “Words don’t matter without actions and these actions can only make us a better, more fair newsroom to work in, inspire more relevant, vital journalism and help make our ideals a reality.”

In an earlier note to staff, Gentle acknowledged that the Star’s newsroom is not representative of the communities it reports on, even as its own outstanding anti-racism reporting continues to expose systemic racism within other institutions and organizations such as education and police.

“Internally, we obviously cannot ignore our own deficits,” she said. “There are historical and financial reasons for this, but that, while a fact, is not an excuse.”

Among the actions the Star and Torstar news organizations have committed to are: voluntary surveys of newsroom demographics to measure employment diversity statistics, hiring and promoting of Black and Indigenous employees and other people of colour and diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, training and mentoring of young and aspiring journalists of colour, including possible collaborations with journalism schools. Gentle also committed to establishing ongoing consultations with racialized and other communities through advisory groups.

“Some of these are underway or beginning. Others will require some time to set up and entrench,” Gentle said. “But we are committed to doing it because we, like all of you, know it is the right thing to do.”

The Star’s newsroom commitments are supported fully by the Torstar organization overall. In the memo to all staff, Torstar CEO John Boynton made clear the company “cannot just talk about appointing more committees, more task forces more study groups to look at these actions.”

“As a media company with a long history of championing equality for all, Torstar is uniquely positioned to learn from our past, to give voice to the present through our news coverage and providing opportunities in our pages and on our websites for frank, honest and open conversations about race and diversity and to help provide guidance and examples for future generations,” he said.

While I have been discouraged at knowing how long Canadian newsrooms have been talking about this issue, with so little real and necessary change happening. I am heartened by these statements of actions and our CEO’s words seeking accountability: “We will be – and we should be – held accountable for ensuring that we act. If we fail, please let us know.”

Indeed, equality and diversity are not simply “nice to have,” an exhaustive 2019 report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism on “the struggle for talent and diversity in modern newsrooms” tells us.

“More diversity and a better representation of the underlying population is not only a question of justness and fairness, it’s also a question of power, as the media still largely decide who gets to be heard in society and thus who gets to shape political and social issues,” that report states.

Within the Star, I believe there is strong understanding that this week’s commitment to action is just the beginning as we all listen to learn and understand our own roles in the perpetuation of newsroom inequity. I see need for ongoing discussion and debate among journalists, their employers and unions, people of colour from the wider community, journalism scholars and industry associations about newsrooms structures, and journalism’s practices, standards and values. Most important, as is happening throughout North America now, this time demands a rethinking about how journalism and its mission in a democracy that stands for universal human rights is defined — and more important, who defines it.

Whether we regard this moment as a reckoning or a revolution, the time for that is now.

Source: OpinionTime to act on newsroom inequality‘It is well past time for a “reckoning” within journalism, a time to listen, to learn and to examine journalism’s role in the damaging prevalence of systemic racism.’

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