How Syrian refugees arriving in Canada became ‘extras’ in their own stories

2016/02/23 2 Comments

Academics! Miss the point that maintaining public support for refugees is equally important, and making Canadians feel good about themselves is part of that.

Media coverage that I follow has included a fair amount of stories about the refugees themselves and the challenges they face.

And Al-Solaylee, the academic quoted, does not base his critique on a rigorous, quantitative analysis of media coverage:

When he saw images of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne greeting some of the first Syrian refugees to arrive in Canada, Kamal Al-Solaylee was overcome with pride. After all, 20 years ago, he was the one arriving in Canada.

“My initial feelings were of euphoria and happiness. This is a great country, this is a very welcoming country,” says Al-Solaylee, a journalism professor at Ryerson University and the author of the 2015 Canada Reads finalist Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes.

But as he saw more and more news stories about sponsors hugging refugees in airports and Canadians knitting toques to keep refugees warm during their first Canadian winter, he began to feel uncomfortable.

“The story is changing. It’s no longer about them, it’s about us as Canadians,” Al-Solaylee says. “The gaze turned inward instead of outward.”

He points to CBC’s “Open Arms” project, which highlights the “outpouring of Canadian generosity and support” towards refugees, as an example of how the conversation has shifted to place the focus on Canadians.

Al-Solaylee says he understands why stories about acts of kindness and refugees’ first visits to Tim Horton’s resonate with journalists and their audiences. However, he worries feel-good stories are “suck[ing] the oxygen” out of important stories about what life in Canada is really like for immigrants and refugees after the welcome is over.

“The truth is a lot of these immigrants will struggle, initially and probably for a long time. They will not be able to find jobs that call on their qualifications or experience. They will end up doing the kind of work that Canadians no longer want to do,” he says.

Source: How Syrian refugees arriving in Canada became ‘extras’ in their own stories – Home | The 180 with Jim Brown | CBC Radio

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

The problem with newspapers today: the Marty Baron perspective

2016/02/08 Leave a comment

For those concerned about the future of media and journalism, and who liked the film Spotlight, good piece by Neil Macdonald on the assessment by Marty Baron, the former editor of the Boston Globe featured in the film:

Baron, now executive editor of the Washington Post, acknowledged the economic forces ripping the business to shreds.

Like most media managers, he has an app that shows how many readers are on any story on the paper’s website at any moment, and how long they keep reading. Those metrics are now indices of survival.

But, said Baron, news institutions must place principle ahead of metrics, or our core withers, and we become clickbait hustlers for corporate paymasters who would rather see stories about a Kardashian. (He didn’t quite put it that way, but you get the idea.)

Over dinner, I asked him how media managers in such a shaky financial environment can possibly be expected to operate without fear or favour.

Baron, who actually is as serious in person as the character played by Schreiber, put down his fork and recited a segment from a speech he regularly gives.

It is so on target that I’m going to quote its most salient passage:

“The greatest danger to a vigorous press today,” he begins, “comes from ourselves.

“The press is routinely belittled, badgered, harassed, disparaged, demonized, and subjected to acts of intimidation from all corners — including boycotts, threats of cancellations (or defunding, in the case of public broadcasting) …

“Our independence — simply posing legitimate questions — is seen as an obstacle to what our critics consider a righteous moral, ideological, political, or business agenda.

“In this environment, too many news organizations are holding back, out of fear — fear that we will be saddled with an uncomfortable political label, fear that we will be accused of bias, fear that we will be portrayed as negative, fear that we will lose customers, fear that advertisers will run from us, fear that we will be assailed as anti-this or anti-that, fear that we will offend someone, anyone.

“Fear, in short, that our weakened financial condition will be made weaker because we did something strong and right, because we simply told the truth and told it straight.”

Amen, Brother Baron.

Any reporter who has, for example, ever been based in the Middle East, or has tried to bring some sensible context to a domestic audience whipped into fear about terror, terror, terror, has often seen the mettle of his or her managers tested to the limit.

When Baron’s Washington Post, along with The Guardian, revealed U.S. government lying and law-breaking, courtesy of whistleblower Edward Snowden, public outrage was mostly directed against the newspapers and Snowden himself.

Baron made one other key point. He’s not the first one to make it, but it’s a gleam of optimistic logic in these tumultuous times: Anybody can Google anything, he said. Everyone does.

But the original information, before it is aggregated and re-aggregated a thousand times, has to come from someone with the experience, brains and training to uncover it in the first place.

That is usually the work of credentialed journalism. It’s what Baron did in Boston. The alternative is usually just spin and corporatist fantasy, and let us all hope the latter does not overwhelm the former.

Although, I have my doubts.

Source: The problem with newspapers today: the Marty Baron perspective – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Other Tagged with , ,

Canada’s refugee program draws praise around the world

2015/12/15 Leave a comment

Not surprising that the contrast in language and action noted.

Reinforces the branding strategy of “Canada’s back”:

Only a small fraction of Canada’s expected Syrian refugees arrived last week, but the fanfare around their welcome prompted a slew of headlines – and policy comparisons – around the world.

To New York Times editors, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “spoke unmistakably to a broader audience” when he personally greeted refugees stepping off Canada’s first government-organized flight, which landed in Toronto late Thursday night.

“Canada’s generosity – and Mr. Trudeau’s personal warmth and leadership – can serve as a beacon for others,” said a Saturday editorial in the newspaper.

“In the meantime, it puts to shame the callous and irresponsible behaviour of the American governors and presidential candidates who have argued that the United States, for the sake of its security, must shut its doors to all Syrian refugees.”

The Thursday plane load to Pearson International Airport, along with a second flight that arrived in Montreal on Saturday, brought just 324 of the 25,000 refugees the Trudeau government has promised to help resettle, including 10,000 by the new year.

But video of their arrival drew hundreds of thousands of views in Canada and elsewhere. The flights coincided with controversy in the United States after Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump announced a proposal to ban entry of all Muslims to the country.

With many state governors opposing refugee resettlement, several American news organizations noted the widespread support among Canadian leaders for the federal plan.

The Los Angeles Times spoke to Perrin Beatty, the chief executive of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and a former Tory defence minister, who is working with Canadian Labour Congress president Hassan Yussuff to support the government’s effort.

Mr. Beatty was quoted as saying that Mr. Trump’s “rancid” comments would “drive Canadians in the other direction,” increasing their support for the refugees.

Britain’s Daily Mail wrote that all of Canada’s premiers support the refugee plan, and that members of the opposition, including Conservatives, attended the airport welcome, along with the ministers of Immigration, Health and Defence.

The British government has said it plans to resettle as many as 20,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2020, and the U.S. government plans to take in at least 10,000 next year.

More coverage followed at Newsweek, the BBC, NBC, Paris Match, CNN, and the Guardian and Independent newspapers in Britain. The American magazine GQ called Mr. Trudeau a “sparklepile of progressive sunshine” at a time when U.S. politics is “a clown show of ventriloquized garbage bags.”

However, The Washington Post noted that recent polls show a similar level of public support in Canada and the United States for welcoming refugees, despite a drastically different tone of public debate south of the border.

A Forum Research poll conducted this month found that 48 per cent of Canadians approve of Mr. Trudeau’s refugee plan and 44 per cent are opposed. The Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute found late last week that 53 per cent of Americans support refugee resettlement, while 41 per cent are opposed, the Post wrote.

News organizations in other countries that have opened their borders to a flood of refugees, particularly in the Middle East, also published articles exploring the significance of Canada’s fledgling program.

“Canada’s programs are an expression of support to Syrian refugees, but importantly for us they are a demonstration, too, of solidarity to countries in the region hosting more than four million Syrian refugees,” Adrian Edwards, a United Nations spokesman, said in a Reuters article published in the Arab News, an English outlet in Saudi Arabia.

Source: Canada’s refugee program draws praise around the world – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Refugees Tagged with ,

Ethnic and Multicultural Media Training Offered

2015/04/28 Leave a comment

One of the more interesting initiatives from New Canadian Media. Letter from publisher George Abraham to current and developing journalists:

Dear fellow journalist,

Greetings from Ottawa!

It is an honour for me to roll out Canada’s first nation-wide training program aimed specifically at journalists who work with “ethnic” or “multicultural” media organizations.

This accompanying questionnaire will help us determine locations and the specific workshops we will offer. All the information you provide is confidential and will only be used for research and training purposes.

These in-person training sessions build on our successful mentoring program, launched in February, as part of seeking out “new voices”.

Here is some more information that may be helpful:

This training program will be offered free-of-cost and is funded through a federal government grant

NCM will offer up to three individual workshops (two hours each) in each location. Topics for the workshops will be chosen based on responses to the questionnaire

Workshops will most likely be hosted at the nearest journalism school, subject to space availability

A light lunch and refreshments will be provided to all participants

I’d be more than happy to respond to any questions you may have relating to your participation. And, please do forward the questionnaire to your friends as well.

Ethnic and Multicultural Media Training  – New Canadian Media.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Stop Blaming the Media! – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Fair points on the media and bias but there are any number of studies on coverage and portrayal of groups, not only Muslim, that show a particular slant:

However, some of my colleagues, among them Muslims, and the nattering voices of social media jumped immediately to the conclusion that the media were biased in not instantaneously identifying this as a hate crime and in being slow-footed with their reporting. If we believe it is the job of the media to draw conclusions about racism, we are wrong. The reporter’s job is to tell the story. Absent conclusive evidence, reporters did not say that the alleged killer was Islamophobic.

But I have to point out that deliberative and well considered reporting works both ways. If we media were permitted to conclude the UNC killer was a Muslim hater, then the Parliament Hill shooter, who killed Cpl Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa, should have been immediately identified by the media as an “Islamic terrorist.” They didn’t do that. The man may have claimed he was inspired by his (faulty) understanding of Islam, but the Canadian reporting more readily identified him as a deranged – even psychotic – “lone wolf,” more likely influenced by drugs. The coverage got it right.

There’s also the matter of simple reasoning that seems to be lacking these days. If all terrorists are, say, men of the Purple religion – and the media simply report that fact – it doesn’t mean they hold a bias.  Logic 101: just because all the terrorists are Purple men, doesn’t mean all Purple believers are terrorists. It doesn’t mean all men are terrorists, either. It’s a simple matter of reason.

But Landau’s recommendation makes sense:

In the media welter, there are some proactive steps you can take to heighten your community’s media profile. Tell your own stories by starting your own website. Contact the mainstream media when you have a story you think others might want to hear (I know New Canadian Media is always listening). Encourage your children to go into journalism. Teach yourself and others media literacy so that you can separate fact from opinion. Wherever possible, make sure that whoever lays claim to speaking for your community is articulate and credible.

Stop Blaming the Media! – New Canadian Media – NCM.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Diversity is right course: Public Editor | Toronto Star

2014/07/10 Leave a comment

The Star’s Public Editor, Kathy English, on diversity:

That means every Star journalist must filter the many choices made every day in creating and presenting stories, opinions, photos and videos through a key question — Does this reflect Toronto in all its diversity?

This question needs to be top of mind for reporters, columnists, photographers and their editors when stories are pitched, sources are selected, images are captured. Our journalists need to seek out visible minority sources for comment on all the broad issues that affect our entire community — not just the issues that affect their specific communities. We should not accept easy stereotypes and tokenism. And just as importantly, we must understand how a disproportionate level of negative coverage of visible minorities can skew perceptions of reality.

Of course, all of this makes good business sense at a time when the economics of news publishing are changing drastically. Studies link a decline in reader engagement with the news to the reality that many people do not see themselves reflected in coverage. Certainly to grow readership and deepen reader engagement across all the new platforms through which the Star serves readers now and into the future we need to reach and reflect a diverse audience.

But for me, the heart of this issue is the overall accuracy and fairness of the Star’s coverage of its community. When we do not fully and truly reflect the diversity of Toronto we give readers an incomplete and inaccurate picture of their community.

Indeed, reflecting Toronto in all its rich diversity is the right thing to do.

Diversity is right course: Public Editor | Toronto Star.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Indo-Canadian Media: Reporter’s Firing Stirs Backlash in B.C.

2014/04/28 Leave a comment

Good in-depth article on some of the challenges facing the Indo-Canadian media, and the role that ethnic media can play – or not – in integration:

The current debate begs this question: If broadcasters wish to air programs that discuss South Asian issues from a South Asian perspective, does that breed ethno-cultural ghettos here?

According to Singh, the conventional media has perpetuated this notion. “If the ethnic media is supposed to play the role of integrating new Canadians into the mainstream, they too have the same responsibility. Diversity of voices is completely missing from mainstream media. All they do is highlight the negative stories emerging from the South Asian community and no effort is made to talk of the positives,” said Singh.

Diversity of voices is completely missing from mainstream media.

Many radio listeners agree. “Debates on topics of religion, Indian politics and other social issues are shallow with the prejudice of the hosts clearly reflected in program content. It is somewhat irritating when you listen in to an open line talk show. There are a handful of people, mostly men, who are on all radio stations giving their opinion without facts on every possible topic,” said a Surrey-based doctor who didn’t want to be named.

According to experts and some broadcast managers, this largely happens because there aren’t many professionally trained journalists in the South Asian media. “I can count on my fingertips how many trained and experienced journalists or radio hosts our community has, and since there aren’t too many available to hire, we have to depend on in-house training, but it’s not the same,” said Dutt.

Reporter’s Firing Stirs Backlash in B.C. – New Canadian Media – NCM.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Rogers’ cuts to OMNI chip away at Canada’s cultural mosaic | Toronto Star

2014/03/28 Leave a comment

While penned from a union perspective, the questions it raises about local ethnic programming are valid. Better to have more local programming than communities relaying on satellite programming from abroad, with no Canadian context or content:

If Rogers continue to produce ethnic and multilingual programming, without any changes to its license, it would cost OMNI $2 million annually – a relatively small price to pay so that small-market and third-language communities are well-served. Ethnic broadcasting is about serving the public interest – not solely about padding a corporation’s profits.

Rogers’ cuts to OMNI chip away at Canada’s cultural mosaic | Toronto Star.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Margaret MacMillan: How today is like the period before the First World War

2014/03/24 Leave a comment

Good interview with Margaret MacMillan with some interesting reflections:

Do you not see any developments in modern diplomacy that keep countries away from the precipice?

We have better international institutions and more of them. And we do have the capacity now to talk quickly to each other. But what we don’t have are the experienced diplomats who used to really know a country. There’s been a tendency in most countries to downplay the role of the diplomatic corps and to say, ‘do we really need diplomats?’ You’ve got it in the Harper government: ‘Do we really need all these people? They just hang out and go to cocktail parties.’

By the same token, diplomats did not prevent the First World War.

No, they didn’t. But they did actually deal with quite a few crises before World War One. You could argue that they had shown their value. I think good diplomatic services are very very useful. It’s also worrying to me what’s happening to newspapers. The media generally are closing down their overseas bureaux because they’re too expensive. What that means is we’re getting huge amounts of information but we’re not really getting the analysis and expertise that we all need.

We mistake being able to get lots of information from everywhere very quickly with actually getting knowledge.

Margaret MacMillan: How today is like the period before the First World War – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Government, Public Policy Tagged with , ,

Role of Media in Integrating Immigrants: Metropolis Panel Discussion

2014/03/21 Leave a comment

For those interested in the role of ethnic and mainstream media in integration, please find below a transcript of the Metropolis discussion last week, organized by New Canadian Media and involving yours truly. Fairly long but it was a good and interesting discussion.

Thanks to CIC for deeming it important enough to merit transcription (tax dollars at work!).

Role of Media in Integrating Immigrants: Metropolis Panel Discussion

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →