Arielle Piat-Sauve – Ryerson Review of Journalism :: The Ryerson School of Journalism http://rrj.ca Canada's Watchdog on the watchdogs Sat, 30 Apr 2016 14:26:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Tongue-Tied http://rrj.ca/tongue-tied/ http://rrj.ca/tongue-tied/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2015 13:49:07 +0000 http://rrj.ca/?p=6189 Ryerson Review of Journalism graphic My ears were buzzing from the latest news: two female protesters had interrupted the annual anti-abortion March for Life on Parliament Hill—topless. The senior producer at CBC News Network’s Power & Politics with Evan Solomon wanted me to get both women, who were part of the feminist group FEMEN, in the studio as soon as possible. [...]]]> Ryerson Review of Journalism graphic

My ears were buzzing from the latest news: two female protesters had interrupted the annual anti-abortion March for Life on Parliament Hill—topless. The senior producer at CBC News Network’s Power & Politics with Evan Solomon wanted me to get both women, who were part of the feminist group FEMEN, in the studio as soon as possible. I punched in the phone number and felt a brief jolt of surprise when the woman at the other end of the line answered, “Allo?”

Reflexively, I answered in French—only later realizing the words spiraling out of my mouth weren’t English. I didn’t switch back: my source seemed more comfortable in her first language. Thirty minutes later, she and her co-protester, also a francophone, arrived at CBC.

Though the interview would be conducted in English, I continued to make small talk in French as I escorted the two women to the makeup studio. Our conversation was friendly and engaging. Later, the interview with the host went smoothly: the women were articulate and brought a fresh point of view to the debate. I walked back to my desk smiling; I must have been doing something right.

I grew up in a bilingual family in Montreal and we discussed the news in both of Canada’s official languages. In the morning, my mother tuned in to World Report on CBC Radio until my father waltzed in a few minutes later and switched to Radio-Canada’s French morning show. I went to school in French, but gossiped with my friends in English. Being fluently bilingual meant I didn’t identify as an anglophone or francophone.

It was only after I moved to Toronto at 22 that I realized how my bilingualism would shape my journalism career. Unlike many Montrealers from previous generations, I wasn’t fleeing Quebec because I didn’t speak French and couldn’t get a job; moving was my choice. As Canada’s largest city and media hub, Toronto was my one-way ticket to pursuing the career I had dreamed of—being a television reporter. If that meant choosing to work in English, then I was fine with that. But I quickly realized that my ability to speak French and my knowledge of Quebec was what made me different. It became something I wanted to hold on to, not discard.

“I used to joke that it’s taken me decades to come to the conclusion that I am both and neither,” says Bernard St-Laurent about his language status. As a veteran journalist at CBC Montreal, he co-created the national CBC Radio program C’est la Vie to introduce English Canada to stories about life in Quebec. The show allows guests to speak in their language of preference as much as possible. St-Laurent believes journalists who are multilingual have a better ability to understand and communicate with different communities.

For the longest time, I felt like I had to choose one language and one culture in order to find my true self. Moving to Toronto made me feel like a tourist in my own country—I thanked the streetcar driver in French for months. There were many differences between my home province and my new home, including the fact that hardly anyone spoke French.

I wanted Ontarians to know more about their neighbours to the east and for my reporting to bridge the gap between Quebec and English-speaking Canada. In searching for my identity as a journalist, I gravitated toward stories my colleagues weren’t familiar with and, for other assignments, I sought Quebec voices. While reporting on the federal government’s new prostitution laws, for example, I included sex workers and activist organizations from Montreal. Almost without realizing it, I was planting my journalistic feet in both worlds—something I’d long avoided.

Toronto Star political columnist Chantal Hébert believes this ability to move fluidly between French and English cultures can be a great strength for journalists. As a Franco-Ontarian who spoke little English growing up, she describes her bilingual career as a series of accidents, switching back and forth from reporting in English to French. Working in both languages enables her to explain complex political issues to both audiences. Because she understands the two cultures, she doesn’t speak from a place of ignorance nor does she mirror the audience’s prejudices.

Hébert sees a need for more bilingual journalists in Canada to fill that gap between English and French, especially when it comes to political reporting. “I feel like there is more of an appetite for journalism that isn’t us versus them in the coverage of national politics,” she says.

Like so many of my bilingual peers, I still can’t accurately explain what language I think in and translating can be frustrating at times. But I no longer feel I have to choose between languages; I don’t want to choose. Bilingualism is a wonderful opportunity to discover and share more stories. And sharing stories that matter to all Canadians, regardless of language, is why I’m a journalist.

]]>
http://rrj.ca/tongue-tied/feed/ 1
Breaking Bad http://rrj.ca/breaking-bad/ http://rrj.ca/breaking-bad/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2015 13:00:52 +0000 http://rrj.ca/?p=6000 Breaking Bad Six journalists. Five newsrooms. One massive Montreal corruption scandal]]> Breaking Bad

November 25, 2008. Light rain drizzled over the city as Marie-Maude Denis walked along Amherst Street from CBC/Radio-Canada’s offices in southeast Montreal. She had a 10 a.m. meeting with a source at Pouding Café, a neighbourhood coffee shop. Her boss, Pierre Tourangeau, had suggested she talk to this contact, someone he relied on during the Gomery Commission’s investigation into the federal sponsorship scandal in 2005.

Denis was an ambitious television crime reporter, a go-getter with a strong work ethic that impressed her superiors at Radio-Canada. A few days before this meeting, the then-27-year-old had received a brown envelope from a confidential law enforcement source. The tip mapped out long-standing collusion linking construction entrepreneurs and union bosses to high-profile municipal and provincial politicians throughout Quebec, prompting her to meet with this new source at the café. The evidence focused primarily on Laval, a city north of Montreal.

At the time, Denis knew little about the Quebec construction industry, or the cast of characters her source was rambling on about at the coffee shop. But she learned a lot as he shared his intimate knowledge of the systemic corruption that had gripped much of Quebec for the previous decade. The people involved included Tony Accurso, one of the city’s most prominent construction entrepreneurs.

Back at her newsroom cubicle, Denis asked her colleague, Christian Latreille, for advice on how to handle the information. Latreille recommended she share it with Radio-Canada’s newly revamped investigative unit. He urged Denis to contact Monique Dumont, a senior researcher known for her interest in the Laval corruption dossier. Denis walked down to Radio-Canada’s current affairs department on the building’s ground level. She knocked on Dumont’s door and introduced herself. They walked over to a glass-enclosed conference room, where Denis watched as Dumont’s eyes widened; then she began running around the office, screaming, “I’ve got my smoking gun! I’ve got my smoking gun!”

 ***

Before Charbonneau

 

Here’s how Montreal investigative journalists broke the stories that led to the Charbonneau Commission:

December 13, 2007: Le Devoir’s Kathleen Lévesque reports on conflicts of interest in Montreal’s water meter contract.

November 29, 2008: La Presse reporter André Noël’s story on the Faubourg Contrecoeur deal reveals illegal privatization of city land.

March 5, 2009: Radio-Canada’s Enquête airs an episode on the FTQ construction union and the construction industry.

March 13, 2009: La Presse columnist Yves Boisvert reveals that executive committee president Frank Zampino vacationed on a boat owned by prominent construction entrepreneur Tony Accurso.

April 14, 2009: Lévesque uncovers private sector control of the city’s public works contracts.

August 20, 2009: The Gazette’s Linda Gyulai’s exposes the city’s corrupt water meter contract.

October 12, 2009: RueFrontenac.com’s Fabrice De Pierrebourg reveals ties between municipal politician Benoît Labonté and Accurso.

October 15, 2009: Enquête airs “The Fabulous Fourteen,” its second investigation into corruption in the construction industry.

October 17, 2009: Labonté does a sit-down interview with Radio-Canada’s Marie-Maude Denis after resigning from his position at Vision Montreal.

February 19, 2011: Premier Jean Charest creates anti-corruption unit. Dozens of arrests follow in the next two years.

October 19, 2011: Charest announces the Charbonneau Commission. It runs from May 2012 to November 2014.

Since Denis took that smoking gun to her colleagues at Enquête in 2008, Montreal reporters have successfully exposed deep-rooted corruption, in what has been hailed as a golden moment for Canadian journalism. By 2009, the investigations began to snowball and over the many years it took to reveal the whole stunning story, several Montreal journalists became involved—including Denis and Alain Gravel at Radio-Canada, André Noël and André Cédilot at La Presse, Kathleen Lévesque at Le Devoir, Linda Gyulai at The Gazette and Fabrice De Pierrebourg at RueFrontenac.com, the news site launched by locked-out Le Journal de Montréal employees in 2009. They were competitive, but they built on each other’s stories. Although many received defamation suits from people they were investigating, they persevered.

“We’ve been part of the solution regarding the fight against corruption and crime,” says Brian Myles, a reporter at Le Devoir and former vice-president of the Quebec Federation of Professional Journalists. He and his colleagues have every right to be proud: their exemplary, old-fashioned reporting and the astonishing results—cemented by the creation of the Charbonneau Commission in 2012—reaffirmed that investigative journalism can lead to change. “The real work, and the part that people don’t realize,” says Les Perreaux, a Quebec correspondent for The Globe and Mail, “is the story that comes the day after the big scoop.”

The journalists had their work cut out for them. Corruption is not new to Quebec politics and public works contracts. Since 1925, there have been eight inquiries, including the 1973 commission on organized crime and the 1974 Cliche Commission that revealed intimidation practices within construction unions.

In 1977, then-Premier René Lévesque enacted a new law prohibiting companies and unions from donating to political parties and limiting individual donations. Thirty years later, though, construction and engineering firms had found ways around the rules. A well-oiled underground system with arm’s-length connections to the Mafia was involved in rigging contracts for public works and providing illegal political financing.

By 2008, the public realized something was not right. The city’s infrastructure was in a dire state, while Quebec remained the highest-taxed province in the country, with Montrealers paying 30 percent more for their public works contracts than anywhere else in Canada. It soon became clear that many of those in power had been abusing the system for years. In their arrogance and complacency, they weren’t expecting a group of astute journalists and an informed public to put them to shame.

At Radio-Canada’s Enquête, Gravel, a middle-aged television journalist with stern features, teamed up with Denis. The two became local celebrities as their show generated unprecedented audience interest. From 2009 to 2011, they produced bombshell investigations into corruption, primarily focusing on the construction industry’s ties to organized crime. Their work paved the way for other journalists to contribute to the sensational story. The picture was coming into focus and the public was outraged, as long-standing suspicions were confirmed by the meticulous reporting.

At La Presse, Noël, a seasoned investigative reporter, revealed the details of the Faubourg Contrecoeur real estate deal between the City of Montreal and Frank Catania Construction & Associates. The housing and development department allegedly sold the land to construction entrepreneur Paolo Catania for well below the estimated $31-million market value. The secret deal had been orchestrated before the call for tendering on the project. Those accused of being involved included Frank Zampino, then-chair of the city’s executive committee; Bernard Trépanier, a Union Montreal party fundraiser; Martial Fillion, the director of housing and development; and Catania.

In 2012, Noël left La Presse to work for the Charbonneau Commission. (He declined to be interviewed for this article because it would be a conflict of interest.) For much of his career, he and Cédilot were the only investigative reporters at La Presse. Small-statured with a trim moustache, Cédilot mastered the organized crime beat. The two collaborated on the tell-all book Mafia Inc., first published in 2010, which explored the intricacies of Montreal’s Sicilian mob.

Meanwhile, at the independent daily Le Devoir, Lévesque, a reporter with piercing eyes and youthful energy, investigated engineering firms. She detailed their close ties to illegal political fundraising operations and alleged that bids for city contracts were rigged. Her diligent reporting over the years helped force the province’s auditor general to become involved, and he eventually proposed the creation of the public inquiry.

At The Gazette, Montreal’s only English-language daily, civic affairs reporter Linda Gyulai also contributed to the unfolding story. She’s the kind of journalist people don’t see coming even though she’s always three steps ahead of them, says her colleague Monique Muise, who covered the Charbonneau Commission for The Gazette. With two decades of municipal reporting experience, Gyulai’s analytical skills and expert knowledge of city hall helped her reveal a correlation between city contract allocations and political party donations.

Big news organizations weren’t the only ones working the story. The now-defunct website RueFrontenac.com also covered it. Rugged-looking French-born Fabrice De Pierrebourg broke a shocking story linking the construction industry to municipal party donations in the lead-up to the Montreal municipal elections in 2009.

Together, the reporting fuelled public discontent, leaving politicians no choice but to create the Charbonneau Commission to examine Quebec’s construction industry and its connections to organized crime. As Gravel says, “Sometimes you need a perfect storm in order for everything to explode.”

 ***

The timing was right for a big story at Radio-Canada. When Alain Saulnier became senior director of information in 2006, he had two goals: increase international coverage and produce more investigative reports. He helped kick-start the return of hard-hitting journalism in Quebec. Meanwhile, the network’s public affairs program Enjeux was going through an existential crisis. That same year, Jean Pelletier, Radio-Canada’s director of television information, came to Saulnier with an idea.

“Are you crazy!? You want us to produce a weekly investigative show?” exclaimed Gravel, then-host of Enjeux. “We are never going to be able to pull that off.” Although he had never been particularly fond of Enjeux’s soft human-interest stories, he remained uncertain about the feasibility of the idea and worried that sources would refuse to speak to them after they heard the premise of the new program.

Saulnier was immediately on board with the idea. His vision was to dismantle the traditional boundaries between the newsroom and current affairs. He wanted the six o’clock news to lead with breaking stories, while the weekly show Enquête would follow up with in-depth coverage. “I felt like we needed to prove that we were indispensible, and that the public could count on us for our professionalism and our thorough work ethic,” says Saulnier, now a journalism professor at the University of Montreal. “I knew it was a risk worth taking.”

Initially, Enquête struggled to produce investigations every week, but everything changed in late 2008. Soon after Denis’s scoop, Radio-Canada executives allocated time and resources that enabled the journalists to see their investigation to fruition. Denis created a makeshift desk in Gravel’s office, where she began pinning central figures and events onto a bulletin board. The duo chipped away at a list of possible sources, conducting numerous off-camera interviews. “This was a Cinderella story for me,” recalls Denis.

In conversations with sources, one name kept surfacing: Ken Pereira, director of the industrial mechanics branch of the Quebec Federation of Labour’s (FTQ) construction wing, the province’s largest union. Pereira noticed irregularities with executive director Jocelyn Dupuis’s expenses. It appeared that he and other union executives were indulging in first-class dinners at restaurants, receiving tickets to hockey games and more. Pereira had also discovered close ties between the FTQ and the Mafia.

In January 2009, Pereira arrived at Radio-Canada looking for Gravel. The whistleblower presented the Enquête team with a duffel bag full of Dupuis’s receipts. He produced hard evidence about the Mafia’s involvement with Quebec construction union officials and how they tampered with the Fonds de Solidarité, a multi-billion dollar pension fund in which half a million Quebeckers keep their life savings. “This is when I realized we had something solid here,” recalls Gravel. “This wasn’t bullshit.”

Enquête’s lawyers suggested the show package the expense scandal story and the report on the ties to the mob. On March 5, 2009, it aired its first episode on corruption. “What happened after that was very much like Watergate,” says Gravel. “We all understood that we would only be able to bring the big picture to light through smaller stories, piece by piece.” La Presse picked up on it the next day but added new details, proving that it had been working on the story as well. “As journalists, we don’t necessarily like being quoted or scooped by others,” says Gravel, “but in this case, it was a good thing.”

***

In the days following that first Enquête episode, Denis and Gravel searched for a new piece of the puzzle. It appeared that several high-profile public servants had taken all-expenses-paid holidays on The Touch, a yacht owned by construction magnate Tony Accurso. Through privileged information, they knew that Michel Arsenault, who was FTQ president and Dupuis’s boss, had vacationed on the boat. As a representative of the labour union, Arsenault shouldn’t have accepted this kind of gift.

“My boss told me we were going to do something we never do,” remembers Gravel. “We were going to sacrifice our scoop.” Pelletier instructed his team to scrum Arsenault, who happened to be in Quebec City at the time, and ask him straight out about the boat. To everyone’s surprise Arsenault confirmed everything. That evening, Céline Galipeau, host of Le Téléjournal, led the newscast with this latest scandal.

At the same time, Noël was investigating Accurso and his alleged ties to Montreal’s former executive-committee president Frank Zampino—the same Zampino involved in the Faubourg Contrecoeur scandal. He’d retired from municipal politics in July 2008 and was now working for the engineering firm Dessau-Soprin, which was part of the consortium that received Montreal’s largest contract for water meters. On March 13, 2009, La Presse’s headline shook things up yet again. La Presse’s judicial affairs columnist Yves Boisvert wrote “Copinage et Pantouflage” (“Cronyism and Revolving Doors”), exposing the friendships between civil servants and members of private enterprises. Boisvert summarized all of the suspicious behaviour that had emerged through other reporting. Buried at the end of the column, he made reference to Zampino vacationing on The Touch while the city was awarding the water meter contract—a contract Accurso’s construction firm won. “I felt like I needed to support the movement and follow up on my colleagues’ investigations,” explains Boisvert. “A column can accelerate a news story.”

Journalists had successfully uncovered ties between construction unions and the mob, as well as connections between municipal politicians and the construction industry. From then on, they continued to reveal information piece by piece. “In the industry,” laughs Gravel, “this is what we call a one-two-three punch.”

In the months that followed, this combination of competition and cooperation continued among the journalists. According to Gravel, Noël leaked information to him after La Presse hesitated to publish one of his stories, then went to his bosses to say that Gravel had scooped them—leverage to convince them to publish. When asked about it, Noël said, “I can’t confirm this.”

Meanwhile, at Radio-Canada, the journalists became a close-knit group as they enjoyed success after success. “I think that was our real strength at Enquête,” says Latreille, who worked with Denis and Gravel. “We lunched together, we had fun together—just like a hockey team.”

 ***

While the Montreal story was unfolding on TV and in the press, the journalists knew the problem was much larger in scope. The provincial transportation ministry was responsible for awarding public works contracts to engineering firms, which in turn put out a call for proposals to construction companies. Then the bidding would begin. At the time, the government was increasingly using private engineering firms instead of the Ministry of Transportation. This was also occurring at the municipal level. It appeared that engineering firms were communicating with the construction firms that were receiving the contract bids. This type of collusion is illegal, and Lévesque uncovered it early on. She also paid close attention to a similar trend: the engineering firms being invited to municipal political financing events were the same firms receiving city contracts. Her dedication and attention to detail resulted in several stories that revealed the larger corruption picture in Quebec.

But before that came part one of the water meter scandal. In 2007, Lévesque received a phone call from a source who had helped her in 1996, when she first wrote about water meter scandals. She remembers the conversation being brief, and her source telling her to look into the water meter contract—the city’s largest. Lévesque struggled to find out what had actually happened, but she was eventually able to put the pieces together. On December 13, 2007, under the headline “Conflict of Interests in Connection with a Contract for $355 million,” Lévesque revealed that BPR, the engineering firm the city had hired, was allegedly collaborating with engineering firm Dessau on several other projects. It was no coincidence that Dessau undertook the water meter contract. “Two years later, the scandal took on a new dimension and greater importance,” says Lévesque. “This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

 ***

By 2009, as The Gazette’s civic affairs reporter, Gyulai was investigating another angle to the water meter story. Since her time as a freelancer at the Montreal Mirror, a now-defunct weekly, she’d believed in old-school sleuthing in service of the public interest. “What I love about municipal reporting is that you ride this righteous horse waving your arm in the air.”

While Denis and Gravel reported on the construction industry and Lévesque investigated irregularities within engineering firms, Gyulai sifted through municipal archives. A source hinted that the eventual owners of the water meter system would be a private consortium called GÉNIeau, co-owned by Dessau and one of Accurso’s construction firms, Simard-Beaudry.

Gyulai discovered that the contract usually attached to the service file was missing. This piqued her interest. After all, the $355-million contract was the largest awarded in Montreal’s history. She was dumbfounded that city councillors didn’t have a copy of the contract to review before approving it. Through an access to information request, Gyulai received the documents from a 2007 council meeting. She discovered that the water meter contract passed in a group with other resolutions in 53 seconds without objections or debate.

“For people like Linda, it was really a lasting commitment that they were going to devote themselves, their talent and their energies, to these stories,” says Muise. The Gazette didn’t have the resources other news organizations had for these investigations, which is why it decided to focus its coverage on city hall.

Gyulai looked for patterns within the paperwork and then cross-referenced her data. After she received the tip on the water management contract, the newspaper granted her the summer of 2009 to advance her research. “You are on this track and you just keep following it. It’s about seeing a pattern and following it down whatever path,” she says. “You aren’t really driving the car. It’s kind of driving you.” In August of that year, Gyulai wrote a story with the headline, “City Deal Was Changed at the 11th Hour.”

Her extensive investigation revealed that changes to the contract removed the financial risk to the consortium. Not only would the city not own the water meters, but it would likely have to replace them 15 years down the line. Montreal Auditor General Jacques Bergeron then investigated the matter. “Everything he wrote and all of these findings supported everything I wrote that summer,” says Gyulai. On Bergeron’s recommendation, former mayor Gérald Tremblay announced the cancellation of the contract in September. “She is the reason we didn’t have a bogus $355-million water meter contract,” says Martin Patriquin, Quebec bureau chief for Maclean’s. Gyulai “saved us $355 million, and that alone is astonishing.”

As the only investigative reporter at Le Devoir, Lévesque couldn’t cover everything. After her research into the water meter scandal in 2007, she focused on the engineering firms. In 2009, she filed an access to information request with the City of Montreal after receiving a tip from an anonymous source. She filed another with the provincial ministry of transportation on the same issue of outsourcing contracts. What she discovered was just as astonishing as what she’d previously uncovered. Almost all of the city and province’s construction contracts were being outsourced to a small number of private firms. Whether in the public interest or not, it was certainly benefitting the small coterie of politicians, bureaucrats and construction executives who lined each other’s pockets with money they grabbed from the public purse. With every new revelation from the journalists, public outrage grew. Something had to be done.

Quebec’s Auditor General Renaud Lachance came to the same conclusion as Lévesque. He recommended the creation of an anti-corruption unit (UPAC) headed by Jacques Duchesneau, a former Montreal police chief. In September 2011, Duchesneau leaked his own report to the Enquête team, later recommending to a parliamentary commission that, in light of his findings, the government launch a public inquiry. He was fired a month later for the leak. In 2013, UPAC raids led to the arrests of Zampino, Catania, former Laval mayor Gilles Vaillancourt, interim Montreal mayor Michael Applebaum and many others. Several engineering firms, including Dessau, were also raided.

Lévesque says the engineering firmsare at the centre of it all. They are the professionals making the plans and the decisions at the start of any contract.” She investigated donations to political parties and the bid-rigging system within a core group of nine engineering firms in Montreal—“the fabulous nine,” as they came to be known. “The last thing you should do as a journalist is work alone in your corner,” says Lévesque. Looking back now, she understands that by building on each other’s work, they were able to move forward.

 ***

Denis and Gravel continued their research during the summer of 2009, while other journalists, including Fabrice De Pierrebourg, sought to contribute to the ever-growing story. After the Journal de Montréal locked out its employees, the newsroom staff created the website RueFrontenac.com to host their reporting. These journalists were not paid, and the newsroom was a decrepit ballet studio across the street from the Journal’s office.

In August, De Pierrebourg’s phone rang and he recognized the number. “Are you ready to write this down?” asked a familiar voice. He grabbed his pen and notebook. The source went into great detail about a meeting that took place at a restaurant in Old Montreal in March 2008. Municipal politician Benoît Labonté had asked Accurso for money to help fund his campaign. Louise Harel, the leader of the opposition party Vision Montreal was running for mayor in the November 2009 elections, and Labonté was her right-hand man. Vision Montreal’s entire campaign was based on the idea of cleaning up city hall.

After weeks of research, De Pierrebourg managed to get three other sources to confirm the details. But Normand Tamaro, RueFrontenac.com’s lawyer, thought it would be best to release the story as part of a series over the course of three days. “I didn’t like this idea at all because as a journalist you are always afraid of being scooped,” says De Pierrebourg. But Tamaro’s “bear trap” strategy lured in readers and created shockwaves throughout the city. Labonté resigned from his position at Vision Montreal and Louise Harel subsequently lost the election to the incumbent Gérald Tremblay.

This was the first time an investigation proved direct ties between political financing and construction entrepreneurs. “I remember everyone jumped to write follow-up stories after that,” recalls Vincent Larouche, who contributed to RueFrontenac.com and is now at La Presse with De Pierrebourg. “We all had something to contribute.” After his resignation, Labonté chose to give his first sit-down interview to Denis. He was emotional and admitted to accepting cash from Accurso, stating that “prêtes-noms” (“straw men”) were commonly used to conceal illegal political donations from private companies.

 ***

Cédilot sits at the busy Première Moisson bakery in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, a neighbourhood west of Montreal’s downtown core. His grey moustache and vintage black-rimmed glasses make for a distinguished look. Now retired from La Presse, he spends most of his days commenting on radio or television about organized crime or the latest developments at the Charbonneau Commission.

Like his pal Noël, he has a different perspective on these events. Throughout the 1990s, he and Bruno Bisson published a series of investigations into corruption in Laval—a precursor to what would come in Montreal and other municipalities across Quebec. Yet the timing wasn’t right and the public didn’t take much notice. Having spent 20 years covering organized crime, Cédilot’s interest in Montreal’s mob family the Rizzutos runs deep—as Mafia Inc. showed. “When the book arrived, it was like the cherry on the sundae,” he admitted. “To say that the Mafia was involved in all of this—the pizzo!”

But Cédilot remains skeptical about what the commission report will accomplish, especially since the inquiry didn’t clearly identify the ties to organized crime and failed to look into Hydro-Québec—the government-owned corporation that deals with many of the same crooked players. Though journalists played an instrumental role in revealing the intricacies of the corrupt system, the commission didn’t hear testimony from high-profile provincial players such as Jean Charest and Pauline Marois. Andrew McIntosh, who leads Quebecor’s new investigative unit (which Cédilot sees as a competitive response to Enquête), also questions how far the commission went. “It’s like we’ve been at the buffet and they’ve been plucking at the juiciest cuts of meat, but they never drilled down.”

The commission proposed reforming the province’s Access to Information Act, but reporters also want better protection of whistleblowers and greater access to municipal documents. “The access to information law has become a way to block journalists,” says Pierre Tourangeau, now Radio-Canada’s ombudsman. “It’s time for governments to demonstrate more transparency.”

 ***

As this extraordinary period of investigative journalism comes to an end, no one doubts that more scandals will surface in the years to come. “Where there is money being exchanged, there will always be the potential for corruption,” says Alan Conter, a media consultant and journalism lecturer at Concordia University in Montreal. “And when this does happen,” he hopes “journalists will be there to uncover the facts yet again.”

In the meantime, the climate of journalistic collaboration has shifted back to one of competition, as more news outlets create or expand their investigative units. La Presse recruited Lévesque and De Pierrebourg. And while budget cuts at Radio-Canada may affect shows such as Enquête, in late September—six years after the initial scoop—it’s business as usual.

Gravel leans in toward his computer screen, mouthing the words as he reads his script. A copy of Mafia Inc. is open on his desk, and piles of documents are spread on the floor. Photos of his children are on the wall, and on the other side of the room are awards and newspaper clippings collected over the years. “I don’t have the status of Peter Mansbridge,” says Gravel as he points to the investigative unit. Empty desks and boxes line the pathway to his office.

Dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt under a blazer, he makes a few final changes to his script before picking up the phone to speak to one of the show’s lawyers. After Accurso unsuccessfully sued Radio-Canada three times, vetting scripts for a television show such as Enquête has become a tedious but necessary process. This is going to be a big “Accurso-Mafia” episode, Gravel says with a sense of vindication.

People used to congratulate him for his work, but now they thank him. “The Charbonneau Commission is the stamp of validation on everything we said,” he says, and while he believes reporters still have work to do, this whole chapter in Quebec’s history helped reaffirm journalism’s core values. His boss Pelletier agrees. “Journalism is by definition investigation. If it is something else, then I don’t want to practise it.”

Photo by Scott Adamson

]]>
http://rrj.ca/breaking-bad/feed/ 1
TEASER: Breaking Bad http://rrj.ca/teaser-breaking-bad/ http://rrj.ca/teaser-breaking-bad/#comments Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:40:47 +0000 http://rrj.ca/?p=6049 TEASER: Breaking Bad Here is a sneak peek at the cover story of our Spring 2015 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism magazine.]]> TEASER: Breaking Bad

Here is a sneak peek at the cover story of our Spring 2015 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism magazine.

By now you all have heard the horrific news: Twelve people were killed at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper headquarters in Paris earlier today. At 11:30 a.m., local time, three men dressed in black emerged from a vehicle in front of the newspaper’s office, carrying automatic weapons. The gunmen stormed through, killing two police officers and [...]]]> Je Suis Charlie

By now you all have heard the horrific news: Twelve people were killed at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper headquarters in Paris earlier today. At 11:30 a.m., local time, three men dressed in black emerged from a vehicle in front of the newspaper’s office, carrying automatic weapons. The gunmen stormed through, killing two police officers and eight journalists—including Hebdo editor, Stéphane Charbonnier (“Charb”) and cartoonists Bernard Verlhac (“Tignous”) and Jean Cabut (“Cabu”). According to raw video footage shot from a nearby building, the gunmen were overheard shouting, “We avenged the Prophet Mohammed! We killed Charlie Hebdo.”

The shooting is being described as the worst militant attack in France in decades. French President François Hollande referred to it as a “terrorist attack” and placed the country in its highest level of terrorism alert. Hollande noted that other attacks have been prevented in France in recent weeks.

As the world mourns the loss of these twelve lives, these events have sparked conversations in newsrooms, on the streets and online, about freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

A left-wing weekly, Charlie Hebdo is not new to controversy and skewering religious leaders and politicians. In 2011, the magazine made headlines for publishing an issue “guest-edited” by the Prophet Mohammed. Soon after, their offices were firebombed. But the magazine’s cartoonists and editorial board didn’t back down. In addition, their website has been hacked and they have been accused of blasphemy. Since those 2011 attacks, police bodyguards accompanied Charbonnier at all times.

Charlie Hebdo prided itself in provoking debate and commentary on world affairs. Their cartoonists were journalists, many of whom also wrote thought-provoking columns. The pen was their means of expression. It is important to note that they didn’t only target radical Islam. Some of their infamous covers include former Pope Benedict XVI embracing a Vatican guard and an Orthodox Jew kissing a Nazi soldier.

These journalists were not provoking for the sake of provocation. They were trying to prove a point through their cartoons: that by respecting these taboos, we are only serving to strength the power of censorship. A strong democracy is a place where opposing views are accepted and embraced.

Today, people turned to social media to express their anger in frustration regarding this senseless act and created the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie and #CharlieHebdo. Cartoonists around the world responded in solidarity, and Ottawa-based satirical publication Frank, responded by changing its logo to that of Charlie Hebdo’s. Michael Bate, the magazine’s editor, also stated that it’s going to run some of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons.

So what sparked today’s attack?

The reasons behind today’s carnage remain unknown, with the hunt to find those responsible for the crime ongoing. But many media outlets have hinted to Charlie Hebdo’s current cover, a cartoon of a new controversial book recently published by French author Michel Houllebecq, Submission, where the author imagines France run by an Islamic party in the future.

Charbonnier famously said, after the attacks in 2011, that his job was not to defend freedom of speech, but without freedom of speech we are dead. He was a man who would not be silenced. “I prefer to die than to live like a rat,” he said.

Journalism is experiencing difficult times. We are now living in a world where ordinary citizens claim to be journalists, and where professional journalists continue to face severe cuts from news organizations as well as deal with the reality of increasingly concentrated media ownerships.

Are today’s attacks proof of the price to pay for journalism? The individuals who died today stood up for freedom of speech and freedom of the press until the very end—because freedom of the press will only disappear if we stop using it altogether.

]]>
http://rrj.ca/je-suis-charlie/feed/ 0
Is La Presse+ the solution to newspaper woes or a capitulation to advertisers? http://rrj.ca/is-la-presse-the-solution-to-newspaper-woes-or-a-capitulation-to-advertisers/ http://rrj.ca/is-la-presse-the-solution-to-newspaper-woes-or-a-capitulation-to-advertisers/#respond Tue, 09 Dec 2014 13:53:56 +0000 http://rrj.ca/?p=5527 Is La Presse+ the solution to newspaper woes or a capitulation to advertisers? By Arielle Piat-Sauvé Guy Crevier knew something needed to change when he compared the drop in newspaper revenue to the aging baby-boomer population. The president and publisher of La Presse suspected that as his core readership aged, newspaper sales could decrease significantly. Fearing it was only a matter of time before the traditional newspaper model [...]]]> Is La Presse+ the solution to newspaper woes or a capitulation to advertisers?

By Arielle Piat-Sauvé

Guy Crevier knew something needed to change when he compared the drop in newspaper revenue to the aging baby-boomer population. The president and publisher of La Presse suspected that as his core readership aged, newspaper sales could decrease significantly. Fearing it was only a matter of time before the traditional newspaper model collapsed, Crevier decided to endorse a new approach, relying only on advertiser revenue. In April 2013, the company launched its La Presse+ tablet app in an attempt to reshape the way its readers consume news.

By Alanna Kelly

The goal was simple: create a platform that would increase audience engagement and reach. Crevier, who is also president of Gesca, a subsidiary of Power Corporation that publishes six French papers in Quebec and Le Droit in Ottawa, wanted to work with an existing digital platform. So La Presse approached Apple in 2010, a few months before the technology company was set to release its first iPad. Then Gesca invested three years of research and $40 million into the new app. The 130-year-old newspaper’s headquarters in Old Montreal were also redesigned to include television studios and wall-mounted video displays to show the iPad app.

Last May, during Power Corp.’s annual meeting in Montreal, co-CEOs André and Paul Desmarais Jr. confirmed their plans to phase out newspaper print editions. Gesca believes this tablet technology and new business model will save its newspapers. Today, 40 percent of La Presse’s revenue derives from the app. The interactive platform is designed to increase readership and, in turn, attract more ad dollars. The danger is that without money coming from circulation, the pressure to change editorial content to please the last paying customers—the advertisers—becomes even greater.

La Presse+ seeks to attract a broad and engaged audience that is also willing to interact with its mostly national multimedia ads. Video and interactive storytelling are replacing black newspaper ink. So far, the results are encouraging. Over the last 18 months, La Presse+ reached 600,000 downloads, with an average 160,000 daily views. The average reader spends 44 minutes on the app during the week and 73 minutes on Saturday. Half the app’s downloads are by readers who aren’t subscribed to the paper’s print edition. While newspapers across the country cut staff, La Presse hired several new journalists specializing in multimedia, video and graphic design.

Providing readers with free news is an essential element to La Presse+ and Jacques Nantel, a marketing professor at the University of Montreal, believes this is a smart gamble. “They started with the assumption that no matter what the platform will be, advertising now will be your sole source of revenue,” he says. “This is where the clientele is.” The papers aren’t gone yet, but when they are, Crevier hopes all the advertisers will move to the digital platform.

But others remain skeptical of the model’s sustainability in the long run. Marc-François Bernier, a journalism professor at the University of Ottawa, fears relying exclusively on advertising revenue will force the paper to alter its content to focus on entertainment instead of news and information. “When your source of financial revenue relies too heavily on advertisers, this undoubtedly leads to weaker and less independent content, more susceptibility to pressure from advertisers,” he says. Bernier points to new commercials that feature a man and a woman flirting while surfing La Presse+ as an example of advertisers influencing the way consumers perceive the app.

Meanwhile, La Presse’s sister papers in towns across Quebec continue to wait for further information from Gesca about where they fit into this new digital model. At Quebec City’s Le Soleil, the atmosphere remains optimistic about what these changes could mean for their paper. Pierre-Paul Noreau, now the deputy editor and managing editor, remembers when he first entered that newsroom 37 years ago as a 22-year-old reporter. Back then, the paper had 150 journalists instead of the 65 it has today. But Noreau isn’t nostalgic for the glory days and he believes in the La Presse+ model, even if this means trading in his former readers for new ones.

Although no official decisions have been made regarding Gesca’s other papers, Noreau’s ideal scenario would be for his Quebec City newsroom to produce local content, while being part of the larger La Presse+ app that would include tabs for the different newspapers. However, Le Soleil and Gesca’s other papers may not have the digital and financial resources required to produce the content for an app.

Other papers are taking notice. The Toronto Star recently became the first newspaper to announce plans to release its own tablet app based on the La Presse+ platform technology. That will happen next fall and the paper plans to remove all existing digital paywalls. This partnership between the two media outlets will provide advertisers with joint marketing opportunities to reach both French and English audiences.

Yet, most newspapers remain reluctant to adopt the La Presse+ model. Le Devoir, an independent French language paper in Montreal, was the first in Canada to create a paywall on its website back in 2002. Publisher Bernard Descôteaux also feels the pressure to shift to a new digital strategy in order to survive, but insists that model won’t limit his paper’s app from including rich content, different from its print counterpart. Newspapers opting for a paywall are hoping to convince their readers that quality journalism comes at a price.

Today, Crevier admits he doesn’t read a single print newspaper or watch the evening news, but he says he’s never consumed as much information as he does now. Although there are definite risks associated with being first, La Presse+ is his attempt at creating a new sustainable newspaper model. This tablet technology is also a way of competing with a whole new realm of multimedia platforms, for broader audience reach and more advertiser dollars.

 

]]>
http://rrj.ca/is-la-presse-the-solution-to-newspaper-woes-or-a-capitulation-to-advertisers/feed/ 0
CBC v. CBC: the fifth estate on the unmaking of Jian Ghomeshi http://rrj.ca/cbc-v-cbc-the-fifth-estate-on-the-unmaking-of-jian-ghomeshi/ http://rrj.ca/cbc-v-cbc-the-fifth-estate-on-the-unmaking-of-jian-ghomeshi/#respond Sat, 29 Nov 2014 20:14:41 +0000 http://rrj.ca/?p=5452 jian ghomeshi For weeks now, everyone wondered how CBC would cover the downfall of its own golden boy. “Our story tonight is not an easy one to tell. Many of those you’ll hear from are our colleagues. But we are telling it because five weeks after Jian Ghomeshi was fired, important questions still have no answers: what [...]]]> jian ghomeshi

For weeks now, everyone wondered how CBC would cover the downfall of its own golden boy.

“Our story tonight is not an easy one to tell. Many of those you’ll hear from are our colleagues. But we are telling it because five weeks after Jian Ghomeshi was fired, important questions still have no answers: what did managers know? When did they know it? What did they do?”

And with those words, the fifth estates Gillian Findlay began last night’s much-anticipated episode.

The fifth estate told a story of a charismatic young man’s rise to fame within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and how his flagship show quickly became an arena for promoting his own celebrity. But last night’s episode was about more than rehashing Ghomeshi’s past and re-exposing details of the scandal.

In what was sometimes an uncomfortable episode to watch, but absolutely necessary, the fifth estate produced a one-hour investigation unearthing the inner malfunctions and miscommunications that occurred at CBC. In the midst of the media frenzy surrounding the high-profile former CBC employee, the fifth estate sought to set the record straight by answering questions about the timeline of events, who knew what, and when specific decisions were made.

Through its own investigation with Q staff, the fifth estate found that, unlike what CBC management was saying, there was no investigation undertaken over the summer to look into allegations of workplace abuse and assault—at least not to the Q employees’ knowledge. Findlay cornered Chris Boyce, CBC’s executive director of radio, with her persistent questions. Boyce continued to refuse to answer her questions, stating that this was what lawyer Janice Rubin was looking into. When Findlay pushed Boyce for more answers, he appeared almost at his breaking point, unable to remember what happened and arguing that he doesn’t hold the same responsibility as the police in this story.

By highlighting the untold stories of Q producers Brian Coulton and Sean Foley, the fifth estate cast away any doubts of biased reporting. Coulton and Foley—who brought their information and concerns to CBC managers in early July—still feel as though their faith in the public broadcaster has been shaken following this incident.

Perhaps using the fifth estate to air details of what looks like a mismanaged crisis is part of CBC’s concerted efforts to quickly move on from this downfall and literally scrub away any association with Ghomeshi.

This subsidiary investigation on behalf of the fifth estate was a difficult exercise of self-analysis and reflection, but CBC succeeded in doing so graciously, without avoiding the hard-hitting questions. The fifth estate reminded viewers that as a corporation of journalists, it was their duty to tell this behind-the-scenes story—reminding everyone they are first and foremost journalists.

 

Image courtesy of the fifth estate

]]>
http://rrj.ca/cbc-v-cbc-the-fifth-estate-on-the-unmaking-of-jian-ghomeshi/feed/ 0
Was Justin Trudeau’s boycott of Sun Media justified or an unfair obstruction? http://rrj.ca/was-justin-trudeaus-boycott-of-sun-media-justified-or-an-unfair-obstruction/ http://rrj.ca/was-justin-trudeaus-boycott-of-sun-media-justified-or-an-unfair-obstruction/#respond Fri, 03 Oct 2014 13:51:10 +0000 http://rrj.ca/?p=4963 Was Justin Trudeau’s boycott of Sun Media justified or an unfair obstruction? In 1967, Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously said, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Recently, Trudeau’s bedroom activities were fair game for Ezra Levant on his show, The Source. Levant said Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s “frat boy” antics around a stranger’s bridal party were no surprise considering his parents’ behavior, [...]]]> Was Justin Trudeau’s boycott of Sun Media justified or an unfair obstruction?

In 1967, Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously said, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Recently, Trudeau’s bedroom activities were fair game for Ezra Levant on his show, The Source. Levant said Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s “frat boy” antics around a stranger’s bridal party were no surprise considering his parents’ behavior, calling his father a “slut” and saying his mother Margaret “wasn’t much different.”

While the original video has been taken down, a column similar to the monologue is still on Levant’s blog. Trudeau replied by boycotting all Sun Media journalists, refusing to answer their questions until he received an response from the chain.

Trudeau’s actions sparked a debate about the freedom of the press. Chantal Hébert said he obstructed fair journalistic access. Blacklisting one of the country’s largest newspaper publishers in the lead up to a federal election may not be appropriate. Levant’s views expressed on his show aren’t representative of all Sun Media journalists, so why should the entire news organization suffer as a result of one loose canon? But, as political science professor Emmett Macfarlane pointed out, freedom of the press guarantees that the government won’t restrict journalists, not that reporters will land interviews.

Bruce Anderson argued we should take the spotlight off Trudeau and ask ourselves how low we’re willing to let media standards fall. Not only was Levant’s rant based mostly on opinion, he also got many facts wrong. He claimed Trudeau pushed his way into the photo, when in fact, the wedding party had asked him to join. Levant also failed to mention that the groom didn’t have a problem with the kiss. Anderson questioned why journalists spent so much time criticizing Trudeau’s response instead of looking into Levant’s lack of integrity, which he claims is “an embarrassment to journalists.”

On Monday, Sun Media—not Levant—apologized for the segment, saying it shouldn’t have aired. Trudeau’s camp accepted the apology and lifted the ban on its journalists. And we await the next round of controversy between the two.

]]>
http://rrj.ca/was-justin-trudeaus-boycott-of-sun-media-justified-or-an-unfair-obstruction/feed/ 0
Rob Ford: Professor of Journalism http://rrj.ca/rob-ford-professor-of-journalism/ http://rrj.ca/rob-ford-professor-of-journalism/#respond Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:44:25 +0000 http://rrj.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=2902 Rob Ford: Professor of Journalism [Text contains three clarifications to original article as published in the RRJ print edition:] When I started my journalism studies at Ryerson University, I naively thought I would be learning how to be a good reporter from the professors and practitioners visiting my classroom. Boy was I wrong. It isn’t the classroom that provides the answers to how to [...]]]> Rob Ford: Professor of Journalism
[Text contains three clarifications to original article as published in the RRJ print edition:]

When I started my journalism studies at Ryerson University, I naively thought I would be learning how to be a good reporter from the professors and practitioners visiting my classroom. Boy was I wrong. It isn’t the classroom that provides the answers to how to be a good journalist and how to delve into investigative reporting. For these lessons, and much more, I had to look to the most unlikely place: Toronto City Hall.

There he sits during the months before the bombshell that would call for his removal from office, my greatest teacher, in city council’s first row. He is quiet and looks bored, with his hands folded over his protruding belly. Around him, the councillors are squabbling like children as the speaker tries to keep them in check. But my mentor pays no attention as he stares off into the distance.

At first, I was shocked to discover the one man who would teach me important reporting lessons is the same man who has been shutting out members of the press. Yet, I am fascinated by how he is able to restrict access to the press and circumvent some media outlets. Though some journalists may try to thwart him, Mayor Rob Ford manages to keep his core support while also raising questions about whether media coverage of him has been fair. Here are 10 lessons I’ve learned from Ford—lessons every budding journalist should know.

Lesson 1: Beware the go-to contrary politician; he may turn on you one day

Ford didn’t always shut out journalists; back when he was a city councillor from 2000‑2010, he actively engaged them. “He was basically famous for losing 44:1 votes,” says John Michael McGrath, a former reporter for OpenFile in Toronto. “He was always in the opposition and, even by the standards of the conservative opposition under [then Mayor David] Miller, was usually the most isolated opponent.”

Edward Keenan, one of The Grid’s senior editors, says Ford would be “the only person opposed to things, and the theory that would go around a lot was that he did that intentionally so that he would get quoted.”

Back when current Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi was a city hall observer, he was also happy to give his views to journalists. But unlike Ford, Nenshi, as mayor, is still maintaining a good relationship with the press and is actively involved in social media.

Lesson 2: When the difficult politician shuns you, work around him

On July 13, 2010, the Toronto Star published a story that relied heavily on anonymous sources, suggesting Ford may have had a physical altercation with a player on a high school football team he used to coach. This outraged the soon-to-be mayor, who denied anything of the sort occurred and demanded the Star apologize. Once Ford became mayor, the Star says his office stopped sending the paper media releases. The mayor’s office disagreed, and issued a statement saying “the Toronto Star receives all notifications, press releases, [and] media advisories from the City of Toronto.”

“They don’t send us press releases and that’s really irritating, but it’s not something that we’re not working around,” Star urban affairs reporter Robyn Doolittle said at Toronto’s The Word on the Street in September. The Star often relies on the kindness of its competitors to get copies of releases. As well, the paper has filed a complaint to the City’s integrity commissioner about Ford’s exclusion of the newspaper from the mayor’s office’s e-mail list and not being notified of the mayor’s appearances and public statements—a barrier the Star gets around by regularly filing Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act requests to find out what Ford has been up to. In May 2012, for instance, theStar reported that the mayor was “doing less than half the official work he was doing this time last year” according to FOIA freedom of information requests. Even though Ford continued to talk to some print-based reporters until this fall, he is participating in far fewer scrums than his predecessor. Regular scrums are one of the tools city hall reporters use in Canada to access politicians and get their burning questions answered. But, as The Globe and Mail Toronto columnist Marcus Gee notes, Ford’s scrums are very brief: “Three, four or five questions at the most. Very brief answers, then they rush him off.” And, of course, during a scrum, Ford rarely answers a question posed by a Star reporter.

Lesson 3: If the difficult politician shuns you, tell your readers he’s shunning you

When Ford or his office won’t comment on a story, it’s customary for the Star to note this in the story. But does anyone really notice or care?

“I think the public just thinks we’re a bunch of whiners when we complain about not having access to either politicians or to public documents,” says Kelly Toughill, director of the school of journalism and associate professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax. “[But I also] think it’s important to note when people won’t answer questions, even if we do look like whiners.” Similarly, Gee says: “I think all you can do is remind readers that the mayor, or whoever it is, is not speaking to you and let them draw their conclusions. That’s what theStar has done. They make it a practice of saying, of pointing out, that the mayor didn’t comment to them. I think people ultimately will judge politicians harshly for spurning the press in that way—at least I hope so, although the press isn’t the most popular institution in the world.”

Lesson 4: Social media can be a terrific communications tool for municipal politicians

Some politicians in Canada grant greater access not only to the press but also to voters. For instance, Hamilton Spectator urban affairs reporter Emma Reilly notices that in Hamilton, Ont., there is a lot of interaction between municipal politicians and the public using Twitter. While she cautions Twitter is often just “another avenue” for politicians to state their party’s position, she also says “there are politicians like Justin Trudeau, for example, who doesn’t really seem to follow the party line and engages on Twitter in a way that I think is valuable a lot of the time.”

Ottawa Citizen reporter David Reevely says social media is “really useful for politicians who want to be accessible. It makes them more accessible.” But he adds that if a politician doesn’t want to answer questions, social media can be used as a mechanism to create distance.

“I think politicians have always tried to limit access,” adds Toughill. “I think they have more capacity to limit access now because they have more direct routes to reach the public than they used to.” She also says social media gives politicians “an entirely different capacity to reach and interact with the public without the gatekeepers of the media filtering that communication,” but still says that “there is significant value in putting those messages in context and also checking the veracity of them.”

Lesson 5: But for one difficult politician in particular, an older medium works best

For Ford, it isn’t social media that allows him to bypass the press. Instead, he’s back in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s world, using radio to speak directly to his supporters. In his councillor years, Ford would complain about city hall through John Oakley’s morning show on AM640. Now, Ford and his brother Doug Ford, also a councillor, use their weekly radio showThe City with Mayor Rob Ford on Newstalk 1010 to address voters, complain about the press and explain some of the perceived gaffes or mistakes that have occurred during Ford’s time as mayor.

Of course, that doesn’t stop Ford or his brother from attacking even their own radio station. During the September 23 broadcast, Ford told listeners that a trip to Chicago earlier that week, which Ford and several city councillors went on, “didn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.” Newstalk ran an update during a advertising during a commercial break in the show, suggesting Ford’s claims that the Chicago trip wouldn’t cost taxpayers money were untrue, resulting in Ford calling the media “pathological liars,” a group that would include Newstalk staff. Doug Ford also called members of the media “a bunch of little sucky little kids” who “whine and cry and moan” when the brothers stand up to them.

Lesson 6: It’s okay to poke fun at a difficult politician

If you’re an urban affairs reporter who hasn’t been in the mayor’s office for a year-and-a-half, what do you do? Well, if you’re the Star’s Robyn Doolittle, you go anyway and then write a parody about your experience entering “forbidden territory.” Even better, you videotape it.

This was not your typical break-and-enter. In fact, Ford’s office actually invited the reporter—as a member of the public—to his office. During the last weekend of May 2012, Doors Open Toronto held a city-wide event during which buildings not usually accessible or free to visit were open to all. Dressed in a form-fitting black ensemble befitting a burglar and toting binoculars, Doolittle was allowed into the area outside the mayor’s office, along with a group of Japanese tourists. She stood on the threshold of Ford’s office and peeped in. Looking through her binoculars, Doolittle scanned the territory. Sadly, it was gravy-free. But at least Doolittle was permitted to step on the mayor’s infamous scale that was part of his Cut-the-Waist Challenge.

Lesson 7: But be careful of going too far when poking fun at a difficult politician

In April 2012, the Star posted a video on its website of Ford walking into a KFC restaurant, with the sound of a woman laughing. It appeared the video was mocking Ford for going to the fast-food outlet when he was supposed to be losing weight in his very public weight-loss campaign, which began in January 2012. But as anyone struggling with those extra pounds can tell you, dieting isn’t as easy as not providing press releases. Ford faltered in his weight-loss attempt and started skipping his weekly weigh-ins, which were regularly attended by city hall reporters.

The KFC video led many readers to question the newspaper’s decision to publish it online, with much negative response.  “Sometimes I feel sorry for Rob,” says Gerald Hannon, a freelance writer who wrote an article for Toronto Life about Ford as he was campaigning for mayor. “There’s a bit too much glee in the Star’s take on Rob. I can see it could bring out the opposite reaction than what the Star might want, that people could begin to sympathize with him.”

Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy says she doesn’t remember ever writing anything remotely about Mayor David Miller’s eating habits, weight gain or loss, or anything like that. “I talked about his policies. I stuck to what I felt was professional. Now yes, I did call him ‘his blondness,’ but that was all in fun. And he made hair a matter of his own campaign. He talked about the mayor with nice hair.”

Lesson 8: And be even more careful when encroaching on the home turf of the difficult politician

On May 2, 2012, Star reporter Daniel Dale was found near the mayor’s backyard. Around 7:30 p.m., Ford was in his house with his family when a neighbour came by to tell the mayor there was a man outside. Ford went to investigate, cornered Dale on public land and charged towards him. Faced with an angry, over 300-pound burly politician, the rail-thin Dale ran off.

“Every time I tried to sidestep him to escape, he moved with me and yelled at me again to drop my phone,” says Dale said after the incident. “I became more frightened than I can remember; after two or three attempts to dart away, I threw my phone and my recorder down on the grass, yelled that he could take them and ran.”

Ford accused the reporter of standing on cinderblocks and peering over the fence into Ford’s backyard. Dale denied he was spying on the mayor, saying he was on public property doing a story on Ford’s attempt to purchase the land adjacent to the Fords’ home when the mayor ran towards Dale with a fist raised. The police were called to Ford’s home.

“You may not like my politics,” Ford said to the press after the incident, “but don’t start taking pictures of my family—my wife’s home, my kids are home—in my backyard.”

There have been past incidents at Ford’s house that have led to the police being called, including the visit from sword-wielding Mary Walsh, a former member of comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, dressed as her character Marg Delahunty, Warrior Princess. As well, there was a more serious threat from an ex-boyfriend of Ford’s sister, which resulted in the man being charged with two counts of threatening death, forcible entry and possession of heroin and cocaine. With this history, it’s hardly a surprise Ford reacted the way he did. “You’ve had death threats to your house,” says Ezra Levant, a Toronto Sun columnist. “You’ve had that big old moose [Delahunty] from the CBC storm onto your property in the morning… You’ve had property trespasses. You’re worried about your safety. You’re in this frame of mind and your neighbour rushes over and says, ‘There’s someone in the forest behind your house.’ How could you not take that personally?”

Lesson 9: When dealing with the difficult politician, keep accurate notes to track his changing stories and viewpoints

Ford has certainly had his difficult moments. Like being charged with possession of marijuana. Or making drunken, offensive statements at a Maple Leafs game that resulted in his ejection from the game. Or offering to score OxyContin for a stranger who was in pain during his mayoral campaign.

To handle these situations, Ford’s strategy when confronted with a questionable incident is often to deny the incident ever took place. For instance, when initially confronted about the marijuana possession charge from 1999, Ford told Toronto Sun reporter Jonathan Jenkins: “No, to answer your question. I’m dead serious. When I say ‘no’ I mean never. No question. Now I’m getting  offended. No means no.” After Ford was provided with evidence of the charge, he changed his story, admitting police found a joint in his back pocket.

While at a Maple Leafs game on April 15, 2006, an intoxicated Ford shouted obscenities at those around him, including asking one person at the game, “Do you want your little wife to go over to Iran and get raped and shot?” He was kicked out because of his behaviour. Though he initially denied being at the game, his penchant for handing out business cards was his downfall, as he had given his card to someone attending at the game.

“I’ve been covering him a long time, and that’s what happens, after every single controversial event,” says Keenan. “This is his pattern here. Whenever there’s an episode in which [Ford] will come out looking very bad, he immediately denies that it happened at all and then comes up with a story to try to make it seem more charitable to him.”

And then there’s Ford’s ode to the great work journalists do for an event celebrating World Press Freedom Day. “The day serves as a reminder that violations of press freedom occur in countries around the world while journalists, editors and publishers are  harassed, detained, attacked and killed,” Ford said. “The day is also an opportunity to join with media professionals worldwide to reaffirm the need to respect press freedom and remember those who have lost their lives while on the job,” Ford added.

Fine sentiments. But once Ford finished his speech, he wouldn’t respond to reporters’ questions, saying, “I’ve got places to go, people to see”—and, presumably, more journalists to ignore.

Lesson 10: Expect the unexpected

No matter how powerful the press thinks it is, other dynamics usually play a much larger role in influencing events, as evidenced by Justice Hackland’s ruling on November 26, just as the RRJ was going to press, that Ford’s seat be vacated.

Ford says he’s appealing the decision. “The left wing wants me out of here and they’ll do anything in their power to and I’m going to fight tooth and nail to hold onto my job, and if they do for some reason get me out, I’ll be running right back at them.”

But if Ford has to leave office, I’ll start the campaign to have him join the journalism faculty at Ryerson.

]]>
http://rrj.ca/rob-ford-professor-of-journalism/feed/ 0
Fixated http://rrj.ca/fixated/ http://rrj.ca/fixated/#respond Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:31:53 +0000 http://rrj.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=2859 Fixated We begin in Germany during the 2006 World Cup of soccer. There are thousands of fans inside the main stadium at Dortmund, watching Brazil take on Ghana for a berth in the quarterfinals. The majority support Brazil. They won’t be disappointed; within six minutes the South Americans are up 1–0. The stadium erupts as fans dressed in yellow, [...]]]> Fixated

We begin in Germany during the 2006 World Cup of soccer. There are thousands of fans inside the main stadium at Dortmund, watching Brazil take on Ghana for a berth in the quarterfinals. The majority support Brazil.

They won’t be disappointed; within six minutes the South Americans are up 1–0. The stadium erupts as fans dressed in yellow, some wearing bikinis, start waving their green, yellow and blue flags.

When the final whistle blows, the score is 3–0 for Brazil. The Ghanaian fans leave quietly as the Brazilians samba onto the streets. While the stadium empties, a solitary man remains. His name is Declan Hill, he’s a Canadian investigative journalist, and he’s standing 50 feet back from the touchline. If you saw him, you would remember him not for his dark brown hair or the intensity of his green-tinted brown eyes, but for his tears.

As Hill wipes them away, he wonders what passersby must think. He wants to explain, but at this moment there is no one who can understand. Despite sharing the match with 65,000 fans inside the stadium, and millions more watching it on TV, Hill stands alone, consumed by the belief that the game was fixed.

It’s a life-changing moment. Hill first learned of the possibility of a rigged match while following a group of gangsters in Thailand. At first, he wasn’t sure what to make of them. It seemed improbable that four men, sitting at a KFC in northern Bangkok, could buy a World Cup match. Even though one of them told Hill the score in advance, he wanted to witness the game for himself. He needed to see the “string of stupid mistakes” (deliberately missed shots and poorly played off-sides) to know that the fix was real, he says.

Suddenly, the game he loves no longer feels pure. Sport is meant to be something more, a place “where bullshit cannot reach,” says Hill. However, if the final score is the product of a mafia-controlled script, then the game loses its integrity. This possibility drives Hill to action. He decides to take a stand because, for him, this isn’t just another investigation—it’s a crusade to protect the world’s most popular sport from becoming an empty spectacle.

This is the story of an obsession. It’s about a hard-driving journalist who uncovers an inconvenient truth and refuses to look the other way. In doing so, he raises some troubling journalistic questions that nearly destroy his reputation. He’s willing to go to extremes because, as Hill himself puts it, his eyes beaming through his glasses: “This is the Watergate of sports stories.”

THE TRAIL BEGINS IN MOSCOW. It’s 1999 and Hill is in a Georgian restaurant, sitting across from a high-ranking Russian mobster. At the time, Hill is an associate producer at CBC’s the fifth estate, investigating connections between organized crime and Russian hockey players in the NHL. “I guess you like hockey,” remarks Hill, attempting to break the ice.

“I kind of like hockey, but I really love football,” replies the mobster, before recounting his experience at the 1994 World Cup, where he sat in the VIP box alongside various high-level executives from FIFA, soccer’s governing body.

Hill can’t believe what he’s hearing. “It’s like being in the Vatican sharing the balcony with the Pope on Easter Sunday,” he  explains. “It doesn’t get, symbolically, more important than this. What is this man doing at the epicentre of world sport power?”

This question sparks Hill’s interest in the relationship between organized crime and soccer. However, while Moscow is the catalyst, it’s not the beginning of Hill’s own story. To understand him, we need to know what compels a man to confront a multi-billion-dollar gambling industry, powerful sports federations and even his fellow journalists.

WHILE THERE IS NO SINGLE ANSWER, it’s best to start in 1988 with Hill, in his 20s, about to embark on a trip to India. He was born in Ottawa, but his family has ties to India dating back to the 1850s, and this trip is partly an attempt to reconnect with these roots. It proves to be a life-altering experience.

Hill tells me this in an Italian café near Ottawa’s Preston Street. It’s an intimate place, with two TVs constantly tuned to sports. There is a foosball table at the back, and the walls are lined with handwritten charts that record the latest soccer standings. Hill’s shoulder brushes against them as he sips his Americano. He’s dressed in a blue shirt and black pants, and he sits with his legs crossed. His defining feature, however, is his scarf. Today it’s grey, worn loosely knotted around his neck. “It’s like European fashion now,” he explains.

India “challenges you intellectually, emotionally and spiritually,” says Hill. “You hate and love the place all in one day, 10 times a day.” While in Calcutta, he volunteers in a street clinic, Calcutta Rescue. He sees nurses treating patients with leprosy, only to run into them a few hours later, begging on the streets. When asked why they’ve removed their bandages, the patients would say, “How do you expect us to make money?”

The living conditions that Hill encountered were unforgettable, and no matter how bad things get, no matter where he goes—Kosovo, Iraq, Mexico, Bolivia—nothing is ever as bad as Calcutta. Despite the challenges, what Hill takes away from the experience is the excitement of being around people who are trying to make a difference.

Inspired, Hill returns home and becomes a co-founder of Doctors Without Borders in Canada. In 1990 he enrolls in the University of Toronto and begins studying history and political science. Halfway through his undergrad degree, Hill is presented with an opportunity to return to India. He’s taking a course on environmental degradation, and his professor is interested in doing some first-hand research in Assam, a northeastern Indian state where civil war still rages today in certain areas.

Hill’s previous experience in India makes him a natural choice. Full of ambition, he pitches a story about his trip to CBC Radio and convinces the producers at Ideas to take a chance on him. They provide a tape recorder and challenge Hill to come back with enough material to make a documentary.

Back in India, he presents himself as a tour guide to the authorities. Through “sheer bravado, good luck and chutzpah,” he manages to gain access into Assam and begins working on his first journalistic endeavour. Trying not to draw attention, he pretends that his tape recorder is a Walkman.

When Hill returns to Canada, he has enough material to make a two-part documentary. While he’s now on his way to becoming a journalist, he’s torn because his first love is acting and, as it happens, India has given him some valuable experience.

During his first trip, Hill worked on an Indian TV show, Bharat Ek Khoj (The Discovery of India), having picked up enough Hindi to play small roles. As luck would have it, the show gave him the chance to work with some big Bollywood names: Om Puri, Jalal Agha and Tom Alter.

Hill was able to land these roles because he’s a professionally trained actor. After nationwide auditions, he was accepted to the National Theatre School in Montreal with a full scholarship. He graduated in 1988. His acting resumé also includes an apprenticeship at the Shaw Festival and appearances on Top Cops and Counterstrike, ’90s TV shows. He has also done  commercials for Ruffles Potato Chips, I.D.A. Drugs and Pizza Hut, and another with Don Cherry.

While Hill is passionate about acting, he’s reluctant to discuss it. He worries that people, particularly Canadians, consider actors to be “luvvies” or “flakes.” What they don’t realize, says Hill, taking another sip of his Americano, is that “it’s a tough, tough life, and it’s one that I couldn’t take. It’s one that I had to leave for my own sanity.”

The breaking point comes after losing the role of Gilbert Blythe on the TV series Road to Avonlea. After several auditions, it’s down to him and Jonathan Crombie, and Crombie gets the role. That’s what acting is like—it’s a series of breaks, and sometimes they don’t go your way.

The competitive world of acting teaches Hill professionalism and self-belief. Both qualities ease his transition into journalism, as does the discovery that journalism, in addition to being intellectually stimulating, can also be creative. It’s a testament to Hill’s abilities that he completes his undergrad while continuing to work for CBC. By 1993 he is already at the fifth estate, working as a researcher. In 1996 he becomes an associate producer.

At the fifth, Hill is exposed to some of Canada’s top investigative reporters. It’s the place to be when you’re a young man, eager to learn. According to Claude Vickery, one of the show’s producers, “it’s an extremely competitive environment” with no shortage of applicants. He remembers Hill as a “very special researcher with outstanding journalistic skills.”

David Studer, a former executive producer at the fifth, also remembers Hill as a “smart guy, quick on the uptake with lots of energy.” He describes Hill as “an all arounder,” good at photography, radio and television. Studer isn’t surprised by Hill’s success. “This is a guy who wanted to do a lot of different things in his life.”

Although more than 12 years have passed since Hill left the fifth, his work—particularlyMafia Power Play, a joint CBC/PBS Frontline production and the reason why Hill was in Moscow—is well remembered, as is his involvement in the team that won a Michener Award in 2000 for a series of reports on the police and the justice system.

The intensity of the fifth speaks to Hill’s personality. He likes working at an elite level, and at the fifth he’s in on some of the biggest stories in Canada, like the Airbus Affair. Karlheinz Schreiber, a German businessman, allegedly attempted to bribe Brian Mulroney, a charge the former prime minister denies. In his book The Truth Shows Up, Harvey Cashore describes Hill’s brief role in a key stakeout of Schreiber’s Toronto hotel in 1999.

Suddenly, sitting in the Ottawa café, Hill raises his arms, simulating the near-arrest of one of his colleagues during that stakeout. Apparently the owners of a nearby jewellery store grew suspicious of their presence and called the cops. “I just finished wrapping this thing up when I get a phone call saying that Schreiber has left the building,” says Hill, bobbing his head in order to re-enact his sprint down the Yorkville lanes in search of a taxi. He then jumps in his seat as if throwing himself into the back of the vehicle. He stares straight across the table, points his finger and repeats the immortal words he said on that day: “Cabby, follow that car!”

These are the origins of an investigative journalist, but Hill wants to be more than just another face in the crowd—he wants to be the best. In order to achieve this, he needed to continue growing and this meant seeking opportunities outside of the fifth.

HIS PATH LEADS HIM TO OXFORD, where, in 2003, he begins studying for his PhD. He lives on a 49-foot canal boat. It’s a romantic notion that lasts three months. “I woke up one morning and there was literally a layer of frost on my blankets, so I was like, ‘sod this,’” says Hill, who soon after finds a place on land.

He’s studying sociology at the School of Informal Governance, which is a fancy way of saying “organized crime and corruption.” This school is part of what’s now known as Green Templeton College. In the middle of the campus is an 18th-century observatory and a stable that is now a pub. However, what makes the place unique is not the architecture but the academic environment.

“This isn’t normal academics. Normal academics fight to be away from exciting subjects; these guys have studied real life,” says Hill. One colleague, for example, is not only an expert on the yakuza (the Japanese mob) but also a black belt in karate who spars in the morning before lectures. Hill’s supervisor, Diego Gambetta, is a leading expert on the Sicilian mob. Others are studying the IRA, and one professor, an expert on the Russian mafia, is used as a source by John le Carré.

Ever since his meeting in Moscow, Hill has been fascinated by organized crime’s relationship to sports, so for his thesis he proposes studying match-fixing in soccer. He does this partially because he’s a lifelong fan of the game (his colleagues at thefifth still remember the soccer scarves that hung in his office), but also because of the notion of “universal deviance.” Since the sport is played around the world and it’s illegal to fix a match no matter what culture you’re from, soccer can be used to analyze corruption at an international level.

It’s not easy to find the right subject, says Bruce Livesey, an author and investigative journalist who worked with Hill at the fifth. They’ve remained friends and, according to Livesey, Hill went to Oxford with the goal of writing a bestselling book. The secret is finding a “sexy subject,” says Livesey. “A lot of investigative books…have vanished into obscurity because they’re on obscure subjects that nobody gives a shit about.”

During the course of his research, Hill is shocked to discover the extent to which match-fixing is corrupting professional soccer. “I kind of fell into this massive story,” he says. He also hits upon it at the right time. While match-fixing itself is not new or unique to soccer, several incidents occurred just before or during his studies.

In 2000, there was the Hansie Cronje affair in cricket. A few years later, match-fixing allegations arose in sumo wrestling and tennis. In 2005, the Bundesliga scandal, involving German soccer referee Robert Hoyzer, made headlines. One year later, there was the Calciopoli scandal, in which officials working for five of Italy’s top soccer clubs were found guilty of match-fixing. One team in particular—Juventus, Italy’s most popular team—was stripped of two Series A titles and demoted to a lower division.

Hill was now working on a major story, the kind that he says he couldn’t have done at CBC. “[There is an] institutional mentality where they just won’t do the world’s biggest stories…CBC is not built that way.” It’s not the journalists, he explains, but the culture of the organization. “If I were still a journalist with the CBC, I wouldn’t be able to do the best stories in the world. I wouldn’t have been able to deliver the Watergate of sports stories.”

You have to have an ego to do this kind of work. If you decide that the world is wrong and that you’re right, you’re going to need a lot of self-confidence. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that Hill can be difficult to work with. At least that’s what David Nayman, former executive producer of CBC’s Newsworld International and current Ryerson instructor, heard before offering him a position as a late-night anchor. The word on Hill was that he could be a “very in-your-face, intense guy.” The problem, says Nayman, is that he’s “dogged,” and as a result, “he does what any other good journalist does, which is fight for your material.”

While Livesey agrees that Hill can carry a chip on his shoulder, he suspects that there are other factors involved at the fifth. “You know you’re a better journalist than the people you’re working for, and it’s frustrating that they’re getting paid more, they’re getting more control…in the case of the host, they get all the glory and you’re going, ‘fuck, what am I doing this for?’” Above all, Livesey emphasizes that any problems were simply due to the nature of working in an intense, stressful environment.

After leaving the fifth, Hill stayed at Newsworld International for approximately two years and also did freelance projects while working there before continuing on to Oxford. In fact, he won an award from the Canadian Association of Journalists in 2006 for his radio documentary Speaking the Truth, about Filipino journalist Marlene Esperat, who was killed in her home.

Despite this achievement, Hill was surprised to find that “90 percent of journalism” was nothing more than “secretarial work.” He describes it as “making comments on other people’s commentary.” It was only after leaving the fifth that he realized that much of Canadian media didn’t share the same drive. “They don’t have that ‘we will stop at nothing, we have the public interest.’ So I loved working at the fifth. I would get up in the morning because I believed that it was a really important job.”

At Oxford, Hill rediscovers the excellence he seeks. However, the source of his motivation lies deeper. The key to understanding it, says Hill, is that “I’m a very strong Quaker, or at least I have a very strong belief in God.”

Quakers seek to create heaven on Earth. As Hill explains, “part of the oxygen of being a Quaker is the belief in social justice.” They function without a formal clergy and perform communal worship in silence, speaking only when moved by the spirit.

Quakers believe that there is a piece of God in everyone; for this reason they’ve fought against slavery and helped champion women’s rights as well as prison reform. With so many role models, it’s easy to understand why Hill feels like he’s expressing his spiritual beliefs when he’s fighting corruption.

For his PhD thesis, Hill conducts primary research by following a group of match-fixers across Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Physically going to these meetings is tough. He is, after all, dealing with criminals, who at any moment could say, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re taping this meeting, you’re dead.”

One of the things that surprises Hill about these meetings is the degree to which globalization has transformed the gambling industry. “It’s as if somebody’s taken corruption and injected a drug to make it go WOW,” says Hill, animating the story with his hands. “That is the same thing that is affecting the music industry and travel.” Now, with a click of a button, people can bet on almost any game, in any league around the world, “just like anyone can buy an airplane ticket.”

The danger is that match-fixing strikes at the core element of sport: its unpredictability. In doing so, it threatens sports as a business, an educational tool and a contributor to society. If people stop believing and become cynical of the results, then sports become like professional wrestling—little more than spectacle.

Upon completing his PhD, Hill publishes The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime in 2008. In this 400-page book, he alleges that fixers are not only operating around the world, but also attempting to influence the game at the highest level—the World Cup.

HILL STANDS BEFORE ME, dressed in black, in a boxing club beneath a church near Ottawa’s Chinatown. He’s an avid boxer, and today he’s teaching me a Cuban warm-up exercise, where the objective is to tap your opponent’s shoulders.  It’s a way of simulating the conditions of a fight without risking injury.

When we first entered the club, Hill, wearing a navy scarf with red and white marks, was upbeat and happy to see his fellow members. He knows most of them by name and has a story to share with nearly everyone. But now that we’re facing each other with our hands up, the intensity in Hill’s eyes is scary. When he attacks, the only tell is a slight expansion of his irises. It’s not enough to help me. One, two, three, four, five—he’s scoring points at will.

The bell, or in this case an electronic beep, saves me. Boxers practise under the same conditions as an actual fight: three-minute intervals of intense activity are broken up by a minute’s rest. The rhythm of the club changes during these breaks. Gone are the sounds of screeching shoes and thudding barbells, and the clanking of chains that accompanies the one-two combinations against the punching bags. In their place is an eruption of conversation as members greet one another, stretch and catch their breath in preparation for the next round.

In the ring, Hill’s biggest advantage is his reach. He’s six feet two inches tall, and it’s hard for me to get near. It’s the same problem that Jeff Davis, general manager at an Ottawa pub, had when he fought Hill in March 2012. Their charity boxing match was on the undercard of the Justin Trudeau/Patrick Brazeau fight that helped raise over $230,000 for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation.

Although Quakers are pacifists, Hill took on the fight after Davis’s original opponent dropped out with less than a month to go. Hill agreed to participate because he, too, has lost loved ones to cancer.

When Hill fights, he has a wry smile. Davis may have wanted to wipe it off, but Hill’s reach proved difficult to circumvent; however, any animosity stayed in the ring, and both men later went out for drinks. “He’s just a fantastic gentleman,” says Davis, who ended up losing the fight. “Not one bad word could I say.”

When The Fix came out, not all of the reviewers were as kind as Davis. Hill still remembers a certain TV host who kept giving him “the gears,” but during a commercial break said, “You’re absolutely right. I talk to players all the time, and this is what they tell me is going on.”

Some charge that Hill failed to prove his case. As John Doyle, television critic for The Globe and Mail and a well-known soccer writer, points out, a set of accurate predictions does not prove that a game is fixed. Hill takes this criticism personally. “There are approximately 76 pages of notes… If anything, I was being very modest about what I could show at the time.”

Doyle also worries that Hill is “feeding into and helping to play up suspicions about soccer,” which he says carry “dark undertones.” Doyle’s concern is that Hill, whether consciously or not, is validating a predominantly American bias that sees soccer as “foreign and part of the other.”

Another problem is that Hill, by injecting himself into the book, left himself vulnerable to attack. “It reads like a spy novel or something,” says Stephen Brunt, columnist for Sportsnet Magazine, who admits that he was initially skeptical. “The notion that there could be these incredibly elaborate conspiracies involving Asian gamblers and obscure soccer leagues and then right through to the World Cup, that goes against my nature.”

The problem with verifying some of Hill’s allegations, says Simon Kuper, author ofSoccernomics and a columnist for the Financial Times, is that “by the nature of the investigation, he is the only one there, so you have to take him at his word.” And while Kuper says “the book is not proof in courts, as it were,” he stands by Hill’s work.

As does Brunt, who says that “after watching events unfold, you realize what a remarkable job he’s done there. It’s pretty clean.” Brunt also defends Hill’s use of pseudonyms to conceal the identities of several key figures. “There probably is a school out there that says all sources should be identified and everything should be transparent. But the fact is there are types of reporting where you can’t do that, if you’re going to tell certain kinds of stories. And I think this is probably one of those.”

According to Kuper, part of the reason why the story remained hidden for so long is that most people don’t want to know that the game is fixed, including the media. “People who live off of soccer—that includes me—most of us don’t want to destroy the industry, and you risk doing that if you lift the lid off of the garbage can, and that’s what he’s doing.”

James Sharman, host of The Footy Show on The Score, agrees. “There are a lot of people in this business who are operating in sports media, and they can’t really upset certain people too much because they have a career to build.” That’s why Sharman is thankful for Hill’s efforts. “He takes these fixers and holds them to the high standards, saying, ‘this is my game that you’re ruining.’”

Hill refers to this initial resistance as a “Cassandra moment.” In Greek mythology, Cassandra has the gift of prophecy, but a curse is cast upon her so that her predictions are no longer believed. What helped Hill deal with the situation was boxing, which he says has taught him to stay calm. “It doesn’t do you any good to be angry when you’re fighting.”

Hill’s reputation was on the line. He learned to be patient, and when pushed, he would wait for his moment to push back. “I would say, ‘excuse me, there are two journalists in this conversation, and only one of us has risked his life to protect sports and it’s not you, so figure out which one of us loves sports more.’”

In short, Hill fought back. “Most people regard themselves as loving sport just because they switch on and watch it on television. I had risked everything for it, so I wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.” Above all, he learned that “you don’t get thank-you notes for revealing corruption.”

What you do get are threats. The most notable came from a European sporting official who told Hill, “I have friends of the kind that you know, and they will fuck you over if you betray us.”

Also, by the time Hill published The Fix, he had racked up over $20,000 of credit card debt to help support his investigation. “I believed that the story was so significant that I couldn’t drop it. It was a massive fi nancial gamble, but I had seen this gang in operation and wasn’t going to let it go.”

FOUR YEARS LATER, HILL CONTINUES to pursue his quest. Today he is bringing his message to Prime Time Sports, the popular Canadian radio program on 590 The FAN.

Twenty minutes before showtime, he waits to be picked up at the corner of Logan and Bain near Toronto’s Greektown, dressed in black slacks and a blue dress shirt. Despite the early-summer heat, he is once again sporting a scarf, this time black with white streaks.

“I’m not sure why they’re having me on twice in one week,” he says, stepping into the silver Lincoln sent by the radio station. “I guess they’re short on hot topics.”

Hill settles into the beige back seat. He sees the complimentary candy, but reaches for his smartphone. “I’m checking to make sure that I’m not missing any major stories,” he says, as his fingers scroll through The New York Times, the Toronto Star and The Guardian. “I don’t want them to call me on as an expert and not know what they’re talking about.”

With minutes to spare, Hill arrives at the studio. The show’s producer meets him at the door and begins going over the talking points. The inscription on the entrance reads, “Through these doors walk the greatest on-air talent in the world SN590 – The FAN.”

The hot topic they’re discussing is the recent announcement that Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister, wants to suspend soccer for two to three years because of allegations of corruption involving more than half of the country’s professional teams. The problem is now systemic, and it’s affecting one of the top leagues in Europe.

Half an hour later, Hill walks out and shakes hands with the hosts, Jeff Blair and John Shannon. Hill has enjoyed the conversation, as well as the jabs at his scarf.

In addition to Italy, there are now police investigations into match-fixing in Turkey, Finland, Singapore, South Korea, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Israel, China, Thailand, Zimbabwe, Australia and Germany.

In September 2012, according to Hill and the Daily Mail in England, Richard Kingson, the former goalkeeper of Ghana’s national team, publicly stated that match-fixers approached him at the 2006 World Cup and offered him $300,000 to let in two goals. While he may not have taken the money, it’s a troubling revelation, as is a recent survey by FIFPro, a world soccer players’ union, in which nearly a quarter of the more than 3,000 eastern and southern European players questioned said that they were aware of match-fixing in their domestic leagues.

The ongoing Bochum trial in Germany is investigating one of the largest instances of corruption in European soccer, involving over 300 games in 10 countries. There is even evidence supporting Hill’s argument that match-fixing is endangering the popularity of the game. Researchers in the United Kingdom investigating Italy’s Calciopoli scandal, which broke in 2006, have seen attendance figures for punished clubs drop by 15 to 16.5 percent in comparison to the non-punished clubs. This research, conducted four years after the scandal, estimates that more than $84 million in attendance revenue has been lost.

Even as Hill leaves the studio of 590 The FAN and re-enters the silver Lincoln, he’s back on his phone. While he has been vindicated, the fixers are still out there working to corrupt the sport he loves. He knows this because even though he’s exposed them, he still has contacts in the Asian gambling world.

Hill puts down his phone in order to explain. “Those guys are gamblers”—he leans forward, his voice dropping as if he’s sharing a secret—“and gamblers are like alcoholics, they are going to betray you at a certain point. They can’t help it. They owe their…they owe their control to something else.”

THE FIRST TIME I MET DECLAN Hill was on a soccer field in 2008. I was playing pickup with friends when he approached, said “Hi, I’m Dec,” and joined in. What’s great about playing with Hill is his self-belief. Players like him make a difference—they’re the ones you try to get the ball to when they’re on your team, and the ones you need to stop when they’re not. Back then, Hill’s book was still months away from publication, and to us he was simply another player, someone who might show up on a Friday to kick the ball around.

Today, The Fix is an international bestseller, published in 17 languages. In the past year, Hill has travelled to Turkey, Antigua, the Caymans and Finland to make presentations on his work. He estimates that since the book came out, he has done over 450 interviews, and with each new match-fixing scandal the phone keeps ringing.

In 2013, Hill will release a book based on his thesis, Greed and Glory: Match-fixing in Professional Football. “It’s about the nuts and bolts of corruption, including, in part, how you actually put a corrupt team together.” He’s also contemplating a sequel to The Fix.

It has now been nearly 13 years since Hill’s meeting in Moscow, and over four since he published The Fix. Amongst his friends, there’s a worry that perhaps he is becoming a “one-note Johnny.” After all, there are only so many ways to keep writing about the same issue.

It should then come as no surprise that Hill is already working on a new project. For now, all that he’ll say is, “It’s on the subject of our times.” He’s ready to clear the stage. “At this moment I’m the world’s expert on match-fixing, and in the next year or two, I’d like to pass the torch.”

The fact that Hill can walk away is the ultimate measure of success. While he wasn’t the first to write about match-fixing in soccer, he went deeper than any other, and through sheer tenacity has taken the story to the tipping point. He has shed enough light on the issue to ensure that it will not disappear. Thanks to Hill, match-fixing is now on the agenda of every major international sports organization, and reporters around the world are now on the story.

While we wait to see what comes next, let’s remember that Hill is only in his 40s and has plenty of stories left to tell. He’s faced his critics and is ready for his next fight. It’s intense work, but as he says, “I used to be an actor. That was much tougher.”

]]>
http://rrj.ca/fixated/feed/ 0
The media diet http://rrj.ca/the-media-diet/ http://rrj.ca/the-media-diet/#respond Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:22:35 +0000 http://rrj.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=2792 The media diet Few shoppers here are in a hurry. It’s a hot, late-August afternoon, and Carrot Common is dappled with shade. Two young women sit outside with organic takeout boxes, their feet sporting charity-chic Toms shoes. To their left, a bulletin board advertises holistic nutritionists and alternative health therapies. To their right, a juice bar churns out murky green detox smoothies and blood-red beet juice. At [...]]]> The media diet

Few shoppers here are in a hurry. It’s a hot, late-August afternoon, and Carrot Common is dappled with shade. Two young women sit outside with organic takeout boxes, their feet sporting charity-chic Toms shoes. To their left, a bulletin board advertises holistic nutritionists and alternative health therapies. To their right, a juice bar churns out murky green detox smoothies and blood-red beet juice. At the back of this eat-well oasis, nestled in the heart of Toronto’s Greektown, is the city’s iconic ultra-healthy grocery store, The Big Carrot. Inside is a new world of food: the carrots are purple, the tea is fermented, and the aisles are stocked with bags of hemp hearts.

On most days, the store buzzes like a swarm of contented bees alighting on their favourite organic agave nectar. The shoppers are diverse: some Lululemon-clad patrons head straight for the dulse granules. Other miracle-food seekers meander the aisles, pausing to identify things like edible bits of “sprouted ancient grains”: a box of kamut, wheat, adzuki, lentil and fenugreek squiggles.

After 10 years of working at the The Big Carrot, store nutritionist Cathy Hayashi is used to buyers’ uncertainty. From noon till 8 p.m., Monday through Thursday, she stands by the entrance, offering new customers guided tours or directions to the latest much-hyped superfood. The media plays a large part in such popularity cycles, Hayashi says. “If Dr. Oz says something,” she explains, “for weeks on end we’ll be hearing about whatever was highlighted by the show.”

Big Carrot shoppers aren’t the only ones lured into stores by the media’s never-ending stream of “breakthrough” reports on healthier eating. In 2008, almost two-thirds of Canadians said they consulted newspapers and magazines for health-related facts—making print media one of the four most-used sources for such information (along with doctors, other health professionals and family/friends), according to non-profit research group Canadian Council on Learning. Surely, some stories deserve that trust; many others do not. And, as ridiculous as certain super-cure stories can be, this on-trend reporting also has the potential to do great harm. “It’s absolutely wrong and irresponsible,” says Toronto dietitian and TV/print journalist Leslie Beck, “to make people think that if they eat blueberries every day, they’re going to reduce their risk of heart disease.”

The health and wellness beat, after all, deals with serious stuff—from diet and exercise regimens to illness treatment and when to see a doctor. All this, as Beck says, requires a particularly careful and balanced approach to providing the tips readers crave. Instead, in many ways health reporting has come to mimic tabloid entertainment: stories on nutrition, fitness and lifestyle are ubiquitous and hard to sift through, which makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction. The result is a cycle of (often inaccurate) “bad for you” and “next big thing” stories that risk discrediting the entire health beat. On top of that, in place of real health help, readers and viewers are left following a potentially harmful “Media Diet” based on miracle cures, fad diets, superfoods and food scares.

In February 2012, cardio-thoracic surgeon and television personality Dr. Oz introduced another superfood, just in time for Valentine’s Day. “I’ve got the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. It’s raspberry ketone,” Dr. Oz began solemnly, fixing TV viewers with a soul-searching stare. He had finally found it: the miracle cure for women who will do anything—anything!—to lose weight. During the segment, guest expert Lisa Lynn (a specialist in metabolic disorders and personal training) provided this vague prescription: “Try 100 milligrams at breakfast,” she said, “and if that doesn’t work, go to 200, try it again at lunch.”

Last April, the Toronto Star ran the story under the headline “Weight loss ‘miracle’ supplement: Dr. Oz extols virtues of raspberry ketone.” The Globe and Mail followed with greater skepticism in June: “Is this supplement a weight-loss miracle?”

Beck hadn’t even heard of raspberry ketone until Dr. Oz pushed it into the headlines. Sitting in her glamorous North York office (a mixture of luxe boutique and spa, lined with books and health products), she throws up her manicured hands at the mere mention of ketones: “I just knocked that to shreds on CTV!”

The method behind the miracle fat cure seems sound. According to Dr. Oz, raspberry ketone regulates adiponectin (which “sounds like a big word,” he added), a protein used by the body to regulate metabolism. Lynn’s recommended daily dose of 100 mg of concentrated ketone (the equivalent amount in 90 pounds of fresh fruit) purported to break up the fat contained in the body’s cells, allowing it to be metabolized more efficiently. There is only one problem, as Beck mentions: “Raspberry ketone has never, ever been tested or studied in humans.”

One of the few raspberry ketone studies involved two groups of mice, which were fed the same high-fat diet. One group received a supplement of raspberry ketone, and these rodents gained slightly less weight than expected. The results are significantly less impressive than the word “miracle” implies. With the endorsement of media darling Dr. Oz, however, these results helped prove the basis for the next miracle cure.

Besides the limited scope of the study, there are other important caveats to consider, such as the amount of ketone the mice were forced to consume each day: a minimum of 0.5 per cent of their total body weight. By comparison, Lynn’s recommended dose of 100 mg would amount to a miniscule 0.0001 per cent of the total body weight of a 75-kilogram woman.

Ketones weren’t the only magic bullets fired in recent years. In June 2011, we heard “A yogurt a day may keep heart disease away” from The Globe and Mail; in August 2012, it was “Goji berries pack an antioxidant punch,” according to CBC News; and in April 2012,The Gazette featured quinoa: “‘The mother grain’ is really a tiny, nutrient-packed seed.” The list of such articles goes on and on. Of course, some of these headlining foods are likely very good for us—but the danger lies in telling the two apart when sensational stories and credible scientific studies are presented on the same platform: our magazines and newspapers. “I don’t know if this whole superfood thing will really ever go away. People want a food to keep them healthy forever,” says Beck. “That’s why that story sells.”

The Superfood club has its VIPs: margarine, chocolate, red wine, coffee and eggs—just to name a few foods under constant scrutiny. When journalists aren’t telling consumers why these foods will kill them, they are busy extolling their virtues. Much of this can be blamed on the bad habit of headline-plucking—emphasizing one small element of a study, without context, as the basis of a story or attention-grabbing headline. Take, for instance, an August 2012 Toronto Sun story about egg yolks, with this fear-inducing headline: “Egg yolks almost as unhealthy as cigarettes: Study.”

The social media backlash was enormous, with egg eaters’ ire directed at both scientists and journalists. “Please ‘NO MORE STUDIES,’” wrote one aggravated online reader, dubbed Slappybeaver. “I am tired of everything being bad for us, then it is good for us, then another study says it is bad. I don’t care anymore I will do whatever I feel like doing.”

The next day, The National Post ran a story tracking the ups and downs of egg coverage over the years: In November 2008, Harvard Medical School research, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, linked a daily egg habit to early deaths. In the same issue, former American Heart Association president Robert Eckel issued a response to the study, stating that eggs were a neutral (neither healthy nor unhealthy) food. In January 2009, University of Alberta scientists discovered that certain proteins in eggs are similar to medications for high blood pressure. Yet, in September 2011, egg-yolk consumption was linked to an increased risk of dying from prostate cancer. Then, in November 2011, the University of Cambridge released a study suggesting that egg whites were a better source of energy than jam.

The Toronto Sun story comparing eggs to cigarettes is based on a study by University of Western Ontario scientists J. David Spence and David Jenkins, titled “Egg Yolk Consumption and Carotid Plaque.” Judged by title alone, the study would be less than exciting to the general population. From a sell perspective, though, everything changes once egg-yolk consumption is compared to the dangers of smoking. As Medical Post clinical editor Terry Murray says, “It’s got a ready-made headline because of the cigarette connection.”

The researchers analyzed data from 1,262 older individuals. Information was divided into three categories: plaque buildup by age, plaque buildup in smokers by “pack-years of smoking” (defined as packs smoked per day multiplied by years smoked) and plaque buildup in egg-yolk eaters by “eggyolk years” (the number of yolks consumed per week multiplied by the number of years consumed). They found that plaque buildup increased linearly with age, but exponentially along egg-yolk years or pack-years. By isolating the correlation between egg-yolk years and plaque buildup, the researchers concluded that egg-yolk consumption was detrimental—meaning egg yolks do accelerate carotid plaque buildup over time, and people at risk of heart disease should avoid them—but also that the connection merited further research, not a nationwide exodus from the egg aisle. The article also stated that some key factors weren’t taken into consideration, such as exercise and waist-to-hip ratio. Despite the researchers’ acknowledgement of the study’s limitations, the media focused on the sensational sell. “[Publishers] want something provocative on page one,” says Murray. “We are not the most angelic, pure of heart, motivated by the desire, solely, to make people’s lives better. We also want to say, ‘Hey, look: I’ve got a good story here, and a million people read it.’”

But will people keep reading it? For all those who read the egg story—and the hundreds of other roller-coaster stories—arguably just as many ignored any useful information the study provided on the effects of eating eggs because they, like Slappybeaver, dismissed the news as another scare story. Like so many other health fad articles, the egg story made headlines for a few short days, then vanished forever.

Even the most routine health reporting is often like a game of broken telephone. The communication of research from scientist to journalist to reader is what reporter Julia Belluz refers to as “knowledge translation”—and there are many places where it can go wrong, even when journalists, editors and publishers aren’t trying to find the sell. Belluz is the writer of the blog Science-ish, a joint project of Maclean’s, The Medical Post, and the McMaster Health Forum. Science-ish functions as a bridge between health research and reporting. In doing so, it challenges the sensationalist headlines that so often make the paper, and holds journalists, policy makers and opinion leaders accountable for their roles in the public’s perception of health reporting. Since the blog launched in the summer of 2011, it has been examining where journalists go wrong. “[We’re] looking at studies that are reported in the media,” says Belluz, “how they are reported, how we end up with the crazy headlines we have, when we get things wrong.”

Part of the trouble comes from the way scientists and journalists communicate about each “breakthrough.” The ups and downs of studies, for instance, often simply reflect science’s pursuit of new discoveries (though they may alarm magazine readers with a newly toxic tub of margarine lurking in their fridges). The answers you might be getting in a study one day aren’t the final answers, says Belluz. The conclusions are really situated within a larger body of research. Unfortunately, many readers are looking for the quick fix—and they don’t want to be told exercise and sensible eating are the best way to get fit, or that there is no easy answer. As Beck says, the real question when it comes to giving sound advice is “How do you make that sexy?”

Belluz isn’t so sure it can be done. “They’re not things that you can buy, so we [media] overcomplicate,” she says. “We’ve overcomplicated all of this messaging about health to the point that people are just genuinely confused about what the best thing to do is.”

Megan Griffith-Greene, in charge of fact-checking at Chatelaine from 2007 to 2010, agrees. While at the magazine, she set out to restructure the way health stories were researched and reported in an effort to avoid the roller-coaster effect of superfoods that heal one minute and harm the next. She says that even in 50- to 150-word health briefs, factual infractions can add up and contribute to a culture where the public no longer trusts the media when it comes to health research.

“I found it very humbling at Chatelaine because you’re reaching millions of Canadians, and millions of Canadians will trust you and will change their lives because of what they read,” she adds. “The potential harm you can do with inappropriate information is very great at mass publications, at women’s publications.”

Like Belluz, Griffith-Greene blames much of the harm factor on a disconnect between journalists and academics. She says many journalists often rely on press releases about studies instead of reading the actual scientific research. For this reason, the guidelines Griffith-Greene set up required that writers read the full study and contact the lead researcher to check that the  magazine brief captured the methodology and conclusion of the research. “There was an appreciation to take the time to ensure we got it right,” says Griffith-Greene. “Academics love to talk about their research. They love to have their research get picked up in print.”

Griffith-Greene cautions that a conversation between researcher and reporter isn’t the cure-all. Statistical illiteracy is rampant in all beat reporting, but especially in health stories, where journalists are presented with figure-heavy abstracts and expected to interpret the results. In other words, just because journalist and scientist are talking to each other, it doesn’t mean they understand each other. “I wish journalism schools would provide, or require, a course on the fundamental reading of statistics,” says Griffith-Greene. “We think that it’s simple math…but statistics can often be really misleading, especially when it comes to things like disease burden, incidence levels, treatment efficacy…”

Belluz puts it another way: “Lifestyle magazines are tough…the stuff that’s peddled to [readers] is total pseudoscience—it’s insanity.” But it doesn’t have to be.

The first organized push to get journalists and researchers talking to each other began with Frankenfood. Starting in 1999, sensationalism swept through the British media. The scare story of the year focused on what’s officially known as genetically modified (GM) food. These crops were designed to be more nutritious, more disease-resistant and better-tasting than their non-modified cousins. A great hope for these super-plants was that they would put an end to world hunger. Instead, GM foods were vilified by the British press and ultimately banned from being grown in the U.K. Scientists, politicians and public figures complained about the unbalanced coverage, insisting that the media was slowing the progress of a powerful disease-fighting tool in the name of a good scare.

Following the GM food coverage, along with similar horror stories about mad cow disease and a supposed correlation between autism and MMR vaccines (immunization against measles, mumps and rubella), the House of Lords decided to examine the state of science and society in Great Britain. One of the resulting recommendations was to set up a new initiative to support and encourage scientists to engage more effectively with science journalists, and vice versa. In 2002, this initiative culminated in the Science Media Centre (SMC).

“The SMC facilitated a much more proactive culture,” says Fiona Fox, SMC’s chief executive. For starters, the centre encouraged scientists to get involved, whether it was making themselves available for interviews or breaking down their research for  journalists to ensure no facts were lost in translation. The idea is to prevent situations like the Frankenfoods fiasco from ever happening again. Fox believes that through the centre, the public can say yes—or no—to new science after an informed debate, and after receiving accurate scientific information from journalists and the SMC’s database of experts. “We will never know how that GM debate would have gone if the best plant scientists in the country…had taken up the opportunity of interviews.”

To get accurate information out to readers, the SMC functions as a middle ground between scientists and journalists. The centre sifts through journals and press releases and flags the stories the media will most likely be interested in—often the ones that arrive at either a cure for or cause of cancer, according to Fox. Researchers then examine the scientific paper and provide journalists with made-for-print feedback on the study, red-flagging issues that the writers may not notice, such as human conclusions being drawn from a study conducted on mice, inadequate sample sizes, or conflicts with the overwhelming evidence of previous studies. They deliver this analysis to the writers and their editors to help them make a more informed decision about the value and significance of the story. SMC researchers will also provide a quote that journalists can insert into the story, should they so choose.

Although Fox agrees that some stories obviously deserve front-page coverage, she says that the big message, really, is: “Science journalists, tell your editor: do not splash this on the front page. This is a lovely study, but it should be on page 15, and preferably copy and paste the quotes we sent you, which are very nicely written, very clear, very accessible, and put them in the article.” She adds, “And every single day that happens in the SMC.”

Health and science communities around the globe have taken notice of the SMC’s success. To date, there are similar centres in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Japan, and plans for new centres in other countries, including the United States.

The Science Media Centre of Canada (SMCC) began to take shape in 2008, the result of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation’s desire to promote a “culture of innovation.” The centre opened its doors two years later, using the British SMC as a model.

SMCC executive director Penny Park, who helped create the Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet, was particularly enthusiastic about joining the centre. She recognized journalists’ desire to cover science stories — as well as their hesitation to delve into the complicated reporting this involved. While Park was at Daily Planet, this hesitation was a recurring theme at meetings she attended with other journalists from several programs owned by CTV. At these meetings, Park and her colleagues would discuss the lineup for the next top stories. Time and time again, stories about climate change, health and technology were brought up, but many were ultimately, reluctantly, dismissed. “I was going ‘Oh my gosh, there’s so much science!’” she says. “I could see that they wanted to do more science but didn’t have the resources. They wanted to cover [science] in more depth.”

Canadians trust scientists, but need to understand what the challenges are for journalists, says Park. Similarly, scientists and journalists needed to come together to forge a network of communication and understanding. She believes that the SMCC champions this cause. Through the centre, science journalists are able to read studies early under publication embargo and engage scientists about their research. Scientists, meanwhile, are exposed to the culture of journalism and situations they don’t encounter in the lab, like the boiling point of an editor or the unstable pressure of an imminent print deadline. The aim is to make scientists start thinking about their research in a way that gets them to communicate it effectively, says Park.

The SMCC takes a multi-faceted approach to providing resources for both journalists and academics. Like the original SMC, the Canadian centre releases studies under embargo to allow journalists time to speak with experts, provides highlights of the latest  findings, and matches writers with researchers. While the SMCC is dedicated to helping all science journalists, it may also serve as a particularly useful tool for the underappreciated general assignment reporters who are often handed health stories.

Park and her colleagues plan on going into newsrooms to conduct boot camps on how these reporters should approach studies and identify the key risks, statistics and weaknesses of the research. They will also teach journalists to avoid sensationalizing one finding in a study. “[We] fine-tune their bullshit detectors, basically,” says Park.

Boot camps and courses for scientists are already taking place at universities. The media awareness skills taught at these sessions are intended to facilitate communication between scientists and journalists, minimizing the possibility of embarrassing mistakes in their stories. On the flip side, the SMCC plans to offer a formal Science 101 course to journalists to teach them basic scientific literacy.

The health beat is sick, but courses like these, watchdog blogs and the efforts of individual editors to improve the credibility of their health coverage will lead to more balanced reporting.

“We really do hope this attitude that says ‘we love a good scare story’ disappears,” says Fox. “We are [not] asking the media to write boringly. There’s enough. There’s enough ‘exciting’ happening in science for there to be hundreds of front pages on science stories—but just written accurately.”

]]>
http://rrj.ca/the-media-diet/feed/ 0