Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy has now been in an Egyptian jail for 319 days. He was arrested along with fellow Al Jazeera reporters Baher Mohamed and Peter Greste in December 2013, under trumped up charges of spreading false news and aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed organization. All three are now sitting in prison just for doing their jobs—reporting the news. Famhy’s sentence is seven years.

The prison sentences have been publicly condemned by many, including the White House, the European Union and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). Absent from that list is Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The initial outcry from journalists and the public was also loud. A petition created by CJFE obtained nearly 11,000 signatures, and it’s estimated over 200,000 people have signed similar petitions worldwide. February 27, 2013 saw a day of global protests calling for their release. A slew of articles, blogs and videos were published, and the hashtag #FreeAJStaff hit 2 billion impressions by the end of October.

Inevitably, as months wore on, Fahmy and the other journalists were pushed from the headlines. When there’s an update, such as Fahmy’s upcoming opportunity to appeal on January 1, his name pops back up. But aside from that, Fahmy’s situation is forgotten by many. His family’s Go Fund Me campaign has raised $31,715 of their $350,000 goal.

Elizabeth Renzetti writes that the worst thing we can do is forget dissidents, because then we’re doing their captors’ work for them. It’s our job as journalists to keep the public caring and motivated to try to help Fahmy. But what does that even mean? There were weeks of strong, public outrage. The #FreeAJStaff hashtag is still mentioned dozens of times a day. Yet nothing has changed. It’s difficult to justify making Fahmy’s story a lead one when not much is new. It’s easy to feel powerless.

Canadians Tarek Loubani and John Greyson were detained in Egypt for 50 days in 2013. They write that only Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird can get prisoners like them and Fahmy released, but they won’t do it “without the pressure of Canadian citizens everywhere.”

Peter Mckenna, a professor and chair of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island, points out that securing the release of a prisoner in the Egyptian legal is a “tall order,” especially given Canada’s overtly pro-Israeli policies. He details a speech given by former prime minister Joe Clark, who said in a situation like this, the worst thing to do is to harshly criticize publicly the government that can decide the prisoner’s fate. Clark suggests the best practice is to work quietly under the radar.

Mckenna’s bottom line: there’s no magic wand that can be waved here. Still, we need to continue to send the message that journalism is not a crime, and fabricated accusations and sham trials should not be tolerated: not by journalists, not by the public and not by our government.

Do you have a topic you want covered on here? Email the blog editor. While you’re here, be sure to follow the Review and its masthead on Twitter. 

Thanks for Jumilla for the feature photo. 

Media coverage of the Toronto event came close to saturation level, with local and national television, radio and newspaper outlets out in force. Like most of the coverage, the Toronto Star‘s article focused heavily on the heroics involved. In the page A3 colour picture it ran of Adams climbing the tower, he stares intently at his hands, one gripping the railing, the other gripping a cane to propel him backward and upward. His lips are pursed in determination. The story’s lead begins breathlessly: “When Jeff Adams emerged, flush-faced and still sweating from his climb to the top of the stairwell at the CN Tower, the crowd was already clapping.”

Buried near the end of the piece is the answer to the question why: a few years earlier, Adams had been ejected from a downtown Toronto bar with one flight of stairs – he had been told he was a fire hazard. In response, he decided to climb the tower for charity, donating the money raised to educate schoolchildren about the importance of normalcy for everyone and a barrier-free society. Key information. Yet the why of the story reads tacked on, an afterthought. In the inverted pyramid style of newspaper writing, this was clearly the dispensable part of the article.

Despite the attention Adams garnered, media coverage of disabled issues is paltry at best. When it does appear, misguided emphasis and glorification of the individual are the norm. Maybe that’s not surprising, considering the matter of representation in the media itself. At a time when visible minorities and women have established themselves in the profession, the number of disabled journalists remains very low.

Just how paltry is the coverage? Even with a ready-made news hook it can be virtually non-existent. Last year, in the eight days preceding December 3 – the United Nations International Day of Disabled Persons – there wasn’t a single story in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail or the National Post that mentioned the event. On November 29, the Star ran a 140-word story about illegal parking in disabled spots. The next day, the regular disabilities column appeared in the Star‘s Saturday Life section; the Post had an A-section 386-word story on the same day about a fatal scalding of a disabled man.

On December 3 itself, the Globe carried a 236-word story about a Special Olympics breakfast and numerous activities to take place the next day. The Star ran a 335-word statistics story entitled “3.4 Million Adult Canadians Report Some Disability,” with the deck “Problems Range from Aching Back to Arthritis.” The Postcarried a 1,250-word, page-one article on an accident that might leave former British Columbia premier Mike Harcourt disabled.

So why is the coverage of issues that directly affect almost 13 per cent of Canadians (more than 3.5 million people) so abysmal? “It’s just not a sexy topic,” sighs David Onley. Onley is best known as an anchor for CablePulse24 and Citytv in Toronto. He also happens to be a survivor of polio and is the only prominent Canadian anchor with a physical disability – he walks with a cane. Onley points out the ongoing problems with transportation, unemployment, discrimination and abuse. “They are serious problems that are completely ignored. Alleged racial profiling at the Toronto Police was a sexy topic. Princess Diana’s butler was a sexy, sexy story. And that’s the way the media works.”

But do all stories have to be sexy? “We are storytellers,” says Ing Wong-Ward, a producer at CBC Radio’sMetro Morning in Toronto, and a wheelchair user. “It can be interesting and provocative without being sexy. The media put limits on themselves and cut out sections of their audience by approaching it that way.” She cites coverage of actor Christopher Reeve as a clear example of how journalists approach disability all wrong. “When he said, ‘I’m going to walk again,’ that was all they paid attention to. Why are we so obsessed with curing? It sets up the false notion that disabled persons have to be fixed and want to be fixed.” Wong-Ward questions why there isn’t more analysis. Why didn’t reporters ask Reeve about accessibility, for instance, or unemployment?

Stereotypes are common. “The hero stereotype is extremely dangerous. It means, as a disabled person, you have to be a super-high achiever to get noticed,” she explains. “Journalists buy into the medical assumption that there is something wrong with disabled persons, and that we need to be fixed. The assumption that journalists are neutral is a crock. We are a reflection of society. In society, there’s a lack of awareness about disability. It’s not tragic to be a disabled person. It’s simply a part of my life.”

Stereotypes of persons with disabilities emerge again and again in the media, and the coverage generally presents it two ways: you’re either a hero – consider Terry Fox – or you deserve pity or charity. While no article would dare make pity a central theme, many stories are flavoured with it.

For instance, when hydro prices in Ontario soared this past fall, the Star ran a story on October 29 about a Hamilton single mother who could not pay the bills. The piece emphasized that she had a disabled child who required a ventilator to breathe. The child’s grandfather was described as sending “a desperate plea” to the Ontario legislature. Language, too, reveals pity: “confined to a wheelchair” is still everyday terminology. As Wong-Ward puts it, “It’s just as easy for the disabled to accept the stereotypes when we are presented with them again and again.”

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It’s Wednesday afternoon and David Onley is hosting CP24’s weekly hour-long technology show Homepage. He and his guests sit across the table from each other in Citytv’s open-environment set. Within an hour they’ll cover topics as varied as tablet computers and budgeting software. They face a screen that shows the software being discussed.

Like any good anchor, Onley is a skilled interviewer. He asks the important questions and absorbs the answers. With his guests he is relaxed and amiable, as if he’s talking to old friends. Unless you caught him in the ’80s as City’s main weatherman, you might not know he has a disability. Back then, the cameraman would include Onley’s entire body in its frame, showing him holding onto his cane with one hand for balance. Nowadays, the camera frames his face and upper body, focusing not on his disability, but on his abilities to keep viewers tuned in.

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The shortcomings in how disability issues are covered appear closely linked to the dearth of disabled journalists, who would be more likely to handle the subject in a relevant manner. This is where “normalization,” as Jeff Adams called it, enters the media landscape. If it’s not normal to see disabled journalists on TV or to know of them working in radio or print, disabled youths won’t readily view journalism as a viable employment option.

“I know the traditional answer is that there aren’t enough qualified people enrolling in radio and television arts or journalism courses,” says Onley, “but is that an excuse? Or is it that there are not enough people applying to these positions because they don’t see any on TV? I always knew I wanted to be a broadcaster on television since I was 11, but I turned first to radio because I didn’t see anyone with a disability on TV.”

Finding the root of the shortage isn’t easy. Across the nation, on paper, prospects for employment appear to be fair.

Quebecor World is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome and encourage diversity.

Bell Globemedia is dedicated to equity in the workplace.

The Employment Equity Office exists to facilitate recruiting, integration and promotion of women, members of visible minority groups, aboriginal people and people with disabilities, so that the CBC can achieve a workforce which reflects the diversity of Canadian society.

At a dozen different media outlets across the country, the answer is much the same: “We are an equal opportunity employer.”

Ron Nowell, executive editor at the Calgary Herald, says, “We hire consistently with what the universal standards are. We look at every application, and it makes no difference to us whether a person is handicapped or not.” Explaining that the Herald does not currently employ any disabled staff in the newsroom, Nowell says the Herald has not received an application from a person with a disability – as far as he knows.

At the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, one of the few independent papers left in Canada, human resources assistant Gina Gallant says, “An applicant’s disabilities wouldn’t matter. There is a woman here with a walking impairment and another staff member with a heart problem.” Jenny Pruegger at Canadian Living‘s human resources department says that affirmative action is not incorporated into the publisher’s policy, but it is something the magazine practices. “It’s a matter of the best person for the job.” At the National Post, Sharlene Kanhai, recruitment development specialist says, “My hiring practice is to hire the best candidate. We have a couple of people in wheelchairs in editorial.” Roy Wood, executive editor of the Edmonton Journal, says, “It’s not an issue if a person has a disability. The issue is his or her abilities. We don’t have a policy seeking to hire those with disabilities or an affirmative action program, but we don’t dismiss people from consideration because of a disability. We do have a columnist in features who has been with us for 15 years, and he is a wheelchair user.” Cathy Foti, human resources manager at CTV, says that the station actively places job postings with diversity groups as well as with post-secondary institutes and on its website.

At Rogers Media (publisher of Maclean’s, Chatelaine and Canadian Business, among others), an unidentified woman in human resources curtly says, “We are equal opportunity employers.”

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So from all appearances, Canadian media are more than willing to hire any person with the correct qualifications. There’s just one complicating factor. As Wong-Ward says, “‘The best person for the job’ is a loaded term. It could mean ‘who fits in’ or ‘who doesn’t create problems.’ The playing field should be equal, but unfortunately there are subjective qualities that are brought into the game.” Wong-Ward recalls an experience she had when looking for a job in 2000. She called The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Television to inquire about a position. The female senior producer that Wong-Ward spoke to was enthused and asked her to come by for a chat. Before the phone conversation was over, Wong-Ward asked casually if the offices were accessible and was told, “Well, no.” Before the job opportunity could ever begin, it ended.

“You’d think a subsidiary of The Globe and Mail would have the funding to be accessible, but apparently not,” Wong-Ward sighs. “When you start pointing this out to the people who hire, you run up against people’s baggage. ‘Yes, I’m an equitable employer. Just because I don’t have a disabled member of staff doesn’t make me a bad person!’ Until we get over that guilt, we’re not going to move on this issue.”

We all know the drill. Entry-level journalism jobs are often grunt work, as Wong-Ward puts it: running upstairs to make copies, filing or chasing ambulances. “I know I’m not an ambulance chaser, but there has to be an equal playing field. Accommodation does not make you special or unique. Everyone needs accommodation. It means so many things. If you’re a single mom who has to go to daycare at five to pick up your kids, that’s an accommodation. If you’re an observant Jew, chances are you’re going to have to leave early on Fridays during the winter for sundown. Compromises are for everyone, and I am no different.”

Overall, unemployment is huge in the disabled community. The rate of unemployment of persons with disabilities was 43.7 per cent in 1991, according to Human Resources Development Canada. HRDC’s December 2002 report shows that disability employment rates slid even further. By 1996, 41 per cent of men with disabilities were employed, compared to 47 per cent in 1991. Thirty-two per cent of women with disabilities were employed in 1996, compared to 35 per cent in 1991. What’s more, the December report states that “the 1996 census found that persons with disabilities are only half as likely to be employed as those without disabilities.” Worse still, they are “at a disadvantage because of their disabilities: even with the same level of education, they are 20% less likely to be employed than those with no disability.”

Catherine Frazee, co-founder of the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University and former chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, says that in the media, employers blaming school recruitment – and vice versa – is a circular path that has to end. She herself wanted to study journalism at Carleton University in the 1970s; the school’s underground tunnels made getting around ideal, and she had also received a scholarship when she applied. “When I was out seeking advice and direction, I arranged to meet with a member of the journalism faculty. Candidly she said, ‘So much of journalism involves getting to the scene. You’re going to be sent out on assignment to cover something and you’ve got to be there in 45 minutes. For someone with restricted mobility, I think this would be extremely difficult for you. If your primary interest is writing, why don’t you major in English.’ I was completely discouraged, and indeed, I did not pursue a degree in journalism. I did what she suggested.”

While the faculty member had some valid points, mainly they pertain to hard reporting for newspapers. In other areas of the profession, disabilities seem irrelevant, as Talia Maze says. Maze, currently a journalism student at Ryerson, has had a condition called short chain acid deficiency since birth, which results in general muscle weakness. She explains that she chose her field of study largely because of its practicality. “You can be a successful journalist without having to do much heavy-duty physical work. For the most part, it involves the mind more than the body. I have always enjoyed writing and can type as well as anybody else. Interviews can be done by phone when accessibility keeps me from getting to a person. Compared to other professions, journalism does not have many barriers to overcome.” Maze chose Ryerson because it was close to home and all the buildings have been accessible since the early ’90s.

Wong-Ward, who began journalism school at Ryerson in 1990, faced a more difficult situation. During her first two years, the journalism school building was not accessible. She would have to go to Jorgenson Hall, Ryerson’s main building, which had access, and phone her professors to come meet her for a cup of coffee. “How intimidating is that, especially in your first year? It was terrifying.” In her third year, the journalism school became accessible, and finally, in 1992, her final year, the Rogers Communications Centre was completed. “But I had to fight for automatic entry doors,” she adds. “My naïveté must have helped me – I never really contemplated if I couldn’t physically get into school, how was I ever going to get a job?”

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It’s 10 A.M. and Barbara Turnbull arrives at her desk at the Toronto Star. Her chair, controlled by her head motions, lets her enter the building and take the elevator to the newsroom floor and finally to her desk. As co-workers pass by, she asks one of them to aid her with putting on her telephone headset, hooking up her tape recorder and setting up a glass of water with a straw. Later, after she’s been assigned the stories she will research and write, she calls her sources. She uses a mouth stick that enables her to type, dial the phone, and press record on her modified recorder. Co-workers frequently ask her if she needs a refill of water – or anything at all. “No, it’s not in their job description,” she writes in her autobiography, “but I have never had any indication that anyone minds.”

Turnbull has been a quadriplegic since she was shot in a robbery in 1983. Her biggest career obstacle turned out to be applying to journalism school in the first place. In the ’80s, says Turnbull, there was less of an expectation that a disabled person would find an area of interest to study. “The focus was that if you’ve got anything wrong with you, anything different, whether mental, developmental or physical, you’re going to go into social work. I was pushed that way. I had to appeal to my insurance company to attend journalism school because, according to them, I had not shown an aptitude for it. Well, I hadn’t shown an aptitude for anything! But I guarantee if I had said social work I wouldn’t have had a hesitation, and I wouldn’t have had to appeal.” She won her appeal, and studied journalism at Arizona State University.

The most common concessions disabled students require are alternative tests. For students studying in Ontario, the Ontario Student Assistance Program offers a bursary for students with disabilities for funding of specific items, which could be anything from tutoring to specialized equipment. Similarly, at every major post-secondary school across Canada, accessibility issues are taken seriously and accommodations made.

Still, employment falls way short, and has even deteriorated, according to HRDC. No wonder that there’s little satisfaction with the 2001 Ontarians with Disabilities Act. It has no enforcement mechanism for any part of society, public or private sector, to mandate accommodation. It simply asks organizations to make a plan, but does not make them accountable for implementation. “They might as well have not passed anything,” says Turnbull.

And at the national level, there are no government policies that encompass both the private and public sector. In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 enforces a civil rights guarantee for persons with disabilities in both the private and public sector. “If there were any other minority group in our society that had this rate of unemployment, there’d be rioting in the streets,” says David Onley. When he talks to a group, he likes to remind them that they are but one accident away from disability. And that, if for no other reason, is why we should care about these issues.

The common belief among disability advocates is that this is the new civil rights movement. “But it’s a catch-22,” says Wong-Ward. On one hand, it’s hard for the disabled community to be galvanized into organizing without having seen their issues covered properly in the media. On the other hand, the media may not pay attention to the issue because the community is not yelling loudly enough to be heard. Adding to that, Frazee says, “The medical paradigm is so strong, it takes a great deal of time and intellectual and political work to help people give up that idea that my problem is that I can’t walk. People need to understand the idea that my problem is built on the assumption that everybody can walk. The media just buys into that majority bias.”

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I meet Wong-Ward at her downtown condo, and her husband answers the door. As I take off my shoes, she welcomes me and quickly leads the way, steering her chair into the kitchen. Casually dressed in a black sweater and jeans, her black hair is chin-length, framing her face; dark lipstick accentuates her mouth. She’s forgiving of my tape recorder that won’t work, and she brings me a pad of paper to take notes, ripping out pages for me to use. Only rarely does she take her eyes off my pen or me. She allows time for my hand to catch up with her words. Her hands play with the pieces of ripped notepaper while we talk for three hours. Her frustration makes confetti out of the scraps of paper, and her voice often rises heatedly about the issues that affected her entire life.

While Wong-Ward is glad to be at the CBC, especially if it means that her perspective can add diversity toMetro Morning, she has no illusions that change will come quickly or easily. Her thoughts return to Christopher Reeve. “We all want Superman to walk again. We just don’t want to know about his everyday reality,” she says, looking me straight in the eye. “So how do you move the mindset?”

When the series was published, the lead story contained a paragraph that read, “The actual number of AIDS deaths is difficult to determine. But it appears priests are dying of AIDS at a rate of at least four times that of the general U.S. population, according to estimates from medical experts and priests and an analysis of health statistics.”

Controversy followed. A number of critics and colleagues felt that what The Kansas City Star published was not accurate journalism. The first grievance can be found in an article written by Columbus Dispatch reporter Jennifer Halperin, who described the above statistic as misleading. Mentioned in her article is a senior analyst with the Statistical Assessment Service in Washington, Iain Murray, who pointed out that the article looks as if it says one thing but upon further scrutiny says quite another.

He and other critics called the comparison between priests and the general public invalid. “Priests are adult men,” Murray told Halperin. “The general population includes women and children, and thus is much less likely to be infected with HIV.” Women are said to account for only 20 per cent of new AIDS cases and children make up a relatively small percentage of AIDS victims. “By some calculations the AIDS death rate of adult males is about 4 per 10,000-about the same as the death rate among priests, and four times as high as the general population,” continued Murray.

The Star fought back, quoting an AIDS expert who deemed the comparison to be common and legitimate, also pointing out that the series also made the comparison between priests and all adult males. But Halperin wrote, “Not all reprints in other newspapers included that element.” Also, the comparison between priests and adult males was not published in the second paragraph of the lead story; the comparison between priests and the general public was.

The second grievance concerned the Star‘s survey of 3,000 priests. Only 801 of the 3,000 responded, a number many critics deem unrepresentative. Also, because the poll was anonymous, it is difficult to ascertain where the responses came from, and again if it was representative. The poll, although meant to add credibility to the series, did the opposite.

In an Editor & Publisher magazine article five weeks later, Star editor Mark Zieman was quoted as saying, “We had the story reported at the time we decided to do the poll. But we felt the poll would lend more credibility. We believed we would be criticized for being too anecdotal, not scientific enough. We learned a big lesson. This has been a cautionary tale.”

Numbers saturate every page of our newspapers and magazines, and at times act as the cornerstones of good reporting. They need to be given the same consideration that words do, and this just isn’t happening. Journalists build their stories around facts and statistics, assuming that they’re correct. “There is something so magical about numbers,” says Don Gibb, a reporting instructor at Ryerson University in Toronto. “You come back with numbers and just toss them into a story, or even better than that you toss them into a quote, and somehow that gives it authenticity.” But the result can be the opposite: numerical inaccuracies threaten the credibility of writers and in turn the publications they write for. “There are continual problems with the way reporters handle basic math, everything from issues as simple as percentages to probability theory and news accounts. It’s endemic,” says Jack Hart, managing editor of The Oregonian, a daily paper in Portland, Oregon.

Fear of math pervades the industry and as a result numbers aren’t being questioned. Even more alarming is the fact that numeracy isn’t even being considered by aspiring journalists. In his 1995 Editor & Publisherarticle “Young Journalists Are Terrified by Numbers,” Melvin Mencher, professor emeritus of journalism at Columbia University, wrote that a group of Japanese sixth graders gave more correct answers on a math test than did applicants to the university’s prestigious journalism school.

Innumeracy in journalism is not a new phenomenon. In 1936, Mitchell V. Charnley wrote in Journalism Quarterly about his discovery of habitual numerical errors in newspapers. Almost 70 years later, inaccuracies continue to plague the pages of our dailies.

Numeracy – an acquaintance with the basic principles of mathematics – is not required to enter the industry, nor is it required to enter most journalism schools. As a result, while journalists may generally be good writers, they are generally weak mathematicians.

Consider Christopher “Chip” Scanlan, of the Poynter Institute, “a school dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders,” in St. Petersburg, Florida. When you read his chapter on numbers and the novice journalist in Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century, you wouldn’t know that Scanlan is math-challenged, except for the fact that he tells you. You wouldn’t know that in his newsroom days he kept the back of a calculator package in his desk drawer because it had instructions for calculating percentages, or that he almost declined my interview, wanting to refer me to a better source. Scanlan knew that he had to include a chapter about numbers in a textbook for journalism students, but writing the chapter failed to give even Scanlan himself confidence with numbers. Instead it gave him confidence regarding where to find information about numbers. He describes the result as “the expanded version of the back of the calculator package.”

While many journalists fear and dislike math, they love a good statistic. As Scanlan says, numbers “come kind of cloaked with this authority and if it’s a really sexy number then journalists love dropping it in there.” He offers the example of the widely used statistic declaring that the average child watches 100,000 acts of violence on television by the time he finishes elementary school – a stat he thinks he may have used himself. He emphasizes the need for reporters to ask why they like that number. “Do you like that number because it fits your preconception, or are you looking at the number and saying, ‘Okay, let me do the math here’?” The statistic originates with a study done by the American Psychological Association, and it is an estimate based on the average American child watching 28 hours of television a week.

A number is not by nature automatically a fact. Obvious mistakes get past reporters and copy editors purely because they aren’t looked at critically. Don Sellar, who runs the Bureau of Accuracy at the Toronto Star, mentioned an article in which the Canadian Press misstated the losses for the wireless firm Look Communications Inc. in the third quarter of 2001. The figure printed was $103,091; the company’s actual net loss was $103 million. The mistake may seem trivial, but it involves powers of 10, understating the loss by over $100 million-a mistake stockholders would deem anything but trivial.

There are obvious mistakes like this one, where percentages are calculated incorrectly or zeros are dropped from a number, but there are also subtle mistakes, which are even more dangerous. These mistakes involve the interpretation of numbers and affect a reporter’s control over a story. Consider this line: “Ottawa estimates up to 16,000 Canadians die prematurely each year from pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.” This appeared in a Toronto Star article concerning the Kyoto Protocol. Contrary to the article’s assertion, the Canadian Health Coalition statement being quoted made no direct claim that all 16,000 lives could be saved if Canada ratifies the agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions by one-third. A diligent reader informed theStar of the error and a correction followed, but the mistake demonstrates the danger of misinterpreting statistics. Credibility is jeopardized and the entire angle of a story can change.

Information is the heartbeat of journalism, and sources are the blood. Journalists rely on the information sources provide in order to do their jobs. But sources can have their own agendas.

By blindly accepting numbers, journalists may be forfeiting control over their stories to those agendas. “I think reporters are easily snowballed because they’re not comfortable with the idiom,” says The Oregonian‘s Jack Hart. “It’s like trying to order food in a different language, and they’re just happy if something edible comes along.” Usually something edible does comes along, but that doesn’t mean it’s what was ordered. Numbers shouldn’t get through the gate unchecked.

A reporter must understand what the numbers in a story mean before even attempting to explain them to readers. A major inhibitor of this is the comparison of apples to oranges. Comparing annual figures to semi-annual figures, for example, is hardly insightful. An article in the Toronto Star last November about gang violence said that Toronto police laid 4,165 charges for illegal possession of a firearm in 2001, up from 3,565 in 1997. The article also cited a 1996 figure of 809 charges, suggesting a major increase from 1996 to 2001. The 1996 statistic was accurate, but it only represented part of the year.

Many articles about innumeracy in the industry have surfaced over the last couple of years and heightened awareness, but few yield concrete solutions to the problem. Education is critical, but involves time, initiative and money. In-house training programs are surfacing, but not in every newsroom.The Toronto Star, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and The Oregonian are among those that offer numeracy courses. The St. Petersburg Times in Florida has even implemented a three-phase math-training program.

Ryerson’s Don Gibb wishes there were numeracy police in the newsrooms. “There is always the style person who says, ‘That’s not the way we write daycare. Day care we write as two words, not one word.’ There has always been that person there and there’s always that person who has a fine eye for syntax but I’ve never met anyone who billed himself or herself as a numeracy expert.”

Using outside experts is another solution. University of Toronto mathematics professor Ed Barbeau believes that every newsroom should have a Rolodex of statisticians they trust and can consult. One of his colleagues has been called in by news stations at election time to help deliver coverage of the election race as votes come in. Barbeau also recommends having a statistician come into the classroom or newsroom to talk about how stats can be manipulated. Experts – or even math-proficient colleagues – can act as checks and balances.

On their way to the newsroom, some journalists spend a few years at journalism school. Unfortunately, they aren’t likely to be any more adept with numbers than those already in the business. Although math content in curriculums is increasing at university-level journalism schools in Canada, it’s still not pervasive. Almost all Canadian journalism schools include some sort of math training in their reporting courses, but the concentration varies. The University of Regina is the only one that offers an entire journalism-related math course. Concordia University in Montreal and Ryerson University in Toronto are the only schools that offer a course designed to teach students how to find and analyze information using digital technology.

Several schools also have specific beat-related courses that address numeracy issues. But this is a bit idealistic considering journalists are almost never assigned to their desired beat upon entering the newsroom. Also, those who don’t specialize will still face numbers daily.

The nonexistence of journalism-related math courses isn’t a result of apathetic curriculum committees; it’s more an issue of budgets and balance. It’s not that directors of journalism schools don’t care about numeracy-they actually take it very seriously. It’s that they care more about other things. To add a course you have to drop a course, and most schools aren’t willing to do that. “We don’t believe there is a journalism requirement we would be prepared to drop to add such a course, and we believe that the balance of academic credits is equally important to our students’ education,” says Stephen Kimber, director of journalism at University of King’s College in Halifax. Unless innumeracy in journalism acquires a larger profile, journalism-related math courses will continue to take a back seat to other interests.

Those who are deprived of math lessons in newsrooms or classrooms can certainly learn a few from the staff at the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, who broke a major story simply by taking a closer look at the numbers.

When Record editor-in-chief Lynn Haddrall saw the interest rate of a city park financing agreement, she saw two reasons to launch an investigation. The first: her need to know how the City of Waterloo got such a beneficial arrangement, while other municipalities weren’t enjoying the same good fortune. And the second: her need to know if this deal was in fact too good to be true.

The City of Waterloo joined forces with MFP Financial Services Ltd. of Mississauga to finance the building of a large sports complex called Rim Park. Waterloo said it was repaying the loan over 30 years at an interest rate of approximately 4.7 per cent – two per cent less than the usual rates for this type of loan. Haddrall called in Kevin Crowley-then a business reporter, now the paper’s business editor – to investigate. After unsatisfactory interviews with city officials, Crowley decided to try his hand at calculating the costs of the park himself. The results he came up with were nearly double those given to him by the city.

Crowley knew his way around financial statements. He had taken the Canadian Securities Course-a course for aspiring stockbrokers-at the suggestion of a friend who billed it as great for investigative journalism. Though Crowley calls the course a “confidence booster,” he still didn’t feel comfortable enough to run with his own numbers. He decided to pursue a more tangible angle-the tax breaks in the deal, which conflicted with federal tax laws. A few weeks later, he put everything on hold to take a vacation with his family.

It was shortly before lunch about 12 days later and Crowley had just come in from the beach in Gabriola Island, B.C., where he was vacationing, when his father-in-law told him to call the paper right away. His editor was inquiring about the reliability of a tip he had received claiming that actual costs of the park were twice what city officials had thought. Having done similar calculations himself, Crowley confirmed that it was a possibility. Just like that, he and The Record staff uncovered one of Canada’s largest municipal-government money scandals.

The interest rate of approximately 4.7 per cent turned out to be closer to nine per cent in reality. The actual costs of the park were about $227.7 million, more than double the original estimate of $112.9 million. Waterloo city officials had signed contracts that they didn’t understand and taxpayers almost had to pay the price. The Record published a series of articles detailing the scandal, for which it received the 2001 Michener Award for public service journalism. Since then, Waterloo has reached an out-of-court settlement said to save taxpayers $82 million, a judicial inquiry is currently underway, and city treasurer John Ford has resigned.

Following the scandal in Waterloo, several other MFP clients decided to take a closer look at their deals. Brock University has reached a settlement with the company said to save the school millions of dollars. The municipal governments of Toronto and Hamilton, county officials in Windsor and Essex County, and the Union Water System near Leamington have all filed their own suits against MFP, and an inquiry is also underway in Toronto.

Meanwhile, the Ontario government is developing regulations to guard taxpayers from similar deals, and two finance officials in Windsor and a technology manager in Toronto have lost their jobs. The catalyst that set this all in motion: an editor who looked at the numbers and asked, “Does this make sense?”

Haddrall doesn’t think she learned how to be skeptical; she thinks she was born that way. “I think for some journalists you’re always just always asking, ‘Well, why? Well, why?’ and ‘Show me, show me.'” She urges journalists to never stop asking questions. Especially when it comes to numbers.