On page 20 last November 22, The Toronto Star admitted it had lost. The people of Canada had voted against it, had “spoken convincingly.” An editorial, a quietly disappointed concession speech, signaled the end of the paper’s three-year fight to undo the free trade initiative. It was an emotional fight, one in which the Star was called “a propaganda machine” or simply passed off as a collection of “liars” for its vigorous expression of editorial opinion that washed onto its news pages and colored its coverage day after day.

The Star wasn’t alone in its opposition to the deal, but it had very little company among major dailies in Canada. And it was the only one to be criticized so loudly and so angrily by so many different people. None was louder than Simon Reisman, Canada’s principal negotiator in the 1987 free trade talks in Washington. On his way into ,a bargaining session, Reisman ‘paused on the steps of the building he was about to enter and screamed down at a reporter who had asked him a simple question.

“I was the one being screamed at,” says Bob Hepburn, the Star’s Washington correspondent. He had just asked Reisman if rumors were true that the 1965 Auto Pact was on the table. “Rather than answering the question,” Hepburn says, “he blew up and charged me with being-what the heck was the phrase? -oh, a hack and that The Toronto Star was nothing but a rag, and so on and so on”

And so, on to McGill University last November where Reisman attacked the Star again. Both it and The Montreal Gazette, he told an audience of students, were simply lying about the nature of his free trade deal. But outside of Reisman’s swaggering assaults, neither the Gazette nor The Edmonton Journal-both opponents of the deal-were so widely accused of being unbalanced or unfair in their news coverage as the Star was. Mel Morris, managing editor of the Gazette, says his paper attracted relatively little criticism because it was not as relentless in its handling of the subject: “[The Star] gave rather prominent play to anything that cast a bad light on free trade.” For its part, the Gazette flew in the face of its own editorial board and, on November 19, ran a front-page editorial by its publisher, Dark Davey, supporting the free trade deal and urging its readers to vote Conservative.

But the Star, a fat high-profile paper with the largest circulation in the country, took no such backward step. And so it became the obvious target. Even The New York Times took a shot. A Times article, which appeared last November 17, defined the problem this way: “What has differentiated the Star’s coverage has been its habit, acknowledged by its editors, of giving far more prominence on its news pages to the case against the trade pact than to the case for it.”

In other words, the Star didn’t provide editorial balance, which has long been a tenet of responsible journalism. The “Statement of Principles’1. by the Canadian Daily Newspaper Publishers Association says a paper must be comprehensive, accurate and fair, and that “fairness requires a balanced presentation of the relevant facts in a news report, and of all substantial opinion in a matter of controversy. It precludes distortion of meaning by over- or under emphasis.”

On both of those counts, the Star’s lopsided coverage was obviously unfair. But it brought into question the whole notion of balance as a guarantee of fairness. Has balance become an outdated concept that should be replaced by a larger meaning of the word? Stuart Adam, director of the Centre for Mass Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, thinks balance is “not exactly the full standard,” and that there is a place for certain forms of advocacy “but not at the expense of understanding. “

The Star is not afraid to advocate, and it does so openly, proudly. Since the time of “Holy Joe” Atkinson-founding owner and editor of the Star and the man who set it on the road to becoming perhaps the most powerful newspaper in Canada -it has followed Atkinson’s own liberal, nationalist philosophy. Since then it has crusaded for principle, has voiced the concerns of those without voices, the ones conventionally referred to as “the common people.”

Ross Harkness, author of J.E. Atkinson of The Star, said in his book: “The newspaper stood for certain things and it stood for them in every column from the weather on page one to the Eaton’s advertisements on the back page. Star reporters always found the evidence to support a crusade.”
The Star itself admits this. It is, in fact, a great source of pride for the paper. According to the same New York Times article, Beland Honderich, the Star’s recently retired publisher, “considered it his duty to ensure loyalty to the credo established by Joseph Atkinson.” The article quoted Honderich as saying that “whether it’s overt or not, I think newspapers have a bias, and I think it’s better that people should know it,” acknowledging that the Star’s crusade against the free trade initiative had “affected its news coverage.”

A crusade is wonderful if one happens to support the side being fought for. But outside of such personal interest, the question exists whether unabashedly unbalanced news coverage is in the best interests of the Star’s readers.

At least one of them hardly thought so. Kean Bhatacharya, a Toronto chartered accountant who at the time was not affiliated with any institution other than himself, spent four months and hundreds of hours researching the Star’s portrayal of free trade. After assessing and classifying six months’ worth of coverage, he found that from October 6, 1987 to March 31, 1988, 51 percent of the Star’s news stories focused on opposition to the deal or on negative aspects of it. Only 20 percent featured a pro-free trade element, and 20 percent didn’t take sides. He filed a complaint with the Ontario Press Council in June 1988, and after several delays, it was heard last February 22. The council dismissed Bhatacharya’s complaint; it said his findings didn’t prove the Star’s coverage was unfair.

Ian Urquhart, managing editor of the Star, has always felt that no unfairness could be proven because none existed, that any supposed imbalance on the Star’s part was an unavoidable result of giving a more complete account of the issue than other papers. Referring to its coverage of parliamentary committee hearings on free trade, Urquhart says, “If the antis outnumber the pros at the committee, are we to be chastised for giving full coverage, coverage that results in more antis than pros? Is that bad journalism? I think not.”

This discussion over the merits of the Star’s depiction of free trade often depended on what “side one took in the free trade debate itself. It is no coincidence that Bhatacharya is pro-free trade. Like him, other supporters of the deal simply say the Star lied, that it virtually ignored the side of the debate they supported, giving nothing close to equal space and prominence to the truth.

John Crispo, a professor of political economics at the University of Toronto, an outspoken advocate of free trade, and a self-styled-and vocal-media critic, calls the Star “a propaganda agency masquerading as a newspaper. They are beneath contempt,” he says. “There are no words to describe them, and if you can find somebody in journalism school that will defend them, I’d be surprised. Well…I guess I wouldn’t be surprised; there are a lot of left-wingers at journalism schools.”

But the ones who defend the Star, who say it has given a fair and full presentation of the facts, are also the ones who spoke out against the free trade initiative. Abraham Rotstein, an economics professor at the University of Toronto, is one of the few academics in that department to oppose the deal. And he says of the Star: “They were absolutely responsible, and they did a first-class public service in exposing some of the hidden features of the agreement which were not covered by the rather glowing propaganda of the government.”

Peter Bleyer, the coordinator of the Pro-Canada Network (an umbrella group for more than 30 national anti-free trade associations), includes the vast majority of major daily newspapers among the most vocal and visible supporters of free trade: “When you’re facing media that have almost overwhelmingly ignored one side of the story for quite a long time and which have been overwhelmingly biased in the other direction, for some of us [the Star was] a breath of fresh air.”

In fact ventilating the issue was precisely what The Toronto Star was up to, according to John Honderich, the paper’s editor-in-chief and leading light in its crusade. “We see our role as one to provoke and to stimulate discussion and to try to foster some greater understanding of what’s going on,” Honderich says. “You don’t get that if all the players in society agree. In the end, the election results [indicated that] there were a lot of people who were very worried about this free trade deal, and we voiced some of those fears.”

The Program in Journalism for Native People at the University of Western Ontario changed Juanita Rennie’s life. The intense, 12-month course prepared her and six other graduates of PJNP’s first class for entry-level media positions. Rennie, then a 40-year-old mother of six and grandmother to three, graduated in 1981 knowing exactly what to do next: “I wanted to show people-anyone who would listen-that there are positive things happening in the native community.”

Although Rennie grew up an urban Indian on the outskirts of Toronto with little knowledge of her ancestors’ culture, her ambition was typical of the program’s early students. The idea of a special journalism school to help natives achieve their aspirations arose in the 1970s, after an emerging political consciousness in the Canadian aboriginal community led to a dramatic increase in native media activity.

There’s been a change in recent years, however, and Allan Chrisjohn, PJNP’s current director, says many more students are considering entering the mainstream media. Still, very few do-and Dennis Martel, its director from 1982 to 1985, wonders if PJNP hasn’t outlived its usefulness and is in danger of becoming moribund. “As long as it’s just for natives, then the students are going to go into native journalism,” he says. “We felt they should be journalists-not Indian journalists. It’s becoming a bit of a cultural ghetto.”

Martel’s concern mirrors a dilemma facing many aboriginal Canadians: whether to enter the mainstream of Canadian society or to work from within the confines of their community. Chrisjohn says that PJNP graduates are equipped with the skills to work wherever they want, and opportunities in the mainstream media have never been better. Since the introduction in 1986 of the federal Employment Equity Act which requires broadcasters to hire aboriginal peoples and other visible minorities, Chrisjohn has received “all kinds of inquiries” from the media asking for applications from PJNP students. But despite the Act-and the students’ own aspirations and training-only a handful of graduates have landed in the mainstream. Others feel it is un-challenging and not a place where native issues can be discussed in depth.

The mainstream wasn’t much of an issue when the program set up shop inside the staid stone walls of Middlesex College. Classes were held in the basement while the students from Western’s graduate journalism program, with which PJNP is affiliated, studied upstairs in more comfortable quarters. In 1983, Martel moved PJNP upstairs to help integrate the students culturally and socially, and to cut costs by sharing equipment and space. Two-thirds of this year’s budget of $175,000 was paid by the Secretary of State and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, which also pay many students’ tuition and living expenses. But PJNP isn’t a make-work project -it’s tough and the failure rate is high. Last year only four of its 14 students graduated, and past years have had similar failure rates.

Natives from the cities and reserves of every region in Canada, including 10 Inuit and three Metis, have enrolled in the program. They range in age from their late teens to midforties: four of this year’s students are in their forties. Western’s entrance requirements make allowances for older students like Rennie, who dropped out of school in Grade 10. “They usually make up for what they may be missing in formal education with a wealth of past life experiences,” says Chrisjohn.

For some, like 1982 grad Dan David, PJNP provides an invaluable second chance. He grew up near Montreal on the Kanehsatake reserve and planned to enter Carleton’s journalism program until a high-school counselor advised him he was better suited to bricklaying because he was good with his hands. After 10 years of odd jobs, David heard about PJNP and now works in Toronto as a writer and broadcaster for Infotape, CBC Radio’s syndication service.

Today PJNP has three native instructors including Chrisjohn, each with a long history in journalism. The program’s first native director, Chrisjohn believes that native instructors provide excellent role models, reminding students that native journalists can make it. Martel agrees this is important-but having the best teachers, no matter what their race, is crucial. A tribal elder once told him not to worry about being white: “You teach them to be journalists, I’ll teach them to be Indians.” Only one course deals specifically with aboriginal issues, training the students to analyze government policies by scrutinizing the Indian Act, the Constitution and documents on self-government and land claims.
All other courses focus on the basics of journalism, with the students publishing a newspaper and producing weekly half-hour radio shows and short video documentaries. A magazine course taken with the Western grads includes a competition for the best magazine mock-up, and PJNP students take great pride in the fact that, with only one-third of the grads’ enrollment, they’ve won about half the contests. David says one of the program’s few drawbacks is that students do not have time to take liberal arts courses which would provide the broader base of knowledge often required in the mainstream.

The students’ first opportunity to address a non-native audience usually comes at the end of the year when they are placed in a three-week intern program: last year, Global Television, London magazine, CHIN Radio and CKO Radio participated. According to Joe Snider, CKO’s London bureau chief and news director, PJNP students compare favorably with interns from other journalism programs and his last intern “was gung ho all the way. He knew what was required of him and went out and did it.”

Snider says CKO’s door will continue to remain open for PJNP students.

About half of this year’s class are considering walking through that door to a career in the mainstream. Their reasons vary. For some it’s the lack of money in native communications although a few are willing to postpone entering the mainstream until they’ve “paid their dues” for a couple of years in native media. Others, like Geoffery Johnston, simply don’t want to be limited to native communications. He knows what he eventually wants-a job with Hockey Night In Canada: “I am interested in native issues but I love hockey. I want to meet the stars.”

Despite these ambitions and encouragement from employers like Snider-almost all of this year’s grads will probably end up in native media. Rennie’s career is typical. After graduation she began reporting for a native newspaper, then spent two years as founding publisher and editor of SweetgrO$S, a national native magazine which folded after two issues. She went on to produce Native Express, a television series profiling native political and artistic leaders, and now contracts her skills to government agencies involved in native issues.

Sherry Huff, a 1988 graduate, is following in Rennie’s footsteps and is now a reporter with the Wawatay Native Communications Society at Sioux

Lookout in northern Ontario. Wawatay operates a radio and television station and publishes a monthly tabloid in both English and Oji-Cree syllabic. Huff plans to continue working on native issues but may eventually do so in the mainstream, using her experience at Wawatay “to build a stronger base of knowledge on native issues so I’ll know exactly what I’m trying to tell the Canadian people about native people.”

Huff was one of the PJNP grads who intended to enter the mainstream after graduating, and she did her internship at Global Television. For now she has chosen Wawatay because she believes her job, which includes flying into some of Ontario’s most isolated communities, is more challenging than an entry-level position at a Toronto television newsroom. Dan David puts the case more forcibly: he believes most grads work in native communications because that’s where the real stories on native issues get covered. The mainstream is only interested in them after a sit-in, blockade or blowup: “There’s no examination of the burning fuse that leads up to that explosion-only the body count afterwards.” He adds that many other natives “don’t feel comfortable at a white publication. They come in believing they’ve been hired as the token Indian.”

Throughout his career, David has rejected tokenism and any suggestion that only natives should cover native issues. After three years as a CBC- TV reporter in Regina, a new executive producer told him to take the native affairs beat. Instead, David let his contract expire, moved to Ottawa and supported himself as a freelancer.

Tokenism and providing role models are very different issues. In fact, one of the program’s most important achievements is that its graduates pro. vide role models for Canada’s native community: David was one of the first native journalists Regina’s large aboriginal population had seen on its local television news. As well as working on reserve newspapers and newsletters, grads may help research their bands’ land claims. Some get politically involved-one former student, Les Carpenter, became mayor of Sachs Harbour, NWT.

When the PJNP started, many native publications were little more than propaganda broadsheets published by inexperienced reporters. The program is partly responsible for raising their standards. And despite his misgivings Martel says, “PJNP did what it set out to do-it’s turned out some damn fine journalists. They’ve interpreted Indian concerns and Indian news to both Indian and non-Indian audiences.”

Western’s acting dean of journalism, Andrew MacFarlane, who was instrumental in the founding of the Program in Journalism for Native People, agrees with Martel that the program should ultimately self-destruct but feels “his timing is off.” Until there are a large number of native applicants in other journalism programs and many more native students enroll in regular university programs, MacFarlane says the program remains too positive a force in too many lives to shut down now. Graduates like Juanita Rennie agree. “If it wasn’t for PJNP,” she says, “I’d still be a waitress in Markham.”