MEDIA
T H E C A N A D I A N A S S O C I AT I O N O F J O U R N A L I S T S • S U M M E R 2 0 1 0 • V O L U M E 1 4 , N U M B E R T H R E E
BUSTY HOOKERS,POLITICAL MISFORTUNES
AND UNREGISTERED LOBBYING
How former cabinet minister and Conservative M.P. Helena Guergis and her husband
became fodder for sensational allegations that still have Parliament Hill reeling
by Russ Martin
Student Journalist
Hong Kong Fellowship
MEDIA
Exploring Asia’s world city
Hong Kong, Asia’s world city, is a
Special Administrative Region of the
People’s Republic of China, run by Hong
Kong people under the “One Country,
Two Systems” principle. Hong Kong is
one of the most open, externally oriented
economies in the world. The city has been
rated the world’s freest economy by the
Heritage Foundation and Fraser Institute.
What makes Hong Kong tick as a great
world city? …. Its unrivalled location; its
liberal investment regime; its low tax
regime; its transparent common law legal
system and rule of law; its world- class
infrastructure; its free flow of
information; its entrepreneurial spirit; and
a truly international lifestyle.
Student journalists, who are interested in
gaining first-hand knowledge about Hong
Kong, are invited to apply for the
“Student Journalist Hong Kong
Fellowship” jointly organized by the
Canadian Association of Journalists
(CAJ), and the Hong Kong Economic and
Trade Office in Canada.
Two student journalists will be selected
by CAJ each year. Each will be awarded
a package including a five-day visit
program with an economy class air ticket
and hotel accommodation. In Hong Kong,
the winners will have the opportunity to
visit various points of interest, and meet
with people of diverse views and
backgrounds. The selected student
journalists must publish or broadcast at
least three stories about Hong Kong
within six months upon completion of the
trip in the local media or in their
university/school publications. They will
enjoy complete editorial freedom.
The award is open to any journalism
student who is currently in a recognized
university or college -level journalism
program. Applicants must be a paid-infull member in good standing of the CAJ.
Non-members may take up membership
upon making an application. For
application procedures, please visit the
www.caj.ca.
CAJ website at www.caj.ca.
Selection of the successful candidates will
be made and announced around midAugust 2010. The visit program must be
completed before the end of March 2011.
Application must reach:
The Canadian Association of Journalists
1106 Wellington Street, P.O. Box 36030
Ottawa, ON. K1Y 4V3
30, 2010
by Thursday, July 15,
For enquiries, please contact:
John Dickins, Executive Director, CAJ at email: dickensjohn@rogers.com or
Stephen Siu, Assistant Director (Public Relations)
Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office, at (416)924-5544
or email: stephen_siu@hketotoronto.gov.hk
SUMMER 2010 • VOLUME 14, NUMBER THREE
www.caj.ca/mediamag
COLUMNS
5 FIRST WORD by David McKie • Where are we going?
6 WRITER’S TOOLBOX By Don Gibb • Make a plan before you write. Our writing coach completes his tip sheet with this simple
message: Tell stories. Tell them well.
9 JOURNALISMNET By Julian Sher . Digging for buried treasure. There are ways to navigate the invisible web.
FEATURES
10 MEDIA CIRCUS By Russ Martin • Busty hookers, political misfourtunes and unregisted lobbying: The story about how former
cabinet minister and Conservative M.P. Helena Guergis and her husband, former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, became fodder for
sensational allegations that still have Parliament Hill reeling.
13 WHERE DID THE 25-MILLION DOLLARS GO? • That question haunted CBC Investigative journalist, Harvey Cashore, for
the 15 years he investigated the Airbus scandal and money that was paid to former prime minister Brian Mulroney. In an interview
with Media magazine, Cashore opens up about the price he paid to pursue the story and why he decided to chronicle the odyssey in his
new book The Truth Shows Up.
16 A CULTURE OF IGNORANCE By Tiffany Narducci • Has censorship taken hold of the Canadian military’s official newspaper,
the Maple Leaf?
18 HOW I GOT THE STORY By Charles Rusnell • CBC investigative journalist Charles Rusnell explains how he broke what is
believed to be the biggest mortgage fraud in Canadian history.
20 SO LONG CANWEST • What does the future hold for the former newspaper chain? Journalism professor Christopher Waddell
ponders the question in a discussion with Media magazine.
22 THIS HOUSE IS NOT A HOME • Stuart Thomson and Laura Osman explain how they used building inspections data for the city
of Ottawa to tell the story of a negligent landlord and the tenants it deprived of decent living conditions.
COLUMNS
26 FINE PRINT By Dean Jobb • A message to bloggers. The Supreme Court of Canada says you better work hard to get it right.
28 LEGAL UPDATE By Dean Jobb • Was the high court’s ruling in the Andrew McIntosh case a bad day for journalism? Not really.
30 COMPUTER-ASSISTED REPORTING By Fred Vallance-Jones • Disappearing data. Some federal government departments are
making it more difficult to obtain.
33 INSIDE THE NUMBERS By Kelly Toughill • Passing the smell test. If a number seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
34 RESEARCH ON THE NET By Lucas Timmons • Strategies for tracking people online. Using Google can be better than hiring a
private eye. And cheaper, too!
36 ETHICS By Stephen J.A. Ward • Fumbling toward open ethics. Central to the distinction between closed and open ethics is who
has the power to control and shape the discourse.
38 FEEDS AND LEDES By Mary Gazee • And speaking of Google, it has become the mother of all search engines. But there are
alternatives.
40 THE FUTURE OF NEWS By Simon Doyle • Curators. These “super copy editors” possess some of the new skills that will be
useful in an ever-changing world of information-gathering.
Where are we heading?
FIRST WORD
T
MEDIA
SUMMER 2010 • VOLUME 14, NUMBER THREE
A PUBLICATION OF
THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS
EDITOR
David McKie
EDIOTORIAL BOARD
Chris Cobb
Catherine Ford
Michelle MacAfee
Lindsay Crysler
John Gushue
Rob Cribb
Rob Washburn
LEGAL ADVISOR
Peter Jacobsen, Bersenas
Jacobsen Chouest Thomson
Blackburn LL P
ADVERTISING SALES
John Dickins
ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR
John Dickins
(613) 526 - 8061
Fa x : (613) 521 - 3904
ART DIRECTION and DESIGN
Laura Osman
CONTRIBUTORS
David McKie, Don Gibb, Julian Sher,
Russ Martin, Tiffany Narducci,
Charles Rusnell, Stuart Thomson,
Laura Osman, Dean Jobb,
Fred Vallance-Jones, Kelly Toughill,
Lucas Timmons, Mary Gazee,
Stephen J.A. Ward, Simon Doyle
COVER PHOTO
Former cabinet minister and Conservative M.P. Helena Guergis and her husband, former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, became the
focus of a media scandal, dominating political coverage for months. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
his edition of Media magazine contains a little of the old and a lot of the new. First the old, as in
the kind of journalism that requires the digging and the shoe leather we’ve come to associate with
investigative enterprises.
In the cover story, Russ Martin takes us behind the scenes of what is arguably one of the most
sensational stories to come out of Parliament Hill in years. The characters could be right out of a
Hollywood movie: Helena Guergis, the glamorous ex-cabinet minister with a reputation for being a
diva whose downfall began with an inexplicable meltdown at the Charlottetown airport and ended
with allegations involving unsavory characters cutting backroom deals; her husband, Rahim Jaffer,
the disgraced former Conservative MP who seemed to have it all – looks, smarts and the confidence
of his fellow M.P.s. Together they were the power couple that jazzed up a dour Conservative brand. Rounding out the cast
were suspicious businessmen, a debt-ridden private eye with possible secrets to tell, a prime minister looking to get rid of
the unsavory mess, and, of course, those “busty hookers.” Yes, this story had it all. And journalists on Parliament Hill, and
outside Ottawa, had fun digging into the allegations that so far still remain murky. The sensational allegations and tawdry
subject matter notwithstanding, the Guergis-Jaffer affair also represented examples of supreme sleuthing as exemplified
by the Toronto Star and Collingwood Enterprise Bulletin, the local newspaper in Guergis’ riding.
Sleuthing was also at the heart of the Airbus affair with its allegations of kick-backs and suspicious payments to former
prime minister Brian Mulroney. For the past 15 years, CBC investigative journalist Harvey Cashore attempted to answer
one simple question: What happened to the 25-million dollars in commissions that resulted from the sale of the Airbus jets
to Air Canada? Cashore documents his quest for that answer in his highly readable new book The Truth Shows Up. There
can be no finer example of shoe-leather journalism than his dogged pursuit of the main characters, including the shady
middle man, and a former prime minister who was determined to spin his own version of the truth. Reading the book, I
was astounded at Cashore’s (full disclosure, Harvey is also a colleague at the CBC) tenacity and refusal to accept pat and
half-backed explanations, and his fearlessness in the face of lawsuits that could have destroyed his career. For anyone
passionate about investigative journalism or curious about the Airbus affair, I would recommend you add this book to your
summer reading.
As part of a transition towards the new – as in a new generation of journalists -- there is the story of a negligent landlord in Ottawa that allowed tenants to live in deplorable conditions. Digging through building inspections data, Laura
Osman and Stuart Thomson (full disclosure again, two of my former students), identified the landlord, TransGlobe Property Management, and the tenants, low-income residents who were afraid to voice their concerns for fear of being evicted.
Laura and Stuart scoured the Internet to find people willing to talk, and then visited the neighborhood on a number of occasions in an attempt to convince people to go on the record. In short, they combined shoe-leather with computer-assisted
reporting: the old and the new. Their efforts paid off handsomely. Their stories aired on CBC Radio, television and were
published on cbcnews.ca.
And in keeping with the spirit of the new, Media is fortunate to have two new columns. In Research on the Net Lucas
Timmons, now a multimedia journalist and web producer at the Edmonton Journal, walks us through techniques he used
to track down gun enthusiasts who didn’t want to be found. And in his column we’re calling The Future of News, Simon
Doyle introduces us to curators, super copy editors who search social media sites in their quest for information.
In mixing the old with the new, we are attempting to stay above the tired rhetoric about our business being in trouble.
Yes, Canwest is history. But perhaps a new, more dynamic model will emerge. Yes, journalism students may find it harder
these days to find jobs. But perhaps their increased familiarity with social media and new forms of technology will make
them better suited for jobs that will mix skills-sets in new ways that we never thought possible.
So let’s try to stay positive, shall we.
If you have issues you think we should be covering, please feel free to contact me at david_mckie@cbc.ca. In the
meantime, have a great summer. M
David McKie, Editor
MEDIA is published four time a year by the Canadian Association of Journalists. It is managed and edited independantly of the CAJ
and its content do not necessarily reflect the views of the association.
4
MEDIA
SUMMER 2010
5
Writer’s Toolbox
MAKE A PLAN BEFORE YOU WRITE: PART 11
In the end, your task is simple. Tell stories. Tell them well.
Don Gibb
W
riters should never be satisfied with
their first draft, their first stab at a
lead, or quotes that seem never to end.
They shouldn’t be satisfied with unexplained jargon or a weak nut graf. Likewise
for lack of context or lack of balance.
And it’s a crime to be boring.
The list goes on. So to add to a checklist
of basics begun in the winter 2010 edition
of Media magazine -- everything writers
should consider with every story -- here is
Part II.
SHORTER SENTENCES
Too many long sentences in a row make
life miserable for readers. They have to
work too hard to read and comprehend
your story. Broadcasters know the merit
of short sentences or have it knocked into
them quickly. Listen to how they do it.
A writing coach once said if you give
readers a long sentence, treat them to a
short one. Varying the length of sentences
adds rhythm and flow to a story. If you find
yourself stuck with too many long sentences, consider breaking them into two or
three by using periods. The lowly period is
the simplest tool to break up the congestion.
If you read your story aloud, you will
likely pick up on sentences that are too
cumbersome. Try this one without coming
up for breath:
After Israeli Major-General Amos
Gilad met Palestinian security chief
Mohammed Dahlan on Saturday, their
subordinates met into the early hours
of this morning to work out details of
a plan under which Israel gradually
would withdraw from Bethlehem and
parts of the Gaza Strip, putting security back in the hands of Palestinians
after months of Israeli occupation,
the Israeli Defence Ministry said. (62
words)
6
With minor alterations, you can break
this into three, easier-to-digest sentences.
TRANSITIONS
These are simple devices that make a
story move along smoothly from one topic
to another, one person to another, one place
to another, one time to another. Readers
shouldn’t feel lost or left behind when you
make a sudden turn without warning.
“We fail to heed
the unspoken
commandment that
undergirds all others,
the only common
demand of readers
everywhere: For
Pete’s sake, make it
interesting. Tell me a
story.”
- Willam Blundell
Tell them when you have a change in
location, a change of speakers, a change in
time. Keep the reader informed with every
move.
USE ACTIVE VOICE
Simply put, it is more direct. “City council met last night” is more concise and direct than “a meeting was held by city council last night.” Strong sentences follow the
traditional format of subject-verb-object.
Never say never to the passive voice. It has
its place, but not as a dominant force dulling down a story or a broadcast.
SHOW RATHER THAN TELL
Easy to say, harder to do. Avoid saying something was “fun” or “awesome”
or “difficult.” Show the fun -- the giggling
youngster splashing in the pool. Show the
difficulty -- the cross-country runner gasping for air as she climbs the hill. Showing
takes readers right to the heart of your story.
It helps them to visualize and feel a part of
it. Look for specific details. Telling rather
than showing is more abstract and passive.
Krystal Wilhelm crouches on the
seventh stair of the Merlin Apartments, thin knees pulled against her
16-year-old stomach, insides cramping. She’s dope sick. … She rocks
with cramps.
When you think of showing, you want to
capture key moments, just like Wilhelm’s
dope sickness.
As Rene Cappon (The Word) notes,
“colour is a matter of detail – those details
that make this story different from any
other stories.” Avoid the predictable (sandy
beaches, posh resort, tony neighbourhood,
urban sprawl). They are well-worn descriptives applicable to many scenes. Search for
the right word(s) for your story.
OBSERVE
This is a close cousin of showing. Reporters, in my mind, are among the best
observers. But because we’ve been trained
to record what other people say, we tend
to pay less attention to what we see, hear,
smell, taste and touch. Sometimes what
you see (or hear) is your lead. Take the
time to record observations in your notes –
just as you do quotes and comments from
those you interview – so you have the deMEDIA
tails when it’s time to write. Don’t rely on
memory. Be careful, however, not to interpret what you see … but just report what
you see.
When the late Pierre Trudeau turned 80,
he guarded his privacy and refused to talk
to a reporter. But she caught up with him
at a lunch counter and wrote the following
observations, no doubt aided by some information from those who serve Trudeau
every week:
He inches ahead at the Lebanese fastfood counter, reaching for his plastic cutlery with slow and deliberate
hands. He orders his usual - chicken
in pita bread with mild sauce – and
graciously smiles at the staff. It’s a
lunch-time routine several days a
week. Then all eyes in the room follow him as he moves off to a remote
corner to eat by himself.
AVOID WARM BODIES
Reporters often show and tell their stories through someone they interview. For
example, the impact of a new government
policy on ordinary people. By using one
person through whom to tell a complex story, you make it easier for readers to grasp
the significance of that new policy.
However, you need to develop such a
person beyond one-dimensional – otherwise, the person becomes a “warm body”
used simply as a prop. Such stories often
drop the person around paragraph four with
a simple transitional line like, “So-and-so
is not alone.” Or: “So-and-so is one of
500,000 Canadians who …”
The person leaves the story, never to be
seen again. Unless, of course, the reporter
brings the person back for one last, unremarkable gasp at the end.
If you are going to use people to illustrate stories, develop their personal story.
Make them real. Show their personality.
Make them people with whom readers can
identify.
WRITE TIGHT
This takes discipline and requires writers to exercise good judgment. As Boston
Globe writing coach Don Murray has observed, writers are territorial animals with
a primitive instinct to use up as much
newsprint (or air time?) as possible. “But
the stories that survive,” he says, “are usually short, precisely limited and clearly focused.”
SUMMER 2010
William Zinsser (On Writing Well),
adds, “Writing improves in direct ratio to
the number of things we can keep out that
shouldn’t be there.”
A few quick tips:
1) Watch for a sentence that repeats what a
previous sentence or quote said.
2) Justify the need for everything in your
story: Why is this important? Does the
reader need to know this? Does this advance the story?
3) Fight clutter – due to the fact that (because); at this point in time (now); for the
purpose of (for); in order to (to).
4) Look for sections to delete – an anecdote
that doesn’t advance your story or perhaps
an interviewee repeating what another interviewee has already said.
Better writing comes
from leaving the
comfort of the safe
or routine approach.
It also means
accepting, if
necessary, failure. We
learn from our
mistakes and we are
better for it.
Tighter writing means understanding
your story and having the confidence to
write it without resorting to over-explanation and long, cumbersome quotes.
Take time to self-edit before handing in
your story. Accept the challenge of making
your writing crisper by cutting and eliminating needless material.
Just because you gather it, doesn’t mean
you have to use it. What you leave out is
just as important as what you put in.
REWRITE
It’s your chance to recheck some basics. Have you backed up your lead? Have
you buried a better angle? Are your quotes
punchy? What about sentences that are too
long or a point that needs more explanation? Rewriting makes you a better writer
because you are the one fixing before handing off to an editor.
UNDERSTAND NUMBERS
A writing coach who taught engineering
students said they didn’t realize that 60 per
cent of their time would be spent writing.
Reporters, she said, don’t realize the 60 per
cent of their time could be spent translating
and analyzing numbers.
Like it or not, numbers are a big part of
journalism and writers need to understand
some basics such as figuring out a percentage, making sure numbers add up, or understanding the difference between average
and median.
Scary stuff for writers who say they got
into journalism because they hated math.
But there’s nothing wrong with calling on
outside sources – business professors, accountants, high school math teachers – to
help translate what the numbers mean. It’s
best if they have no vested interest in the
story on which you are seeking help.
MASTER THE COMPLEX
You have to explain technical, complex
material in simple terms. Slow down how
much and how fast you feed information to
readers. Short, simple sentences are often
best to describe long, complicated issues.
And know when enough is enough. The key
is that you have to understand all of it, but
give readers only as much as they need to
know to understand the topic. Remember,
you’re not writing it for the doctor, lawyer,
or engineer you interviewed. You’re writing it for ordinary readers and that will be
less technical than the doctor, lawyer or engineer might prefer. Accurately conveying
complex material is always your goal, but
you have to work at making it understandable.
TAKE READERS THERE
Give readers a sense of place. Where are
you? What do you see? Here’s an example
where a reporter returns to Kelowna, B.C.,
a year after a forest fire destroyed more
than 200 homes and forced 30,000 to flee
their town:
You can smell the burned forest on
Okanagan Mountain before you see
it. Hiking up an old railway bed surrounded by green pines, you wonder,
was this really where, one year ago
7
this weekend, a massive fire threatened to engulf an entire city? Then
the heavy smell of charcoal hits you.
Turning a corner you see where the
fire raged on the mountain, a black
tongue licking down the hillside,
consuming everything in its path.
Marching off to the summit, stuck
like spears into the soil, are thousands of dead, black trees.
ENDINGS
Just as important as beginnings. In fact,
Justice Denise Bellamy, of the Ontario Superior Court, says she was taught in “judgment writing school” that the opening paragraph is prime real estate. “Why would you
put a hot dog stand there?”
Why, indeed? And while you’re at it,
think of your ending before you get there.
Endings shouldn’t leave readers hanging
over the edge of a cliff, unless you’re running a series and want to entice them back
for more tomorrow or next week.
Here’s a writer who has a catchy lead
and an excellent ending as he circles back
to the beginning to complete his story in a
natural and charming way:
Opening
Susan Wright’s life of crime began
about two weeks ago, on a sunny
Sunday afternoon. She stood at the
corner of Bathurst Street, just south
of Dupont Street. The coast was clear.
Ms. Wright went ahead with her plan.
A minute later, as she headed west on
Olive Avenue, a police car pulled up
next to her. Ms. Wright had joined
the ranks of Toronto’s fastest-growing criminal class – the jaywalker.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Ms.
Wright, who lives downtown and
owns a business called Tree Hugger
Puppets. “Who gets busted for jaywalking?”
Ending
This week, Ms. Wright went to the
courthouse to fight her ticket, arguing
that the fine was excessive. The justice of the peace agreed, and dropped
it to $20 from $50. Ms. Wright described the trip from her home to the
court: “I jaywalked seven times to
get there,” she said. “I just didn’t get
caught.”
•••
In the end, your task is simple. Tell stories. Tell them well.
8
William Blundell (The Art and Craft of
Feature Writing) says nothing is easier than
to stop reading. “We fail to heed the unspoken commandment that undergirds all others, the only common demand of readers
everywhere: For Pete’s sake, make it interesting. Tell me a story.”
That’s the real challenge every day. Do
not approach any story with complacency
and for heaven’s sake, accept the challenge
every story has to offer, no matter how
mundane it seems at the time. Bad attitude
kills more good stories. Instead of being
negative going in, look for the gem in every
story. It is there. (Thus endeth the preachy
part.)
No doubt you can add more to this
checklist of basics, but the list should serve
as a reminder to constantly stay on top of
the tools that make for excellence in writing. Just as airline pilots make the same
checks over and over again on every flight,
writers need to do the same on every story.
It will keep you sharp, help you avoid or
overcome lazy habits, and exercise your
mind.
While you’re at it, take some risks. Better writing comes from leaving the comfort of the safe or routine approach. It also
means accepting, if necessary, failure. We
learn from our mistakes and we are better
for it. M
Don Gibb, who taught reporting for 20 years at
Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, retired in 2008. He can be reached at dgibb1@
cogeco.ca
•••
Part I of this two-part column appeared
in the winter 2010 edition of Media. It covered the following basics: Focus, story outline, structure, leads, backing up the lead,
nut graf., context, use of quotes, attribution, balance and interviewing.
Journalism Net
The Invisible Web
Google and other search engines can’t spider those kinds
of web pages and won’t list them in their search results.
Julian Sher
O
ne of the biggest myths about the web
is that it is easily searchable. With the
speed and accuracy of search engines like
Google, people assume everything on the
web is easily accessible and at their fingertips. If they haven’t found what they’re
looking for, they figure they’re doing
something wrong in their search strategy.
That can often be the case – and you should
check out JournalismNet’s Search Tips
(www.journalismnet.com/tips) to be sure
you are employing the latest, best and most
relevant techniques and tricks.
But even if you’re a whiz with Google
and other tools, you have to know their limits. Even the best search engines tap into
only a small portion of the web. According
to Google, the first Google index in 1998
had 26 million pages, and by 2000 Google
was searching more than one billion web
pages. By 2008, its engineers boasted their
tool was “spidering” more than 1 trillion
unique URLs.
Sounds impressive, right? It is. That’s
like hunting through a stack of paper more
than 5,000 miles tall – a stack that would
almost stretch from Chicago to Paris travelling by air. Except that the web keeps
growing at a faster page rate: millions of
blogs, YouTube videos, websites and other
postings go up every hour.
Buried Treasures
And there is a bigger problem. All the
search engines combined – Google and all
its competitors – only scratch the surface
of what’s out there on the Internet. The rest
remains largely unexplored as buried treasures. That’s why it is called the “Invisible
Web” or the “Deep Web.”
How big is the invisible web? According to one search company, BrightPlanet,
the invisible web could be “at least 1000
times greater than the Surface Web.”
What’s buried in the invisible web? Well,
MEDIA
SUMMER 2010
obviously sites that intentionally keep their
pages from being searched by search engine spiders – private networks, like intranets, like companies use for internal consumption; secure databases from banks and
governments. Then there are public sites
like universities, journals or other institutions that might only allow access with a
password.
Finally, there are what are called dynamic searchable databases. Think about
what happens when you visit a government web site that contains public information on companies and shareholders. You
make a request for a listing of directors of
Company ABC and up pops a list of their
names and affiliations. But that web page
did not exist until you made that request.
The same happens when you ask a university library site to find all the books about
“blue whales.” The information is stored
in databases, retrieved when you make a
request and displayed on a web page that
will disappear after you finish.
In most cases, Google and other search
engines can’t spider those kinds of web
pages and won’t list them in their search
results.
Tools to Hunt
All is not lost. There are ways you can
hunt through the invisible web. You can’t
get into password-protected sites or private networks (though they sometimes get
hacked or cracked!). But there are ways to
hunt through the many databases.
One easy trick is to just add the word
database to your search keywords. For example, try a search for:
“toxic chemicals” water Arizona databases
This will get you quite different results
than if you don’t put in the word “database,” including links to some possibly
very useful databases.
There are also several specialty search
engines that offer ways to dig through the
invisible web. One of my favorites is Infomine (www.infomine.com), put together by
librarians from the University of California
and other educational centers. It contains a
vast number of databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards,
mailing lists, online library card catalogs,
articles and directories of researchers –
searchable by keyword or by topic.
Librarians in general can help you navigate through the invisible web and you’ll
find a listing of helpful library sites at
JournalismNet’s Library Help page (www.
journalismnet.com/search/librarians.htm).
In particular, Gary Price, a librarian and
information research consultant, maintains an excellent resource at http://www.
resourceshelf.com.
The University of Idaho also maintains
a listing of over 5000 websites describing
the holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare
books, historical photographs, and other
primary sources for the research scholar.
[http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html]
Another valuable tool is the Directory of
Open Access Journals.(www.doaj.org) This
service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
Finally, a site that aims to catalogue all
the world’s libraries is called WorldCat
(www.worldcat.org). It searches many libraries for books and research articles and
even music, and videos to check out.
You’ll find similar tools listed on JNet’s
Academic Search Page at http://www.peoplesearchpro.com/journalism/search/academic.htm.
So don’t get discouraged. Much of the
web may remain invisible, but there are
ways to uncover some hidden gems. M
Julian Sher is the creator of JournalismNet. He
can be reached at www.juliansher.com.
9
Feature
The Helena Guergis,
Rahim Jaffer media circus
With talk of “busty hookers,” cocaine abuse
and unregistered lobbying, it was a story the
likes of which journalists on Parliament Hill
had never seen -- or may never witness again
Russ Martin
W
hen a letter
defending
former M.P. Helena
Guergis arrived on
Ian Adams’ desk on
March 28, he had
his suspicions. It
was the fourth letter
written to Adams,
editor-in-chief of the Collingwood Enterprise Bulletin, a local newspaper in Guergis’ riding. All the letters were supportive
of the MP and cabinet minister, and were
signed by Jessica Morgan. Adams decided
to call Morgan.
Adams conducted a search on the phone
number Morgan left on one letter and found
it listed on a local community information
centre’s website. He requested the file and
found the number belonged to Jessica Craven. A previous Facebook search revealed
Craven was in a relationship with a man
with the surname Morgan. Bingo.
Adams called Craven to confront her.
When she picked up, he asked, “Are you
Jessica Morgan?” She said she’d have to
call him back, but Adams asked again. She
admitted her husband’s last name is Morgan.
“I had to ask her three or four times
before she said, ‘I don’t have to respond
to your questions,’” Adams recalled. She
hung up, but Adams had the proof he was
looking for. Jessica Craven, executive assistant to Guergis, had written the letters.
Craven’s letters became part of a larger
narrative in the fall of Helena Guergis.
10
The trouble started on September 16,
2009, when Guergis’ husband, former Conservative M.P. Rahim Jaffer, was charged
with impaired driving and cocaine possession (the charges were later dropped.) The
couple made headlines again on February
19 when Guergis had a meltdown at the
Charlottetown Airport.
The Enterprise Bulletin published its
story on Craven’s letters on March 30. Several other outlets quickly posted the news.
“It took off like crazy as soon as we put it
up online,” Adams said. “I was astounded
by how much that got picked up. I assumed
it was a slow news day.”
The story continued to unfold. On April
6 the Liberals demanded an investigation
into a claim Guergis was given $800,000
for her home Rockliffe Park, Ottawa’s
wealthiest neighborhood. Two days later
a report in the Toronto Star claimed Jaffer
had offered to “open up” the Prime Minister’s office to Nazim Gillani and several
other businessmen.
Despite Guergis’ resignation on April
9, the unspecified allegations against the
former cabinet minister who the Prime
Minister also kicked out of the Conservative caucus, continued. Reports on April
13 claimed Jaffer used Guergis’ office to
conduct business. Three days later, it was
revealed Guergis had written an e-mail in
support of Wright Tech Systems, a company Jaffer was planning to take public.
Another potential conflict of interest was
revealed on April 29, when it emerged Jaffer had used his wife’s official e-mail for
business.
“The drive was the sequence of things,”
said Carleton journalism professor Paul
Adams, explaining how the story became a
national news scandal. “There was a build
up of events.”
Though Adams said Guergis and Jaffer were well known on Parliament Hill
before Jaffer’s arrest, neither were household names. Still, the couple has been the
subject of countless articles and newscasts since February, surviving many news
cycles. Adams said the Prime Minister’s
drastic, largely unexplained firing (though
MEDIA
FEELING THE PRESSURE: Once the golden girl with the bright future, Helena Guergis became the focus of negative attention,
much of it innuendo, which eventually led to her fall from grace. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
she resigned, Harper made it clear that he
would have asked her to leave) of Guergis
elevated the story’s prominence. The Liberals then pushed for answers, he said, which
kept her name in the papers.
“The liberals have been looking hard for
something to give them a lift in the polls
and they [latched] onto this,” Adams said.
The tactic didn’t work. A survey published
by Ipsos on April 24 showed 35 per cent of
voters still support the Conservative party,
SUMMER 2010
while only 29 per cent support the Liberals.
“It doesn’t seem to have given them any
lift,” he said.
Jaffer’s use of Guergis’ office was most
important to readers, Adams said. But that
wasn’t all that was reported. The sensational details, including a claim Gillani had
photos of the couple amongst cocaine and
“busty hookers,” made front-page news. As
Jane Taber, senior parliamentary writer for
the Globe and Mail, put it, “You don’t get
those stories in politics very often. Certainly not in Ottawa.”
Guergis’ reputation didn’t help matters.
Taber said Guergis is known as very tenacious, but added she thinks Guergis been
unfairly labeled as a diva and a princess
because of her fashionable clothing, good
looks and gender.
“She stood out from the moment she got
elected because of her looks. Politicians
don’t look like her,” Taber said. “There’s a
11
Interview
“I know we all overuse
the word closure. But
for me it was closure
on a story that’s been
with me for 15 years.”
THE MONEY
THE MIDDLE MAN
AND A FORMER
PRIME MINISTER
FATAL TESTIMONY: The testimony of former MP Rahim Jaffer and his business partner Patrick Glemaud, right, at the Commons government operations and estimates committee on April 21, 2010, raised more even more questions about their lobbying activities.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand
double standard and the double standard remains. Women are judged differently from
their male counterparts.”
While Guergis may have been judged
unjustly, Taber believes journalists made
rigorous attempts to verify the allegations,
most notably Kevin Donovan at The Star.
“People were being very, very careful,” she
said. “I do believe the reporting was not in
any way dismissive.”
For Donovan, Guergis was never the focus of the story, just one character caught in
collateral damage. “I was a bit disappointed
that she became so much the story,” Donovan said. “I thought the story was Gillani
and Mr. Jaffer.”
By the time many journalists started
working on Guergis pieces Donovan had
been investigating Jaffer’s business dealings with Gillani for about a month. He
said this head start provided his pieces with
details not yet published in other papers.
On April 8 Donovan received a tip that the
12
letter Guergis wrote in support of Wright
Tech Systems had been published on a public website.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s writing
about a company her husband is involved
in,’” Donovan said. The next week The
Star ran a piece on Jaffer’s business deals
and his wife’s involvement.
The more sensational details, which
many other outlets focused on, were murky
at best, Donovan said. “I never believed
there were pictures that Gillani had of the
cabinet minister in that circumstance. Gillani tells a whole bunch of people he has
photos of them in compromising situations,” he said. “Most of the things Gillani
boasts about need to be taken with a grain
of salt.”
Though Donovan and his team plan to
continue to pursue the story as it develops,
he’s now deep into other investigations.
“There are a lot of equally important or
more important stories in Canada to do,”
he said. “I don’t think everyone needs to be
fixated on this.”
If anything, Donovan hopes the Guergis story leads to more investigations into
government corruption. “It would be nice
to see, as a result of this, journalists focus
on how governments are conducting business,” Donovan said.
As for Guergis, Ian Adams expects she
will fight the allegations. “She won’t go
quietly,” he said. “She’s not that type of
person. She’ll fight this every step of the
way.”
He expects no further letters from Jessica Morgan. M
Russ Martin is a freelance reporter and recent
graduate of Ryerson’s online journalism program. His work has been published in Marketing Magazine, Toronto Star, the Ottawa Citizen
and the Montreal Gazette. He has also contributed to new media publications including AndPop, Newsfix and Futuréale.
MEDIA
C
BC investigative journalist, Harvey
Cashore, recounts the 15-year odyssey that took him halfway around the
globe in an attempt to follow the money
trail in the Airbus affair, a sad chapter in
Canadian history that may forever tarnish
the reputation of former prime minister
Brian Mulroney. Cashore’s journey, recountSUMMER 2010
ed in the pages of his new book The Truth
Shows Up, was painful, surprising, and
exhilarating. In an edited version of a
conversation with Media magazine, Cashore
discusses his odyssey and the personal price he
paid in pursuit of the real story that
still remains untold.
We began the
conversation with his explanation of why
he chose to write the book as a personal
journey.
Cashore: I think that on the one hand
it was such a complex, convoluted story.
Early on I realized the best way to tell that
story was through the pursuit of it. And I
think it made it more accessible. It was a
story of how we got the story -- and not the
13
story itself.
Media: Why did you decide to write
it?
Cashore: There are many different answers I could give at different times. But
on a personal level, I just had to. I know we
all overuse the word “closure.” But for me
it was closure on a story that’s been with
me for 15 years. I needed to close it for
my family, my children. I needed to move
ahead of it, but I knew I couldn’t until I
put it all down. And I knew there was a
story unwritten and untold about how our
institutions, be they RCMP, justice, media,
collectively fail Canadians. And I really
wanted to explain why I believe that. And
why the facts prove it. And I hope that I’ve
done that. Because that book will always
be on someone’s shelf or on the library.
And you go and get it and read about a real
dark period in Canadian history. Both the
story itself and how we did not deal with it
properly when it came to light.
Media: What is a significant part of that
unwritten story?
Cashore: I think that we do live in a
bit of a banana republic. (laughing) We
tend to have this idea that our democracy
works pretty well. We’ve got a good political system that is open and transparent.
And we’ve got the media doing its job. But
I think, hopefully, what this book shows
is that we don’t expose our scandals and
then we move on. And I think there’s a gap
between what Canadians want and what
they deserve, and what they get from our
institutions. Even if you look at how the
story was covered in the media in the last
15 years, it didn’t get the attention it deserved until very recently. Canadians did
not tire of the story. They were interested
in the idea that a former prime minister met
in a hotel room with a middle man who
doled out one thousand dollar bills in an
envelope and that money came from Airbus (shorthand for the deal that saw Air
Canada spend more than a billion dollars to
buy Airbus jets during Brian Mulroney’s
time in power). And that was of intense interest to Canadians. I tried to explain why
they didn’t get more attention paid to that
story.
Media: What details about Airbus are
still lacking? When we have spoken in the
past, you’ve always wondered where the
money went?
Cashore: That’s the quest that guided
me throughout the book, was where did
14
that money go? Quests can succeed or not
succeed. I think it can still make a good
story that we did not succeed (in finding
out where the 25-million dollars in commissions from the Airbus deal with Air
Canada ended up). In some ways we did.
We found out about the money to Mulroney. Three hundred thousand dollars of
it, or 225-thousand, take your pick, went
to Brian Mulroney. That was a significant
accomplishment, and the credit goes to the
fifth estate and the CBC for having, in the
dark days when no one wanted to do the
story, for sticking with it and getting the
information that led to the revelations in
the media. I believe the CBC deserves a
lot of credit for that. But the overall quest,
which is where did that 25-million go, is
still largely unanswered. And what I argue
is that we had a real opportunity during the
last year, both at the ethics committee and
the Oliphant Commission to get at those
really important questions. Our institutions
chose not to. I would say that the truth really was a character in this book. The truth
knocked at the door of the Oliphant Commission and said ‘I’m here. I want you to
ask me questions.’ And we said, ‘no thanks,
we’re good.’
Media: So we ignored the scandal?
Cashore: Many people have said this
to me: Imagine this kind of scandal in the
United States where a former president met
in a hotel room with a former arms dealer,
a middle man, took cash from a secret account in an offshore account that generated
cash for deals that government when it was
in power. You would never have heard the
end of it. Every penny would have been accounted for by now. Every penny! We never called an Airbus executive to the stand.
We never called an Air Canada executive
to the stand. And yet on the very same day,
we knew that Brian Mulroney got his very
first cash payment, and (German businessman and the infamous middleman in the
Airbus affair) Karlheinz Schreiber, Fred
Doucet, Mulroney’s closest friend on earth,
writing letters to Air Canada about the Airbus commissions.
Media: The Oliphant Commission was
unconcerned about Airbus.
Cashore: The objective should not have
been to make the link between Airbus and
Mulroney. That would be unfair and unfortunate. The objective should have been to
find out where the money went. I would
say we had a real opportunity to find out
where all that money went. And we didn’t.
Media: Would you argue that the Oliphant Commission was our last shot to follow
the money?
Cashore: Absolutely. It’s tragic. And
I’m not overstating it here. Justice Oliphant
used the word ‘inappropriate’ to describe
Mulroney’s behavior (in accepting envelopes full of cash from Schreiber). I think
that it could be suggested that the commission’s findings were inappropriate. We had
an opportunity here to find out not just that
one man (Brian Mulroney) got money in a
hotel room from a middle man (Karlheinz
Schreiber). But what about the bigger picture, which is how can corporations, some
of which are larger than countries… how
can we ensure that large corporations like
Airbus in the future no longer offer sidedeals, grease money, bribe payments in
order to make deals happen? That question
was not addressed. And yet to me that is
the most significant question. How can we
make sure that our democracy itself is not
undermined by corporations wanting to sell
goods and make money?
Media: What was the hardest part in
writing the book?
Cashore: The hardest part for me,
because my memory isn’t very good, was
going over my own notes and looking at
my behavior and realizing that I might
have spent too much time thinking about
the story and working on the story. My last
chapter dealt with this. What was this all
for? I wanted to find out where the money
went and the truth showed up, but we really didn’t want to find out what the truth
knew. So what was it for? What did we accomplish? I guess we exposed the fact that
our democracy is sick. That our institutions
don’t work.
Media: There were times when you had
family stuff to do and work took over.
Cashore: People have accused me
of being obsessive. I don’t agree. If you
had a $35-million dollar lawsuit hanging
over your head for seven years (Schreiber
was suing him), you’d want to make
sure you got that sorted out as well. You
can’t move on until that kind of thing gets
sorted out. So that made me preoccupied.
If you lose a lawsuit, you lose your career.
And we knew that we were right and that
we did a good job. So that became always
there in the background. You knew your
reputation was on the line. And therefore having to go back into the story, not
MEDIA
only to advance the story, but save your
reputation… So in some ways I had to.
There was no choice. What else was I going to do?
Media: So no lawsuits. That’s all done.
Cashore: I have a photocopy of a
cheque that Schreiber wrote to our lawyers
to pay for our legal costs. It’s right in front
of me. I’m looking at it right now. And every day I see it. And I know what we won.
But at the time no one knew we were going
to win.
Media: But what price did you pay?
Cashore: I don’t want to blame the
fact that my marriage failed on the story itself. But the fact is that this job, not just the
Airbus story, is more than a job. And if you
believe in the issues, in exposing injustice,
righting wrong, it can’t be a nine-to-five
job. So that has a toll on those around you.
And so, when you asked earlier what was
the hardest thing about writing this book,
it was actually putting things in a row and
realizing I did spend a lot of time on this
story. I did miss birthdays. I did miss events
I didn’t want to miss. I did have to fly off
to Europe at a moment’s notice. And what
does that do to your human relationships?
It’s not that helpful. So there’s a human
toll for sure. But there’s also a toll on your
work. If you lose a lawsuit, you lose everything.
Media: When you examine the way the
media handled this. How did they do?
Cashore: Well, you know this yourself
because I tried to write about this in Media
magazine back in 1996. And I wanted to
write about the spin campaign (On the part
of Brian Mulroney). And I did. You commissioned me to write that story. And this
was during the time we were being sued
and I couldn’t understand why the story
wasn’t where did the money go? Our lawyers signed off on it and everything, until
a CBC manager intervened and said, ‘no,
that story’s not going to air. We’re not going to let Cashore write about that.’ So it
was an insecure time for me because here
I am, a research-associate producer. I don’t
have a lot of power. But I do have a sense
of stories being covered the right way. I
was confused. I was probably insecure. I
was young and feeling kind of hounded.
Every day I’d come to work and see a story
critical of me and the fifth estate. It wasn’t a
fun time. If that happened now, I’d be a lot
more confident.
But, to take this into the modern age,
SUMMER 2010
ACCEPTING ENVELOPES FULL OF CASH: During the Oliphant Commission, former
prime minister, Brian Mulroney, was forced to explain why he took the money from
Karlheinz Schreiber. PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
this couldn’t have been done without the
partnership we had with Greg McArthur
and The Globe and Mail. There was a team
work during the period after we exposed
the Britton account (an off-shore account
that contained grease money from the Airbus sale) and after Schreiber talked about
the money to Mulroney and we proved that
the money came from Airbus. The Globe,
which I had been very critical of in the
1990s and early 2000, got some new people
on board. And they, along with us, helped
push that story to the finish line by getting
it on the public agenda.
Media: So this was a crucial time in
linking some of the money to Mulroney?
Cashore: At least where we succeeded
is that everyone knows that Mulroney got
cash from Schreiber. Everyone now knows
it came from Airbus. And, to some extent,
that’s all I really wanted to do. We knew
that information was true a decade ago. But
because of the failure of the media to report it in any significant way, no one ever
knew about it. So we finally got it onto the
national stage and it had a public airing of a
very important issue. And that I feel really
good about.
Media: What do you hope will be the
book’s legacy?
Cashore: I hope young journalists
get to read this book. And I hope they’re
inspired by the fact that you can overcome obstacles and you can have the truth
come out if you keep digging away. I also
hope they’re inspired by the idea that our
media institutions are not perfect. They’re
deeply flawed. And when you are a young
journalist, you are a naive, idealistic
and enthusiastic. And I hope that when
young journalists read this book that they
remember not to lose that. Because it’s
that kind of naiveté, idealism and enthusiasm that makes us do the work we do. Let’s
keep the idea going that the more we expose
corruption that we’re doing good
work and making change. So there’s a
thread of pessimism and optimism in my
book.
Media: In these days of cutbacks, is it
possible to investigate stories like this?
Cashore: I like to think of it as a pendulum, and this is where I still have the
optimism. Investigative reporting ebbs and
flows. And I hope we’re in a period now
when we’re doing more of it. I think the
National Post is doing good investigative
journalism. The Toronto Star is doing fabulous work, as are The Globe and Mail and
the CBC.
In some way we’ve come to understand
that if media outlets are going to differentiate themselves from the bloggers and
anybody who can go on the Internet, we
must be unique and distinct. And you will
be most unique and distinct if you do original reporting. And this is where I think the
media are headed. M
15
Media censorship
A CULTURE OF IGNORANCE
Media censorship in the Canadian Militay
A retired reservist believes army conventions have prevented
military news from covering sexual assault cases,
disregarding recommendations from a federal Ombudsman
Tiffany Narducci
“
The purpose is
not to tell you
what is going on
– it is to keep you
happy.”
The words come
out of Tony Keene’s
mouth slowly,
clearly and with
the utmost calm. A
“It is highly unlikely for a sexual assault case to ever even make it into The
Maple Leaf, let alone have commentary
from the parties involved.”
good
news,
and
only
what the
department
wants you to hear
is presented.”
Drapeau goes on to explain that the
newspaper could never operate in an objective and unbiased manner since its staff
is solely comprised of military personnel
who owe loyalty to their employer, the
Department of National Defence. He says
that, as a publically-funded periodical,
The Maple Leaf deserves a “buffer” in order to operate as transparently as a civilian
media outlet.
“You should have an editorial board
made up of individuals that are not on
the [DND] payroll who would put out an
editorial policy and occasionally invite
the public, because we’re paying for it,
to have access to this public organ.” says
Drapeau. “This document has to become
for the public good, and the public good
is not defined by or restricted to the senior
management of DND.”
Although Keene disagrees with the way
The Maple Leaf chooses to operate, he is
also quick to explain that there is no harmful intent behind the paper’s strategy. He
says the newspaper operates on a ‘needto-know basis’, selectively choosing news
stories in order to minimize concerns and
alarm among military personnel. The main
objective, he says, is to keep the mission
going.
THE DND/CF WEEKLY
NEWS
APPEARANCES ARE DECIEVING
“It is not a newspaper.” Keene stresses.
retired 18
reservist refers to the
26 May 2010, Vol. 13,TheNo.
short silence ensues.
“It is to make you think you know
what’s going on.”
The sobering words trigger an almost
instinctive reaction to look over your
shoulder. However, his troubling statements are directed to a small but vital
part of our nation – the Canadian Forces.
Keene, a retired reservist and journalist
(for both military and civilian media), is
speaking about the nation’s official military newspaper, The Maple Leaf.
The newspaper came under fire in
1999, following a report to the Minister of
National Defence, by Ombudsman André
Marin. The document highlighted seven
recommendations to reform the Canadian
Forces’ policy on sexual assault. The final
recommendation underscored the need
for “changes to The Maple Leaf editorial
policy
to ensure that victims
and comBy Rebecca
Szulhan
plainants are given an opportunity to share
their experience [...] when articles refer to
their specific case.” Marin’s admonitions
were the result of an investigation into a
botched sexual assault case that had been
launched in 1998.
Keene, who retired in 2007 after 42
years of service, says in his time as intern
editor of The Maple Leaf, he never saw
this policy implemented.
Technology
newspaper firstly as a military publication
that tended to “accentuate the positive”.
As a civilian journalist, Keene was able to
compare The Maple Leaf’s operations to
that of a local newspaper; there were no
reporters, no editors assigning stories. Instead, a small group of six individuals received various contributions from military
public information offices across Canada
and distributed these additions to bases
nationwide. Employees of The Maple Leaf
were expected to publish the information
verbatim and were subjected to criticism
from their superiors if they disobeyed.
“It is completely contradictory to the
idea of a newspaper.” Keene says, slowing
his words again and speaking carefully.
“You don`t even think about getting the
other side of the story [...] there is no
journalism or editorial judgement being
practiced.”
Retired Colonel, lawyer and recurrent
contributor to Esprit de Corps magazine
Michel Drapeau agrees with Keene’s statements. He believes The Maple Leaf is a
‘corporate bulletin’ presented in the guise
of a newspaper.
“We have to keep in mind, particularly
when we have Canadian soldiers and civilians deployed abroad, their only source
of news may be The Maple Leaf [...] We
are providing a disservice to our soldiers
by presenting a distorted view – only the
Technologie
Who’s got
your back
online?
Government-wide, we use computers
every day, for a variety of tasks. And yet,
any computer network—professional or
personal—is vulnerable to a cyber attack.
One wrong click, one unintended visit to
16
the wrong Web site, one corrupted e-mail,
and the entire network is compromised.
IGNORANCE IS BLISS
Keeping the mission going, howMEDIA
ever, seems to come at the loss of free
of speech. In stark contrast to Marin`s
recommendation, The Maple Leaf`s 2005
to 2008 archive holds only a single article
on the issue of sexual assault. During
this three-year period, a 2009 report by
the Department of National Defence
(DND) highlighted 157 such charges laid
in military bases across Canada, with
several hundred other allegations. The
sole article, written by Captain Mark Giles
in 2005, does not disclose information
about a specific allegation or case. Rather,
it is a briefing on how the military should
disclose information to the civilian media
about high-profile issues, including sexual
assault.
“Oh, they have policies on everything
and they all read wonderfully.” says
Keene. “These lists are put out so when
someone like you asks questions, they
have something to show. They are not
there to be enforced until someone gets
caught, until something goes wrong.”
Following The Maple Leaf’s lead, the
military has been reluctant to comment on
Marin’s recommendations. DND chaplain
Heather Smith offered only a brief statement before declining any further comment.
“Sexual assault is no more prevalent in
the Canadian Forces than in the general
population [...] Yes, it exists and it is taken
very seriously.”
The type of glossed-over news coverage The Maple Leaf offers is not necessary
to the well-being of soldiers, according to
Keene. He points to the example of The
Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper
of the United States military. During their
stay in Vietnam in 1965, the newspaper
was censored by the U.S government after
reporters unveiled black market trading,
drug use and racism amongst American
soldiers. In an unprecedented move, the
newspaper filed a suit against the U.S
district court in Washington, accusing Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara of
violating its right to free speech. In 1967
The Stars and Stripes won the case. Since
then, The Stars and Stripes has since been
covering such controversial subjects as
fraud, drug use and sexual assault – a far
cry from the ‘feel good’ reporting of the
newspaper’s Canadian counterpart.
LES NOUVELLES
26 May 2010, Vol. 13, No. 18
Technology
Technologie
Who’s got
HEBDOMADAIRES DU MDN ET DES
your backLe 26 mai 2010, vol. 13, n
online?
CULTURE SHOCK
For the most part, Canadian civilian
SUMMER 2010
THE DND/CF WEEKLY NEWS
o
FOLLOW ORDERS: Employees of The Maple Leaf were expected to publish the
information verbatim and were subjected to criticism from their superiors if they
disobeyed.
By Rebecca
newspapers
fall in Szulhan
line behind the notions
In order to guarantee the accomplishof free speech and public awareness. What ment of its goals, says Keene, the DND
makes The Maple Leaf deviate from the
must always ensure morale is at its highest
Government-wide, we use computers
ranks of non-military media, says Keene,
level. Following this line of thought, the
every After
day, serving
for a the
variety
of tasks. And
yet,newspaper is careful to avoid
is culture.
Canadian
military
any
computer
network—professional
orinto controversial or negative
Forces for four decades, Major Tony
straying
Keene
was deeply entrenched
in reservist
personal—is
vulnerable
to a cyberreporting.
attack. A strategy Colonel Drapeau
lifestyle.
believes
One wrong click, one unintended visit tois largely futile.
“It is almost conspiratory.” he says
“The soldiers don’t rely on [The Maple
the
wrong
Web
site, one
corrupted
e-mail,
“The
people
being
victimized
within
bases Leaf]...
It plays a role, but I’d be hard
and
theof entire
network
is compromised.
keep
it out
the public
eye. [...] They
can pressed to say what role it plays.”
do things
you Kingston
– if any otherGarrison,
employer we have
Keenea adamantly reasserts that the
At tothe
tried
these of
things,
they would
end up in monitoring
intention of the military is not malicious.
team
dedicated
individuals
front of a Human Rights Tribunal.”
The doctors, nurses, and chaplains in the
our networks to provide a buffer between
It all comes to ensuring the completion
Canadian Forces, he says, are every bit as
threats
us andaims.
the According
host of potential
cybercaring
of military
to Keene, in
as their civilian counterparts. But
criminal
cases put before a military court
until The Maple Leaf abandons its current
out there.
“the victim
is irrelevant.”
The focus
is
reporting style, Marin’s recommendations
Students
at Royal
Military
College
largely on the accused, in order to punish
will continue collecting dust. Victims and
(RMC) Kingston offered a glimpse April
22
them and get them back in the ranks as
defendants will remain voiceless, and pubintoasthe
complex,
of will be undermined.
quickly
possible.
Victims, fast-paced
says Keene, world
lic awareness
cyber
defence,
where
technology—and
are important only as long as they are
“It is a disciplinary system, in which
evidence.
main goal is regulating conduct and
how people are manipulating it—isthealways
“If any report on a sexual assault
the victim is by and large meaningless.”
changing.
actually did surface in The Maple Leaf,
says Keene. “It sounds brutal, doesn’t it?”
this is why we would never think to seek
M
Continued
on page
the ‣other
side of the story.
This is 2
why no
victim would come forward to discuss
Tiffany Narducci
studies journalism
The Canadian
contingentatpiper, Sgt W
their case.”
Carleton University.
She’s
enteringGeneral’s
her
from the
Governor
Foot Gu
17
Deux musiciens du contingent
canad
clairon des Governor General’s Foot G
Source Building
Getting people
to open up
Developing sources
takes time. So be sure to
develop a plan
Charles Rusnell
“
I got something
for
you. It’s big.
Very big.”
That voicemail message
seemed to have
come straight
out of the blue;
a lucky break,
some
might
suggest.
But
there
was no luck involved. That tip was the
direct result of the assiduous cultivation
of a source over many years. It produced
a string of exclusive national stories in
May for CBC TV, radio and on-line about
what’s believed to be the biggest mortgage
fraud in Canadian history. The Bank of
Montreal is accusing Calgary Conservative
MP Devinder Shory of having ties to the
scheme and is suing him and hundreds of
Albertans. In the court documents, which
were obtained by CBC News, the bank alleges that Shory, who is a lawyer, executed
illegal transactions. None of the allegations
has been proven in court. And the Conservative MP denies any wrongdoing.
The story would have been impossible
without that crucial tip.
Knowing how to build and maintain
sources is critical to enterprise and investigative reporting. And even for those who
don’t aspire to in-depth reporting, it’s what
separates an exceptional reporter from the
merely adequate.
18
So why should you build sources? The
first and most obvious reason is that it allows you to get information you wouldn’t
otherwise get. That information comes in
two forms.
The first is tips. Tips produce original,
exclusive enterprise stories and we know
how important those are. When the public
sees that you produce original enterprise
stories, they give you yet more tips.
Pretty soon, you don’t have to take lame
assignments from the desk. Pretty soon,
you will have more tips that you can either
give away, or put on a list.
Sources can provide crucial information
at crucial times, which can mean the difference between beating the competition on a
story or getting beat.
Sources provide another crucial form
of information: context. They know how
institutions work, or should work. All
good reporting, whether it’s about cops,
courts, or the legislature, is based on a
Knowing how to build
and maintain sources
is critical to enterprise and investigative reporting. And
even for those who
don’t aspire to indepth reporting, it’s
what separates an
exceptional reporter
from the merely
adequate.
fundamental understanding of how the institution works. Sources like talking about
where they work; it’s part of human nature.
All the best reporters I know don’t leave
source building to chance. They have a
method. Because source building is a function of a person’s personality, everyone
should develop their own method. But here
are a few basic techniques I have learned
and adapted over the past 25 years.
ESTABLISH A SYSTEM
You can’t build and maintain sources
without some kind of system for keeping
track of them. I put mine in an individual
searchable word files, and conglomerated
in one main word file so I can email it to
myself when I am going out of the country.
I also keep a copy in my CBC email and
in my BlackBerry. Whatever system you
choose, it should be electronic, searchable
and have enough space to put in personal
information about the source such as his
hobbies, where he drinks, or the fact that
his kids play hockey.
I try to key in every contact as soon as I
get one. Take the time because it pays off in
the long run. I have sources from 1983.
ASK FOR NUMBERS
You should ask every person you
deal with for all their contact information,
including cell and home numbers, email
addresses, etc. I always say, “Is there a
number I can get you at after hours if
I need to fact check, or if my editor has
questions?” Very few people will say no.
Always ask for cell numbers even if you
don’t think you will get them. You would
be surprised who will give you your number.
LEARN EVERYTHING YOU CAN ABOUT
PEOPLE
Write down the details about the individual so you remember them. This allows
you to make a personal connection every
time you call them for information. I will
Google a person`s name to try find their
hobbies, the associations they belong to,
the professional organizations, the charities they support. During conversation, I
will ask about their kids. If they play competitive sports, I ask how they are doing.
I write down their wife`s name, and most
especially their secretary.
TICKLE LIST
Keep a list of your best sources and
call them every few months just to chat,
a check-up on what is going on. I actually say, “Is there anything I should know
about?” Call them for a drink every once in
awhile, especially if you have a good joke
to tell. People love to laugh.
MEDIA
WORK YOUR NETWORK
Learn their networks because that is
how you grow your sources exponentially.
Find out who they associate with because
they can put you onto other sources.
USE ONE SOURCE TO “BOOK” ANOTHER
Ask every source to recommend
someone else you should talk to. Make it
a habit to say: “Is there anyone else I
should talk to about this?” One source begets another. I actually ask sources to call
other sources and vouch for me and they
do it.
ACCURACY
You will never build sources if you are a
sloppy reporter. Why would a source talk to
you again or vouch for you with someone
else if you get it wrong? That seems selfevident but I can tell you I know reporters
who my sources will not talk to. They don’t
trust them.
Sources will actually check you
out. My former investigative partner
called a national behavioural analyst at
the RCMP crime lab in Ottawa and
when he called her back he said he was
prepared to talk because he had checked
her out with the people he knew in Edmonton. Spell and pronounce their names correctly.
FACT CHECK
Call your source before the story
appears and tell him or her generally what
you plan to use and the context within
which you are going to use it. I often do this
before I leave the interview. You should
explain that you have editors who may
change what you plan to use. You should
also explain that fact checking doesn’t give
them the right to change something they
don’t like.
Fact checking builds trust, especially
in TV and radio. Think about it. We
interview people for 20 minutes or more
and then use 20 or 30 seconds. It’s nervewracking for them. Fact checking builds
trust and shows you are an up-front reporter.
Some people don’t believe in fact checking – it may even be banned by policy. But
many news organizations do it, including
60 Minutes. Legendary producer Ira Rosen
does it on every story. He has won a Peabody and 20 Emmys.
SUMMER 2010
I DIDN’T DO IT: A photo montage featuring Conservative MP Devinder Shory hangs
on the wall at his constituency office in Calgary, Thursday, May 6, 2010. Alberta MP Devinder Shory is one of dozens of people named in a Calgary lawsuit alleging at $70-million mortgage fraud against the Bank of Montreal. The RCMP
say they are in the preliminary stages of seeing whether a crime is involved.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
BE UPFRONT
Nobody wants to deal with a weasel.
This is critical and it makes or breaks your
reputation. When I phone a source I will
actually write a little script or preamble
that explains who I am and precisely what I
want to know. I will say straight out, look,
here’s what I am up to. This is what we’re
looking at and why. So the person knows
exactly where we’re coming from.
Don’t try to trap, trick or mislead your
sources about what you’re doing. You can
be guaranteed that source will never deal
with you again and they will badmouth you
to everybody who will listen. They poison
the well.
When you mislead sources about your
intentions, you undermine not only your
own reputation, but that of your news organization and all reporters. M
Charles Rusnell is an investigative reporter and producer for CBC News Edmonton. Charles began his career at The
Ottawa Citizen. After a decade in the nation’s capital, he moved back west to The
Edmonton Journal. In 2008 he made the
transition to television and radio broadcasting, joining the team at CBC Edmonton.
During his nearly 25 years as a journalist,
Charles has broken some of Alberta’s, and
Canada’s, biggest stories.
19
Q&A
New days ahead for what used to be CanWest
David McKie
A
“We’ll see whether Mr. Godfrey
gives individual publishers more
ability to shape their news
organizations, because we know
that they are much broader than
just producing newspapers.”
fter months of bidding, the deal was
struck. Canwest Global Communications Corp. agreed to sell its publishing
division to a group of unsecured creditors
who have appointed National Post president and CEO Paul Godfrey as the new
company’s chief executive.
So now there is some certainty. The secured creditors get their money. And once
the new company emerges from creditor
protection, it plans to sell the papers in what
is called an initial public offering (IPO) as
early as this summer.
What’s uncertain is how many of the papers, including the Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen and Montreal
Gazette, will stay together, and whether the
new owners will be more inclined to cut
costs or invest in content. It’s also unclear
who might emerge to buy specific papers in
the chain such as the Windsor Star or Vancouver Province once the papers are on the
open market.
And we don’t know what kind of journalism will emerge as we enter a new era
when newspapers, or “news organizations,”
as Chris Waddell chooses to call them, fight
to stay relevant, re-invent themselves and
still make money.
The director of Carleton University’s
school of journalism has been watching,
studying and commenting on the developments at what is still the country’s largest
newspaper chain.
Waddell shared some of his insights
with Media magazine. The following is an
edited version of our conversation.
Media: What are we to make of these
20
Chris Waddell
developments?
Waddell: When the banks took over
CanWest, they had no interest in hanging
on to it for a long period of time. They just
wanted to get their money back that they
loaned to CanWest. So they were looking for someone who came along with the
most cash and take over the company. They
found them with this group of hedge funds.
They have some of the same debt problems
that, potentially, CanWest had when it was
running the company. We won’t know the
details until we see how the deal is structured.
Media: And the new owners will try to
raise money by going public?
Waddell: They were unsecured creditors. So had the whole thing collapsed,
they would have got nothing out of it. They
bought the company. They’ve asked Paul
Godfrey to be in charge of it. They will restructure and then issue an initial public offering (IPO). So they will put the company
out on the stock market. And their hope is
that in that listing, they would get back the
money they had borrowed, potentially the
money they had lent CanWest initially, and
maybe some profit. Whether they’re able to
do that will depend on what they’re able to
price the shares at when they decide to go
to the market. What the general perception
of media is at that time and the general perception of the economy. So what it means
is that they could hold on to the company
for a while and not do an IPO. There’s been
some suggestion that they could do it as
quickly as this summer. Some of it may
also depend on the terms under which they
borrowed the money to buy the CanWest
properties in the first place.
Media: Will they hold on to the National Post?
Waddell: There are some core elements
to this company: the National Post, the
Montreal Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen, Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald and
Vancouver Sun, and maybe the Vancouver
Province, most of the major media markets
in the country with the exception of Winnipeg and Atlantic Canada and Saskatchewan.
They also own the Windsor Star, but were
they to put that on the market you could
easily see the Toronto Star be interested in
purchasing that. They (TorStar) have the
Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator, and
the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. So you can
see them trying to expand their Metropolitan city newspaper empire into Southwestern, Ontario. The other group of assets that
might be put on the block at some point is a
group of community newspapers that CanWest owns, largely in the Lower Mainland
of British Columbia. And that could be an
attractive purchase for David Black, who
is a regional newspaper owner. It could
also be a purchase for TorStar through its
Metroland newspaper division. And there
are other companies that have community
and weekly newspapers that might be interested. At the moment, Mr. Godfrey has
indicated that he wants to keep the whole
company together, the question he has to
calculate is, are those individual assets
worth more being sold separately.
Media: So it will strictly be a business
decision?
MEDIA
Waddell: Sure, the people who bought
the papers want to get their original money
back. You do a buyout where you borrow
money to do the buyout. You organize
things, and then you sell and hope you
make more money selling it to the market
than it cost you to buy the assets in the first
place.
Media: And what do we know about the
owners?
Waddell: Not very much. They’re
hedge funds and a bunch of other money
people, who don’t have a long-term or vested interest in the newspaper business. It’s
all about money and business.
Media: And of course, TorStar was also
interested.
Waddell: Having the Toronto Star buy
this would have raised some very serious
policy questions, or should have raised serious public policy questions about whether one newspaper can actually own all the
newspapers in Canada. They also own 20
percent of CTV Globe Media. And I think
there’s a pretty good public policy argument to suggest that that’s not a good public policy.
Media: So what does all this mean for
the journalists at CanWest?
Waddell: We don’t know that either. It
depends on how they decide they want to
structure the organization. At the moment,
I think it’s fair to say that CanWest made
a couple of serious mistakes. They centralized as much as they could so that everything they could take and run centrally they
ran centrally. Publishers had less and less
control over what was in their papers, and
less ability to shape the nature of the papers
to respond to their local communities. One
of the things that will be interesting to see is
whether under Mr. Godfrey, the individual
papers and publishers are given more flexibility and more control to shape their own
papers. Let’s say the head office says ‘you
have to do some budget cutting.’ One way
to do that is to tell the publisher of paper
X, you have to cut X number of dollars in
your budget. The other way is to say ‘you
have to cut X number of dollars from your
budget and you’ll do that by reducing three
sports reporters, two arts reporters, three
people who run the front desk and two other people.’ That takes away the ability of
the publisher to say ‘when it comes down
to it, our community is much more interested in the arts than they are in sports. So we
can take a bigger hit in the sports section,
SUMMER 2010
but we really want to keep the arts section
going.’ So that centralization was a huge
problem. So we’ll see whether Mr. Godfrey gives individual publishers more ability to shape their news organizations, because we know that they are much broader
than just producing newspapers. And they
want to be much broader than that.
The second area where CanWest made a
big mistake was the centralization and giving individuals no control over their websites. As a result, the websites are all the
same. They all look the same. Individual
newspapers have very little room to maneuver in an environment where on the web
you’re trying to encourage entrepreneurship, distinctiveness, an ability to try ideas,
see new and different ways to tell stories.
This is a chain of 11 daily newspapers, and
there should have been eleven newspapers
competing with each other to find new and
interesting ways of doing things. Instead,
they were all told how to do it from headquarters. So any of the interesting ideas
people had, there was very little opportunity for them. And as a result, the newspapers
web presence in Canada and the use of the
web in Canada is significantly behind what
they do in the United States.
But that requires money and a commitment to content. And that’s something
I don’t think we’ve seen in what has been
a decade of cutting. So whether the new
hedge fund owners will want to reduce
their profitability by making investments
in people, which allows them to produce
more content, is going to be an interesting
question.
Media: Is there not a realization that
it’s necessary to spend money?
Waddell: That will be my guess. But
we’ll have to see.
Media: Or it may be that they rob Peter
to pay Paul. That is, just take the money
from another part of the newspaper to beef
up content.
Waddell: That’s essentially the policy
that CanWest undertook and it failed. And
that’s the policy that most media owners
have undertook in the last few years, which
is this faulty logic that you can reduce the
number of people producing the news, but
still maintain the same amount by displaying it across different platforms. Well, that
hasn’t been a success anywhere.
Media: So how are we to characterize
this buyout?
Waddell: First of all, newspapers
aren’t dead. They’re a long way from being
dead. I think they are going to evolve into
being news organizations. And that means
they’re going to be doing video and audio,
websites, traditional newspapers, digital
content. And that digital content will show
up on the Internet, your computer screen,
your phone or iPad or whatever it might
be. The question is how much are you going to be willing to pay for that, or will you
be willing to pay for that? How will you
view all this content? And what can you
get for advertising? The problem is we really don’t know the answers to any of those
questions. But the other side of it, I think,
is that people will still pay for information
that they think helps them make decisions
in their lives, and helps them be smarter
and helps them understand what is going
on in the world around them.
Media: It’s almost like the Bloomberg
model…
Waddell:…a little bit.
Media: …they figured out that if you
give people what they want, they’ll pay for
it.
Waddell: That’s right. So… that’s why
I think there’s got to be a renewed focus on
content. And for the newspapers or news
organizations, that may mean turning more
inward again, looking to their communities for their readers, listeners and viewers.
The other thing is the equipment to produce
journalism has never been cheaper. It’s
never been lighter. It’s never been easier to
use. It has never produced better quality. It
has never been easier to communicate from
anywhere in the world. And all of those
things suggest that there’s an interesting
future ahead.
There isn’t just one answer. And we’ll
see lots of people trying lots of different things. Some will work. Some won’t.
There’s lots of possibility for creativity.
Media: That bodes well for our younger
generation.
Waddell: Yeah, particularly those who
have a lot of the skills that are in demand
these days, which is not only being able
to do one thing, but a range of different
things.
Media: But you don’t want to be doing
so many things that content suffers.
Waddell: That’s right. And you’ve got
to have distinctive content. Because now,
the basics, like wire service you can get
that stuff anywhere, anytime during the
day. M
21
number, so we compiled the list
and put it in chronological order.
The request read:
“All building standards
complaints for <building address> in 2009. A detailed list
is attached.”
The full list, copied from
the spreadsheet, was stapled to
the form and then dropped into
the City’s bureaucracy. Miraculously, it took less than a week
for the full list of complaints to
arrive and it turned out to be a
goldmine. The City’s call centre
records each complaint from
the resident, word for word,
making it more human than if
a jaded bylaw officer was re-
Computer-Assisted Investigation
Harmful Negligence
Discovering a landlord who
tenants accuse of constructing
slums in the nation’s capital
Laura Osman and Stuart Thomson
I
n 2007 Erica Marx
was looking for a
place to live with
her husband and six
kids. The family settled on a town home
in Ottawa’s Heron
Gate community,
attracted by the excellent reputation of
the service and the indoor and
outdoor swimming pool.
The pool was particularly appealing for Erica. Most parents
know how efficient they can be
for tiring out rowdy kids.
They moved in shortly after TransGlobe Property Management bought the properties
and for a short time, the positive reputation of the previous
owners still clung to the community.
It took a few months for the
community to really notice,
but things almost immediately
started to deteriorate when
TransGlobe took over. Residents complained that garbage
was piling up almost everywhere: in the parking garages,
next to the garbage chutes, even
in the laundry room.
One resident showed us
pictures of the garbage spilling across the floor next to
the washer and dryer. “This is
where they want me to clean
my clothes,” he said.
The outdoor pool has been
empty since Erica moved in.
22
There was a shopping cart
parked in its depths when we
visited.
Last year the pump of the
indoor pool broke and went unnoticed and unrepaired by the
landlord, sending five children
to hospital with chlorine poisoning.
The high-rises were ridden
with insufficient heat complaints in the winter, residents
were losing hot water in their
units, and necessary repairs
would go unheeded by the
property management.
Erica says the area has
become a slum and that she
doesn’t feel that her home is
safe for her kids.
A CBC investigation of the
area brought attention to a community that was accustomed to
being ignored. But the community didn’t come to us, we went
looking for them.
We started with a Property
Standards complaints database
obtained through freedom of
information from the City of
Ottawa.
porting it. The stack was over
an inch thick, and it made for
great TV as the on-air reporter
thumped it in his hands as he
signed off.
Every single complaint was
available from the city, and it
included the action taken by
the officer assigned to it. It was
a fascinating way to really dig
into the story.
Landlord Negligence
It soon became clear that
tenants of the TransGlobe Heron Gate community saw the
city as their last resort when
calls to the landlord went unanswered and ignored. Erica’s
complaints, and those of her
ENDANGERED FAMILIES: Erica Marx has lived in Heron Gate
with her children for nearly three years. She says the condition of the neighbourhood is a threat to her kids. Recently,
her son was given an electric shock by a broken lamp post.
Even after the incident, the post was left unrepaired for over
a week. MEDIA/Laura Osman
The original spreadsheet
included a field that listed the
address and neighbourhood of
each complaint made to Property Standards. We wanted
to split that field so we could
analyse the addresses and the
neighbours separately. The file
had 18,000 entries, which made
cleaning it up and making it
workable a daunting process.
An elaborate Excel function
pulled the street address out of
the cell, and put it in a separate
field. This allowed us to do the
pivotal table that eventually
gave us the story we wanted.
We divided the information
into three columns and assigned
each neighbourhood to a ward
so that we could make separate queries for the addresses,
streets, and wards with the most
complaints.
At the top of the spreadsheet were three buildings that
were all part of the same neighbourhood and, in fact, were all
owned by the same company.
Making Requests
After we narrowed the list
of complaints into one hotspot,
the freedom of information requests were relatively easy to
do. Each complaint had a serial
MEDIA
A DANGEROUS HOOD: Burnt-out cars adorn the parking lot in
Heron Gate. The cars were damaged by a garage fire over a
year ago, and have since yet to be removed. They have become a fixture in the neighbourhood. MEDIA/Laura Osman
SUMMER 2010
neighbours, were populating
the data for those most inspected buildings.
On our first visit we were
confronted with how large the
community was, including
streets of row and town homes
surrounded by high-rise apartment complexes. Each building
was branded with a bright blue
TransGlobe Property sign.
Given what we knew, it was
an odd boast.
We stood outside the buildings and asked residents if they
could confirm or refute our data,
which suggested the buildings
suffered an unusual number of
interior damage and insufficient
heat problems. The residents
said our data represented only
the tip of the iceberg.
Most of the people we spoke
to were new Canadians who
lived in the area with their families. Some didn’t even know
appealing to city by-law was
an option. They described the
stench of unattended garbage,
rashes from bed bugs, mice
infestations, and freezing cold
apartments.
Finding Sources
We had more stories from
residents than we knew what
to do with, but not a single
resident was willing to put her
name on the record.
We visited the property
regularly for a week-and-ahalf, collecting stories from
residents who weighed up their
frustration with their fear of being evicted or persecuted for
talking to reporters. In every
case fear won out.
Housing advocacy groups
were also unable to help us.
They passed out our contact
information to residents, but no
one made a call.
We moved our search for
residents from the ground to
the web. YouTube videos of
the apartments showed elevators without sensors that would
close no matter what, or who,
was standing in its path. They
also showed other signs of disrepair like overflowing garbage
cans and security doors that did
not close or lock.
It was online that we found
Erica, who had done an interview with a local Ottawa online
publication about a community
advocacy group’s work in the
area. We looked her up in the
phone book and arranged to
meet her at her home in Heron
Gate.
Erica was the first resident
we spoke to who would go on
the record with her story. She
told us about the electric shock
her son had received from a
lamp post in one of the common areas behind her home.
The post had toppled over and
the wires were exposed in the
hole where it used to be buried.
The next day, another boy got a
shock from it.
Erica complained to the
landlord for four days and
when the lamp post still wasn’t
fixed she called the city which
issued a work order to fix the
post right away.
The company severed the
electric connection to the post
the next day, but left the broken
lamp on the ground. Later, the
company came back to salvage
the light bulb.
Erica’s involvement with the
community advocacy group,
ACORN, opened up a new avenue to tenants who were willing
to talk. We contacted the group
who connected us with two
more tenants who were willing
to go on the record.
The first was France Phidd.
She invited us into her apartment building to see the damage first-hand. We documented
images of garbage, broken elevators, holes in the ceilings,
and broken doors and lights.
What we couldn’t document
was the sweltering heat in the
corridors – the furnace was
running full steam while the
weather warmed outside to 10
23
The Investigation
Nabbing sources was the most challenging aspect of reporting
this story. Using social media was our saving grace. Websites like
Twitter and Facebook allow people a public forum to talk about
the things the affect their day-to-day lives. Handily, both websites
provide search tools. Simply searching for keywords related to
your story will give you a great picture of what people around the
world are talking about; and the websites give you direct access
to talk to those people.
•••
A data set provided us a goldmine to dig up this story. But before we could begin to interpret it, we had to clean it up. We were
lucky to have a relatively well-structured spreadsheet provided to
us, but it still took hours of work.
Specifically, we needed to split a column of data that contained two entries, the neighbourhood and the address. We needed
to interpret those entries separately, so we delimited the column
by space, and combined the cells that belonged together.
One column was mixed bag, containing entries for neighbourhood and address, so we used an “IF” statement to pull all of the
neighbourhood entries into a different column. In plain English:
if the cell in the combined column contained any of the words
relating to a neighbourhood (e.g.: Old Ottawa,) put that entry in a
new column.
It took a few hours, but cleaning up the entry was well worth
it.
Having organized, structured data was the foundation of our
story, and it allows us to return to the data as a reference for other
housing stories in the future.
BECOMING A SLUM: Tenants of the neighbourhood say TransGlobe’s willfull neglect has led the community into a steady decline.
Nessessay repairs unattended by the buildings’ management include insufficient heat, water leaks, and complaints of bed bugs.
MEDIA/Laura Osman
degrees celcius. France ushered us into her
apartment quickly, trying not to let the cool
air from her air conditioner rush out.
After France, we spoke with another resident who had documented all his
complaints in writing and with photographs.
Mid-way through our interview his wife
asked that we not identify the family. They
were trying to leave the complex but were
depending on a positive reference from the
management. She was afraid that talking
to the media would earn them another year
there.
City Loopholes
We knew our readers and listeners would
sympathize with the residents, but the situation in Heron Gate was affecting Ottawa
taxpayers’ dollars as well.
It took more than a week to get an interview with a city by-law official, but
eventually we got a call from Craig Calder
(the city’s inspection database also identi24
fied the bylaw officer who had visited the
premise), city by-law manager. He not only
confirmed our analysis of the data, but said
that the neighbourhood was a drain on his
department’s limited resources.
His testimony about the area revealed a
loophole in the by-law that allowed a landlord to neglect tenant concerns without incurring a penalty.
The by-law states that if a complaint
is made, inspectors must visit the
property and issue a work order if one
is warranted. The landlord then has 14
days to complete repairs before the
city steps in to do it for them and then sends
the landlord the bill. Repeatedly ignoring
the work orders could land owners with a
fine.
But TransGlobe almost always grudgingly complied with orders, meaning
by-law had visited the property hundreds of times; the landlord completed
repairs it should have been doing in the first
place.
City councillors seem to recognize that
there is a problem, but they are loathe to
act for fear of punishing all landlords for
the transgressions of a few. Unfortunately,
the public policy has not caught up with
the needs of the residents, which means
that people like Erica Marx are choosing
to leave.
“Right now I’m researching finding another place to live myself. I’ve tried to dig
my heels in and try to make the place better… [but] I realised that it was ineffectual
and that I wasn’t able to make any changes
that way,” she said.
Fines may not be taking a toll on TransGlobe’s pocketbook, but there are other
consequences for neglecting your residents. The complex is emptying quickly,
and some residents now say it is becoming
a ghost town. M
Laura Osman and Stuart Thomson are
Ottawa-based freelance investigative journalists.
MEDIA
•••
A DETAILED INVESTIGATION: Discovering the treatment of tenants in the TransGlobe community required the use of skills that
are new to the world of journalism, as well as old fashioned on
the street reporting. France Phidd (above), a TransGlobe resident, gives Stuart Thomson a tour of the damage in her apartment as it falls into disrepair. MEDIA/Laura Osman
SUMMER 2010
Our online presentation was crucial. And for that we turned
to Lucas Timmons, who packaged the story on the web for us.
He talks about the power of the interactive web. “This story is
powerful, and stirred up a lot of emotion. I think that by presenting the story as we did online made it much more powerful. We
were able to use the tenants’ own voices to describe their living
conditions. The pain and disappointment in their voices came
across in a way that plain text can’t express. Having photos from
their apartments run at the same time really underlined the suffering these people had gone through.
We hear about horrible news all the time and I think we’ve
become desensitized to it. To actually be able to see these people
and hear their stories goes a long way to understanding what they
are going through.
And with radio I find that you can’t always get the whole story
out there. This allowed us to show the city’s and TransGlobe’s
response in full in addition to the tenants’ stories. It really was a
good balanced report.”
25
The Fine Print
A Serious Message to Bloggers
The Supreme Court of Canada says they better work
hard to get it right
Court References
Grant ruling
Dean Jobb
C
anada’s highest court has elevated
bloggers – the serious ones, at least
– to the level of mainstream journalists.
And this is good and not-so-good news for
bloggers, because with rights come responsibilities.
In December the Supreme Court of Canada created a new libel defence, responsible communication on matters of public
interest. In essence, it offers “no-fault” protection from libel lawsuits for those who
publish reports on important issues, even
if facts or allegations turn out to be wrong
and someone has been defamed in the process.
The court deliberately chose the name
“responsible communication” instead of
“responsible journalism” to signal that the
defence applies to “anyone who publishes
material of public interest in any medium,”
not just journalists working for traditional
news outlets.
This is not a seismic shift in the law.
Posting comments on a blog or other online forum that damages someone’s reputation has always carried the same risk of a
libel suit as printing them in a newspaper or
broadcasting them on radio or television.
But this still comes as a surprise to
some in the social-media crowd. A
poll conducted last fall found more t
han one-quarter of Canadian respondents had no idea they were legally
responsible
for
libelous
material
distributed through networking sites
such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
The Supreme Court has little interest
in what you tweet or share with your
Facebook friends. But it does see the
need to offer some legal protection to
online reports on issues of public
interest, no matter who makes them or
how they reach their audience.
In its December rulings in two
libel cases, Grant v. Torstar Corp. and
http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2009/2009scc61/2009scc61.html
Quan v. Cusson, the court stated the
obvious: “the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of
communicating on matters of public
interest, many of them online, which do
not involve journalists.” Blogs and
other online postings, the court noted,
“are potentially both more ephemeral
and more ubiquitous than traditional
print media.”
ing regard to the injury to reputation that
a false statement can cause,” she wrote.
“People in public life are entitled to expect
that the media and other reporters will act
responsibly in protecting them from false
accusations and innuendo.”
First, a blogger will have to establish
that posted information deals with a matter of public interest. The court’s definition
of the public interest is broad, including
Cusson ruling
http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2009/2009scc62/2009scc62.html
Defamation Law Blog
http://defamationlawblog.wordpress.com
Were steps taken to verify the information?
Are the sources solid and trustworthy? Was
an effort made to report all sides of the story
and to interview the person defamed?
Those sound a lot like the
elements of good journalism. They are, and
bloggers will be held to these
standards.
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, who
wrote both rulings, could find no rationale
for excluding bloggers and other online
commentators simply because they lack a
journalism degree or the backing of a newsroom. “These new disseminators of news
and information should …be subject to the
same laws as established media outlets.”
Time for the not-so-good news. McLachlin says these newcomers will be held to
the same standards of accuracy, fairness,
thorough reporting and ethical conduct as
mainstream journalists.
“The press and others engaged in public
communication on matters of public interest, like bloggers, must act carefully, hav-
reports that touch on politics, business, science, the arts, the environment and even
religious and moral issues. The court is
emphatic on one point: the public interest
“is not synonymous with what interests the
public” and does not include “mere curiosity or prurient interest” in the private lives
of public figures or celebrities.
As noted at the outset, the defence is intended to protect serious bloggers dealing
with serious subjects. Posts to www.politiciansareweasels or www.starsbehavingbadly are unlikely to make the grade.
If a post is found to deal with a
Continues on page 27
26
Continues on page 27
MEDIA
Continued from page 26
subject of public interest, the blogger faces
a new hurdle. A jury will be asked to assess whether the blogger acted reasonably
and responsibly. Were steps taken to verify
the information? Are the sources solid and
trustworthy? Was an effort made to report
all sides of the story and to interview the
person defamed?
Those sound a lot like the elements of
good journalism. They are, and bloggers
will be held to these standards.
Matthew Nied, a B.C. law student and
author of the Defamation Law Blog, thinks
few bloggers will be able to take advantage
of the new defence. While many are diliSUMMER 2010
gent and act in good faith, “they are generally not guided by established journalistic
norms,” he noted in a January 25 post.
“For example, although journalists
will generally make a point of seeking the
plaintiff’s side of the story and speaking
directly to witnesses and experts, non-journalist bloggers – who are generally unpaid
for their efforts – will rarely have the time,
resources, training, or willingness to do
so.”
Putting in the extra work needed to
unearth and verify information would
make blogs better, and that’s what the Supreme
Court is encouraging – good journalism,
no matter who’s tapping the keyboard.
The standards by which journalists and
non-journalists alike will be judged will
evolve over time, the court acknowledged,
“to keep pace with the norms of new communications media.”
But fairness, balance and thorough,
original reporting on matters of public
interest will remain the starting point
for any assessment of what’s considered
responsible communication, online and off.
M
Dean Jobb, author of Media Law for Canadian Journalists (Emond Montgomery
Publications), is an associate professor
of journalism at the University of King’s
College in Halifax. He can be reached at
djobb@dal.ca.
27
Legal Update
Was the high court’s ruling in the Andrew
McIntosh case a bad day for journalism?
...Not really
Dean Jobb
T
he next-day headlines focused on
the Supreme Court of Canada’s
refusal to give journalists the constitutional right to protect sources, but they
didn’t tell the whole story. There’s good
news for journalists in the court’s May 7
ruling (R. v. National Post, 2010 SCC 16)
in the case of the National Post, its former
reporter Andrew McIntosh, and the
possibly forged document at the heart of
a nine-year legal battle to protect a source.
Chances were slim that the court
would grant blanket protection to the
relationship between journalists and
sources. The law treats the information
passed between lawyers and their clients
as “privileged,” but not even medical
records or a confession to a priest
enjoys this kind of hands-off treatment.
It was possible the court would
28
It was possible the
court would make it
tougher to unmask
sources... but that
argument was
rejected – it remains
up to the journalist to
show that a source is
worthy of protection.
make it tougher to unmask sources,
and require those seeking to identify
a source to prove that a promise of
confidentiality should be ignored. But
that argument was rejected – it remains
up to the journalist to show that a source
is worthy of protection.
The court did find that journalists
like McIntosh – who promised to protect
a key source behind his so-called Shawinigate investigation into former prime
minister Jean Chrétien’s business dealings
– can claim the right to protect a source
on a case-by-case basis.
The crucial factor is whether protecting
the source is more important than ensuring
crimes are properly investigated or that a
court hearing a criminal case or lawsuit has
access to the information needed to ensure
justice is done.
MEDIA
In McIntosh’s case, eight of nine
judges found it was more important to
try to find out whether a bank document
the source leaked to McIntosh was a
forgery, designed to implicate Chrétien
in a conflict of interest. The RCMP
wanted to test the document for
fingerprints or traces of DNA that
could identify who created or leaked
it. Even though the court acknowledged
these forensic tests may fail, it authorized the police to seize and examine the
document.
While this is bad news for McIntosh and
the Post, here’s the good news for the rest
of us:
§ Justice Ian Binnie’s majority
ruling recognized the “special position”
of the media, given the Charter’s
guarantee of freedom of the press, and
said judges should strive to “protect
the media’s secret sources where such
protection is in the public interest.”
§ The court accepted the media’s
position that confidential sources play
a crucial role in news coverage,
especially
investigative
journalism.
“Unless the media can offer anonymity
in situations where sources would
otherwise dry up, freedom of expression
in debate on matters of public interest
would be badly compromised,” Binnie
said. “Important stories will be left
untold.”
§ Investigative journalism plays a
vital role in addressing the “democratic
deficit in the transparency and accountability of our public institutions” the
court noted, shining “the light of public
scrutiny on the dark corners” of public
and private institutions.
§ Justice Binnie identified a number
of important stories that came to light
thanks to confidential sources or whistleblowers, including the tainted tuna scandal,
secret commissions paid on Air Canada’s
purchase of Airbus jets, and concerns
over restaurant inspections in Toronto
and illegal slaughterhouses in Ontario. Without “the free flow of accurate
and pertinent information” on such
issues, he wrote, “democratic institutions
and social justice will suffer.”
§
The ruling also recognizes
that, when a reporter gives an assurance of confidentiality (usually after
consulting an editor), journalists’ professional ethics demand that the promise be
SUMMER 2010
kept. Judges should be hesitant to cite
journalists for contempt if they refuse
to identify a source, the court said, and
endorsed the Ontario Court of Appeal’s
2008 decision to wipe out a contempt finding after Hamilton Spectator reporter Ken
Peters refused to testify about his sources.
§
The court drew a distinction between the National Post case, which involves a search warrant to seize a piece
of physical evidence, and future privilege
claims to protect whistleblowers or infor-
The court did find
that journalists like
McIntosh – who
promised to protect a
key source behind his
so-called Shawinigate
investigation into
former prime minister
Jean Chrétien’s
business dealings –
can claim the right to
protect a source on a
case-by-case basis.
mants not suspected of wrongdoing. That
could bode well for the court’s ruling, expected later this year, on whether Globe and
Mail reporter Daniel Leblanc can shield a
key source behind his investigation into the
federal sponsorship scandal.
Another factor in the ruling was whether people other than journalists should be
entitled to protect sources. The court was
concerned that the definition of journalist
is expanding in the Internet age, allowing
people to exercise their right to freedom
of expression “by blogging, tweeting ... or
publishing in a national newspaper.”
Granting a blanket right to protect
sources to “such a heterogeneous and illdefined group of writers and speakers and
whichever ‘sources’ they deem worthy of a
promise of confidentiality and on whatever
terms they may choose to offer it ... would
blow a giant hole in law enforcement and
other constitutionally recognized values
such as privacy.”
There’s another problem – not all
journalists or media organizations agree
on when sources should be protected
or whether the duty to protect evaporates
if the source lies or misleads a journalist.
“There is no formal accreditation process
to ‘licence’ the practice of journalism,
and no professional organization (such as
a law society) to regulate its members and
attempt
to
maintain
professional
standards,” the court noted, making a system of blanket source protection impossible.
The National Post ruling applies across
the country and creates a legal structure for
determining when Canada’s courts should
protect journalists’ sources. Privilege
claims will be considered on a case-by-case
basis and journalists will have to demonstrate it’s more important to protect than
expose the source. And when the claim is
tied to a source accused of a crime or with
information that could help solve a crime,
it will be harder – but not impossible – to
shield the source.
The court also avoided setting a precedent that could allow sources to manipulate the media while hiding behind a
promise of confidentiality. “A source who
uses anonymity to put information into the
public domain maliciously may not in the
end avoid a measure of accountability,”
the court noted, citing the case of a White
House official who leaked information to
The New York Times in order to attack a
critics.
“The bottom line,” Justice Binnie noted,
“is that no journalist can give a source a
total assurance of confidentiality. All such
arrangements necessarily carry an element
of risk that the source’s identity will eventually be revealed.”
In order words, be careful what you
promise – and make sure the story and the
information are important enough to justify
the risk. M
Dean Jobb is an associate professor of
journalism at the University of King’s
College in Halifax and author of Media
Law for Canadian Journalists (Emond
Montgomery Publications)
29
Computer-Assisted Reporting
Making it harder to obtain government data
Some departments are failing in their duty to help journalists
Fred Vallance-Jones
T
he Harper government is taking its
control freakishness to new levels as
officials have found a new way to shut
down access to electronic data under the
Access to Information Act. A quiet battle is
underway that, if the government wins, is
going to put us firmly back into the paper
and pencil days.
It hasn’t gone smoothly, but journalists
have been obtaining data from federal departments since the mid 1990s. Occasionally institutions would make the case that
computerized information didn’t meet the
definition of a record under the act, but
once reminded of the actual definition,
they’d back off.
Other arguments would be offered, as
they are in other cases, but eventually a
disk would land on the reporter’s desk.
Fast forward to 2010, and it seems we’re
back to 1990. I’m getting reports from several journalists who work with electronic
records that institutions across government are responding to requests for data
by releasing data printouts on paper or by
converting spreadsheet tables or database
reports into image files before releasing
them. Often no explanation is provided; it’s
just done.
Even those of you who don’t work with
data all of the time will have guessed that
you can’t analyze a paper or image file with
a computer. The whole point of asking for
electronic data is to be able to analyze the
data, to find stories that will help shine light
on the operations of government.
I expected to get some sort of explanation when I contacted the Treasury Board
Secretariat about this. I was writing a chapter for a book on freedom of information,
and I wanted to mention this developing
issue. But the officials at Treasury Board
didn’t have much to say.
30
The new normal when it comes to media
relations in Ottawa is that the people who
used to talk to reporters now communicate
by memo and email. Requests for information are met with a standard, “can you send
me an email on that” response. This is usually followed by a period of silence, before
the “answers” arrive by return email. The
results usually look like they’ve been produced by a committee intent on squeezing
out every last morsel of meaning.
The whole point of
asking for electronic
data is to be able to
analyze the data, to
find stories that will
help shine light on
the operations of
government.
That’s the kind of sanitized pablum I received from Treasury Board when I had the
temerity to ask about this trend in releasing
electronic information as pdf images, or on
paper.
I’m going to spare you the details, but
I’m going to try to translate. The essence of
what Treasury Board told me is that government officials now feel they have discretion
as to whether they will honour a request for
electronic records. In other words, they are
reserving the right to release the information in whatever form they like. It doesn’t
matter, it seems, that the records exist in
their native form in electronic format. If
officials don’t want you to have the information in that form, they’ll just convert the
records to some other format and give you
that instead.
One of the justifications being given
for this is the wording of the duty-to-assist
clause added to the Access to Information
Act by the Harper government as part of
the Accountability Act, and the associated
regulations.
On the surface of it, the clause places
a duty on bureaucrats to help you in any
way they can, and to provide the records
in “quote format wording.” But the catch
is that this duty is to be further defined by
the regulations.
A careful reading of the regulation
shows that it is clear that if a record exists in a particular format in an institution,
the institution must release it to you in that
format. But it’s easy to see the yawning
loophole here. Format is undefined. So is
a computer record, contained in a database,
a record in a format that can be released?
Anyone who works with electronic records
would understand the generic meaning of
“electronic format” as compared to “paper format.” Copying from a database to
an Excel file, for example, maintains the
record in electronic format. So asking for
release in Excel, Access or delimited text
doesn’t change the essential characteristic of the record as a collection of bits and
bytes.
But I’ve already had one department
make the case that the record doesn’t begin
to exist in a format until officials have exported the data from the database. So whatever format they decide to create is the one
that already exists in the department.
Once it doesn’t exist in the format you
MEDIA
ask for, officials can rely on the provisions in the regulations of the duty to assist
clause that allow them to exercise discretion on whether to convert the record to the
format you want.
So here we have a clause that has been
advertised as a step forward for access being used by officials as justification to turn
back the clock.
Now before we come to the conclusion
that this is all a ploy to stop the release of
electronic information—which can be analyzed, sliced and diced to reveal all sorts
of hidden truths—let’s consider the possibility officials are just covering their rear
flank. Treasury Board did, after all, issue
a memo in the fall of 2007, telling departments to stop releasing information in
electronic form unless they could be sure
any information severed because it could
be exempted stayed severed. A department
had messed up when it released some paper
records in scanned electronic form. Sensitive information the department thought it
had blacked out could be recovered. The
information was material that legitimately
should be severed, and I am told officials
went ballistic when they discovered it had
been accidentally disclosed. Hence, the
directive on electronic records. Release at
your peril.
Most departments, for perfectly legitimate reasons related to productivity, have
started to use systems that allow records
to be processed on a computer screen and
released as image pdfs on disk instead of
on paper. Of course, the image pdf files
so created are static, so anything removed
stays removed. And departments seem to
have decided that all records should be
processed this way, even records that start
out in databases. The fact that converting
electronic records to image pdfs torpedoes
the ability of journalists to do important
stories in the public interest is just a coincidence. Collateral damage as they say in
warfare.
I see a big collision coming. This one is
headed to the Information Commissioner,
in fact I know of complaints that have al-
ready been filed. After that, I wouldn’t be
surprised if this ended up in the federal
court. I would argue it is the commissioner
who should take it there if the issue isn’t resolved at the complaint level. A fundamental principle of democracy is at stake here.
Access to Information legislation, the purpose of which the Supreme Court has said,
is to facilitate democracy, isn’t much use
if officials can invent new reasons at whim
to frustrate the people who use the act
in the name of that democracy. I say
enough. M
Fred Vallance-Jones is assistant professor of journalism at University of
King’s College in Halifax. His research
interests include access to information in
Canada.
Government
officials now feel they
have discretion as
to whether they will
honour a request for
electronic records. In
other words, they are
reserving the right to
release the
information in
whatever form they
like
SUMMER 2010
31
Dateline Hong Kong 2010
A Working Fellowship for Canadian Journalists
Hong Kong, Asia’s world city, is a Special
Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s
Republic of China, run by Hong Kong people
under the “One Country, Two Systems”
principle. Hong Kong is one of the most open,
externally oriented economies in the world.
With China’s unprecedented economic
growth, Hong Kong has been used as the
gateway to the robust Mainland market. It has
also served as the springboard for the
Mainland companies to go overseas. Hong
Kong has been rated the world’s freest
economy by the Heritage Foundation and
Fraser Institute.
Working journalists are invited to experience
Hong Kong and report on various aspects of
the city by applying for the “Dateline Hong
Kong Fellowship” jointly organized by the
Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ)
and the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office
in Canada.
Selected journalists will be awarded a
package which includes a five-day visit
program, business-class air travel and hotel
accommodation.
In Hong Kong, the journalists will have the
opportunity to visit various points of interest
and meet with people of diverse views and
backgrounds.
Neither the Hong Kong Government nor the
CAJ will impose any control over or rights to
the work of the participating journalists. The
journalists will enjoy full editorial freedom.
Each application must include a resume, and a
written statement of support from the
editor/producer
of
designed
media
organization to publish/broadcast at least
three Hong Kong stories produced by the
selected journalists within six months upon
completion of the trip.
The proposal can concentrate on any area of
life in Hong Kong, including business,
politics, infrastructural development, IT,
tourism, education, culture and environment,
etc.
Selection of the successful candidates will be
made by CAJ and announced mid-August
2010. The visit program must be completed
before the end of March 2011.
Application must reach:
The Canadian Association of Journalists
1106 Wellington Street, P.O. Box 36030
Ottawa, ON. K1Y 4V3
by Thursday, July 30,
15, 2010
For enquiries, please contact:
John Dickins, Executive Director, CAJ at email: dickens-john@rogers.com or
Stephen Siu, Assistant Director (Public Relations), Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office, at
(416)924-5544 or email: stephen_siu@hketotoronto.gov.hk
Inside the numbers
Kelly Toughill
J
ennifer
Figge
swam
across
the Atlantic Ocean
last year. The 56year-old American
dragged
herself
onto a beach in Trinidad roughly a month
after paddling away from the Cape Verde
Islands near Africa.
Her amazing story was covered by
hundreds of newspapers around the world
and inspired an almost universal reaction
among readers: “That’s unbelievable!”
Yes, it is. That’s because it wasn’t true.
We often mess up number-based stories because we fail to heed our own good
instincts. If a story doesn’t feel right, or
doesn’t pass the ill-defined “smell test,”
we automatically dig deeper – unless it is
a number story.
Here’s a quick tip sheet on how to check
the numbers in a story if your instincts tell
you something is wrong. Most of the time,
your hunch will lead you to an error of
credibility, correlation or calculation.
Credibility: Where did the number come
from? Sources spout numbers all the time
and sometimes people just make them up.
Find out how your source got that number.
Is he or she really in a position to know?
It isn’t just spin doctors who offer up
suspect data. Well-respected organizations
sometimes repeat numbers that they honestly believe are true, but aren’t.
Take the Ontario Medical Association.
It put out a position statement in 2004 that
repeated the well-known fact that secondhand smoke is 23 times more toxic in an
automobile. This spring, two Australian researchers tried to trace the science behind
that claim. Writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Ross MacKenzie
and Becky Freeman, of the University of
Sydney School of Public Health, say that
the “23 times” figure did not come from
research, but from a lobby group in Denver, Colorado. It was first published in the
Rocky Mountain News and then widely repeated, even in reputable medical journals.
Correlation: The maxim is that correlation does not equal causation. Just because
two numbers rise or fall in tandem does not
SUMMER 2010
mean that one causes the other.
Take the much-heralded study of Toronto’s restaurant smoking ban. Researchers found that hospital admissions for heart
conditions dropped 39 per cent after smoking was banned in Toronto restaurants, and
hospital admissions for respiratory conditions dropped by 33 per cent.
It’s an incredible statistic, and a heartening one. A simple change in public policy
saved four in every 10 potential heart patients in Toronto hospitals. But did it?
How did hospital admission rates
change in areas where there was no smoking ban? The researchers looked at that, but
didn’t publish that portion of the findings
with their paper. It was only available in an
online appendix. The appendix shows that
hospital admissions for many heart and
respiratory ailments also fell in Durham
Region and Thunder Bay during the study
period – even though neither area had imposed smoking bans in local restaurants.
Michael Siegel is a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. He
analyzed the raw data in the appendix to
the Canadian study and found that the rate
of heart attack hospitalizations in Toronto
and Thunder Bay both declined by exactly
28 per cent during the period. The decline
in angina hospitalizations in Toronto and
Durham were also almost identical, at 59
and 60 per cent.
When looking at correlation, think about
what else might have caused the trend. In
the case of the hospitalization story, could
it have been changes in available medical
treatment, such as new drugs to manage illness at home? What were pollution trends
like at the time, and could they have affected the rate of respiratory disease?
Correlation stories are tricky, because
causation is hard to prove even when it
does exist. The tobacco industry dismissed
the correlation between smoking and lung
cancer for many decades, saying there was
no definitive causal link between the two.
Of course there is a link, and even the tobacco industry now admits that.
When presented with a correlation story,
look for a valid comparison to prove the
theory, and think about what else might
have caused the trend. It is unlikely, for
example, that an increase in the number
of police officers will quickly affect crime
rates. It is unlikely that the election of a
new provincial government will quickly
affect the provincial economy. When presented with a correlation story, rely on your
common sense.
Calculation: This is the easiest type of
error to spot and fix. When there is a number in a story, check it. When there is a calculation in a story, check it.
Let’s look at the case of last year’s baby
boomer superhero, Jennifer Figge. She left
Cape Verde Islands on Jan. 12 and landed
in Trinidad on Feb. 7. Her journey took 27
days, and she told reporters that she swam
up to eight hours a day.
The distance between the Cape Verde
Islands and Trinidad is 3,380 kilometers,
so that means Figge swam 125 kilometers
per day. If she swam for eight hours each
day, that is 15.7 kilometers per hour. That’s
pretty fast. Those who don’t swim might
want to compare Figge’s pace to worldrecord holders. The current world record
for the men’s 100-meter freestyle sprint is
47 seconds, a pace that translates to 7.7 kilometers per hour. That means Figge swam
twice as fast as the world-record holder,
and she did it for eight hours a day.
In other words, she didn’t do it. Yet
the story ran in hundreds of media outlets
around the world.
It didn’t take long for readers to point
out the error in the story. The corrections
began on Feb. 9, and sparked many explorations of why people exaggerate their
claims to the media, and how shameful that
is. The corrections didn’t spark much exploration of the media’s role in this ruse.
Sixty seconds with a calculator would have
proven that Figge’s claim was fantasy and
killed the story before it ever ran.
So the next time you are presented with
a story that sounds unbelievably terrific,
check the numbers behind the news. Is the
data reliable? Has your source misconstrued the cause of a correlation? Whip out
that calculator and do the math yourself.
Kelly Toughill teaches journalism at the Uni-
versity of King’s College.
33
third year.
Using the Internet as a tool
Using Google can be better than hiring a
private eye. And cheaper, too.
Strategies for tracking down sources online
Lucas Timmons
W
ith investigative journalism, especially
when the topic is
sensitive,
finding sources can be
hard. Some people
don’t want the truth
to come out. Others
are scared of the repercussions if they speak. With the Internet
and today’s culture of speed over accuracy,
what I’ve found is a lot of distrust towards
the media. People are scared to talk, or give
information.
How then, do you find people when no
one will talk to you? Online search tools
make finding someone much easier, even
when no one will talk to you. The method
described here took me less time than it will
probably take you to read how it was done.
Don’t use this as a step-by-step guide, but
rather a framework in which you can operate.
I recently worked on a series of gun stories during an internship at the CBC. The
RCMP was confiscating weapons that owners had legally held for years. We needed
some visuals of an owner with this weapon
for television. We were looking for his or
her side of the story. Are these guns dangerous? Is the seizure of the weapons warranted? The only problem was finding an
owner.
I started with the traditional methods.
I hit the phones, calling the company
that sold the weapons, local gunsmiths,
range workers and even the National
Firearms Association. None were able
to help. The NFA couldn’t find a gun
owner who was willing to come forward.
34
The company that sold them refused
to talk. And with only 39 of the weapons out there, no one at the gun ranges in
Ottawa had seen anyone with the weapon. If I was going to find an owner, it
would have to be done online.
A local gun owner, who had never
seen the gun I was looking for pointed me
to an online forum for gun enthusiasts
called Canadiangunnutz.com. Everyone
I contacted on that forum was reluctant
to talk, and it wasn’t long before I had
my login and ability to read the
posts banned. The issue was not only a
distrust of the CBC, but the forum members felt like I had invaded their niche.
Online search tools
make finding
someone much easier,
even when no one will
talk to you.
Sending private messages failed. In
hindsight, I would recommend first
sending a public message explaining
who you are and what you are looking
for. If that doesn’t work, then it’s time
for a new strategy.
The search begins
The weapon I was looking for was
a Chinese-made bullpup rifle. Starting
at the company’s website, I found an
even better description of the weapon
I was looking for. Using Google Chrome as
my web browser made things signifocantly
easier. Chrome can translate pages for you
as you search. So finding information on
products from foreign markets is significantly easier.
From the company’s website I matched
a picture of the gun with the following
text: 轻武器,步枪,自动（简称97式) (translated it means: Light weapons, rifle, automatic (i.e. type97)). I used the Chinese text as
my first search term.
That search gave me different results
in Chinese than the search I did in English.
Finally, I was getting new information.
But I was still far from my goal of
finding a Canadian owner. Google turned
up unexpected results in the form of
Youtube results. They displayed a few
videos at the top of my search results.
After going through the search results,
I looked at the videos on Youtube.
For every video, there are related videos
that Youtube suggests. Using those related
links of the first video I checked, I was able
to find four or five more. Each time I would
check the uploader’s user profile to see
where they were located. After a few minutes, and watching a lot of gunfire I finally
found someone in Canada.
His name was TooTallDean, and he was
based in British Columbia. I suspected that
once I contacted him, he would make the
videos private or remove them from Youtube, so using an extension (a special plugin that you have to download) available for
Chrome (It’s available here), I downloaded both videos of him with the weapon and
saved them to my computer.
There are extensions for Firefox
that will do the same thing. This was
MEDIA
important. Had I neglected to save
the video, I would have been unable to
see it again. And since he refused to go
on air, I wouldn’t have any visuals for TV.
There was no more information I
could get about his location or real
name from his other videos, but I had
a good start. For convenience, I’ve
noticed that most people try to keep
the same username for most things on
the web. For example, I use lucastimmons as my gmail, my youtube and my
Twitter accounts. My suspicion was
that TooTallDean probably does the same.
This is the one of the great truths of
human behaviour and personal privacy.
As a good researcher, you will notice
that despite privacy concerns, people
generally use the same identifier, even if
it is an alias, for everything online.
A Google search of TooTallDean
brought me to a different firearms
enthusiast website called Cast Boolits. TooTallDean’s profile said he was
from Langley, BC. I went back to
Google and a search of “TooTallDean”
and “Langley” brought me to a Photobucket account for TooTallDean. Photobucket is a site allowing users to upload
photos to share with their friends and
anyone else who is curious.
Searching through his pictures online, I came across a picture taken of him
and Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.
Dean was wearing a nametag with his
last name. Unfortunately, the low resolution of the photo made reading the
name impossible. It was too blurry for a
full read, but there was no doubt his
last name started with an “R” and
ended with a “Y.”
Armed with this new information, and the fact he was an amateur
photographer, I returned to Google
again. Using the search terms, “TooTallDean Dean” “R” “Langley BC”, I
found a modeling website that featured a
photography resume of a Dean Roxby.
I was there. Success! But I needed to be
sure.
Confirming success
Going through Dean’s photographs
I was able to match up a photo from the
Dean Roxby page with the TooTallDean
Photobucket page. I had found my man. I
had it confirmed. All that was left was to
find him using Canada411.ca.
SUMMER 2010
But it wasn’t over yet. Since I had
been saving the videos, pictures and
links as I went through them, I wanted
to double check everything. Using
Photoshop I opened the picture of
Dean with the Prime Minister. Using
the photo’s EXIF metadata, I found
out when the picture was taken. Looking
at the public schedule for the Prime
Minister that day, I figured out where
the picture was taken: At a fundraising
BBQ.
Next, I tried to find out if the CBC
had any video of the event. As it was
a fundraiser BBQ, I also checked to see
if he had made any political donations to
a federal party using the elections
Canada database.
At the end of the day I had found two
videos of a man with this weapon. Using the
username from the videos, I found links to
his hobbies that led to finding his real name.
I had pictures and video of him, with the
weapon, and with the Prime Minister. I had
his phone number and his home address.
Name: Dean Roxby
Hometown: Langley, BC
Alias: TooTallDean
Interests: Firearms, photography
Political affiliation: Conservative
Address & Phone number
Visuals: Photos with weapons, videos of
the weapon and subject firing it
Audio: Narration of video of weapons and
gunfire sounds
Saving the information was a big help,
too. After talking to him, he quickly made
his profiles private and removed the videos.
But I still had them on my hard drive.
This effort was well worth the time.
The information I found allowed for
two online stories and two national
radio pieces. The stories generated
furious debate, more than 1,600
comments and tens of thousands of pageviews.
All this information is available on
the Internet. A lot of people don’t
even know how much is out there. A
good reporter can dig deep and find
it. Hopefully, this example has inspired some investigative work of your
own. It doesn’t have to take a long
time. This search took a matter of
minutes. It was well worth the effort. M
Lucas Timmons is a freelance multimedia
journalist and web producer at the Edmonton Journal. He can be contacted by email
at lucas@lucastimmons.com, through twitter @lucastimmons or at www.lucastimmons.com.
FINDING YOUR MARK: People often use the same username for many of their online
accounts. Every account can help you track down your source. TooTallDean was
wearing a nametag in a photo of his family and Prime Minister Harper, which he
posted on his photobucket account. Photobucket
35
Ethics
Fumbling toward open ethics
Central to the distinction between closed and open ethics
is who has the power to control and shape the discourse
Stephen J. A. Ward
T
he shape of a future journalism ethics
is slowly emerging from the shadows
of the once dominant professional ethics
that was closed to meaningful participation
by citizens.
Journalism ethics is fumbling toward
what I call an “open journalism ethics.” The
advent of new media is making citizens and
non-professional journalists intrinsic parts
of a global ethics discourse. Whatever the
content of a future journalism ethics will
be, ethics practice – the way that ethics is
discussed, monitored and enforced -- will
have the characteristics of an open ethics.
Consider an example of this open public
sphere for ethics. When columnist Jan Moir
for London’s Daily Mail wrote a homophobic column about the death of Boyzone
singer Stephen Gately the column sparked
a campaign on Twitter and Facebook, resulting in 22,000 complaints to the UK’s
Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in a
single weekend.
Jan Moir’s name ‘trended’ on Twitter. A
group page created on Facebook to call for
a retraction of the column also published
contact details of brands advertising in the
Daily Mail alongside Moir’s article. Sample
text was provided for group members who
wished to complain to the Daily Mail’s editor, Paul Dacre. Ultimately, a critical public
spotlight was shone on the PCC’s “closed”
approach to this case, as an in-house professional matter.
In open ethics, both professional and
non-professional journalists participate in
the evaluation of practice and principles.
Open ethics is a citizen-based discourse
that runs along the sinews of overlapping
communication networks. The ethics discourse is less orderly, sometimes anarchic.
It is also more inclusive, less hierarchical,
more transparent, and global.
Closed and open ethics
Central to the distinction between closed
and open ethics is who has the power to
control and shape the discourse. An ethics
OPEN ETHICS: A homophobic column by Jan Moir for London’s Daily Mail sparked a
huge online reaction, including a Facebook group calling for her resignation. Open
ethics makes both professionals and nonprofessionals part of the discussion.
36
discourse is closed to the extent that it places significant restrictions on two things: (1)
the “intended users” of the standards and
principles, and (2) who gets to participate
in the on-going discourse about the standards and principles. A closed ethics is a
set of standards for the guidance of a small
number of intended users – members of a
relatively small group of practitioners. In
contrast, an open ethics sees the standards
as providing guidance beyond the group –
potentially to all of society.
A closed ethics restricts who participates in two ways – who gets to participate
in the discussion, and who participates in
decisions based on that discussion. For example, the Canadian Association of Journalists could invite public input into a project to reform its existing codes of ethics,
but only CAJ members would be allowed
to vote on final recommendations.
An open ethics does not consider the
boundary between the professional and
non-professional members of a practice to
be absolute. To the contrary, it regards the
meaningful participation of non-members
in ethics discourse to be necessary and important.
Journalism ethics as closed
Historically, the great wave of professionalism that began in the late 1800s adopted a closed ethics model. Ethics was an
“in-house” affair. The ethics of lawyers,
doctors, and accountants consisted in codes
of ethics that were intended primarily for
the doctors, lawyers and accountants. Discussion of ethics was restricted in large part
to professional journals and conferences.
Enforcement of the code was carried out
by a disciplinary body of fellow lawyers,
doctors or accountants often meeting privately.
Journalism followed this pattern. When
the early journalism associations declared
MEDIA
journalists to be professionals, “professionalism” meant adherence to a code of ethics intended primarily for the guidance of a
small but clearly defined group of intended
users -- professional journalists working
for large newspapers and broadcasters.
Norms such as objectivity and independence placed a normative barrier between
journalists and external influences. Journalists would self-regulate their practice.
Not surprisingly, then, most journalism
ethics discourse over the years has been
“in-house” – occurring in ethics journals
aimed at journalists, or debated at conferences aimed at journalists. Of course, across
the 20th century and into this new century,
there has been a trend to make journalism
and its ethics more open. First there were
press councils and ombudsman. Then there
was much talk of “accountability mechanisms” and editorial transparency. By the
late 1990s, interactive forms of media allowed newsrooms to start asking – incessantly – for audience feedback to programs.
Yet all of this amounted to only a gradual
extension of public participation in ethics
discourse. Many of the mechanisms, such
as press councils, were based on a closed
model where the public were allowed to
register only specific complaints about specific reports. Even when newspapers such
as The New York Times investigated scandals of fabrication by reporters, the process
was firmly in the hands of in-house editors.
More recently, major news organizations
such as the Washington Post and The Associated Press have developed new guidelines
for social media. The process, typically, has
been internal and closed.
Enter open ethics
In the late 1900s, this closed approach to
journalism ethics began to be undermined
by new forms of communication. Citizens
can create media, do journalism, use powerful online tools for gathering information
and checking news stories, and join networks for discussing media ethics. Bloggers, social media writers, web site creators
and twitterers do not need to be members
of professional news organizations to debate ethics; they do not need to attend professional journalism conferences to engage
in ethics discourse.
Today, ethics discourse is an intense
global discussion and negotiation among
professional and non-professional media
citizens. The discourse takes many forms.
SUMMER 2010
One form, as seen in the Jan Moir case, is
the well-known “us versus them” mode of
media criticism. A more recent mode is collaboration among professional journalists
and online twitterers and bloggers.
Take, for example, how The Guardian
newspaper worked with the online world to
overturn a court ban obtained by Trafigura,
a multinational oil company. Trafigura had
dumped chemical waste illegally in Abi-
An open ethic does
not consider the
boundary between
the professional and
non-professional
members of a
practice to be
absolute. To the
contrary, it regards
the meaningful
participation of
non-members in
ethics discourse to be
necessary and
important.
djan, Ivory Coast, in 2006, leading to tens
of thousands of people reporting illnesses
ranging from skin lesions to diarrhea and
breathing problems. Trafigura secured a
‘super-injunction’ in Britain preventing
the media in that country from reporting
on the class action by 30,000 Africans and
even barring the media from reporting on a
question asked on the matter in parliament.
The Guardian appealed to the blogosphere
and tweeter-sphere (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/oct/13/twitteronline-outcry-guardian-trafigura). Within
12 hours of the editor of The Guardian
tweeting about the injunction, it became
the most popular trending topic on Twitter in Europe. The parliamentary question
was unearthed, published online by bloggers and disseminated on Twitter. Trafigura
dropped the ban.
Conclusion
In summary, here is how this sphere is
changing the three features of closed ethics:
Intended users: The “democratization
of media” blurs the old idea of the intended
users of ethics. Not only is it unclear who
is a journalist, but journalism ethics now
applies to all media citizens. If citizens participate in media, they too must ask what
norms they will follow on their wikis and
blogs.
Participation: Networks of people
participate meaningfully in ethics discourse in both ways – discussion and adoption. For example, citizens worldwide
monitor and comment on the daily activities
of the news media, often causing mainstream
newsrooms to run corrections or change
approaches to stories. We now have
a global, on-line fifth estate. Whether
professionals like it or not, people
outside their ranks are leading ethics discussions and intervening in a once-closed
process.
It is difficult to know where this open
process will lead. It is not guaranteed that
a more open discourse will be a better ethical discourse. Will the new tools of communication be used to promote responsible
journalism practices across our mixed media? Or will the discourse be hijacked by
voices that care little for principles of good
journalism. Nevertheless, it is clear that we
are far beyond the point of any return to a
simple “public input” or “complaint” model. And, surely the emphasis on a more diverse and participatory process is not only
correct, but the only model that suits our
global media.
Rather than spend energy on decrying these changes in ethics, we should
get ahead of the curve. We should be
forward-looking,
ethically
speaking,
and seek to channel these new expansive
discussions towards ethical ends. M
Stephen J. A. Ward is the director of
the Center for Journalism Ethics at
the University of Wisconsin- Madison’s
School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
37
Feeds and Ledes
ALTERNATIVES TO GOOGLE
It has become the mother of all search engines, but there are other options
Mary Gazze
Y
ou, and everyone
you know probably Google dozens
of times a day, no
matter what your career. Google is great
for general searches,
when you need to look
up something quickly
like a phone number, address or old news
story.
But with the Internet being a massive
source of un-indexed information, there are
plenty of other, more specialized search engines out there that could help journalists
uncover more information than you’d get
on Google or Yahoo.
Here’s a rundown of some of the best:
Dogpile.com and Mamma.com
These are metasearch engines, which
work by running your keywords through
other search engines like Google, Yahoo,
Bing, and Ask.com, and presenting the
combined results on on page.
Underneath each result, Dogpile will
tell you which major engine found the
link. These can help you cast a wider net if
you’re having trouble with the mainstream
search engines.
Viewzi.com
The benefit of Viewzi is not so much the
results, but how they are displayed.
Everyone knows that a copy editor’s
fresh set of eyes can catch that spelling
mistake you glossed over six times. Viewzi
acts like that second set of eyes. This visual
search engine lets you choose whether you
want to see your results in the typical format, or as a Google timeline, photo spread,
screenshot of a site’s front page, as well as
a host of other options.
Seeing the usual information presented
in a different way may help you see something in a new light and lead to a new story
angle.
38
Allwhois.com
I don’t know about you, but I find lots
of web pages with zero contact information
on them. Sometimes people forget to list
it, may not want to be found, or may buy
a domain name hoping to masquerade as
someone else.
This website, which is used to check
availability for people who want to purchase domain names, will give you the
With the Internet
being a massive
source of un-indexed
information, there are
plenty of other, more
specialized search
engines out there that
could help journalists
uncover more
information
contact information for the owner, often including names, phone numbers, and email
addresses. Even if the name of the registrant is not available, Allwhois usually lists
the contact information for the company
hired to maintain or host the website, and
you can use that as a starting point.
Blinkx.com
As a former TV producer, I know the
pain of having to ditch a great story because
you’ve got no pictures to fill large voiceover holes. Oftentimes, turning to YouTube.com or Liveleak.com can help you fill
the video gaps. But if you can’t find what
you’re looking for, Blinkx might help.
This is a metasearch engine like Mamma.com or Dogpile.com, but it is devoted
solely to scouring through millions of
hours worth of video on different video
sharing websites like YouTube, Google and
MySpace. You can also choose a filter that
removes all “Not Safe For Work” results to
avoid a potentially embarrassing talk with
your boss.
Omgili.com
One of my favourite ways to find regular
people with a particular interest is to scan
topic-specific message boards.
Type in a keyword, and Omgili searches
message boards, discussion groups, and
online forums, to find relevant boards, and
relevant posts showing what people are
talking about.
Omgili claims to scan through 100,000
message boards. Use Google.Omgili.com
to combine the results from both websites
on one page. (Note: This is not endorsed
by Google, but works in the same way that
many websites embed a Google search
bar).
Icerocket.com and Technorati.com
When looking for a blog, people often
turn to Google Blog Search, which is great,
but here’s two more you may want to try
if you’re having trouble. Technorati was
one of the first blog search engines and still
does a good job today. It also maintains a
Top 100 blog list. Icerocket also searches
blogs, but the tabs at the top help you sort
web, news, twitter, and MySpace results.
Sort by the “Big Buzz” tab, and you’ll get a
real time view of recent blog posts on your
topic, and how long ago they were posted.
Archive.org
Google cache works for websites that
changed a few weeks ago, but when you
need to go back to the days of chat rooms
MEDIA
and AOL, jump into the Wayback Machine
at archive.org. It will give you a snapshot
of your chosen website in all its cluttered,
pixelated glory from 1996 (if it even existed back then). Once you’re looking at the
website’s archived state, you can still click
on the links there, which are sometimes
still active.
Legacy.com
You’re investigating someone you know
is a scam artist, but she says she inherited
a fortune from her great aunt Gladys. You
know aunt Gladys exists, but is she really
even dead? Legacy.com will look through
obituaries from major newspapers from
Canada and the U.S. Records go back as
far as 1949.
Thoora.com
Twitter search can help you keep an ear
to the ground as to what is a popular topic
at any given moment, but you can’t really
use it as a gauge to measure water cooler
chatter, especially when the top-10 trending topics include tween singing sensation
Justin Bieber or #ibetyou5dollars. Google
Insight (which I mentioned in my last column) can tell you how many times a search
term was used within a given time frame.
Toronto-based Thoora examines the traffic coming from blogs, Twitter, and mainstream media, and ranks stories according
to “Buzz.” The results are presented in a
similar way to Digg.com, but while Digg
requires a reader to proactively click on
a button to vote for a link to be ranked,
Thoora uses an algorithm to rank popular stories without relying on votes. It
can help you see what stories the online
public cares about, and help you choose
where to focus your energies for coming up
with relevant story ideas for the day. Thoora’s website said that as of March last year,
it had indexed 81 million blogs.
I hope you find these niche search engines useful and I’d love to hear about
your success stories. For more about search
engines in general read http://searchenginewatch.com/ and poke around http://
thesearchenginelist.com/ to find a long list
of other useful sites.
Happy typing. M
Mary Gazze is a Toronto-based freelance journalist. She can be reached at:
marygazze@gmail.com
SUMMER 2010
39
The Future of News
Seeking curators
These new skills may lead to new jobs
Simon Doyle
T
here’s an emerging discipline
in
journalism
known
as
curation. It’s not as scary as it sounds.
This is early, theoretical stuff,
but communications experts and bloggers
are devoting significant yarn to curation —
i.e., journalists as hunters and gatherers
for online, public information.
But like the curation that happens in
museums and galleries, it’s a little more
than that.
Curators, traditionally, take original
materials, often artifacts, and arrange
them neatly in public spaces, provide
context, cull unnecessary items, clean them
up, and make them fit for public consumption.
So it’s as much about presenting information as it is finding it and making sense
of it. There’s a human touch.
You could say that editors and journalists have always curated news releases, reports, interviews, wire copy, and video and
audio tape into their news packages. But a
news curator’s focus isn’t original reporting.
That doesn’t mean they don’t find exclusive stories. There’s a need to swim through
the ocean of data to be found on blogs,
Twitter, Facebook, discussion groups,
emails, databases, Flickr, YouTube, newsgroups, online communities, crowdsourced
data, and other miscellaneous, niche Web
content.
Twitter alone is a sea of potential
stories. Bit.ly—that short url people use
in their tweets—generated 2.7 billion
clicks in February of this year, more
than Google News, which last year
generated about one billion clicks per
month.
Most social media is raw, unedited
source material, but has more value when
it’s cleaned up, checked for accuracy, and
arranged and packaged in a form that con40
sumers want.
“The stuff that comes through citizen
journalism channels, for the most part,
isn’t journalism,” Michael Tippett, founder of the Vancouver-based NowPublic
citizen journalism project, told me recently.
His organization employs five editorial
staff, who primarily work as curators. They
have software in the newsroom, called
Scan, that allows them to punch in a location or a keyword and pull up a sea of related citizen-generated photos, videos, and
other content.
NowPublic is using the program to tap
it’s as much about
presenting
information as it is
finding it and making
sense of it. There’s a
human touch.
into “a vast conversation … happening on
the Internet on every imaginable topic,” its
website says.
This is already happening in the
mainstream media. It’s not uncommon
for the evening news to use tweets,
Facebook photos, YouTube videos and other social media content in its newscasts.
Here’s a little prediction: It may not be
long before much of the evening news becomes a kind of “best of the Web.”
“I think you’re going to see this play out
nationally, internationally. I think you’re
going to see it play out locally,” Tippett
says of the trend.
But how is curating so different from
editing, you may ask? Aren’t video
producers and copy editors curators?
Kind of. Except that “curator” is a
term new to journalism and specific to the
world of “journalism 2.0,” an expression that
essentially
means
journalism
and
technology.
In a recent article on Owni, a
French social media site based in Paris,
Benoit Raphael proposed a structure for
the “future newsroom,” containing three
groups of journalists: Reporters, who
engage in original, exclusive reporting;
curators (or “super copy editors”), who
cover breaking stories, scour the Web
for material, and engage in “link
journalism”; and columnists, including
bloggers.
In other words, Raphael advocates for a
kind separate, curation newsroom.
Jeff Jarvis, popular BuzzMachine
blogger, professor at CUNY, and author
of the 2009 book What Would Google
Do?, has also blogged about its importance.
He
says
journalists
need
to
learn
curation
skills
in
today’s
media environment. The old, traditional
skills alone— reading, writing, researching, interviewing, editing tape—won’t cut
it.
Curators, “super copy editors”—
or whatever you want to call them—
will have to keep on top of new communications platforms, social networks, and
search tools. To be Web literate is an
understatement. They will need a range
of technical and often specialized skill
sets.
A major report released last year by
independent
media
coalition
The
Media Consortium, titled “The Big
Thaw,” noted that today’s journalism
landscape is demanding new skills
MEDIA
and competencies.
The report suggested that journalists should build skills in “communitybuilding, strategic use of technology, multi-platform agility, greater
integrated organizational functions, and
an ability to experiment.” They’re the
kind of skills, the report duly noted, that
“may require counterintuitive ways of
working.”
Alice Funke might not consider
herself a curator, but that’s essentially what
she does. She is the administrator of
Pundits’ Guide, a well-read resource
for political junkies. Her skills in
information technology (IT) led her to
create an online database of crosssearchable elections and riding information that has become about the millionth
most popular website in the world. Not
bad for a four-year-old site about Canadian
politics.
For now, Funke may come short of
a profitable business model, and she
may not be trained in journalism, but
she is successful because she’s creative,
loves what she’s doing, and possesses
a specific set of computer-assistedreporting skills.
Canwest News Service recognized
that in 2008 when it hired her during the
federal election campaign. She conducted
computer-assisted reporting for the national bureau’s reporters.
“I’ve obviously assembled some
valuable data sets, data that is in the
public domain, but really badly
organized,” Funke told me recently.
Today’s journalists don’t need certificates
in IT—but a little training in database
SUMMER 2010
management is helpful.
So is web design, for obvious
reasons. Part of the job of curation involves
finding
innovative
and
creative
ways of presenting and aggregating information.
Curators, “super copy
editors”— or
whatever you want to
call them—
will have to keep on
top of new communications platforms,
social networks, and
search tools. To be
Web literate is an
understatement.
Martin Langeveld, in a piece
last year for the Nieman Journalism
Lab, wrote that we should start to think
about news content “as a cascade, as in a
stream
running
down
a
rocky
glen,
always
moving,
dividing, uniting, filling pools here and
there, constantly finding new niches
to fill.”
A little abstract, sure. But by
example, he wondered why news
sites continue to run separate articles
for rolling or developing stories. Why not
just manage wikis that are updated with
each new development? OpenFile, a
new,citizen-engagement news site in
Toronto,
approaches
its
stories as “files” as opposed to
isolated texts or videos. Each story
belongsto
a
broader,
linked-in
narrative, like a wiki.
It’s just one creative way curators
can experiment with news delivery
and drive its innovation on our iPads,
laptops and wireless devices.
A brave new world, indeed. But
thankfully, there will also continue
to be a need for good-old video
editors and, of course, writers.
Tippett says he thinks there may
come a time when our obsession
with immediate information fades, and
long-format news makes a return.
“You
may
find
there’s
slow
information movement, in the same
way
there
was
a
slow
food
movement, where people are rejecting
McFood and are looking for more
wholesome food,” he says.
It’s also notable that the online
encyclopedia,
HowStuffWorks.com,
is hiring writers, according to the site.
Yes, plain old writers. You might
even consider it a form of journalism. M
Simon Doyle is the editor of The Wire
Report in Ottawa.
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