Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 6 - Evidence for February 1, 2005
VANCOUVER, Tuesday, February 1, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 9:00 a.m. to examine the current state of Canadian media industries; emerging trends and developments in these industries; the media's role, rights and responsibilities in Canadian society; and current and appropriate future policies relating thereto.
Senator Joan Fraser (Chairman) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chairman: Honourable Senators, members of the public, welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications. The Committee is pursuing its study of the news media in Canada with a series of hearings in the Western provinces.
[English]
We are meeting today at the School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia and I particularly want to thank the director of the school, Donna Logan, for hosting this today and for making us so very welcome here.
This committee is studying the Canadian news media and the appropriate policy in helping to ensure that the news media remain healthy, independent and diverse in light of the tremendous changes that have occurred in recent years, notably globalization, technological change, convergence and increased concentration of ownership.
Our first witness this morning is Donna Logan, who has already appeared before the committee and who told us, when she came to us in Ottawa, that she had some very interesting work under way at the school; she is here today to tell us about the fruits of that very interesting work. We are grateful to you for agreeing to join us a second time, and we are also grateful to you for opening the school to us. It is helpful for us to see the school and to be able to tour it.
Ms. Logan is accompanied by Professor Mary Lynn Young, who has also been involved with this study, as I understand it.
I believe it is you, Ms. Logan, who will begin the presentation. Please proceed.
Ms. Donna Logan, Director, School of Journalism, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable senators, for the invitation to appear before you today. Before beginning, I would like to say how pleased we are to have you here in Vancouver and particularly at the School of Journalism at UBC.
The graduate program in journalism that we offer is the only one west of Ontario and it has been in existence for only six and a half years. We hope that our presentation will demonstrate the importance of journalism education and how we can make a valuable contribution to the future of the media in this country by providing both excellent training for journalists and much needed research about the media.
Helping me make that case will be my colleague, Mary Lynn Young, who is a professor here at the school. I have handed out the slides for the presentation but I would urge you to follow it on the screen if you are able to do that.
The Chairman: The screen is perfectly situated for the senators to see it. The members of the public may have a little more trouble. If those chairs are movable, we will not be offended if you turn the chairs around to look at the screen.
Senator Tkachuk: I would consider that normal, actually.
Ms. Logan: Because of the time constraints, I have had to edit today's presentation. The handout may be a little difficult to follow now but will give you a lot more information.
When I first appeared before this committee early last year, I talked about the Canadian Media Research Consortium and the survey we were planning, as Senator Fraser had mentioned. Just to refresh your memory, the CMRC is a partnership of three universities in Canada — UBC, York and Laval — and we came together to foster discussion about the media and to conduct research on media issues.
Our first major study involved a survey of 3,000 Canadians, and we looked at four different areas. First, we looked at how Canadians consume news; second, we looked at how Canadians feel about the credibility of the news they are getting; third, we studied how Canadians' attitudes compare and contrast with Americans'; and, finally, we analyzed the difference between English and French Canadians in their views of the job being done by the country's journalists. From all this data, we put together a report card on Canadian journalism.
For the purposes of today's presentation, I am going to skip over the material on how Canadians use the media. I suspect you know most of it already and it is included in the handout.
Our comprehensive study was the first survey of its kind in Canada, and that fact alone says a lot about the state of media research in this country. As you are aware, media research of this type has been going on in the U.S. for about 30 years. We were curious to know how the situation in Canada compared. So, in designing this research, we worked closely with the Pew Research Center in Washington, and together we came up with several ways to measure credibility, including accuracy, bias, fairness and balance, accountability, sensationalism and trust, independence, and consolidation and ownership.
Let's look at the results of those indicators, starting with accuracy. Regarding accuracy, which is one of the most significant measures of media credibility, we find that a majority of Canadians believe that the news media get the facts straight. In Canada, the bad news is that nearly one third, or 31 per cent, of Canadians think that the news reports are inaccurate, and that is almost one in three. The good news, however, is that it could be worse. In the United States, the perceptions of accuracy are reversed, with 56 per cent of Americans thinking news reports are inaccurate.
Next, let's look at bias. We found that Canadians are quite cynical about the news that they are getting. A surprising number of Canadians do not think the news is impartial. Almost 80 per cent of Canadians think that reporter bias influences news often or sometimes. The finding of reporter bias is very similar to results in the United States, as you can see on this slide.
On the question of fairness and balance, two-thirds of the Canadians thought that news is not often fair and balanced; however, only 16 per cent believe news is seldom or never balanced. Quebecers, interestingly, are more positive. Forty-four per cent of French users see news as often fair and balanced. Younger Canadians, and this was a surprising finding, are more likely to perceive a lack of balance. Seventy-four per cent of them see a lack of balance at least sometimes. When we asked Canadians if they thought the issue of fairness and balance was becoming a bigger or a smaller problem, 55 per cent said it was becoming a bigger problem.
It is obvious that with the volume of material that the media churns out on any given day there are bound to be errors, and so we wanted to find out how the media deal with errors and how the public feels about the way that they deal with errors. Canadians don't think the media are very willing to admit mistakes. In fact, 54 per cent think that the news media try to cover up their mistakes. Only 34 per cent think the media are willing to admit their mistakes. Younger Canadians are more cynical on this issue. Among Canadians 19 to 25 years of age, fully 68 per cent think the news media try to cover up mistakes. Americans in this measure are even more pessimistic about mistakes. The public in both countries clearly believe that the media are not appropriately accountable.
With respect to media responsiveness, another measure of credibility, we found that only 53 per cent of Canadians believe news organizations pay attention to public complaints. In the United States, the figures once again are much worse. Only 35 per cent of Americans think the news media are responsive and almost 60 per cent think that the media ignore complaints.
Now I am going to turn it over to Mary Lynn Young to take us through some other indicators of credibility.
Ms. Mary Lynn Young, Professor, School of Journalism, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Welcome, senators. We also asked questions about sensationalism and trust. In fact, we asked two questions about sensationalism. The first asked Canadians about whether they perceived the news to be sensational, which was defined as exaggeration or focus on emotional details in order to attract attention or make a point. In response, most Canadians, 92 per cent, reported seeing sensationalism in the news.
Our next question was a follow-up. It asked respondents who said that the media were often or sometimes sensational to comment on whether their trust in the news was affected by this. Sixty-three per cent of those respondents said sensationalism affects their trust in the news media. Interestingly, it is the younger people who say sensationalism in the media is more likely to affect their trust. Quebecers are also more likely to see sensationalism, but less likely to be bothered by it.
We also asked whether respondents felt that the media were independent. Canadians are apparently under no illusions about the independence of news organizations. They clearly think the news they receive is strongly influenced by powerful people or groups. This cynicism is reflected in the fact that fewer than one in five Canadians think news organizations are independent. Interestingly, Americans are no more cynical than Canadians on the independence issue, even though they are more cynical about the media in most other respects. We are not sure what to make about this finding. It is possible that Canadians no longer see the media as having a responsibility to uphold the public trust, or that, to the public, news outlets have become just another business.
Then we wanted to find out who Canadians think influences the news. To those respondents who had indicated that they believe that the news is influenced by people or organizations, we asked an open-ended question about the major influences on news content. From a wide range of responses, we created umbrella categories to capture the sentiments of the Canadians who responded. The most frequently mentioned category, cited by 42 per cent or the respondents, was political interests, which included local and federal governments, politicians and bureaucrats. Economic interests, including people with money and perceived influence, businesses and large corporations, was the second most popular category, cited by 27 per cent. Only 12 per cent mentioned media ownership.
Next we asked specifically about consolidation and media ownership, because in the past some commentators have said that they believe that Canadians are not concerned about who owns their media. Our results show clearly that this is not the case. Fifty-six per cent of Canadians see consolidation of media ownership as having a negative impact on their trust in the media. This sentiment is also shared by American audiences.
This brings us to a subject that is often debated but difficult to measure in a survey of this type: the role of the media and people's thoughts about whether the media helps society function. Here we used a question from the Pew Research Center so that we could compare Canadian attitudes to American attitudes on this issue. We discovered that Canadians are clearly more optimistic about the influence of the media on the country and the media's ability to help solve problems. In fact, 48 per cent of Canadians believe that the news media help society solve problems, compared to only 31 per cent of Americans who had that same opinion. In fact, nearly six in 10 Americans believe that the news media actually get in the way of solving problems.
As well as looking at the role of the media in general, we wanted to look at the contribution of specific media in explaining news stories. Here we found that television provides Canadians with a better overview of the news, outranking newspapers more than two to one. When respondents were asked which medium provided better explanations, newspapers edged out television, but not by as much as the newspaper industry would like to think. There was only a 7 per cent difference in which medium people thought provided better explanations.
TV and newspapers are the major sources of news for most Canadians. The Internet is not yet a major source, although a new study from the U.S. shows that online and ethnic media are two of the biggest growth areas for media right now.
We also asked about satisfaction with aspects of news media content. Overall, Canadians are satisfied with the variety of subjects and viewpoints provided by the news. When it comes to providing different points of view, the public clearly wants a wider range of perspectives. This is particularly true of younger and immigrant Canadians.
We looked at people's perceptions of how comprehensible news stories are. We were curious to find out if Canadians really understood what was going on in the world from the way it was represented in the media. Of those who are willing to admit they find news difficult to understand, A surprising 26 per cent, or one in four Canadians, said that they sometimes or often find news difficult to understand. This finding suggests that a sizable audience is not being well served by the news media.
Now I would like to hand the presentation back to Professor Logan.
Ms. Logan: As I mentioned earlier, we have been comparing our baseline study mostly with U.S. findings, but we also found some interesting differences between French and English audiences in Canada. In the handout, there is a fair amount of information on this, so at the moment I will highlight just a couple of those differences.
Francophone Quebecers are considerably more positive about the capacity of news media to help solve society's problems. In fact, they are nearly twice as positive as Americans. Colette Brin, from the University of Laval, our francophone colleague on this study, suggests that that may reflect a much closer integration of the French media in Quebec and the communities that they serve.
Francophones are also more positive than anglophones about television news as compared to other media. The differences are most striking on this measure, but they also show up when Canadians are asked which medium provides a better overview of news or a better presentation of different viewpoints on controversial issues. Again, Professor Brin felt that it was perhaps that there is much more television viewing per citizen in Quebec than there is in English Canada; that is, the number of hours of viewing per person is higher in Quebec.
What does this all amount to? After we had looked at our results, we put them into three different categories in the report card that we drew up. In the very positive category we included these subjects: variety of subjects treated in the news; interest in the news, which is very high in Canada, as you will see from the material in the handout; the variety of viewpoints, which seems to be satisfactory; and making news understandable, which also seems to be satisfactory. In the second category, still positive but not as much as the first, we included these three measures: accuracy, responsiveness, and media's role in society. Finally, in the category of serious concern, are the following: balance and fairness; ownership concentration; accountability; independence; and reporter bias.
To sum up, looking at four of the five areas where there are serious concerns about the performance of the media, it becomes obvious that journalism education and research are important tools for building a better future for the media in Canada. The four areas are balance and fairness, reporter bias, independence, and accountability.
The fifth area of concern on that list is ownership concentration. History has shown that it is difficult for government to deal effectively with media ownership and concentration. However, we feel that there may well be a role for government in providing a framework that could foster good journalism. What is needed is better education for people entering the business, more and better training for working journalists, and research that measures the performance of the media and provides some real data to replace the hot air on which most media discussions currently are based. The Canadian Media Research Consortium could well be a vehicle to develop initiative in all of these areas.
Today, you have seen the results of our first major research. In a few weeks, we are going to release the results of the first comprehensive study done in Canada on Internet use. That study is part of a worldwide look at how people are using the Internet. At the end of this month, the consortium is hosting a conference at UBC of the top decision makers in Canadian journalism to consider what needs to be done to rebuild trust and confidence in the media. Later this year, we will proceed with phase two of the credibility project, where we will hold public forums in different parts of the country and survey journalists for ideas on what needs to be done to improve standards and practices.
We are guided in this work by what the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists is doing in the U.S. As you probably know, the work they do is funded by two huge media foundations, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Pew. Unfortunately, in Canada we do not have the luxury of such resources, but the consortium has made a start. However, its funding is insufficient to do the job that needs to be done. In the U.S. the Committee of Concerned Journalists offers free training sessions to newsrooms across the country. Needless to say, that is expensive, but it is starting to pay off according to a recent assessment about to be released. The Canadian Media Research Consortium could well perform this role in Canada.
This brings us to the end of our presentation. Thank you for listening.
The Chairman: Thank you. It is not often I find myself saying that was frustratingly short. Usually I am really pressing people to gallop on.
Ms. Logan: We were told to be brief.
The Chairman: Yes, and we appreciate it no end, because of course we have a lot of questions, but there is an enormous amount of material here to think about. We will begin with Senator Tkachuk, followed by Senator Carney.
Senator Tkachuk: Thank you very much. Well, it is nice to see that the media have lowered themselves to the same level of credibility as politicians. I was wondering how the public would feel about the two of us sitting here trying to solve some of these problems.
Did your survey have regional breakdowns?
Ms. Logan: Yes, it did.
Senator Tkachuk: Could you tell us whether there were strong variances from region to region? Perhaps B.C. would be a good example.
Ms. Logan: Actually I can't tell you because we have not yet done the regional breakouts. So far we have been able to do the comparisons with the U.S. and between French and English. However, we have data that we are willing to make available, even unanalyzed, if you wish. We are now proceeding to work with that data to do regional breakouts.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you think that the media reporters you talk to would buy into the results of your study or would they simply close their eyes and say, "No, we are not biased. We give the facts as they are?" In all the discussions I have had with reporters, they have said that they are not biased.
Ms. Logan: That is a very interesting question. In the United States, the Committee of Concerned Journalists has gone a long way to bring journalists onside when they presented with data like this, to help them realize that there are problems and to work with journalists. In this country, that work forms phase two of this project. We are hoping to present this data to journalists, to engage them, and to get them working with us on the solutions. Once faced with the results of this study, it is difficult to deny that there is a problem.
Senator Tkachuk: How do we overcome the fact that the media are seen to be highly influenced by the very institutions that they are supposed to watch? After all, the fourth estate is given certain standing and privileges by society in the expectation that they will be the watchdog for society on government and powerful institutions.
Ms. Logan: Certainly the media are not seen as independent or as independent as the public believes they ought to be. We used almost exactly the same question that had been asked by Pew over and over in the United States, so we believe this to be a valid finding.
Senator Tkachuk: There has been some discussion about media people working for government and government people in the media. Does that contribute to problem, do you think? In other words, people don't see a separation anymore between the media and the institutions they cover.
Ms. Logan: It might. I would only be speculating in answering that question. I think that there are other factors that play a greater part. It has always bothered me, as I worked in journalism and now in the academy, that there was not enough discussion about the role of the media in society. I guess that, as media have become more and more commercial and less and less public, people have lost sight of the extra role that the media plays in society. With the consortium, we are trying to get people talking about the role of the media in our society. Journalists do not have enough opportunity to talk to the public about their role, and the public does not have enough opportunity to make its views known to media owners.
Studies in the United States indicate that 80 per cent of the news originates from official sources — government, business leaders, police — and it is relatively unanalyzed data, that is, comments and quotes. I think that is in part why the public feels that these institutions influence the news.
Senator Tkachuk: I think a mistake that perhaps schools, students and reporters make is not taking responsibility for the perception that ordinary people have of the media. People feel that there is a reason for them not to trust the media. When are the media going to look at themselves and say, "It is our fault; we are not doing our job and how do we go about fixing that?"
Ms. Logan: Well, you know, I think that journalists do agonize about the jobs that they do, the resources that they have, the limitations that are placed on the work that they do. There is never enough time. Competition is keen. You know the factors as well as I do. I think there is a lot of introspection on that front, but maybe not enough discussion between journalists and the public, and this might be one way of improving the dialogue.
Senator Carney: Good morning. I have four questions and you can divide up how you want to answer them if you wish. With respect to your first question of who is interested in the news, you say that 67 per cent of people watch news. Did your studies show the demographic breakdown of that figure?
Ms. Logan: There is quite a lot of information in the handout regarding the demographic breakdown. I am sorry we did not have time to go through that here.
The interesting thing about that breakdown, at least to me, is that young people are spending a fair amount of time acquiring news. There is a lot of hand wringing in this country because young people supposedly are not reading newspapers or even watching television news, but if we consider the Internet, we find that young people are spending as much time acquiring the news or accessing news as older generations. The difference is how they do it. They do it on the Internet and they read newspapers on the Internet. They watch television on the Internet. They look at alternate sources on the Internet. A couple of years ago one of our students did a study on this and found that young people are spending as much time as older generations accessing the news. They just do it differently.
Senator Carney: If you add up all the people who use the Internet, either daily or less than once a week, it is 45 per cent, which is quite a bit. Would you assume that many of those are the younger readers? If so, what is that going to mean for print journalism and television journalism?
Ms. Young: I definitely would assume that a lot of them are younger readers. For The Globe and Mail, online is its key revenue growth area as well as its readership growth area. The same thing is occurring in the U.S. Online has been cited as one of the only growth areas when it comes to the newspaper business. That is why I think you are seeing newspapers putting a lot of resources into their online news operations, creating new content for online.
Senator Carney: We heard from another witness who will be known to you, Catherine Murray at Simon Fraser University, on the questions of fairness and accountability, which you identify as problem areas. She suggests an agency or a body or a commission to beef up accountability. Her position was that press councils are too weak and there is not enough accountability. She would include in this overview agency members of the general public and what she calls stakeholders. I argued that having an overview body of different stakeholders might lead to political correctness.
I have told you my bias in advance. How do you think we might achieve more and better accountability in newspapers, and what do you think of the idea of having an overview agency with stakeholders?
Ms. Logan: The idea of an overview agency scares me. I think that, whenever you set up agencies like that, there is always a danger of, as you said, political correctness or bias in the agency. We have looked at all of the various mechanisms that exist around the world to try to deal with this problem. The Project for Excellence in Journalism in the U.S. last year released a report card on the performance of media, and they intend to do this annually. I think that would be a huge undertaking in Canada. I do not think it is necessary to do it annually, but perhaps once every two or three years would work. I think it could have a tremendously powerful effect.
Senator Carney: Thank you. We have heard complaints from other witnesses about the lack of diversity in the newsrooms. One of the professors at Ryerson said there is not enough ethnic diversity in Canadian newsrooms. Now, your students are extremely diverse in terms of ethnic background and experience. What is your comment on that, and do you think it is a valid point or do you think it is necessary to have ethnic diversity in order to get more balanced coverage?
Ms. Young: Taking Vancouver as an example, a third of the population of Vancouver is Asian, is of Asian descent. If you look at the newsrooms in this city, you can count on one hand the number of journalists who can actually speak Mandarin or Cantonese or any of the languages from that area. I think there is an issue of access. There is an issue of representation and there is an issue of community. There is a vibrant ethnic media in this city, and I think that there also needs to be dialogue within the greater community. I think diversity would definitely benefit that. Studies show that the greater representation there is in newsrooms, the better able newspapers and TV outlets are to access those types of readers and viewers.
Senator Carney: I would like to clarify that when you say that a third of the population is from Asia, you mean a third is of Asian ethnic background, because a lot of them are Canadian-born, Canadian-educated.
Ms. Young: Yes.
The Chairman: And a further clarification: when you said that hardly anybody in the newsrooms speaks those languages, you were referring to the main English language media, I assume. You were not thinking of Ming Pao.
Ms. Young: I was thinking of the main English language communications here. Hardly any of them speak Mandarin or Cantonese, but Ming Pao and Fairchild are clearly a different case.
The Chairman: Clearly. Had you concluded, Senator Carney?
Senator Carney: Yes, except to say that it is an extremely interesting study. I know that Donna Logan spearheaded the establishment of the study, and I think it is extremely important and a terrific contribution.
Ms. Logan: Thank you.
Senator Phalen: You mentioned a report card. Who is doing the study in the United States?
Ms. Logan: This is being done by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is a group funded by Pew in Washington and headed by Tom Rosenstiel, a journalist of some note in the U.S.
Senator Phalen: And you do not feel that they could do that in Canada?
Ms. Logan: I think if we had the resources, we could. It is an expensive undertaking. It is not necessary to do it every year. We have been to Washington and have talked to the people who are doing it there, and I do think we could do it in Canada and it would be a terrific contribution to accountability.
Senator Phalen: Could you suggest anyone in Canada who would be equipped to do such a study?
Ms. Logan: Well, as I tried to say, I think the consortium could do it, but not with its present resources. It would need additional resources.
Senator Merchant: Thank you very much. The follow-up to such studies of course depends on the kinds of questions you ask. Unless we delve into that, we do not know the accuracy of the results. Are you very sure that these results are accurate? How do you measure the accuracy of the findings? How did you conduct this study? Was the questionnaire done by telephone?
Ms. Logan: I indicated at the beginning of my presentation that we worked with the Pew Research Center in Washington. Pew has worldwide respect. The research director spent a week here working with us on the development of the questions. Our research team also included Angus Reid, who is a well-known pollster in this country; at the time, he was working at the university after having retired and sold his business. He has since left his position at the university, but at the time he was part of our team. I feel fairly confident in saying that we had the best in the business in the United States and Canada helping us to formulate this questionnaire. Social science is not an exact science, as you well know, but we are satisfied that the questions were as fair as we could possibly make them.
Senator Merchant: And were the questions asked over the telephone or did you see the people?
Ms. Logan: We hired a firm to do the interviews. Because the respondents were from all across the country, the interviews had to be done on the telephone. It is interesting to note that, although the refusal rate with pollsters is becoming a huge problem, as you are probably aware, when the subject is media, the refusal rate drops a bit. We used to listen to some of the interviews just to see how it was going and whether we needed to make any adjustments to the questions and we were amazed that no one wanted to get out of this interview. Most of the interviews went on for 25 minutes. Even the pollsters doing the calls were amazed that people wanted to talk about this.
Senator Merchant: That tells us that people are very concerned, very frustrated, about the kind of news that they are getting. I think there is a great disconnect between the news reporting and what the public feels are important issues. Reporters have their own interests and seem to zero in on what they feel is important, and then they tell everyone else what to think is important. For instance when President Bush was here last fall, Pierre Berton died, and the big news of the evening was all about Pierre Berton. Somebody had to decide that that was what was important that day. But many people I spoke with afterwards were shocked that there was so little said about President Bush's visit. I come from Regina, and we are always very interested in what is happening between the U.S. and Canada, because of BSE or mad cow disease and our trade issues. Yet that evening it was not mentioned. It seems that the news is presented with a take it or leave attitude, and so a lot of people are leaving it.
What do you think of that? What do you think of the disconnect between the audience and the presenter?
Ms. Logan: Well, there is no question that there is a disconnect. We talk about it a lot here at the school. It is particularly acute with young people, because young people feel that traditional media, in particular, are not addressing their interests and their needs.
Last night at dinner with people from The Toronto Star, we were talking about how to address this very subject; there is no easy answer. News people are trained to determine what is news. That is not always what you or anybody else thinks is news. It seems to me that the media perhaps have to take a look at addressing what interests citizens. James Fallows, who used to be the Washington editor of the Atlantic Monthly, wrote an interesting book a few years ago and he argued that the news media was not addressing the concerns of the average citizen. I do not have an answer, but a lot of news people are grappling with that question at the moment.
Senator Merchant: It does not matter how good the news is, if people are not watching it. For instance, the CBC does wonderful programming, but it has a very small audience. It really does not matter how good their work is because nobody is tuning them in.
You said that the School of Journalism here is unique. We have a school of journalism in Regina. Can you tell me how yours is different?
Ms. Logan: The University of Regina does not offer a graduate program. We are a graduate program only.
Senator Merchant: I did not know that. Thank you very much.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Thank you, chair, colleagues, distinguished professors and audience members. I am always looking to the future in thinking about our youth, and I was very interested in the number of things you mentioned with regard to our younger population in Canada.
I have underlined the things that I noted, and it seems to me that perhaps you found overall that the younger people were more discriminating and more critical. A greater number of them found a lack of balance. A greater number thought that mistakes were covered up. A greater number thought that news was affected by sensationalism, and so on. You did not mention it in your presentation, but more young people are using the Internet for news. Could you expand a bit on your impressions now from this survey and of course from your professorships regarding our younger population in Canada, the next generation, and the future of the news?
Ms. Logan: We should probably ask the students to comment on this, and there is a lot written about it, but my observation is that traditional media are not addressing the interests of younger people in the way that they would want. The value of the Internet, of course, is that they can look at traditional media on the Internet but they can also look at a lot of alternatives.
The concern that you bring forward is a major one for media owners around the world and they are looking at various ways to deal with it. In the United States and in Britain, there are many new publications aimed at younger audiences. Newspapers particularly are trying to do this. There is one in Chicago called Red Eye.
Ms. Young: CanWest Global is launching one in five cities.
Ms. Logan: Yes, CanWest Global is launching a youth-oriented paper in five cities across Canada this year. Clearly they have recognized that traditional media are not able to meet the demands of a younger audience and they are trying different ways to address that. The U.S. experiments are regarded to be successful, and I suppose it remains to be seen what will happen in Canada.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Thank you. Will that paper for young people from CanWest Global be free?
Ms. Young: I actually just wrote about it in my column last week. It is going to be free. It is going to go out in five cities in March. It is called Dose and it is modelled on the Chicago Tribune.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Yes, I did see an article somewhere on that. Will that paper also be on the Internet?
Ms. Young: I do not know if they are going to go online. I would assume so, but that has not been released yet. They are worried about competition from the free dailies. Metro, the Swedish company that is in Toronto and Montreal, is coming out to Vancouver. There is a lot of movement in the industry right now.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: What is the overall prevailing mood amongst your students? Is it optimism?
Ms. Logan: Well, we just saw an ad in the paper yesterday that Metro is hiring in Vancouver. So I assume that they are feeling a bit better than they did the day before.
Senator Munson: I am curious to know about how your survey affects the attitude of the students and whether it will affect how you teach your students from here on in.
Ms. Logan: An interesting question. We have all been following the work that is being done in the Pew, and in setting up our program we were very conscious of what was going on in the industry, including all of the things that we have been talking about here today, and particularly the effect of technology on the business. Most journalism schools are still streaming students either to go into radio or to go into television or to go into newspapers. From the beginning, we decided that, because we did not have any professors that were uni-media, we would do away with streaming and we would try to turn out journalists who could work in the new converged world and be able to do print, television and the Internet, as well as radio. That is one way that not only our study but other studies have influenced what we are doing here.
I have always believed, and this study reinforces the idea, that we need journalists with education in a field other than journalism. Traditionally, people have gone to undergraduate journalism school, sometimes to graduate journalism school, and then into the business. I have become convinced over the years that that was not the way to go, that it was better to have people who were educated in another field and then did journalism after that. Ninety-nine per cent of the people in this school have a degree, sometimes two, in another field before coming to take a masters degree in journalism. I believe that this is the future of journalism education, that it is more and more important to have people who understand the way the world works and who have a specialty understanding of an issue, whether in finance or Asian studies or health, when they report on that issue. To me, better education at the undergraduate level as well as at the graduate level is the secret.
Our program has an academic component. The students do not take courses only in journalism. During the two years they have to do 12 credits in an area that they are going to be reporting on, such as international relations.
Senator Munson: You spoke briefly about a converging world and ownership by certain families or groups. Not that this committee is the biggest road show in the world, but we were here in British Columbia yesterday but there were no reporters covering the event. I do not know why. It was probably a good news story. It is about the media and many voices were heard yesterday, but they were not heard in The Vancouver Sun or The Province. I am wondering about the attitudes of your students and yourselves regarding this converging world and having one owner of a major television station, newspapers and community newspapers. Is that a good thing?
Ms. Logan: We could be here a long time trying to answer that.
Senator Munson: That is my final question.
Ms. Logan: This city is the most converged in the country. That is probably not a healthy situation, but it is not as dire as a lot of people seem to think. We do have the CBC here, and they have a very respectable audience. We have CTV here and they too have a very respectable audience. In English, the rest is owned by CanWest. However, as we alluded to earlier, there is an incredibly strong ethnic press here that serves a huge population. And we have two or three television stations and more radio stations than can be counted, and they command huge audiences. The situation here is much more complex than is often portrayed.
Senator Eyton: Thank you. I will preface my remarks by saying this is wonderful stuff and really a cold shower as opposed to much of the anecdotal and impassioned commentary that we hear here and there. It is lovely to see numbers and to see a study that you can hang something on.
I was amazed to hear that your graduate school is only five years old and is the only graduate school west of Ontario. How many other graduate schools are there in the country?
Ms. Logan: It is difficult to say because it depends how you define graduate schools in journalism. If you are talking strictly about journalism graduate schools, there are only two others, at the University of Western Ontario and at Carleton University in Ottawa. They are building a graduate program at Ryerson, and there are other schools of communications that have graduate programmes. But, strictly speaking, in journalism there are three or four, depending on how you define it.
The Chairman: What about Laval?
Ms. Logan: Laval is a media studies program; it does not really turn out journalists, also it is true that some do go into journalism.
Senator Eyton: Just from my own knowledge, I would have thought there were considerably more than that, but perhaps my measurement is broader than yours.
We have not had much opportunity to look at your study, but it is fascinating. I will reread tonight to get a better flavour for it. The study seems to be professionally done, so the only question I had was with regard to the sampling itself. It is a large sample, over 3,000 respondents, and the interviews were extensive, so that was fine. How did you acquire that sampling? Was it random phone calls?
Ms. Logan: Random digit dialing.
Senator Eyton: Well, it is a very impressive piece of work.
On my quick read, it seems that the media as a whole got a strong failing grade, if you apply ordinary judgments and ordinary values to the study. I think it is a failing report card, and it indicates a whole variety of concerns. I would go beyond that to say that if this report card had to do with the automobile industry or the marmalade industry, that industry would likely be out of business. You would certainly hear about it in the media. Do you think this work and its implications will be picked up by Canadian media generally? Will the story carry on as a running concern, rather than a one-day story that we all read about on a Monday and then forget about by Friday? Will the story be widely broadcast and with some industry concern about the implications of this report? How well do you think it will be received and carried?
Ms. Logan: Well, we made a presentation of this material at the Banff Television Festival. It was a very preliminary presentation because we had analyzed the data less thoroughly than we have now. I was quite surprised and disappointed at the amount of press coverage that it got. Given that this is the first major national public survey of its kind, we thought it would get better coverage. We had professional people handling the publicity for us. We sent out releases across the country in all the usual ways that media are informed about these things. And there was one story in The Vancouver Sun for print, but it did not get picked up in English anywhere else. Canadian Press did a short story that got picked up in La Presse, and there were a number of radio interviews. I think I did about 11 radio interviews, sort of talk show things that were quite good. No television at all. So, I guess my one-word answer to your question is "no."
Senator Eyton: The industry is marvellous at being critical of everyone else and it would be lovely to see some of that objectivity applied to themselves.
Yesterday, we had a very long, very interesting day in downtown Vancouver. I am fascinated by the question of who influences the news. Yesterday's presentation suggested that media concentration is 90 per cent of the problem and advertisers the other 10 per cent, with maybe one or two other groups thrown in. By contrast, according to your survey, on the question of influence, political interests get 42 per cent, economic interests are at 27 per cent, and poor old media owners are down at 12 per cent. Media owners hardly register on the scale in terms of having an influence on papers. With respect to consolidation of media ownership, a majority of people are concerned about media concentration, which I guess is fair enough, but that should be seen in the context where, at least according to your survey, the owners have a minimal impact, ranking around lobby groups, labour unions and the advertisers, who have almost no influence at all.
I think that the industry owes it to itself to address the implications of the study. This work cries out for an action plan. And I would not be as pessimistic as you suggested by saying that Canada cannot do a project for excellence in journalism because we are smaller and have less money and fewer resources. Admittedly, the U.S. has a couple of magnificent foundations with lots of money to fund that sort of thing. But I would not give up on the idea, because it seems to me that transparency and better awareness of the industry by those on the inside and by the public are vital. I applaud you for you work; it is a tremendous contribution for us. Thank you.
Senator Chaput: I would like to look at the areas of serious concern, beginning with the independence of the media. The study shows that both Canadians and Americans do not believe that the media are independent; rather, they are influenced by powerful people. The figures show from 76 per cent to 70 per cent.
That brings me to ownership concentration. If I understood correctly, one of yesterday's witnesses said that the rules are different in the U.S. and they do limit corporation concentration. That does not seem to make much difference, because people still say that the media cannot be independent. Have you gone so far as to look at the different rules or regulations in Canada and the United States? Will you be doing that kind of analysis?
Ms. Logan: We had not thought about doing that but it is not a bad idea. The laws are different, but there is still a lot of concentration in the United States because many of those deals were grandfathered when the new legislation came in. In fact, there are American cities that have as much concentration as you will find here.
Senator Chaput: Oh, that is a good point. I had not understood that yesterday.
As a francophone from Western Canada, I am quite happy to see that the study has addressed francophone as a different clientele issue. Did the study get in touch with francophones from Ontario, or Acadians from the Atlantic or francophones from Western Canada? Or was it limited to French-speaking Quebecers?
Ms. Logan: The overall sample of 3,000 included francophones from all across the country; unfortunately, there were not enough outside of Quebec for a breakdown.
Senator Chaput: Am I allowed a third question?
The Chairman: Absolutely.
Senator Chaput: Thank you. The third one has to do with the Internet. We were told yesterday by a witness that we should look at what he called electronic media. Electronic media are coming and we should begin thinking of different rules for them. Do you have anything to say to that?
Ms. Young: Can you be more specific about what you mean by rules?
Senator Chaput: Perhaps regulatory guidelines would be the best term.
Ms. Young: Are you referring to guidelines for the Internet?
Senator Chaput: Yes. For the new electronic media.
Ms. Young: I think we have to look at the media more broadly than that. When we talk about concentration issues or electronic media, I think we have to consider whether we are we looking at diversity of local news or diversity of national news or diversity of international news. The Internet has actually made information much more widely available. Online, people around the world can read widely and from different ideological or community points of view on issues that are relevant to them. I do not know that we necessarily need guidelines for the Internet. I think we need to focus on improving the quality of journalism in this country, in terms of local news and national news, and making the industry more accountable.
Senator Carney: I have been privileged to be on the advisory council to the School of Journalism since its inception, and it has been a fascinating experience for me to see the school grow.
I have a question regarding the Internet. The school's own publication, for which the students earn credit, is an online journal, The Thunderbird. As far as I know, you do not have a print journal. You do not have a print version of The Thunderbird. You rely entirely on an Internet journal for the school's voice. Can you explain why you have chosen to do that rather than to have the usual print journal?
Ms. Logan: There are a couple of reasons. One is economic: we do not have the money to do a print journal, which is much more expensive. But it is also not a bad thing, in my view.
Senator Carney: Good.
Ms. Logan: As I have said many times, the students themselves are very oriented to the Internet. When I was doing the first set of admissions to the school, I made a practice of asking the students how they found out about the School of Journalism at UBC. Ninety-eight per cent said "on the Internet." I realized that young people were looking to the Internet for their information. The focus of the paper is media issues, and we deal not only with local issues but also with national and international issues. We felt that the Internet was the best way to reach students, who are mostly of a certain age.
The Chairman: I have three questions. First, I think you said it was 26 per cent of the respondents who found the news difficult to understand. Does that correlate with illiteracy? My recollection is that most surveys show that it is about that number of Canadians who have problems with literacy.
Ms. Young: We did not dig that deeply into the data to see if there was a relationship with literacy. In fact, we did not ask about literacy. We asked about education. We could pull that from the data, to see whether education is correlated with lack of understanding of the news.
The Chairman: It might be interesting to look at that as you go forward; it just struck me that there was possibly a neat parallel there.
Second, we all know that when you ask people questions, they sometimes give contradictory answers. But I was struck by the contrast between the 54 per cent who say the media try to cover up their mistakes and the 53 per cent who say that the news media pay attention to complaints about inaccuracies in news reports. Can you explain that apparent contradiction?
Ms. Young: The point was raised earlier about how the questions are worded and the survey is organized.
The Chairman: Yes, exactly.
Ms. Young: Some of our questions are not included here. There are a few anomalies and I think this is probably one of them. How the question is framed, either as a positive question or as a negative question, can elicit different responses.
The Chairman: Yes. So, in the end, we are not sure where that one settles down.
Ms. Young: We are not sure. Because this was a random sample survey, we do not have focus group information to delve into to ask more detail, though it would be great to be able to follow up on that level.
The Chairman: Yes. My last question is about sensationalism and trust. The largest group saying that sensationalism affects their trust is the 19 to 25 year olds. I assume that they mean sensationalism affects their trust negatively, although that may be a wrong assumption. I am fascinated by that, because I think conventional wisdom has been suggesting for at least the past 20 years or more that to attract young readers you must dress it up and put spangles on it and feathers and leaps and whistles and whatnot and certainly include an awful lot of sex.
Senator Carney: That is for old people.
The Chairman: Maybe that is what this is telling us. What do you think this means? Does it mean that the young are more sophisticated?
Ms. Logan: I think it means they are more critical. But I always thought it was a false premise that you had to have all those spangles to attract the young. They use the Internet, and the Internet is hard to read generally and, while it has a lot of movement, it does not have the kinds of things that a newspaper or even television can have. Think back to when you were in university. Young people are very cynical about conventional means of doing almost anything, and so they should be. That is the one time in your life when you have that luxury.
The Chairman: I hope that as you go about telling this story, particularly to the management in the media, you will draw this particular item to their attention, because I suspect that it might be one of the most surprising things in your whole study. I found it fascinating.
Ms. Logan: We are hoping to engage some of the media managers at our conference at the end of this month.
The Chairman: Thank you both so much. You can tell we have all been absolutely fascinated by your work, and we look forward to receiving your next study, which I believe you said is coming out in a few weeks.
Ms. Logan: Yes, it should be out by the middle of this month.
The Chairman: Terrific. Please make sure that we get it.
Ms. Logan: I will.
The Chairman: In the meantime, thank you very, very much for this extremely interesting piece of work.
Ms. Logan: You are most welcome.
The Chairman: Our next witness is Professor Stephen Ward, Associate Professor of Journalism Ethics here at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism. He has just published a book called The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond.
Before Professor Ward begins, I would like the students in the room to know that the senators here really want to carve out at least a few minutes for the students either to tell us what they want to tell us or to ask us questions, to which we may or may not have any answers. We will try to do that at the end of this meeting.
Please proceed, Professor Ward.
Mr. Stephen Ward, Professor, School of Journalism, University of British Columbia, as an individual: I just want to let you know that my students are here, and after this hearing, which is taking some of our course time, we will be discussing some of these matters in my ethics course.
Thank you, again. It is an honour to be able to address you on this very important question of Canadian journalism and ethics, which is my area of research and specialty. I will give you a very brief idea of my recent research on ethics, the relevancy of ethics to policy and media policy, and some issues facing journalism ethics as I see it today, and then I will put forward some ideas to improve journalism ethics. I want to stress that I am sticking to ethics here mainly because I am not an expert in the economics of media or the technology of media, although I do have views on the various questions you have all been asking. So, if you want my views, I will give them to you, but I am not an expert in those areas.
I have had professional activities such as helping the Canadian Association of Journalists construct two codes of ethics over the past couple of years; one was a general code while the other was specific to investigative journalism. I am very interested in helping journalists and newsrooms develop policies and procedures with respect to improving their news coverage.
Academically, my area is in applied ethics, which refers to the practices and the standards and the norms of a particular professional discipline. I define journalism ethics as the norms and standards and ideals that journalists ought to follow in the course of their service to the public.
My research over the past couple of years has been mainly on the history of journalism ethics — not journalism, but journalism ethics, although the two obviously go together. I have published or am about to publish a book called The Invention of Journalism Ethics. The book has two parts. First I try to trace how the norms of journalism have changed since the 17th century till today, and then I take a very cautious peak into the future, because it is so complex. Another part of the book has to do with the rise and decline of the idea of objectivity in journalism.
Although I am still very much interested in history, my new research is about the future of ethics and where we are going in the discipline and in the practice. I am also interested in global journalism ethics, which questions the adequacy of our existing norms and standards given that the media now have a global impact and can influence international affairs, humanitarian efforts and so on. Are our ethics adequate to handle that sort of world?
I also look at the relevancy of ethics to media policy. Part of journalism ethics is to talk about what the goal of the media in society should be. What should our news media system look like? What ought it to be?
For me there are three major types of question. First is an ethical, normative sort of question. What is the goal? What sort of new system do we wish to have? Can we even articulate what it should look like? Next is an empirical question, which, like our study, tries to figure out where we are now, what the public thinks of the media, what the current state of journalism is today in newsrooms, and so on. Finally, assuming that we know where we are and we know what our goals are, there is the question of how we bridge the gap from where we were to where we are going. And that is a practical, institutional reform question which I find absolutely complex and mind-numbing at times when I try to figure out how we are going to improve journalism and how we are going to meet the challenges of the future. So, it is means and knowledge, mechanisms and knowledge, focusing in on our goals.
When pushed to answer the question of what is the goal, I take a view of a sort of political notion of journalism, which is that the primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be self-governing and free, including information on the great issues of the day, such as economics, health and the environment, not just politics. Ideally our first obligation as journalists is to seek the truth in service to the public. As a journalist, I always tried to make the public my first loyalty. The essence of journalism, as Kovach and Rosenstiel's book suggests, is verification through independent journalists and proportional and comprehensive news and views. I know that sounds very ideal, but you have got to have some sort of ideal in front of you if you are going to evaluate what you are supposed to do for the future.
I also have a quote here from Robert McChesney who talks about media systems as having informed and active self-government as the goal. This is virtually the same thing in my view.
Where are we now? We could talk for hours about where we think the media stand today. I think we are in a difficult media revolution, making a difficult transition towards what I call a mixed-media system. Basically, we no longer have the mainstream media and traditional media owning the news by themselves. They have to share centre stage, or side stage, with many types of journalists: bloggers, online journalists, Web sites of all kinds. There is and will continue to be a mutual influence going back and forth as the mainstream media look at more of the fringe side of news and Web sites and they look back. There is also a mixed media use; many people will consult the mainstream media but they will also go to personal media. For example, during the tsunami coverage, people were not only watching The National on CBC, they were text messaging, they were using cell phones, they were using all manner of media to exchange messages and get information. That is the world we live in, and for me that is a very important point.
In addition, because we are getting this convergence and expansion of the media, we have got a whole bunch of trends going on that could have good or bad potential down the line, and it is difficult to say how it will turn out. We have a proliferation of new media with completely new communication practices and different ideas of what journalism is. We have new values coming on-stream. We have increased speed of media and we have ubiquitous media. The media are enlarged and seem to be everywhere, which also makes it seem as if they are invading people's privacy, because 400 reporters will show up at the front door of someone who is grieving from a loss in their family.
We also have changing societies. Obviously if the habits of the audiences and the readers change, that will affect newsrooms. People are becoming more impatient with news. They want to flip the remote more quickly. They want to use various forms of non-appointment media. They do not necessarily want to have to sit down at 6 o'clock to watch the news. Those changing habits and uses of media affect how newsrooms are going to have to deliver the news. With the proliferation of media now, we have a hot media environment. There is tremendous pressure about how to get attention, how to entertain, how to grab whatever market is left out there as we fight over the remaining niche markets. That can have an impact on standards and procedures.
Also, there has been a fairly long drift towards defining news and the news business as primarily or only a business, with news divisions as product divisions, quarterly reports forcing us to get more and more readership and ratings. I have noticed that at journalism conferences there is more and more talk about "the product" as opposed to journalism and news and citizens' views. That language can be a problem.
There is convergence in niche audiences. Some people are trying to reassemble audiences over platforms. Others are going niche. And we have the phenomenon of the multi-media journalist, which is old by CP standards. I did radio and print when I was with CP. Increasingly, newsrooms are meshing those functions more and more closely together.
A final trend to mention is that media are going global, with global conglomerates and very large media organizations. With that comes the potential for conflicts of interest between what you are reporting on and the economic interests of your global conglomerate.
The effect of all of this is a mixed journalism ethics. We have right now a battle or collision or convergence of old and new norms. Take objectivity, for example. Is it declining? Is it worth saving? Perhaps what we need is a journalism of assertion, of attitude, of spin, of attracting people to one's point of view. There is the question of gatekeeping. When it seems there is no gate anymore, when everyone has access to a multitude of forms of media, how valid is the concept of gatekeeping? Accuracy is another issue. How accurate should we be on the Web? Should your standards for reporting be same for your online product as they are for your newspaper, if you happen to cross own? There is an enormous debate going on in journalism ethics on how we do that.
We are seeing that ethics is very difficult; it is difficult to make pronouncements and to maintain standards, because journalism is triply embedded, is caught in a cross-fire. We have changing news media, we have changing media environment and we have changing society. And so the provocative question is this: are our existing ethical norms relevant? People are debating about principles and norms within journalism, and because we have a lack of consensus on principles, we get a sort of ethical vertigo. Where are we? What are the standards we should be espousing?
Are our norms strong enough? Do they receive sufficient support in today's newsrooms? Or have other factors overwhelmed ethics? And so the second provocative question is this: are we facing the end of journalism ethics? Can our concern for ethics and standards survive strong commercial pressures, and so on and so forth?
How do we move towards these goals? I call that the Monty Python conundrum. Monty Python has this wonderful scene where a traveller asked a farmer how to get to the city and the answer was, "You cannot get there from here." The question for us is whether we can get to our goals. Where do we want the media system to go from here and how would we do that? How do we develop a media system that meets our democratic needs with mechanisms that reinforce ethical standards amid this revolution? In other words, how do we buttress journalism ethics in the current environment?
There are several obstacles to fundamental change in ethics. I am often asked why journalists simply don't do the right thing. After all, we have all of these standards and procedures and codes. Let's not be naive about this: there are enormous numbers of problems, and that has frustrated me during my years as a teacher of ethics.
First of all, journalism is a non-insulated, embedded profession, in the sense that journalists not only have professional standards and ideals, but they have to try to carry them out within a newsroom, which is part of a large corporation, and there are all sorts of conflicting loyalties — loyalties to sources, to what the editor wants, to what the survival of the media outlet may be. That means that ethics can become of secondary importance, and journalists can lose some of their autonomy to make their own decisions; ethics can be compromised.
Within journalism there are also negative attitudes towards ethics; there is a feeling that journalism is a practical craft while ethics is for professors who like to sit in classrooms. Journalism is too speedy; there is no time to think of norms and principles when we are trying to make a decision in the middle of a breaking story. There is a fatalistic, anti-intellectual attitude among some journalists. There is a sense that we cannot do anything, that is, we can fight against the forces of bad journalism, but I am not sure that we can actually change and get there from here.
There is a complex structure of the news media. We have all sorts of different media companies, all sorts of different journalists with all sorts of argumentative and different attitudes. Consensus is difficult. Were I to produce my code of ethics today and say, "Here is the path to the future," you would get as much disagreement among newsrooms and journalists as you could possibly imagine. If you try to enforce ethics, you run up against legal problems, appeal to the constitution, freedom of the press, and so on.
The informal nature of journalism ethics itself is a further obstacle. We are not structured like doctors or lawyers. We do not have a legislation of entry, strict definitions of who is a journalist and who is not, or bodies that dole out penalties for bad behaviour.
There are also inadequate response mechanisms to ethical problems. We get a sequence of crisis ethics; plagiarism or fabrication examples blow up somewhere, everyone is shocked, editors say, "Well, look, we are really going to try and solve these problems. We are going to look at our standards," and within a couple of years the crisis is forgotten and then the same problems come up again two years later. There is no institutional structure for ethics to make sure that we have cross-institutional reform that is sustained over time.
Given these obstacles, we really have to question the doctrine of self-regulation in the media. It is not just that individual journalists happen to be unethical. Rather, there are systemic obstacles, obstacles that have to do with the way our profession and institution are structured. Despite the fact that we have better educated journalists, more sophisticated newsrooms, and powerful techniques for gathering news, the role of ethics still remains precarious, and adherence to standards is uneven. Self-regulation, which has been touted for at least a hundred years, by itself does not seem to be enough; it is a weak reed.
So, what are the options? Here I start to echo some of my colleagues' previous comments about accountability. We need a public influence or regulation or public accountability beyond the usual market controls like not buying a newspaper. We need a means for public monitoring of the arbitrary use of media power and we need pressure for compliance with standards. I can think of at least five major steps for improving accountability.
The first step is conceptual. We have to begin right at the beginning and rethink this thing we call media or journalism ethics. We could start calling it "citizen ethics" or "information ethics for the citizen," within which journalism ethics finds a place. That means that we start considering what the public expects of journalists, not only what journalists as professionals expect of ourselves. Through our opinion polls and other studies, we have to start to allow the public into the process of discussing and debating the sort of standards that they expect their media and information systems to maintain.
Second, I think we also need to move to what I call "public participation ethics." We must find structures for better ways of discussing these matters in Canada. There is an internal model that that says that ethics is basically for journalists. Journalism ethics is what journalists, as a profession, deal with in their conferences, in their newsrooms, among themselves. Yes, we hear the public complain and then we react.
The other view is external; there is this large, evil, corporate media out there and journalists are sort of the enemy that must be monitored and controlled and reprimanded with laws, to inhibit the sort of news that we disagree with. Neither extreme is the right way, but perhaps there is a third way. I call it MSS, which means mobilize, structure and study.
First, if we could mobilize public interest and involvement in these issues, we could form coalitions of concerned journalists; we could hold annual or semi-annual national state-of-the-media conferences where issues could be debated and explored. Unless we get substantial public pressure, standards are not going to get any better in journalism.
Second, we not only have to have many voices talking about the media, but we have to structure that public discussion so that it is diverse and deliberate. The debate on journalism has so far not been comprehensive; the debate has engaged organizations or people with political agendas already, or it has not been informed with all the facts of the media, or it has consisted of a rant about the latest specific or piecemeal problem in journalism. Instead, we need to step back and look at the whole picture of the media in general. National conferences and coalitions in which we can have a more inclusive discussion and focus and get the public involved would be a positive step. By the way, I do not think that people will stay interested if the journalists themselves do not show up at those meetings.
Third, we must study the news media objectively and comprehensively. This is very difficult; there are not enough studies like we have just done, and we do not have enough basic information on the nature, the function, the economics, the structure of media. That information must be made available not just to journalists and editors but also to the public. We should have websites and a clearinghouse where we bring all of that information to advance the discussion. Like we did with our study, I think we could form from those coalitions teams of researchers who come from a broad spectrum of political views, who are respected in their profession, and who therefore have more serious and deliberate discussions of these issues.
The third step is accountability mechanisms within newsrooms. I have no idea whether people will take me up on this, but I have some ideas.
First of all, I think we need leadership in newsrooms to articulate our standards, specifically and in detail. What exactly are the standards that we hold and how are we going to abide by them? For example, how do we articulate our values and procedures to staff and to the public? Often the staff are not even aware of some of the rules on particular issues in newsrooms. Take for example the issue of competitive pressures and verification. The CBS Rathergate memogate scandal of reporting on President Bush's military service on the basis of unauthenticated memos produced a huge, 220-page independent review. CBC's reaction was to have to tell the journalists that they shouldn't let competitive pressures get in the way of the truth. In this day and age, you have to articulate that, you have to keep saying it.
Also, I think we need to look at the owner-reporter relationship. How far do the rights of ownership go in affecting news, in affecting the copy that is supposedly straight news? There is also the issue of conflicts of interest. I have asked newsrooms whether they have explicit rules that staff know about, for example whether the business reporter can report on a company in which he or she has a stake or holds stocks. You would be surprised at how many times the answer is, "Well, everybody knows that." The problem with unspoken rules that everybody sort of knows is that things happen, and when things happen, you have nothing to say. People actually question whether there are rules, whether they broke any rules, because no rules are established.
I believe that codes of ethics are not sufficient for good journalism, but I think it is important to articulate rules in terms of codes. If you do not tell people what you believe in, if you do not write it down, then it is difficult for people to hold you accountable, because you can always slide away and say, "Oh, well, we do not really hold that," after the fact and after the complaint comes up. So, you might want to incorporate those rules or standards in national codes and keep an eye on the evolving international situation with international codes.
In order to get credibility back, it is important that we find transparent ways for the public to assess how stories are done. With websites, it is quite easy today to explain for controversial or major stories who your sources are, why you picked them, who your reporters in the field are, how you are getting the stories, and, if you made controversial editorial decisions, why you made them, and then link why you made those decisions back to a code of ethics or a set of guidelines and standards to show the consistency in which you act. In any other profession, this would be Ethics 100, right?
This active accountability is something we can work on. It is not enough to say to people, "Trust us, we are good. We are the trusted name in news." I want to be able not only to access the news, but also to assess it. I think that is a movement in journalism ethics, to be able to assess as well as access.
Finally, for the major media, I like the idea of appointing standards and public editors, as has happened at The New York Times and CBS. CBS has appointed a standards editor, not a public editor, but The New York Times has appointed both. Again, having an ombudsman is a form of accountability by which the public can raise questions about the journalism you are doing.
I will touch on a few other mechanisms quickly. There could be editorial ethics committees to deal with standards or concerns within the newsroom, so that if a journalist feels that perhaps some conflict of interest is happening in the newsroom with respect to someone or some practice, there can be a confidential complaint laid and a discussion amongst newsroom staff as to whether standards are being upheld. How that works, of course, would have to be determined.
I also think we need clear, easy and unstinting correction policies. After all these years, members of the public still come to me complaining about how they did not get a correction, or why the correction was buried on page 29 when the mistake was on page 1. We could have policies on corrections and make those policies and procedures very clear to the public.
I like the idea of independent investigations into major problems where the credibility of entire news organizations, such as The New York Times or CBS, is called into doubt by an important story that went wrong. The investigators should be people from the outside who are knowledgeable on these issues, and the results should be released to the public.
I believe that in this age where people are worried about the fabrication of news, information, quotes, and sources, we might find some way to do random accuracy tests and random fabrication tests in newsrooms. That can be done either by picking a particular day in the newsroom once a month or by focusing on various journalists, checking their copy for accuracy and so on. There is also software now, although some of it is pretty expensive, that can pick up, for example, plagiarism. That might help.
Also, as I said, we should avoid crisis ethics. Ethics does not instantly give you a formal solution to every problem that arises; every circumstance has its own details to consider. However, we can have guidelines for recurring situations and have those guidelines reviewed regularly. For example, there are news organizations in the United States that actually present on their websites their guidelines for things like interviewing children or covering funerals and what photographs they use and do not use.
Many people say that those guidelines do not work when stories are breaking, and that is true. You cannot do ethics in a crisis. You have to have basic norms and procedures established before the crisis happens. Do you remember the dispute over the embedding of reporters in the Iraq War? Well, a good question to ask newsrooms or managers is whether, given that experience, they have reviewed their policy\y with respect to embedding or have constructed a policy for embedding in the future. Those are simple, normal, professional guidelines and procedures. Do some of them exist in good newsrooms? Yes, of course they do. I am not denying that. But I think that their existence is uneven in journalism.
You have to penalize wrong, unethical behaviour, not cover it up. You have to send the message that such behaviour will not be tolerated. I would even throw in an annual ethics audit by independent teams. There have been newspapers, although their names escape me, who have in the past asked a group of people to come in and do an ethics audit, to look at how accurate their copy or their television is, and to go through all the ethical standards by which we evaluate newsrooms.
Moving beyond newsrooms to industry-or profession-wide mechanisms, we need to think about improving or reforming press councils and media councils in general. I think that press councils are not well known amongst the general public, that, in fact, they have a pretty low profile. They tend to be complaint-driven and are seen as places where you go to complain about the media; they are not proactive, and they often lack sufficient budget and resources for marketing and to do their job. Perhaps we need national press councils or media councils. Perhaps we need multimedia councils in an age when a news organization owns different types of media organizations. I would like to see them equipped with sufficient funds and staff to be media educators, to be going out amongst the public and holding public sessions on various issues.
My recommendations on professional associations echo what Professors Logan and Young were saying, namely, that increased support for journalism associations, for research and for education of journalists is needed. Hopefully we will have associations to focus on ethics and editorial policies as well as on training and skills. At the Canadian Association of Journalists annual conferences there is a drift towards talking not only about how you do a particular story, how you get a particular source to talk, and other specific skills, but also about media policy and ethics, and I think that is a good way to go.
Finally, I think media education is incredibly important, and that is not just because I happen to be employed by a journalism school. I think that we need journalists who are able to deal with the more complex issues of society, and that requires an academic strengthening of journalism programmes. I can talk about that later if you wish. Also, I think media education for citizens in our schools is very important. Even first-year students at university, although they consume vast amounts of media, are not aware of who owns the media in Canada. They are not even particularly aware of how the media construct stories. It seems to me public interest might be more readily mobilized if people knew more about these matters.
My conclusion is that improvements will require a judicious and wise mix of self-regulation, creative media policy and public accountability, which will find a right balance between freedom of the press and responsibility and allow a nationwide public discussion that insists on improvements to standards and procedures, supports ethical journalists in the field and ethical organizations while putting real pressure on non-compliance, and establishes appropriate, well-defined accountability mechanisms. If this does not happen, I suppose that ethics will continue to have a precarious existence, and the public goal of journalism will not be fulfilled. So, is it possible? I hope so.
Senator Tkachuk: Much of what you say and what we heard earlier concurs with what I believed the problem is with the media. You mentioned Dan Rather. I thought that was very symbolic. He is 72 years old and probably one of the most famous newsmen in the world. When he was caught out, I said to my wife, "Let's watch the news tonight. I guarantee you it will be the last story, if it is on, on CBC and CTV." And it was the last story on CBC that night. The report said, "The devil made me do it." This is representative of a larger cultural problem. "Competition made me do it. The reason I lied... The fact that I lied was not the important bit. Competition made me lie, so it is okay to lie." It is not okay to lie. Those things are even more troubling, and they are really cultural problems.
What do you say to your colleagues in the business about the fact that this study never made the news? And I am not surprised that it didn't. How do you urge your colleagues to pay attention? What roles do the School of Journalism and people like you play in this cultural problem? The distress that people feel about the media is not good in a democratic society.
Mr. Ward: Well, there are a variety of things we can do. First, we can educate our students to be aware of these issues and to have a high regard for ethics and standards of the craft and the profession. Education is obviously one of the things that we want to do. We can also extend our expertise, such as it is, to newsrooms that do want to make changes; for instance, I have been a consultant or advisor to help newsrooms look at how they handle a particular problem that blew up in their face.
Also, I think we can be public spokespeople who actually are in the media, just trying to raise these issues and providing criticisms of actions we do not agree with. We have to take a stand and be out there in public.
Finally, I think we can be part of the study of the media. I would love to get coalitions of people and a movement in Canada to model the American developments. When people debate these issues, we should see what facts we have here before we get into hot rhetoric about the media.
Senator Munson: I have a conflict of interest here; we are both ambassadors of New Brunswick and we love to talk and it is great to see you again, Doctor.
When I worked as a reporter in Beijing, a Chinese government official told me that I must learn to seek truth through facts. I have been perplexed by that ever since and I never could understand it. I always wondered whose facts he meant — the government's or the facts as I see them. Sometimes that is the dilemma for reporters.
A famous person once said, "The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation." Who will come into the newsrooms to teach or re-teach reporters who have been around a long time? What independent body could sort things out, teach how to understand the facts and how to present them, and remind journalists about ethical standards?
Mr. Ward: I do not think you could have agencies or institutes coming into newsrooms and telling them how to do their business. But there could be very good institutes that bring several experts together, including journalists, to discuss and develop programmes. Then if there was interest on the part of the newsrooms, a school or other institute could offer to hold seminars or editing sessions or even to develop policy on particular ethical problems. But I am not suggesting that that be forced on the newsrooms. What I am saying is that if we have a broad public discussion on this, hopefully it will begin to be of practical use to newsrooms and also to raise the pressure on people who do not comply by those rules.
Senator Munson: Do you think it should be mandatory? Do you think that once a year The Toronto Star should send all of its reporters off to some session in Banff for a week?
Senator Tkachuk: Or here?
Mr. Ward: No, I do not think that would happen, but I hope that they allow their individual reporters, or groups of them, to upgrade their skills and their training and knowledge of the media system and to debate these issues. Many journalists tell me that they want to upgrade their skills and train and educate, but they do not have the opportunity. The problem is that as a journalist, once you get a job and you start doing well, then you are so busy doing journalism all the time that you never get a chance to stop and retrain and rethink, because you are so caught up. So, I think there are ways in which we could support journalism now.
Senator Munson: I have a question dealing with the practical aspects of journalism and Canadian voices around the world in journalism. I have worked with you in the Gulf War and elsewhere; you were there as a Canadian Press reporter.
Mr. Ward: Yes.
Senator Munson: There are no more Canadian reporters. I am wondering what kind of message that sends to aspiring students here who see themselves as a voice for Canada as distinct from American reporters or anybody else. Those students cannot become Stephen Ward, because CP and everybody else are cutting back.
Mr. Ward: Oh, sure. One problem is how we do foreign reporting now and whether we have newsrooms with staff who have sufficient experience in the field and who can even cover it properly. You are right. However, people are still getting jobs out there, perhaps not with Canadian organizations but with other organizations. There are freelance opportunities, magazines, websites and so on that deal with these issues and they may use your work, so it is not entirely impossible to do it. But I share your concern about whether we actually have people in the field.
Senator Munson: Well, they can always start at the Bathurst Northern Light.
Mr. Ward: Yes.
Senator Carney: First of all, I should point out that our chairman, Joan Fraser, wears another hat where she has been very involved in developing a code of ethics for the Senate.
The Chairman: Conflict of interest.
Senator Carney: Conflict of interest. Okay. She will be quite sympathetic to the many problems that you have in devising a code of ethics for journalism. I hope it takes less time.
It is hard to condense your whole book. In your presentation you covered an awful lot of meat; unfortunately we do not have enough time to pursue it all. But I wanted to ask you — was there ever a golden age of journalism where everyone was pure and ethical?
Mr. Ward: You might find that golden age in Genesis.
Senator Carney: There wasn't?
Mr. Ward: No.
Senator Carney: Oh.
Mr. Ward: I have heard lots of talk about diversity and worries about economic concerns; quite frankly, those same concerns were raised at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, when, in fact, there were all sorts of criticisms about the media and people questioned how there could be journalism when press barons were being formed and the first newspaper chains were being organized by Scripps and Hearst and others. In a way, these problems are very old and that is why they are frustrating, and I wonder why we cannot better address them.
Senator Carney: That is very disappointing but quite realistic.
Mr. Ward: But I am not counselling despair or saying that we cannot do anything. I am simply saying that we have to remember that historically change in journalism has been uneven and very slow, and all we can do is to speak up for good journalism in our craft as much as we can.
Senator Carney: Okay.
Mr. Ward: Some days when I see what is in the newspaper or on television I wonder why I am teaching ethics. It is a hopeless venture. And I am not going to give up. Yes, there are days I am proud of my craft and other days I am not. We need to keep voicing our concerns.
Senator Carney: How do you deal with the concept that the first loyalty of the journalists is to the readers, while the so-called press barons or publishers' first loyalty or obligation is to the shareholders? You do not mention that in your ethics.
Mr. Ward: That is what creates the problem for journalism ethics, because the ethical ideals that you hold come into conflict with other imperatives, such as the business imperative or the profit imperative. That is one of the most basic problems of ethics today, and it has been ever since we started selling news books in London in the 17th century.
Senator Carney: Many journalists, I think, would like to have a code of ethics to protect them from the competitive pressures. We have the Dan Rather issue and The New York Times plagiarism issue and the local issue of a reporter who is alleged to have taken a discounted condo price while writing about the real estate market because journalists cannot point to a code of ethics. Do you find that journalists want some sort of piece of paper that says, "I do not have to do that, Mr. Editor?"
Mr. Ward: Yes. I am well aware that many journalists are sceptical about codes of ethics in journalism, but we did not get much resistance to the Canadian Association of Journalists' codes, because that was a time when journalists were worried about the national editorial policy of CanWest and they were worried about their independence within the newsroom to make judgements. Even the sceptics tended to say, "Well, it is better to have something on paper than nothing."
Codes are useless pieces of paper unless they are embodied in daily newsroom decisions. They are a necessary but not sufficient condition for good journalism. It does not matter whether you call them codes or you say that you are going to articulate your principles and guidelines and inform the public. "Codes" perhaps sounds a little formalistic for journalism. Codes are valuable also because then not only does the public know exactly where you stand and can call you into account, but your own staff can look at these codes and wonder whether what they are doing is kosher, whether there is some guideline that they may be overstepping.
Senator Carney: Or that their editor may be asking them to overstep, like getting the picture with the body.
Mr. Ward: Absolutely. As I said about being triply embedded, the problem with ethics is that it has to fight all of these other imperatives.
Senator Carney: You are one of our only foreign correspondents. It was bad enough that CP had only staff reporter in Europe to cover the whole of Europe. I share Senator Munson's concern. Is there any role for ethics in the fact that we do not have the foreign coverage that we should have in newspapers?
Mr. Ward: It is an issue of resources, of not having enough reporters, obviously. But I think it becomes an ethical issue as well, not just an economic issue, because it affects the quality and the accuracy of the journalism Canadians get. It affects how many perspectives you are going to get on an event.
Senator Carney: It is a question of diversity.
Mr. Ward: Yes, diversity. I was down in Bosnia in Sarajevo. I was the only Canadian reporter there and — I know I am being dramatic — all of Canada had to depend on my report to figure out what Canadians there were doing that day. And sometimes I would get it wrong. I am imperfect. I have my own perspective and biases. I wanted 20 other journalists down there to balance what Ward was writing. So, yes, it is a diversity problem. It is also a resource problem. If you are the only foreign reporter on a staff, you are worked to death. You are so busy trying to cover the daily news that you do not have a chance to do analysis, backgrounders, and the sorts of other journalism that you would like to do.
Senator Carney: Thank you. I am buying your book.
Mr. Ward: Oh, good.
Senator Munson: I will borrow it.
The Chairman: Yes, but you can buy him dinner. I will buy the book.
Senator Merchant: Thanks very much. We hear many wonderful ideas from many qualified people, as you are this morning, and there is so much to do and so little time for everybody. How does one bring about change, looking into the future? We can apply what we have learned from the past, but things are moving very quickly. Is gathering in small groups like we are today effective? Is there a role that the government can play? Judging from the past, has that worked? What do you expect will happen when we release our report?
Mr. Ward: Hopefully your report will provide useful information for people who want to deal with these issues. Respectfully, though, I do not think the discussion that you are having here is broad enough or getting enough attention, for reasons that are perhaps beyond your control. When your report comes out, the government of the day will make a decision on what they want to do with it.
I think there are three alternatives, or perhaps a mix of three strategies. There is self-regulation, where journalists are to fix themselves, to develop their own code of ethics, and that is possible to a certain extent. There is government action, which can include laws, agencies, new regulations. I would prefer not to have to go there, because of freedom of the press and because I do not want a government agency telling journalists what to do or not to do or what to write. But I think government can create a media policy framework that would encourage diversity. For example, though this is not my area, perhaps there are research monies available or support for the development of alternative media or for various forms of community broadcasting, for entry into the world of journalism. That, at least, would increase diversity in concentrated markets. There is a role there for government. I do not buy the laissez-faire view of simply letting the market rule and letting the corporations, which have such influence through the media, simply have it their way. However, since I find self-regulation lacking, I am trying to find a middle way between legislation, laws and government structures, on the one hand, and self-regulation on the other. That is where I see somehow getting the public organized, with the help of coalitions of journalists and academics and institutes. I am not sure it will work, but it seems worth a try.
Senator Merchant: But we do not seem to be able to engage the public. They do not know how to go about communicating their message. They do not feel that they are being heard.
Mr. Ward: Yes. One problem is how that discussion happens, and I am not sure how you would go about it. However, I do not think it is possible. Consider the public reaction when the U.S. decided to weaken media ownership laws; there was a fairly substantial interest among many Americans. Apparently 3 million people participated in the process. I think we write about these issues in ways that show that they actually affect society. But I do not think we are specific enough. Rather than general discussions about diversity, perhaps we should pick specific areas of need, specific solutions and specific programmes. I do not have the answer for you but that may be one alternative. Can we get the public interested? I hope so. Certainly let's not say we cannot before we even try.
The Chairman: In terms of engaging the public, it is not a complete desert out there.
Mr. Ward: No.
The Chairman: Yesterday there were some keenly engaged members of the public here, and we did not even have an ad in the paper.
Mr. Ward: Right.
The Chairman: In the past, more than in the present, there were media proprietors who had statements of principles. The old Southam company had a statement of principles about what we believed, what we would and would not do. A former publisher of La Presse gave us a statement of principles that was operative when he was there, although I do not know if it is still in effect, because we have not yet heard from the present regime there. There are the famous Atkinson principles at The Toronto Star. Do those things make any difference? Are they pious, empty platitudes or do they have any effect?
Mr. Ward: I think it depends on the particular media organization, the owners and the senior editors, and whether they give due consideration. As I said with codes, they can simply be wall art, something you stick on a wall, but that does not play a part in actual newsroom decisions or at story meetings. I think they have had some positive effects and have guided people in decision making, but not enough.
Also, there are whole new areas of problems to which these codes do not refer. If you are going to construct a code, I think you need it at two levels. At the top level, you want your statement of principles, which are the very broad things — often motherhood and apple pie — but things that need to be stated. Below that, I think you need specific policies on specific problem areas, such as covering suicides, covering funerals, and a whole range of issues. If we got public pressure to make sure that those codes were adhered to, I think it would improve the situation.
The Chairman: How do you reconcile a detailed code of ethics in a newsroom with collective bargaining and with workers' union rights? Understand me, I think unions have been a positive force. I am not here to say otherwise. However, I have seen unions grieve and win at arbitration on cases of discipline involving what every journalist I ever heard of would consider serious errors, like fabrication, plagiarism, taking a benefit. Those are things that journalists are not supposed to do.
Mr. Ward: Right.
The Chairman: But an industrial arbitrator said, "Oh, no, nothing serious about that."
Mr. Ward: Yes.
The Chairman: Because the benefit was not a big one, for example. So, how do you reconcile that? Have you or do you know anyone who has done work in this area?
Mr. Ward: This is not my area of expertise, but it would seem to me that lots of news organizations out there have detailed codes of ethics and have not particularly run into this roadblock, although I agree that it can exist. As an ethicist, all I can do is encourage unions to make ethics a part of their concern and not simply protect bad behaviour, if in fact that is what they are doing.
The Chairman: I just wonder how it will work when you get down to a tough case. I was reading the code that Le Devoir quite cleverly negotiated with its union and its staff. It is separate from the collective agreement, but they brought in the union. And all the way through, there are clauses saying, "This is not subject to the grievance procedure. This is not part of collective bargaining." But then when it gets down to a tough case, maybe to do with somebody in the newsroom whom everybody loves, the argument can go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Mr. Ward: It would seem to me that you would have to develop language in the collective agreement that somehow clarifies this and avoids the defence of unethical behaviour, if indeed there is proven unethical behaviour. You need a process to deal with allegations.
The Chairman: You have to be sure.
Mr. Ward: So I do not have a specific answer, except to say that this needs to be addressed in the future.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. You have got some royalties coming.
Senator Eyton: I may be a trifle naive, but I assume that any respectable news-gathering organization would have in place a code of ethics, that the CBC would have one, CTV would have one, The Toronto Star would have one, and so on. Am I naive in that?
Mr. Ward: Not all of them have one. The Vancouver Sun does not have a code of ethics, for example.
Senator Eyton: Would that not be rather an essential?
Mr. Ward: It does not have a code of ethics.
Senator Eyton: I cannot imagine running a business of this sort and not having standards that apply to the work you are doing.
Mr. Ward: Sure.
Senator Eyton: And The Vancouver Sun does not?
Mr. Ward: No, not to my knowledge. There are probably many other organizations that do not — smaller organizations in particular. Some might have a statement of principles at head office for all newsrooms in their chain. I know you find it hard to believe, but there are not codes of ethics everywhere.
Senator Eyton: It seems to me that it is fundamental to the business, if I can use that term.
Mr. Ward: Yes, I agree with you.
Senator Eyton: I do not understand, then.
You talked very little about the limits on exercising or practicing good ethics in journalism. I think Senator Carney mentioned money, but there are all sorts of limits: the people available, the cash available, the cost, time, competitive pressures, other circumstances. I will leave that, because that is a long discussion and I am not sure where it would take us.
Mr. Ward: Yes.
Senator Eyton: But I would like you to comment on the right of citizens to privacy. You have talked about the obligation to seek the truth and to provide the public with all the facts. But it seems to me that there is a counter-balancing interest on the part of our citizenry, which is that they have the right to privacy, and I think often intrusive and inappropriate behaviour by journalists goes beyond that measure. There has to be some balance, but there seems to a sense among journalists that they are entitled, no matter what, to all the facts and they persevere, and often I think that is wrong. Can you comment?
Mr. Ward: That is a huge problem area in journalism ethics; there are many points that have to be studied and analyzed with respect to that.
My view is that there are two extremes. You can argue, implausibly, that you have a right to everything and that therefore journalists should be able to intrude on anyone's life and in all matters. On the other side, you can become so sensitive about people's privacy that reporters' ability to cover events or get information is unduly restricted. I think we need to talk about the concept of privacy within the principle of minimizing harm, minimizing the unnecessary harm we do in the act of reporting, and that means two things. First, we do not intrude on people's private lives or private information if there is no greater public benefit or justification for it. Sometimes a person's personal life does bear on their conduct in their office, or public office, for example. Second, there is the problem of acting compassionately and approaching subjects in a respectful and appropriate manner. We need to remember that there are ways in which we can approach people in a tragedy, such as families who have just lost a member in a car accident or a plane crash, that reduce our intrusion on their privacy, perhaps by going through a family intermediary for instance.
My concern is that we be careful how we define privacy. A couple of years ago New Brunswick legislation defined a breach of privacy as giving undue publicity to someone. Well, that covers just about everything — we might as well all pack up our journalism newsrooms and go home. So we have to be careful about this act of privacy. Perhaps we do not want to give the press the names of people who have been killed in accidents anymore. This is a privacy matter. Perhaps we want to use privacy as a way to hide embarrassment or ineptitude on the part of officials in handling situations like forest fires.
The ethical argument is that, if you are going to intrude on someone's privacy, you must justify it in terms of your loyalty to the public. That is necessary. This is a serious public issue and the information you get cannot be obtained from other sources. You have to go this route, and it is justified on the basis of public interest.
Senator Eyton: What about the relevancy factor?
Mr. Ward: Absolutely. Relevancy is what I meant by saying it is important to the whole public interest.
Senator Eyton: Can you comment on the ability of journalists to protect sources, no matter what?
Mr. Ward: Well, yes. We could have another hour or two on that.
The Chairman: You don't have an hour, but you can write us a letter. In the meantime, a brief answer will suffice.
Mr. Ward: The appeal of confidential answers is overused and abused, but it is necessary in certain circumstances. But you had better make sure you can justify why you are doing it, and you need strict editorial control on the use of confidential sources, meaning your editor should know what you are doing.
The Chairman: Should we have shield laws?
Mr. Ward: Yes, I would like to see shield laws, but I do not see them coming in the future.
Senator Eyton: Thank you.
The Chairman: It has been fascinating, it really has, and we are very grateful to you.
Mr. Ward: Thank you. We are now going upstairs to continue the discussion.
The Chairman: I hope you are not taking your students this minute. We were really hoping that after our next witness, whom we cannot delay, we would have at least a quarter of an hour to give the students a chance to say what they think or to ask us questions.
Mr. Ward: That is fine with me.
The Chairman: Senators, our next witness represents Fairchild Television. Ms. Winnie Hwo is the News and Current Affairs Controller for Western Canada at Fairchild Television, which does Chinese language television, and we all know how important that is in Vancouver.
We are very glad to have you with us, Ms. Hwo. I think you have probably been told our basic ground rules — an opening statement of about 10 minutes, which will give us time to ask you some questions. The floor is yours.
Ms. Winnie Hwo, News and Current Affairs Controller, Western Canada Fairchild Television Ltd.: Thank you for having me here. I really appreciate this rare opportunity to talk to the Senate Committee.
Fairchild TV is actually a national pay service. We broadcast in Cantonese. We also have a sister station called Talentvision, which we broadcast in Mandarin. Both stations are national services. Apart from the fact that our viewers have to pay about $20 per month for the service fee, our service, the way we broadcast and the way we design our programmes, especially in news and current affairs, is no different than any other network, for example CBC, Global or CTV. Obviously one major difference is the advertising resources that we get; it is a much smaller portion, but we are also a for-profit organization.
We have been under the Fairchild TV banner for about 10 years. We only celebrated our 10th anniversary last year. But in terms of Chinese TV and Chinese broadcast service, we actually have been here for quite a while, at least 20 years. I joined Cathay TV, which was the predecessor of Fairchild Television, in the late 1980s when I graduated from university here in B.C. Subsequently the station flourished. Then Thomas Fung bought Cathay TV and merged it with a national service in Toronto, and that became Fairchild Television.
After that, Talentvision also came along. Throughout the 10 years, the senior management has divided the two markets. Fairchild became mostly a Cantonese-speaking broadcast service while Talentvision became the Mandarin-speaking broadcast service. Fairchild TV is the big sister. Most of the resources are put in there. The two stations have two separate channels, two news programmes, two current affairs programmes, although some reporters may work for both stations.
With Fairchild TV we try to help our viewers, and so it is important that we identify who they are. Because we are a Cantonese broadcast service, most of the people who watch us are from the Hong Kong immigrant wave from the early 1990s. Our viewers have grown up with us during the last 10 years as we have grown and thrived. One big advantage is that, because we are also part of the group, we are a user as well as the program provider. We feel that we know what our viewers need and they have also established a very strong relationship with us. Throughout the years, our role has changed quite dramatically. I would say that 10 years ago, most of our news and current affairs programmes were designed to help our viewers know what Canada is about. We would tell them that Canada has three levels of government, that the Prime Minister is not the same person as the Premier of B.C., and that every two years there is a civic election, which is very different from the federal election.
For many years, we have fed our viewers the basic knowledge that they need to be Canadians. From day one we have taken our job and our vision and philosophy very seriously, which is all under the realm of the Canadian multi-cultural principle; we wanted to help our viewers to be Canadians at the same time as not being ashamed of being Chinese. I think that that is the whole idea of having Chinese media — not just us, but other Chinese media members, including daily newspapers. I am very happy that I have seen this developing, and we are all growing together.
Most of our viewers have been here for about 10 years, some a little longer and some less time, and their expectations for what we give them are changing. Especially in the last two or three years, I have noticed that our viewers are a lot spicier and stronger. They want to know stronger stuff. They want to know more complicated issues. We do not need to tell them anymore that there are three levels of government, and they would reject it if we tell them. They do not want that anymore. Now they want to have the context of policies. For example, why is the government introducing the same-sex bill? What are the arguments out there?
I also come from the Chinese community. I was born in Hong Kong and lived there for most of my teenage years. Part of the culture there is that we all believe that we need to believe and to listen to authority. If a politician talks, then we need to listen. Most of the people who watch our service come from that same mentality.
However, I see a dramatic change in my viewers after 10 years in Canada. They no longer think that when the politicians open their mouths, we need to listen. The viewers think more and more that the politicians are spending too much of our money. Money is a big issue, which is also a very Chinese thing. They want to know how the politicians are spending our money. They want to know why the federal government is introducing the same-sex bill today. They want to question. They no longer all have one unified view. I know that public perception suggests that most Chinese do not like same-sex marriage and do not approve of gay relationships. But when we do our news stories and we go out and talk to them, we find that that is not the case. When we open up our phone lines to do a live talk show, our viewers call in and they definitely have a split opinion on this issue, just as they do on many other issues.
We know that we cater to a group of very smart viewers these days. The also know what is going on in their countries of origin — Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Mainland China. And, they are very interested in international issues, like what the Americans are doing these days. At the same time, they also know a lot about what is going on in their adopted home here in Canada. We try to give them what they need to know, which nowadays means that we really have to give them a lot more in our news stories. Ten years ago, could simply be that there was a press conference today and this is what was said. Today, we cannot do that or we would get a lot of calls and email complaints. Today our viewers expect us report not only what the government says, but also the opposition, to give the story context. Our viewers' changing expectations require us to throw more resources into our stories, and one reporter cannot cover three stories anymore
I do not think there is any question that in terms of Chinese electronic media, Fairchild will be the biggest owner, because we also own not just two national TV services, but also a number of radio stations throughout the country. We also have three major production centres — Vancouver, which is the biggest, Toronto, and Calgary. We have two radio stations in Vancouver, two in Calgary and two in Toronto.
A major change is happening in Vancouver. Last year, Channel M came into being. It is a multi-cultural station, but they have also put a lot of resources in their Chinese service. There is obviously competition coming our way, and from where I am sitting, I just love it, because my bosses are saying, "Well, make sure that your budget is much bigger this year because we need to compete." My staff is also happier because I can let them do a lot more aggressive stuff. Competition is totally great for us, as long as we all play by the same rules.
I also wanted to mention briefly the issue of foreign service coming into or sharing our air waves. As a practicing journalist, I really hate that, for one particular reason. I do not care about the money factor; I know that my bosses would hate the idea because we would have to share the resources or lose advertising money, but that won't be my concern. My concern is that we play under the rules of the CRTC and the Broadcasting Act, 1991. I am extremely sceptical about when the foreign services come in. Do they abide by the same rules? I do not think so.
There is a good example from a few years ago. Talentvision got into big trouble and we needed to advertise on air that we were sorry that we broadcast a particular thing because it was unfair for our viewers and for a group of religious practitioners. We had used CCTV services, that is, the China Central TV, which is a government-owned service in China. China still has a lot of problems with a group of religious practitioners. Our weekend editor aired a story that we got from CCTV and we had not seen it first. It was an extremely negative and bloody story about this group of people. It followed no Canadian rules on journalism at all. I just felt so bad afterwards. I still cannot forgive myself today for letting that story on the air. I am afraid that if CCTV were allowed to share our air waves in Canada and not be censored, those programmes would be on the air almost every day on one channel that people can see. We have stringent rules that guide our Canadian journalists here, whether they broadcast in Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, or English, and we have to be critical as well as fair and balanced. Unless foreign services are forced to follow the same rules, I do not think that they should be allowed to come in. If they do not follow the same rules, it is not fair for Canadian journalists. But most of all, I think it is the viewers who would lose here in Canada, because we already have a very high expectation of how our journalists function in Canada.
Senator Carney: I would like to thank you for an excellent presentation.
Could you send the committee a list of what you own in Canada as a national service, and indicate where your radio and television stations are? Can you tell us what your national viewing audiences are? And whatever you can give us on your competition would be appreciated.
Ms. Hwo: Yes.
Senator Carney: Fairchild Television is owned by a major Hong Kong company, is it not?
Ms. Hwo: No. In fact, that could not be. I think Canadian broadcast ownership still would have to be majority Canadian, and in fact, Fairchild Television is owned by Thomas Fung. He is the majority owner. A small portion is owned by TVB in Hong Kong, but it is extremely minute, and I think, by law, that we cannot allow them to own anything more. They are also our programme provider for the entertainment side.
Senator Carney: Yes. I think that is where I got confused, because the entertainment side is large.
Ms. Hwo: Yes.
Senator Carney: You provide the Cantonese service, which is for the people who come from Hong Kong and Guangdong. An increasing number of Chinese immigrants to Canada are coming from the Mainland. Is that where you direct your Mandarin coverage, to service them?
Ms. Hwo: In fact, we started our Mandarin service before the wave from England came, and for a while many of our viewers were from Taiwan. Many still are, but we have also heard that over the years many have gone back to Taiwan. When we put together our program, we have to be very sensitive, because we know that Taiwanese are watching us as well as Mainland Chinese, and they totally cannot stand each other in most cases. We get calls from them complaining about our programmes all the time.
Senator Carney: Okay, but you are the main service provider or broadcast provider for the Mandarin-speaking Mainlanders and Taiwanese.
Ms. Hwo: Yes.
Senator Carney: That is what I wanted to establish.
Ms. Hwo: They both watch.
Senator Carney: Okay. Now, in terms of your editorial content, you say you get your entertainment programming from Hong Kong, which is very big, all those Hong Kong stars. Is most of your editorial content local Canadian or local national? Do you switch with other areas? Do you get some programming from Toronto, while programming goes from here to Toronto?
Ms. Hwo: Yes, local production is very big. I cannot tell you the percentage, but I think the number is there somewhere in the office.
CRTC regulation dictates that we need to provide a certain amount — a big chunk — of local production. I think local production is the reason that I along with my news and current affairs staff have been able to be in the business for so long.
Senator Carney: How many hours a week do you broadcast, and of that, how much is public affairs?
Ms. Hwo: I think it might be easier if I tell you per day.
Senator Carney: Okay, sure, as long as the committee gets it.
Ms. Hwo: Yes, yes.
Senator Carney: Channel M is relatively new. Who services the large Indo-Canadian community, the Vietnamese, the Koreans? When we talk about a third of the audience here in British Columbia, that is, a third of the population in the Lower Mainland, being Asian, it encompasses all of those groups. Who services the non-Chinese Canadians?
Ms. Hwo: On Talentvision, we have during the day Korean programmes and Vietnamese programmes, but they do not have the daily news. They have their weekly news.
I do not think we provide Indo-Canadian programmes at all. But some of the main broadcasters, like City TV, have Indo-Canadian programmes. I think Now TV does as well. Channel M certainly provides a half-hour daily news programme for the Indo-Canadian community. We might have provided that service briefly when we were in the Cathay TV stage, but we do not now.
Senator Carney: I am wondering if there are sections of this huge Asian population that are underserved in terms of news. We have heard only from the Chinese community. We have not heard from the large Indo-Canadian community which, of course, has its own newspapers and the like, which we must not ignore. You do a wonderful job servicing the Chinese-Canadian community and the off-shore community, but, as a broadcaster in this area, do you think that there are sectors of the Asian community that do not have sufficient access to news?
Ms. Hwo: That is a very tough question, but I have been thinking about this for a long time also. When I look at my own viewers in the Chinese community, I realize that more and more they are watching our news programmes by choice, not because they cannot understand English-language programming. They do understand. They read The Vancouver Sun. They read The Province.
Senator Carney: Oh, good.
Ms. Hwo: They also watch Global, CBC, and the other English channels. Our news show starts at 7 o'clock live. The other mainstream broadcasters start at 6:00. From talking to viewers and from my own family's experience, I know that there is increasingly a habit of watching the main broadcasters at 6:00, to see what is being talked about, and then tuning in to our program at 7:00.
Senator Carney: At night?
Ms. Hwo: Yes, 7 p.m. So I feel that they are watching us, not because they cannot understand the English news programmes, but because they want to get the Chinese flavour that makes them feel more at home; also, of course, we give some stories a different spin. I can speak only on behalf of the Chinese community, but I am seeing that trend.
My general impression is that within the Indo-Canadian community, English language proficiency would be at least as strong as it is in the Chinese community. Perhaps they also get a lot of their news programmes on the main channels, the English programmes. Maybe the reason we do not have many Punjabi news broadcasters in town is because there is no market, because maybe they do not need that service. I am only speculating here; I cannot pretend to be an expert in this area.
Senator Munson: That was a very strong presentation. Could you elaborate on your statement regarding foreign services, that they should not come in, that there should be a level playing field and rules. In this country we have Canal 5, Fox, Aljazeera, with some rules, though I do not know what they are. The CRTC will probably approve Rye TV's coming in as well. Those stations are here and I do not think anybody should be frightened of them. I worked in China for five years as a reporter in Beijing and I have seen some of the things that CCTV can do. Are you saying that a government-run, state-owned enterprise like CCTV should not be here at all?
Ms. Hwo: Yes, I am saying that. I think it is very dangerous, because there are some authorities in the world, even in the Canadian community, even within the Chinese community, that we have serious doubts about. If we open our air waves to these TV services or broadcasters, we are actually filling our air waves with rhetoric, a lot of unfair promotions. People are going to use the air waves to broadcast programmes for promotional and advertising purposes, rather than what we do in Canada, where we take our job as journalists seriously and we do not put out a piece of sensational or critical information about anybody, be it a private person or a government, without having to think. As we just talked about with Dr. Ward, we have to be ethical. We need to be fair at least and be balanced about our reporting. Do these people do the same thing? From my experience, I would say no. We need to be extremely careful when we show CCTV programmes or we choose some of their news stories. At least with the system we have now, because CCTV programmes come through us, we as Canadian journalists can select the stories to show and we know that this one abides by the rules while that one does not, so it does not go on the air.
The big mistake that we committed with Talentvision a few years ago, and I was a new news director at the time, was letting that story air. It was bloody war all over. This guy admitted to government officials that he killed all his family members only because he joined Falun Gong. I do not think we would allow anybody in the Canadian journalistic community to do that and, in fact, we got into trouble. CRTC, CBS, the Canadian Broadcast Standard Commission all told us that letting this story out was wrong, and I totally agree. I think it would be very dangerous to have those 24-hour services coming in all the time, flooding our air waves, when they do not have to abide by any rules.
Senator Munson: In this new age of technology, CRTC or no CRTC, they are going to come, somehow, and people are going to receive them. Are you in favour of blocking, in a telecommunications way, these channels from arriving in our areas?
Ms. Hwo: I do not think it is realistic to block them, but I think that as a country, as our Canadian community, we need to send a message out to our viewers, to Canadians, saying that under the Canadian banner, these services are here because they uphold the Canadian values that we believe in. We cannot block those services, but we can say which ones do not have Canadian approval. In this day and age it is stupid to think that we can block any of them, but that does not mean that we have to give them clear approval to come.
The Chairman: Let me just observe, if it is of any comfort to you, that the weekends are always when the bad stories slip through.
Ms. Hwo: I found it is always Friday.
The Chairman: Not just for you but for every media outlet I have ever heard of, because the senior, experienced people are at home. They have earned the right to be home on the weekends. It is the juniors who are there working and they make mistakes. So, it is not just your station.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: This has been a wonderful presentation. Certainly those of us from the far east of the country are learning much from you and we thank you very much. I have had the impression, listening this morning, that there is quite a difference between the Canadian content, and maybe emphasis on multiculturalism, and Canadian values and so on in your TV, versus what we heard yesterday about the Chinese print media. I would like you to comment on that.
Second, I am fascinated by what I sense is — I do not want to use the word "intellectual" — but a very smart audience you have that questions and wants to debate and to know and to see different sides of an issue. If that is so, I think I am ready to admit that perhaps it is a smarter audience than we have in all parts of the country. I would like you to comment on that as well.
The Chairman: Watch where you are going.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Well, that is my impression.
Ms. Hwo: I think the audience has to be smarter, because they are actually fed two groups of contents. They know what is going on with their own culture, which is not the Canadian culture, and at the same time they also know what is going on with the Canadian culture. You are talking about a very interesting group of Canadians who are growing more and more to become Canadians. And we will make sure of that, because we feel that with the Chinese media, that is our role. We are not here to separate the Chinese media into little ghettos and have them live in their own world. I hope that is not how the Canadian government designed it when we set up the Chinese media body. I always hope and we work towards the Chinese media helping the Chinese immigrants to become better Canadians. And, in fact, a lot of those immigrants have become Canadians citizens. The ones who do not like it here have gone home to their countries of origins.
Many have stayed here, and I am talking about this so confidently today because our viewers have stayed for 10 years. And those who have stayed have advertised, have set up their own businesses, have grown for the 10 years, and their children have also studied here for 10 years. They have a very concrete, strong bond here. Now they have the context to understand if in conversation you throw in a name like Glen Clark. It is interesting, because when you talk to them about Jou Soo Yung, they can talk to you about him also. But then if you talk about Brian Mulroney, hopefully they can also talk about him, and they definitely have a lot to say about Jean Chrétien. Really they are a well-rounded body of viewers. They are a smart audience, and we make sure that they are happy, because they pay for our service.
When our people came here, they wanted to live in a better world. Some, especially from Hong Kong, the Cantonese-speaking ones, came because they were afraid of what the world might become after the Communists took over Hong Kong. But the ones who have stayed definitely made that decision because there is something that they like about here. So they see that there are reasons why they need to know more about the Canadian society. Some of them brought their children here, or had children here, eventually their parents came also to babysit the children. We are really catering to this group of middle-aged working people, their parents, and their children, and their children are also growing up from elementary school to teenagers. They want information on education, health care, social policies, crime, drugs, policing. Canadian content is also, I think, all about the Canadian mosaic and multiculturalism.
We care about these things as any Canadians would, and our viewers also care about them because they also need to live in Canada. In that respect, there is no difference between them and the mainstream Canadian community. The only difference is that our viewers also have kept up with what is happening with the political system in Hong Kong, for instance why are they still not voting in the democratic system whereas the Iraqis are, as of last weekend. These are the issues they are talking about.
We also have a very vibrant radio system here; Chinese radio has thrived. Talk radio programmes especially are capturing a lot of advertisers and a lot of listeners. Monday to Friday, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., and again Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to noon, the two competing radio stations here have talk radio, and they talk about one particular issue and callers call in and express their opinions. They talk about bigger issues, mostly national issues. So the people who watch our news programmes and our current affairs programmes have accumulated a lot of content and information and arguments, and they also have a channel to talk about it, to exchange opinions with the hosts and with other radio listeners. The Chinese immigrants or the citizens now definitely know about what is going on in this country and they want to talk about it. Sometimes we feel that even with that kind of programming, there does not seem to be enough, because it looks like they want to talk even more. This flourishing of the Chinese media is going in a really good direction right now.
Senator Chaput: It will be a very quick intervention, but I would like to thank you for your presentation and congratulate you on the fine work that you are doing.
Ms. Hwo: Thanks.
Senator Chaput: About a month ago, the ambassador from France in Canada, Monsieur Jouanneau, told me that he had visited B.C., like he does all the provinces. In B.C., France has Alliance Française offices, and he told me that Alliance Française was bombarded by requests from Canadian Chinese who want their children to learn, besides their own language, the two official languages of Canada. I am sure you heard about that. He was very impressed with your community.
Ms. Hwo: I am happy that you raised that point. We actually did a program, a long piece, a half hour current affairs program addressing that issue. It is true, and not just Alliance Française, but also the French immersion schools. My son was in a half French immersion, half English school last year. I was really amazed to see that a lot of the students in the French immersion programmes are Chinese. In fact, the daughter of one of the Sing Tao columnists went to the same school as my son last year, and she has been in the French immersion program for a long time.
I think this is part of the Chinese immigrants' wanting to stay in Canada and wanting to be part of the Canadian system. They know that to be truly Canadian and to have the flexibility of finding a job anywhere, you need to be able to speak both languages; you are not a true Canadian unless if you have both languages. And they also know that if you have both languages, you can go anywhere. Whereas if you are like their parents, who speak maybe not-so-fluent English, or speak English even with just a slight accent, many doors could be closed for you. These Chinese parents all wanted the best for their children and they really believe in the Canadian society. They think that if they have both French and English, then they are Canadian and that is what Canada is about, and then the sky is just totally open for their children. When we did our program two years ago, I think that was the beginning, and it reflects how the Chinese citizens in Canada think in terms of how much they want to be in Canada.
Senator Merchant: I think you are a wonderful Canadian.
Ms. Hwo: Thanks.
Senator Merchant: I sympathize a lot with you because I was born in Greece and came to this country as I was entering my teens. So, I still have one foot in the culture, and I understand that we need that bridge and we feel very comfortable straddling both countries.
You say that Fairchild Television has a very bright future. What are you doing to keep the young people who are born here, the Chinese children, as your audience? Are they maybe not going to be as committed to the Chinese ways and the Chinese culture?
Ms. Hwo: Yes, that is an excellent question. I have an eight-year-old son. Two years ago I was worried, because he was not showing much interest in Chinese stuff, although he speaks Cantonese with his grandparents and with me also. But this year I am not so worried, at least not in the last three months. As I said, we tailor our programmes for working parents in their thirties and forties, their parents and also their children. And I can confidently say that we are also catering to these children. One reason I can be so confident is that recently I went into my son's classroom and his friends, who are in the same age group, all looked at me and smiled, as they do every morning when I bring my son in. About a month ago, my son said, "Mom, you know that political segment that you do every Tuesday — my friends Wesley, Sean, Ryan and Andrew said they saw you on TV last night and they just loved it." Now that I know what the kids are smiling about when I take my son to school, I talk to them. And I realized that, in fact, they are also our viewers. They are actually watching our news programmes and listening to our radio shows, and so I feel a lot more confident now that they are watching us by choice, because they want to have that Chinese touch, not to forget where they came from.
But at the same time, do they speak fluent English? Yes. My son just got a full mark in French yesterday. So he will be speaking fluent French also, and, hopefully, he will be speaking fluent Cantonese and Mandarin. So I am not so worried anymore about what will happen when we lose the middle group. I think we are keeping the younger generation. Even the parents are speaking much better English than 10 years ago when they came here. But the fact that our viewership subscription is still growing indicates to me that they must be watching us because there is something about us that they like, not because they cannot understand the issues in English. I know that many of them read The Vancouver Sun.
The Chairman: I have four very quick questions and then Senator Carney has a final question.
How many hours of news do you provide every day?
Ms. Hwo: It is complicated now. We have our live news show from 7 to 8 o'clock.
The Chairman: That is an hour.
Ms. Hwo: Yes. Then we also repeat the news show from 11:30 to 12:30. And we have a local insert now, so that for the first half hour, viewers in Vancouver watch a completely different news program than the ones in Toronto. Calgary and Vancouver watch the Vancouver news program for the first half hour, while Toronto has a totally different setup for the first half hour, and then we share the last half hour.
The Chairman: Okay. Here in Vancouver, which is your mother ship, so to speak, how many journalists do you have?
Ms. Hwo: I have 32 people in the newsroom. On a daily basis, I have five reporters running in and out, and we keep four translators in the newsroom. Then we have editors and producers.
The Chairman: Where do you get your journalists?
Ms. Hwo: In Vancouver. They have to be Canadian citizens or Canadian immigrants. Our radio news director hired a young girl from Hong Kong who was studying here. She is extremely nice and also very efficient. We hired her and applied for the immigration process. But with TV news, because we run a much bigger newsroom, it is just not wise for me to do that. I always hire people locally.
The Chairman: If the average daily reach of Fairchild is 103,900 Vancouver Chinese adults, what proportion of those watch the news? If you don't have the number now, perhaps you could send it to us.
Ms. Hwo: I cannot tell for sure, but I think almost all of them would.
The Chairman: Basically they would?
Ms. Hwo: Yes. That also has changed over the years. A long time ago I was told that nobody likes to watch news in the Chinese community. But recently, my president has been telling everybody that the most watched program is news and current events.
The Chairman: Oh, congratulations.
Ms. Hwo: And the most winning program is current affairs, so people are definitely interested.
The Chairman: Terrific.
Senator Carney: I was born in China, and I am interested in your dual cultural attitude. But I just wanted to tell my colleagues, and I need help from others here, that for many, many years, English has been a minority language in the school system in Vancouver in terms of what is the prime language spoken at home. English has not been the majority language for some time; we should check what that statistic is. So there is a huge audience out there for many different languages. Thank you.
The Chairman: Ms. Hwo, thank you so much. You can tell how fascinated we all were.
Ms. Hwo: Thanks for having me.
The Chairman: Oh, Mr. Thomas Fung, he is a Canadian citizen, I take it?
Ms. Hwo: For even longer than I am.
The Chairman: Okay. Thank you very, very much indeed. It has been a most interesting session. I know we have kept you a little longer than we said we would but we are grateful to you for hanging in.
Ms. Hwo: That is okay. Thank you.
The Chairman: This next bit was not planned, so we do not have standing mikes, which would be the normal practice when we say to a group, "come one, come all." We really would like to hear from any students who would like to say something they think we ought to hear or who would like to ask us questions. This invitation is for the students only. Come to a mike, and tell us your name for our records.
Ms. Jhenifer Pabillano, as an individual: Hi, my name is Jhenifer Pabillano. I will give you the spelling of that later. It is a little bit complex.
We are looking for internships at this point because we need a three-month internship in order to graduate. It is a tough search, and one issue we run into is that many of them are unpaid. It is really tough to get experience in broadcast, and I think it shuts a lot of people out, because you have to volunteer your time and sometimes even go to Toronto or Montreal or somewhere to get unpaid experience. So we are a bit limited in terms of our scope for job opportunities.
And the number of internships, I understand, has gone down over the years. I read an article online by Shelley Fralic from The Vancouver Sun who had been interviewed about internships. This is in the Langara Journalism Review. And she said that when she was hired back in the 1970s, they had 14 interns working on a team, but now there are maybe five or six. It is becoming harder to get in. Older journalists tell us that 30 years ago they could jump from writing a university paper to writing for The Sun or The Journal, or maybe The Journal came calling and said, "We would like to have you as a writer on our team," but that does not happen anymore. Now we have to get higher education. And if the opportunities are not there, then it is really tough to make this work for us.
The Chairman: That is actually a very interesting point. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Senator Carney: I just wanted to comment that I did exactly what you said, went from the university paper to the mainstream papers, The Province and The Vancouver Sun, and they paid 25 cents an inch, which is why we were pretty verbose.
The Chairman: And now you can hear Senator Munson argue about who started for the lowest salary back in the old days.
Senator Munson: Thirty-two dollars a week, 1965, CJLS.
The Chairman: I was in the big city getting $50 in 1965.
Unidentified Speaker: Thirty-five dollars a week, The Province.
Senator Tkachuk: That paid two months rent though.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Jhenifer. Anybody else?
Mr. Richard Warnica, as an individual: I am also a student here. I just wanted to comment that I tend to look a bit sceptically at public opinion numbers, especially when they are about young people. I think when you ask whether this or that organization is biased, people will say that it is biased if it does not reflect their own views. For example, I grew up in Calgary, and when I tell people in Calgary that I am going to be a journalist, they say, "Oh, well, you cannot work for the CBC because they are biased and they are pro-Liberal." I did my first degree in Victoria and when I go back to Victoria and tell people I am going to be a journalist, they say "Oh, you cannot work for CanWest. They are so biased, they are so pro-Liberal." I think that when the members of the public say that journalists are biased in this way, you really have to take it with a grain of salt, because I am not entirely sure that the public knows all the time. If we listened to public opinion numbers all the time, Stephen Harper would be prime minister, you know. That is what journalists and public opinion polls were telling us during the last election.
I take issue when we say that now the public has spoken and this is the state of journalism and we don't trust journalists. There are groups out there with a very good reason to tell people not to trust journalists. Those are people who want to get around journalists and get a message out without having to have it vetted by a public organization or a fact check. They can easily get around journalists and fact checks by convincing people that things are biased. That started very badly during the Nixon administration in the United States, with the idea that mainstream media are liberal, so let us just circumnavigate the liberal bias and get you our message directly. I don't think things are as bad as maybe the numbers in these studies make them out to be.
The Chairman: Comments? I might say that those of us who are Liberals would be surprised to hear that CanWest had a rooted, pro-Liberal bias these days. Am I fair in making that statement, colleagues? It would be allowed to have that bias. I mean, people are allowed to have biases.
Senator Tkachuk: Unlike the CBC, though.
The Chairman: Well, I could even take you down a pretty vigorous road of argument on that one, but we are not here for partisan debates. But the point you are really making there is that the media and the public should beware of polls.
Mr. Warnica: Yes, and I think there is a lot of good journalism out there and I think that in some ways it is up to the public to find it. People say that they don't like sensationalism, but what do they buy? It is the same argument that people always use about pornography. Everybody hates pornography, but it is one of the biggest businesses in the world. People will say one thing but do another entirely. So what they say in a poll does not necessarily reflect the media choices that people are making.
Senator Eyton: Are you sure you are from Calgary?
Mr. Warnica: This is why I moved to B.C.
The Chairman: Thanks so much. Who is next?
Mr. Kesten Broughten, as an individual: I am not actually a journalism student here, but I am with CITR Radio, which is the UBC campus radio.
The Chairman: No, this is only for UBC students.
Mr. Broughten: Oh, okay.
Unidentified speaker: Campus radio.
The Chairman: Campus radio. Oh, I am sorry. I am sorry. I thought, I actually thought you said "capitalist radio."
Mr. Broughten: We are all volunteers actually.
The Chairman: We are all getting old.
Mr. Broughten: I just wanted to bring to your attention a local group called "Check Your Head." It was started probably five years ago by a pair who have both gone on now to local politics. Kevin Millsip is on the Vancouver School Board, and Lyndsay Poaps is on the Vancouver Parks Board. The organization went into high schools and engaged the students and got them to talk about the things that you are talking about today. They talked a lot about media concentration. I was just wondering if there was any interest in a group like yours extending the studies that you have done by using local groups such as that? As far as I know, no one is continuing their work right now. Originally they were funded by the British Columbia Teachers' Federation, I believe, among others. It might be interesting to take your study and approach certain niche groups.
The Chairman: For sure, as in journalism, senate committees cannot cover everything, but we certainly want to find out as much as we can about everything. You have to understand, we don't have any money to invest in community groups. That is not what senate committees are authorized to do. But if you could write us a letter or an email setting out the specifics of the group you are talking about and what they did, that would be really very helpful.
Mr. Broughten: Okay.
The Chairman: The clerk can tell you where to send that. Any questions? Okay, next.
Mr. Brad Badelt, as an individual: I am a student here in the School of Journalism. I just wanted to tie into something that Jhenifer mentioned earlier. I know there is a lot of concern about consolidation of media ownership, but I think the biggest issue is the lack of diversity in the newsroom, and particularly in terms of age. I guess newsrooms have not been hiring, and there is sort of a slug of other journalists weeding through, which is fine. But I think younger journalists would give you a very different perspective on many of the different current events. We have not seen the whole history leading up to them, so I think younger journalists tend to ask the question "why" much more often, maybe take a different tack on certain events, and I do not think we see that in a lot of the news media that we get. For example, CBC has the "George Strombolopolous Show," which is one hour in a week, and it is heralded as "the youth show." But if you looked at the percentage of audience that watches CBC, it is much more than one hour out of seven days times 24.
I do not think you see the youth percentage reflected in the media. I think more than media ownership consolidating, that is the biggest issue for why young people are not reading the paper and reading mainstream news sources. That is a plug for more young journalists.
The Chairman: Let me ask you something. I watched the George Strombolopolous Show last night. I'm sorry, but I still have problems with nose rings. But actually I found it a pretty good show. I thought it had a fresh take on a number of things and it kept me engaged. Then I thought, I am 60 years old — if this show appeals to me, is it missing the boat? I would like a show of hands. How many have seen it and do you think that is helpful, that what the CBC is doing with that show is the kind of thing that will help the public broadcaster? I am not the Nielsen ratings. I am just interested.
Unidentified speaker: Comme ci, comme ça.
The Chairman: They are not quite there, right? They are still trying too hard?
Mr. Badelt: I personally think that they are trying a bit hard; bringing on someone from Much Music, they are sort of plugging the cool, young person vote.
The Chairman: Yes?
Mr. Badelt: It's not that they are underestimating the intelligence of younger people. Young people are looking for serious discussion as well, and he does bring that.
The Chairman: He does.
Mr. Badelt: But I think they are over marketing it, in a sense.
Senator Tkachuk: A bit condescending?
Mr. Badelt: A little bit.
Senator Carney: I wanted to ask you about the Internet. How many of you get your major news sources from the Internet as opposed to the mainstream media? Is there a show of hands? Ah, there. So, we can tell. Okay. Do you think that is going to affect the future of print journalism or mainstream journalism? Maybe I could ask you to talk about that.
Mr. Badelt: I think it is going to make a huge difference. I think all of us, throughout the day, are checking the Internet for our news, in addition to reading the newspaper. So far they have more or less copied and pasted onto the Internet but they could do much more with it. It could be much more alive and interactive.
Senator Munson: I do not think it is a young person thing. I have a 20-year-old son and a 17-year-old son, and I have taken their habits and put them on my favourites. I check The Globe and Mail online every half hour or so when I am working; it has become part of my routine now. It is not only for youth.
Senator Merchant: Could I ask a question too? You are all students in journalism, so obviously you are interested in the news. Do you think you 30 people here are representative of young people, generally?
The Chairman: Just a minute.
Senator Carney: The Hansard record of this meeting would not show shaking heads. So, someone has to say it. Thank you.
Mr. Badelt: No.
Senator Merchant: How many think that other young people your age are also doing what you are doing, that you are representative of that age group?
Mr. Badelt: For the Internet?
Senator Merchant: How do they get their news if they are interested in the news, are looking for news?
Unidentified speaker: Oh, yes.
Senator Merchant: Yes, I am sure they are getting it through the Internet. Are young people interested in news? I do not know.
The Chairman: These students are all in journalism.
Senator Merchant: I know.
The Chairman: There is self-selection at work here.
Senator Tkachuk: There are two different questions here that we did not really get answers to: first, do they think they are representative of young people today in terms of how they receive their news, and second, are young people interested in the news. Those are two separate questions. I think that that is what you asked.
Senator Merchant: Well, you take over.
Senator Tkachuk: I am just trying to bring clarify.
The Chairman: I know Senator Trenholme Counsell wants to ask something, but I wanted to follow up from your response to Senator Carney.
Senator Merchant: No, I understand. I am saying this kindly.
Mr. Badelt: The sense I have is that we are representative of Internet viewing but not necessarily representative of news watching. We probably consume a lot more news than the average person our age.
The Chairman: Yes, you are prime audience for news organizations because you all love news. When you use the Internet for news, are you using it primarily as the delivery mechanism for news from the classic great news organizations, or are you seeking out news from new, untraditional sources?
Unidentified speaker: Blogs.
The Chairman: Well, blogs are not exactly journalism but I was referring to magazines and all.
Ms. Darcy-Anne Wintonyk, as an individual: I am a student here as well. Regarding the question of whether journalism students are representative of younger people, I do not think that we are at all. I think that journalism students are generally much more cynical of what we see in the media. I think that the Internet is great for destination-driven learning, and I think that is the greatest benefit of finding news on the Internet. Maybe we are not going to classic sources for news, but we are going to a lot more sources for it. A site like Google News will pull up the same news story from 20 different organizations; then, being the cynical people we are, we can decide what we like the best and take what we want from each of them.
The Chairman: Very good. Senator Trenholme Counsell.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I am delighted to have the opportunity to ask you this question. Maybe you can help me. On many snowed-in winter mornings back east, rather than going to get the newspapers, I have been using the Internet, and my son challenges me do to do that. But I find that I have to look so hard for stuff, whereas with a paper that I can pick it up, I really get more. I do not know how you get a good, full picture of the news from the Internet, because you get the big stories, but then you do not get all the little pieces that are in the newspaper. If you go page by page in a newspaper, you see an item that catches your eye and you decide to read it. I don't think you get that if you just click on The Globe and Mail or the National Post or the Ottawa Citizen. Maybe after this I will put The Vancouver Sun on my favourites.
Second, unless you subscribe, you cannot get a lot of things in the newspapers online, and I doubt that many of you subscribe. I would like to have your reaction to those two points.
Ms. Wintonyk: I think that you are right about that, because when we are going online to look for news, we are looking for basically what interests us the most at that time. Ideally, I would like to read a paper every single day and I would like to read a few to see what is out there, but I cannot. Maybe that is a problem with going to the Internet for news, and it probably will be a problem in the future because we are going to the Internet more for sources.
The Chairman: Okay. We have time for one or two more.
Mr. Badelt: I think the Internet also offers a first person narrative, which people find appealing, like blogs, or you get more of that sort of direct assessment, and so you will tend to go back to that person, which you do not get as much of with TV or newspapers.
The Chairman: Thanks very much.
Ms. Meena Mann, as an individual: I am also a student. I am in communications right now.
In response to Senator Carney's question about the difference we see between print and online journalism, I would say that there is a difference definitely in the style, but the journalistic teachings are still there and the journalistic style of grabbing the attention of the reader. That is consistent between the two media sources.
Regarding the George Strombolopolous Show on CTV, I think it is a very good representation of the diversity that we are trying to gain in our media and reaching out to different types of people. You commented that you do not like the nose piercing, but there are other people who can relate to him and may find it compelling to hear what he has to say.
The Chairman: Yes, and I watched the show in spite of the nose ring.
Ms. Mann: Yes, exactly, you watched it. So you can imagine how all the other people for whom he is the norm would very much be listening to what he has to say.
There is a Canadian-based online news site, called TheTyee.ca. It is a very good website. You can give your own opinion at the end of the article, without any biases. It is a very liberal type of paper, which is important. We need to incorporate more of that in the media today.
Senator Munson: In small doses.
The Chairman: Open-minded.
Ms. Mann: Yes.
The Chairman: Enlightened.
Ms. Mann: Yes.
Senator Carney: She means that they are very open.
The Chairman: Yes, we do know that, Senator Carney.
Senator Carney: In other words, conservative in the liberal sense.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Middle of the road.
The Chairman: A splendid operation, in other words.
Ms. Mann: Yeah, it is. I was very impressed with that online service. That is all I had to say.
The Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. We have time for one more voice. We have two? We are going to sneak in two.
Mr. James Weldon, as an individual: I am also a journalism student here. I wanted to reply to a point that was touched on briefly, which was that the rise of the Internet will affect print journalism, and I suppose television as well by extension. It strikes me that one point that has not been raised is that, in certain respects, the Internet will never be able to supplant print or television completely, whether in the minds of young viewers or older viewers. That is because there is an element of passivity involved in both television and print media that is not present on the Internet. With the Internet, we have to, as you said, actively seek out news stories. It takes efforts, it takes thought, and you have to read. And I think that there is a certain pleasure to be had in sitting on the couch with a remote control and letting someone else feed you the stories of the day. I do not think that that will ever go away and I think that that is something that other forms of media can cling to as a source of viewership. And I think there is also a human aspect to it that is also enjoyable for people, having a face tied to the news, having someone sit behind a desk and tell you in a soothing voice what is going on, and even having their face tied to a column is I think useful to people. It gives them certainly the illusion of clear and transparent authorship when it comes to the news.
Ms. Carrie May Siggins, as an individual: I am a student here. One issue that comes up is the idea of the gatekeeper. Studies like the one UBC has done show that young people are more sceptical about the media. I think that in fact they are sceptical of the gatekeeper, the institution that chooses what news is put out there to be consumed. With the Internet, there is the illusion that the gatekeeper is eliminated, that people can choose their own news. There are both dangers and positives in that. It has led to a growth in sophistication in how young people approach news shows. They know that young people are a market, a demographic that is sellable, and that news organizations are trying to sell to them. But I think that that is being eroded by the Internet.
The Chairman: I think I heard you say something very important, which is that when they go to the Internet, they have the illusion that there is no gatekeeper.
Ms. Siggins: Right.
The Chairman: But there are, in fact, gatekeepers.
Ms. Siggins: Right. More and more Internet news institutions are being established, and The New York Times, CBS, The Globe and Mail have been around for 100 or 150 years; they are established institutions. This is a growth period for the Internet, when institutions are gaining reputations. It is an exciting time, too.
The Chairman: Somebody keeps the gate.
Ms. Siggins: Exactly.
The Chairman: One great big gate. Okay, this is such fun. I know I said we only had time for two more. But does anybody else — okay.
Mr. Robert Annandale, as an individual: I am also a student here at the School of Journalism.
I do not know whether your question about the Internet got answered the way I would have answered it. It is true that it is hard to get some information sometimes from The Globe and Mail because of their subscription, and many other sites are like that. But the appeal for me is this: when you read something in the newspaper, you get 500 words or so, and that is all you are going to get; but when I read something on the Internet, whether or not it has links, I rarely read just the 500 words. It leads to a bunch of other things. I can maybe get the initial document and look at it myself to see if they analyzed it the way I would have analyzed it. Or if somebody says something interesting, I can search the name and see what else that person may have said, and I can dig a lot deeper. That is the appeal for me.
Mr. Dustin Pirillo, as an individual: I am a student from Langara. I am interning at Adbusters magazine. Marshall McLuhan that a third world war would be a media war, a media guerrilla war for information, because information is distorted on so many different fronts. I have talked to many reporters from CanWest who were fired because they wanted to report on global warming. They wanted to report that Palestinians were dying defensively, whereas CanWest maintained that they were terrorists. Whenever reporters from a huge company want to say something different or contrary to the sponsors, they are terminated. Is the information we get in the media based on what products are going to be sold? That is a very scary thing to live with. When you read the paper, you see it.
I watched a Global report on a stabbing in Metrotown; they zoomed in on this movie poster at the Silver City Metrotown for the "Lemony Snicket's" movie and they said, "Well, that was a series of unfortunate events, indeed." So they spun a movie while reporting a stabbing. Now, where is the ethics in that, when they are trying to sell something? And that is every media source we have in Vancouver. It is The Sun, the National Post, Global television. When you are that large, you have your sponsors to look up to; you have to report the way they want you to. And if there is any controversial material for CanWest, it has to be sent to their largest sponsors. If it goes against them, that article will be wiped.
The Chairman: I know what is going on in CanWest newsrooms, although we hope to know a bit more about these things as we go forward. It seems to me that what you are talking about comes right straight back to what Professor Ward was saying about codes of ethics.
Mr. Pirillo: With the concentration of media, you do not have a choice anymore when you get that large, because that is where all your money is coming from. If you run out of the money, you lose the company, right?
The Chairman: Indeed.
Mr. Pirillo: You run out of money, you lose the company. I have nothing against journalists. I have talked to many journalists and people who have been fired. They want to do the right job. They want to be ethical. It is not the journalists that are the problem. It is the people with the cash writing their cheques.
The Chairman: Some of them. I think we all understand your point about the commercial pressures on the media.
Mr. Pirillo: One last thing: Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be used to make sure that individuals can speak and have social advocacy ads through the media to give a different perspective. I think that is a good way for the public to put a control on the conglomerate media. Article 19 says that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression and this right includes freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers. I think this declaration should be the most important way of putting a rein on the types of information that get out to allow everybody to have a voice, as opposed to saying, "That is against our sponsors, so you cannot say it." Well, it is a human right. We can say it. Despite what your sponsor says, your sponsor is lying.
The Chairman: Right. Thank you all so much. You are terrific, you really are, and we are very, very grateful to you all. You have also been as much fun as any session we have had. However brief our time with you has had to be, we are very grateful to you all.
The committee adjourned.