Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Everyone loves hearing a good story. Maybe that's why audio storytelling has become such a big thing. So many people have picked up the microphone to share their voices, opinions and experiences with a wider audience. But more than just personal expression, podcasting connects people, and it can work as a bridge for groups that are underserved by traditional media.
I'm Kelsey Arnett, and you're listening to the Community podcast initiative. The goal of the CPI is to produce and promote podcasting as a way to amplify underrepresented voices through audio storytelling. This initiative is based out of Mount Royal University, which is located on treaty seven territory. The CPI is powered by Shaw.
In this episode, we're looking at how we can make canadian legacy media more diverse and equitable. Back in December, I participated in an event called Bridging Research and experience exploring EDI practices in canadian broadcasting and journalism. I was one of several student researchers from Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary. We presented our research on media diversity and heard from working journalists who shared their professional experiences with turning research into practice. CPI co director Brad Clark moderated the discussion, providing insight into his own research on diversity and inclusion in canadian newsrooms. The panel considered the overrepresentation of certain groups in the media and how journalists from diverse backgrounds navigate an industry which hasn't always been very inclusive. Here's Brad kicking off the event and introducing the topic.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: What I teach is based a lot on the research I've done. I teach a course in in media and inclusion in the broadcast program. And in that course I like to show my students a video of a new special from 1970, something I found on the CBC website. So CBC had preempted the nature of things to assemble a panel to talk about.
Wait for it. The introduction of canadian content policies.
Small wonder Canadians might have been inclined to tune into us TV stations. Nonetheless, the panel itself. There were twelve people there, ashtrays in between their chairs, and it was made up of eleven men and one women. And they were all white.
They're a little hard to make out, actually, through the haze of cigarette smoke on the set. And so, clearly a lot has changed since then. In many ways, there's no more cigarette ashtrays on sets. But some things haven't. I'd say the ghost of journalism past haunts coverage today. Our production norms, the way we gather news, our ethical canons, they were all shaped over the decades by the type of people assembled for that cancon panel. White, mostly christian, able bodied, heterosexual men. And for a long time, no one really noticed the impact that particular lens, that particular white male gaze had on coverage. But by the mid seventy s, a few academics started to look at news content, especially as it related to stories about racialized groups and women. Not a lot of work done in Canada, but certainly quite a bit more in the United States.
What those early academics found was profound under and misrepresentation, stereotypes and ignorance of culture and history, and the history outside the dominant group.
We're 50 years past that CBC special and today's newsrooms are much more diverse in many ways, but especially along gender and racial lines. And yet under and misrepresentation persist. So does stereotyping. So does ignorance of cultures and history outside the dominant group. And so while there is plenty of terrific, authentic contextual reporting related to difference, you still come across coverage that is problematic. And immediately springing to mind for me are issues like the migma lobster fishery, which was even in the news again this fall, and misreported or interactions between police and racialized groups during Black Lives matter protests. It's clear even when we look at the news discourse today that there are systemic issues still at work. And so that's why it's so important for journalists and academics and students to examine equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives in the field and to see the impact. It's absolutely critical. And so it warms the very cockles of my heart to be here this morning and to hand the floor over to both journalists and students and academics to explore Edi in journalism. Our young scholars here today come from the University of Calgary and from Mount Royal University and they're going to share their research in this area and our respondents will of course respond. So first up we have Kelsey Arnett and Charlote Voss from Mount Royal. Kelsey is a third year journalism student. She also works for Meg Wilcox and me as a producer for the community podcast initiatives. She enjoys hearing and authentically sharing people's stories. Kelsey's keen to learn more about how we can make the newsroom a more inclusive space for all. In the future, she hopes to work as a reporter and pursue further education.
Charlote is a passionate writer and photographer in her third year of journalism at MRu. She was born in Netherlands and moved to Alberta when she was twelve. She's been involved in writing, music, acting and dancing since she was young. She's expanded her passion for helping others recently by volunteering and mentoring first year students here at Mount Royale. When she's away from campus, she enjoys spending time with the creatures on her farm, dogs, cats, horses, and apparently even chickens. So Kelsey and Charlote, you have the floor.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: We just wanted to say thank you, Brad, for inspiring our 2023 study. It was very interesting to look at the differences and thank you for the introduction. So I'm Charlote and this is Kelsey.
[00:07:11] Speaker D: Hi. So we kind of want to start just by introducing a little bit of the topic and what we were researching. So in Brad Clark's 2013 study, reflecting which Canada a source analysis of canadian network television news, he noted that most prominent news organizations focus more on hiring minority journalists to improve coverage of underrepresented groups. But this process of increasing diversity rarely extends beyond the newsroom to the sources themselves. Meaning while newsrooms are hiring more diverse reporters, this doesn't necessarily mean that they're sharing stories about more diverse groups. In his paper, he also states that white sources are overrepresented in national newscasts, regardless of the ethnic background of the journalist.
[00:08:01] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:08:02] Speaker C: And now, ten years later, we kind of wanted to see if there was a difference in the sources in the newsroom crew, everything like that, which is why we did our research. So we used the same methodology, which was a content analysis of three major nightly canadian newscasts. So between January 23 and February 19 of 2023, we watched 75 national newscasts, which included the global national, CTV National News, and CBC the national.
[00:08:35] Speaker D: So then we coded reporters and sources into the following four categories. So whether or not they were white, racialized or indigenous or undetermined, we also counted the number of female sources.
And then overall, our research resulted in a total of just over 1200 sources, excluding the 25 undetermined sources. So overall, there was about 76% white sources. And that's across the board for all types of reporters. So reporters that were white, racialized or racialized or indigenous. And then we also have with the female sources, that was about 35% were female sources, 32% were racialized sources, and 5% were indigenous sources.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: The third graph on the page, it's about the white reporters sources in Canada's network newscasts. So the sources that white reporters would use in their stories, a total of 74.6% of these sources were whites, 21.6% were racialized, and 3.8 were indigenous. Whereas indigenous reporters, their sources were 59.5% white, 32.4% indigenous, and 8.1% racialized. So when we compared our study to Clark's, we found that little has changed in terms of the overrepresentation of white sources in canadian news. So Clark also found that white sources appeared at a rate of just below 87%, which isn't a huge difference from our total of 76%. One of our most significant interesting findings was that representation of indigenous sources seems to be growing. So the representation increased to 5%, which more closely aligns with the 6% of the population who identify as indigenous.
[00:10:27] Speaker D: So even though there are signs of improvement, specifically with the representation of indigenous sources used across the board by all types of reporters, white sources still dominate the news media landscape and we kind of see that systemic change is still needed to address this gap between the representation of white sources and minority groups. And that doesn't necessarily kind of aligns with what Brad Clark found in his study, that this doesn't necessarily mean hiring more diverse journalists or journalists with diverse backgrounds. It's sort of about, in a way, changing the culture and seeing that all reporters, regardless of their background, are still using diverse sources.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah, great presentation. I think you really captured the methodology of this study. I did in 2013 really well.
And your findings, I think are really significant and important. But I won't get into that too much.
I'll allow Alejandro Melgar, that is, to respond in a more deeper way than my brief comments. So Alejandro Melgar is a web editor and a reporter with City News in Calgary. He's also studying at the University of Calgary. These days he worked with the local news outlet livewire Calgary while he was a journalism student at SAIT. He also ran Sait's newspaper, the Emory Wheel. Before he ventured into journalism, he was a personal trainer and a boxing instructor. Excellent background for a reporter today. So Alejandro, if you'd like to take the spotlight for the next five minutes and give us a sense of what you thought of the presentation.
[00:12:18] Speaker F: Thank you, Dr. Clark.
I appreciate the introduction and I appreciate the chance to speak here today and respond to this paper.
I will say I found it really fascinating. I think my initial response was, yeah, I totally agree, just from my point of view as a reporter.
Granted, I should also add, I don't have an extensive history working in newsrooms. I've worked in a couple and I've been in a couple of other ones, but I feel I should preface that. But with that being said, from my own point of view and reading this report, it's definitely true, especially as someone who is a racialized reporter, a lot of my sources have been white sources.
The thing I found interesting with regards to that mention is I think as a newsroom, like in our newsroom in particular, we kind of have like a gallery of sources. And I think a lot of other newsrooms do the same thing. I've talked with people with post media and with CTV and there's a bit of a gallery for, like, I think a couple people come to mind, like Lori Williams and Dwayne Bratt from MRU. They are very common people that we speak to, and then others also as well. And then there's, like, Doug King, criminologist at MRU as well. He's also very common to talk to.
And so we have a bit of a gallery, and I think there's a level of comfort in referring to this gallery, but the problem is that a lot of that gallery, because we refer to it all the time, it doesn't give room for other kinds of voices. I want to kind of give a little bit of an anecdote here. I was in a pitch meeting one time in our newsroom, and we were just chatting about stories for the day, and I can't remember the exact story. It had to do or something to do with the legislature slate here. We had a couple people we wanted to talk to, and a colleague of mine who no longer works there. She actually works at Global now.
She was fighting, actually, for a source. She really wanted to talk to this person who was very educated in the realm of criminology and law and whatnot, and there was a lot of hesitancy, and I think the reason there could have been a couple of reasons behind it. For me, the first reason was we have never spoken to him before as a newsroom. So we don't know what he's going to say. We don't know what he's about. There's, like a level of trust, I imagine, with the news director and who they choose for their sources, who they kind of want people to reach out to.
But then the other thing I noted about the source in particular was it was a black man. He was a black man, and they were very hesitant about it. I think they would have preferred someone like Doug King, who they reach out to all the time.
We did actually end up speaking with him. I remember writing the story. I worked with her on this, and we put this story together, and it was at least published on our website. And we did used his voice in a lot of the radio scripts that we ran, too. But since that time, we actually haven't spoken to him since, which I find personally, just from my point of view, a little disappointing. I thought he was pretty well sourced. I thought he was very educated. I thought he had a lot to say on the topic.
I would totally call him up again, for sure, just for my own recording, but it was just a bit of a shame that that didn't come to pass.
But I guess I also want to kind of add on to with the use of white sources, especially as being like a racialized reporter. I was talking to a colleague who worked for post media for like 20 years and we were kind of chatting about this idea. And the thing that we both kind of came to or at least agreed upon was the fact that there are positions that we kind of have no choice but to talk to these people to get information. And those positions just also are filled by white people. It's tough to avoid at times. And I think that's like a big systemic problem as a whole. And I think it's a tough trap, I think for us because it's almost like an excuse. It's like, oh, well, because these positions, let's say I want to talk to, you know, it's like, oh, we're going to probably perhaps speak with some of the PR people over the city of Calgary and those PR people aren't going to be racialized. You're going to be white. And we're going to have this back and forth before we even get to Jody Gondick as an example. So sometimes I think it's a tough nut to crack. I think at least with those types of stories where we just need to get a comment from someone.
But when it comes to stories that revolve around racialized communities, I think that's where I also agree. I think despite having a racialized newsroom, like having more people on board, it doesn't necessarily lead to that. I'm a web editor and a reporter for the web. So while I do interview people and talk with people that also might go for our TV broadcast or the radio, and I sometimes also voice for the radio, my role is to report and write for our website. And when it comes to that, it's tough for us to chase certain stories that kind of don't follow the trend of our television and of the radio, if that makes sense.
When we do.
I don't know. Sometimes I think while I don't always agree with, say, our news director and the choices they might make, the harsh reality at times is as a company, I think the goal, and I'm not saying I agree with this, I'm just saying the reality here is that I think the goal is still to get engagement on stories.
I did a story at the beginning of the year about a woman from Afghanistan and she had fled the country when the US pulled out. And she owns this newspaper that tells women's stories and is basically a voice for women in Afghanistan. And this was like, after the Taliban left for the first time. And so this was like kind of an unheard of thing in Afghanistan. And so I thought her story was super interesting. A friend of mine, I learned about her through my friend who reports her fortune.
And so I was like, oh, we have to do the know. It was a bit of a difficult story to even to put together.
There were some translation issues there, so I needed a translator to talk with her and whatnot.
But I was really happy with the story, put it together. We had it ready to go put on the web. And the unfortunate reality around that story was it didn't get a lot of traction to our website. A lot of people were interested in that story, and it made me a bit sad. It was unfortunate.
I don't think news agencies should follow what people want, per se, if that makes sense, because I think at times there's this need to just put out things that it's like the saying, if it bleeds, it leads. That's what attracts people. But I don't really believe, personally, I don't believe that that's what an agency or what reporters should do all the time. I thought it was very well put together, and the content analysis and the sample size and whatnot. I think that was pretty adequate. I think it would have been interesting to explore other broadcasters and also more than just broadcast. There's also Postmedia, that's an entire news organization that while they focus on print and online, that's still like a whole branch of news that people still read. And look at our station. I know we're not the biggest, but I mean, that could have been interesting to view, too, because cities is owned by Rogers, and Rogers also owns Omni, which is like an indigenous focused station. So it'd be interesting to kind of maybe get more results or more understanding from stations like that.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Thanks so much. Alejandro.
You raise some really interesting points. You started off the top speaking about having a gallery of sources, and one of the early diversity initiatives that some of the professional associations had looked at were what they used to call rainbow rolodexes, where that gallery would be diversified by journalists looking for diverse sources, going beyond the usual suspects, like a Dwayne Brad or a Williams.
And I was in newsrooms where that happened. And it sort of starts out with a lot of gusto and enthusiasm, and then as the news cycle takes your attention, tend to get away from it a little bit. But thank you so much for engaging with the research and sharing your ideas. We're going to move on to the next research president, and this one comes from Darnell White from the University of Calgary. He's a fifth year student majoring in communications and media studies. He's a dedicated and accomplished student, regularly showing up on the dean's list. As a student, Darnell wants to expand his understanding of how marginalized groups are represented in the media. He presented at the U of C's CMF graduate Student conference revolution in Media escapes in May, discussing how authentic representation is often messy, rough and nuanced. This summer, Darnell received a four month peer research award to support a study of his own design, which explored how diverse Canadians are represented in news media. Darnell is also an avid sports fan and works part time as a broadcaster and writer for the UFC, covering a number of Dinos sports teams.
[00:22:13] Speaker G: Darnell, take it hey everyone. Thank you for that introduction, Dr. Clark. First, I just want to say I'm honored to be a part of this group and before I get started, I'll just say that I really enjoyed all the discussions so far by Kelsey Charlote and Alejandro. Definitely some really interesting points made and some perspectives that were shared.
My presentation is called representing the underrepresented how self identifying CBC journalists are challenging traditional practices to deliver impactful stories.
And like Dr. Clark mentioned, this is based on a pure research project that I worked on this summer and I'm excited to finally have the opportunity to share that with all of you. All right, so let's get to it.
Like I mentioned earlier, this project was conducted through Calgary's peer research program. So for those that who are unfamiliar with it, the program provides undergraduate students who are interested in pursuing research with funding and gives them the opportunity to do so under the supervision of a faculty member.
My idea for the project initially came about as I wanted to learn more about the news industry and also I want to connect it with something that is important to me, understanding how diverse people are represented in the media.
So after some brainstorming sessions with my supervisor, Dr. Googlietti, and also just some preliminary research, the focus of the project became CBC because of their mandate to reflect Canada's multiculturalism and their recent EDI plan. Progress and progress. About midway through the project, I started realizing that reporters'self identification actually impacted the ways that diverse stories were covered. So I made some adjustments to my project about halfway through to further explore this phenomenon. But before we get to my study, I think it's important to understand a couple of challenges that diverse journalists face in the newsroom. And Alejandro, I think did a good job of kind of explaining some stuff before. But I also want to add in some of what my own understanding is. So for better or worse, I think we know that good journalism is usually associated with objectivity, and actually acting as an advocate can often clash with rigid definitions of objectivity. Furthermore, diverse stories are viewed as less important in the newsroom, which could actually lead diverse journalists to avoid covering stories, in some instances over fears that it may impact their career trajectory. And then it was actually Dr. Clark who demonstrated in 2017 how canadian news organizations have often tried to address these issues in the past through a number of different policies. However, they haven't been as effective as maybe they would have liked. And now Canada is more diverse than ever, making media representation all the more important, which exaggerates some of these challenges that we've been discussing. So now that we have a bit more of an understanding of the challenges, let's take a look at what my project is all about. So, as I alluded to previously, this project was comprised of two parts. So the first part was a quantitative content analysis and the second part was a discourse analysis. So for the content analysis, I coded all diverse stories that appeared in national and local CBC News across a two week period. I just focused on front page news for written content online. And then I also looked at the national and also the Calgary's local flagship broadcast. And I wanted to make sure that my study was as inclusive as possible. So I tried to include all the different groups that have been historically underrepresented in legacy media. In terms of codes, I tracked four categories of information that provided some insights about the content of the stories, the groups being represented, the authors of the story, and more general data, like when and where the stories appeared.
So during the content analysis, I began to notice that CBC was doing a strong job of elevating indigenous stories and that there are a number of indigenous journalists who actually self identified as indigenous in their CBC profiles. So this prompted me to investigate if self identifying journalists reported differently on stories about their own culture, and if this proximity to their communities helped reporters report on these stories. And it also should be noted that the sample was not limited to just indigenous reporters. It was expanded as well to any diverse reporters who chose to self identify. So what did I find? Well, the biggest finding from the content analysis was that while representation was statistically representative of how much diverse people there are in Canada, it was quite unequal actually, amongst diverse groups. So while indigenous and black Canadians received lots of coverage, other groups who make up a large portion of Canada's population were absent or received very little coverage in comparison. There are many different reasons this could be the case, but I just really thought that was interesting to see that even within underrepresented groups, there are still some inequalities in who receives the most attention from news media. And now moving on to the discourse analysis is where we find some of our more positive findings. So firstly, we see that self identifying authors use their position to raise awareness and act as advocates. So self identifying journalists actually elevate diverse voices, including them as the most prominent sources in stories. So, as we know, this is something that's not always the case. So that's a very big thing for them to be doing. And they also infuse their lived experience into the stories, which allows room for subjectivity and the ability to act as advocate on certain issues, which also boosts their credibility on the topics. And what we also see is that self identifying authors actually view reporting as an educational opportunity as well. So in each story, the self identifying journalists incorporated their traditional language actually into the story and kind of explained some of the cultural meanings behind it that can be lost in translation. So this obviously offers a good learning opportunity for the audiences who may not be familiar with the cultures. And by offering these alternative perspectives, the authors encourage healthy discourse and discussion. These findings potentially have a big impact on how diverse news stories are covered by legacy media. And this study kind of showed that how selfidentification can really be an important tool which journalists can use to better the coverage of underrepresented groups, and also how it could be an avenue in which journalists can actually challenge traditional journalistic norms, such as objectivity, and kind of reframe the boundaries of their role to act as advocates for underrepresented people. So to assist in improving the coverage of underrepresented groups, more diverse journalists at CBC and other canadian media organizations are recommended to self identify to give a greater voice to underrepresented communities.
CBC in particular is recommended to reflect on some of the effective aspects of their coverage of underrepresented groups and adjust their policy to better serve underrepresented populations, not just select few. And some potential strategies that I've actually identified could be creating a weekly front page section to spotlight diverse perspectives. So the idea behind this is that covering diverse stories would be a bit more prestigious than it has been in the past. So that could maybe reduce the stigma around it, and also making better use of developer tools to allow for greater user customization. So we're living in an age where technology is really advancing. I think that could be put to good use here and allow people to customize their news experience a bit more and hear more about the stories that are important to them and their communities. That's all I got for everyone right now. So thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the presentation and I hope that it sparks some further questions and thoughts about the ways we can improve the coverage of underrepresented groups in the media.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Thanks for that terrific presentation Darnell. Lots of, I think, really creative approaches to your methodology. Some things that I certainly hadn't considered and we'll look at in my own future research. We're going to now hear from Hafa Maksood, who's going to respond to Darnell's presentation. Hafsa is a PhD student in the communication and media studies department at the UFC. She completed her bachelor's degree in the same program, graduating first class honors in 2021. She then went to UBC where she graduated with a master's of Journalism earlier this year. Hafsa has worked with CBC Calgary Radio and CBC Toronto's Kids News, where she wrote scripts and stories on diversities and minorities in Canada. At UBC, Hafsa completed a year long global reporting project, including traveling to Vietnam and publishing in Monga Bay. Her master's thesis was on the experiences of muslim women journalists in Canada. Her current research is incredibly topical representation of Palestine in western news discourse, diasporic resistance on social media Hafsa hi everyone, I'm Hafsa.
[00:33:47] Speaker E: Thank you so much for the introduction, Dr. Clark, and for all the organizers of this wonderful panel, and to darnell for this amazing presentation and this research that I want to first of all commend you on. I think it was very balanced and a well rounded study, very thorough, and I'd love to see it published. I definitely encourage you to consider that as an academic, two of the kind of findings that really resonated with me. The first was the importance and value of lived experience since my own master's thesis kind of also looked at the incorporation of situated knowledge in the work of muslim women in canadian mainstream newsroom. So I think it's like a great finding to kind of highlight that shift that's going on right now in journalism epistemology, moving away from that objectivity discourse and what that leaves out and what objectivity tends to mean and how we're kind of making that transition to making room for other forms of knowledge that might be more personal, come from more various experiences. The second was the finding in terms of reflecting the audience and the diversity in the country reflecting in news and the discrepancy there with certain groups that you highlighted. I think that when I was doing my own research, one of the women mentioned a quote that really stood out to me, where she was like, everything has to be for Susie in Saskatoon, where you're framing your work through usually a white audience lens. And even though my own time working in newsrooms, like working at the CBC, was pretty short term, but from my own work when I was there, I worked with like a call in show, Alberta at noon, and I also worked with the home stretch. And something that I experienced that I think Alejandro was touching on too, was that sometimes there's a resistance in the pitching process where especially with something like a call in show for Alberta, which has a largely white demographic, it's hard to pitch certain stories that are more diverse in that sense. And I feel like sometimes you have to go that extra mile as a racialized journalist to prove that your pitch is worth covering, which is something I experienced in J school too, at UBC, where I have to kind of fight for my stories to make it out there because it's just not on the radar sometimes. Something that I did couldn't help but be curious about with regards to this sort of research is thinking about the burden of representation and just tokenization, which is something I feel like newsrooms need to be careful about in their EDI policies because it's difficult when it comes to who should be doing that work and how much of it should be on the shoulders of racialized journalists. Should they be expected to? Is it more of a choice thing? Are they doing this work on their own will or are they kind of being confined to a race story box? And how do we kind of ensure that the industry isn't pigeonholing our journalists? It reminded me of, again, one of the journalists I was interviewing. She said that I believe at the time she was at the Toronto Star, this was a few years back, where they asked her to spearhead and be the lead editor of a diversity section, of making that a beat like a diversity beat. And she actually refused and was like, I don't think there should be a diversity beat because diverse stories happen in business and they happen in politics and they happen in the beats you already have, which I thought was a really fascinating point. So that's one some questions I have about future researches when thinking about who's responsible when it comes to improving coverage, who is that responsibly delegated to? Plus, I feel like something we need to think about when we're bridging our research with what actually plays out in newsrooms and then thinking about Edi in terms of paper versus practice. I think content analysis is wonderful, and I'm kind of thinking how my research was more ethnographic in interviews, and I feel like they create a really great unity brought together. So thinking about those methodologies and then with respect to your recommendations, I think those are great. And I just have certain, again, questions that come up as having worked in newsrooms and spoken to muslim women in these newsrooms, too, and thinking about just how would we do that in practice, and what kind of things would we have to take into consideration of actually making these sorts of policies be very productive in these spaces. I think something else that I think would be great for future research would be thinking about this in terms of geographical variance, because I'm sure local news stories in Toronto would be different from Calgary, would be different from Vancouver, considering the kind of demographics that are in those cities. And then also what kind of media attention are these diverse groups getting? Is it positive? Is it negative? For example, what treatments are news stories about black people in Canada versus what the stories about muslim people in Canada look like? So I wonder if ways to move this research forward would include not just considering diverse stories as like an overarching umbrella, but kind of getting into nuances of what those diverse stories look like. What kind of representations are there? Is there stereotyping involved? Things like that? But overall, I want to say this is a beautiful start into this area, and that's very well done, Darnell. And if I came across this in a journal while I was doing my masters, I 100% would have cited you. And yeah, I think it's a really job well done, and I definitely encourage you to publish it somewhere.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Absolutely. Thanks so much, AFSA. Those are some great points you raised.
Before I get to Anissa, I just wanted to really support your ethnographic work in this area. There's lots of content analysis, and I think it's great to understand what the discourse is, what the messaging is in the content that comes out. But I also think it's really important to understand the forces that shape that discourse as well. And there hasn't been as much of that in Canada. There hasn't been as many participant observer studies or interview based analyses related to EDI and journalism in Canada. So let's now hear from another respondent on Darnell's work. So we have here today as well, Anise Hadari, a senior reporter at CBC News who covers business, tech and money for national programs on television, radio and online. He's a graduate of CBC's developing emerging Leaders program, which helps diverse employees to advance their careers. He's also an elected leader with the Canadian Media Guild. He grew up in iranian Baha'I household in Edmonton and apparently can deftly impersonate his father's Persian accent, but he tends to avoid speaking Persian Farsi to anyone but his cat and the people who cut him off when merging from Crochild onto Glenmore trail. I can relate to that particular stretch of road. So without further ado, anise, take it away.
[00:40:22] Speaker H: Hi everyone. I feel a little bad. I didn't realize everyone wasn't going to put jokes into their biography, but it is true as there's a few people in this room who know me and are probably going yep, as you read that, I just want to say thanks to all of the participants and to all of the researchers here. It's been really interesting to listen to all of this. When I was listening to Darnell specifically, it really caught my attention when he referenced the ideas of spotlighting and for ease of use, I'll call it diverse journalism, but spotlighting, whether it's diverse creators or stories that are more diverse and how that could maybe make it more know it's CBC that we've been trying a know. Not everything goes according to plan, I will say, and this is not a project I've been involved in, but there's the being black in Canada project, which has slowly grown over a lot of years. And there's also the CBC Indigenous sort of section of the website that helped to do that. But I don't know that they were created and I genuinely don't know that they were created with the intent of making it more prestigious. And I think that's an interesting goal for a lot of journalists, whether they're frontline or news directors or working on their own, to think about the idea that we should try and change the idea that it is a niche beat that is just off to the side and make it one of those subsections of our work that is more important. The way that we might think of foreign correspondence or business reporting, maybe. But the thing that I really wanted to talk a little bit about was the idea that diverse journalists should self identify more because I will admit it made me think about how that might work. And I'm honestly not entirely sure because as he was mentioning it, I was thinking like, oh, that would be really important. But I don't know how it would work entirely on every platform. Right? Do we put that into every biography of a writer? What about stories that are not bylined? Does it put those journalists more at risk in certain contexts? That's certainly something that has been coming to mind for me lately. Not that I want to talk too much about Twitter as it slowly dies, but my Twitter biography pretty clearly identifies my demographic groups. And that used to be something that I thought was great, and it leads to problems with the way that audiences, not audiences, I would like to be honest with you, but the way that certain audiences interact with me. So I guess one of the things that I would want to look at with Darnell's suggestion of having journalists self identify more is I think what we can draw from that is that it is a good idea. And I think it's important for both diverse groups to hear and see themselves represented in the journalists, even if it's just sort of in passing. But it's also important for people who are not a part of those groups to see that diverse journalists are present. But I think one of the things that we will need to take into account as we move forward with that at any organization is how do we protect journalists from a real world that's maybe a little not ideal for openly putting your identity out there.
I struggle with how we would make that work in broadcast at times. As someone who presents as very caucasian, it would be very weird for me to say out loud in a radio piece or a television piece what my identity is, and I don't know that I would want to do that or take the time to do that. So it was just something that struck me as a part of the research. It would be another place to look at, another thing to explore, because my first reaction to Darnell's I'm going to call them pitches was that these are good ideas and I would like to see organizations move forward with them. I think CBC, from my experience, is certainly what I observe is I'm welcome to self identify when I choose to, if it's appropriate for the know. I'm certainly not going to switch into another language in the middle of a story about the gross domestic product going up or down.
I think we all have to keep that in mind as we're framing our stories honestly, it might make a gross domestic product story more interesting anyway, but I wouldn't be doing it. I do want to talk a little bit about what Hafsa was mentioning specifically when she was mentioning that sort of resistance in the pitch process because it's twofold and it is real. There's a resistance on the part of the diverse journalists themselves. Because even when you're in a newsroom that might welcome what you're talking about or what you are pitching, you're second guessing yourself almost always, just in case you have to explain things more a lot of the time. And so the pitch is like a pitch. Plus, even when you are in a situation where it's going to go really well, you have to pitch your story with an additional explanation, or at least you have to prepare one. So I think one of the things that a lot of newsrooms are still struggling to move forward with is we're bringing in more diverse staff and more diverse journalists, but we haven't yet really found a way to grapple with the bonus work that comes from being diverse in those newsrooms. I think a lot of leaders are aware of it and that's good, but I don't know that we've come up with good ways to address it and I don't know if there are other than just more time spent doing it. A question that often comes up in those pitch processes is how does this apply to the average person? But what are real people saying? And you can sometimes come away from that as the pitcher, as the journalist going like, well, is the unintentional implication here that this topic is not real or this group is not real? Everyone is still grappling with that. I don't want to excuse it, it is getting better in my experience. But I think this ties into both. What Hapso was saying in terms of a reaction and some of Darnell's conclusions and his pitches for ideas is that, I don't want to call it blowback, but there is pushback still from existing structures that sees a diverse story as being different from the norm. And when it's different from the norm, there is a concern that it is not relevant to the audience.
Diverse stories happen anyway, so you don't need to have a diverse beat. I think a lot of us were saying that half. So certainly bringing that up. I would like to highlight a program I used to work on, the cost of living at CBC Radio. That was something that at least when I was working on the show, and I think they still do. I haven't been on it for about a year, but that is a show where they're always thinking about that and saying like, okay, well, diverse stories happen anyway, so let's not make this a story that is a diverse story, but let's make sure that it is happening anyway through the process of talking about business and economics. We've been talking a little bit about data here, and I would just sort of close by saying one of the ways that I think we can encourage both what Darnell is pitching to happen and some of Hafs's reactions there is to keep tracking what we're doing and to make sure that there is data behind it. I do not want to imply that if you're like, okay, check this story had a diverse person, good. This is not about tokenizing or using numbers to quantify in a way that gets you off the hook. But when you keep track, you keep it in your head. And that way when you're keeping track of it in every story that you do and everything you do in the newsroom, it also helps you avoid the trap of having the diverse beat and just shoving everything that you might do into that one reporter or that one section because you are making sure that you're keeping track of it everywhere. Those were the big points that sort of came to my head in listening to everyone. I'm really glad that this is a topic of research and that it's being discussed, and I appreciate you inviting me to join you.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for your comments. Anise. It's great to have someone who's at CBC right now talking about so much of the work that CBC is doing. And in a lot of ways, I think CBC in Canada has really been a leader in trying to understand and do a better job with EDi on looking at a number of initiatives, whether it's the CBC Indigenous or some of the projects that you actually referenced.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: A panel discussion of diversity, equity and inclusion in canadian newsrooms featuring journalists Alejandro Melgar, Hafsa Mexud and Anise Hedari undergraduate students Darnell Weike from the University of Calgary, Charlote Voss from Mount Royal University and myself, Kelsey Arnett. Bridging research and experience exploring EDI practices in canadian broadcasting and journalism was organized by Dr. Victoria Guglietti and Dr. Amanda Williams. We'd like to thank Drs. Guglietti and Williams for their help in putting this episode together. The Community podcast initiative at Mount Royal University focuses on audio storytelling as a way to better include underrepresented voices. The CPI is powered by Shaw. You can learn more and listen to all our shows at thepodcaststudio CA or find us on social media at Communitypod yYC.
