Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everyone, it's Kelsey Arnott. This month's episode is a little different than what we usually do. For the past few months we've been working on a collaborative series with JSource. It's called Re Engaging and it's about doing journalism differently. Pulling from interviews done at an Engage Journalism conference last summer, the series explores the successes and challenges of community centered journalism.
We're sharing the first episode with you here. New episodes drop every two weeks on Tuesday and you can listen to them at our website thepodcaststudio Ca or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Episode one of Ethical Considerations for Community Centered Journalism.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: It's no secret the media landscape in Canada looks pretty dire to both journalists and and consumers. Funding challenges, declining audience engagement, and a lack of trust are impacting local and national news outlets. Because of this, journalists are looking for new approaches to reporting. One of these avenues, Engaged Journalism, aims to help rebuild trust with audiences and communities.
Welcome to Reengaging, where we explore a new way of doing journalism. This four part series will explore engaged journalism through a Canadian lens, what it can look like, and its successes and challenges.
Each episode features conversations with academics and media makers from across the journalistic landscape who gathered at Concordia University last June to discuss various ethical considerations and practical applications for newsrooms and universities. I'm your host, Gabriela Peromo, and in this episode we're exploring the ethics of engaged journalism.
Traditional media practices can often isolate sources. Interviewees rarely see an article before publication, and even then, newsrooms have complete control of the narrative. But Engaged Journalism attempts to open the door to collaborating with sources. While Engaged Journalism challenges traditional practices in good faith, there are still a number of ethical factors newsrooms must first consider. Journalist Jessica Botello Urbanski spoke with Professors April Lindgren and Nicole Blanchet about how news outlets can maintain editorial independence and build trust with communities.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: Jessica I'm Jessica Botello Rubanski. I'm a master's student at Concordia University in Digital Innovation and Journalism Studies, and we're here today as part of an Engaged Journalism conference in Montreal at ForSpace. So we've broken into separate groups throughout the day to do smaller conversations on an array of topics. And now we're going to do a quick summary about what we heard from the group that was doing Ethical Considerations in Community Centered Journalism.
So I'm going to let you both introduce yourselves.
[00:03:14] Speaker D: Hi, I'm April Lindgren and I'm a professor at the at the School of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University, and I run the local news Research project.
[00:03:24] Speaker E: I'm Nicole Blanchett, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. I'm the Canadian lead of the Journalistic Rural Performance Project, and I also work on a number of audience data and AI projects.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Can you just provide a brief summary of what your group talked about and why you decided to pitch this topic as well? Because I know it was not one on the original list.
[00:03:45] Speaker D: When we were asked for topics that we thought were worth discussing during this session, I immediately started thinking about the ethical challenges, because I think there's a bit of an assumption that it's an automatic good and it's automatically a straightforward process to work engaged journalism. And by definition, it's just a good thing, which it is. However, I think as you dig deeper into it, you see the potential for pitfalls. And so I just thought it would be very important for us to have a discussion along those lines.
[00:04:17] Speaker E: And then at our table, we basically came up with three areas where we thought we needed to give some serious consideration into what best practice might be. So the first one was looking at establishing a set of guidelines. The second one was looking at what newsrooms need to do organizationally to consider how to manage best practice. And the third one was building relationships with community. So maybe we can start at the top one, building guidelines. If you want to go, April, and talk a little bit about that.
[00:04:44] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, we thought that it would be a worthy exercise for news organizations that are interested in this practice to have a real discussion about the issues that are likely to come up and the extent to which you can find common best practices going forward, and to write them out so that people who haven't thought about them before at least, will have some idea about the issues they need to think about and decisions they need to make within their news organizations. So one of the points, obviously, that will come up is issues related to editorial independence. So if you're building a relationship with a group in the community, do you give them the right to review the story? Do you give them a veto over the story? How do you deal with that issue? Because the issue of editorial control will come up, and there needs to be some approaches to that, or best practices, we think, outlined in maybe some guidelines for news organizations so they don't have to all start from scratch in considering these issues.
[00:05:45] Speaker E: And one of the things we've talked about, too, is the fact that there's already such limited time and resources in newsrooms that it could be difficult for a lot of organizations to spend the time to think about this and to develop the guidelines. So perhaps it could be a situation where the public broadcaster, cbc, for example, or a nonprofit or a collective of organizations could develop some living guidelines, so to speak as well. Because this should be a reflexive process where everyone's consistently going back after different projects and saying, did this actually work? Were there new things we didn't think of that have come up that need to be addressed in these guidelines? And this way it would be an up to date resource that everyone could have access to and particularly smaller organizations that may not have the resources to build this type of document.
[00:06:24] Speaker D: And the guidelines would be address broad principles like the need to maintain a relationship once you've started. It's not just to go and do the story and walk away. So a broad principle of there's a commitment to maintain an ongoing relationship with the community once you have started it. And then each news organization will determine that and discuss that and how that might play out within their news organization.
[00:06:49] Speaker E: Speaking of newsroom organizations, perfect segue, we'll go into the newsroom organization part. So one of the things we considered with this is that when we're talking about different ways of doing journalism, newsrooms are often structured to work in a very specific manner with very hard deadlines. And this is how we do things. So if we're talking about changing the rules of how we do things, newsrooms have to really consider how much control are we willing to give over what are our specific rules? What are we comfortable with in our newsroom so that, you know, there's some acceptance of. For example, if someone commits to doing a story and everyone's counting on this story, but then that person decides to pull out of that story, the acceptance, well, that's going to happen. And how are we going to manage if someone doesn't make a deadline for a variety of reasons that, well, you know what, we want things to meet deadline, but maybe we're going to have to be flexible in our deadlines. So just a real analysis of what are we comfortable with within our space and how will we manage that in practical terms, if things come up in.
[00:07:42] Speaker D: These stories and some of the suggestions that we had for this category seep over into the next category, which is building the relationship with different groups. But for instance, one of the ones we talked about was what is the purpose of the project that we're doing here? What is the purpose of this journalism and within the newsroom? I think there need to be discussions about that before you embark upon it. What are we doing here? Are we just providing needed information? Are we trying to start a conversation, Are we pursuing potential solutions that we want to present to the community? What exactly is our purpose here and what do we have the bandwidth to take on? I think is the other part of it that you need to decide as a news organization before you embark upon this.
[00:08:26] Speaker E: And I think another important part of that conversation, too, is who decides who the community is. So as an organization, again, through a variety of means, you might have an idea of who your audience is, but when it comes to community engaged reporting and this idea of building a relationship with the community, different communities have communities within those communities that have differing viewpoints of how things might be done as well. So really spending some time thinking about who are we defining as our community? Does the community that we are working with define it in the same way? How do we build the relationship with that community that, again, is sustainable and, you know, prepare the community? For example, in terms of informed consent, what happens if a story is done? There is a big backlash to that story. Do we have supports in place? For example, if someone gets doxed or if there's, you know, they're facing online hate? How are we going to support the community that we're in this relationship with? Which also kind of goes back to the newsroom organization one, because you have to have, you know, mechanisms in place for that. But just the idea of protecting the relationship, building on the relationship, and understanding that it may not be as simple as you think to define a community.
[00:09:31] Speaker D: And related to that is how much control are you willing to give up and in what areas are you willing to cede control because it is a partnership. So what are you comfortable with doing? And this, of course, goes back to touching on the editorial control and editorial guidelines, because that's something else that you're going to have to really think about as a newsroom embarks upon these types of relationships.
[00:09:53] Speaker E: And I think that we saw just in one of the last presentations, someone talking about some guidelines that they had created for a project. So part of this, too, could be more of a curation than a creation, where you're looking at some of the guidelines that have been created for other projects, again, kind of compiling those to come up with some general guidelines that will be specified for particular spaces, depending on the type of journalism that they're doing and the community that they're dealing with.
[00:10:19] Speaker D: And we also thought about what happens when the story the newsroom produces isn't exactly what the community wanted. And we think there has to be careful consideration to that potential issue. And I think that is what requires a real clear communication and conversations between the community and the news organizations from the start. So what if you start out thinking this is really a story, the community is interested, you research it and in the process you find a story that is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. So what happens in those cases, I think that needs to be talked about and potentially anticipated. Won't necessarily happen, but it can get very uncomfortable and cause a lot of heartbreak and challenges. So again, does the community have the right to veto it? And if so, are you comfortable with that from the point of view of your commitment to quality journalism and telling fact based, verifiable stories, or is it a betrayal?
[00:11:17] Speaker E: And the other thing as well is that what if the community itself doesn't agree? So what if one part of the community likes the story, another part of the community doesn't like the story? Again, there are levels of complication that can arise and I don't think that any set of guidelines is ever going to mean that it's going to solve every issue. But I think having thought about it and creating a space where everyone's comfortable talking about it, and again, a reflexive process where there was this continual analysis of how does this work, how can we make it work better? You're always coming into it from that perspective. It gives the room for growth and it gives the room for space to, you know, to really think about how can we do this the best way?
[00:11:53] Speaker D: Yeah. And I think the idea that the standards or the guidelines that you apply the definitions of the problem can be somewhat flexible, it doesn't have to be written in stone and that it must happen this way. And I think that's actually kind of challenging for journalists because we grew up in a business where this is okay and that's not. And all of a sudden there's kind of this gray area where maybe you do want to talk to people about what the story is going to say, but maybe you can't give them the. I mean, it used to be a firing offense where I worked with to give somebody the story in advance. So how do you navigate that territory and reflecting on it and thinking about it in advance and having a really transparent, open conversation with your partners, I think is really necessary for everyone involved because otherwise it could go badly off the rails.
[00:12:38] Speaker E: Transparency of process was something that came up in all three categories. I think in terms of again, how you're developing the guidelines, how the newsroom thinks it's going to work. But I also think too that pushing the boundaries of journalism, I'm actually comfortable with letting people see a story ahead of time. In some instances, depending on the circumstances of that story and depending on the agreement that you've made with the people that are in the story or the community that you're working with, different people will completely not be comfortable with that. So, again, it comes down a lot to, in some ways, an organizational perspective, but having this discussion with people in management about, again, what control are we willing to give up here? What rules are we absolutely not okay breaking, which might be like, we're not going to do PR stories for people, but maybe we will rethink these ideas of, you know, letting people see a story beforehand, being comfortable with them saying, nope, sorry, I'm not okay with that. In order to preserve these relationships in a community.
[00:13:35] Speaker D: And also I think as a part of that is the whole issue of informed consent that we've talked about before. But being very clear about what that means and talking to people about what the consequences of telling us this information could be for you.
And I think that's a huge part of the relationship part, which is our sort of third category that has to be very clearly and transparently laid on the table so that people understand this is going out into the ether and it's going to be out there for a long time. And it could well generate reactions that are not going to be pleasant.
[00:14:10] Speaker C: That transparency piece, I think that's the word I've heard the most today is transparency. Transparency, transparency, which I think is really important. And there's a lot of threads I would want to pick up on what you both said. I think the most important when you're talking about the guidelines too, is having them be very broad because context matters so much. And which newsroom is doing this engaged journalism. And are they in Montreal or are they in Toronto or in the North? There's so much context there, depending on where you're doing the journalism. So you talked about maybe CBC or CAJ or one of these bigger folks being the person to draft these type of guidelines. Is that something either of you would want to do as well?
[00:14:51] Speaker D: This is the danger of putting out ideas like this.
You have to run and hide after you do it.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: Yeah, just drop the idea bomb.
[00:15:01] Speaker E: Yeah, we'll see what comes of all of this. But hopefully there is an organization again that has the time and space. Space to be able to do it. I think the danger is too, that you don't want it to kind of be so, you know, CBC's decided this is where we're going to do it. And so this is, you know, the standard, because there might be even smaller organizations who have very particular ideas about what they want to do. So I think it is more the idea of finding a place that could perhaps support the creation with input from other people about what might be best practice, again, in this very reflexive, open way that can be used particular to environments. And hopefully there are a number of people who are willing to jump in and work on that.
[00:15:45] Speaker D: And I don't think you have to invent the wheel on all of our houses.
[00:15:48] Speaker E: Exactly. Curation.
[00:15:49] Speaker D: There's a lot of Good Work, Duncan McHugh's book on writing about covering Indigenous communities. Quite a few of these ideas are there already.
But I do think the conversation needs to start because I'm not comfortable with this idea that it's an automatic good. There's also automatically the potential to do harm or to get embroiled in unforeseen consequences.
[00:16:13] Speaker E: Yeah. It's important to think about because journalism can have really profound impact on people's lives. And I think that always needs to be considered in every story that you're doing. But particularly when your whole goal is supposed to be to engage underserved communities, you want to be careful about how you do that.
[00:16:35] Speaker D: Yeah. You do want to end up with betrayal, anger, and disappointment.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: I appreciate you bringing a realistic lens to, like, what could be a very positive conversation, but you also have to ground that in reality. And a lot of folks who have been historically traumatized by journalists and don't have that trusting relationship that needs to be built back, and we don't want to ruin it further by engaging them more, if that makes sense. Like by bringing people more into the process, there's more potential for damage as well.
[00:17:05] Speaker D: Yeah. And I think there's also the potential, though, for a lot of good to come out of these conversations more and better journalism.
[00:17:12] Speaker E: It's true. I had a student did a presentation that was quite profound last semester where there was this discussion about how do we engage communities in. Her point, and she was an Indigenous student, was maybe we don't want to be engaged. Maybe we don't want you to tell our stories, and we're just not talking to you about it because we don't want to. And I thought, wow, that's a really good point. So I think also coming from the perspective of, well, of course people want us to tell their stories, and of course they want to engage with us, maybe they don't. So that's another thing, too, to think about is that the point of engaging is not coming in with the assumption of, I know you want to. It's the same thing as coming, I know what stories are important to you. You have to come in with, do you want to be involved in this process? Does this seem like a good idea to you? How might this be a process that you do want to be involved in if you have no interest in it? Maybe it is a hard no, but I think again, from the perspective of, of course everyone's going to want to be more engaged. We have to be careful about the assumptions that we make going into any space. As a journalist.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Just one more question for the both of you. Do you have a main takeaway or something you learned today or were surprised by that you're going to take home with you?
[00:18:23] Speaker D: I think in the course of our conversation, dividing it into three categories was actually quite helpful for me thinking about what would guidelines say, what needs to happen on the newsroom floor, and what has to be part of the conversation that you have with the communities you, as a news organization, are seeking to engage.
[00:18:41] Speaker E: I would say one of the things that just came to me was that it did kind of get me thinking, is that what we mean by engagement? There was such an interesting conversation about the translation between French and English, how there wasn't really a word that worked. And one of the things as I was listening to people use engagement, because I do a lot of work with audience data, what that means from a journalistic perspective is kind of different because engagement is measured in all these, you know, how the audience is consuming content and the different ways that they're doing it. So for people who work in audience engagement, that engagement is different than for people who are talking about engaged journalism in this context, too. So I think, again, just recognizing that different people understand things in different ways, and that's why it's important to have something like a guideline where it's clear what we're talking about.
[00:19:26] Speaker D: I also think, you know, from the point of view of the work that I do on the viability of local journalism, producing. Producing content that's meaningful for the people in your community is about producing journalism that engages them because it might be engaging them because there's a forest fire and people are being evacuated, it might be engaging people because all of a sudden you're going to give them an opportunity to be a part of the conversation that they've been shut out of before. It might mean you're working with them to ensure that they have the opportunities and the information they need to participate in the local political process. So I think the whole idea of engagement means giving people and providing people and listening to people so that you're producing journalism that matters to them and that therefore they're willing to support is also really important.
[00:20:15] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:20:15] Speaker C: And pay for at the end of the day. Well, thank you both very much. This has been great.
[00:20:20] Speaker E: Thank you.
[00:20:21] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: That was Jessica Botello Urbanski, a journalist and Concordia University graduate April Lindgren, professor at Toronto Metropolitan University's School of Journalism and principal Investigator for the Local News Research Project and Nicole Blanchet, Associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and the Canadian lead of the Journalistic Role Performance Project.
I'm Gabriela Perdomo, Editor in Chief of JSource. Thanks for listening to Re Engaging.
This series is a collaboration between JSource and the Community Podcast Initiative at Mount Royal University.
Special thanks to the Engage Journalism conference organizers Magda Koniekszna and Gabrielle Bassar Lecourt, and to the CPI's co director, Meg Wilcox and journalism students Emma Miller and Kelsey Arnett at Mount Royal University for their work on this series. You can learn more about JSource@JSource CA and you can find the community podcast initiative at ThePodcastStudio CA or on social media communitypod. YY.
