https://www.cbc.ca/news/editorsblog/editor-note-pandemic-protests-media-experience-1.6343672
Our journalists are facing more harassment, threats for doing their jobs
Erosion of trust in journalism has a real impact on the people who do it, and by extension, those we serve
We use this editor's blog to explain our journalism and what's happening at CBC News. You can find more blogs here.
As vaccine-mandate protests rolled into Ottawa (and later other cities this past weekend), CBC took extra measures to ensure the safety of our journalists covering these events.
We reduced our visibility and hired extra security. We identified fallback positions for our reporters and field crews. We conducted risk assessments for each deployment.
These precautions were warranted. We've seen multiple examples over the last several weeks of our teams and other Canadian media being verbally harassed, threatened and intimidated simply for doing the job of journalism:
- One of our journalists at a protest in Vaughan, Ont., overheard a group planning to "mess up" another journalist and did not feel safe enough to report live for CBC News Network. One of the CBC vehicles had its window smashed.
- In Winnipeg, a reporter was surrounded and insulted by an angry crowd. The security guard hired to accompany him was tackled against a car.
- In Ottawa, a Radio-Canada journalist had to be pulled from the field a few minutes before she went on the air because protesters were approaching her screaming.
- Our colleagues at other news organizations have faced similar abuse and intimidation as protesters tried to hinder their work.
This is not to paint all protesters with the same brush. Many have demonstrated peacefully, though some have tested the patience of residents and business owners whose lives have been seriously disrupted, partly by the blaring of horns, leading to a temporary injunction to silence them in Ottawa.
A number of protesters spoke to our reporters and camera operators, offering important insight on their motivations. We have endeavoured to report on all of it with accuracy and balance. Indeed, the protests are just one expression of the frustration and more widely shared concerns by some across Canada about the disruptive impact of COVID-containment policies on people's lives and businesses. The onus is on us to reflect, report and challenge all sides of this issue.
But it is also true that many of the protesters harbour a deep and growing distrust of news organizations like ours, mirroring their distrust of the consensus public health opinion, government policy and other institutions.
And there is a growing segment of Canadians who are actively hostile and menacing when they encounter journalists.
Trucks attempting to drive south on Avenue Road toward the Ontario legislature are blocked by a police cruiser during a demonstration in support of a protest against COVID-19 restrictions in Toronto on Feb. 5, 2022. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)
This hostility extends online. Some disturbing abuse has appeared in our inboxes and social media feeds, threatening our staff with arrest, graphic violence and extra-judicial trials. References to Nuremberg and treason are common. The dialogue is rife with allegations of conspiracy and "fake news."
We tend not to share these experiences with audiences because we never want to make ourselves the focus of the story. We work hard to carefully guard our journalism against self-interest.
Growing intolerance
It's important to understand how the growing intolerance of journalism is playing out in this country and making it more challenging for us to report the news, and to see that Canada is not immune to the same forces that have propelled distrust and disinformation to peak levels in other parts of the world.
We have our own work to do, of course. Every day, we reflect on the things we do that may contribute to distrust in our journalism: careless mistakes or a lack of precision that results in public clarifications, corrections and ombudsman reviews; the missing voices and perspectives that leave some people feeling excluded from our coverage; and the unconscious biases we must understand and work to overcome.
But there are many external factors at play as well.
Chipping away at the trust in journalism in Canada are opinion-makers and personalities who nurture conspiracy theories with phrases such as "What the media don't want you to know" or who make broad generalizations about "legacy media" or "mainstream media" (MSM). Some alternative media websites exploit the "MSM/fake news" narrative to drive their own business and political interests. Disinformation designed to sow anger and distrust of news media is common, such as this recently faked CBC News story. Social media platforms are slow to remove harassment and disinformation aimed at journalists.
None of it is benign. Bit by bit, the erosion of trust in journalism has a real-world impact on the people who do it, and by extension, you, the people we serve.
There is no democracy without a strong news media.
While the safety of our teams in the field and online remains a top priority, our commitment to journalism and truth telling has not wavered.
As the public broadcaster, we will not be intimidated or step back from our commitment to independent, fact-based journalism and the public service mandate that drives all of our work. But it's important for you to know what we are encountering on the ground.
At stake are the press and media freedoms guaranteed under Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the very same section that guarantees protesters the right to assemble and demonstrate peacefully.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BONOKOSKI: CBC bans Facebook comments to protect staff from toxicity
One-month pilot will close comment sections on the corporation's Facebook page
The CBC building at Front and John Sts. in Toronto.Photo by Alex Urosevic /Postmedia NetworkBack in the early 2000s, when Brodie Fenlon worked in the Toronto Sun newsroom, anyone with a brain knew he was a young man on the way up.
He was a go-to reporter. If a difficult story needed to be ferreted out, Brodie Fenlon was it. His instincts were impeccable.
He could find a snake in a rockpile, and he did.
He and the late Al Cairns, another exceptional reporter, found Karla Homolka in Montreal after she had fallen off the Earth — a reminder today of how her ex-husband, serial killer Paul Bernardo, had again played the system, forcing relatives of his and Homolka’s victims to again relive a heart-gutting nightmare this week while he sought no-hope parole.
After a decade at the Sun, Brodie Fenlon moved on — first to the Globe & Mail, then the Huffington Post and eventually to the CBC where he’s now editor-in-chief and executive director of the corporation’s daily news.
The other day, Fenlon launched a one-month experiment to ban readers’ comments to news published on its Facebook page.
His reasons were edifying.
“There is ample evidence the mental health of many Canadians is fragile and in need of attention after 16 months of pandemic lockdowns, school closures and economic uncertainty,” he wrote.
“Journalists are no different. Some recent articles on the well-being of reporters tasked with covering a crisis they’re also living through have many of us looking in the mirror to take stock of our health.
“Compounding the stress and anxiety of journalists is the vitriol and harassment many of them face on social media platforms and, increasingly, in the field.
“As (the Globe and Mail’s) André Picard wrote in a recent column, ‘For journalists, platforms like Twitter can be a great way to find sources and promote their work, but also a cesspool of hatred.’”
Journalists, especially old-guard newspaper reporters, normally sucked it up, although alcoholism tended to sweep indiscriminately through the ranks of my predecessors and less so through mine.
“If public discourse is a litmus test of the health of a society, the conversation on social media suggests we have a problem,” Fenlon continued.
“It’s one thing for our journalists to deal with toxicity on these platforms. It’s another for our audience members who try to engage with and discuss our journalism to encounter it on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, where they are almost guaranteed to be confronted by hate, racism and abuse.”
Fenlon says the one-month experiment will give the CBC “the opportunity to post more stories to Facebook that cover a range of lived experiences, political thought and topics without worrying that they’ll be overwhelmed by negative comments and attacks.”
Now, I can understand a portion of the CBC’s audience having no stomach for the toxicity on social media platforms, but I know no journalist of my generation who would get worked up by the nastiness being hurled at them, or the news they were forced to face.
The only exception, coincidentally, were the psychological damages suffered by some journalists who covered the graphically-profound Bernardo-Homolka trial, or the trial of sex killer, Russell Williams, the former base commander at CFB Trenton.
Maybe today’s young journalists are more sensitive.
Or maybe today’s young journalists are just smarter.
Knowing Brodie Fenlon, I suspect his antenna wisely and quickly picked up on his staff’s mental health concerns in the midst of this pandemic because his instincts are impeccable.
Now I could be wrong as hell, but I doubt it.