Pull Quotes

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By Lidia Abraha and Michal Stein

This week, Toronto elected a new mayor and a new city council. But this election was not like previous ones. On July 27, barely two months into his elected term, Premiere Doug Ford announced a reduction in the number of city councillors in Toronto from 47 to 25. What followed were a series of legal challenges and a lot of confusion before the new government had its way, invoking the threat of a controversial notwithstanding clause.

How did this interjection affect media coverage of the election?

Did we miss the political steam Patrick Brown stirred up to get elected Mayor of Brampton?

What can we learn about covering white nationalists based on Faith Goldy’s run for mayor?

Pull Quotes is produced and hosted by Lidia Abraha and Michal Stein. Sonya Fatah is our executive producer. Thanks to Angela Glover and Lindsay Hanna for technical support.

Shawn Micallef is a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, cofounder of Spacing Magazine, author of Frontier City,The Trouble with Brunch, Full Frontal TO: Exploring Toronto’s Architectural Vernacular, and Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto. Shawn also teaches at the University of Toronto and is an advisor to Progress Toronto.

Jonathan Goldsbie is the News Editor for Canadaland and co-host of its show Wag the Doug. Jonathan has written for NOW and the National Post.

Azeezah Kanji: The Colour-Coded Race for Mayor

Denise Balkissoon: Faith Goldy doesn’t want to be mayor of Toronto

Shawn Micallef: It took John Tory decades of effort to become mayor, so why is he squandering the opportunity?

Rhianna Jackson-Kelso and Alexandra Jones: 25 wards, 25 faces: Here are Toronto’s new city councillors

Maclean’s Interactive Results Map

The post Pull Quotes: Season 2, Episode 2 – A Three-Month Long Civics Lesson first appeared on The Review of Journalism.

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The Ryerson Review of Journalism podcast, Pull Quotes, is back for another season.

October 17 has come and gone. Another era of prohibition is behind us; recreational cannabis use is now legal in Canada. Michal Stein talks to cannabis reporters Kieran Delamont and Mark Rendell about what changes they’ve seen in the Canadian journalism landscape as a result, and how the focus on business impacts other areas of cannabis reporting. Nick Pateras also joins us to talk about the role media has played in normalizing cannabis use.

Pull Quotes is produced and hosted by Lidia Abraha and Michal Stein. Sonya Fatah is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Angela Glover and Lindsay Hanna for technical support.

Mark Rendell is a reporter for Cannabis Pro, a new product from the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.

Kieran Delamont is a freelance reporter based in Ottawa. Delamont’s work has appeared in NOW Magazine, the Ottawa Citizen, Vice, The Atlantic, and Spacing, among others.

Nick Pateras is the Vice President of Strategy for Lift & Co.,  a Toronto-based cannabis media and technology company.

https://nowtoronto.com/news/cannabis-indigenous-communities/

https://nowtoronto.com/news/indigenous-art-appropriation/

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/10/17/analysis/what-un-panels-special-climate-change-report-means-canada

The post Pull Quotes: Season 2, Episode 1 – The Highs and Lows (But Mostly Highs) of Cannabis Reporting first appeared on The Review of Journalism.

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Pull Quotes is produced and hosted by Laura Howells, Jacob McNair and Emily Pardo.

The post Pull Quotes: Season 1, Episode 17: Weed all about it! first appeared on The Review of Journalism.

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The Ontario election campaign hasn’t officially started yet,  but news coverage certainly has.

Newly-elected PC leader Doug Ford has a history of being hostile to journalists and bucking political norms. And yes, more than a few people have made the Trump comparison.

So what does good journalism look like when Ford is running for premier? And what should the press learn from the American election?

Jacob talks with Toronto Star city hall reporter Jennifer Pagliaro, (@JPags) TVO digital media producer John Michael McGrath (@JM_McGrath), and Queen’s Park Today publisher Allison Smith (@QueensParkToday).

Get in touch @PullQuotesRRJ or email [email protected].

When Jennifer Pagliaro first started covering Rob and Doug Ford at City Hall, she was given some advice: “bring running shoes.”

“To cover a Ford is sometimes to cover chaos, and there’s no real road map for that,” said Pagliaro, who experienced Doug Ford’s hostility to journalists first hand (Ford called her a “little bitch” while leaving a mayoral debate in 2014).

Pagliaro says we’ve seen a much more restrained and “put together” Doug Ford over the past few months–but it’s important to remember his political record, and that the “other” Doug still exists.  

With Ontario’s election a few months out, Ford is leading the polls against unpopular incumbent Kathleen Wynne, and the NDP under Andrea Horwath. Watching Queen’s Park coverage from the sidelines, Pagliaro says it’s been tough not seeing Ford challenged on some of his untrue statements. She urges reporters to back each other up, and not let politicians get away with evading questions during scrums.

“I think we should also not be afraid of appearing biased,” she said, adding that reporters should fact-check the candidates as much as possible. Pagliaro says she’d like to see reporters doing more analysis pieces, which put the day-to-day reporting in context. 

McGrath fears that Ford will thrive on television coverage, where it’s much harder to add context and fact-check on the fly. Ford is great at taking up all the air in the room, says Pagliaro, and it’s important for news outlets to be cognizant of how much airtime they’re giving each candidate. 

Allison Smith says that one of the challenges is that Ford is “not really saying much” at this point; he hasn’t delivered many succinct policies that reporters can interrogate. Smith says she could use fewer opinion pieces about Ford, which have flooded the media lately; the Donald Trump comparison is easy to make, for instance,  but does it actually add value?

 Now that Ford is in the running, the national columnists have started paying attention to Queen’s Park, says McGrath, who cringes when people who “just tuned in” write about political situations they clearly don’t understand. While more reporters at Queen’s Park would be great, he says, McGrath hopes the augmented press pool sticks around after voting day.

Show notes:

The Doug Ford-Donald Trump comparisons roll in after Ontario PC leadership win (Huffington Post)

Ford’s history with the media: Doug Ford calls Toronto Star reporter Jennifer Pagliaro a ‘little bitch’

Doug Ford/Donald Trump comparisons in the New York Times: “Will Canada Elect a Tin-Pot Northern Trump?”

Lessons for Doug Ford’s Ontario from Donald Trump’s America (Martin Regg-Cohn, Toronto Star)

Let’s audit Rob Ford’s ‘$1-billion in savings’ claim (Marcus Gee, The Globe and Mail)

From 2011: Doug Ford’s dream waterfront? Ferris wheel, monorail and a boat-in hotel

Former councillor Doug Ford improperly used political influence to assist clients at city hall (Jennifer Pagliaro, Toronto Star)

Here’s the Globe and Mail investigation into Doug Ford’s alleged history with drug dealing

Doug Ford rejects Trump comparisons but Twitter fans urge him to Make Ontario Great Again (CBC)

Doug Ford Sure Disliked A Lot of Questions in this CBC Interview (Via Huffington Post,  2018)

Opinion: How should the media cover a hostile Doug Ford? (Bob Hepburn, Toronto Star)

Three ways the Progressive Conservatives could still lose the election (John Michael McGrath, TVO)

TVO’s Ontario PC Leadership Debate

A Rob-Ford-beat reporter’s advice to the scribes covering Donald Trump (David Rider, Toronto Star)

The post Pull Quotes: Season 1, Episode 16: Covering Doug Ford first appeared on The Review of Journalism.

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There’s not a lot of religion reporting in Canada nowadays. When institutional religion declined, the “religion beat” did too.

Jacob McNair has been digging into religion reporting for an upcoming feature in the Ryerson Review of Journalism. He talks about why religion reporting is “pretty sparse” in Canada, gaps in mainstream coverage, and how the denominational press has changed in response.

Then Jacob speaks with Mary Hynes, host of CBC Radio’s Tapestry, a show about spirituality and the search for meaning. She talks about covering a subject that sometimes “defies what we think of as news”—and why these stories are still relevant.

Jacob McNair’s feature, “Spiritual Journey: In search of Canada’s remaining religion reporters” will be published in the Ryerson Review of Journalism this April.

Shownotes:

–New York Times executive editor on NPR: “We don’t get religion”: https://www.npr.org/2016/12/08/504806512/new-york-times-executive-editor-on-the-new-terrain-of-covering-trump

-Writing from Douglas Todd, spirituality, migration and diversity reporter at the Vancouver Sun:

-Listen to CBC Radio’s Tapestry, a show about spirituality and our search for meaning: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry

Angus Reid poll on faith and religion in public life: http://angusreid.org/faith-public-square/

-Steven Zhou, freelance journalist and columnist for the Islamic Monthly: https://zhoujournal.wordpress.com/thoughts/

-The United Church Observer: http://www.ucobserver.org/

-The Canadian Jewish News, Canada’s last national Jewish newspaper: http://www.cjnews.com/

-Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation: https://www.saltandlighttv.org/

The post Pull Quotes: Season 1, Episode 15: Losing my religion reporting first appeared on The Review of Journalism.

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The post Pull Quotes: Season 1, Episode 14: Budget Qs, FHRITP, online harrassment first appeared on The Review of Journalism.

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What do you learn after 80,000 love stories?

In honour of Valentine’s Day, we talk to Daniel Jones, the editor of the New York Times column, Modern Love.

Since the column started in 2004, Jones has sifted through thousands of personal essays about love and relationships (yet somehow he’s not jaded). A couple  of years ago, the column was adapted into a podcast version, which recently celebrated its 100th episode.

Jones talks about what he looks for in essays, the sometimes-uncomfortable fact-checking process, whether Modern Love is a form of journalism and personal storytelling in the age of Trump. 

(This interview was conducted in October 2017, during the HotDocs Podcast Festival. In the episode, Jones references a live recording of actor Andrew Rannells reading his own essay, “During a Night of Casual Sex, Urgent Messages Go Unanswered.”)

The post Pull Quotes: Season 1, Episode 13: A Pull Quotes Valentine: The editor of Modern Love first appeared on The Review of Journalism.

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This week, National Post reporter Marie-Danielle Smith talks about her uncomfortable experiences as a woman on Parliament Hill  –  and how consensual sex complicates the Me Too discussion in politics. 

Then, Anthony Oliveira critiques media coverage of the serial killer in Toronto’s gay village (including the fixation on Bruce McArthur’s history as a mall Santa.)  Plus, 36 years ago, Toronto police stormed bathhouses in the gay village and arrested nearly 300 people. Activist and writer Tim McCaskell remembers how the bathhouse raids marked a turning point in mainstream coverage of the queer community.

Shownotes:

-Young and female on Parliament Hill: A Post reporter reveals what it’s really like for women who work there, by Marie-Danielle Smith, National Post

-It’s the same as it ever was for women in politics, by Carol Off, Globe and Mail

-Death in the Village, by Anthony Oliveira, Hazlitt

-How reaction to the bathhouse raids informed the future of gay liberation, by Tim McCaskell, Xtra

–What was The Body Politic, anyway? (Xtra)

Guests:

–Marie-Danielle Smith is a political reporter for the National Post.  She recently wrote, “Young and female on Parliament Hill: A Post reporter reveals what it’s really like for women who work there.”

–Anthony Oliveira is a writer and academic in Toronto, who recently wrote “Death in the Village” for Hazlitt. 

–Tim McCaskell was a member of The Body Politic, a Canadian queer magazine that played an influential role in the LGTBQ rights movement of the 1970s and 80s. He is the author of Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism and Race to Equity: Disrupting Educational Inequality.

The post Pull Quotes: Season 1, Episode 12: When you’re a female reporter on Parliament Hill first appeared on The Review of Journalism.

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When an 11-year-old girl said a man attacked her on the way to school, cutting her hijab with scissors, news outlets eagerly ran the child’s name and images. But a few days later, police said the attack never actually happened. And that makes things a lot more complicated.

This week, we talk to Toronto Star reporters Jenna Moon and Fatima Syed about wading through this wild news cycle.

Then, Amira Elghawaby and the National Post’s Joseph Brean discuss the challenges of covering children, when to shield identities, and why this story got so huge, so fast.

Shownotes:

–Children in the news always require special consideration (Public Editor, Toronto Star)

–Attack on a girl wearing a hijab didn’t happen, police say. But why did the TDSB let the tearful 11-year-old face the cameras? (Toronto Star)

-Amira Elghawaby, Globe and Mail: “The hijab story wasn’t true – but our compassion must not waver”

-Joseph Brean, National Post: “Until it was found to be a hoax, Toronto girl’s hijab made news, not the attack on her”

–Family offers ‘sincere apologies’ for 11-year-old girl’s false hijab-cutting story (Toronto Star)

–Toronto hijab-cutting case highlights ethical issues with putting kids in spotlight: experts (Globe and Mail)

The false hijab-cutting story raised questions around how reporters interact with kids. Journalists generally don’t interview children without parental consent, and victims of crimes often aren’t identified if they’re underage.

In this case, however, the girl’s family was in the room as she spoke–as were police and school board officials. As far as consent was concerned, it “checked all the boxes,” said Fatima Syed on Pull Quotes.

But just getting a parent’s OK may not be enough. Parents don’t always always understand the implications of allowing their child to speak to the media, said Romayne Smith Fullerton, a professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario.

“I think that we’re far too lenient in terms of identifying vulnerable populations generally, and children in particular, in North America and places like England,” she said in an interview, adding that journalists should offer anyone who’s participating in their stories a clear idea of what that might mean.

Smith Fullerton suggests reporters have a routine or checklist they go through every time someone under age 18 is involved in their stories, where they think carefully about the implications of their coverage.

“I think in this particular instance, there was really no need to identify that little girl in order to do a good version of that story, regardless of whether it was true,” she said.

(Smith Fullerton’s 2004 article, “Covering kids: are journalists guilty of exploiting children?”, is referenced in Toronto Star public editor Kathy English’s recent column on the subject.)

Related reading:

-The Made-Up Hijab Attack Doesn’t Mean There Isn’t A Real Islamophobia Problem In Canada (BuzzFeed Canada)

-Chris Selley: Hijab hoax episode far bigger than it should have been (National Post)

-Let’s keep some perspective here: one false story does not mean Islamophobia doesn’t exist (CBC Opinion)

-Canadaland: Creeping Sharia, Bitches!

-How did the false hijab-cutting story go viral? ‘A perfect storm’ of factors, says expert (Canadian Press)

Blurred faces

After news broke the story was false, several news outlets stopped publishing the girl’s name and photo in their stories to protect her identity–although she is still identified in previous reports from many of those same outlets. CBC, for instance, says they are following “customary practice” and no altering previous stories, “because they represent the record of what took place.”

National Post reporter Joseph Brean said it seems a “bit quaint” to blur the child’s face on new stories, but leave the old stories up.

“In so far as it affects her life, there’s no difference there,” he said on Pull Quotes.

Brean, and other outlets like the Toronto Sun, are still running the girl’s name and photo in their coverage.

In her column, public editor Kathy English said the Toronto Star should consider removing the girl’s name from their previous stories, “so this story is not connected to her online identity for the rest of her life.”

“Whatever happened — and it would seem this child told quite a lie — we must remember that she is just a child,” English wrote.

Amira Elghawaby said she hopes this situation forces organizations to review their protocols and rethink how they report on children. This young girl did not have to be at the centre of a media storm, she said.

“I think that everyone was caught up in the story itself,” she said, noting how fast it all unfolded.

Brean said journalists should remember that just getting a quote from a vulnerable source doesn’t mean you have to use it.

“We like hard and fast rules,” Brean said on Pull Quotes.  “We even like publication bans because they’re clear. We find it harder, I think, to exercise good judgement.”

The post Pull Quotes: Season 1, Episode 10: Kids, consent, and the story that didn’t happen first appeared on The Review of Journalism.