Unknown: My name is Joyce Smith and I'm the director of the
Ryerson journalism Research Center as well as being an
associate professor here at the school. And before we begin, I'd
like to acknowledge that Toronto is in the dish with one spoon
territory. The dish with one spoon is a treaty between the
anishnaabe Missisaugas and Hoda. nashoni that bound them to share
the territory and protect the land. Subsequent indigenous
nations and peoples, Europeans and all newcomers have been
invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship, and
respect. And on that note of respect, I'm delighted to open
this really special dialog today on the way in which editorial
boards and op ed pages and submissions work in today's
print and online sources. I've got to admit a bit of
selfishness here. I really wanted to do this panel. And
that's one I guess, the benefits of being a research director.
Given a relatively recent news, especially about what happened
with the New York Review of Books and the decision to
publish the Jian Ghomeshi essay. That's just one example of many,
many. I wonder how many of us when I say us, I mean, people
who work in news even understand who makes such decisions and how
those decisions come about. Because even during my time at
the Toronto Star, and at the Globe and Mail in the newsrooms
there, I have to admit, I didn't know a lot about who was on the
editorial force, and how decisions were made, both in
terms of by unblind, editorials, as well as op eds that were
solicited. So I'm sometimes it kind of felt like a secret
society. So I'm looking forward today to finding out more about
how those decisions are made. And I'm really delighted that we
can be joined by three people who can bring a bit of
transparency to the process. So we have Robin herb back, we have
Andrew Phillips, and we have our own professor Ann Rauhla , who
will moderate the discussion, I'm going to introduce them but
first I really want to recognize two people who've done a lot of
work in making this event happened today. One of them is
Jaclyn Mika, thank you very much, Jacqueline. And the other
is the wonderful Laura Howells. Our research associate at the RJ
RC, who's really central to the success of this event today.
Thank you to to Adrea Vasil. And to Vicki Mochama who brought
their classes here today. They're op-ed classes. So I'm
really looking forward to the q&a, no pressure, but I'm
looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with. So Andrew
Phillips has been editor of the stars editorial and op ed pages
since 2011. Previously, he was editor in chief of the Victoria
Times columnist, columnist, columnist. Yeah, sorry, I've got
columns on the brain. So I'm suddenly changed the name of it,
sorry, and the Gazette in Montreal. He's also been a
writer, editor and foreign correspondent at the Gazette,
CBC Television News, and Maclean's, as well as business
editor of the star. He holds a degree in history and economics
from McGill University, and has taught journalism at Concordia.
Robin Urbanek is a columnist with CBC News and editor of
CBC's opinion page. She was previously a columnist with the
National Post and a member of their editorial board. She's
contributed blogs for Maclean's among others. And not so long
ago, she was a student here at Ryerson, graduating with many
awards in 2010. And Ann Rauhla should be able to introduce
without looking at my notes, she spent 15 sorry, 16 years at the
Globe and Mail Good thing I have my notes, where she worked as a
copy editor, assignment editor, beat reporter, foreign editor
and featured columnist. She's been a television reporter for
CBC Television, and has also written editorials, business
stories, book reviews, magazine articles, and radio
commentaries. Until 1999, she was senior editor of counter
spin on CBC News
World.
And in 2000, she worked as an editor at the Toronto Star which
has more recently, in addition to her teaching and research,
and has trained academic writers how to write op eds. So she's
the perfect person to moderate this panel. So and take it away.
Thank you very much. I welcome this opportunity to draw back
the veil on the Secret Society of opinion writers. But first,
let's start with the classic journalists some of the classic
journalistic questions. You know, who, what, where, when and
why. So, let's get started. If you would not mind to please I'd
like to ask each of you this and then we'll talk a little bit
about what your what your days look like and how decisions are
reached. Andrew, if you'd be so kind, would you tell us a little
bit about how you found yourself in this position?
Yeah, thanks, everybody for coming out appreciate the
invitation. I found myself in this position in 2011. Because
the publisher of the Toronto Star at the time, asked me to do
it. And it's something that I had not done as a full time job
in, in journalism, even though I've been doing for a long time.
And I fou nd it appealing. The Toronto Star actually values its
editorial board, the editorial board, Trump's are actually
reports directly to the publisher, as opposed to being
simply another department in the editorial department. It's kind
of a, an arrangement that some other papers in particularly in
the united states do. And it's an indication that the star kind
of values its opinion, and also an attempt to keep the editorial
board independent from the newsroom, or more more precisely
to keep the newsroom independent of the editorial board. The idea
being that just because we have an opinion on the editorial
page, the newsroom shouldn't go out on slant, it's reporting.
And so it's an it's an effort to keep that apart. So that's how I
found myself in this position after doing, as you indicated
quite a lot of other jobs in in journalism.
Okay, Robin, you want to share how you found yourself in your
position? Sure.
I didn't have a lot of other jobs in journalism. I went to
journalism school here at Ryerson, I was a very average
students, I think in terms of reporting, and I kind of figured
out by the time I got to my fourth year, I did the undergrad
program, that I wanted to be an opinion journalism. And I say
opinion journalism as something distinct from personal
journalism, I didn't want to write about myself, but I wanted
to write argumentative pieces, I wanted to have a thesis to
everything that I was writing, I wanted to make an argument, I
wanted to win an argument. That's what I wanted to do. So
when I, when I graduated, I did do a little bit of conventional
reporting, just freelancing in order to eat and things like
that. But my first real job, I guess, in journalism was at the
National Post, and they hired me when I was 24 years old. And
the, you know, the the lore in journalism is sort of that, or
it used to be that you became a columnist after you paid your
dues. And then that was kind of your reward for decades of
reporting. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that
idea. When I was hired, my editor sat down with me, and I
remember sitting in the cafeteria at the National Post
in Don Mills, and he said, You know, I don't care how old you
are, and I don't care who you are, and I don't care, you know,
what your personal sort of feelings are things like that.
But if you can make a great argument, and if you can make a
persuasive point on our pages, then that's what I want you to
do. That's all I really care about. So I sort of kept that in
mind, throughout my career, and now that I'm in a position where
I'm looking for other writers. In my mind, what I'm looking for
is a great piece of writing a great opinion piece, a great
column, doesn't matter if you've never written a piece before in
your life. That's kind of how I got my shot. And I'm sort of
looking to pay it forward in that sense.
Okay, I will definitely return to the subject of writing
argument. But let's talk a little bit now, in the interest
of learning more about what what this work entails and major news
organization. Could you first Andrew, talk a little bit about
what a typical day looks like for you? And we have, we had a
little taste of that this afternoon didn't leave as you
you failed your your spare time by reading about the Supreme
Court today?
You know, in many ways, there are there are big differences
between what opinion writers do as Robin describes what State
Street reporters if you like to, but in many ways externalism
Let's face it, right. And so, you know, I work for a daily
newspaper. And so every morning, every every weekday morning, if
you ask me what my days like, you know, I wake up and I start
reading, basically, I start absorbing stuff. And we meet at
10 o'clock in the morning as a group and decide what the topics
of the day will be. Which means that people have to come to that
meeting, read into things so they may have to read into a
climate change thing, and they have to read into the Supreme
Court decision which came out today about journalists and
their sources. You know, you name it, they may and and so and
come to a meeting, not just like a reporter might well there's
something going on and you Got it up, but they have to come to
it with, you know, there's something going on. And this is
what we should say about. Right. And, and that is something that
not have a cast of mind, I guess you know, and Robin, maybe
touched on that, in that. I'll just say this that, to pick up
on a bit of what she said that, you know, we get quite a few
reporters, especially in like summertime when we have absences
who come in to spend time on the editorial board. And often after
spending years of going out and doing, you know, checking all
the sources and writing a kind of a balanced story. They've
kind of either lost or forgotten or never had the ability to cut
through all that and say that this is what we need to say. And
I think that that's kind of the essential quality. So lots of
stuff happens in the world every day. But the question is, of all
that stuff, what do we have to say today, and so or tomorrow.
And so that's kind of what my day looks like, it's deciding
that and then probably three days a week, all write, and that
takes up some time, you actually have to once you've decided
that, then you have to go out and sort of substantiate the
opinion that you kind of have came up with, and, and write it
and shape it. And I'll be editing things I'll be because I
will be talking to the op ed page editor, the opinion editor
about what we put on in the other columns of things. So I'll
be reading a lot of submissions, and deciding what what that so
we want to come up with a good mix of things, we can talk about
that what is a good mix of things, from the point of view
of subjects and point of view of writers from the point of view
of all those things, and then there are fires to put out, you
know, there are, there are, you know, the mistake that gets in
that you have to correct or the column that like to fire under
people, and all of a sudden you're dealing with, you know,
Christ alarm from here or there and so forth. There's always
that kind of thing. So it's I think it's interesting, I think
you're dealing with a lot of issues, you've got to kind of
think through and come up, come to a conclusion. And that is not
what you know, not what a lot of journalists are trained to do.
It's a it's kind of a special way of thinking. And hopefully,
I would imagine that this what your classes are about, I
obviously I taught opinion writing at Concordia. And I used
to, you know, I would say my first sort of thing I would say
to people, if whatever is an opinion, that's not the point,
right? The point is, you know, to develop skills and and, and
habits and to so that you can take that opinion, and make it
worthwhile for somebody else to listen to. Because just because
you have an opinion, so what everyone has done, and but not
everyone can have an opinion and make it work. For others to to
read to and who want to share.
I think I want to ask you a little bit more about the
Toronto Star because I think
the
the challenges posed by your work and the challenges posed by
Robins are quite different. So I want to talk a little bit more
about the Toronto Star and then talk about Robin, and opinion at
the CBC. So so you have a team of 20 people working on produce
those, those two pate, those two all important pages at the back,
took this job, which is actually a job, you know, I've done for
probably the longest I've done any job. There were 11 people
reporting to me. And that included two staff comp
cartoonists and included a couple of commas. It included
two or three editors who just worked on somebody who almost
just who only really did letters to the editor. Okay, so we've
gone from 11, now to four, and we still produce probably more
content. How do we do that? You know, well, we do various
creative things to get the work done without having them on
staff. And we cut some corners. But we and we all work hard. And
but, you know, to give you an idea of the number of people
working on that. At the Toronto Star, I guess one of the
features of the star, maybe that's what you're alluding to,
and is that the star does have kind of a philosophy and an
approach if you like, and we have these things called the
Atkinson principles. And the stars likes to style itself as
a, quote unquote, progressive newspaper. And I won't go into
all that. But it does have a an approach to the news and
approach to society, which is kind of baked in not only to fit
into the organization that the it's the board that the that
runs the star to sort of signs up to fulfillments. And so you
know, we do tend to have a consistent point. We hope we
have a consistent point of view. And we work from these
principles that are I would call progressive, but sort of debate
what exactly they are, as opposed to, you know, the CBC
doesn't have such a doesn't have a content charter like that, and
neither does the bulk mail. So it's a little more they have
somewhat different mandates. So within that mandate, I For us,
there's an awful lot of variation. But we do have that
as kind of a core underlying philosophy.
So on the editorial board itself, however, my
understanding is that there are three people on the editorial
board writing, I guess, minimally seven editorials a
week, but probably more like 11 to 15 editorial, so we will
typically
wait, Is that better? Yeah, there we go. We typically do two
a day on weekdays. And Saturday and Sunday, we do Saturday, we
didn't do long one Saturday, we kind of cut back to one a day on
Sunday and Monday. So we'll add that up, whatever that 10 1112
or 13 or so. And there's three people. And if everybody's
there, and everybody's sort of not sick or away or anything,
it's doable. And and we do do it. So that's the staffing
issue. I don't know what it is. Right now at the globe or
anywhere else. I know those, the National Post, for example, is
pretty much dropped editorials. They do occasional editorials,
and I suspect that it's maybe a continuity, they may say that
it's for I don't know what they say about it, I suspect to some
staffing reasons, whatever they say in terms of philosophy, if
you like,
if there were two or three words you would describe, you would
use to describe people who who are asked to write editorials
asked to write opinion at the star, what would those two or
three words speak?
Well, I think I would say that if you would describe people who
are who do it? Well, I would, I think opinionated but more like
clear minded, I would say you get an awful lot of people who
are kind of having an opinion, but they they're kind of fuzzy
about exactly why they get there. They kind of feel like
they should think this but they don't quite have a path to
there. It's I mean, I think it's just not everybody thinks like
that. And so to do it, well, I think you need to have a pretty
rigorous mind, and, and be able to go to the heart of the
matter, take a complicated issue and say, you know, this is the
heart of it. Because you can drown yourself, in fact, and we
go off and research climate change or something. And I mean,
you'll just, you'll burn the printer out, just you know, just
going nuts, accumulating facts, you have to be able to kind of
have a thread from the beginning to the end is a consistent and
coherent argument, and be able to quickly research the facts
that really make that come alive and are important, because it
isn't a matter of just packing up. Every fact you can you can
get in, in fact, often less is more. So it's a it's a certain
cast of mind and not everybody has it.
Okay, so with With that in mind, let's talk about opinion as it
as it presents itself at CBC. Robin, would you tell us a
little bit about your typical day. But I think also talk about
talk about what you're looking for and how you make decisions
about CBC opinion.
Right? So probably what I'm going to tell you about my day
is in a good indicator of most places, or how opinion sections
work just because the opinion section of the CBC, it's a bit
of a misnomer. It's more of like an opinion person. If the
section is about two years old, it started when I was like I was
hired to run the section and I wear two hats as both the editor
of the section and I write a column CBC has an iron wall that
separates reporters from anyone, you know, delving into that,
that opinion space, and that's done very purposely because they
don't want you know, opinions to muddle perceptions of
objectivity and so forth. Which just means that it with the
exception of myself, who was hired as a columnist and Neil
McDonald, who is also the other person who writes opinion for
the CBC. Everyone else who writes under the opinion banner
is a freelancer. So my section is basically made up of the
weekly column I write the column that Neil MacDonald occasionally
writes and then freelancers. So it means that I don't have a
typical day, because I'm running all over the place doing
different things half the day this morning, you know, I was
acting as a columnist and I was on a panel which is what I'm put
together because normally I don't look quite this neat. And
then right after that, I went back to the office and I'm
working with freelancers to get their columns ready for
publication, in terms of what I look for, as opposed to the
Toronto Star that does have more of a mandate or a specific
direction, the mandate I'm operating under basically is
just one of balance. And if it doesn't mean that every column,
it's actually going to be, you know, I'm going to run a series
of bad columns if they're all sort of equally balanced and
tempered, and so forth. But I'm looking to achieve balance over
time. So
occasionally, I'll do sort of audits of the section and think,
Okay, how many, you know, more progressive columns that I run,
how many more conservative columns I run, you know, which
ones were sort of on this end of the spectrum or that and, and
that's sort of what I'm looking for in terms of content. I'm
also looking for writers who It sounds very cliche, but who
represent Canada, and part of my job. And when I was hired on, I
was told that part of my job was to work with people who maybe
hadn't written a column before in his or her life. The person I
was working with this morning is a grandma out in St. Thomas,
Ontario, who I had to plead with over Twitter to write a column
because she she was tweeting about when the Ford factory left
St. Thomas and comparing that to the news that we heard earlier
this week about GM leaving Oshawa, and she was tweeting
some things about how she comes from a manufacturing badly and
her husband retired from the plant in St. Thomas. And she's
seen the way that the area of St. Thomas has evolved since
that plant left and I thought it would make such an interesting
column. And I reached out to her and I said, Hey, this is really
creepy. I've been following your tweets, you want to write a
column, I will work with you. And that's, that's the luxury of
working in a digitally only environment, I don't have to
fill two pages every day. So I am spending time working with
the grandmas in St. Thomas to get their columns up to snapper,
and publishable, which might mean that my page is a little
bit stale once in a while, which also drives me crazy. But for
the greater good of getting those different voices out there
getting people who have never been published before in their
lives, but they are the people that we don't often hear from
firsthand, they'll be quoted in in news reports or in future
stories. But we don't often read them in their own voices. So a
lot of what I'm trying to do is define those voices those
everyday Canadians who have great opinions maybe can make
great points about foreshadowing and St. Thomas compared to
Oshawa, Ontario, and what it's like to live in a family that
for generations has been reliant on the auto sector in Canada, I
find it such an interesting story. And I want to hear from
her. So a lot of what I'm doing is working with people who don't
consider themselves writers who don't consider themselves
columnist, but allowing them to have a platform to speak to
other people who are maybe like that,
when not long after the CBC opinion, person, page entity
started a couple of years ago there was it attracts a fair
amount of criticism, both from the left and the right, but
mostly the right. Yeah. Saying that, suggesting more or less
that it was somehow unfair of the CBC to be getting into the
opinion business. How did how did you react to that? How did
you handle that?
Right? Um, I think a lot of the concern was that the CBC is this
behemoth entity in Canada, and by getting into the opinion
business, it would sort of eclipse the papers and the
smaller news organizations that are struggling to survive. I
think, just by virtue of the fact that we've kept the opinion
section so small, it's not doing that. We're publishing one
column A day or something like that. But But moreover, I think,
I mean, I came from, I came straight from the National Post
and went to the CBC. And the national posts opinion section
from the time I started there, until the time I left, by the
time I left, actually almost everybody had exited. It used to
be Get an editorial board of maybe eight full time people.
And by the time I left, it was maybe three. And those people
have since left, it wasn't the CBC that was responsible for
closing down the opinion section at the National Post, these
places were shutting down already. So if anything, it was
not an opportunity to keep some of the voices that were more
regularly published in these other places. And to, to create
an opportunity to continue to hear from those voices. And
shortly after, I think postmedia laid off a whole bunch of its
its freelancers. And suddenly, I got all these messages from
people saying, Hey, I used to write a weekly column for the
Ottawa Citizen or whatever. And they've just slashed their
budgets, I have nowhere to go. Are you looking for for more
writers? And actually, the problem is that I just because
I'm one person, I don't have the capacity to process all these
people. But I think a lot of the the initial concern was that
idea that the CBC is going to come out and destroy these
sections. I think in practice, the sections were already kind
of devolving on their own. And it really hasn't become this
behemoth that I think a lot of people feared it would be.
I'm mindful, but I want to save time for questions from the
floor. I have one more question and and then we'll head in that
direction. How do you make decisions? A question for both
of you? How do you make decisions about what's going to
take precedence that day? Which, which subject? To what degree?
Are your decisions driven by the news? And what else are they
driven by?
Well, I mean, I don't jump in if you like, I mean, they're,
they're, they're quite driven by the news. I mean, we we aren't,
you know, we're part of a newspaper, we're part of a daily
newspaper. Right. So when GM closes down, on or announces it
will on on Monday morning, you know, we're on the lookout for,
for, for for pieces that are that are related to that. We
want to be, we want to reflect what's going on that it's not
that day, that week, as much as possible. But you know, it's, so
that's one factor. We have, I mean, we have common regular
columnist who kind of have spots. So, you know, we allow
them to kind of get off the news as often, really, as they like.
And then we, we choose contributors, not just because
they're on the news, but because hopefully they have something
worth saying and they say it well. So it's pretty news
driven, I would say. But it's more like a current events
section than a straight, you know, not every every piece
doesn't have to be about about yesterday's news. So you'd kind
of go crazy. I mean, we're more than one person, but we're not,
we're not a ton of people. So you can and we do have, as Robin
mentioned, sort of alluded to, we do have this feel like burden
of the print that we carry along with me, you have to actually
fill it every day, you can't kind of take a day off and think
longer, longer things. But we do try to do longer term planning
in terms of it you no sh pieces that may take longer to do. I'm
not that way. And we've tried to do a mix too, right? You can't
do with when the St. Michael's College School scandal broke a
couple of weeks ago, you know, after the first day or so there
were there was a flood of people wanting to sound off about about
this place. And once you publish, you know, 234 are you
going to publish 5678? necessarily, just because, you
know, because the bar gets a little higher, you know, people
have to have something to add. So you get a bit, you know, it
does get a bit like that, I'm sure Robin finds the saying
that, you know, something big happens, all of a sudden you're
looking for things and there's kind of a vacuum because people
are kind of trying to make up their minds and all of a sudden,
you know, 10 come along in a row. Because all these same
people have decided, you know, in unison to, to sound off, and
then you have to make the balance of just, you don't want
to bore people to death with the same subject. So it's a
separate, definitely a daily balancing. Robin,
a lot of it is news driven. But I'm also mindful of the fact
that opinion pieces really can make news in a way. They change
the conversation often, which is an extraordinary burden, I think
for editors to just knowing that you're putting something out
there that can really derail or change the conversation. I'm
thinking actually have one column that we ran, it was paid
to the announcement that goop deliver. Like goop the Gwyneth
Paltrow thing was coming to Canada and You know, I had a
million pitches about why goop is pseudoscience. And that's
fine. I've read that piece 1000 times. But I got a pitch from a
doctor who wrote a piece about how goop appeals to to women in
particular, because when it's Paltrow or whoever it is, who's
responsible for it has identified the fact that that
women who seek treatment in mainstream medicine often feel
as though they're not being heard, and not being taken
seriously. And women's pain is not being taken seriously. And
she was writing from the perspective of the GP. And she
was saying that while we're all you know, spending time saying
how fake goop is, or you know, how they're peddling bullshit,
whatever. The important thing to keep in mind is that this, this
has been really successful for a reason. It's because women feel
as though they're not being heard when they go to their
doctors, or when they go to hospitals or what have you. And
I it was an excellent column. And we published it. And then
her I mean, I talked to her a little bit afterwards, and her
phone just blew up with interview requests and phone
request radio and this and that, and it really became like this
huge thing. So the initial peg was a new story goop is coming
to Canada, let's talk about it. But the angle that she found was
so unique, and I think it was so bang on that it changed the
conversation to to not just be about like wire, people sticking
things in their vaginas, or whatever it was. It was about
like, Why do women feel disempowered by the mainstream
medical establishment? And why? Why are these sort of
alternative therapies finding fertile ground in Canada and
abroad? So that's a way that that a really strong opinion
piece can not only react to the news, but also change the
conversation.
Thanks very much. And speaking of changing the conversation,
wondering if we have some questions from the floor from
the
floor?
Could I ask you to use the mics, please? The mic, staff?
come up to the mic. Hi, there.
My name is Aurora. I'm
the Ryerson review journalism. I'm in class right now. But when
we started the conversation, I know, she had mentioned that
editorial boards and just like the knowledge of how columns
work, kind of came to light recently with the Jian Ghomesi
editorial in the New York
Review of Books.
And as we have a, someone who's a part of it was a member of a
board. And as well, you've written a lot about like YouTube
reform of that I just love to get your opinions on on what
that has meant. And even like, what happened in a Canadian
context?
And I think a lot of the problem with that column maybe was the
fact I'm totally speculating here. So but I think part of the
problem was that it it did land in an American publication, I
think, had it landed somewhere in Canada, the editor might have
been able to pick up on some of the, the glossing over, I think
within the column, there was a lot of talk, you know, at the
CBC, of course, and I'm sure in most newsrooms about whether
that was a worthy column and whether it should have been run.
We don't I I don't know if we even know exactly why the editor
was made to resign, whether it was that column or not. My first
week, it was circle, was it that column? Definitely. My personal
view is that it was a it was a problematic column just by
virtue of the fact that it wasn't sort of fact checked
properly. I think Had it been now I think, you know, there was
a lot of talk about how he doesn't deserve a platform. And
this is normalizing. You know, that type of behavior he was
accused of doing, I think the column was valuable to the
reader because I think sometimes the stories come out and people
wonder what happened to that guy. And depending on who you
are, that can provoke a certain reaction. People tend to feel
sorry for the person and think, Oh, well, he's an exile or other
people think that maybe he hasn't learned from what
happened to him. I read that column. And I thought he saw
sort of hung himself with his words, in a sense, I think, you
know, reading through it, this was my own personal
interpretation was that I don't think he had reading the way he
sort of described What happened to him and then the aftermath?
To me, it seemed like he hadn't totally gotten it. And as a
reader, I found that extremely valuable because people wonder,
you know, what happens to these guys in the metoo era, too? You
know, these people disappear, and we never hear from them? Do
they learn their lesson? Did they not learn their lesson? Do
they continue on with certain behaviors? Do they not do that?
So I think there is journalistic value in answering that
question, Who better to answer that question, then the person
himself or herself? So, you know, I don't think it, you
know, I don't think it really elevated the young democracy
name in any way other than sort of confirming that he he doesn't
seem all that different. So had that landed on my desk, it
wouldn't have run the way that it did. But I can certainly see
the value in a follow up like that.
Do you want to address that? Well, I
think that the point about it running in a US publication, I
think if it had come to a Canadian publication, it would
have gotten a lot more scrutiny. Partly, you know, part because
we because there would have been a lot more sensitivity to the to
the subtleties. And I think that the clearly what Ghomeshi wanted
to do is you want to test the waters and see if, you know,
there was any room for him to come back? And the answer came
back No way. Right? It's like four years since he went down.
And, you know, it'll be a frosty Friday before another editor
publishes a piece by him or does or gives him any kind of chance.
And I think that the editor of the magazine kind of did him a
disservice by allowing him if you'd like to stick his head up
like that. I think a Canadian editor would have said, let's
talk about this. Are you sure you want to say that, you know,
partly out of self protection from the the editor, but also
because, okay, it is interesting to hear from Ghomeshi as an
editor, you think Ghomeshi wants to speak out after four years. I
mean, that is talk about Robin made allusion to, you know, you
can kind of break news with opinion, you know, that's kind
of breaking news, right, except in this case, it kind of broke
the wrong that broke the editor, as well as everything else. So I
think that I think an editor that had come to the Toronto
Star, I mean, it would have been kind of like, Oh, my God, what
are we going to do? But I think it would have been to say, Oh,
no, john Ghomeshi turned him away. We'll never want to hear
from him. I think, you know, I don't think necessarily, that
would be the right thing to do, because he's a extremely
controversial and interesting figure. And, yeah, I'm curious
as to what, what happened to him and what he's learned, except,
in this case, now, should Ian buruma have been fired about?
You know, because of that, you know, I mean, a lot of it, a lot
of publications are kind of running, you know, you know,
from from all of this, and people are, he's not the only
one to have kind of been mousetrap on that.
I would like to emphasize the point that Robin alluded to, and
you have both talked about, that there were actual
misrepresentations. And there is there. I just want to emphasize
the point that in opinion writing in editorial writing, in
column writing, there is an expectation that you are
following the practices of journalism, verifying what
you're saying and checking it. It's hard to imagine a Canadian
editorial decision maker, not recalling that the facts were
not quite as he
presented them,
I would just say that, you know, even went through went through
all of that. Right. And you sort of went through all of that just
a piece by Ghomeshi allowing him to quote, speak, you know, no
matter how carefully it would have done would have landed like
a bomb. And in any newsroom, any Canadian newsroom, just the mere
fact of him being quote, unquote, allowed to speak would
have probably, you know, shut off of a big explosion.
Absolutely. But I did want to emphasize the idea that that
opinion writing were by whomever is dependent on some genuine
research news gathering and reading before one expresses
one's opinion. Yes, we had another question.
This is for Robin, I think from the CDC. I read an article about
why hunting Headley still about yet but like after the
accusations of the head, lead singer, and I know like I know
that opinion is subversive, but I don't know. Like how much that
really adds to the conversation. So I mean, I was thinking about
what, just because it's a different opinion than than the
normal one. Is it worth, like being given a platform just like
the junk Ghomeshi thing? Like how do you weigh that? How do
you measure that like, the subversiveness of like how
harmful they could potentially be to me.
So for those who don't know, this was a column that was
written by someone who, just like a random mom out in New
Brunswick, maybe I can't remember and she was a hardcore
Headley fan. And she wrote a column that was written sort of
in the middle of the Jacob Hogarth allegations, I don't
think he had been convicted yet, but there was sort of like a
groundswell of accusations against him. So this column that
we ran that was very controversial was written by
this woman saying, okay, here's why I still support Headley, and
here's why I'm still going to the concerts and there was a lot
of backlash to that column. And the way that I would justify it
was, you know, there were a lot of us sitting around in the
newsroom, actively reporting on the allegations against Headley.
And because we're journalists were so we know all the details,
we know the facts or the allegations intricately. So to
us, while we were reporting on all of that, we were also
noticing that at the time, Hadley was still on tour, and
Headley was filling up these stadiums with 1000s of people.
And kind of sitting in our little Toronto bubble as this,
this band is going around there with this active with this lead
singer, accused of these horrific things. Were sitting
there thinking like, why are people still supporting the sky?
Why are people you know, going to these concerts. And there was
an opportunity here for someone who is one of the people
occupying one of the seats in that 1000 person stadium coming
out and saying, Here's why, you know, I can still support this
guy, despite the fact that he is being accused of these horrific
things. For me, as an editor, it doesn't matter whether I agree
with her or not, whether I think her opinion is offensive or not,
whether I think she is justified or not. My role as an editor is
to, as I mentioned earlier, to make sure that the section is
reflecting the views of Canadians, even if they're hard
for some people to understand. And they were really hard, you
know, for me to understand, for example, because I knew of all
of the horrible things that this guy was accused of, but I think
if we just keep our heads down, and we think, Okay, well, he's
been accused of horrible things. And we ignore the fact that
there are still 1000s of people paying money to go see him. I
think we do ourselves a disservice by not understanding
how people around us think I'm doing my role a disservice by
only allowing voices with whom I agreed to have that platform. So
So part of the job, I think, of running an opinion section is to
recognize that there are people out there who have these views
that you might think, are totally misguided or are
totally, you know, uninformed, or are short sighted, but you
have to acknowledge that they're there, I think in order to
understand them. I think in a way, you know, it draws me back
to this, you know, how we cover Trump and how we understand
Trump. And I find it very useful actually, to go on the Donald
Trump subreddits. And their bananas are totally crazy. But I
think, you know, a lot of journalists were caught off
guard by the fact that Donald Trump won the election and the
fact that he still has all of this support, like we can't kind
of wrap our heads around it. By not listening to why that is, I
think we'll continue to be bewildered by the fact that the
support is, is there. So this is my sort of roundabout way of
saying that, you know, a lot of people found it offensive. And I
understand why a lot of people thought it shouldn't have been
given the column space that it was. And I also understand that
why, why that was. But I think by virtue of the fact that there
are lots of Canadians who have that view, I think we need to
acknowledge that it exists and maybe create an opportunity to
write a counterpoint to that, which is what happened
afterwards to one one person who was particularly put off by the
fact that we ran that column. She wrote a counterpoint that
was very good and she said, You know why? You know, that was a
very misguided position to take or what have you. But I think
it's part and parcel right of running a good multi faceted
opinion page is to allow for that space that we don't
necessarily agree with.
I think we have a couple more questions from
Flora Huey. Okay.
See you, Robin. And I have a question that is complicated for
both of you. It's, it's about definition, which until
extremely reasonably recently, are thought of as being my
research field that nobody in the world was interested in,
which is about the definition of journalism. And now it seems to
be like, it seems to be a thing. That, that, that I and I think,
for my own satisfaction, I feel fairly comfortable with having
solved the question of the definition of journalism when it
comes to News. I'm not sure I have when it comes to
commentary, that you guys have been alluding to it. And you
also have been alluding to a problem. In the discussion, I
just wanted to try to pose the question. So you know, yeah, so
it seems like general opinion journalism is different from
just opinion. Because as you both really emphasize, three of
yours emphasize there is supposed to be a factual basis
for it or at least. And it comes from that sort of sense of
discovery. Okay. And then we get to the end. So the accuracy
piece, which is whether for everybody interested, one of the
five defining things in my opinion, journalism theory.
Another is the independence. Most people think journalism is
supposed to be in some sense, independent, way harder to
define the word I'm not going to get back. One way in which one
way in which the importer with respect to news is that a
reporter, or an editor of news is agnostic about the
consequences of putting this piece of information out there.
If it's true, if it is a matter of public interest, you know,
we've done our best to verify that it's true, and it's a
matter of public interest. We're gonna put it out there, whether
it has the benefit, whether it has a net benefit to Donald
Trump, or a net benefit to Justin Trudeau or neither of the
above, right? We're just going to put it out there because it's
the American public interest, and we've investigated them.
Okay, but now we come to commentary. And now we see this
argument, really different. Right? Like, like, you know, are
they some people, we wouldn't give a voice to just period
that's the bomb? Yeah. Yeah, that's my question. That's the
bomb, you know, the consequences young dementias put up there in
the public here that has consequences. And I guess I
wonder to what extent the two of you, you know, think about
consequences of publication in a way that is different to your
colleagues and needs?
Well, okay, so
are there voices that should not be heard? If you like, is that
library more or less? Right? I think there's always been that
there's always been, I mean, you know, there always is question
is, it really is where you draw a line, right? And at the
moment, there's a very active debate about this goes under the
guise of being under the rubric of free speech, right, which,
unfortunately, is a label that seems to have been appropriated
by the right. And unfortunately, the left has allowed the right
to appropriate it, in my view. And so the line is increasingly
being drawn in ways that are more perhaps now than I would
like. I think that, you know, probably, I mean, if you're, if
you're into opinion, journalism, if you're the kind of person
like Robin, myself, you know, you're the kind of person who
enjoys different opinions, and you're probably the person who
really likes a good clash of opinion, right? That's almost
like, that's what we do. Right? So we can I think, I won't speak
for Robin, but I think as a group of people, we, the people
who are engaged in this really would draw the lines quite
broadly. And say, you know, let the facts and let the opinions
contend and people will decide to the broadest possible extent.
Now, I realized there's a big debate about, you know, certain
forms of speech that are regarded as harmful. And people
want to draw the lines narrower, for philosophical reasons, for
all kinds of reasons, reasons of interpreting and its reasons of
power and As opposed to certain, simply recents of abstract
rights. And that's an act of debate, which I hope you guys
I'm sure you guys in your classes have thought about. I
would tend to course there are people who don't get, we don't
platform if you like, and or different organizations might
draw the line differently. But I mean, I guess I would say that I
would tend to draw the line, in principle quite widely. Now,
that doesn't mean that the Trump furred for our purposes, and
opinion might be perfectly reasonable, and even well done.
But I might think, you know, that's a great piece in the
Toronto Sun, but it isn't really a trauma star piece, that's
branding all, it doesn't mean that the person has no right to
speak, it just means that as a promo star, we choose not to
particularly select that in our menu. And that's not a it's not
a banning them or anything like that they have many other ways
to get their, their views out. That's like more like branding
and planning what kind of organization you think you are,
but I would tend to draw it widely. And, you know, we could
I mean, it's kind of a very long and discussion, I guess, as to
where you draw the line, who's included, you know, and so
forth, and so on, you know, forms of speech that I would
never have considered to be hate speech are now regarded by some
people as hate speech. And that's a that's where I think
you're perhaps you're getting to, I don't know, I'm just I'm
just talking a lot about this, I don't have a lie, I can't tell
you exactly where the line is,
in essence, in your case, the line is easier to determine
possibly, then the line is a Robin,
do you want to talk about that? Yeah.
I think part of Iris question was, how much do do I think
about, you know, the consequences of publishing
something. And the more I think about whether or not something
is worth publishing, the more I sort of think it is, the more
fraught I am about it, if I start to worry about what will
this mean for my job, which, honestly, I do, because I'm two
years into it. And I'm in an environment that is brand new to
opinion writing. So if I wasn't worried about it, and if I
wasn't worried about the repercussions for me, and for my
writers, there have been a few times where someone wrote, I
mean, one column in particular, a woman wrote a column and she
was getting death threats, because she wrote it. And I felt
that I had sort of abdicated my responsibility to her because I
hadn't seen that ahead of time. So I've sort of made a habit
now, when it comes to more controversial columns to talk to
writers beforehand, especially if they're new writers to say,
look, the CBC News platform is humongous, you're gonna piss
people off, are you ready to do this? But if I wasn't constantly
second guessing myself, if I wasn't wondering about the
repercussions, if I wasn't wondering about the value or the
harm, perhaps of publishing something, I think I'd be
running a really boring section. If it was just safe and just
sort of boilerplate, then it would be not worthy, I think.
So. I mean, famous last words, maybe when I get myself in
trouble for finally publishing that piece. That just pisses too
many people off. But I sort of see that as the marker of, of
whether I'm doing my job correctly, as I see it, which is
to get people thinking to maybe change some minds. That's the
ultimate goal. I think when it comes to writing a really
persuasive opinion piece, if you can get someone who was
skeptical at the beginning and change their mind, by the time
they hate your kicker. That's, that's the holy grail of opinion
writing. So if I'm constantly striving for that, I think I'm
doing my job. Right.
Thank you very much. I have about 117 questions, and I know,
we need to wrap up. So could I invite Dr. Smith's to take over
the mic?
Thank you. And we could we could obviously run several courses on
this, but some of you have to get back to your classroom to
finish off your course. So could you please join me in thanking
both of our panelists and our moderator.
And thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the semester.