Convergence Spring 2014

CONVERGENCE HUMBER SCHOOL OF MEDIA STUDIES AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Spring 2014

NOAM CHOMSKY

“Freedom” of the press and other illusions

The Dean’s Convergence Awards The following five pages are winners of the Dean’s Convergence Awards. A call for submissions was put out to the co-ordinators of the Humber School of Media Studies and Information Technology programs, and Dean Guillermo Acosta chose the winners.

Visual & Digital Arts - Shraddha Kumar

Shraddha Kumar is a second year visual and digital arts student and her inspiration comes from the beauty of culture, tradition, feminism and its transformation over time. Kumar’s goal for this piece was to show the audience that the people who are tied in culture and tradition should not be judged based on their artier. The main goal of this piece was to evoke feelings of bliss.

Graphic Design - Darcy Jones

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Darcy Jones is in his final year of the Graphic Design Advanced Diploma program at Humber College. He designs with an emphasis towards simplicity while developing clean designs with a strong passion for typography.

Advertising & Graphic Design - Yasemin Yenilmez

Yasemin Yenilmez is a second year student in the Advertising & Graphic Design. For this assignment her natural reaction was to look at how women would see their own beauty with this product. The goal was to highlight that a woman can be free to wear any clothing they wanted and not worry about the yellow stains from sweat. The freedom to show their beauty without the anxiety.

Creative Photography - Rhiannon Smart

Rhiannon Smart is in her final year of the creative photography program at Humber College. She’s studied commercial, portrait and location photography. Her aspiration as a photographer is to focus on commercial photography in the Toronto area.

Graphic & Package Design - Dusan Guzina

Dusan Guzina is a third year Graphic and Package Design student and her inspiration for the design was the superhero movie genre as a whole. She wanted the design to embody the energetic action sequences and come to life just as the movies do. The genre in itself is very action oriented and her goal as a designer was to do exactly that, bring to life not only the package, but also incorporate the product in a dynamic display of fearless action.

Letter from the editor T

here’s a saying in the newsroom of Humber College: “we write stories that matter.”

The original message was a comment made by judges at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. It hangs on the newsroom wall right beside the Gold Medal plaques, as a reminder, as a rule and as a standard of writing. I pass by those awards and that sign every day. Every day I’m reminded of the legacy of brilliance that has been made by students before us.

At Convergence magazine this year, we have put together a work of art that will compel you, challenge your ideals, and push the limits of media, as you know it.

In this issue, we focused on the impact of the media. We searched thoroughly for answers and we got them. The interview with Noam Chomsky, flagged on the cover of this year’s issue, was a definite coup. Words of wisdom on the freedom that might be abused by the media can be found on page 36 in a rare and exclusive interview with the father of modern linguistics.

Guantanamo Bay may have slipped from the front pages, but a small cadre of intrepid reporters, including the Star’s Michelle Sheppard, is overcoming obstacles to report on Guantanamo Bay and the issues that come with reporting from there (p.

46).

In contrast, CBC vs Dagenais (p. 41) continues to make the job of reporting what’s before the courts in Canada possible. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s continuing controversy offers a fresh look at why this case is still important for reporters today.

Ads that catch the eyes of consumers through prankvertising or revolutionizing the way movies and other goods are marketed toward us in movie theatres, show the evolution of the craft. (p. 13 and 16).

These stories, international hot spots for journalists, changes and threats to social media and the beginning of a new era for J-source all live up to the standard of writing stories that matter.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed working on it.

Gurpreet Mann Editor-in-Chief

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CONVERGENCE MASTHEAD Editor-in-chief...........................Gurpreet Mann Co-Executive Editors ..................Kate Paddison Amy Stubbs

Managing Editors Print ...................................................Jake Kigar Words ........................................Thomas Rohner Online...........................................George Halim Art Director............................Cameron Da Silva Art Director, Online.......................Jessica Paiva Assistant Managing Editor..........Kat Shermack Videographer/Photo.....................Adam Kozak Copy Chief ........................................Paul Rocca Copy Editor..........................Alessandra Micieli International Editor...............Hermione Wilson Research Chief...............................Olivia Roger Section Editors.........................Glyn Bowerman Ashley Cowell

Paolo Serpe

Kelly Townsend Faculty Adviser...............................Terri Arnott Publisher................................Guillermo Acosta HUMBER SCHOOL OF MEDIA STUDIES CO-ORDINATORS Cory Avery, Jane Bongers, Annette BorgerSnel, Kevin Brandon, Marilyn Cresswell, Paul Cross, Carey French, Lorne Frohman, Michael Glassbourg, Greg Goralski, Greg Henderson, Mike Karapita, Noni Kaur, Garrett Kerr, Vass Klymenko, Jennifer Leonard, Bernie Monette, George Paravantes, Catherine Pike, Robert Richardson, Rob Robson, Michael Rosen, Dan Rowe, Anna Santilli-Finn, Ravinder Singh, Andrea Tavchar, Lynne Thomas, Sheila Walsh, Ken Wyman, Karen Young, Eva Ziemsen Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning School of Media Studies and Information Technology 205 Humber College Blvd.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M9W 5L7 Phone: 416.675.6622 x 4513 Fax: 416.675.9730 terri.arnott@humber.ca

Letter from the dean

This picture

has a very special significance for me. In fact, I think it is really worth more than the proverbial 1,000 words.

It’s a picture of my three-year-old daughter Vera during a rally February 22 in Toronto

supporting peace in Venezuela. Vera is clearly happy. In a world of her own, as children often are, she’s possibly playing at being a princess or a super-hero with her Venezuelan-flag-cape.

In the midst of the rally, I was so happy to see her playing and running, with not a worry that anything could happen to her for being with us at a protest where a group of Venezuelan-Canadians were expressing our opinion, creating awareness of the current Venezuelan situation. The country that I had left when I emigrated to Canada 13 years ago has been immersed in violent anti-government protest for about six weeks now. More than 30 people are dead, mostly students and innocent bystanders, and thousands are injured.

On that day in February, it had not even crossed my mind that Vera could be in any type of danger.

Unfortunately, the absurd political division, extreme polarization and unnecessary hatred between differing political sides, makes this impossible­ – even unthinkable – in Venezuela. Here, in Toronto I can bring my daughter to a protest. In Venezuela as I write these lines, people are being injured and killed for peacefully asking the government to guarantee the most basic human rights: dignity, freedom, justice, solidarity and equality. The current situation in Venezuela contravenes these minimum human rights so needed for the development of a society

under basic principles of wellness and quality of life.

Any solution to the Venezuelan situation must guarantee these basic principles for the vast majority of the population. Any proposal missing this will be short-lived.

I wish that all parents in Venezuela could bring their children of any age to a rally, without fear and angst, to exercise publicly their freedom of speech. I’d like to see all those children playing at being princesses or super-heroes in a country that guarantees a future plenty of prosperity, freedom and peace.

As Dean of the School of Media Studies and Information Technology I am proud of the efforts of final year journalism students who continue to bring awareness of the importance of truth and press freedom around the world.

In this issue we examine the plight of a Canadian photojournalist arrested in Egypt, the death of a photographer in Syria. Closer to home journalists continue to fight for freedom and access to information surrounding matters before the courts, like the Rob Ford saga, and from prisoners, and officials at Guantanamo Bay. As internationally renowned academic and activist Noam Chomsky tells us on page 36 “Kind of like a fly trying to escape a spider web, people would prefer to be free, independent individuals, not under the control of others. Not dominated by others.”

Dean, School of Media Studies & Information Technology CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

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Features

Spring 2014

Contents

13

Hanky Pranky Advertising

32

Science-ish journalism

41

NOT another Ford headline

46

Silence descends on Gitmo

Cover Story 36

Resisting propaganda

16

Silverscreen advertising

19

The news/ad monster mash

22

Farming for credibility

25

Still a man’s world

29

A story in six seconds

50

Journalism in chains

57

News on the run

53

Over to you, Ghana

60

The Great Collaboration

55

Changing of the guard

62

You (not so fast) Tube

64

Maximizing minimalist ads

67

Where are they now?

70

In Memoriam

44

an honest journalist has two choices. One is to tell the truth, and be out of the system, because you cannot write these things and stay within the system.

Noam Chomsky

Enemies of the Internet The Press Freedom Index ranks each country. We outlined recent events in six countries where Internet freedom has been threatened. Featured countries are the United States, Gambia, China, Venezuela, Colombia and Turkey.

13

16

46

36

18

Visit www.convergencemag.ca for additional exclusive content

s

Actors and crew prepare to trick unwitting customers into thinking they are witnessing a horror movie come to life.

Hanky pranky advertising Part ad, part prank, prankvertising has taken off in the United States, but it may be peaking before even getting to Canada.

BY JAKE KIGAR

A

t a quaint coffee shop in New York’s West Village, the stage has been set.

A fake brick wall has been constructed and put in place to mimic the shop’s existing décor. The shop’s tables, chairs and books have been spring-loaded to move at the command of a remote control. Actors have taken their places, all ready to pull off the next elaborate prank.

That’s when the customer walks in.

On cue, a panicked girl rages against a man in the shop using her telekinetic powers to throw him against that constructed brick wall. The other actors scattered around the shop scream, as the girl motions towards inanimate objects, moving them without a touch. The customer panics along with those in the shop and races towards safety.

There’s silence, followed by applause as cameras appear and the customers stand there alone with all eyes on them. They quickly realize the unexplained phenomena they think they had just witnessed were anything but.

They were just part of a film prankvertisement for the film Carrie.

A prankvertisement is digital advertising in viral video form and it’s changing the face of marketing.

“It’s highly sharable content that’s cleverly branded towards the end of the video with whatever it is that we’re promoting,” said viral ad producer Michael Krivicka.

Krivicka is one of the founders of Thinkmodo, a world-leading ad agency in New York that specializes in creating digital and viral marketing ads. Thinkmodo was the

mastermind behind the Carrie prankvertisement, as well as countless others including Devil Baby and The Last Exorcism 2.

In the last three years since his company began, business has risen drastically. He reminisces about the recent past and having to approach clients with ideas.

“Now a lot of clients coming our way [are] mainly movie studios and TV networks as well as a lot of really cool brands,” said Krivicka. “And they kind of approach us and say ‘hey we got this new thing coming up, is there a unique viral video idea you can come up with for us’.”

Krivicka said the business of viral ads is nothing new, but the craft has grown immensely and the ads have gotten better.

“It’s a science for us,” he said. “We’re very

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careful about how we put it together, how we craft it, how we package it and obviously the most important thing for us and for our client is the connection to the brand.”

Krivicka and his business partner James Percelay are constantly brainstorming ideas for clients and actually had a concept for a telekinetic ad long before the Carrie ad came together.

Krivicka said that after the first Carrie trailer came out, he and his team “quickly realized, ‘You know what? This is it. This is exactly what we’re looking for’.”

“This would be perfect for this studio, for this movie. So what we did, we picked up the phone, we called them up and said, ‘Hey I know this is not how it works, but listen – we’ve got this really cool idea for one of your movies’,” he said.

Sony Pictures jumped on board and the next phase of the prankvertisement began.

Thinkmodo teamed with production partners, hired staff and architects to help create the video from start to finish.

“We just hired the right people to work with,” Krivicka said. “There was a stunt team involved and some prop masters … it just took a lot of timing and it was quite complex to do. We had to kind of rehearse with the actors. All the people who are in the scene – they’re kind of in on it, except obviously the customers who walk in.”

“It was quite the project,” he said.

The Carrie prank has proven that these ads are far reaching, having been viewed more than 50 million times on YouTube. But, what do 50 million views mean in terms of their overall effectiveness?

“The way we measure success is by the free media we can generate,” Krivicka said.

“It’s really not by the view count of the YouTube video.”

“We have services which measure this kind of media coverage, for example TV coverage nationwide. So, we’re able to generate a number for our client saying ‘hey, we delivered such and such in free media for you, for this campaign’.”

Krivicka said the way they generate a number is by using a service called TV Eyes that tells them the viewership for each TV segment that shows their video and what the monetary value is for that particular time slot. For the Carrie ad, the campaign reached more than 65 million viewers, which adds up to over $5 million domestically in earned TV media coverage, he said.

A viral ad garnering free TV coverage is a great formula for ad campaigns, Krivicka said.

“Not only do they talk about it, they always plug in the brand, they always plug in the movie and sometimes they even show the whole trailer to it because of our video,” he said.

Thinkmodo also uses public statistics as a

reference from an online service called Unruly Media, which tracks its online presence.

Based on its statistics, Carrie was the 8th most-shared ad of 2013 and 20th of all time.

While generating big numbers and financial proof for their clients is key to their success, measuring how effective prankvertisements are in driving sales is difficult, according to media scholar Robert Thompson.

“In advertising, in spite of Nielsen ratings, in spite of social science, it’s so hard to measure effectiveness because all of advertising is based on this stuff that works on your id and unconscious, and you can’t give a survey to an unconscious,” he said.

Thompson, who is the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, uses the analogy of ‘bad used car commercials’ to explain how it’s hard to predict whether or not these ads push product.

“Everybody says ‘I hate those commercials, I turn the volume down whenever the come on, they drive me crazy, I’d never buy a car from that guy,’ but nevertheless…when it comes time that someone wants a used car, it’s the only place in the city they know to have used cars and that ad has probably moved a lot of cars off the lot.”

Along with effectiveness, there’s also a growing concern about the liabilities surrounding prankvertisements like the Carrie video. The purpose is to get great reactions

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MICHAEL KRIVICKA

Krivicka and his crew set up to shoot reactions of those who fall victim to prankvertising.

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from those who are being scared out of their minds. Surely there’s a risk that something might go wrong.

“What we do in order to control the situation, just so nobody has a heart attack or something terrible happens, is that we do sometimes vet people and that means that there’s a layer of control before they walk into one of our scenes,” Krivicka said. “So, we greet them, we talk to them, but they never, never know what they’re about to see.”

Krivicka said sometimes they let participants know there’s a setup, so they’re aware there are cameras, but they never reveal the secret, “so their reactions are still genuine.”

“Not in their weirdest dreams would they imagine they would witness a telekinetic event,” he said.

Thompson is critical of this approach, citing huge liabilities as a possibility in these scenarios.

“I’ve got a feeling by pre-screening they might mean, ‘here’s what’s going to happen are you okay with that, will you sign this?’ said Thompson. “If I were a legal department, that’s the kind of pre-screening I would require.”

What would happen if someone physically harmed the young actress pretending to use her telekinetic powers to control the coffee shop?

“How would a jury deal with that?

Thompson said. “That’s a fascinating Harvard Law School case study or a great episode of Scandal.”

While no such cases have plagued Thinkmodo’s ads, Krivicka said they take their precautionary approach very seriously. He notes they’ve never had a problem with their 18 ads and everyone is always happy to sign release forms at the end of their shoots.

“We know what exactly goes into creating these,” he said. “We always go out of our way, we play by the book, we play by the rules, get all the permits. A lot of times there’s an officer with us on the shoot to oversee it.”

So far, prankvertisements have steered clear of problems, aren’t slowing down and the novelty hasn’t yet worn off. More and more companies are following Thinkmodo and are producing more prank ads.

That’s not surprising to David Soberman, professor and Canadian National Chair of

An actor channels her inner demon in order to promote the film Carrie.

Strategic Marketing at the Rotman School of Management. When something works, marketers and advertisers will stick to it, he said.

“One of the things we often suffer from as marketers is something called the not-invented-here syndrome,” Soberman said. “What we always want to do is come up with the greatest thing that no one’s ever done before, but some of the most successful companies –

“

big as these come and go, only to come back again, remarks Soberman.

“What happens is that it may go through cycles, as opposed to running its course, and then never be seen again because the fact of the matter is that anytime you do something kind of notorious, or something that people aren’t expecting, you’re going to catch attention.”

We...Go out of our way, we play by the book, we play by the rules...

all they do is copy something else that works very well in another part of the world.”

So, what’s next for this budding style of advertising?

Krivicka said he believes as they grow in popularity, prankvertisements will fade.

“We just think that it’s sort of at a peak right now and it’s definitely a marketing trend that’s going to start fading away,” he said. “A lot of companies are buying views, faking reactions and it’s getting very diluted right now.”

But even so, all good marketing trends as

MICHAEL KRIVICKA He adds that as long as prankvertisements don’t become omnipresent, they are a marketing strategy that will stand the test of time.

“Our stuff is very newsworthy. It’s very sticky because once something starts to trend, you want to talk about it,” Krivicka said.

“To get people to actually go and watch these things actively on their own requires you to make something a lot more compelling,” said Thompson, “and these prankvertisements seem to be the biggest model out of the gate as to how to do that.”

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INNER PHOTO: COURTESY HELOISE HOOTON AT WIEDEN+KENNEDY AMSTERDAM. OUTER PHOTO WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The website Booking.com has successfully taken advantage of advertising on the silver screen.

SILVERSCREEN ADVERTISING A marketer’s dream-come-true, ads on the big screen provide a cinematic experience to a captive audience.

BY OLIVIA ROGER

A

silver car glistens as it speeds along the open road, twisting and turning with each swerve of the wheel. Although it’s uncertain where it will lead, as the engine smoothly accelerates to the sound of ambient music, it is mesmerizing.

This beauty isn’t real; in fact it isn’t even the film people have paid money to see. This is an advertisement for a Lexus car that appeared in Cineplex theatres in 2014.

Brands have always found financial success by advertising in print, on billboards, over the airwaves and through television spots. It should come as no surprise the digital era has made multi-platform marketing easier, and the silverscreen is no exception.

Often louder and often longer, cinema on-

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screen advertising has given companies an unparalleled opportunity to be as creative as the films that follow them.

This is especially true for Booking.com, an online accommodations portal for travellers. Wieden+Kennedy, an advertising agency based in Amsterdam, creatively led its ad campaign “Booking.yeah.” Their witty advertisements, which use the word “booking” to express a wide range of human emotions, has blown up in Canada recently, particularly in Cineplex theatres. Jordi Pont, the group account director for the campaign, said this is because it is the first time they are introducing the brand to Canadians.

“We feel that with cinemas you go big and want to make a statement as a brand,” said

Pont. The ad that appears for 30 seconds on television has increased to a minute for the theatre environment. “Cinema seems like a nice media for a campaign push when you are launching a brand.”

This kind of business plan has encouraged other large companies, such as Stella Artois, Coca Cola, H&M and Telus, to advertise on the big screens.

The increasing profitability of presenting commercial material in such a setting can be alluring for those brands capitalizing on the captive audience.

According to Cineplex, 42 per cent of consumers who are moviegoers have a stronger emotional attachment to film than to major televised events, TV shows, magazines and

radio. The impact of such advertisements is also high with an average of 71 per cent total awareness of show-time advertising and 88 per cent correct brand association.

A study conducted between U.S. companies NCM Media Networks and Innerscope Research confirmed this, as they explored the difference between televised ads projected in at-home environments compared to those appearing on theatre screens.

The results? Moviegoers experienced heightened emotional responses when viewing the ads in a cinema setting.

Doug Pulick, head of strategic insight and analytics at NCM Media Networks, said people who choose to go to the movies make numerous positive decisions to leave their home and entertain themselves.

“TV is not a necessarily negative experience but could be a much more passive one.

The whole idea is that you seem to be more distracted in a television or in-home environment versus one that’s out-of-home, mainly in a movie theatre, where you’ve made all these positive choices and now you’re sitting back and saying, ‘entertain me’.”

Using a biometric belt to measure skin sweat, heart rate, respiration and motion, two different sets of audiences were shown a one-minute advertisement for Best Buy. The group viewing the advertisement in a cinema setting showed an increase in engagement by 32 per cent within the final moments of the advertisement, when the brand was revealed.

Pulick said when shown the ad was on television, audience members showed a low level of engagement because there was an opportunity to tune out.

“TV allows you to have the reach to get everyone in the country [but] cinema ... has a much more effective way of telling that message.”

For companies that target potential consumers, Paul Moore, a film historian at Ryerson University professor and president of the Film Studies Association of Canada, said this approach to advertising is more cost-effective as these commercials are more accessible in today’s digital era.

“With digital projection and digital production it has become easier to have advertising on the screen … and ads have become a really standardized part of the show itself.

“Digital projection allows you to project ads cheaper and just take a television ad and project it at the movie theatre without having to make film prints on 35 mm film.”

Farzan Dehmoubed, president of Golden Eye Media Inc., sees on-screen theatre advertising to be effective. He has seen his business grow 15 to 20 per cent every year for the last three years. His company is devoted to targeting Canada’s South Asian Market through on-screen, print and point-of-purchase advertising at Bollywood cinemas, giving his clients the ability to advertise through pre-show material, lobby posters, print magazines and movie sponsorships.

“The best success we’ve seen is people who’ve done something on the screen and they’ve combined it with an ad in the magazine. This way if someone sees an ad for a car on the screen they have the information right in their hands in the magazine so they can take that phone number or contact information home with them.”

This kind of multi-platform advertising is also an option at Cineplex theatres. Companies that work with Cineplex can have their promotional material incorporated into TimePlay, a mobile-based interactive movie trivia game that gives audience members the opportunity to win prizes. This has proven to be enticing for moviegoers who would otherwise be seated in silence before their feature film begins. In a polled survey, 89 per cent of moviegoers said they liked the idea of having this kind of interactive experience before the film.

Cineplex’s magazine also offers an opportunity for advertisers to have a print presence.

The magazine, which has been around since 1999, is free to all customers. Marni Weisz, the editor, said they have a whole team of sales representatives who sell all of their media whether it’s in the magazine or during the pre-show.

“It all depends on the client and whether they have available print advertising. But if they’re a client and they’re advertising on the screen we will try to sell them an ad in the magazine.”

Although this might spell financial success for brands looking to target a wide range of demographics, one committee in particular isn’t quite sold. The Captive Motion Picture Audience of America has launched the campaign “Stop Pre-Movie Commercials!” announcing publicly that this is “the last straw,” as “the only difference between a movie screen and a TV screen is size.” Although they hope others will follow suit and take a stand against these powerful advertising giants, NCM’s Pulick disagrees. He said the idea of advertisements appearing in cinemas having a negative connotation is simply not true because they play during a period where people are engaged and have time as they sit in the theatre.

Despite the difference of opinion regarding such motives, it’s undeniable that cinema advertising is an effective business plan that works to entertain the viewer while gaining corporate profit. Audiences can’t quite ignore what is seen to be the “attack of the 50 ft. ad.”

PHOTO BY: OLIVIA ROGER

Studies show these movie goers may be more affected by ads on a big screen.

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The news/ad monster mash First it was advertorials, now it’s the ‘native’ ad. Where should the line be drawn?

BY ADAM KOZAK

A

drastic move by The New York Times on Jan. 8, 2014 left some readers and critics praising the venerable news leader, and others angry and perplexed.

On the New York Times website, sideby-side with news stories about cutting energy costs in Asia and Saudis backing Syrian rebels, was a new form of content – one that’s not quite editorial, but also not simply advertising.

Some call it a ‘native’ ad, and the curious hybrid is causing a stir.

Essentially, it’s a step up from an advertorial. Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor and the author of the PressThink blog, defined it in a tweet as, “advertising that is as worth reading as the editorial into which it is mixed, from which it is distinguished.” It can only be defined loosely because it’s still new to online publishing and every publisher does it a little bit differently.

Cathrin Bradbury, executive director of content development for the Star Media Group, is blunt about the emergence of native ads, saying it’s all lipstick on a pig.

She divides content into two groups: independent news content and paid content.

“To me it’s just a different name for what we’ve had for some time in different guises: branded content, advertorial, sponsored content – there are a million names Advertising in disguise.

ILLUSTRATION BY: DOMINIKA GUDANIEC

SCREENSHOT

Native ads can make it difficult to distinguish between what’s an ad and what isn’t.

it goes by,” Bradbury said. “To me what’s a bit different about native is that it’s meant to be seamlessly woven into traditional media in a way that’s not distinguishable as advertising.”

Native ads have popped up across many news outlets, including The Washington Post, Vanity Fair and Forbes.com, as well as online-only sites such as BuzzFeed and Mashable. And although Google News refuses to aggregate commercial content and demands news sites host commercial content on a different server, it’s gaining traction. EMarketer, which gathers data from research firms that look into how consumers interact with media, released a study expecting native ad spending to increase to $2.85 billion in 2014 from $1.63 billion in 2012 across the board in the United States.

For some, the adoption of native ads has been a rocky process.

In early 2013, The Atlantic ran an article about the positive merits of the Church of Scientology without including a disclaimer that it was paid for by the church, and was not a regular piece of editorial written by journalists looking to uncover a truthful story.

Soon after, The Atlantic had to withdraw

20 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

the piece and issue an apology, stating it would review its digital advertising strategy “until we figure all of this out.”

It’s a mistake the New York Times appears determined to learn from.

In The Times’ first native ad, the signposts were plenty. Star Media’s Bradbury said, “It’s pretty hilarious. There’s no mistaking it’s paid content. There are like 18 different labels saying it’s paid for; it’s not journalism.”

Three big blue boxes with the Dell logo prominently displayed were on the online front page, and when the native ad was clicked, the reader was brought to a separate domain which began with a link to www. paidpost.nytimes.com, light blue banner with the words “paid for and posted by Dell”, as well as a Dell logo beside the byline.

For Tom Foremski, founder and editor of the Silicon Valley Watcher blog, this wasn’t good enough. Native ads are wading in murky waters even if they are fully transparent, Foremski said.

“At the end of the day the newspaper only has trust … anything that casts any kind of suspicion is bad. I’m shocked that the New York Times doesn’t understand this relationship with its readers.”

At The New York Times, editorial staff does not produce native ad content: no reporter’s work will be sacrificed. Instead, a new department separate from the editorial staff will be created to produce this content, according to NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in a letter he sent to The Times’ newsroom.

Martin Waxman, executive vice president of Thornley Fallis, instructor in the Digital Strategy and Communications Management certificate program at the University of Toronto and co-founder of three PR firms, sees potential problems in having news staff writing native ads. He said transparency is a must, and commitment to readers goes beyond simply reporting the news.

“The danger is upsetting people,” Waxman said. “Losing trust, being perceived as an organization that’s just putting one over on you … the thing is, if the content is good enough, resonates with people and is of highenough quality, it doesn’t matter if it’s sponsored. I read it because I think it means something to me.”

Michael Wolff, author of “The Man Who Owns The News”, and a columnist for the Guardian, USA Today and the British GQ, disagrees that clear labeling is good enough.

According to Wolff, transparency doesn’t mean an ad will increase its level of page views or level of engagement, and effective ads should do both.

“I think that’s a self-defeating way to do it.

Basically native ads work because they fool the reader. So as soon as you say ‘OK we are going to do this in an honourable way,’ you lose the impact of the ad. So you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.”

Integrity of the brand isn’t the only way to measure the success of a native ad. Kathy English, Public Editor at The Toronto Star, said there are many reasons why a reader may open up a newspaper and as always, the concept of creating interesting, compelling content is at the heart of any good publication.

“I think people come to news organizations for lots of different types of content,” English said. “Obviously I was a journalist so I think news content is most important, but I think readers read other kinds of content too.”

English said news organizations receive pressure from advertisers looking for editorial content, as well as to generate revenue.

But Wolff is clear: “Native advertising is

prepared by the talentless – the unemployed.

Nobody would choose to do that for a living.

You do it because you can’t make the type of content that people actually want.”

While The Toronto Star does not run native ads, it does run commercial content – but like the Times the content is produced in a place separate from the newsroom, in the advertising department. Bradbury, formerly an award-winning journalist, helps manage the people who produce commercial content on the advertising side and said the distinction is not talent, but form.

“The first thing I’d say to anybody is that it’s not journalism. You can learn a whole lot about telling stories, reporting stories, reporting the heart of a story and doing them really well, but the fundamental precepts of journalism is that there’s no outside interest paying for you to say what you’re saying. If you’re going to do this kind of content you have to understand that distinction.”

Dissenting views and strategies are rampant. For example, Forbes.com has built its native ad presence by providing companies with direct access to create the kind of compelling content Wolff thinks is preposterous.

Currently, Forbes.com charges $50,000 to $75,000 per month to brands for access to their content management system, where they can go ahead and publish as frequently as they like, with or without the help of the Forbes’ in-house brand newsroom called “Brand Voice.”

“They get the keys to the kingdom,” Mark Howard, Forbes’ Chief Revenue Officer, told Convergence from his cell phone en route from San Francisco to Silicon Valley.

“Brands who sign up can receive help to post content, to use the analytics tool, as well as headline optimization and copywriting.”

“There’s one really great underlying principle here that’s been fantastic with Brand Voice which is that all of our partners are blue-chip companies. They’ve got big brands themselves, they don’t want to do anything that puts their brand at risk. This form of content marketing is about establishing a relationship and building trust with an audience.”

Howard said brands understand that kind of low-level marketing is self-defeating when it comes to building a positive image online.

Most sites clearly have different mandates

PHOTO BY: KELLY TOWNSEND

Even the prestigious New York Times has started using native advertising.

than The Times, which has a responsibility to inform the citizenry, and a strong reputation that has won 112 Pulitzer Prizes.

Right or wrong, beneficial for brands or not – Bradbury told Convergence the adoption of what’s new and current is vital in the ever-changing world of media.

“We’re all in the mash-up trying to figure out where the money’s going to come from.

And this is one of the strategies right now,” she said. “I think it’s important to be in it because whether it’s a lasting strategy or not you need to be in the leading strategy to figure out what the next thing’s going to be.”

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FARMING FOR CREDIBILITY

BY KATE PADDISON

Click farms are bloating Facebook and Twitter numbers. And getting away with it.

I

t’s not your typical farm. You can’t buy milk or eggs, but for $34 you can buy yourself 5,000 Twitter followers.

In a business where social media and sweatshops collide, underpaid workers sit at computers sharing, liking and retweeting comments on social media all in order to inflate numbers.

Buying fake “likes” from click farms is fast becoming a multimillion-dollar industry.

Companies are capitalizing on this opportunity to make millions while conning social media platforms. And the numbers don’t lie.

Andrea Stroppa, Huffington Post blogger and Italian security researcher, has begun re-

22 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

search on the numbers, estimating that fake Facebook likes bring in $200-million per year. As for Twitter? He estimates $360-million to date.

“For Facebook, we’re talking about the spam on the unofficial pages,” Stroppa said.

“It would be interesting to look into the subscribers and likes market on official pages.”

There are hundreds of sites where people can buy fake likes and followers. And you can find anything from fake Google+ followers, to fake likes on Facebook, or even to artificially-inflated play counts on YouTube videos – all for a price as low as $4.55.

Mitul Gandhi is the co-founder and chief

architect of seoClarity, a Chicago-based company that provides a platform to help companies tackle search engine optimization. He said trends have shown an uptick in “fake likes.”

“The seoClarity platform is used by enterprises to see the visibility they have in search engines and to show them how to improve their numbers,” Gandhi said. “One influencing factor is social activity. Using velocity and growth, we can figure out what is a real engagement and what isn’t.”

The chief architect wants to know “if his own team is really getting people to like their sites, or if they are buying the likes,” said Gandhi.

:M N BY

RATIO

ST ILLU

“You don’t want to be the company that is outed by Facebook saying your popularity has been bought. The other aspect is companies want to know if their competitors are engaging in buying fake likes.”

But why buy fake followers, and who even cares?

“There are a few different reasons for doing this,” Gandhi said. “The premise for why people buy these Facebook likes and Twitter followers is because of credibility.”

Credibility can make or break it for a startup business. “If I’m trying to sell my company to a large Fortune 500 company, what a way to prove your credibility by saying, ‘hey, we have 30,000 Twitter likes’,” said Gandhi. “Independent consultants also use it, any agencies trying to buff up their performance.”

According to Stroppa, followers mean legitimacy and popularity, and can even make you a status symbol.

“It’s because numbers matter. If I have 100,000 you’d consider me a star. If I have 100, I’m a nobody,” he said.

For prices as low as half a cent a click, websites can help get you 10,000 Twitter followers, 5,000 page shares on Facebook, and

even boost your LinkedIn profile.

“Any time there is a monetary value you are going to find people that will sell you that,” Gandhi said. “There is a marketplace to unlock this value. Everyone should be writing good content, but that’s the hard way to do it. So people buy it.”

Tech companies are struggling to police these sites because every time they crack down on one scheme, another takes its place.

Experts invent software that notifies them of “bot-generated” clicks, and these companies are constantly fighting back.

StatusPeople is a London-based company which aims to develop valuable social media software. In 2012, the company launched the “Fakers App,” the first social media tool worldwide to inform people of how many spam and fake followers they have.

Robert Waller, founder of StatusPeople and lead developer of the app, is fast becoming the private eye of Twitter followers. He can tell you who is real, who is fake, what languages they speak, and even compare your status with competitors.

Since StatusPeople released the “Fakers App” in July 2012, it has reached over half a million Twitter users. There is a free version for the generic everyday user looking to check their score, and then subscription services, which are targeted at businesses and

LUE

Y-B ELOD

SEN

KLAS

pro users. “The app itself has accessed more than 600,000 users and nearly 1.2 million accounts,” said Waller.

There is also a tool to auto-block fake users.

“So for someone who has bought a lot of fake users, we check their account every day,” Waller said. “We recheck for fake users and block them on their behalf. One user has blocked 20,000 accounts, which I was baffled by.”

Facebook and Twitter seem to have the hardest time keeping their fake user numbers down.

Jay Nancarrow, communications manager for Facebook, said the social media platform has certain measures in place to catch these fake accounts.

“We catch fake accounts at various points of interaction with our site, including registration, friending, clicking the Like button, messaging and more,” he said.

“Lots of fraudulent activity occurs in patterns, thanks to spammers’ automated attacks, and as a result we’ve greatly enhanced our ability to detect and block abuse.”

And then came click farms. Low-paid workers are hired to manually click on different social media sites to boost the numbers for users, companies and advertisers.

According to an Associated Press examination into the phenomenon in January 2014, Dhaka, Bangladesh is an international centre for these farms. Those operating the sites have found different ways to make it more difficult for social media sites to catch them.

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“With click farms, it’s difficult,” Waller said.

“There is a huge amount of money in spam, and for our side, very little money. I try my best, but it is not perfect. The resources are well against us and they are developing all the time.”

One new tactic the scammers are using is to create an account, send out a large quantity of messages, then delete either the account or the messages minutes later. “The whole point is that they just need someone to see the message and possibly click the account,” said Waller. “But when Twitter tries to access the account they won’t see it.”

Unique IT World, a Dhaka-based social media promotion firm, pays workers to manually click on clients’ social media accounts.

This makes it nearly impossible to catch them, because the accounts are genuine. They aren’t fake accounts made for the sole purpose of liking certain accounts; real people are spending time on these accounts to like other people’s.

Shaiful Islam, CEO of Unique IT World, denied requests for an interview with Convergence, stating: “Firstly, we are not a click farm, we are a web development company. This is a legal site, and our procedure is legal.”

When he was sent the Associated Press article that states otherwise, he stopped answering emails.

Despite Bangladesh being considered the capital of click farm businesses, the numbers are starting to show that these click farms can exist almost anywhere with Internet access.

“You find these companies anywhere where labour itself is cheap and Internet access is available,” Gandhi said. “From Indonesia to Pakistan to Bangladesh, it’s good money for these workers.”

According to Waller’s research, India and Russia also host many of the world’s click farms.

“Anecdotally, we know a lot of click farms are produced by spammers in India and Russia,” he said. “People selling these likes and shares are middlemen connecting the buyer to a seller, or a computer programmer in India or Russia. And the middlemen takes their cuts.”

Stroppa’s research has found that click farms are most prevalent in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

It seems to be that anyone with access to the Internet can get involved in this extremely

24 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

lucrative business.

Danielle Restivo, senior manager of Global Programs at LinkedIn, said “We urge members to make the right connections with people they know or have done business with, so any activity that dilutes the member experience, such as buying connections, is something we take seriously. In fact, it is a breach of our User Agreement.”

Compared with fake purchased connections on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, Restivo said LinkedIn hasn’t typically seen this kind of activity.

“We don’t see it happen that often on LinkedIn, which is because of the nature of the network. People tend to take it more seriously,” she said.

On Aug. 31, Facebook posted a note titled Improvements to Our Site Integrity Systems.

“A Like that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with a Page benefits no one,” it said. “Real identity, for both users and brands on Facebook, is important to not only Facebook’s mission of helping the world share, but also the need for people and customers to authentically connect to the Pages they care about.”

Nancarrow said this is a matter that Facebook takes extremely seriously.

“People use Facebook to connect with real people, which is why we’re so focused on authentic connections and activity on our service,” he said.

Facebook has built a combination of manual and automated systems that block accounts that are used for falsified purposes such as generating fake followers and clicks. “We are constantly improving these systems to help us better identify suspicious

behaviour,” said Nancarrow. “We also take action against sellers of fake clicks and help shut them down.”

However, in Facebook’s most recent quarterly report, it estimated that of its 1.18 billion active users, 14.1 million are fake users.

At Twitter. Waller estimates that nearly 90 per cent of Twitter users are spam.

“In October, Twitter hit over 2.2 billion accounts generated on its site,” he said. “But they have only roughly 200 million active users. That basically tells you that 90 per cent of users are spam. It also shows you how many accounts Twitter blocks themselves, and the number that is still getting through.”

Waller said StatusPeople only looks at this as a problem for Twitter, because there wouldn’t be enough time to look at other social media sites as well.

“We don’t have the time to look at Facebook. Every time we think that the Twitter issues are dying away, something new comes up,” he said. “Retweet bots, fake trending bots, faking a trending topic to get something trending ... it’s always something. Facebook is not as open with their information, so it would not be as easy.”

Despite the fact click farms and buying likes are considered a new issue, since social media is a relatively new tool, this idea has been seen before.

“The web has a very short-term memory, because this in itself is not new,” Gandhi said.

“The channel has changed. Buying something fake, like credibility and votes, goes way back on the web. People used to buy content and pass it as their own, buy links and point it back to them, and now buy likes and shares, to boost their numbers.”

SCREENSHOT

Artificial followers on social media can cost as little as five dollars.

Still a man’s world The gender gap in newsrooms is shrinking, but not at the most senior positions.

BY KAT SHERMACK

I

f you pick up any Canadian newspaper today, you are just as likely to see a woman’s byline on the front page as a man’s.

“I have the Globe in front of me now, let’s take a look,” said Jan Wong, on the phone from Pearson International Airport.

“If you look at the bylines, there are six bylines, and four women,” said Wong, confirming that women are a significant presence in the newsroom. However, if you look past the bylines and make your way up the masthead, women become scarce.

“There’s progress in terms of the journalists,” Wong continued. “The Globe has women on the masthead, they’re just not at the top.”

One of Canada’s most accomplished journalists, Wong was appointed The Globe

ILLUSTRATION BY: DOMINIKA GUDANIEC

and Mail’s bureau chief in Beijing in 1988. To this day, she remains the only woman to ever hold this position.

“They don’t consider you,” said Wong bluntly of women’s status in the Canadian newspaper business. “You’re not even on the radar. There’s lots of discrimination against women rising to the top, as there is almost everywhere.”

While cases of outright sexism have thankfully

become more rare, it’s clear gender equality is still an issue. In Canada, only 25 per cent of MPs are women. A recent Statistics Canada study found educated men significantly out-earn women with the same level of education, making millions of dollars more over the course of their careers. Another study from TD Economics found only 11 per cent of board members for firms on the S&P/TSX

CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

25

Composite Index are women – all this despite the fact that there have been more women graduating from university than men since 1992.

It’s undeniable that women have made amazing strides in the past 50 years. But the numbers don’t lie. There is still a problem.

Newspapers are no exception. Of the 25 biggest newspapers in Canada, there are four female editors in chief, and four female publishers.

How could it be that in a country as diverse as Canada and in an industry that is supposed to reflect its readership, there is barely a handful of women in senior roles?

Vivian Smith spent four years answering this very question. Smith has worked in newsrooms across Canada for over 20 years, as a reporter, editor, and manager. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Victoria studying why there is such a big gender gap in Canadian newsrooms.

Smith discovered that while few young female journalists experience outright sexism in the newsroom, there are factors holding them back they may not even consciously recognize. Newsrooms, like many other workplaces, were historically male dominated.

“Newspapers were particularly male in that they were the soapboxes for political views,” Smith said over the phone from Victoria. “Men are the people, historically, who had total control of the political system.

Newspapers were built by men who sought office, or businessmen who wanted to support certain politicians. It’s not just the newsroom itself as an originally male workplace, but it’s particularly male in that it’s where you have politics and business coming together.”

It wasn’t just that newsrooms were dominated by men. It was the accepted macho behavior of the newsroom that made the profession even less welcoming to women.

According to Smith, it was pretty much testosterone overload.

“Newsrooms used to be places where the mystic men would come. You wouldn’t have to have any training. You were kind of wild, and you drank, and you smoked, and you worked long crazy hours, and you never went home and saw your wife.”

While this stereotype of the newsroom has disappeared on the surface, it is still an important part of the history and culture of

26 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

the newsroom. Throughout the course of her PhD, Smith interviewed almost 30 women and it became clear that the influence of the male-dominated newsroom has not faded as much as we may think.

“Women were feeling as though they were outside the mainstream culture of the newsroom,” said Smith. “It’s not to say that no women make it. Lots do. But there are particular problems that hold them back.”

Though time has passed and more women work as reporters, they are not moving up into editorial and management positions.

“My theory used to be that we just needed more women in the newsroom in order to push up against that barrier and break through,” said Margo Goodhand, editor-in-chief of the Edmonton Journal. Goodhand recently took over at the Journal and was previously the editor-in-chief at the Winnipeg Free Press. She can’t figure out why there aren’t more women in roles similar to hers.

“What I’ve always thought is that it would take critical mass in the newsroom before those things started to push up. But it hasn’t quite happened yet.” Both Goodhand and Smith noticed that when it came time for the reporters in their newsrooms to decide whether or not to start a family, women were faced with a choice: be a good journalist, or be a good parent.

“I knew from my own experience that a lot of women leave print journalism when they have children,” Smith said. “That, to me, was still pretty old school. I would see women questioning why they were still in the business when it was so difficult to combine it with their families.”

Goodhand witnessed similar patterns in her own newsrooms.

“Over 15 years, ten babies were born. Not one of them to a woman. They were all born to the male staffers because they had people at home, wives who were able to come in and out of their careers more easily. That was my breakthrough. I started to wonder if women of a certain age started to say, ‘It seems to be an either-or thing, and maybe I have to choose a different track in order to have everything a male counterpart would have’.

“I know a lot of brilliant women in the Free Press newsroom that have chosen not to have children,” Goodhand added. “They have taken that track and they’re awesome journalists. They’re doing great work and possi-

PHOTO COURTESY JAN WONG

Jan Wong, the Globe and Mail’s first and only female Beijing bureau chief.

bly they will move into management. But it seems to be kind of wrong to me that you’d have to make that decision. Because I don’t notice the men making that decision.”

This is not to say that women have not made progress in journalism. Kelly Toughill is the director of the school of journalism at King’s College in Halifax, as well as a hugely accomplished journalist. Before taking on her position at King’s College, she was the deputy executive editor at the Toronto Star, and can remember a time when exhibiting any female elements was seen as a mistake.

“For many years, newspapers thrived in a very macho environment, where the kind of journalism that was most prized was the most aggressive journalism. The way you got into management was by being really, really tough, and exhibiting lots of traits that women have been taught not to value.”

However two Toronto Star reporters recently refuted this theory, Toughill said.

“I’m pleased this month with Michelle Shephard and Robyn Doolittle, who were confident enough to display aspects of their female identity, which is hugely encouraging for all women in news, but particularly newspaper and particularly from two kick ass reporters.

It’s safe for them to publicly explore aspects of their female identity, partly because they have

BRIDGING THE GENDER GAP Convergence looked at the top positions of Canada’s 25 biggest newspapers.

Here’s what we found.

Publishers PHOTO COURTESY MARGO GOODHAND

Margo Goodhand, editor-in-chief of the Edmonton Journal.

excelled in aggressive journalism.”

While progress has been made, there is still more to be done before the gender balance of newspapers accurately represents the people reading them. Smith wants to see more effort on the part of different institutions to ensure diversity and balance.

“Journalism schools need to shake the tree for a more diverse population of students,” she said. “Work in partnership with newspapers, do outreach with communities where journalists don’t normally come from.”

Smith also wants to see managers who can be more flexible, who can make it possible for men and women journalists to be able to have families and still be able to do their job.

“I think people can figure out how to make a journalist’s work day, so they’re working better hours, more family-friendly hours. Let people work it out themselves and let them work from home more.”

Wong said that if women are ever going to make it to the top, they can’t be shy about it.

“Don’t be quiet about what you want. If you want to be editor-in-chief, you say it. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get it, but if you have 50 women in the newsroom asking, there’s a good chance one of them might get it. It’s not a guarantee, but if you don’t ask, it’s a guarantee you’re not going to get it.”

Editors in chief

Managing editors

MALE FEMALE GRAPHIC BY KAT SHERMACK AND JAKE KIGAR

CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

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ILLUSTRATION BY NEHA MAHADIK

A story in six seconds NBC News teams up with a start-up Vine-based company to bring you six seconds of news.

BY GURPREET MANN

CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

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T

he devastation in Kiev’s Independence Square is depicted in 18 pictures and six seconds. What’s provided isn’t the whole story, but rather a glimpse of the destruction.

NowThis News (NTN) on Vine creates six-second videos on the latest breaking news stories.

Though a picture’s worth a thousand words, a six-second video can provide a detailed look into the news: The monument to Berehynia in Ukraine’s Independence Square, standing amidst destruction and flames. The video’s description reads, “After a failed truce in Kiev, at least 50 more people have died and hundreds more are wounded. Police and protesters are armed. #euromaidan.” In these six seconds there is just enough information given to know what’s happening in the Ukraine or, at least, to pique your interest.

NBC News is now teaming up with NTN to co-produce content across all platforms for both web and mobile.

“I think together we’ll really work to push the limits in terms of what people come to expect, not only news content in general but from social news content,” said Steven Belser, vice president of production at NowThis News.

Vine is a Twitter-owned social media app, which debuted in January 2013. NowThis News is a start-up company based in New York and Washington. It was founded by Kenneth Lerer, who had previously co-founded Huffington Post, and Eric Hippeau, the former CEO of Huffington Post. NTN creates videos for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Vine and YouTube, from 6 to 90-seconds in length.

Those who enjoy getting their news content from social media won’t find this a very difficult transition.

“Vine has proven to be a very common way for people to interact with one another, and use it as a story telling tool. By NBC building [this] relationship, it’s showing their willingness to engage with their audience and making it more accessible for them,” said Ellyn Angelotti, from the Poynter Institute in Florida.

Bhupesh Shah, co-ordinator of Seneca College’s social media graduate certificate program is a big fan of social media. He said it wasn’t until Vine came into the picture that things got interesting.

“When you look at consumer behaviour in

30 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

the media, it used to be just text messaging, email and words back and forth, then it was pictures so Instagram became popular…then it migrated to video,” said Shah.

Its shareability is one of its selling factors to young consumers. Six seconds is long enough to tell a story, but short enough that one doesn’t need a storyboard or DSLR camera, said Shah.

“Typically you don’t take a picture or video and keep it for yourself. You want to share it with someone, friends, family etc. The ability to share, is what people like to do,” he said.

George Paravantes, program co-ordinator of multimedia design and development at Humber College said it has a lot to do with the “second-screen experience.” More people use a mobile device while watching TV. “If you’re looking to build interactive experiences, you need to be thinking of social,” said Paravantes. “There’s this behaviour going on where people are watching a show but there’s this trending Twitter feed that’s going on while that’s happening.”

Saul Colt, principal at Kinetic Café and professional speaker on the subject of social media said consumers are attracted to six-second videos because the barrier to entry is low.

Six seconds isn’t long and doesn’t lose people’s attention quickly, but it’s just the right amount of time to tell a quick joke.

“The barrier to entry in creating videos is very low, but also the barrier to consume

them is very low. You can do it on the bus, sitting on the toilet or lying in bed. You can consume a lot, really quickly and you don’t have to think too hard about it. It’s a very easily digestible medium,” said Colt.

And the public’s affinity for the medium could tell us more about how people consume media.

“I think that digital media, with all its strengths, dumbed down the audience’s expectations of what is available in broadcast journalism,” said Jeffrey Dvorkin, director and lecturer of the journalism program at the University of Toronto in Scarborough.

Dvorkin also suggests that the public’s attention span is being challenged by the sheer number of media outlets.

“You have a real digital divide between people who are interested in finding reliable sources of information that are consistent, and people who are interested in just sampling,” he said.

“They’re kind of a news mix-tape that people make for themselves every day. So that people will take a little bit of CBC, Toronto Star, or podcasts.”

With all these media outlets vying for our attention, are six-second newscasts the way to go?

Jethro Ames, Vineographer and winner of the Tribeca Film Fest #6SECFILMS in the “Animate” category, was an art director be-

NowThis News newsroom: putting a modern spin on storytelling and the news.

PHOTO COURTESY STEVEN BELSER

“

They’re kind of a news mix-tape that people make for themselves everyday. fore he began making six-second video advertisements full-time for companies like GE, Bank of America and Fruttare Fruit Bars to name a few. He said it’s just another direction for news outlets to engage their audience.

“I think they’re teasers. It’s another way to engage with a younger audience. [NowThis News] can’t do the full report in six seconds but it’s nice to just address the issue, have a concern, or engage with their viewers and have comments.”

Belser remarked that the videos will lead viewers to another platform.

“Six seconds is tough to get a full news download, so unfortunately headlines are something that will really prevail on that platform,” said Belser. “We would love to drive you to a longer form experience on one of our platforms…where we’re creating a more indepth experience on that news story.”

Ames isn’t the only one in support of the six-second videos. Shah said that although he doubts the videos will have insight in terms of commentary, he likes the idea of catching glimpses of [news] through short clips. He mentioned that seeing short news clips while he surfs the net doesn’t require extra work on his part and said it grabs people’s attention.

“When I think of news, I think of fresh content. What I’ve seen with traditional media now is old news. I wake up in the morning and I’m on Twitter, reading things and if I look at the Globe and Mail newspaper, what I see is everything I’ve already read online,” said Shah.

Belser told Convergence the stories they are interested in are usually those that dominate the social conversation.

“We try to assess the landscape of Vine, what people are talking about, what our audiences are interested in and then create relevant content for them. It’s current events and general news,” said Belser.

Dvorkin is less optimistic about the value

Jeffrey Dvorkin of six-second newscasts.

“I’m sure that it will have a short term success. Whether that translates into an established news consumption tradition, I have my doubts. My sense is that digital media has created different kinds of appetites. There will still be a core of citizens who want substantial and contextual information,” he said.

He said there are still viewers who are information hungry and desire more in-depth analyses of the news.

Colt is less enthused by the idea of getting bits of news in six seconds and prefers more thorough explanations.

“Brevity breeds hysteria. When you don’t have all the information your brain fills in the pieces, usually you would come up with something that’s far more sensationalized than the actual truth. You think about six seconds, it’s all going to be crazy, sensationalized headlines,” he said.

Colt believes shorter news clips are just encouraging people to have shorter attention spans. He finds this “shotgun” approach to news very unsatisfying.

Dvorkin said part of the problem is the trivialization of information. Media organizations fight to be first and struggle to keep all eyes on themselves – while less attention is paid to the substance of a story, such as with interviews.

“I think the latest figures I’ve seen is that the average sound bite in TV news is three seconds. This can hardly be considered a service to the public. It’s possibly very entertaining, but not very effective,” he said.

What lies in the future of video, social media and the news is a tricky question. Some say it’s too soon to tell. Dvorkin said the issue is that many people are consuming information but aren’t going to one place for all of it. The age of significant distraction makes it harder for any organization to keep viewers.

“Younger consumers of media [are] not

very loyal and the challenge for media organizations is to figure out a way to make themselves indispensable, and maybe six-second videos are the way to go but I kinda doubt it.”

Paravantes said getting a quick, even superficial bit of information while consuming content online can be informative and keep you up to date, believing the future of news is going to be a hybrid of both.

“It’s kind of interesting how things are playing out where one or the other has to survive. But I think we’re going to have a future with both these formats,” said Paravantes. “I look at the parallel of when online retailing started and people thought, ‘Oh! Brick and mortar stores are gone.’ I don’t see shopping malls emptying out.”

Social media is a prevalent part of many lives. Trying to find a happy medium with the news and social media might be a challenging, but it’s not impossible. And though six seconds may be the newest trend in social media and news, it won’t be the last.

“We’re in an age of media promiscuity.

People are fooling around a lot. For older, more established media, this seems like a discourtesy,” said Dvorkin.

“But it’s the nature of digital media to be promiscuous.”

NowThis News on Vine can be viewed on your tablet.

PHOTO BY: ADAM KOZAK

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Science-ish journalism The notion of false balance is undermining scientific news coverage. What will the consequences be?

BY PAUL ROCCA ILLUSTRATION BY NEHA MAHADIK

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A

t the height of the Crimean War between British and Russian forces, Lord Cardigan, leader of a British light cavalry unit, was to be ordered by his commanders to pursue and charge a Russian artillery battery believed to be in full retreat.

Instead, his orders were flubbed, and he and his men were led into a full frontal-assault against a stationary, well-armed battalion.

They faced heavy casualties.

The “Charge of the Light Brigade,” as it’s now known, stands as a historic example of the consequences of miscommunication, and the potential dangers in sending the wrong message when it matters. Though the Light Brigade’s charge now only lives in poetry and in the annals of history, the communicators of today can still lead the public to danger with the wrong message – and when it’s the media miscommunicating matters of science, that danger can be even more perilous than an enemy battery.

Stephen Strauss, an author, speaker and science writer with over 30 years of experience working for Canadian media, said the source of the problem in how science is miscommunicated by the press is in the differences in how each operates.

“One of the fundamental realities is that how science communicates and how the media communicates begin with very different premises,” he said. “[It’s] always fundamentally about the same conflict between trying to produce a good story and trying to produce a good methodology.”

The problem is that science can’t often generate the good story the media craves.

The greater body of scientific research relies on a tempered chorus of “hmm” and “maybe…” from researchers, rather than the thrilling guitar solo of a fabled, everything-changes-with-this discovery.

“There’s nothing dramatic in the presentation,” said Strauss. “What it’s about is fundamentally a methodological statement.”

When practiced properly, science is slow and methodical, and so science itself can’t always get the attention it craves on its own merits. Journalists may have a hard time answering the question of “who cares?” when reporting on a newfound mechanism in the interaction between histones and DNA throughout the process of cellular division in eukaryotic cells. The implications of a

study’s result can easily become overstated for the sake of garnering interest.

“The process of discovery is really interesting, and those kinds of stories compel people,” said Michael Kruse, an advanced-care paramedic in the GTA and science advocate.

Kruse, the founder of Bad Science Watch, a non-profit organization fighting for good science in public policy, told Convergence science news is unique to journalism and requires a different approach.

“There seems to be a sort of hyperbole associated with science reporting, that everything is a breakthrough, or everything is going to revolutionize field X, or this will cure cancer, or this will be a possible therapy for disease. Cancer is ‘cured’ every week.

That form of hyperbole does a disservice to how science is done and how it’s understood by the public,” he said.

John Dupuis, a science librarian at York University, agrees there is a tendency in the press to resort to hyperbole in science reporting.

“It’s not as interesting as politics,” he said. “But there’s always that tendency to try to make it as interesting as politics, and that means when you write the lead, it’s got to be something controversial or sexy or dramatic.”

A political story, on the other hand, attracts an audience in part due to its inherent association with the topic of justice. A criminal proceeding or an inquiry into political corruption can draw in an audience because of the appeal of seeing wrongdoers punished, just as a political debate can validate our respective political stances. But science, said Strauss, can’t hold the same subjective appeal.

“Science isn’t about justice. Experimentation isn’t about justice. It’s about what is and what’s there,” he said.

In 1998, a clinical researcher by the name of Andrew Wakefield published a study positing that the application of the MMR vaccine – that’s Measles, Mumps and Rubella – may be responsible for the later development of autism in children, and proposed a new syndrome called “autistic enterocolitis.” Though the paper itself admitted that no causal link had been established, Wakefield claimed that this was ground-breaking evidence of the vaccine’s harm and said

in a press conference four days before the paper’s publication that usage of the MMR vaccine must be suspended pending further research.

The result was a public furor over the supposed link between vaccines and autism that has lasted even after the study was fully retracted by the science journal The Lancet and summarily rejected by every major medical association, including the CDC, WHO, Health Canada and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

For years following the study’s announcement, the media communicated the new (and incorrect) idea that there may be an environmental and therefore preventable cause for autism. According to Strauss, that dialogue was what has appealed to readers’ sense of justice, especially among the parents of autistic children.

“They want to believe it, because they would want to believe that there’s something they can do – and they would want to believe that it wasn’t their fault,” he said.

“It produces a realpolitik in the sense that it’s political. It’s opinions. It’s not simply the data that matters, it’s the kind of answer people want to have. That makes it difficult to report on because, in fact, you’ve moved from the science of evidence to the science of people wanting the result to be a certain kind of way.”

“They had a great story to sell to people, it was very compelling,” said Kruse. “And it also matched with certain anti-corporate, anti-big government sentiments, especially in the US – and that resonated with people.

They were very successful in getting that message out.”

Eventually, a collection of concerned parents, activists, and private practitioners were given a platform on the mainstream news circuit to espouse the uninformed and conspiratorial notion that manufacturers had lied to the public about the risks of vaccines.

In an effort by journalists to appear more neutral, a common format used for these stories was to balance believers with sceptics. But that balance had the opposite effect: It legitimized the story as a scientific controversy.

“There’s this massive scientific consensus on one side, and almost nothing on the other side,” said Dupuis. “But somehow the

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media reports give the ‘almost nothing’ on the other side equal weight to the massive scientific consensus.”

The practice is essentially a hallmark to the media’s concept of fairness and balance: On any issue, journalists must present every dimension and nuance. If the government tables a new law, find someone for and someone against it, and have them argue on the issue in a panel segment on national television.

The underlying theory is that there’s a debate in everything, and by covering every facet of the subject, journalists are free from accusations of bias.

But while that approach to balance may work in politics, it’s incompatible with how science works. It invents controversy where there is none, and can potentially validate the ideas of cranks and pseudoscience proponents.

Kruse refers to this format as the “false balance model.”

“While there may be competition on the cutting edge of science between ideas – when you’re talking about settled science, or science that has been accepted by the community as the best answer – opposing views to that really don’t matter anymore,” he said.

“The danger of that kind of false balance is that you mislead the public into believing that there’s equivocation in the community, and they don’t know what to believe. It becomes very difficult to make a decision.”

That problem even exists for journalists themselves.

“Journalists who aren’t very well versed in the scientific subject they are covering may not be well-equipped to discriminate between peripheral or fringe views and ones that are well-accepted,” said Julia Belluz, a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and the founder of the Science-ish blog at Maclean’s and the Medical Post.

“Sometimes the fringe views end up being right, but it’s important to contextualize that research to make sure that you’re looking at the science in its context and not just the one-off study in isolation and that you’re communicating that context to your audience,” she said.

The consequences of that wrong message were very clear. A 2008 study titled Risk, Its Perception and the Media: The MMR Controversy revealed that, by September 2001, quarterly immunization levels reported by the Information and Statistics Division of

34 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

National Health Services Scotland had plummeted. From an MMR immunization rate of 91.9 per cent among two-year olds before Wakefield’s study, it had dropped to 87.8 per cent – well below the WHO’s recommended rate of 95 per cent.

MMR vaccination rates plummeted in certain localities in Western Europe, Australia, and even the U.S. Though the diseases the MMR vaccine targeted were on the decline and even near eradication by the late ‘90s, numbers of disease contraction have risen since, reaching epidemic levels in localities including California and parts of Ireland.

According to a January 2014 national poll conducted by Forum Research, less than 40 per cent of Canadians immunize themselves

“

climate change may be political.

“Almost all of modern life is based on access to cheap energy. If you take that away, it’s a conflict,” he said.

Loxton, who’s experienced in challenging unscientific beliefs, uses the example of a 2012 Angus Reid poll on belief in Bigfoot as an example of how well the public accepts pseudoscience.

“Twenty-nine per cent of Americans and 21 per cent of Canadians think Bigfoot is definitely or probably real. And that is your kind of go-to example of a tin foil, hat-wearing kooky belief,” he said. “When you’re trying to do communication on these topics, you’re up against the fact that most of the population is in a general sense sort of friendly to fringe

People are reporting both sides of the climate change debate as if they have equal merit and weight.

against the flu. The most common reason given for the abstention is a mistrust of vaccines.

And though the public’s trust in vaccinations is a victim of science miscommunication, it isn’t the only one. The validity of global climate change, though supported by nearly all recognized climate scientists, has too, become a controversy within the public domain thanks to the false-balance model.

“People are reporting both sides of the climate change debate as if they have equal merit and weight in the scientific community when they don’t,” said Belluz.

“The mainstream media has really dragged their feet on climate change, and the false balance continues,” said Daniel Loxton, illustrator, author, and editor of Junior Sceptic. “Journalists and scientists should be in the same business – in the truth-finding and truth-telling business – but very often they’re at odds.”

Strauss, on the other hand, suggests that the motivation behind the rejection of global

Julia Belluz beliefs.”

And journalists are a part of that population, too. Despite the dangers in the misreporting of science, Strauss emphasizes the truth does eventually come to light, and journalists can (and should) ensure that it makes it to the papers.

“It’s not up to the journalists to do that.

It’s not up to the journalists to have to figure out which of the people is right,” he said. “[And it’s] not the journalist’s fault if they reported on what was reported, and leading publications had gone through a peer-review process. What journalists have to do is go back and re-report.”

“We’re fallible,” said Kruse. “The ideas that science comes up with are not the perfect picture of the world. Everything that we read should be taken with a grain of salt, and with the understanding that this could change by the end of the week.”

As for what journalists can do to best avoid bad science, Strauss suggests some-

thing unorthodox to what most journalists are taught in school: go back to your sources and confirm their facts.

“I go back to the people who I’ve interviewed and I say ‘here’s how I’ve quoted you, here’s how I referenced what you said,’ Because what I find – and I’m just always astounded, and it just happens – I’ve misunderstood it. I’ve misunderstood what they’ve said. I heard it, I recorded and transcribed the interview, and I still got it wrong.”

Loxton agrees that building a conversation with experts is essential for reliable science journalism.

“When you’re writing about topics that require some kind of expertise, very often, I think, the only solution is to take more time and ask experts,” he said.

“The reality is that, in ways that doesn’t exist in, say, the political realm of reporting, it’s easy for you as a journalist to get the facts wrong. Even if you kind of know it, it’s easy to get it wrong,” said Strauss.

Fortunately, the future isn’t so grim. Belluz says there is still a platform for good science reportage on the Internet.

“There are pockets of excellence,” said Belluz. “But science sections in traditional media outlets have shrunk or disappeared and people who are reporting on science are reporting on many other things at the same time, so it’s hard to say if it’s improving overall, but I see a lot of really great work out there. And the web is such a good platform for that.”

“There’s much more scepticism about the claims being made by the anti-vaccination movement, and the realization that those claims have harms attached to them,” said Kruse. “It does seem that most of the articles I read in the mainstream press there is the understanding that these people are wrong, and that there are harms attached to them. That, I think, is good.”

But is there still room for science reportage in the mainstream press? And can science news be attractive to the average reader while still maintaining accuracy?

Strauss, when asked this question, offered a long pause before responding with a pensive “sort of.”

“I thought long and hard about this, and the thing is you want to be able to say ‘yes, I think you can.’”

TIMELINE 1993: Andrew Wakefield publishes a series of medical reports alleging a link between the measles virus and Crohn’s disease.

1996: Wakefield receives over £430,000 in undisclosed fees from a legal firm seeking litigation against vaccine manufacturers to produce a study establishing vaccines as harmful.

1997: Wakefield files a patent for an alternative vaccine, writing he has proven a link between the MMR vaccine and Crohn’s disease.

1998: Wakefield publishes a new study for The Lancet purporting the MMR vaccine as a potential cause for autism and bowel disorders in children.

2004: England’s Channel 4 broadcasts a one-hour special investigation by journalist Brian Deer critical of Wakefield’s work.

2005: Wakefield sues Channel 4 and Deer for libel. Deer uncovers the undisclosed fees he received in 1996, and examples of professional misconduct for his 1998 study.

The lawsuit is eventually dropped in 2007.

2007: Wakefield attracts the attention of Playboy model Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy appears on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live to promote Wakefield’s work.

2010: Wakefield is found guilty by the UK General Medical Council of professional misconduct, and is barred from him from medical practice. The Lancet formally retracts Wakefield’s study.

Today: A March 2014 study contributes to the growing consensus that autism is developed prenatally in the brain, and not environmentally post-birth.

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Resisting propaganda Mainstream news coverage is laced with indoctrination, but resisting implicit values offers hope for the future.

BY THOMAS ROHNER

F

reedom of the press is integral to mainstream media’s self-identity. But what people – or institutions – say about themselves should always be taken with a grain of salt, because in our desire to believe the best of ourselves, we tend to be biased; or flat out lie. In reality, freedom has been pressed right out of the newsroom, and sits on the curbside with other well-intentioned illusions.

“The normal way is just to internalize the kinds of beliefs that are mainstream doctrine and that will in fact be conducive to moving ahead in professional aspects of life,” Prof.

Noam Chomsky said in his Boston office in

36 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

an interview with Convergence.

Chomsky is one of the most influential academics and activists of the last hundred years, in part because he constantly steps outside the ivory tower, in jeans and knit sweaters, to talk to almost anybody with a serious, skeptical curiosity of mainstream media’s messages – even lowly college students. His soft-spoken and humble demeanour – listening, questioning, asserting – belie the startling implications of his analysis of our “free” press. His conclusion that freedom of expression has been systematically excluded defies mainstream doctrine, much like the peculiar architecture that houses his modest office

seems to defy gravity. Tucked in an inconspicuous corner on MIT’s campus, his office is piled, predictably, with towers of books and papers, idle, for now, in the sunshine streaming through the window.

And how is freedom of the press neutralized? Through propaganda at a terribly effective and subtle level.

Ass of U and Me

“When you have a commercial media system, the economic basis of that system is advertising,” Danny Schechter, a former producer at CNN and ABC, and an Emmyaward-winning journalist-turned-media-critic

told Convergence. “That’s propaganda at a very pervasive and insidious level.” This system sees audiences as products to sell to a market of advertisers. And like all products, audiences range from good (with money and desire to buy) to poor (and unimportant).

News – or any content – is just filler for the main attraction: advertisement.

Propaganda isn’t just commercial, though; it’s governmental too. Government has been wise to influencing media for propaganda purposes since WWI, when the Committee on Public Information found “that one of the best ways of controlling news was flooding news channels with ‘facts’, or…official information.” “By dint of endless repetition,” Chomsky wrote in Necessary Illusions, “… the required doctrine has become established truth. Virtually no deviations are to be found.”

The resources at the government’s disposal for “controlling news” is matched only by that of large corporations and business associations.

What chance do journalists attempting to discern truth have?

Of course we’re not as stupid as all that. We often know when we’re being lied to, when stories don’t quite make sense. But in the absence of more honest or factual accounts, what else can we believe? “What is at issue is not the honesty of the opinions expressed or the integrity of those who seek the facts,” Chomsky has written, “but rather the…general framework imposed for the presentation of a certain view of the world.” There are dedicated, inspired journalists digging for truth every day, but propaganda works at the level of mass media, where messages can reach a huge audience. If you fling enough mud initially, the truth of what lies beneath remains obscured by a film of filth.

The Internet may prove to be a powerful tool to combat propaganda. But there are limiting factors: the big players in mass media already dominate online news coverage; alternative sources generally rely on advertising revenue, making them less alternative; and who has the resources to produce original news coverage that can rival the reach of big players?

We’re all products of our society, and we get sucked into some of its lies, while seeing through others.

“You see it all the time,” Chomsky said of internalizing mainstream doctrines. “Some-

times it’s so dramatic it’s shocking.” He pointed to a comment by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in early March in reaction to Russia’s occupation of Crimea. “You just don’t, in the 21st century, behave…by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” Kerry said.

Gee, that’s embarrassing. Iraq and the long-abandoned allegations of weapons of mass destruction in 2003 is the first, most obvious contradiction that comes to mind. The New York Times, complicit with the bogus allegations, even apologized to its readers for misleading them. “It was so outlandish that [I felt] there’d be a big response to it, but there was virtually nothing,” Chomsky said of Kerry’s remark. “It was just repeated.”

We’re in it together

As Schechter pointed out, this critique could be an “analysis that leads to paralysis”.

It’s overwhelming and plain depressing to realize our thoughts and values are coerced and manipulated by society’s power centres to toe the line. But “careerism” exists in every profession, not just the media industry.

“The difference is in the media we have a tendency to think that doesn’t exist,” veteran Toronto-based journalist and author Linda McQuaig told Convergence. “We have a tendency to think the media is all about truth and getting facts out.” It’s not surprising, she added, that the increasingly concentrated corporate ownership of media want to see their values and opinions reflected in news coverage.

“It’s pretty easy to see what’s going to be the easy route to success in those organizations.”

The good news is that resisting the internalization of mainstream doctrines is in the power of every Joe Schmo.

“Anybody can do it. I mean it’s not a great unique talent,” Chomsky said. “It’s not like becoming a great violinist, let’s say, which I can’t do, but other people can do. This is something that is just ordinary common sense.”

“But it’s hard to do,” Chomsky added. “It’s hard to break out of conformist sentiment.”

The struggle against conformity, which we all fight to some degree, has led to what Prof.

John Downing calls “constructive schizophrenia”. Downing, professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University’s Global Media Research Center, has taught politics and communications PHOTOS BY: THOMAS ROHNER

Chomsky’s Frank Ghery-designed office building on MIT’s campus.

all over the world. “Psychologically speaking, how do young journalists survive when they get out into the news system… knowing that certain things ought to be reported in different ways, but are unable to get any leverage to make that happen?” The constructive schizophrenic lives as two people. “You’re not going to have the comfort, ever, of being one person whose personal views and whose professional practice sort of neatly jive with each other.”

This can be a lonely existence, but mitigated by finding “comrades in arms”, Downing said, someone who will listen and commiserate: “What’s the next piece of crud they’ll come up with?”

On the other hand, Kevin Gosztola, a journalist with the collaborative online news outlet Fire Dog Lake, and who has covered the Chelsea Manning trial extensively, told Convergence networking shouldn’t define your journalism. “I’m doing this journalism without depending on my proximity to government officials,” he said.

The rash monkey

Luckily, conformist mentality is often based on an obvious lie or transparent assumption.

If you can point to the naked emperor, you have a starting point for responsible, important journalism.

“There’s an interesting category of truisms,” Chomsky said, “truisms

which are universally accepted and universally rejected at the same time. So take, for example, the Golden Rule: ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Everyone theoretically accepts it, but in practice everyone rejects it.”

Chomsky again turned to the Crimean crisis for an example. “The closest analogy is probably Guantanamo. The Russians are protecting a naval base, in fact their only warm water port, in Sevastopol. The U.S., 100 years ago, took over eastern Cuba, with no justifications, and they weren’t part of the U.S., no historical connection the way Crimea has to Russia…They took it over in what they called a treaty, but it was at gunpoint.” By the Golden Rule, the U.S. should’ve been condemned and sanctioned the same way Russia is being punished over Crimea. Instead, there’s a double standard.

There’s no shortage of assumptions at work in the newsroom and they can actually be easy to find if you resist, or at least contextualize, the urge toward professional success with professional integrity and thinking for yourself.

Chomsky provided a straight-forward example. Journalists “have to claim that the

U.S. and Canada are free market, private enterprise economies,” otherwise you’re “from Neptune”. International free trade agreements, for example, have nothing to do with free trade, he said. “They’re highly protectionist. Most of them are not about trade at all; they’re about investor rights. They’re certainly not agreements, because the populations are usually opposed. So if you take something like NAFTA, the only accurate words are North American.” Sometimes, facts or events that threaten entrenched assumptions are swept under the rug or forgotten: “Computers were developed for decades inside the U.S. system,” Chomsky said. A few floors below his office, in fact. “Finally the hard research was done, at tax payer’s expense, and handed over to people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to market. Gates became the richest man in the world by cleverly adapting state-created technology and research and then gaining a monopoly. That’s anti-capitalist.” The myth of our “free” market runs parallel to the illusion of our “free” press; both are entrenched in the newsroom.

Part of what makes tackling truisms daunting is the fear of being controversial and factually wrong. “The higher a monkey

climbs the more he shows his ass,” is an old maxim implying this fear. As McQuaig points out, “You have to be extremely good at getting your facts right, because if you get your facts wrong, you’ll be in even deeper trouble than you would be normally.”

But it’s not just about getting the facts right. “What allows you to write about the facts is not some sort of rational analysis or weighing of the facts,” historian, philosopher and social critic John Ralston Saul said in an interview in his Toronto home. “It’s something far broader than that.” The ‘something broader’ is bringing all of our human qualities to bear on the story. In his book, On Equilibrium, Saul identifies our human qualities as common sense, ethics, imagination, intuition, memory and reason. The notion of objectivity in the newsroom, one of the most pervasive and ridiculous assumptions in media, places such an emphasis on facts and reasoning that the rest of our human qualities are marginalized, to the detriment of our reporting, and in support of existing power structures. “Balance is not about one of those, one of those and one of those. It’s about knowing enough to know what things mean.”

To that end, Saul said “it is virtually im-

WORTHY VS. UNWORTHY VICTIMS One of the consequences of mainstream media’s biases, is the treatment of victims as worthy and unworthy, based on their nation’s relationship with U.S. imperialism. So, for example, when a priest was murdered in communist Poland in 1984, his story received far more and detailed coverage than four U.S. women raped and murdered by the Salvadoran National Guards in 1980, where the U.S. was working hard to legitimize a corrupt election and install an allied, despotic politician. Communists, on the other hand, needed to be brought to swift and vengeful justice. (source: Manufacturing Consent, 1988)

CBS News

NY Times Articles

Front page articles

Editorials

News programs

Evening news programs

Jerzy Popieluszko

78

10

3

46

23

4 U.S. women

26

3

0

22

10

This chart shows news coverage by the NY Times and CBS News for an 18-month period after initial reports of the victims’ murder or disappearance.

The quantitative difference is obvious, but there was also an enormous qualitative difference: Jerzy Popieluszko’s murder was accompanied with indignant calls for justice and extensive, even gory detail of his injuries. The women were not treated similarly, and calls for justice were conspicuously absent or tempered.

38 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

“

...wage labour was standardly called wage slavery, simply because of the destruction of personal dignity and independence.”

Noam Chomsky

possible to be a good journalist if you haven’t ready heavily, heavily, heavily,” in order to constantly challenge personal principles, ideas and beliefs. Seeking diverse experiences, through volunteering, for example, and connecting directly to people and places is crucial too. By giving yourself the “tools of thought and imagination”, when the time to act (or write) comes, you’ll be “jam-packed with all of this brilliance, which gradually mutates...into the way you’re going to handle things.” The intercrossing of knowledge, experience and self-awareness allows you to “smell bullshit quite fast” and to act in the moment, at crunch time. “If you’re left in the comfort of this peculiar class system, which means you only talk to people like yourself, then you don’t understand how to communicate, how to write, how to put forward your

ideas,” Saul said.

This idea of balance and fairness, of bringing all of our human qualities to bear on a story, is directly opposed to the notion of objectivity taught in journalism schools and perpetuated in newsrooms. Moral relativism and false equivalency are only two of the setbacks this false sense of objectivity leads to.

“I think in the effort to be objective what you end up doing is adopting the least adversarial way of putting forward your journalism,” Gosztola said.

“The main self-deception of journalists is they think if you’re objective in your methodology, it makes you objective in your journalism and that’s a false assumption,” Paul Jay, who produced CBC’s main debate show CounterSpin until 2004, and the founder and

The problem is...

What is to be done?

“The fact is mainstream news rein-

“What’s missing in journalism

forces class and cultural assump-

schools all across North America

tions every time it does a story. It’s

is any sense of history. You can

not about investigating the world

graduate with a master’s of jour-

and coming to a conclusion. It’s

nalism with one high school history

about a set of assumptions based

credit.”

on who has power and how things

-Paul Jay

are owned.” -Paul Jay “You’re responsible for the pre“Anybody who gets a job within

dictable consequences of your

a week is going to ... notice that

actions. You’re not responsible for

they’re being pushed to not ask

the predictable consequences of

themselves questions ... unless they

somebody else’s actions.”

have the character or are stubborn

-Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing

by nature.” -John Ralston Saul

Consent documentary

CEO of The Real News Network, told Convergence from his Baltimore office. Propaganda is based on a set of assumptions, Jay said. “That there’ll always be rich, there’ll always be poor, there are no alternatives to capitalism, that war is inevitable. To question those is like questioning gravity.”

Inside and Out

But why shouldn’t we question gravity, at least from time to time? A hazy mythology of an apple falling on a celebrated scientist’s head doesn’t exactly leave a clear, confident understanding of an invisible force keeping objects in place. The newsroom, if freedom of the press is real, needs to be constantly questioning itself, especially its most basic tenets.

“Look, it’s now 50 years since the U.S. invaded South Vietnam,” Chomsky said. “Try to find in the entire Western press a phrase referring to the U.S. invasion. It doesn’t exist.”

A heroic country spreading a heroic ideology around the globe couldn’t possibly be guilty of an act of aggression, such as an invasion.

“An honest journalist has two choices,” Chomsky said. “One is to tell the truth, and be out of the system, because you cannot write these things and stay within the system. You’re regarded as a lunatic…The other possibility is just to adapt to it somehow and try to do what you can within it.”

There are at least two windows of opportunity within the system to increase the diversity of opinions by stretching the bounds of acceptable debate.

One is in the rare instance when there is a rift in elite consensus on an important topic.

This happened in Britain in 2003, Andrew Mullen, senior lecturer in politics at Northumbria

CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

39

“

People would prefer to be free, independent individuals” University in UK, told Convergence. Some media outlets temporarily opposed the Iraq invasion. “You tend to find that media themselves mirror elite division, and that there will be a broader form of debate within the media as a result,” Mullen said. This is a top-down scenario.

The other window is a bottom-up scenario.

“Where the public is educated and very animated about a particular issue, they can actually force a response from the political elites and the media can act as a mouthpiece for that,” Mullen said. Funny. That’s exactly what media claim to do on a daily basis. When elite consensus was restored on the 2003 Iraq invasion, for example, millions of people around the world took to the streets to demonstrate. The media couldn’t ignore that, and an opportunity for a broader range of debate presented itself.

Whether you work within mainstream media or not, quality journalism constantly questions society’s most entrenched assumptions.

Mullen said media labours under the illusion it acts as a “watchdog on the exercise of power”, and represents a marketplace of ideas. “Ideas are actually quite severely constrained within boundaries of thinkable thought.”

The fly that could

The great American poet and journalist, Walt Whitman, considered himself somewhat of a teacher. “He most honours my style,” he wrote in Song of Myself, “who learns under it to destroy the teacher.” This is the most an honest teacher can hope for: that each generation, rather than pay lip service to power and position – careerism – build upon worthy foundations.

When talking about human nature we’re speculating, Chomsky said, but history, reason and experience have led him to believe people have a built-in instinct for freedom.

“Kind of like a fly trying to escape a spider web,” he said. “People would prefer to be free, independent individuals, not under the

40 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

NOAM CHOMSKY control of others. Not dominated by others.”

As always, Chomsky has an example to draw on. Around the time of the industrial revolution in the U.S. 150 years ago, there was a “very free press” with a wide array of working class press. “People were bitterly protesting that they were being forced into an industrial system in which they became what they called slaves,” Chomsky said. “The general position was that if a journeyman, an artisan creates something and sells it for a price, he keeps his own personal dignity. If he sells himself for a price, meaning he becomes a wage labourer, he loses his independence, his dignity. He’s selling his person. In fact wage labour was standardly called wage slavery, simply because of the destruction of personal dignity and independence.” This was even a slogan of the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln, Chomsky said.

Our society is deeply invested in denying and institutionalizing this loss of dignity, but the struggling fly, wings incessantly buzzing, can nonetheless be heard.

Danny Schechter would like to see marches on media outlets. “A hundred-thousand people would march on Washington in anti-war protest,” he said of the 2003 Iraq war, “but nobody would march on the Washington Post, which, at that time, was promoting the war almost religiously – because they think the government is in power. They don’t realize that we live in a corporate state, and that media is the front door of the corporate world.”

Paul Jay created TRNN specifically to combat propaganda by refusing advertising, corporate or government funding, or by blindly regurgitating news wires. He’s dared to create news that motivates, rather than paralyzes, ordinary people. “Most ordinary people know, especially in the working class, amongst poorer people, the way the world is being presented by mainstream news isn’t their world. It doesn’t describe what they

encounter in their life…We focus more on a vision that people can fight for. It’s very hard to mobilize people towards having power, if there isn’t a policy that you can actually imagine what that would look like.”

Linda McQuaig, who was pulled from her coverage of tax evasion by the wealthy by a “top-down intervention” at The Globe and Mail, said mainstream media has become shorthand for “media without much credibility.” But she’s buoyed by events like Occupy Wall Street, where the issue of wealth inequality was thrust onto the media agenda.

“The encouraging part is we know that pulse is still beating. Out there is all kinds of resistance, dissatisfaction, skepticism, anger at what’s happening in our society and the increasing control by powerful corporations.”

And Andrew Mullen founded the International Propaganda Model Project to link researchers from around the world testing the applicability of Chomsky’s work on propaganda.

Nobody could blame Chomsky if he had taken a quiet retirement. But for that struggling fly. “I think those are deep-rooted instincts which are crushed by propaganda, by institutions which compel people to accept them,” he said of the working class press resistant to wage slavery, “but I presume they’re just below the surface and can break out at any time.” Even the most entrenched, coercive assumptions can be dislodged. “There is a chance, I think, if illusions are dismantled.

Which they can be.”

Curiosity piqued?

Read on!

1. Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman 2. Necessary Illusions, by Noam Chomsky 3. Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West,

by John Ralston Saul 4. On Equilibrium, by John Ralston Saul

NOT another Ford headline Convergence pays homage to the Dagenais-Mentuck Test and follows the trail that led to endless headlines.

BY GLYN BOWERMAN

J

ennifer Pagliaro spends a lot of time in courthouses. Since Jan. 2013, she has been working as a crime reporter for the Toronto Star, which often entails a lot of stumbling around in bureaucratic shadows, intuiting questions and hoping for answers. A hunch can propel a writer, or a tip. Ultimately, she and her editors must pick their battles and, once picked, prepare to dig in.

Pagliaro has been one of the foremost voices covering the raft of revelations contained in search warrant information about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. She dug in.

The story got off to a grueling start, with Pagliaro and the lawyer representing the Star, Ryder Gilliland, “sitting in Scarborough court, which was horrible. It’s like this terrible courthouse in Nowheresville,” trying to obtain information connected to a massive guns and drugs raid Toronto police dubbed Project Traveller.

“It was really frustrating at first,” said Pagliaro.

The Star filed an application to see the documents. When Pagliaro wrote a story about the paper’s attempt to obtain the information, other news outlets joined the fray, putting up a unified front.

“The Crown, all along, tried to argue that there were these innocent third parties that shouldn’t have their information revealed,” said Pagliaro. “It was difficult because there were things that were discussed in court that we weren’t able to publish, but we knew that ILLUSTRATION BY: DOMINIKA GUDANIEC

one of the innocent third parties was Ford.”

Journalists’ counsel managed, after much debate, to obtain nearly 500 pages, in various states of redaction, of information police used to obtain search warrants (ITO), as part of an initiative police called Project Brazen 2. With the ITO making front page news, Toronto voters gained sharp insight, otherwise fated to be buried in the courts, about His Worship: covert meetings, public drinking, suspicious drop-offs, wiretaps.

This sort of information is public, in theory, but procedural barriers often spring up in practice. For a journalist, for the past two decades there has been an invaluable tool to break past these barriers. But it takes time, money and a lot of patience.

Journalists in Canada enjoy no special rights pertaining to their craft. Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of expression, but, as far as guaranteed rights to access important documents for members of the press – well there are none.

Twenty years ago, however, there was a landmark decision, Dagenais v. Canadian Broadcasting Corp., which made suppressing documents more difficult for judges. Essentially, the burden of proof is on the judge, who must show that to reveal certain information to the press would seriously interfere with the administration of justice. This was the result of a challenge from the CBC, which had produced a fictional series on sexual abuse at a Newfoundland orphanage, entitled “The Boys of St. Vincent” based on actual events.

At the time, a similar case of sexual abuse was before the courts, and the defence for the accused requested an injunction, which threatened to bar the series from airing. Both sides pushed their case, with CBC counsel relying on the relatively nascent Charter, and its specific mention of freedom of expression, to defend its right to air the series. This opinion was upheld in court, and set a precedent for press freedom in this country.

Today, Canadian media and its legal counsel relies frequently on what – in conjunction with a later legal battle involving the Toronto Star – became known as the Dagenais/Mentuck Test (DMT), for access to important legal documents, evidence and information.

Pagliaro has already seen many applications of Dagenais in the pursuit of the story,

42 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

but the Ford documents were the most difficult to obtain, and the most compelling. The DMT, Pagliaro said, made it possible to tell this story.

“I think that it’s a really important tool ...

It makes it possible for us to show the court how important it is for this information to be public.”

“It’s important that the justice system be as open and transparent as possible,” said Toronto Star lawyer, Ryder Gilliland.

He points out there are some instances where publication bans are mandatory, but otherwise, public access to information be-

“

I think, by and large, judges today are very much aware of the Dagenais case Ryder Gilliland

fore the courts is essential to transparency.

“I think, by and large, judges today are very much aware of the Dagenais case and attempt to apply it,” said Gilliland. “Over the past 20 years, many cases involving publication bans have been appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada; the Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly said that you have to follow the principles in Dagenais.”

Gilliland said the DMT is raised in pretty much every case where there is a publication ban involved.

Daniel Henry was the instructing lawyer, in-house at CBC, during the Dagenais appeal.

Henry was responsible for the approach to the appeal, ultimately accepted by the court. He said the concerns this appeal addressed had been at issue for media and their legal representatives for some time.

“Early in my career I used to occasionally be called to court because a publication ban had been put in place which stopped our re-

porters from reporting what were otherwise public proceedings,” said Henry.

“Lawyers for the media were not notified in advance, did not have an opportunity – a practical opportunity and a real opportunity – to make arguments about what, effectively, was a stripping-away of media reporters’ rights to speech.”

Section 2(b) of the Charter, the part guaranteeing free speech, includes the media.

Henry said the opportunity to appeal publication bans while cases are ongoing is an important part of the right to free speech. It was this argument which led to the Dagenais v.

CBC ruling and, ultimately, greater freedom for the press.

Asked why this freedom is important, Henry points to the case of Ashley Smith, a Moncton teen who struggled with mental health issues, and died in custody at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener under questionable circumstances.

Henry was also the instructing solicitor for the CBC during its push to lift publication bans surrounding Smith’s death. The CBC’s investigative program, The Fifth Estate, launched five court applications before receiving a ruling from the Ontario Court of Appeal, which said certain exhibits in Smith’s case should be made available. One of those exhibits was a video which showed multiple examples of Smith’s treatment from various correctional officers and, sickeningly, her last living moments as guards looked on while she asphyxiated herself to death.

“The benefit is obvious,” said Henry.

“Without that video being accessible to the public, we would not have had the public debate that we had, we would not have had the pressure on the system that we had, we would not have had the lessons that were learned in the end. So openness there made a big difference to public policy, not to mention the satisfaction of Ashley Smith’s mother in the process: somebody who had to live with the results of the system and who wanted it to be changed.”

Henry also points to the Rob Ford case as another important application of Dagenais, saying the release gave voters access to information about their mayor and his conduct in office; information, Henry said, that may not have come to light at all without the Dagenais precedent.

Jonathan Goldsbie, who covers Toronto

“

I don’t think a non-lawyer would be able to get very far...

Jonathan Goldsbie

municipal issues for the weekly NOW Magazine, was covering the Traveller and Brazen 2 stories from a very different position, and it raises questions about the future of journalism and the public’s right to know.

Initially, without the benefit of legal representation, Goldsbie and NOW were having difficulty gaining access to information The Star and other major, lawyered media players were able to obtain. The fight began with attempts to unseal warrants from Project Traveller, which was believed to involve Mayor Ford in some part, and culminated in mass arrests and seizures of illegal property. Access to Traveller warrants received a lot of push back from the Crown – something Gilliland said was due in a large part to the number of accused and variety of charges involved.

When media caught wind of another project, Brazen 2, they found gaining access to those warrants markedly easier. Still, without legal representation, Goldsbie found it difficult to gain access to decisions in real time.

“That was deeply frustrating,” said Goldsbie. He did manage to get NOW on the email list for the release of the Brazen 2 ITO, but the massive PDF file of semi-redacted information was too large to receive. Eventually, NOW got a copy in person, stored on a CD. “In the case of the Project Traveller stuff ... , I found that to be a much more challenging and intimidating experience,” said Goldsbie.

“I felt very conscious of being at a disadvantage there. It was one of the first times I felt that a real structural disadvantage in writing a story in that I knew there was nothing I could do to even get on to the same level as people who have direct access to the documents, via

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE TORONTO STAR

The Toronto Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro is no stranger to the Dagenais-Mentuck test.

the lawyers.

“That was actually pretty dispiriting at the time.”

The challenges facing Goldsbie as he tried to cover these stories raises an important question about the future of the free press – a possible future, given the massive decline in resources and layoffs at daily news outlets, and the ubiquity of unpaid citizen bloggers and alternative online news – when publications can no longer afford to hire lawyers to fight for access in court.

“This is the first time, through the various Ford related things, that I’ve really become aware of the extent to which media outlets use lawyers,” said Goldsbie.

“Certainly I knew that papers have media lawyers for civil matters around defamation,” said Goldsbie. “I never fully appreciated the degree to which papers use lawyers for the sake of actually hunting down information and prying things open.”

“I don’t think a non-lawyer would be able to get very far,” said Goldsbie “Assuming that the basic legal and policy structure that we have now stays in place, I find it extraordinarily difficult to conceive of a situation in which a self-represented me-

dia person would successfully get stuff unsealed.”

Pagliaro said even The Star is facing declining resources in light of the changing media landscape. Fighting these battles is a challenge, even for a major daily, and the smaller publications are forced to lean on the larger ones.

“As it continues to shrink, we’re going to run into more and more problems,” said Pagliaro.

“Fighting something that long in court is a huge cost that a lot of smaller news organizations I don’t think would be able to afford at this point.”

Gilliland said these declining resources are a valid concern.

“The tighter money is, the less likely they are going to be to mount these challenges,” said Gilliland.

“If that were to become a trend, and there were less challenges, I do think there’s a real risk that we’d lose some of the advances that we’ve gained. Because I do think ... the fact that the media has been so aggressive in pursuing open courts over the last two decades [has] been instrumental in getting us to where we are.”

CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

43

Enemies of the Internet As journalists rely more and more on blogs and social media platforms to tell the news, repressive governments fight to maintain a tight control over Internet content. Around the world, governments are putting policies in place to restrict the flow of information. Reporters Without Borders has compiled a list of Enemies of the Internet for 2014. Here are some of the worst offenders as well as their ranking on RWB’s Freedom of information Index (from 1- the best to 180- the worst).

Gambia

Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: 155 In July of 2013 the Gambian government made some disturbing changes to its Information and Communications Act, a law that already limits the freedom of information in the country. The amended act made “spreading of false news against the government or public officials” punishable by up to 15 years in prison or a fine of 3 million dalasis, the equivalent of approximately $99,200 Canadian.

S n

Colombia

Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: 126

Cartagena-based freelance journalist Eva Durán, who is also an animal rights campaigner, has gone into hiding after receiving death threats on Jan. 18, 2014. She recently wrote a story about a contract worth more than half a million U.S. dollars, set up by the Barranquilla city hall for the construction of an abattoir where abandoned pets and other urban animals would be slaughtered. She also says she has become the target of a smear campaign by media who are controlled by local authorities.

e C China

Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: 175

In the year since the installation of Xi Jinping as President in March of 2013, China has tightened its grip on news and information, stepping up the daily censorship directives to the media, while journalists and cyber-dissidents continue to be arrested. At least 74 netizens, including Nobel peace prizewinner Liu Xiaobo, and 30 journalists are being detained in China, making it the world’s biggest prison for news providers.

Illustrations by Cameron Da Silva Photos and flags from Wiki Commons Words by Paolo Serpe and Hermione Wilson

Turkey

Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: 154

d e

On February 6, the Turkish parliament adopted a controversial amendment to its Internet regulatory laws. The law strengthening Internet censorship gives the Turkish Telecommunications Directorate the ability to block websites and obtain user information from Internet service providers without getting a court order. On March 7, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Rayyip Erdogan announced the government was considering further Internet restrictions that would involve closing down local YouTube and Facebook accounts. The country has since blocked Twitter and YouTube after audio recordings, allegedly of senior officials talking about a military operation in Syria, was posted on the video sharing website.

S

r o United States of America

Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: 46 On Nov. 15, Jeremy Hammond, a WikiLeaks informant and cyber-activist linked to Anonymous, became the fourth whistleblower of 2013 to receive a long jail sentence in the U.S. when he was sentenced to 10 years plus three years supervised release, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Information Hammond obtained by hacking into the global intelligence company Stratfor, was posted on another platform by Barrett Brown, a journalist who faces 105 years in prison for various charges, including piracy.

Venezuela

Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: 116 In February 2014 the Venezuelan government blocked citizen access to uploading and viewing pictures on Twitter, saying that cybercriminals were using the social network to encourage a coup. On November 9, 2013, Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) censored 50 websites for reporting on parallel dollar exchange rates and inflation during the country’s ongoing economic crisis. President Nicolas Maduro says these reports incited economic war and were part of a conspiracy.

Silence descends on Gitmo With heightened security and lowered transparency, Convergence interviews veteran journalists on the changes brewing at Guantanamo detention camp.

BY HERMIONE WILSON

S

afe. Humane. Legal. Transparent.

That is the motto of the Guantanamo detention camp. And yet reporters who have been covering the Guantanamo Bay detention camp since it opened in 2002 would beg to differ, especially with that last part.

“We can only see what they allow us to see and in this moment . . . we’re blind,” said Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg. “They’ve created this incredibly hostile, blind, non-transparent atmosphere down there.”

And she should know. Rosenberg, the Miami Herald’s military affairs correspondent, has been to Guantanamo Bay, or “Gitmo” as it is popularly known, so many times in the last 12 years she has lost count. An average of one week every month since 2002 is her best guess.

With the rapid turnover of reporters and personnel alike at Gitmo, the Herald’s Rosenberg is one of the few constants. Journalists consult her when they are preparing to visit the detention centre, seeking her advice on

PHOTO COURTESY MICHELLE SHEPHARD

The Toronto Star’s national security reporter Michelle Shephard in Guantanamo Bay.

what to expect and where the real stories might be hiding. Soldiers leading media tours sometimes look to her to confirm their facts about the facilities.

“They’ll be giving tours of the camp and Carol is constantly correcting them” said her

colleague and friend, Toronto Star reporter Michelle Shephard.

Shephard has been to Gitmo 26 times. Her first visit was in January 2006 when she came to attend Canadian detainee Omar Khadr’s first day in a military court. Shephard was surprised to see a drive-in theatre and a McDonald’s.

“It was absolutely surreal. It’s just so hard to put together all you’d heard about this place and then come to this base in Cuba that, like most military bases around the world, they try and make into a little America,” said Shephard.

Shephard has been with the Toronto Star since 1997, but it wasn’t until after she covered the September 11 attacks in New York that the Star decided to make her their fulltime national security reporter.

“At first it was a very steep learning curve because I knew very little about the field and... the countries I’d be reporting on and then later travelling to,” said Shephard. “From the beginning Guantanamo was of great interest to me, mainly because of Omar Khadr.”

Rosenberg recalls her trip in January 2002 when she and a group of 19 other journalists were invited to tour the new Guantanamo Bay detention facilities. It was only intended to be a tour of the buildings at the camp, but as luck would have it Rosenberg was on hand to witness the arrival of the first 20 detainees.

As the media relations strategy shifted and journalists’ movements in and out of Gitmo became more controlled, Rosenberg dug in and ended up covering the initial months of the brand new facility.

“The military was very eager to have reporters there and to tell their story. Guards were eager to be named and identified and quoted,” Rosenberg said of those early days.

Fast-forward to Dec. 3, 2013. Marine General John F. Kelly, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, the military body that operates the prison, made a controversial decision: Gitmo staff would no longer be allowed to give out the number of detainees engaged in hunger strikes and those who were being tube fed because of it – numbers Rosenberg said have previously been reported almost daily for years.

Guards and employees at Gitmo have always been hesitant to speak to

reporters, said Rosenberg, but with coaxing she was able to get some to agree to be identified. Now directives from on high have taken that choice away from them. In December 2013, Kelly decided only a handful of senior officers could give their names to reporters when being interviewed.

“It’s clear to me that when the military is confident in their ability to show us a safe, transparent, legal detention centre ... we get to see the place, and when they’ve lost confidence in that message, they don’t show us much,” said Rosenberg.

“There’s a really dark feeling to the camps,” said Shephard. “I’ve been in lots of prisons in the U.S. and Canada, and I’ve seen conditions that are similar, in some cases worse than Guantanamo, but it’s knowing that all these men are detained but haven’t been charged or tried, for the most part.”

A former crime reporter, Shephard said reporting on the military commissions at Gitmo is nothing like court reporting in Canada. At Gitmo, already a self-contained little world, the military commissions under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Secretary of Defense are in a world within a world. The commissions, which will eventually put the alleged September 11 co-conspirators on trial, have been in pre-trial phase since 2012.

Courtroom access is limited for both reporters and the public.

No electronic recording devices are allowed in the courtroom, only pen-to-paper note taking. At one point, Shephard recalls, reporters weren’t allowed to bring in spiral-bound notebooks, for security reasons.

She said the rules are constantly changing.

“There was a ridiculous period there where they had a rule...that you could only bring one pen into the courtroom, not two,”

“

said Shephard.

In 2010, Rosenberg, Shephard and two other reporters were banned from Gitmo for identifying a key witness in the Omar Khadr case. Former army Sgt. Joshua Claus, the interrogator who had obtained Khadr’s confession, was testifying that his confession had not been obtained under torture or threat of abuse.

Two years earlier Claus had spoken on record to Shephard about a case in which he had been court-martialed in connection with the death of another detainee, an Afghan taxi driver. However, in the Khadr case Claus was considered a protected person and was only identified as Interrogator Number One. The judge had not specifically ordered the press not to reveal Claus’s identity, so the four journalists tried to seek clarification from him before going to print.

“He didn’t even acknowledge that we asked him a question,” said Shephard.

Shephard, Rosenberg and their two colleagues eventually decided to print Claus’s name in their media reports. That night word came from Washington: the four of them had been banned from Gitmo for life. Rosenberg and the Miami Herald immediately hired a lawyer and appealed the decision.

“It was a big deal because it looked like the Obama administration was trying to censor the coverage,” said Shephard.

The ban was eventually lifted and three or four months later the four reporters were invited to attend a round-table discussion at the Pentagon about how to better media relations.

“I follow their rules,” Rosenberg insists.

“I protest, I object, I point out the inconsistencies of them, but I never ever ever disobey the rules.”

We can only see what they allow us to see and in this moment . . . we’re blind CAROL ROSENBERG CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

47

ILLUSTRATION BY: DOMINIKA GUDANIEC

Still, 12 years of reporting from a place where the shifting administrative landscape is reflected in the ever-changing rules has often put Rosenberg in some bizarre situations.

Like the time she almost but not quite broke the one written-in-stone rule at Gitmo: never talk to the detainees.

Rosenberg happened to be visiting Camp Four, a cooperative camp that allows detainees with good track records to live together in a less restrictive setting, when one of the detainees tried to speak to her through the chain-link fence. It was Omar Khadr and he looked bored.

48 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

“Hey, are you National Geographic?” he asked her. For some reason he didn’t seem concerned that Rosenberg was flanked by two military escorts.

Not wanting to be rude but also not wanting to break the rules herself, Rosenberg turned to her escort and said, in a voice loud enough for Khadr to hear, “‘I guess he doesn’t know that I’m not allowed to talk to him and if I were allowed to talk to him I’d tell him that I don’t work for National Geographic, I work for the Miami Herald.”

Khadr seemed satisfied with her indirect response to his question and walked away.

“The idea that I can’t talk to him but I can communicate to the guy next to me so that he can hear it is kind of a bizarre interpretation of their rules,” said Rosenberg.

“No media ever has in the 12 years of operation [spoken to a detainee] and I’m guessing . . . no media ever will,” said Gitmo’s current public affairs director Commander John Filostrat. “Even when [the media] gets to go into the camps and see detainees, we make sure they try not to see the reporters because then it gets dangerous and threatens operational security.”

Filostrat has been at his post since September 2013, and expects to be at Gitmo until July 2014 before someone else replaces him.

The relationship between the media and Joint Task Force Guantanamo personnel has been professional and congenial, he said. Filostrat said he’d had no complaints from the press so far.

“We understand that these folks have spent a lot of time and effort and money to come down here and regardless of what they write or what they air, it’s our job just to try to facilitate the media as much as operational security allows,” he said. “We have nothing to hide down here.”

“Nothing” doesn’t seem to include the number of hunger strikers at Gitmo. Those numbers are misrepresentations of the situation, Filostrat said; just detainees trying to gain attention.

But Al Jazeera America contributor Jason Leopold has a different perspective on the issue.

“Last year, during the height of the hunger strike, several policies were put into place and these policies ... ultimately did give rise to the hunger strike,” said Leopold. He is referring to policies like the controversial genital searches detainees were subjected to just before meeting with their attorneys, something that had previously been banned due to cultural insensitivity.

Leopold traced the renewal of the genital search policy to the death of a detainee in 2012 under what he calls “troubling circumstances”.

“They suspected that the prisoner who died was hiding drugs in his genital area,” he said. Leopold has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the detainee’s autopsy report. The FOIA request is only one of many.

Leopold, who is known in some govern-

ment circles as “the FOIA terrorist”, has filed requests for everything from statistics about Gitmo guards suffering from PTSD to who made the decision to allow CBS’s 60 Minutes news crew unprecedented access to the camps for their September 2013 documentary, in which they were allowed to show the faces of prison guards (camera crews are usually instructed to film from the neck down) and record the vocal protest of a detainee.

Filing FOIA requests is costly and time-consuming, something Rosenberg herself tries to avoid. When she does though, she files for a specific document that she is sure exists, like when she filed a request for a list of detainees who were being held at Gitmo indefinitely.

“I was trying to find something extremely specific that I believed was both newsworthy and important for the public to know,” said Rosenberg. “It worked.”

That’s a common refrain from journalists who cover Gitmo: the public has a right to know. The administration doesn’t always agree with that. The arrival of Gen. John F. Kelly in November 2012 marked the begin-

ning of a new era of secrecy at Gitmo, said Rosenberg. The commander of U.S. Southern Command, whose headquarters are right next door to Rosenberg’s Miami Herald offices in Florida, is “old school” she said.

“He’s a legacy of a time, I think, when distrust of the media was at its height in America and when manipulation of the message was considered acceptable,” said Rosenberg. That may change, she said, once Kelly leaves.

“You may actually find someone who’s an advocate for transparency.”

Despite the increased restrictions on the press at Gitmo however, journalists like Rosenberg continue to tell the stories coming out of America’s most controversial offshore prison.

“The difficulties of reporting on it is part of the attraction,” Leopold explained. “It’s the fact that I’m always trying to figure out what’s happening. Where can I snoop around to get info? It’s sort of the ultimate investigative story.”

Sometimes, however, the challenge is not digging up the story on Gitmo, but keeping readers interested in what is going on half a

world away.

“I get people saying all the time, ‘Oh, is Guantanamo still open?’” Shephard said.

The Toronto Star reporter has written two books based on her coverage of Gitmo and is now in the process of producing a documentary with a Montreal film director about Gitmo’s 22 Uighur detainees.

It’s frustrating, said Shephard, when the public seemed to have moved on from Gitmo. She is hopeful public engagement will increase as the 9/11 trials draw closer.

Twelve years on, Gitmo remains a goldmine of news stories and despite presidential promises that it will eventually close, Rosenberg doesn’t see that happening anytime soon. She once assumed that her Gitmo beat, which she describes as a cross between being “a foreign correspondent and a small town reporter,” would have an expiry date.

“The President said he was going to close it so I thought it was going to have an end. So I hung in for the end, and now I don’t think there’s an end in sight,” said Rosenberg. “I can’t figure out when would be the appropriate time to stop.”

Media access to Guantanamo Bay is tightly controlled, and the rules are always changing.

PHOTO BY: MICHELLE SHEPHARD

Journalism in chains Egypt continues to crack down on independent press, holding three Al Jazeera journalists without charges.

BY KELLY TOWNSEND

“

Journalism is not a crime!

“Journalism is not a crime!”

Journalists and bystanders stood shivering in solidarity at Nathan Phillips Square, their breath rising in puffs as they chanted.

Reporters struggled to keep their equipment steady in the freezing cold.

“Journalism is not a crime.”

It was 19 degrees Celsius in Cairo while some 60 protesters rallied together in Toronto’s freezing weather, pulling t-shirts over their winter coats and holding up signs that depicted their message, as part of a Global Day of Action in support of a group of journalists sweating in an Egyptian jail as a price for doing their job.

Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, three Al Jazeera journalists, were arrested Dec. 29, 2013 in a hotel in Cairo on suspicion of illegally broadcasting news that harmed ‘domestic security’ and alleged-

ly working with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been declared a terrorist organization by the Egyptian government.

“If interviewing [the Muslim Brotherhood] brings terrorism charges, if you can be considered a terrorist for the day to day work of journalism then there isn’t press freedom in your country,” said Tom Henheffer, the executive director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, who braved freezing temperatures as one of the speakers at Toronto’s Global Day of Action.

Early reports from Al Jazeera said that the journalists were forced to sleep on the floor and were denied medical attention, including Fahmy, who suffered from a fractured shoulder during the arrest. Since then they have been moved to a facility, with provisions of food, clothes and a single hour of exercise per day. They are continually denied access to books, newspapers and their visits are mon-

itored. During a hearing on Feb. 20, where the journalists heard the accusations against them, Fahmy shouted out that he and his colleagues were facing “psychologically unbearable” conditions.

On March 24, Fahmy was taken to hospital for medical treatment to his shoulder. Fahmy’s family received a letter from Egypt’s interim President Adly Mansour, who said Fahmy will receive the “best treatment possible.”

February’s Global Day of Action was one of the ways that Al Jazeera worked to keep media attention on the Egyptian government’s attack on press freedom.

2013 was a violent and turbulent year for journalists in Egypt, with the deaths of six journalists. According to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Egypt was named the third deadliest country for journalists. Egypt was also ranked ninth on the list of top 10 jailers.

Henheffer and Belgraver (front left) stand with protesters at a rally for press freedom.

PHOTO BY: AL JAZEERA

According to CPJ, 10 journalists have been killed in Egypt since 1992 – nine since the 2011 revolution.

“Those are unprecedented numbers,” said Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program co-ordinator for CPJ. Al Jazeera has been very vocal about the injustice of the arrest and continued incarceration of its staffers. “They’ve been leading the charge internationally on the press front,” said Henheffer. “They’ve gotten a lot of really notable journalists to sign on from different organizations who have some international influence.”

Daniel Lak, the Al Jazeera English’s Canada foreign correspondent, was at Nathan Phillips Square, bundled up and offering hot chocolate to the media. Lak told reporters that Al Jazeera is working hard towards getting Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed released. “Our own people tell us – everything that can be done is being done.”

Correspondents, editors and bureau chiefs from CNN, BBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among dozens of other news outlets, have signed a letter, demanding the immediate release of Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed. High profile names on the petition include Christiane Amanpour, the chief international correspondent for CNN and Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East editor for the BBC. Even Egypt’s trade and investment minister, Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, spoke publicly about the case, saying that while the journalists were working without a permit, arresting them was a “mistake.”

Journalists have also taken to Twitter in protest, under the hashtags #FreeAJStaff and #JournalismIsNotTerrorism. Al Jazeera documented nearly 9,000 tweets from protesters within a 24-hour period.

Foreign and local journalists held a protest outside of the Egyptian embassy in Nairobi on Feb. 4, in a bid to increase pressure on the Egyptian government.

CJFE held a press conference in Toronto on Feb. 6, urging the Canadian government to take action and put pressure on the Egyptian government to release Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed.

Jet Belgraver, Al Jazeera English Television senior producer, who helped organize Toronto’s Global Day of Action with CJFE, said, “What we really want is to hear from Ottawa, from our own foreign minister here, given the fact that Fahmy is a Canadian citizen. We

PHOTO BY: AP

Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed are seen in cages at the court hearing on March 31.

know that they are working hard behind the scenes and we appreciate those efforts tremendously, but we need to hear more. “ Lynne Yelich, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Consular Services in Canada, said to reporters on March 4, “Canada is doing its due process… this is an area that has been of interest and we are watching it closely.” Yelich gave no explanation as to why the federal government has yet to make a public statement.

Organizations such as CJFE exist to promote the importance of free expression both in Canada and internationally. “We work to ensure that the world knows about situations like this and that people respond to it and put pressure on it and increase the cause of freedom of expression,” said Henheffer.

Henheffer said when CJFE first heard news of the arrests they reached out to Fahmy’s brother via Twitter and offered to help. “The fear is that if you start putting tons of pressure, that reality will get even worse. [But] The fact is, as evidenced by the campaign, the international pressure makes things better. Once the campaign started rolling [the journalists] were moved into better prison conditions.”

Belgraver read a statement by Fahmy’s brother, Adel Fahmy, at the Toronto Global Day of Action event, saying they find it difficult to eat or sleep, knowing that he is struggling to do the same. “Our lives are paralyzed,” Belgraver read. “[Fahmy] always says, tell everyone, ‘We remain free behind bars because we are journalists, not terrorists.’”

Henheffer said getting the government involved is an important step, and the best way to get their attention is through international press.

“The only way to do that is for them to see that their constituents want them to. It’s got to become an issue, and the people that make these things issues are the influencers out in the world, who are journalists, and the bigger the campaign gets, the better their chances are.”

“The more we see those voices speaking up and the more we see more principle positions coming on from the journalist community, the harder it’s going to be for the government to continue their crackdown on journalists,” said Mansour.

Adly Mansour has stated in a letter to Greste’s family that he is working toward having them freed, but they are still being denied bail.

“The more and the louder people speak, at some point our voice will be heard,” said Belgraver.

In a letter from Egypt’s Tora prison, Greste said their arrest had nothing to do with the stories the team was reporting. “Our arrest doesn’t seem to be about our work at all. It seems to be about staking out what the government here considers to be normal and acceptable. Anyone who applauds the state is seen as safe and deserving of liberty. Anything else is a threat that needs to be crushed.”

At the time this article was written, Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed are expected to return to court on April 22. They continue to deny all accusations against them.

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Over to you, Ghana Journalists for Human Rights brings Canadian journalists to Africa to share experiences and learn from one another.

BY ASHLEY COWELL

O

n a sunny morning in Accra, Ghana, the temperature already almost 30 degrees Celsius, Kathy Addy and Gyekye Tanoh from Third World Network and Franklin Cudjoe from IMANI Ghana joined the Citi Breakfast Show host Bernard Avle on Citi FM for a round table discussion.

The World Bank is urging Ghana to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. The story broke late in the afternoon on the previous news day.

“Some people say it would be a very bad idea to sign on to it, others say it will benefit Ghana,” Avle tells listeners at the beginning

of the show. “[We] will be having a discussion about it so you can decide what you want.”

It was a friendly discussion punctuated with moments of light laughter, becoming heated when the focus turned to the future of Ghana’s growing economy.

The Citi Breakfast Show, an award-winning staple in the Citi FM programming lineup, does not feature on-the-hour news updates. Its role is discussion and analysis of current events.

The daily news can be found on citifmonline.com, the private radio station’s full news website put together by an team of online journalists.

On the same news day, reporters had their stories online that featured, among others,

a recent Ebola scare in Ghana followed by news of a pending increase in severe punishment for illegal miners in Ghana.

For Canadians who have never been to Accra, it may seem surprising to hear these voices taking a comprehensive look at the daily national news in fluent English.

For Ashley Terry, working in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, was an experience that would have an impact on her own work at the Global News newsroom in Toronto.

“It is very sophisticated – they do a lot of work on social media, even streaming an event on their website while I was there,” she said. “In a lot of ways I felt like I was in my own newsroom. It sort of felt like home.”

Terry, senior producer at Globalnews.ca,

While in Ghana, Global News reporter Ashley Terry worked in smaller villages and interacted with residents.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ASHLEY TERRY

CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

53

“

Their journalists are amazing and smart and with the resources they have they’re able to do a ton.

spent a month in Ghana, from mid-April to mid-May in 2013, as an expert trainer through the Shaw Africa Project, put together by Journalists for Human Rights and Shaw Media.

While many before her had gone to work in Africa in different aspects of journalism, she was the first to work with an online team.

Journalists for Human Rights started in 2002, teaming up with different local media outlets in Africa to bring Canadian journalists to African countries to share their experiences and learn from each other.

Kathryn Sheppard, head of International Programs at JHR, says projects like the one in Ghana start with extensive research into the human rights situation and press freedom in the country. It takes two or three years to complete the research and get a team into a country. The program will stay in a country for five to ten years.

Journalists from Canada and around the world are placed in a team of African-based journalists and they work as colleagues.

Sheppard said there is an opportunity for both parties to learn in circumstances like this and she hopes it makes for a better experience for everyone involved.

“That’s one of the reasons why we try to avoid that ‘I am teacher, you are student’ mentality and we really try to work alongside each other, providing mentorship where possible,” Sheppard said.

Terry said the leap Ghana took in terms of technology is what sparked her interest in working there.

The World Factbook reports that in 2012, 25.6 million mobile phones were in use in Ghana, which accounts for why a lot of their online news coverage is done with mobile devices and social media. Citi uses Facebook and Twitter frequently and streams events for live coverage.

“I wanted to go to Ghana because it has essentially leap-frogged Canada, in that no

54 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

ASHLEY TERRY one really had to plug their computer into the Internet,” Terry said. “No one had that; they went from nothing right to mobile.”

“Their journalists are amazing and smart and with the resources they have they’re able to do a tonne,” Terry said.

She had the opportunity to do reporting within the community, speaking one on one with residents of the city and also those in smaller communities outside of the city.

Terry and her colleagues went to a reporter’s village with a human rights organization in Accra, a partnership through JHR. The group brought resources to smaller villages far from the city . On this occasion, they were offering free legal advice regarding sexual violence and women’s rights.

While most people were not willing to speak to the media, one woman stepped up and told Terry a story of losing her children to a husband who abandoned her and left her with no money. The woman, allowed her story to be published.

“She didn’t want me to use her name but she told me her whole story,” Terry said.

“That was probably the most anyone was willing to talk to me.”

“She said something to me like ‘I don’t know, you seem trustworthy.”

Since Terry left Ghana in mid-May of 2013, JHR has stayed and helped Citi FM expand its reporting resources.

At the end of 2013, the national government announced water and electricity rates would increase by 52 per cent. The announcement set of a chain reaction of protests and unrest from citizens. With some help from JHR, the journalists at Citi FM took matters into their own hands, creating and sending out a voice poll to random citizens using an SMS technology created by VOTO mobile.

The citizens were able to voice their opinions on the rate increase, most of which were in

disagreement with the government’s decision.

They were able to reach the rich and the poor, the urban and rural citizens, something that would not have been possible using traditional forms of journalism.

After compiling the information received, they were able to provide coverage that sparked national conversation. Once their news reached the ears of their governing bodies, the government soon dropped the rate increase more than 20 per cent from the originally proposed figures.

Citi FM continues to report daily from its newsroom nestled inside a large house on a paved road just north of downtown Accra. At the end of today’s show, host Bernard Avle bids a direct farewell to faithful listeners.

“Well that’s it for another edition of the show, we really apologize for not giving you the chance to contribute through phone in for the EPA discussion but there will be a lot more coming up in prime news and eye witness news,” Avle said. “Thank you very much for tuning into the show today.”

Some cultural aspects contrast the advanced technology use in Ghana.

Changing of the guard The Globe shifts focus as new editor-in-chief takes up the reins.

BY GEORGE HALIM

A

s editor-in-chief for the Globe and Mail, David Walmsley is prepared to push the envelope.

“In terms of a recklessness that hurts the paper? No. Zero risks. In terms of making the paper the most exciting, the most determined news entity, then I don’t think we have any parameters whatsoever,” Walmsley said, a week after his appointment as editor-in-chief of the paper.

“We need to always be pushing. You know, there has been a rich history at the Globe and Mail through many, many decades. The bravest work the Globe and Mail does is when it goes against the prevailing wisdom. Some would say that that is risk.”

Walmsley, who succeeds John Stackhouse in the driver’s seat, is no stranger to the Globe and its culture; he’s been there before, as national editor and managing editor.

In 2009, Globe publisher Phillip Crawley was looking for someone to drive the publication through the initial process of the digital era. He immediately appointed a young, tenacious John Stackhouse, who spearheaded the Globe’s pay wall, Globe Unlimited, among other things.

Five years later, Crawley sent out a memo informing his staff that he was letting go of Stackhouse and appointing Walmsley, the former head of news content at CBC, as the Globe’s fifth editor-in-chief in the last 20 years.

“David has got a much more on-the-floor, out-with-the-staff kind of approach,” Crawley said. “He’s somebody the staff knows through his previous time here when he was running the newsroom. He’s less

well known on the business side. He’s aware that he needs to make the staff at Report on Business more aware of what matters to him.”

So what exactly makes Walmsley a good fit for the newsroom? For Crawley, it’s his ability to take charge, and to be the best.

“He’s passionate about telling stories that matter and he wants journalists to feel confident and brave about doing that. He isn’t a guy who’s going to want to be cautious in the sense of being second. He wants to be first, and he values the impact of quality journalism that makes a difference. So, he believes that if we get that right, a lot of other good things follow.”

The move was the latest for the paper in recent weeks, as managing editor Elena Cherney took a job at the Wall Street Journal’s Toronto bureau and Report on Business editor Derek DeCloet stepped down to become director of content strategy at Rogers Publishing.

DeCloet, who recently began his position at Rogers, said although he didn’t work very closely with Walmsley, he knew his character would gel with the newsroom.

“I think he’s got excellent news judgment and he’s good with people, and those are the two most important attributes for that job.

He’ll thrive,” said DeCloet, stating he loved his job with ROB, but saw an interesting and challenging opportunity at Rogers. There was speculation that DeCloet, who has been with the paper since 2003, might, or should have been offered the EIC position. DeCloet was quick to bury those rumours.

“No I wasn’t [offered the position], and I didn’t expect to be offered the job,” he said.

“I’ve been an editorial manager for about five years, all of it in the Globe’s business section. The EIC of the Globe needs a broader set of experience than that.”

Globe experience was also important for outgoing EIC Stackhouse, who spent more than 24 years with the paper. He wore numerous hats over the years and at each step tailored himself to the role, manning the post of senior writer, national editor, foreign correspondent, and at the time of his promotion, Report on Business editor, among other roles. Just prior to being named EIC, he transformed the Globe Investor website.

PHOTO BY: GLOBE AND MAIL STAFF

Stackhouse won five National Newspaper Awards for feature writing, business and international reporting – all with the Globe.

Crawley makes the case that as a journalist Stackhouse is among the most successful, beyond his own newsroom.

“He’s a brilliant journalist. He’s probably the best journalist of his generation.”

Just a week before Stackhouse’s release from the paper, the Globe was nominated for 14 NNA’s, more than any other publication.

It was a bittersweet ending to his role as EIC, but a testament to his work.

DeCloet, who spent nearly ten years with Stackhouse in the Globe newsroom, said in a tweet that he learned more from him than he did from anyone else in his time there.

“When a source is trying to snow us, he knows how to go back again and again with questions that break down those barriers. I also learned from John the importance of editors getting out of the newsroom sometimes. To be an effective editor you can’t spend 100 per cent of your time inside the same four walls – you’ve got to go out and meet people in the business community, in politics, etc., as well as people in other departments of your own company. You’ve got to do some public speaking. John taught me that.”

It’s his lone-wolf journalistic instincts that brought him to the top and made him memorable among colleagues, but ultimately, it’s those same vigorous qualities that differentiate him from his successor.

“He’s a driven guy,” said Colin Mackenzie, journalism professor and former teacher at Humber College and former editor of the Report on Business at The Globe. “He’s very, very successful, but he kind of expects everyone to be as driven and as smart as he is … ” “David’s a very different guy,” Mackenzie said. “He’s a sociable Northern Irish guy, friendly, smart.”

According to Crawley, it wasn’t that Stackhouse failed to guide the newsroom

“

anymore. In fact, Crawley made note of the fact that in his time at the helm, he heightened the standard of the role, especially in an ever-changing era of news platforms.

“When these changes happen there’s always a moment in which it seems the right time to make the change. John did an outstanding job for five years, and that’s a long time in the world of newspaper editing these days. It’s a very tough job to do, it’s a very demanding job, and it’s a 24/7 job these days. You don’t get any break, because the web makes sure that you never stop. You don’t get Saturdays and Sundays off anymore.”

jovial, yet serious, personality was evident.

“His talk to staff was pretty good,” Snider said. “He was very clear that culture change was one of the big things he’s looking at.”

Crawley said Walmsley never fell off the radar, and his work ethic at the Globe and ultimately at the CBC made the decision to appoint him easy.

“We felt it was time for a change of leadership style. We had lost a couple of key people [DeCloet and Cherney]…who between the two of them had a lot of wisdom and knowledge about what was needed to make a successful Report on Business section and website and that obviously affected the staff and we wanted to make sure we were able to replenish the talent pool. It was time for a change and inevitably a new leader brings his own ability to recruit ... it’s the way the world works.”

From the newsroom, on his second week on the job, Walmsley defended his industry, saying the idea of print dying off is false and future generations run the risk of believing it if they continue to prophesize it.

“Print is the most marvelous thing, and I think there’s been an evolution in understanding as well, where too many have rushed to say that the world of print is no good. I think if you say that and you’re a leader in the business then you’re going to be in danger of making that a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Globe and Mail is a paper, it’s also an online; we have the best of both worlds. They’re different platforms that have strengths and you have to play to those strengths.”

But should Walmsley leave his position within the five-year window, like his two predecessors, his goals are clear.

“If I can do anything in the five years, it is to battle back the industrial turmoil and instead instill in everyone that sense of both self-confidence and self-belief, and to allow the journalism to do the talking and for everyone to understand exactly what the Globe and Mail stands for in the years to come.”

Print is the most marvelous thing, and i think there’s been an evolution in understanding

56 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

david walmsley As it stands, Stackhouse did exactly what he was expected to do for the past five years.

But for the next five years, it’s Walmsley’s turn to take the Globe in a new direction, with shifting the newsroom culture a priority.

“The only way you can be a distinguished news organization is if you can show trust.

The only operations that work successfully are where there’s trust between the desk and the field, and it’s essential during times of economic and technical disruption,” Walmsley said.

He aims to have reporters keep their eye on the ball – the story. “It’s what the readers demand and it’s what the journalists want to do. My role in many ways is to protect them from any of the sidetrack issues that inevitably do come up because the industry is in, I would say, perpetual turmoil.”

Before heading to the CBC, Walmsley was at the Globe for six years, between 2006 and 2012, where he was the national editor and then managing editor. Michael Snider, mobile editor at the Globe, said when Walmsley addressed the newsroom on his first day, his

News on the run ILLUSTRATION BY: DOMINIKA GUDANIEC

Numbers don’t lie: more and more people are getting their news fix from mobile devices, and media outlets are scrambling to keep up.

BY JESSICA PAIVA

L

ook around.

On the bus to work there will be more people looking into their phones than holding newspapers.

The Globe and Mail reaches 8.9 million Canadians every month. Of that number, 3.5 million read the website online and 2.7 million visit the site and apps with mobile devices.

A few years ago every news organization had a web-first strategy and that alone was a difficult change for journalists and newspaper companies. But according to Globe and Mail mobile editor Matt Frehner, the future of journalism is mobile and newsrooms need to start having a mobile-first mindset.

“Certainly half our digital readership is going to be mobile and it could easily surpass that in the next couple of years. Really what we’re seeing are the people who are the kind of audience we want, which are the peo-

ple who are most engaged with the news and most engaged with journalism, are the people who are reading and engaging with it on their phones,” said Frehner.

“Mobile is a segment of digital but a lot of the initial thinking is that those news organizations who went digital were focused on the laptop and desktop computers rather than mobile devices,” said Steve Buttry, digital transformation editor at Digital First Media, a management company specializing in newspapers headquartered in New York City.

“Most of my company’s digital traffic is coming from mobile products not from desktop or laptops, so we need to think smaller screens and we need to think of … what are the needs that people have when they’re on-the-go?”

Frehner said between 45 and 50 per cent of the Globe and Mail’s total digital traffic in the coming year will come from smartphones and tablets.

That makes it critical that news organizations build content and think about content in a way that serves those readers.

“If your newsroom isn’t paying attention to how the content looks on mobile then it becomes a problem. So if you’re building an interactive graphic or table or chart or multi-media feature that doesn’t work on people’s phones then you’re in trouble because 40 per cent of your audience isn’t able to read that,” said Frehner.

Damon Kiesow, senior product manager of mobile at The Boston Globe points out that news organizations need to reach out to readers in the platform they use the most.

Kiesow said for most news organizations, being mobile-first requires a website and/or an application strategy that lets people have content on the device they want when and where they want it.

“I think every newsroom needs to base its

CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

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strategy on the behaviour of its current readers and its perspective readers,” said Kiesow.

“If you live in the real world where in the U.S. market 150 million consumers have smartphones and most news websites are seeing mobile news quickly approach 50 per cent of visits and page use, then if you don’t have a mobile-first strategy, you should be quickly preparing for the day where your readers have a mobile-first demand for news.”

Kiesow told Convergence news organizations are having a difficult time understanding how fast their audiences are approaching a mobile lifestyle by reading and consuming all the news through their smartphones.

“I think the biggest mistake we make is not understanding what it is our readers are looking for…The challenges are to understand how quickly your audience is moving to mobile and understanding how to make the experience as consistent between platforms.”

“Many of your mobile users, if not most of them, are not just consuming your content on mobile but they’re probably reading them maybe in print but they’re certainly reading it from the website. That’s the other mistake, not making your mobile experiences sort of align with your other platforms,” he added.

A newsroom in Tbilisi, Georgia, also known as the S.M.A.R.T. Media Lab, is designed specifically for mobile-first journalism, giving reporters a first-hand experience in mobile reporting.

Robb Montgomery, an international journalist and designer of the S.M.A.R.T. Media Lab, said it was initially built to serve as a multimedia lab and newsroom for postgraduate journalism students and candidates for Radio-Free Europe’s one-year advanced training courses.

“They each needed equipment and facilities and this was the perfect chance to design a space around a mobile-first concept.”

When designing their newsroom, S.M.A.R.T. Media Lab only had 400 square meters to work with, so every item they considered had to be portable, and, ideally, serve more than one purpose.

“Tables had to fold up and everything on the floor had to be on wheels – including the wall partitions,” said Montgomery.

Students produce news reports for broadcast, film, radio and web. All equipment used is entirely mobile and packaged to fit together

58 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

for field production.

“This ease of interoperability makes it easy for news editors to plan for teams of reporters to swarm a news event and stay in the field, where the stories and subjects are,” said Montgomery.

Montgomery said there are still political and cultural blocks in many newsrooms that prevent them from a web to mobile transition.

“For some, mobile is just another channel of reporting to the web or online manager.

That makes about as much sense as having a print editor managing a website, or a mobile editor deciding what goes on page one of the newspaper. There are different audiences, there are different user experiences, different skill sets and different workflows,” he said.

According to Frehner, mobile-first reporting means thinking about mobile as a medium.

88% | 9% Internet use on tablets by popularity iPad | Samsung Galaxy Tablet

“It could mean being more active on Twitter because that’s where huge amount of mobile audience is for breaking news. It could also mean following your story in a way… easier to consume in a phone quickly, especially if the story is about really complicated topics,” said Frehner.

“For visual journalists, obviously there’s a lot of neat stuff you could do. We have a photographer who’s in Sochi right now who’s doing a lot of really great stuff on Instagram. He’s using his phone to shoot a lot of behind-thescene stuff and doing a lot of colour and texture of what’s happening there with his phone with also extra filters and apps,” he added.

There are unique challenges to mobile news designers, such as data visualization.

Kiesow mentioned in his own blog post that a map-based timeline may look great on a desktop, but once viewing it from a mobile device it’s tiny, not a mobile experience. The screen size removes context and reduces information value.

“I think mobile-first strategy phase one is that you better make sure that your mobile sites are as good or better than your desktop sites and having them work quickly and efficiently,” he said.

However, Montgomery said some of the better newsrooms are making strides in serving a society that already consumes and engages with mobile media at a high percentage.

Travel + Escape, a television channel and website owned by Blue Ant Media launched a digital-only magazine available for iPhones and iPads in April 2013.

There are many news organizations and magazines which have applications for mobile devices however there are several features that sets Travel + Escape Magazine apart.

“A lot of publishers are still doing digital replicas so that’s where they take a PDF version of their print story and then republish them on mobile with links and maybe a couple of other hotspots, but they don’t actually dismantle the content and repurpose it for mobile which I think is really important,” said Stacey McLeod, editor-in-chief of Travel + Escape Magazine. “People want a different experience on mobile, that’s why they’re using it from their device and not from a physical copy or behind their computer screens.”

For each monthly issue, the magazine takes advantage of the digital format by applying interactive maps, real-time location information, and an interactive 360-degree image using gyroscope technology.

Since its launch, Travel + Escape Magazine has won Travel Magazine of the Year from the Digital Magazine Awards in November 2013 and Best in Mobility from The Digi Awards in December 2013.

“With us in a travel perspective, a lot of our readers are actually travelling when they’re consuming the content or in transit so it creates a different opportunity for you to really give them content that they could engage with over a longer period of time instead of those shorter stories,” she said.

McLeod said with the demand for mobile growing every year, news organizations tend to have trouble knowing the difference between having a digital strategy and having a mobile strategy.

“Some people think they could just have a strategy for a website and then that will sort of carry over to a mobile device but it doesn’t always work that way. People love to touch content on their mobile devices, they love big photos and really interactive pieces of content and a lot of times that … doesn’t translate over to the web,” said McLeod.

The Great Collaboration J-source revamps itself after being cut loose from its seed-fund contributors.

BY AMY STUBBS

T

he prime audience for J-source will now become its primary contributor as journalism students and their institutions take on an expanded role.

J-source began 2014 looking to the future by enlisting the support of young upand-comers in the industry. The Canadian Journalism Foundation announced last year it would be contributing in a significantly smaller manner come January.

“I think it started out with nothing being certain at all, and I think we had to face the fact that J-source might not survive,” said Ivor Shapiro, J-source’s founding editor.

Shapiro, and a few others who got involved early in J-source’s history, were not ready to let go and went about creating a new model.

“It would neither be possible, nor would it be ideal for one of us to assume the role that the CJF had taken. It would be better to spread the role amongst us, and invite other journalism schools to join in that project,” said Shapiro.

The Canadian Journalism Foundation, since its foundation in 1990, has promoted excellence in journalism through awards, conversation and support of its partners, like J-source. The CJF was a key player and sole financial supporter of both the English J-source.ca and the French ProjetJ.ca ever since the project, collectively called the Canadian Journalism Project, launched in 2007.

“It was never the intention that it would be an indefinite thing when it first got launched,” said Robert Lewis, chair of the Board for CJF. One hundred per cent of its financial support was intended to be seed money until J-source established itself.

“We felt very proud of what it had become.

It was a really solid institution – much admired

60 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

by the journalistic fraternity and others. So the board decided it was really time that the organization could stand on its own, and that we didn’t need to keep completely funding it,” said Lewis. Having given more than $600,000 to the venture since it began, CJF remains a chief financial supporter and was engaged in a seamless handoff over the past year.

J-source has been the leading resource for Canadian journalism students, professors, researchers and professionals alike to find content about journalism in their own country. With that in mind, it was natural to approach schools from coast to coast to contribute, taking on various roles and housing different pieces, Shapiro told Convergence.

“There is tonnes of information about journalism in the United States and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the world. Without J-source there really is no Canadian Poynter Institute and no Canadian Project for Excellence in Journalism, there is no Canadian Nieman foundation, there is no Canadian Pew Centre,” said Shapiro.

He lists these U.S. based journalism resources, to which only J-source can compare in Canada, in order to emphasize why it is fundamental J-source continue to exist.

“There are all these U.S. based organizations that provide conversation, and critique, and places where journalists can share information and share opinions

ILLUSTRATION BY: DOMINIKA GUDANIEC

about journalism. There is no such place [in Canada],” he said.

J-source spent last year finding a way to restructure and build a model to keep going with just a small portion of its main support system.

Entering an uncertain 2014, J-source managed to increase its reach. In January, page views were at the highest in its history at 93,681 – an increase of about one-third from the previous peak of 69,003 – according to Chris Waddell, director of the school of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University and publisher of J-source. The number of unique visitors in one month also rose from the previous high of 35,617 to 46,651 for January 2014.

The support came from all across the country, and continues to pour in. Universities on board so far include: Ryerson in Toronto, London’s Western, Laval in Quebec City, King’s College in Halifax, Ottawa’s Carleton, UBC in Vancouver, and Mount Royal in Calgary. Colleges include: Humber in Toronto, Sheridan in Oakville, and Belleville’s Loyalist.

Humber College, for example, is working to establish an international bureau operated by final-year students out of both its North and Lakeshore campuses. Co-ordinator of Humber College’s Journalism programs, Carey French, sees the project as being a clearinghouse for international affairs as covered by Canadian and foreign journalists working for Canadian publications. French also hopes the bureau will allow journalism students to start seeing themselves as future foreign correspondents.

The Humber project looks to compile databases of Canadian correspondents, and conduct debriefs when foreign correspondents return home from covering events

overseas. “Essentially the debrief would not be about the news itself but the difficulties and minutiae of covering that. The idea of that is to create tip sheets for others,” said French. Ideally a list of journalists looking to cover foreign affairs would also be compiled along with their credentials.

“It might be very useful to discover that there is a journalism student graduating from Humber who was a student at the University of Kyiv, who is fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian and would be a useful person to have on staff or to employ at this particular time.”

The list of j-school contributions will continue to grow, as individual schools determine what roles they will take on, be it financial support or housing a particular bureau on campus. Robert Washburn, professor of journalism at Loyalist College, says Loyalist’s faculty is still working out the specifics.

“We are just committed in principle at the moment and we are working through what sort of a contribution we are going to make in the days upcoming,” he said. “As you can appreciate this happened over our academic year and while we are delivering curriculum it is really important to stay focused on students first and what is in front of us, but usually, during the period between May and June, is the time traditionally when we meet and talk about larger picture things and commitments for the upcoming year.”

Following the early support of Torstar and its chair John Honderich, Shapiro says he is pleased to see the two major unions supporting journalists in Canada; Unifor and the Canadian Media Guild have provided significant financial support. As momentum picked up, Canada’s leading news outlet, CBC News, came on board as a benefactor. Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, an independent not-forprofit media watchdog, also joined.

J-source provides a window into the world of journalism, said Ian Morrison, spokesperson for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. “If you have an automobile, it takes you under the hood. If the automobile is journalism, it takes you under the hood of journalism and deals with values as well as technique.” Morrison says Friends used to be free riders but was approached for support last year. After becoming comfortable with the company, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting pledged $5,000 for 2014 with the intention to keep a

three-year commitment.

As an assistant professor of Digital Media and Journalism at Wilfrid Laurier, Bruce Gillespie counted on J-source as a resource for readings on Canadian contemporary journalism issues that weren’t getting coverage elsewhere. Now, as editor-in-chief of J-source, he sees exactly how the collaborative structure will help both sides. “J-schools, both their students and their instructors and professors, are probably one of the biggest audiences and populations we have for the site, so the more info we can get from students and instructors, the more relevant the content will be for those end users,” he said.

In addition to bringing the audience behind the scenes to create content, Gillespie says the collaboration will allow for greater coverage, coast to coast. “You don’t see this kind of multi-school, multi-program collaborations across the country on very many other sites. Often programs and schools are very proprietary about the projects they start. They want to hold on to it themselves.”

The collaboration also looks to provide a unique opportunity for journalism students to get their classwork displayed in a format read heavily by their peers. “It’s nice to have a venue where we can actually publish some of that material as opposed to just seeing it get tucked away in someone’s file once it has been graded,” said Gillespie.

Journalism is a quickly changing industry; Chris Waddell suggests those looking to get into the field stay on top of the trends by reading and contributing to J-source.

In addition to providing a place for students to discuss the business, issues, debates and challenges of journalism, it also gets their writing in the eyes of future employers, said Waddell.

“It is being read by ... people in the industry, so if you are writing in J-source there is a reasonable chance that someone who might want to hire you will actually be seeing what you are writing, whereas if you are writing just on your own blog or something that might not be the case.”

“Ambitious and committed students spring at any chance to have their byline out there, to cover anything for anybody with an audience. But this is an opportunity to be covering the thing that matters most to them, which is journalism,” said Shapiro. “It’s a kind of double whammy of opportunity.”

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61

You (not so fast) Tube

After being slapped with a $1-billion lawsuit, YouTube ramps up its copyright restrictions, leaving some users fuming, especially gamers.

ILLUSTRATION BY: DOMINIKA GUDANIEC

BY CAMERON DA SILVA

T

he YouTube gaming community is fighting for the right to make money off their videos.

Before gamers can repost on YouTube, there is a lot of work to do. HD capturing devices, professional sounding microphones and a green screen are some devices that YouTuber George Weidman uses. He spends weeks recording and editing videos while trying to balance freelance journalism jobs.

A new roadblock has been put in his path to riches. Whenever a video gets uploaded, it’s checked by YouTube’s ID system to make sure it is original content.

All YouTubers who regularly post video

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game related content have been receiving copyright notices, putting their livelihoods in jeopardy. Most video game studios have defended the rights of gamers to repost their game, realizing the exposure these videos get.

But not all are so accommodating. YouTube allows users to profit from the revenue on the ads they place on their videos. The bigger the audience, the more money there is to be made; but with copyright claims on users’ videos, it all stops.

“I had no idea why I was receiving these claims,” said Doug Le, better known on YouTube as NukemDukem. Le’s channel is known as a “Let’s Play” channel – playing

through an entire game while talking and giving tips along the way. He has amassed more than 100,000 subscribers in three years.

Through screen capturing technology and a PVR, Le is able to record himself playing the game. With editing software, he commentates over the game, sharing his thought process while playing.

With the new ID system that is supposed to hold up YouTube’s laws on copyright, Weidman received multiple copyright notices on videos he says were covered under fair dealings use.

According to YouTube’s policy page, when a person creates an original work, he

or she automatically owns copyright to the work. There is lots of material under copyright protection, including audiovisual works, such as TV shows, music, movies, and video games.

According to YouTube’s copyright centre, “A counter notification is a legal request for YouTube to reinstate a video that has been removed for alleged copyright infringement.

The process may only be pursued in instances where the upload was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.”

Before the new Content ID system, if a video was flagged for copyright, it could still place ads and make money off of them for a short amount of time. A YouTuber could post

“

Weidman and Le started noticing copyright claims on their videos near the end of 2013.

YouTube videos by numerous creators were suddenly being flagged for copyright violation or removed outright. The Content ID system compares newly submitted videos against a database. If there is a match, the video is flagged and ad monetization is disabled.

The issue is that many of these gameplay videos had already passed inspection, months, if not years ago.

Repeated attempts to get a comment from YouTube went unanswered.

“For copyrighted work, there are exceptions for taking that work and critiquing it or reviewing it,” said Gil Zvulony, an Internet

They might say it could ruin the experience and people aren’t going to buy their game

several videos with copywritten content and make money from the ad revenue. When the video gets taken down, the user could then create another account and keep repeating the same process.

YouTube hopes to catch these people to avoid getting sued from publishers and developers who are seeing their works being broadcast without their permission. However, the problem is that these individuals exist on the same site as those who are passionate about video games.

YouTube plans on updating its submission system, before uploading a video; it’s required that videos be sent days in advance, to go through a screening process.

The process of disputing copyright content IDs are flawed, according to YouTuber George Weidman.

“Some of these companies like Konami have billions of dollars in yearly revenue; they don’t have time to deal with copyright notices,” said Weidman, better known online as Super Bunnyhop, who has been making videos for more than a year and a half and has more than 25,000 subscribers to his channel.

Chris hazzard lawyer based in Toronto who has been practicing law for more than 10 years.

Copyright law is different in Canada than in the U.S.; Canada’s Fair Dealing provision is a statutory exception for copyright infringement, which places the burden of proof on the defendant.

In 2007, American mass media company Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube, charging them with massive copyright infringement. The suit claimed YouTube willfully infringed copyright to gain revenue from advertisements.

Viacom noticed that a lot of their copywritten work was being uploaded to YouTube, allowing viewers to watch and listen for free.

After a lengthy three-year battle, the courts ultimately dismissed the lawsuit, stating that YouTube was protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The act’s purpose is to update copyright law in the ever-changing online world.

“A new law gives YouTube and other hosting companies immunity from liability

for copyright infringement,” said Zvulony.

That Canadian law – C-11, which went into effect in Canada in 2012 – does however require the website to notify the uploader under Canada’s notice and notice regime.

It’s used when websites receive notifications that they have used copyrighted material and are required to inform the uploader of the content. This is in contrast to the Notice and Takedown system in American law, where content is removed by the website after notice of the infringement. Zvulony doesn’t agree with Canadian laws, and says some of the video sharing websites should take some of the blame.

“I would like to see something more akin to the U.S, where it’s notice and takedown. If YouTube knows there is a copyright dispute and they continue to host it [video], then there should be some consequences.”

Chris Hazzard, CEO and lead game designer of Hazardous Software, is happy with users playing his games, recording them, commentating and posting them online.

Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, the company has been in the gaming business since 2008.

Hazzard says YouTube videos increase the games’ exposure. Hazardous Software believes in an interactive media, but understands why some gaming studios would have a problem with viewers being able to watch their games being played.

“They might say it could ruin the experience and people aren’t going to buy their game, it’s more like a movie,” says Hazzard.

Even though YouTube content creators are uploading games they haven’t made, they’re also promoting the product in their video.

These channels provide an interactive type of review that video game magazines simply aren’t able to says Weidman.

Viewers can see gameplay, while the YouTuber is offering his opinions on a game and allows for feedback and discussion. Weidmen, who has a degree in journalism, says having the video game as b-roll when discussing it adds to the review.

Le continues to upload videos on YouTube, while Weidman has stopped posting YouTube has backed off but both content creators remain frustrated with YouTube’s bad policies that continue to affect their every day lives.

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63

MAXIMIZING

IMAG

ES C

OUR TES

Y HA VAS W

ORL

DWID

E

BY ALESSANDRA MICIELI

Advertisers are turning to (mostly) empty space to get simple messages through to a complex world

T

he famous Voice of Fire, painted by Barnett Newman, sits proudly in the National Gallery of Canada. Purchased for $1.76 million, the 18-foot long painting consists of nothing more than a thick red stripe on top of a navy blue background.

The artwork’s elegant simplicity allows people to interpret the painting in many different ways. This form of minimalistic design can also be seen in many advertisements today.

But the idea of minimalistic communication goes way back. Early man got his message across with nothing more than stick figures on a cave wall.

“It started from pictograms in the caveman era, where simple icons would represent either an animal or human,” said Clarice Gomes, a freelance web and graphic designer from Toronto. Thousands of years later, marketers and designers aren’t using stick figures, but a much more sophisticated, yet still

64 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

rather simple design.

The message is simple: “This is our company and this is our product.” How do you do that on a billboard or a 30-second commercial? Incorporate clean and simple designs making full use of whitespace.

“People don’t want to have the fluff,” said Stephen Jurisic, the executive creative director at John St., an advertising and design firm in Toronto.

Jurisic works closely with brands such as Winners, Kobo, Nutella, and Mitsubishi Motors. His firm has won several awards for its work, including five gold medals at the 2013 Marketing Awards.

Jurisic said minimalism and simplicity is key to attracting eyes, especially in a society where people have their attention challenged at every corner.

“It brings order to complexity, which is what’s really great about it,” he said. “[People]

like the simplicity of it, the minimalism, and they want things that are pretty straight up.”

Kevin Brandon, the program co-ordinator of the graphic design program at Humber College in Toronto agrees with Jurisic. Brandon said people today want information right away and a simple design helps focus on the product or idea.

“I think looking at a clean layout, or trying to simplify design is where we’re headed. If you look at an Apple ad or website, you’ll notice a lot of whitespace. Minimalistic design creates focus. People aren’t attracted to whitespace, but what’s in it is what creates the focus.”

Matthew Litzinger, the co-chief creative officer at Cossette Media, said telecommunication or finance companies can benefit from minimalistic design or infographics to help communicate a message to consumers.

For complex information, Litzinger said design and visuals help the consumer understand information that needs to be absorbed.

“So, in a case like that, someone who chooses to convey a wealth of information minimally seems that much more impactful i in their design, because they’re able to say

MINIMALIST ADS

As these ads illustrate, less can sometimes be more.

more by saying less.”

Litzinger gave the example of easy, do-ityourself instructions for everyday people to follow, such as the manuals given for IKEA furniture. Although putting together an IKEA chair or table can seem to some a complicated process, most people can feel confident building a piece of furniture.

Jeremy Robinson is the founder and chief experience officer of Jar Creative, a Toronto-based digital marketing and branding firm with clients including Jamieson and Franklin Templeton Investments. Robinson focuses on ensuring that consumers are engaged by a very user-friendly experience with the agency’s brands.

He said minimalism works in several digital platforms because it provides a simple user experience for the consumer.

“Since we are dealing with so many different [platforms], if we’re designing a website now, it’s a lot more complicated in a sense where we have to think about how it’s going to appear on multiple screens.”

Evan Long, associate creative director for Havas Worldwide Toronto, said minimalism

works mainly because it has the ability to reach people within a very short timespan.

Havas works with companies such as Home Hardware, Durex and Evian. Named ‘Global Agency of the Year’ by Advertising Age, Havas has several international branches.

“I particularly like minimalism. I tend to gravitate, personally, towards two sorts of pools of this design. I like either really high-detailed, illustrative stuff that you can look at for hours and hours, and always see something new. When you want to sell something or if you want to be able to convey an idea very simply, the other end of the scale is sort of a simple, minimal approach.”

Design should get people thinking, according to Long, but not hard enough that the focus is drawn away from the product. The message should have the right kind of impact on a person at the right moment.

“If they get it too fast, there’s no processing, there’s no thinking about it, there’s nothing for your brain to do. You’re just absorbing it and moving on. But if it’s too complicated, or it’s too detailed, if it takes too long, if you put too many messages on it, it takes you too

long to read it. Your brain has gotten bored and it’s moved on. You want to sort of hit someone in between that gap.”

Litzinger, with 17 years of design experience, said ads and brands are increasingly becoming visual feasts, with many more photos than words.

“The world is becoming more culturally diverse, which means the barrier of language becomes more and more evident. So, to compensate for that, people are trying to lure visually and less with words.”

Apple was a trailblazer in minimalism advertising, Brandon said. Prestige companies and shops with high-end clients are most likely going to opt for minimalism. Jewelry stores including People’s and Tiffany and Co. have adopted the minimalist approach.

Though the ad may be simple, that doesn’t mean its conception and design were easy.

Gomes said it took her a while to wrap her head around minimalistic design because she was more detail-oriented.

The simplicity in icons, logos and advertisements packs a powerful message. When a product can stand alone in an ad against a background of whitespace, conveying brand recognition in a glimpse – the company has done its job in offering a simple message to a complex world.

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW? ALEX BEETHAM

Creative Photography - 2012 Beetham ended his time at Humber on a high note, receiving the award for best graduating commercial portfolio. After graduation, he worked as a freelance assistant photographer until December 2013.

In December Beetham was hired as a studio manager at Westside Studio, Canada’s largest commercial advertising studio. “These past few months have been full of ‘pinch me’ moments,” says Beetham. “I remember not so long ago, heading into Westside for the first day of my work placement. Not two years later, I’m sitting on the other side of the table interviewing and hiring on my first batch of interns.”

AMBER DAUGHERTY Journalism - 2013

Daugherty completed the three-year print and broadcast journalism diploma program in April 2013.

After working at the Globe and Mail in the summer, Daugherty accepted a full-time position as a chase producer for CTV News Channel, a 24-hour national newscast, where she completed an internship in her final year at Humber. Daugherty now spends her time booking guests, doing pre-interviews, and writing intros. “Every day is challenging in a really positive way,” says Daugherty. “Your job every day is to come up with fresh, interesting, original, unique content to share on a national basis.”

BIANCA FREEDMAN Public Relations - 2009

Currently the marketing manager, Public Relations, and social media for Walmart Canada, Bianca Freedman graduated from Humber’s postgraduate program in 2009. As the worlds of marketing and public relations collide, her job is much more integrated than it used to be. Freedman has worked for Walmart for the last three years, previously interning at Infinity Communications. She says she chose Humber’s program because of its reputation. “Anyone I had known who was already working in the field would say things like ‘I only hire Humber grads,’ so it’s a very practical application.” She says Humber gave her the practical tools needed to execute her job day to day.

BILL LIVINGSTONE Graphic Design - 2013

Since he graduated Humber’s three-year Graphic Design program last year, Bill Livingstone has become a junior designer at BANG! creative communications in Milton, Ont. Working with a friend and fellow graduate of the program, Livingstone does everything from print design such as advertising, to website and packaging design. Prior to employment, he completed two internships that involved packaging designs for Coca Cola and RBC. He recently completed a wine label for LCBO. He says Humber’s program is “really well oriented to what you do in the real world.”

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CARLEY SMALE

Film and Media Production - 2013 Carley Smale completed her degree in Film and Media Production in April of 2013. After completing an internship at Chesler Perlmutter Productions in Toronto, Smale was hired on right away as a staff writer and development associate. She now writes scripts for TV movies that appear on the Hallmark and Lifetime channels. Smale, who had originally attended Trent University for a year, decided to enroll in Humber’s degree program because it was specific and included a co-op position. Smale says her teacher Sherry Coman was instrumental in her decision to pursue her career in screenwriting.

DAVID FYFE

Film and Media Production - 2013 After completing the four-year film and media degree program in April of last year, Fyfe began work at the start-up sports electronics company 4iiii’s Innovations in Calgary, where he works on videos and web content. Fyfe keeps himself busy by doing freelance corporate videos, shooting music videos and filming a documentary on Canadian music titled “Between Rock and a Hard Place.” Once Fyfe completes his work with 4iiii this fall, he plans to freelance full-time while continuing to work on his outside projects.

GEOFFREY KOEHLER Public Relations - 2010

After interning with the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, public relations graduate Geoffrey Koehler landed a job with the University Health Network. In October 2013 he became a communications adviser at St. Michael’s Hospital, focusing on media relations and social media. Coming from a university background, Koehler said Humber taught him the necessary skills to be successful in his field.

“The transition from writing an academic style to a more news style is something that was honed at Humber and has continued to serve me to this day.” He says he still connects with faculty members and uses his Humber resources. “I still have the CP style book that I bought at the Humber bookstore beside me at my desk.”

JULIA SOHN

Fundraising and Volunteer Management - 2009 After working for four years at Toronto’s office of Médecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Julia Sohn wanted a new challenge. She packed her bags and headed to the Democratic Republic of Congo to work in the field as a Donor Liaison with MSF for one year. Although Sohn has worn many hats during her time abroad, one of her roles includes reporting back to the major donors who support the organization. Sohn says, “Being able to see first-hand the impact that donations can have is inspiring for me, and hopefully that enthusiasm comes across in my reporting.” Sohn, who graduated in 2009 from the post-graduate program, says Humber’s well-rounded program prepared her for any type of role in her field.

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KIMBERLEY FOWLER Radio Broadcasting - 2005

As well as the director of operations for Canadian Traffic Network, Kimberley Fowler is a traffic reporter for AM 640, Q107 and Global TV in Toronto. After receiving her degree in Radio and Television Arts from Ryerson University, Fowler had difficulty finding a job in her field and began bartending. It wasn’t long until she decided to return to school, applying for Humber’s post-graduate Radio Broadcasting program. Upon graduation, Fowler was hired right away. She says Humber offered her the best training ground and made for an easy transition once she found work.

LAURA BOOTH Journalism - 2013

After graduating from the journalism post-graduate program last year, Laura Booth accepted a newspaper job with Sun Media as a crime/court reporter in Grand Prairie, Alta. Booth was part of the broadcast stream in her final year, but was drawn to newspaper because of the greater possibility to do reporting. She says her training at Humber prepared her for her job. “I was taught how to write a great format for newspaper writing. The way we were taught to organize a story is so applicable to the real world. I think the great thing at Humber is that they teach you to follow your instinct. To go find a news story rather than just rewrite press releases. It’s your own initiative. You have to be the one that’s adventurous and has drive to go out there and get actual experience as well.”

MATTHEW DUMOUCHEL Creative Photography- 2013

Having graduated with Honours from the Photography program, Matthew Dumouchel has been able to apply the technical and creative abilities he learned at Humber into a successful freelance photography career. Dumouchel has already worked with a number of Toronto photographers (Miguel Jacob, Mike Lewis, Dan Lim, Dexter Quinto) who have helped guide him into the industry creating new networking opportunities to expand his knowledge. “I have been welcomed into this exciting industry with open arms. I find myself constantly inspired and enriched by my mentors,” says Dumouchel. “I am so proud of my success.” Dumouchel was also awarded the 2013 Narvali Photography Limited Award.

ROBIN KING

Graphic Design - 2013 Robin King entered the three-year graphics design program and Lakeshore campus, determined to work in the field that had always been of interest to her. After graduating she landed a full-time position as a graphic designer at BANG! Creative Communications, a branding and marketing company in Milton, Ont. King works on a variety of campaigns in her line of work, using social media, advertising and web design. “My time at Humber prepared me really well for this job. I feel like I got more than just a base education and that I was really prepared for the real world.”

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PHOTO OF MUSTAFA BY: ZACK HELWA VIA TORONTO STAR

PHOTOS BY: ALI MUSTAFA/ EPA VIA TORONTO STAR

IN MEMORIAM Ali Mustafa 1984 – 2014 Ali Mustafa wanted to be a part of change.

His passion for photography and human rights led him to some of the most dangerous countries in the world; Mustafa wanted to expose the injustices inflicted upon millions of people around the world, in the hopes that awareness could lead to peace for so many.

He travelled to Israel, Palestinian region and Egypt, documenting conflict and revolution. In March of 2013, he went to Syria for the first time, returning to Canada in May. Back home, he exhibited photos showing the death and destruction he witnessed. His photography also shed light on the violence and bloodshed of Syria’s ongoing civil war.

“Getting a firsthand description of the Paris Commune and Soviet-like popular assemblies that had sprung up throughout liberated areas of Syria was very inspiring,” said New Politics’ Jared Anderson, who first met Mustafa in Sept. 2012 at York University.

Mustafa would return to Egypt shortly after and spend another six months there.

During his stay he decided to return to Syria

70 CONVERGENCE Spring 2014

and traveled there through Turkey. Not even Mustafa’s family knew of his plan; the most he told them was that he was in Turkey, a week before his death.

“He wanted to tell mom he was okay,” Mustafa’s sister, Justina Rosa Botelho, told The Associated Press. “He never told me he was in Syria. I guess he was trying to hide that.”

In an interview last July, Mustafa said, “I felt it was important to go there to cover the war first hand. In a way, I’m also fascinated by war not in the gory sense but in the way it impacts us as human beings. What does it take away? What does it leave behind? Most importantly, what does it transform us into?”

He was supposed to return to Toronto within weeks, according to Botelho.

Abu al-Hassan Marea, an activist, told The Associated Press that a military helicopter dropped a barrel bomb – an improvised explosive device – on the Hadariyeh area of Aleppo, on March 9. After reporters and others near the scene, including Mustafa, moved in to survey the damage, a second bomb was dropped, killing him and seven others. Mustafa was 29 years old.

Syria has become the deadliest country for journalists since the 2011 uprising against Bashar al-Assad. According to the Commit-

tee to Protect Journalists, 63 journalists have been killed in Syria since 1992.

For much of the world, Mustafa becomes just another name on the list of journalists who have died on duty; men and women who have risked, and ultimately lost their lives in the fight for others’ freedoms. Courage and bravery are a requirement for these individuals, as they travel to hostile, oppressed regions in an attempt to shed light on the atrocities taking place there.

In a statement to Convergence, Botelho had this to say about her brother: “I can tell you what a great brother he was to me. When he was little we used to do everything together, he used to follow me around and look up to me. Now I find myself looking up to him for all his bravery and his big heart in helping many people here and abroad. In the end it cost him his life in helping others; according to his friends he had set out to help with the search and rescue team. He never got any proper training for such things, but his heart and bravery could not stop him from helping. He is an angel to many and to me. He helped me out a lot in my time of need. He is the people’s journalist and my little brother now and forever.”

- Paolo Serpe

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