The Media and the Vancouver Riots

I've been trying to understand how the Vancouver Riots of June 15th came about. There have been some excellent and thoughtful commentaries about what happened and specifically, my former CBC colleague Claude Adams has written one of the best.

While much has been said about the combination of factors including the consuming of too much alcohol downed by thousands of young people, suburban anomie, lack of police preparedness, etc., one other key element needs to be considered.

The uncritical and over the top media coverage of the NHL in general and the Stanley Cup playoffs in particular were, in my opinion, serious contributing factors to the mayhem that showed up in downtown Vancouver earlier this week.

No one news organization is more at fault than another, but all Canadian media - radio, television and print - share the blame for inciting a culture of violence.

Kovach and Rosensteil in their seminal book, "The Elements of Journalism," say journalists need to keep the news in proportion and make it comprehensive. Coverage of the Stanley Cup was anything but.

The media ramped up the emotionality of the story by playing to middle class Canadians' sense of nationalism, even anti-Americanism. The Canucks were frequently referred to as "Canada's Team." The CBC's Don Cherry is a long time proponent of keeping the game physical. Newscasts on all channels led with stories of heightened expectations, pumping up the volume of the story as the seventh and final game approached.

Newspaper headlines concentrated on this story to the exclusion of anything else, even as the Greek economic meltdown, the war in Libya and the e.coli outbreak in Europe all had strong Canadian angles that were never pursued because the stories themselves were largely ignored.

CBC TV, as the broadcaster of the series on their longstanding show "Hockey Night in Canada" went all out. It was undoubtedly a huge domestic story. But it was also a colossal moneymaker.

According to the Toronto Star, CBC garnered some of its largest audiences ever (6.2 million for the sixth game) and was therefore able to charge $140,000 for 30 second spots - an enormous amount by Canadian standards. CBC News played an unquestioning and supporting role by hyping the event and never really committing much journalism. Instead there were the inevitably soft features about enthusiastic Vancouverites and the sale of Canuck jerseys.

While there has been some reporting earlier about the rise in concussions in the NHL, caused in part by a faster game, that kind of reporting disappeared almost entirely as the Stanley Cup playoffs were underway.

It wasn't as though the series was a croquet match.

Jeff Z. Klein and Stu Hackel of the New York Times called it "the most rancorous Cup finals in a couple of decades. It was less about the best hockey of the year and more about biting, taunting, slashing, cheap shots, late shots, high-sticking, slew-footing, diving, embellishing, brawling, trash-talking and name-calling. Pushing and shoving after the whistle became the norm, and by the end, the teams had combined for 342 penalty minutes, the most in Cup finals since 1986." 

But hardly any of that appeared on air or in print as newsroom across Canada drank the NHL Kool-Aid by sending out a strong message that this is how hockey should be played and woe to anyone who thinks otherwise.

So when thousands of people decided to behave outside the arena in much the same way the game is played, it sounded hollow for newscasters and editorialists to tut-tut about violence on the streets when the same media had been sanctioning it on the ice for weeks.

CBC: "Value for Money" = Deepening Commercial Values

According to the Canadian Press, "the CBC released a study Wednesday (June 15) that pegs their gross impact on the Canadian economy last year at $3.7-billion. The analysis by consultants Deloitte & Touche LLP was commissioned by the public broadcaster in connection with their latest five-year strategic plan."

The goal of the study, according to CBC President Hubert Lacroix is to show that for every dollar the public broadcaster receives from the government, it generates another $3 in related economic activity.

This study was commissioned in anticipation of license renewal hearing before the Canadian regulator, the CRTC. D & L concludes that the CBC presence is actually good for other commercial sectors, saying it can operate as a beta site by developing new technologies and promoting digital content, especially in the Montreal area.

That's the good news.

The problem with the study is that it presumes that the values of the commercial sector now apply completely to the public broadcaster as well.

This puts the CBC on very perilous ground.  By establishing commercial benchmarks against which it will henceforth be judged, the CBC must now prove itself to be an undoubted commercial success. And that can only mean more programming that imitates the commercial sector and fewer programs that don't.

But if the CBC falters due to a shaky economy, or is forced to implement a vigorous round of cost-cutting from the now emboldened Conservative government, the CBC-haters will point to this study and accuse the public broadcaster of failing, based on its own standards of commercial viability.

Despite this study, members of the Tory caucus such as Jason Kenney are still accusing the CBC of being profligate and Toronto-centric.

Interestingly, the BBC also commissioned Deloitte & Touche a few months ago which also came up with almost exactly the same conclusions that the BBC is value for money. That study also unleashed attacks from the Tory ranks, accusing the BBC of being "south-east centric."

According to The Observer on March 11:

The BBC will retaliate against cuts in its budget this week by claiming that its contribution to Britain's economy grew 5.6% to top £8bn last year, delivering well over £2 of value for every pound in fees from television licences.

As the former Conservative minister Lord Patten prepares to take the chair of the corporation, the BBC will step up its efforts to justify the licence fee, arguing that far from being a drain on taxpayers, its activities in commissioning programmes, buying services and supporting creative activities act as a net positive for the nation's finances.

A study by the accounting firm Deloitte will conclude that the BBC's UK activities generated £8.1bn of economic value in the last financial year, up from £7.7bn the previous year. And its "net" contribution – taking account of a simulation of activity that would replace the BBC if licence fees were scrapped – has grown to £5bn, up 14.9% compared with the results of similar research a year ago. Licence fee income is around £3.6bn per year.

In spite of efforts to broaden activities away from the south-east, the BBC remains highly London-centric – Deloitte found that 69% of the BBC's gross economic contribution remained in the capital, although benefit to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all increased. The BBC is trying to reduce its south-eastern focus: by 2016, half of network TV programmes and 40% of radio spending are due to be made outside London, partly through a move of five departments to Salford.

As the BBC and the CBC move away from their public broadcasting mandates, they may discover that being commercial cross-dressers will guarantee them neither love nor money.

In Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, who controls the media?

Over the past week, I attended a conference held in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. There were journalists from Moldova, Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia, and it was sponsored by the Council of Europe.

The Council is part of the European Union and its goal to connect the issues around civil society and democracy and especially how media can be part of the process.

Moldova is a landlocked post-Soviet republic, tucked in between Romania and Ukraine. Media and civic society in the region are making valiant efforts to emerge from a journalistic culture which has been deeply intimidated and deformed - first by decades of Soviet repression and now by a rampant commercialism. The urge to move into a better, more democratic place, is there, but how?

Right now, these countries have built informal networks committed to media self-regulation. In effect - independent media. But it comes with real dangers.

The challenge is two fold: how to give governmental regulators more confidence that journalism can be trusted and fewer reasons to return to the bad old days of censorship.

At the same time, the pressure for profits in commercial media is driving a heightened tabloid sensibility that often borders on pornography.

Control is still in the air: In Romania the government recently tried and failed to institute regular psychiatric examinations for all journalists. Fortunately, this idea was rebuffed but the thought itself is chilling and reminiscent of old Soviet techniques of political repression and intimidation.

There are some positive signs as well.

• In Armenia as in other countries, there is a strong interest in creating ethics guides. 43 media outlets there now have codes.

• In Azerbaijan, there has been a recent proliferation of media along with a national complaints commission which is entirely independent of government funding or oversight. So successful is this model that it has been adopted but the media in Russia.

• In Georgia, six media organizations have combined to create a review board for public complaints, again free of government involvement. The board has a large public component which has proven to be more effective than any top-down approach. Training workshops for journalists are being held on a regular basis.

• In Moldova, a new code of ethics has been implemented over the past year and 88% of all Moldovan journalists now have signed on.

• In Russia, the enormous presence of media and government make simplicity impossible. Efforts at self-regulation are occurring but always with a long tradition of government oversight. Still there are some encouraging signs including training, public involvement, and a proliferation of journalists associations. The sense of physical danger is constant and the need for a stronger governmental presence makes self-regulatory media more difficult.

• In Ukraine, as in Russia, journalistic self-regulation cannot be entirely free of governmental oversight. All media groups require the approval of the Ministry of Justice. At the same time, a code of ethics for 16,000 journalists has been created, complete with rules of conduct and reprimands for ethical violations. Throughout the South Caucasus, there is little or no government funding, but a strong NGO presence helps defray costs.

Is there a role here for independent news ombudsmen?

Press councils are now the preferred vehicle, but there is a strong interest in ombudsmen and how they might operate in partnership. The Moldovan public broadcaster is very interested in having an ombudsman as are a number of newspapers to bridge the enormous gaps between citizens and the media that attempt to serve them.

This is a story that is being written even now, and it was a privilege to be among these brave journalists for whom public service is a deep and cherished ideal.

Stay tuned.

In the Middle East: The Necessity of Pessimism

The level of public expectation about what might happen next in the Middle East is low for many people. Some suggest that a true democratic expression is unlikely to occur. The reasons they cite are historical, cultural and largely fearful.

That doesn't mean that the pessimists are wrong. But when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, many observers of the region choose pessimism as their default mode.

As I mentioned in the previous posting, western media types (we used to be called journalists) were particularly optimistic and naive about Iran especially after the Shah was deposed. One prominent CBC journalist Carole Jerome, fell in love with a leader of the Iranian revolution Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, with tragic consequences. That may have been an extreme response, but many journalists at that time saw the Iranian revolution as an exotic expression of essentially western values that could be literally and figuratively embraced.

With the Arab Spring, some of the same ideals and instincts are at play. And some of the cold water being thrown - yet again - is coming from those who see danger in getting too close, especially from pro-Israel advocates.

Complicating it is Seymour Hersh's article in this week's New Yorker about the lack of a credible nuclear threat from Iran. Iran plays a key role in the demonology of the Middle East. Hersh's article must be creating a lot of concern in Arab capitals (not that they don't have enough to worry about), the White House and in Jerusalem. The timing of Hersh's article (for Israel especially) is not good.

Compounding all of this are media environments in Arab and almost all Muslim countries which are profoundly limited, repressed and reeling with self-censorship. Turkish media remains a prominent exception.

Any point of light in this dark and shifting glass may now be coming from Pakistan, of all places. Pakistani journalism has a long tradition of fearlessness and never more than now.

Matiullah Jan, Dawn News

A recent article in Slate pointed to a young TV journalist called Matiullah Jan. Mr. Jan is only 26 years old, but in his short career has been working as an independent ombudsman, calling out his colleagues to do the right thing: i.e., not to accept bribes, report the truth, stay true to the best values of serving the public with reliable information.

As Slate reports: "Jan, an anchor for Dawn News in Islamabad, launched a new show in January called Apna Gareban—the name means "under our collar," an Urdu idiom that translates as "our own underbelly"—in which Jan investigates the conduct of his fellow journalists. On the show, he acts as a kind of one-man ombudsman for all of Pakistan, badgering reporters, ambushing them Bill O'Reilly-style, and guilt-tripping them on air for their alleged misdeeds—behavior unheard of in the Pakistani media. "This is a very revolutionary thing," says Mehmal Sarfraz, op-ed editor at the Daily Times in Lahore. "Somebody had to do it."

"In February, Jan aired an hourlong report outing the journalists who visited Mecca on the government's dime. Many of the reporters defended themselves. One said God had called him to Mecca, and he had to obey, despite having gone on hajj twice before. "God called you three times?" Jan asked, incredulous. Others said they didn't know where the funds had come from, and they never bothered to ask. Pakistan's supreme court soon ordered the reporters to pay back the money, though some have appealed the decision."

Mr. Jan is engaged in some of the most dangerous journalism in the planet. While he clearly has the right instincts, he also needs someone at his back. So at the Organization of News Ombudsmen, we offered Mr. Jan an invitation to join us and to help him publicize his important work through the ONO website.

We found him on Facebook (another good use of social media), and he immediately agreed to be part of our group.

So welcome to ONO, Matiullah. I'm optimistic and I think we all have much to learn from you.