March 17: Bringing the World to Canada, Journalism Panel

Panellists Mike Gasher (Concordia Department of Journalism), Akli Ait-Abdallah (Radio Canada), Justin Hayward (CBC) and Sue Montgomery (The Montreal Gazette) discuss Canada's role in international journalism.

March 17: Bringing the World to Canada, Journalism Panel

Despite the multitude of difficulties facing the journalism industry, international reporting must find a way to go on. That was the conclusion of a Concordia University Department of Journalism panel discussion that took place as part of the Bridges that Unite exhibition in Montreal on Wednesday, March 17, 2010.

Guided by the Journalism Department’s Chair, Mike Gasher, panellists Akli Ait-Abdallah (Radio-Canada), Justin Hayward (CBC) and Sue Montgomery (The Montreal Gazette/CanWest) used the exhibition as a springboard for this discussion on the role of the media in bringing the world to Canada through international journalism.

Aga Khan Foundation Canada CEO Khalil Shariff opened up the floor by underlining the importance of the media’s role in educating Canadians to better understand what development looks like on the ground. Gasher further refined this thought, stating how dependant we all are on journalists to tell us what’s going on in the world so we can grasp what places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Chile truly look like.

The issues with providing international news coverage to Canadians are similar to those facing the industry at large: continual budget cuts, trying to adapt to the emerging new media news models, and decision-makers being out of touch with their audience.

Ait-Abdallah shared his personal experience covering the Ivory Coast and the Middle-East and explained that in general, pitching stories that don’t involve disaster coverage is tough because of budgetary concerns and a lack of understanding at the executive level.

 For Hayward, it was the passion of female radio reporters he trained in Afghanistan that inspired him to return to international reporting. “They were willing to put their lives on the line to inform people of what was happening in post-Taliban Afghanistan,” he said. “I found that the things that we learned from the women in Afghanistan was radically different than what we learned in the newspapers,” he added, emphasizing that journalists who don’t leave the base when reporting in war zones are actually doing a disservice to Canadians by painting an incomplete picture of the situation by simply covering disasters. or worse, an inaccurate one by not covering development issues as well. “If you’re going to do that, you might as well not be there,” he concluded.

Montgomery concurred with her fellow panellists’ analysis of the current situation. Working for a local publication, Montgomery said representing the audience’s interests, which, due to the diversity of the Canadian population, means covering international stories with a local connection. “Otherwise, we are failing to cover our backyard,” she summarised.  

Panellists agreed that stories from developing countries do not always have to be negative. Most importantly, the panellists pleaded with the audience to petition media executives for more international coverage because if they don’t think Canadians care, reporters will not be able to share the positive stories from the developing world with Canada.