HANNAFORD: WS beat CBC to the Global punch, but journalism association 'undermines public right to know'

Not that we are carping pettibones here at the Western Standard, but dammit, it’s a bit much when an association representing journalists doesn’t accurately give credit where it’s due — at our expense.We speak here of the Canadian Association of Journalists, which recently expressed its shock and ‘disappointment’ that Global News had laid off 35 journalists… and credited reporting by CBC.Ahem. Yes, CBC had it.The Western Standard had it first.Our scoop.C'mon people.The Canadian Association of Journalists has been around for a while, with the stated goal of training journalists, advocating for journalism in general and deciding journalistic ethics. We are not members; we took one look at the pronouns accompanying the names of the team, and knew they weren’t our people.However, it’s not that we don’t share the CAJ’s disappointment at the layoffs.Whatever our differences with corporate, state-funded media — and we have them — those people Global fired were people we ran into all the time at events, press conferences and places where news happens.Now what for them, to pay rent and groceries? If they’re lucky, running comms for people they used to report on. (Naheed Nenshi might be hiring…)But it certainly won’t be like the old days when you could get into a fight with your editor in the morning, get fired before lunch and walk across the street to a new job with the competition before you caught the bus home.We wish luck to those laid off.However consistent with today’s progressive sensitivities as mentioned above, the journalistic association is nothing if not high-minded. It therefore made rather a fist of how Global’s action was undercutting ‘the public’s right to know.’Hmmm. Right to know what? I will grant that with her ‘West Block’ show, one-time Calgarian Mercedes Stephenson does indeed shine Global’s light in dark places. She survived the putsch, but one swallow doesn’t make a spring.You see, when I think about the ‘public’s right to know,’ I don’t think of Global being at the front of the mainstream media pack, asking awkward questions and trying to speak truth to power.During the COVID crisis, they took their place beside the CBC, the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star as public-spirited purveyors of health-care instructions from all Canada’s public health agencies. It’s not that they were worse. They just weren’t any better. To coin a phrase, they really were ‘all in it together.’Global was also shoulder-to-shoulder with other Canadian state-funded media outlets that got it so spectacularly wrong with its May 2021 headline: “Grief, sorrow after discovery of 215 bodies, unmarked graves at former B.C. residential school site.”No. No bodies were discovered. Ground anomalies were discovered. These have yet to be investigated.Meanwhile, for the confusion of the casual reader, the original story remains on the Global website, unedited and without redirection to an updated report. (Presumably there is one.) It does however warn the reader that some details in this story may be disturbing. “Discretion is advised.” No kidding!One could go on. Certainly, if trans is your thing, Global is your go-to tv station for sympathetic reporting.But again, it’s not that Global News is out of step with its peers.It’s just that when the CAJ talks about the public’s right to know, it conveniently forgets that today’s government-funded, mainstream media is far less curious than media used to be, intellectually far less diverse, and with the CAJ’s blessing, far more likely to write off points of view with which the writer disagrees as ‘false balance’ and therefore not worth mentioning.So, I ask again: ‘Right to know what?’Well, maybe this. We humbly point out that any association seeking to advise journalists, should recognize that getting it right, and getting it first is the goal.And you don’t need a government grant to do it.