STEWART: Canada’s media watchdog is as biased as the journalists it watches

Public trust in the mainstream media has collapsed all across the English-speaking world, Canada included. According to recent polls, trust in Canadian news has dropped 18% in just five years and Canadians’ interest in the news has dropped by more than 20% in six years. On top of structural explanations, like those outlined by University of Toronto Media Studies Professor Andrey Mir, and the likely truism that Canadians are generally more trusting of their elites, another significant, but little-known reason for this is that Canada’s media-ethics ombudsman refuses to do its job.I know, because I had to deal with them recently. The experience was hair-raising.Last year, I filed a human-rights complaint against a Toronto playhouse over its ban against all non-black attendees. Currently, the theatre’s counsel is trying to argue such discrimination is justified, due to Toronto theatres apparently being “too white” and, therefore (you guessed it), “racist.”In support of this argument, its counsel offered just a single “study” mentioned in a recent column by Toronto Star’s Joshua Chong called, “Too white, too old, too well-to-do: why Toronto theatre companies need to appeal to broader audiences.” As the headline indicates, the piece is wildly inflammatory (even most in the comment section agreed), although totally in keeping with the fledging paper’s normal, Der Stürmer-levels of race-baiting.I did a bit of digging into the columnist’s “too white”-claim. Surprisingly (but certainly not shockingly), it was absolutely, 100% false. As Mr. Chong states in the piece: “Most significantly the [Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts] survey found fewer than 10% of respondents identified as part of a visible minority culture, despite almost half of Toronto’s general population at the time identifying as members of a visible minority” — Implication: the rest of attendees are “non-visible minorities” i.e. white Torontonians. This is the extent Chong makes to support his headline’s claim, but unfortunately for him, the referenced survey doesn’t say this in the slightest.What it actually says is around 90% of survey respondents identify as “Canadian or of European origin” while the remainder “identify as part of a visible minority culture…” For Chong’s headline to find solid ground here, all the respondents identifying as “Canadian” (along with those identifying as of European origin) would have to be white; something that no one would or should assume. Scores of non-white Canadians would surely pick “Canadian”, and proudly so, over a bureaucratic term such as “visible minority.” An ethical journalist would have at least quoted the survey itself, pointed out the unfortunately vague description employed, sought clarification from the report’s authors or, at the very, very least, hyperlinked the report or even named it in the piece (he didn’t do either and it took some sleuthing on my part to locate it online.) But when your employer is the race-baiting Toronto Star, you stretch and shoe-horn the “facts” until they get what they want.I put this to Chong along with three other, easy-to-find industry reports showing his “too white” thesis was hatemongering bunkum. One report showed that Canadian blacks proportionately attend plays more than whites. His response? Silence. So, I filed a complaint with the National News Media Council: Canada’s self-appointed “voluntary, self-regulatory body that deals with complaints about news and opinion reporting” in an effort to “promote widely accepted journalistic standards including accuracy, context and opportunity to respond to allegations and harmful statements.” The Toronto-based organization is one which just a couple of conservative outlets have availed themselves to, but considering the above egregiousness, surely, I thought, its analysts had to admit this wasn’t even advocacy journalism, but completely made-up reportage designed solely on race-bait.Their response? NNC’s director of dispute resolution Cara Sabatini bizarrely asserted this does not actually rise to the kinds of so-called “direct reporting” problems they deal with. I was stunned. Representing survey respondents who called themselves “Canadian” as “white” is apparently not misleading or inaccurate enough to be a reporting problem for Canada’s press complaint arbiters. Further, Sabatini opted to mischaracterize my complaint, responding with: “your concern appears to be with the wording and findings of the survey in question rather than the reporting on it.” Actually, as I made crystal clear, my concern was directly with Chong’s baseless and racist headline, not the survey’s vague wording. Alas, I was thereupon ghosted by Sabatini and, interestingly, her decision was never posted on NNC’s website, as is its policy.In sum, Canada’s national news-reporting watchdog found that wildly misreporting on survey results in order to impugn and problematize an entire race of people was not a problem for #CurrentYear Canadian journalism. The kind of inciteful misrepresentation it intentionally passed over probably happens several times a day across Canada’s left-wing media and, in part, it is because of NNC’s own racial biases, that it does. Regular contributor Robert Stewart is a small-business owner whose writing has appeared in the Toronto Sun, National News Watch, and the Post Millennial, among other outlets

STEWART: Canada’s media watchdog is as biased as the journalists it watches

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