Covering Canadian Crime: What Journalists Should Know and the Public Should Question 9781442631021

Table of contents :
Contents
Covering Canadian Crimewhat Journalists Should Know And The Public Should Question
Introduction
Part One The Routines And Realities Of Canadian Crime Reporting
1.The Traditional “Pickup” Or “Death Knock” Story: Its Role, Its Value(S), And The Impact Of Social Media
2.Is Coverage Of The Mafia Tuff Enough?
3.The Inherent Drama Of Courts: An Interview With National Post Columnist Christie Blatchford
4.Sometimes The Law Is An Ass: Reflections On Publishing The Record Of A Juvenile
5.Not Naming Names?: Crime-Coverage Rituals In Canada, Sweden, And The Netherlands
6. “I Sleep Really Well At Night”: The Globe And Mail’S Timothy Appleby On Covering Thirty Years Of Grief
7.A Case Of Prairie Justice: The Murderer, The Jury, And The Spirit Of Durkheim
Part Two Court Access And Information Technology
8.Courthouse Culture
9.The Virtual Courtroom: Journalistic Practice, Social Media, And Information Flow In Canada’S Courts
10. “Did She Consent To This Sex Act With This Accused?” The News Media, Sexual-Assault Myths, And The Complainant’S Private Records In Court Testimony
11. Fighting On The Side Of The Angels: The Toronto Star’S Newsroom Lawyer Bert Bruser On The Changing Challenges Of The Law In Canada
12. The Bandidos Murder Trial: All A-Twitter About A Canadian First
13. Aiding And Abetting: How Police Media-Information Units Shape Local News Coverage
14. “Scoop Was King”: Media Competition, Crime News, And Masculinity
Part Three Constructing Criminals And Crime News
15. The People’S Servant: Vancouver Sun Crime Reporter Kim Bolan’S Breakthrough Blogging
16. “Everyone Kept Ganging Up On Harper”: Political “Gangs” And The Language Of Criminal Justice In Canadian Journalism
17. Guns, Gangs, And The Underclass Revisited: An Analysis Of Courtroom Coverage From The Jordan Manners Trials
18. Telling Great Stories: An Interview With Reporter-Turned-Thriller Writer Rick Mofina
19. Covering White “Just-Us”: What Did Journalists “Really” Say About Ipperwash?
20. Debwewin: The Search For The Truth About Ipperwash
21. Did Need For Speed Kill?: “Street-Racing” Legislation And The Mediated Reality Of Crime
22. Representing Risk: Criminality, Violence, And Mental Illness In Canadian News-Media Reporting
23. Rethinking Young People, Crime, And The Media: Turning Transcendental Illusion On Its Feet
Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

COVERING CANADIAN CRIME What Journalists Should Know and the Public Should Question

Crime reporting, in one form or another, is as old as crime itself. Almost all young reporters have spent some time on this beat, and their work affects all of us. Covering Canadian Crime offers a deep and detailed look at perennial issues in crime reporting and how changes in technology, business practices, and professional ethics are affecting today’s crime coverage. Social media in the courtroom, the stigmatization of mental illness, the influence of police media units, the practice of knocking on victims’ doors, the culture of masculinity in the newsroom: these are among the topics of discussion, explored from various disciplinary perspectives and combined with poignant interviews and thought-provoking introspection from seasoned journalists such as Christie Blatchford, Timothy Appleby, Linden MacIntyre, Kim Bolan, and Peter Edwards. A critical account of the challenges involved in crime reporting in ethical, informed, and powerful ways, Covering Canadian Crime poses the questions that reporters, journalism students, and the public at large need to ask and to answer. Chris Richardson is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Young Harris College. Romayne Smith Fullerton is an associate professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University.

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Covering Canadian Crime What Journalists Should Know and the Public Should Question

EDITED BY CHRIS RICHARDSON AND ROMAYNE SMITH FULLERTON

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2016 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-3101-4 (cloth)   ISBN 978-1-4426-2918-9 (paper) Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetablebased inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Covering Canadian crime : what journalists should know and the public should question/edited by Chris Richardson and Romayne Smith Fullerton. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-3101-4 (cloth). – ISBN 978-1-4426-2918-9 (paperback) 1. Crime and the press – Canada.  I. Richardson, Chris, 1985–, author, editor  II. Smith Fullerton, Romayne, 1984–, author, editor PN4914.C74C69 2016   070.4'493640971   C2016-900265-9

This book has been published with the assistance of the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Western University, London, Ontario; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; and Young Harris College, Georgia. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement du Canada of Canada

Contents

Introduction  3 Chris Richardson and Romayne Smith Fullerton Part One: The Routines and Realities of Canadian Crime Reporting 1 The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story: Its Role, Its Value(s), and the Impact of Social Media  23 Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson 2 Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough?  43 Cecil Rosner 3 The Inherent Drama of Courts: An Interview with National Post Columnist Christie Blatchford  58 Chris Richardson and Romayne Smith Fullerton 4 Sometimes the Law Is an Ass: Reflections on Publishing the Record of a Juvenile  65 Kirk L a Pointe 5 Not Naming Names?: Crime-Coverage Rituals in Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands  70 Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson 6 “I Sleep Really Well at Night”: The Globe and Mail’s Timothy Appleby on Covering Thirty Years of Grief  100 Chris Richardson and Romayne Smith Fullerton

vi Contents

7 A Case of Prairie Justice: The Murderer, the Jury, and the Spirit of Durkheim  109 James S. M c Lean Part Two: Court Access And Information Technology 8 Courthouse Culture  129 Linden M ac Intyre 9 The Virtual Courtroom: Journalistic Practice, Social Media, and Information Flow in Canada’s Courts  136 Susan Harada and Mary Mc Guire 10 “Did She Consent to This Sex Act with This Accused?”: The News Media, Sexual-Assault Myths, and the Complainant’s Private Records in Court Testimony  156 Barbara M. Freeman 11 Fighting on the Side of the Angels: The Toronto Star’s Newsroom Lawyer Bert Bruser on the Changing Challenges of the Law in Canada  182 Chris Richardson and Romayne Smith Fullerton 12 The Bandidos Murder Trial: All A-Twitter about a Canadian First  187 Kate Dubinski 13 Aiding and Abetting: How Police Media-Information Units Shape Local News Coverage  193 April Lindgren 14 “Scoop Was King”: Media Competition, Crime News, and Masculinity  217 Mary Lynn Young Part Three: Constructing Criminals and Crime News 15 The People’s Servant: Vancouver Sun Crime Reporter Kim Bolan’s Breakthrough Blogging  245 Chris Richardson and Romayne Smith Fullerton

Contents vii

16 “Everyone Kept Ganging up on Harper”: Political “Gangs” and the Language of Criminal Justice in Canadian Journalism  251 Chris Richardson 17 Guns, Gangs, and the Underclass Revisited: An Analysis of Courtroom Coverage from the Jordan Manners Trials  275 William O’Grady and Patrick Parnaby (with Sabah Fatima) 18 Telling Great Stories: An Interview with Reporter-Turned-Thriller Writer Rick Mofina  298 Chris Richardson and Romayne Smith Fullerton 19 Covering White “Just-Us”: What Did Journalists “Really” Say about Ipperwash?  304 Romayne Smith Fullerton, Ginny Whitehouse, and Maggie Jones Patterson 20 Debwewin: The Search for the Truth about Ipperwash  322 Peter Edwards 21 Did Need for Speed Kill?: “Street-Racing” Legislation and the Mediated Reality of Crime  329 Stephen L. Muzzatti 22 Representing Risk: Criminality, Violence, and Mental Illness in Canadian News-Media Reporting  346 Sarah Berry and Rob Whitley 23 Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media: Turning Transcendental Illusion on Its Feet  366 Hans Skott-Myhre Bibliography  381 Contributors  413 Index  423

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COVERING CANADIAN CRIME What Journalists Should Know and the Public Should Question

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Introduction Chris R i c har ds on a nd R omayn e S mit h F ul l e rt on

The links between journalism and crime run deep. From word-ofmouth reports millennia ago to the sensational yellow journalism in North America at the turn of the nineteenth century, from twentiethcentury fascinations with serial killers to twenty-first-century fears of street gangs and superpredators, journalists, in one guise or another, have been pursuing lawbreakers and rousing public fear and curiosity throughout human history. Now, however, the field is changing in important ways: accelerating communication technologies, new media policies, corporate mergers, and renewed calls for law and order in the political sphere are just some of the issues facing Canadian crime journalism today. Regardless of aspirations, virtually all reporters cover crime stories at some point. Editors often assign their youngest reporters to this beat, sending them to police stations, public hearings, and the homes of devastated families to request photos of victims. Consequently, horror stories from these early and formative career moments abound: seeing a dead body; talking to hardened gang members; asking victims’ families for personal information during their time of grief. As Michael Connelly writes, “the irony of crime beat journalism – maybe all of journalism – is that the best stories are really the worst stories.”1 We are all deeply touched by crime coverage. Yet few academic publications deal with this important issue through direct and sustained analysis. And virtually none of them do so within a wholly Canadian context. That is why we have put together Covering Canadian Crime, a text that provides valuable scholarly research as well as interviews with and reflections by seasoned journalists who have succeeded in covering Canadian crimes in ethical, informed, and powerful ways.

4  Covering Canadian Crime

While Covering Canadian Crime is not a “how to” guide per se, it identifies crucial issues to consider when blogging, court reporting, or structuring a crime narrative. It also raises critical questions that may not have occurred to many reporters and urges journalists to reflect on their assumptions. The book examines coverage of First Nations communities in Peter Edwards’s “Debwewin: The Search for the Truth about Ipperwash” and Romayne Smith Fullerton, Ginny Whitehouse, and Maggie Jones Patterson’s “Covering White ‘Just-Us’: What Did Journalists ‘Really’ Say about Ipperwash?”; it rethinks representations of young people in the justice system in Kirk LaPointe’s “Sometimes the Law Is an Ass: Reflections on Publishing the Record of a Juvenile” and Hans Skott-Myhre’s “Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media: Turning Transcendental Illusion on Its Feet”; and it questions portrayals of mental illness and crime in Sarah Berry and Rob Whitley’s “Representing Risk: Criminality, Violence, and Mental Illness in Canadian News Media Reporting.” The book also studies those who cover crime, particularly in relation to gender in Barbara M. Freeman’s “‘Did She Consent to This Sex Act with This Accused?’ The News Media, Sexual-Assault Myths, and the Complainant’s Private Records in Court Testimony” and Mary Lynn Young’s “‘Scoop Was King’: Media Competition, Crime News, and Masculinity”; in relation to the courtroom in James S. McLean’s “A Case of Prairie Justice: The Murderer, the Jury, and the Spirit of Durkheim,” Linden MacIntyre’s “Courthouse Culture,” Susan Harada and Mary McGuire’s “The Virtual Courtroom: Journalistic Practice, Social Media, and Information Flow in Canada’s Courts,” and Kate Dubinski’s “The Bandidos Murder Trial: All A-Twitter about a Canadian First”; and in relation to moral panics in Chris Richardson’s “‘Everyone Kept Ganging up on Harper’: Political ‘Gangs’ and the Language of Criminal Justice in Canadian Journalism,” William O’Grady, Patrick Parnaby, and Sarah Fatima’s “Guns, Gangs and the Underclass Revisited: An Analysis of Courtroom Coverage from the Jordan Manners Trials,” and Stephen Muzzatti’s “Did Need for Speed Kill? ‘Street Racing’ Legislation and the Mediated Reality of Crime.” All of these contributions provide researchers with relevant material within the Canadian context, keeping journalism practitioners and educators in mind as well as the more general audiences who negotiate these kinds of stories in the press. These chapters are not philosophical musings, public-policy suggestions, or ethics treatises; they are concrete responses to problems that many journalists will face in their careers. Covering Canadian Crime,

Introduction 5

therefore, provides readers with a comprehensive exploration of the crimescape, allowing audiences and journalists alike to consider more deeply the prolific crime narratives that circulate within our local and national media. Crime Reporting Civilizations have codified and punished transgressions in many different ways from the Sumerians’ first written laws circa 2100 BC and Draco’s harsh rule in seventh-century BC to contemporary “three strikes” laws and mandatory minimums. While legal codes and the arbitration of punishments are forever changing, much of the discourse today continues to reflect, implicitly and explicitly, the religious, ethical, and cultural presuppositions of these earlier periods. Recently, contemporary politicians have announced wars on drugs, gangs, terrorism, and other recurring social problems, often putting new emphasis on much older issues. As they do so, citizens are constantly discussing and debating criminality in their societies with the help of reports and investigations by formal and informal journalists. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim famously suggested that there is no society without criminals; even a society of saints would eventually produce scandal.2 The degree and severity may differ, but, as Durkheim argued, crime is “indispensable to the normal evolution of morality and law.” In addition, today’s professional journalists play an integral role in debates about crime and justice by helping both to construct and reflect public opinion and also by circulating information and ideas about transgression and justice. Whether the role of reporter has taken the form of groups of citizens gathered in a “pub” (a word that notably shares its root with “publication” and “public enemy”), or included live-streaming and crowd-sourced coverage of mass protests, journalists continue to facilitate public debates about legal and moral codes in important and subtle ways. As Stuart Hall and his associates pointed out in their groundbreaking work on “mugging” in the United Kingdom, journalists generally take on the roles of “secondary definers,” allowing legal and political authorities to be the “primary definers” who set the parameters for how the public will understand and discuss crime.3 While in some senses this view is uncontroversial – of course, journalists report on what officials say – it becomes more profound when we consider how easily journalists can be manipulated if they are not knowledgeable, cautious,

6  Covering Canadian Crime

and conscientious of the greater contexts and debates. For instance, as Richardson, Muzzatti, and others point out in their contributions to this collection, Canadian politicians are quick to rouse fears of gangs, bogus refugee claimants, street racers, and delinquent youths, but none of these issues are particularly new or dire problems today. In fact, in many cases, crime is decreasing across the country. However, exposure to news media frequently has an inverse effect on how safe people feel; the more news people consume, the more fearful they become.4 Journalists thus have significant power as “secondary definers” to stir anxieties or assuage fears of crime waves and public menaces, and, consequently, they must consider how much they are willing to mediate and challenge the statements of officials. In 1997 Michael Welch, Melissa Fenwick, and Meredith Roberts found that journalists devote a disproportionate amount of attention to street crime and that the expert sources journalists use most often confirm that crime is a major concern (37 per cent), in contrast to those critical of popular conceptions of crime (13 per cent) and those who question official crime statistics (11 per cent).5 Similarly, Michael Welch, Lisa Weber, and Walter Edwards searched the terms “prisons” and “corrections” in the New York Times between 1992 and 1995 and found that the majority of sources (62 per cent) support the government’s position on correctional policies.6 These studies were based on American news sources, and there is some reason to believe that Canadians may be slightly more critical – or at least slightly less sensational – when it comes to crime reporting.7 For the most part, however, it seems that the dominant reporting practices across North America tend to confirm what people already think they know: crime is a growing problem; violent street crime by strangers represents a disproportionate threat to citizens; and the “kids” are out of control. As we explore in this collection, journalists’ popular refrain to abstain from shooting the messenger may not be an adequate response. Instead, we must take it upon ourselves as producers and consumers of news to question why certain messages – particularly those involving risk, proximity, violence, spectacle, and children – float to the top of discussions while criminological studies, well-supported statistics, and unsurprising (i.e., quotidian) information about crime tend to sink beneath the surface of most major debates.8 As the founder of Canadian communication studies, Harold Innis, suggests, quoting his former McMaster University philosophy professor James Ten Broeke, perhaps the leading question ought to be: “Why do we attend to the things to which we attend?”9 In Canadian crime journalism, this probe is overdue.

Introduction 7

Developing Canadian Content in America’s Shadow Most Canadians do not need to be told that, when it comes to North American media production and distribution, we are a distant second. In many cases, Canadians become an afterthought. Economically, it makes more sense to direct media expenses towards consumers in the United States – a country with 312 million people and a 15-trilliondollar economy – and then sell the same thing to Canadians. Doing it in reverse, gearing your product to a country of 35 million and a 1.7-trillion-­dollar economy, and hoping to sell it to the fickle and demanding consumers of the United States, is simply not good business. As a result, many Canadians watch television shows like Law and Order, CSI, Criminal Minds, and the other crime-fiction options available to them, gladly dropping “u”s from their spellings and the queen’s image from their currency, in exchange for the vastly bigger budgets and higher-profile actors. Canadian crime reporters, however, usually do not have the option of relying on information gleaned from U.S. broadcasts; in fact, they must actively fight against the preconceived notions of courts, criminal law, and prison systems depicted in American and other foreign programming when reporting scenes to Canadians who have grown to expect Dick Wolf and Jerry Bruckheimer dramas to unfold in the same way north of the boarder. As Mary Vipond writes, “Canada has been more vulnerable than any other country to the effects of penetration by American cultural industries.”10 One significant legal difference is that, in Canada, superior courts throughout the country issue rulings on criminal and civil matters that hold jurisdiction everywhere. This means that a ruling in an Ontario superior court is just as binding in Newfoundland, Alberta, and British Columbia. In the United States, there are fifty separate state courts, which are sovereign over their state laws. The federal courts are a parallel system that decides federal laws and interstate cases. Thus, while Canada’s supreme courts hold final authority over all municipal, provincial, and federal laws, including legislative and constitutional ones, the U.S. Supreme Court deals only with federal legislation and the interpretation and enforcement of the U.S. constitution. It holds no real authority when it comes to state laws and issues of debt collection, family law, land, contracts, and negligence. Furthermore, the juries in the United States play a much more pivotal role than in many Canadian trials. Americans have a constitutional right to be tried by a jury of their peers in serious criminal and civil cases.

8  Covering Canadian Crime

In Canada, there are virtually no civil trials by jury. As Appleby and Blatchford point out in their interviews within this collection, Canadian jury members are forbidden from discussing deliberations, even after the proceedings are completed. In stark contrast, virtually all important U.S. cases in the media involve interviews with jury members. While many murder cases in the United States turn on whether the accused will face the death penalty, this is not an option in Canada. This fact significantly changes the way in which murder trials play out in the court system. As Peter Bowal writes, “even if we had the death penalty, we would likely never charge, convict, or execute a mentally disabled person … there is a broader ideological spectrum of debate and less so-called political correctness in American judicial speech.”11 More recently, Canadian courts have even restrained the extradition of American criminals in Canada who may face capital punishment because some Canadian judges have openly called this practice barbaric. Bowal observes that “being a criminal lawyer in Canada is easy because there is only one criminal law and procedure … In the US, there are 50 individual state criminal laws and a federal criminal law.”12 This difference also means that Canadian crime reporters likely have a much easier time understanding and writing about the implications of criminal trials than do their American counterparts, who may cover a shooting in Arizona, a murder in New York, and a drug case in Florida, all of which will look quite different under the laws of their respective jurisdictions. Even many of the terms Canadians use differ from their U.S. counterparts, making it challenging to hold discussions in Canada with avid fans of American dramas. In Canada, for example, one says My Lord or My Lady rather than Your Honour; The Crown rather than The People; judgment rather than opinion; examination for discovery rather than interrogatory; adjournment rather than continuance; and lawyer rather than attorney. Clearly, covering crime in Canada, particularly as a crime reporter, represents a significant challenge: one that many young reporters face and, in many situations, without enough of an understanding about how these systems work. Crime coverage, like all types of news, has also evolved hand-in-hand with media technology: the development of the major daily newspapers of the nineteenth century; the radio transmissions of the early twentieth century; the television broadcasts beginning in the 1950s; and, most recently, the online news aggregates and other 24/7 content providers.13 And while it is true that technology has long exerted its influence on the

Introduction 9

modes and styles of coverage, it is also true, as Peter Desbarats notes in his Guide to Canadian Media, that our relationship with the United States entails tremendous power over Canadian crime coverage: “Canadian newspapers in general have followed an American model. In terms of ownership structure, professional development, journalistic ethics, press freedom, even legal structures, American newspaper publishing has influenced Canadian publishers, editors and journalists from the very beginning.”14 Though Canadians are usually a few years behind the United States in terms of style of coverage or attitudes towards storytelling, we tend to move in step with our neighbour to the south in other ways, borrowing many words, phrases, ideas, and even historical heroes. For example, in the mid-nineteenth century, American journalists and other writers began to glamourize bands of young men who terrorized the west, fighting Indians, criminals, and others who got in their way. But Canadians, too, know the legends of Butch Cassidy and the Hole-inthe-Wall Gang, the James-Younger Gang, and similar groups. Their infamy quickly spread as books such as Augustus Appler’s The Guerrillas of the West (1876) and James Buel’s The Border Outlaws (1882) became immensely popular among the growing literate populations on both sides of the borders. Eastern cities like New York and Toronto also held many urban criminal groups, as Martin Scorsese showed in his film Gangs of New York (2002), which he based on Herbert Asbury’s 1927 book. During this period, the criminal element became simultaneously vilified and romanticized, an approach we continue to see today in theatres and bookstores across Canada and the United States. This epoch saw the rise of yellow journalism, exemplified by Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World at the turn of the century. Such periodicals published “features on cannibalism at sea; the practice of human sacrifice … by fanatical religious sects; and unusual murder weapons – including a nail, a coffin lid, a red-hot horse-shoe, an umbrella, a matchbox, and a teakettle.”15 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel point out that Pulitzer and many editors attempted to reform their newspapers by the 1920s. “As the immigrants of the 1890s moved into the middle class of the twentieth century, the sensationalism of yellow journalism gave way to a more sober approach.”16 While Canada did not indulge in “yellow journalism,” Paul Ruther­ ford notes that by the middle of the nineteenth century, newspapers had evolved to display “a certain sprightliness, a touch of humour, even a tinge of sensationalism.”17 As in the United States, this style of

10  Covering Canadian Crime

reporting was found more often in the popular, low-brow press. The penny tri-weeklies enjoyed market success with their “special attention to disasters and crime.”18 Soon, a more serious paper like the Toronto Globe would devote four and a half columns to the murder trial of George Brogdin, and by the mid- to latter part of the century, “again as a result of the example of the penny tri-weeklies, more and more urban newspapers had added a report of the proceedings of the police court that detailed the misdemeanours of petty criminals.”19 Despite Kovach and Rosenstiel’s assertion that the American press had become more “sober” by the early twentieth century, and Rutherford’s statement that the Canadian press “was very proper” compared to either English or American papers,20 the subtle roots of yellow or sensational journalism still resonate in the media landscape of all three countries in the twentyfirst century. Prohibition fervour in the early twentieth century redrew the criminal line in North America as bootlegging became a significant source of income for many Canadians.21 In fact, Canada earned a reputation for providing illicit drink throughout North America. “The label ‘Canadian’ on whisky is proof that the product is unadulterated – a tradition from the continental rum running days of the 1920s and 1930s,” writes Cheryl Krasnick Warsh.22 During this period, popular media discourses blurred the distinction between criminal gangs and venerable businesses. As Edward Behr writes, “the forerunners of today’s drug barons and money launderers were not underworld figures but respectable merchant banks and brokerage houses.”23 And so as Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion and the Great Depression turned many citizens against the senior figures of major financial institutions, earlier conceptions of crime as violent and episodic began to give way to a new model of white-collar crime. With the work of British cultural theorists in the 1960s, such as Jock Young, Stanley Cohen, and Stuart Hall, scholars began to observe criminal waves in the media occurring at disproportional rates to the actual crimes.24 Cohen famously took the cycle of natural disasters such as tsunamis and hurricanes and applied this approach to the way “moral panics” occurred in the press. There would be, he argued, first a warning, followed by a threat, the impact, an inventory, a rescue, a remedy, and then a recovery. These events were heavily constructed by politicians, police officers, moral entrepreneurs, and, crucially, journalists. “In industrial societies, the body of information from which such ideas are built is invariably received at second hand. That is, it arrives already

Introduction 11

processed by the mass media and this means that information has been subject to alternative definitions of what constitutes ‘news’ and how it should be gathered and presented.”25 Thus, while we continue to teach young journalists of the importance of the inverted-pyramid style that privileges the most important information first – typically who did what to whom, when, why, and for how much – it is also crucial that journalists explore the less immediate implications of Hollywood-style narratives and situate the “newness” in a way that allows audiences to understand how events and comments fit within larger contexts and patterns – ­beyond simply linking the story to one that appeared a week ago. “Covering” Crime in the Twenty-First Century Today, we have a new wave of professional journalists with bachelor and, more often, master degrees competing with bloggers, entertainment outlets, and public journalism forums with little or no editorial intervention. The lines between quality journalism and the rumour mill have become even more blurred as journalists take to Twitter and tweeters try their hand at journalism. Nevertheless, crime coverage continues to involve relatively privileged individuals – those with the social, financial, and cultural capital to earn degrees and enter the industry as producers, reporters, and editors – representing those on the other end of the social hierarchy. Thus, crime reporting is particularly susceptible to the relations of power in society. Here, the mainstream news media have historically entered into a delicate relationship in which predominantly white, middle-class, educated individuals report on low-income, less-educated, often minority groups, all of whom tend to lack the economic and cultural resources to represent themselves meaningfully in mainstream journalism. This situation is constantly changing as journalists become conscious of such issues. Nevertheless, part of the impetus for our inclusion of chapters focused on gendered, racialized, and class-based biases in Canadian crime coverage stems from the fact that these problems continue to be significant in the field. And yet many – let’s call them less self-conscious – individuals continue to ignore these issues or relegate them to “special interest” topics. Such explorations as Young’s chapter on crime news and masculinity (chapter 14), O’Grady, Parnaby, and Fatima’s chapter on representations of racialized communities (chapter 17), and Skott-Myhre’s chapter on rethinking youth cultures (chapter 23), among others, raise crucial questions that often fail to be addressed under the pressures of looming

12  Covering Canadian Crime

deadlines and hectic filming schedules. But they remain crucial to practising ethical, sober journalism. Being aware of potential problems as a journalist before facing them head-on can make a significant difference in how one responds and in the maturity of the reporting that results. We argue that a good way to begin this task is by reconsidering the meaning of “coverage” today. As many chapters will demonstrate, the images and words that represent crimes do much more than merely reflect the situation. They actively help to construct the issues and how we understand them. Thus, we open the definition of “coverage” in this collection to encompass the plurality of meanings the word holds. The Oxford Canadian Dictionary suggests that “to cover” can refer to: 1) extending over (an area); 2) dealing with (a subject) by describing or analysing its most important aspects; 3) disguising the sound or fact of (something) with another sound or action; or 4) putting something on top of or in front of (something) in order to protect or conceal it. Applying these definitions to journalism, we offer the following suggestions. First, journalists “cover” certain areas of the news either physically or intellectually, which then become their “beats.” Thus, Peter Edwards of the Toronto Star will frequently “cover” Aboriginal conflicts in Ontario (see chapter 19). Second, reporters and editors “cover” a story by trying to identify the key elements and most important and interesting facts. When Kim Bolan “covers” organized crime in Vancouver, she attempts to provide context for what, when, where, why, and how things happened (see chapter 15). This meaning is often the one journalists evoke when they talk about “covering” something. Third, some journalists “cover” their tracks when fabricating details and events. Though it is very serious to accuse a journalist of this practice, a number of high-profile cases – Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley, Stephen Dunphy, Diana Griego, Chris Cecil, and even Canada’s own Margaret Wente – could fit this definition.26 Fourth, and finally, the word “crime” frequently “covers” another noun in news reports – gang crime, violent crime, crime spree, whitecollar crime. In these situations, the term “crime” colours our understandings of groups, activities, trends, and financial exchanges. This definition, we argue, is the most important and overlooked sense of “coverage” in journalism. While journalists “cover” an event with outrage, graphic details, sympathetic emphasis, and so on, they do more than objectively relate facts. Consequently, this collection primarily aims to unveil contemporary crime coverage, in the sense of both

Introduction 13

reporting on crime and using ideas and language that “covers” a group or event with specific connotations, conventions, and cultural markers. Contents To provide a more complete and holistic approach to the complex subject of crime coverage in Canada, this collection assembles leading scholars in diverse disciplines including communication, cultural studies, criminology, English literature, history, journalism, media studies, and sociology to address key structural shifts and illuminate the practical daily issues facing Canadian newsrooms. We have divided the text into three thematic sections 1) The Routines and Realities of Canadian Crime Reporting; 2) Court Access and Information technology; and 3) Constructing Criminals and Crime News. While many of the chapters in different sections converse well with each other, this arrangement allows readers to enter the discussion by focusing on immediate practicalities while building a vocabulary and theoretical framework that helps branch out into the broader debates of social stratification, transparency, constructionism and theories of social justice that follow. Our goal in assembling this repertoire of thought from Canada’s top academics and journalists is not to create a final rulebook or procedural for acquiring pickups, entering courtrooms, and speaking about cultural difference. Rather, we hope to spark a conversation that will lead to more debate and clarification after readers finish the book. Like the news itself, this process is ongoing. Crime isn’t coming to an end. Neither is crime reporting. How we cover it, however, can improve dramatically as we become better at asking fundamental questions about collecting information and representing groups and events. The courthouse rules and legal debates may change in time, but questioning fundamental assumptions about justice and looking at crime from nuanced and informed perspectives will always be valuable skills to hone, both for the reporters out there getting the story and for the readers consuming the news on their tablets with their morning coffee. NOTES 1 Michael Connelly, Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers (New York: Little, Brown and Company 2004), 8.

14  Covering Canadian Crime 2 Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (London: Macmillan 1982), 101. 3 Stuart Hall, Charles Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (London: Macmillan 1978). 4 Max McCombs, Lance Holbert, Spiro Kiousis, and Wayne Wanta, The News and Public Opinion: Media Effects of Civic Life (Cambridge: Polity Press 2011). 5 Michael Welch, Melissa Fenwick, and Meredith Roberts, “Primary Definitions of Crime and Moral Panic: A Content Analysis of Experts’ Quotes in Feature Newspaper Articles on Crime,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 34, no. 4 (1997): 474–94. 6 Michael Welch, Lisa Weber, and Walter Edwards, “‘All the News That’s Fit to Print’: A Content Analysis of the Correctional Debate in The New York Times,” Prison Journal 80, no. 3 (2000): 245–64. 7 Kenneth Dowler, “Comparing American and Canadian Local Television Crime Stories: A Content Analysis,” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 46, no. 5 (2004): 573–96. 8 See Jewkes’s work for a breakdown of popular themes about crime in the media. Yvonne Jewkes, Media & Crime (London: Sage 2011). 9 Paul Heyer, Harold Innis (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield 2003), 61. 10 Mary Vipond, The Mass Media in Canada (Toronto: Lorimer and Company 2011), 126. 11 Peter Bowal, “Ten Differences (between Canadian and American Law),” LawNow 26, no. 6 (2002): 9–11. 12 Ibid., 10. 13 For an historical overview of the development of newspapers in Canada, see Paul Rutherford, The Making of the Canadian Media (Toronto: McGraw Hill 1978) and A Victorian Authority (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1982). For a similar take on the broadcast industry, see Vipond, The Mass Media in Canada. For a more contemporary and briefer view, see “Technology and News” in Roger Bird, The End of News (Toronto: Irwin 1997). 14 Peter Desbarats, Guide to Canadian News Media (Toronto: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich 1996), 1. 15 Denis Brian, Pulitzer: A Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons 2002), 67. 16 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Three Rivers Press 2007), 193. 17 Rutherford, The Making of the Canadian Media, 19. 18 Ibid., 10.

Introduction 15 19 Ibid., 19. 20 Ibid. 21 In Canada, alcohol laws varied from province to province. At one point, the majority of Canada was dry, with only a majority of Quebec politicians voting to allow alcohol consumption. See Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, Drink in Canada: Historical Essays (Montreal and Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1993). 22 Ibid., 5. 23 Edward Behr, Prohibition: Thirteen Years that Changed America (New York: Arcade Publishing 1996), 130. 24 See Stanley Cohen and Jock Young, The Manufacture of News: Deviance, Social Problems & the Mass Media (London: Constable 1981). 25 Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (London: Routledge 2002), 7. 26 It is also worth noting a fifth meaning: to aim a gun at (someone) in order to prevent them from moving or escaping. While this definition of coverage does not literally concern the actions of journalists, it can metaphorically highlight their interactions with gangs and other criminal elements. Journalists use other tools (not guns) to highlight crimes and draw public attention to them, preventing certain groups from escaping public scrutiny while allowing others to continue their illegal actions.

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PART ONE The Routines and Realities of Canadian Crime Reporting

In Part One of Covering Canadian Crime, we begin by examining oftenoverlooked, or at least largely unexamined, aspects of crime and court reporters’ daily practices to foreground how these aspects of the job affect not only the journalists’ and editors’ psyches and newsroom culture but also the journalistic products – the stories themselves. From theoretical and applied perspectives, the authors in this section explore the ways news constructs the realities in which we live. As Gaye Tuchman argued in her seminal 1978 work, Making News, reporting, writing, and broadcasting serve not only as examples of organizational work but also as both social knowledge and ideology.1 Crime reporting is no exception. At the heart of this initial grouping, then, lie questions about what crime-coverage routines suggest about the public’s right to know, a community’s place in the discussion of lawbreaking, and what role journalism ought to play in telling stories of tragedies, wrongdoings, and criminals that may entertain, create public opinions, affect decisions about legislation, and ultimately teach us about the social constructions of right and wrong – often all at the same time. In chapter 1, “The Traditional ‘Pickup’ or ‘Death Knock’ Story: Its Role, Its Value(s), and the Impact of Social Media,” co-editor Romayne Smith Fullerton and journalism ethics professor Maggie Jones Patterson consider the ethical implications of one of the most notorious assignments usually given to crime reporters, and often the youngest on staff: performing “the pickup” or “the death knock.” When someone dies suddenly, newsrooms traditionally send out a reporter to knock on the door of the family of the deceased, ask for an interview about the person, and, ideally, bring back a photograph to accompany the story. It’s an assignment that makes journalism students and interns quake,

18  Covering Canadian Crime

and can lead members of the public who learn about the practice to shake their heads in disbelief. Technologies of social media are allowing for avoidance of face-to-face interaction, but there is a lot at stake, and the practice, while problematic for some, also offers valuable and community-affirming insights, say more experienced journalists. In chapter 2, “Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough?” Cecil Rosner, CBC’s managing editor in Manitoba, probes Canadian coverage of the Mafia from the 1970s to contemporary times. He poses a difficult ethical question: in a field where consideration of consequences for disreputable people might seem of little concern, is it all right to lie to and cheat those who lie and cheat for a living? Rosner explores this question and more using American ethicist John Merrill’s “TUFF” evaluative formula – Truthful, Unbiased, Full, Fair – as a framework for analysis. Chapter 3 presents one of Canada’s best-known crime reporters, Christie Blatchford, who has written for the Toronto Sun, the Globe and Mail, and now for the National Post. In “The Inherent Drama of Courts,” Blatchford shares her insights from decades of crime and court reporting. While court routines are second nature to her, she identifies some of the advantages and limitations of how journalists do their jobs. No stranger to controversy, Blatchford clearly outlines her concerns with today’s Canadian crime reporters: we need more quality observers, people who can spot the little details that make a story; we need more long-term reporters and less one-shot, stand-up reporters who fly in and swoop out within minutes; we need less stoic renditions of courtrooms and more dramatic coverage when drama is all around us. And these are only the beginnings of Blatchford’s insights. She elaborates on the details that should go out before and after verdicts and why certain things should and should not be included in the final draft. She argues that it’s appropriate to pass judgment on statements that defendants make, and call them out on blatant inaccuracies or misleading information. She also suggests – humorously – when it may be appropriate to threaten editors with castration. In chapter 4, Kirk LaPointe, former editor and associate publisher of the Hamilton Spectator, writes frankly about how and for what reasons he chose to break the law and the code of silence in one particular instance during his editorship at the newspaper. In “Sometimes the Law Is an Ass: Reflections on Publishing the Record of a Juvenile,” LaPointe articulates the legal and ethical arguments he put forth at the time, but he is now not convinced he would make exactly the same choices. His reflection highlights the difficult decisions reporters and editors face

The Routines and Realities 19

when seconds count, and he argues that by already being well versed in the nuances of critical ethical debates, journalists can make tough decisions with stronger conviction and adequate support when such circumstances arise on the beat. In chapter 5, “Not Naming Names? Crime-Coverage Rituals in ­Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands,” Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson explore journalistic crime-coverage practices in Canada and compare them to those in the Netherlands and Sweden. Interviewing crime reporters, studying their stories, and reviewing ethics codes in all three countries, they show that Canadian journalists routinely frame crime stories in a manner that sets persons accused or convicted outside society’s legal and moral boundaries, in effect expelling them from the community. On the other hand, in the Dutch and Swedish journalistic frame, the defendant is defined as a part of that community, regardless of legal outcome. Canadian journalists cover big crime stories as aggressively as legal restrictions like publication bans allow, and see their primary ethical duties as keeping the public informed and the justice system fully public. Dutch and Swedish journalists, who voluntarily withhold the identities of those accused and convicted of crime from their stories, balance their duty to inform the public with what they see as their obligation to protect defendants’ privacy, their families, and their ability to reintegrate into society after conviction. In chapter 6, “I Sleep Really Well at Night,” Timothy Appleby contributes some pithy advice for keeping on the straight and narrow when navigating the complexities of crime coverage. Appleby, who has been at this beat for more than thirty years for the Globe and Mail, uses the example of the kidnapping, sexual assault, and first-degree murder of Tori Stafford and the ensuing trials of Terri-Lynne McClintic and Michael Rafferty to illustrate the aspects of this work with which he still struggles and why, after so many years spent telling such heartwrenching stories, he continued to feel compelled to cover crime. In the final chapter of this section, “A Case of Prairie Justice: The Murderer, the Jury, and the Spirit of Durkheim,” James McLean, a former CBC journalist-turned-academic, expands our considerations about crime to ask one of the most basic but also most provocative questions: Why do we care about crime stories at all? As McLean began to piece the chapter together, Montreal was abuzz over a crime story. Early-morning radio breathlessly recounted a routine traffic stop by police that turned, by degrees, into a botched drug bust, a high-speed

20  Covering Canadian Crime

chase through rush-hour traffic, an attempt by the bad guys to run (in reverse) over some police officers, a shootout, a car crash, and, finally, the apprehension of the miscreants. It is likely that a great deal of unconcealed glee was wafting through the air in Montreal’s newsrooms. This story had it all: outrageous acts by shady, marginal characters; an entertaining car chase worthy of Hollywood; the possibility of lethal force enacted by both sides; and a resolution that put the offenders behind bars. Throw in the fact that nobody was seriously hurt and the happy ending was complete. But this real-world example engenders some lingering questions: What is it about crime stories that seizes our attention and makes them such good grist for the journalism mill? How is it that the narrative of the lawbreaker resonates so tenaciously in our collective being and, indeed, throughout Western liberalism? In the chapters that form this section, it’s clear that journalists who regularly cover justice and its related stories deal in the realm of “ought” – what others ought or ought not to have done as well as what kinds of responses to the wrongdoing are appropriate – in terms of journalistic coverage and the community responses this coverage engenders. In the first chapter, Fullerton and Patterson consider the “oughts” of knocking on the door of a family that’s suddenly lost someone in tragic circumstances, but their interviewees also point towards a possible future where technology will replace the human touch and suggest that the traditional pickup ought not to go by the wayside. Cecil Rosner poses questions about the rightness of lying to those whose criminal existence is built on lying and deceit and whether it’s appropriate to employ hidden cameras and microphones in the pursuit of truth. Like Fullerton and Patterson’s work, Rosner’s findings suggest that forms of technology create the news-gathering routines that ultimately must be questioned. For LaPointe, the self- and journalistic interrogation is more abstract and relates to questions of when – if ever – media outlets can break the provision of the Youth Justice Act prohibiting the identification of an alleged or convicted perpetrator under the age of eighteen. To Fullerton and Patterson in their international crime comparison, the central question is whether North American reporters ought to reconsider their approaches to reporting in light of those of their Swedish and Dutch colleagues. Finally, from the perspectives of two of Canada’s best-known crime journalists – Christie Blatchford and Timothy Appleby – the oughts are both more obvious and more subtle. Blatchford’s view that reporters today ought to be keener, more in-depth, and have a heightened attention

The Routines and Realities 21

to detail needs to be read in the context of how being just such a reporter has affected the personal life and outlook articulated clearly by another of our most successful crime reporters, Appleby. Rounding out this initial section, McLean’s piece about prairie justice is a more theoretical musing on the concrete issues of routine that Blatchford and Appleby raise. McLean calls journalists “creatures of routine,” and with reference to both the trials of Robert Latimer and his own personal brush with the law, he uses Émile Durkheim to explore how and why reporters miss the central aspects of criminal-justice stories, and why it matters that those who cover courts and crime speak the truths of the “collective conscience” back to those in positions of authority. NOTE 1 Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press 1978).

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1 The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story: Its Role, Its Value(s), and the Impact of Social Media Ro m ayne Smith F ul l e rt on a nd Mag g ie J on e s P at t e rs on

To me, “If it bleeds it leads” means if it lives, it has a heartbeat, and if it is human, it leads. And we want those stories – tragedy is part of life just like joy. If we are doing journalism, we are doing life stories, and those are stories about deep loss and sadness. And by trying to whitewash that, then we don’t do pickups anymore and we shirk our responsibility to our fellow citizens. Larry Cornies1 So why do we tell stories about dead people? It usually goes like this: they were just getting their life together or they were just getting out of that gang. It’s because people are the story, and the tiny bits are who they are. Those tiny bits are who we are too – who we all are … When I do pickups and I talk to family, I really get a sense that we are all the same and we’re all on the brink of getting our lives together and getting back into the game… Kate Dubinski

The Canadian term “pickup” or the British version “death knock,” refers to the kind of assignment that strikes terror into the heart of young reporters or would-be journalists: they involve emotionally fraught situations and induce a queasy feeling for many reporters; people on the scene are fragile and vulnerable; and these news items are must-cover stories in virtually all Canadian newspapers. While the term in its most literal sense refers to the practice of an editor sending someone out to the home of a person who has died suddenly – most often as a victim of crime, accident, or natural disaster – to “pick up” a photograph of the deceased and gather some quotes, the majority of Canadian journalists use the term in a general, inclusive fashion. Jennifer O’Brien,

24  Covering Canadian Crime

an experienced cops, crime, and general assignment reporter for the London Free Press, a mid-sized daily in London, Ontario, said she does not use the term herself. “But I know what it means: it’s when you personally contact the relatives of someone who has died tragically, and you hope to get both a photo of, and an interview about, the person. I think the term is kind of crass, and once you do a few of these, you see how personal they are, how emotional, so you wouldn’t consider it a ‘pickup.’” In fact, we argue that the connection the Canadian news professionals articulate to their communities is anything but crass. While many news photographs and stories are described as sensational, superficial, and in some cases highly divisive,2 stories of death and loss can be of the highest value; done responsibly, they can transcend individualism and create and reconfirm community. The challenge for newsrooms is in recognizing this value. Consider a choice made by the London Free Press. In September 2012 twentyone-year-old Terrell Johnson was walking in downtown London with friends when he commented about loud music coming from a nearby car. A fight ensued, and one of the people in the car pulled out a handgun and shot Johnson dead. Clearly the young man was a victim, and the newspaper followed the story through the courts to the perpetrator’s eventual guilty plea to second-degree murder. But the Free Press also ran two divergent photos of Johnson on several different occasions. One depicted a clean-cut young man with short hair, wearing a T-shirt, glasses, a cross around his neck, and a broad smile.3 The person in the other photograph looks like someone else – but it is not. This second photo shows Johnson shirtless, minus the glasses, wearing a sideways ball cap and making a gang-style gesture with his hand.4 Both photographs were taken from Johnson’s personal – but openly accessible – Facebook page. Newspapers have strict rules about avoiding racism in their copy.5 In this instance, Terrell Johnson was an innocent victim. The second photograph does not convey neutrality and can play on numerous preconceived impressions readers may have about race, youths, and shooting. Stories written in the aftermath of tragedy require genuine sensitivity and storytelling genius. Several years ago in Toronto, a dump truck ran a stop sign and slammed into a townhouse, killing a young mother who was inside doing the family’s laundry. Thane Burnett, then a reporter for the Toronto Sun, was sent to do a follow-up story, an assignment he described as “horrible.” What would there be to say? When

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 25

he arrived at the scene, he saw that the dump truck had been removed as well as the woman’s body: “But as they dragged the truck, like a claw it had pulled a mound out on the lawn, clothes, toys and so on,” said Burnett, who showed up at the same time as a reporter from a competitor’s newspaper. “As we arrived, we saw the husband picking up objects one at a time and putting them in his car. We both approached this man, the father, and asked to speak to him. He said he couldn’t speak English and he couldn’t do an interview.” Burnett and the other reporter knocked on neighbours’ doors and gathered quotes until both had sufficient material. The other reporter left, but Burnett lingered. “I’m watching this sad spectacle of this man taking things one at a time to his car, so I put my notebook away and I began helping him.” Burnett said this was not a ruse to get a story; he simply felt that lending a hand was the least he could do for a fellow human being. Without exchanging any words, they both continued the task of loading one toy at a time into the trunk of the car. Finally, Burnett moved off and stood contemplating his notes. At that moment, someone came over and told him that the father would like to speak with him, so he followed the person back to the bereaved man. “And he spoke perfect English,” said Burnett. “We had a long conversation and he opened up his wallet to show me pictures of his wife and children.” The reason for his somewhat odd behaviour was that, once this task was completed, he had one more thing to do: go and tell his two children that their mother was gone. The story moved Burnett. “Then I realized that’s the reason that I’m there: it’s more important than anything a neighbour or bystander could tell me, more than something from Queen’s Park [the Ontario legislature] or the transportation minister saying we need to take another look at heavy equipment on the roads. Nothing could compete because this man had to go home and tell his children they’d lost their mother.”6 The Pickup Story’s Social Function In the last few years, regardless of what term is used (in fact, American colleagues told us that while they do write these kinds of stories, they do not employ any routine word or phrase), the ethics of the practice of the pickup has been the subject of discussion, debate, and criticism, particularly in the post-Leveson Inquiry world.7 (An attempt by the News of the World tabloid to tap into the phone messages on a missing – and, as it turned out, murdered – teenager proved the last straw

26  Covering Canadian Crime

that triggered the British inquiry into the press’ behaviour.) We argue here that the often-maligned practice of the pickup can play a key part in journalism’s community function, pulling against the tide of social division. Done correctly, this narrative binds the community in its common humanity. Done carelessly, it can work to expel wrongdoers and non-conformists in a manner that ill serves the democratic process. Its examination, therefore, should hinge not on whether the pickup should be done, but how. Sadly, the debate may cease to exist because the practice itself is threatened; newsrooms are under growing financial pressure to do more with less. Technology, specifically social media, is being increasingly relied upon to fill the gap. Journalism bridges the public and private spheres. When news organizations do a pickup, the death is usually already public, that is, one that has newsworthy qualities. While that bridge to private grieving for the deceased is hard for reporters to cross, it lies at the heart of one of journalism’s most important functions in a democratic society: building community. In pulling together discrete threads of the deceased’s life into a cohesive and respectful narrative, the reporter as storyteller is also knitting together diverse elements of a community that has lost one of its own. The resulting narrative constructs this lost citizen as a part of all of us and promotes an understanding of what cut short that life. In today’s deeply divided society, many news stories feed what ­Deborah Tannen dubbed America’s argument culture.8 They frame reports in an argument paradigm where reason struggles for supremacy, Walter Fisher wrote in Human Communication as Narration. While they serve an important and necessary function, stories about advocacy­in the courtroom divide people. So do political battles across the legislatures’ aisles and between the government’s branches. Ideally, journalism provides a forum for disagreement so that it can yield to compromise, which has long been identified as the bedrock of democracy. In recent times, however, public debate and media coverage of it have provided more heat than light, fanned the flames of disagreement, and resulted in few compromises, according to Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their seminal book, The Elements of Journalism. As Robert Berdahl, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, said: “Compromise … becomes impossible if every issue is raised to the level of moral imperative.”9 In this overheated atmosphere, stories that remind readers of their shared human conditions reach across political lines. As the journalists quoted here indicated, the stories families tell about their lost loved

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 27

ones take a narrative, not argumentative, form because, as Fisher outlined, all of us believe that there are underlying stories that express shared truths. We see the world “as a set of stories that must be chosen among” and the stories we choose inevitably reflect our values.10 Readers huddle together under the harsh finality of death and the loss of a life before its time, a life that is always, as Kate Dubinski outlined at the outset of this chapter, about to take a turn for the better. In such circumstances, personal and political differences fade. As Joseph Addison said most eloquently in “Westminster Abbey”: “When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions and debates of mankind.”11 From the Journalists’ Perspective News professionals talked with us of their experiences with and beliefs about the practice of the pickup. We used a combination of individual interviews and small focus groups to elicit the views of ten Canadian journalists at varying points in their careers with newsroom experience varying from eight to more than thirty years. An equal number of men and women, all of our respondents were still actively engaged in the business. Most had held both reporting and editing posts, and many had also taught journalism in an academic setting. As David L. Morgan outlined in Focus Groups as Qualitative Research, such interactive discussions best capture experiential or real-life data within a social setting. Similarly, Richard Krueger and Mary Anne Casey suggested in Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research that a group dynamic can be especially helpful in exploring varying opinions and a range of concepts, as well as in identifying emerging trends because of the synergy and collective thinking initiated when more than one participant is present. The interviews began with questions about participants’ personal experiences of doing pickups. Follow-up questions were based on the answers given, with occasional requests for elaboration, explanation, or examples. In this manner, we held the interview within the frame that the subjects provided. By using an open approach to interviewing, we applied grounded theory, as first articulated by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss in 1967, which is characterized by the practice of allowing a thesis to arise from the research, rather than precede it.

28  Covering Canadian Crime

By following this method, we also adhered to the ideas of Walter Fisher in respecting the narrative framing of the interview subjects, who own the stories of why they act as they do. Grant McCracken, in The Long Interview, called this style of interviewing “one of the most powerful methods” in qualitative research because it allows researchers to “step into the mind of another person, to see and experience the world as they do themselves.”12 This dialogic method encouraged spontaneity and story-sharing that in turn served as the basis for us to perform close readings and analysis of these interview transcripts, and allowed us to locate some of the themes and points of discussion the journalists raised in the larger field of theoretical ethics literature. Our approach was not designed to generate statistically significant findings but instead found its strength in a narrative way of knowing. Worth the Queasy Feeling The journalists with whom we spoke valued the pickup for its benefit to the families of those who had lost someone, the victims themselves, and the community of which those people were a part. Even journalists who initially voiced strong negative feelings about performing the task and were, at that early stage in their careers, unclear themselves about what its value might be, had come to see the pickup as having an overarching importance. Kate Dubinski, a multimedia journalist for the London Free Press and the youngest full-time reporter on staff, vividly recalled her first failed attempt at performing the pickup. “It was the death of a child,” she said. The townhouse, the parking lot, and the memorial of teddy bears remained clear in her mind. “I remember going to the townhouse and sitting in the parking lot. There were kids playing. And I sat there thinking, maybe I can just pretend I went and lie and say they weren’t home. Then I thought not. So I went to the house. A ten-year-old girl answered the door, and I asked her to get her parent. The woman, when she came to the door, said no. I was so relieved.” Jennifer O’Brien, a reporter for the London Free Press with more than thirteen years of crime-coverage experience, had similar recollections. Her father was driving her to work on her second day of a Christmasbreak internship at the Windsor Star when she heard on the car radio about a young man killed in a fire. O’Brien thought the editors would never send her. She was just an intern, but they did:

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 29 I was so uncomfortable about it, so I thought, ok, I won’t do it. I went to other houses and got some information, and I had my story about him and the family. I saw his mother standing in the driveway and crying, but I totally avoided her. When I went back to the newsroom, I told them she wouldn’t talk. I’m working away on this story and about an hour later, she called the newsroom. She said, “I saw a reporter there and she must have somehow missed me.” It was her son who had died – he’d been drinking, and he was cooking and the fire started. So I went back out to the scene, and we sat down, and we talked about him. She really wanted to tell people about her son. It was then that I understood this wasn’t just being nosey and preying on people when they are grieving. It can be therapeutic for them to talk about this and they want to share their memories and she wanted to see his picture in the paper.

Both accounts touch on what London Free Press Editor-in-Chief Joe Ruscitti referred to as the “quease-inducing” factor: intruding upon someone’s grief. As Elyse Amend, Linda Kay, and Rosemary Reilly argued in “Journalism on the Spot: Ethical Dilemmas When Covering Death Knocks,” young journalists are rarely prepared to face this trauma – their own and that of their story subjects. Amend, Kay, and Reilly noted the individualized nature of ethical decision making and the lack of consensus on what exactly constitutes ethical behaviour in this particular situation – a gap that they argue is created by the separation between journalism education and news realities. “Kindness is what really resonates with families in crisis,” longtime Hartford Courant reporter Bill Leukhardt was quoted as saying in a Columbia Journalism Review article, four months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Leukhardt’s stepdaughter, Lauren Rousseau, thirty, died along with five colleagues and twenty students in December 2012 when Adam Lanza went on a shooting rampage. “There might be worse times than this, but I can’t imagine what they might be … If someone says, ‘I’d rather not talk with you,’ don’t pester them.”13 On the one-year anniversary of the shooting, most news organizations respected the town’s request that they stay away. In many ways, this was a blessing, wrote the Poynter Institute ethicist-inresidence, Kelly McBride. It gave journalists the opportunity to get beyond emotional “easy visuals and rote story telling” to the hard work they should be doing. “Anniversaries, especially the one-year mark of a tragic event, are sometimes the best opportunity to gain a fresh perspective on the world,” McBride noted in December 2013. “This is why

30  Covering Canadian Crime

counselors tell grieving people not to make major decisions for the first year after a loved one dies. A year later, the world looks much different – maybe not better, but certainly not as fuzzy as it looked then.”14 She lauded those news organizations that updated perspectives on gun and mental-health issues that the Newtown shooting provoked, as well as those that followed up with families with whom they had established strong ties. As several academics have recently noted, coverage of traumatic death is complicated for journalists who witness it, as well as the victims who suffer it.15 North American journalism texts and education programs lack a standardized approach in this particular area. The Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma is trying to address this deficit by offering workshops and conferences as well as material support to encourage education and discussion among practitioners, employers, unions, mental-health professionals, and journalism academics. In the United States, the many resources offered by Columbia University’s DART Center for Journalism and Trauma include curriculum modules, self-study units, and other materials for use by journalism students, working reporters, editors, and producers. The Center also helps journalism teachers develop effective trauma curricula, along with hosting a range of seminars, training sessions, and consultations for working journalists.16 Value in the Discomfort While we are not suggesting that reporters ought to risk their mental health in covering traumatic stories of death, the journalists with whom we spoke did outline how some of the best stories come from places deep within them that were filled with emotion and discomfort. We would add, though, that the quease-inducing response is a socially constructed one and not limited to journalists. Few people in North American culture feel comfortable talking about or dealing with tragic loss of life. Therefore, some social benefit is gained from acknowledging this awkward space. Larry Cornies, a journalism educator with more than thirty years’ experience in newsrooms, as a reporter and editor at both the London Free Press and the Globe and Mail, said that even talking about the pickup makes students uneasy: “They say, ‘Is that what we do? Build our careers on the deaths of other people?’ And it would be easy to say ‘Let’s not talk about that,’ and easy for a city editor to say, ‘If you can get it, then do, but if you can’t, then get it on Facebook.’ But

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 31

I think it’s there (on doorsteps and in the uncomfortable space) where all good stories lie.” Thane Burnett, a thirty-year veteran of writing features and columns for a variety of newspapers and QMI, Sun Media’s news service, spoke about the importance of acknowledging – and not losing – that emotional weight when he was assigned a pickup: “I was scared to death every time. I was wishing I was any place else but there ... That feeling has never changed.” But Burnett kept doing these stories because he continued to believe that “the story on the other side of the door matters, the loss of someone matters, and it’s up to me to get past that threshold – reporter discomfort and feelings of anxiety – to tell what that story was.” Journalists’ Obligations All the reporters with whom we spoke acknowledged feeling obligated to the persons who have passed and to their families because such traumatic circumstances have turned them into news sources. These journalists mentioned the need to be sensitive, to respect the wishes of the person who answered the door. If he or she chose not to be interviewed, they would leave.17 But while the number of people whom reporters suggest decline to be interviewed was, on average, about only two or three out of ten, they had desk drawers full of thank-you notes written by the families involved. This positive feedback reshaped reporters’ initial resistance to the assignment. “I will say it’s surprising how often families will say yes, when you think they should say no,” said Kathy English, public editor for the Toronto Star. When people entrust reporters with personal information about a family member, “you have to do your utmost to honour the deceased person. This may be the last thing that’s written about them … and because I had enough success [gaining access to relatives], I saw I owed the family and the deceased,” said English. Susan Clairmont, a cops and crime reporter and columnist for the Hamilton Spectator for twenty years, said these stories “help to humanize people” so that they are more than just a statistic. Her professional responsibility, she noted, was to give a voice to sources who might be struggling to express themselves at such a difficult time. “I have sat at many kitchen tables and cried right along with the people I’m talking to as I do this,” said Clairmont. “It reminds me that these are real people because I am there and I see their grief. And I can relay that to readers. I’m there at the worst moment of their life and chances

32  Covering Canadian Crime

are they are not going to be their most articulate even if they usually are, so I can do that for them.” Burnett put it succinctly, “I think it matters to the family, and in a spiritual way, it matters to the person who is gone, and it matters to the community.” Threats to the Practice of the Pickup The practice of sending a reporter out of the newsroom to meet personally with the families of people who have died is under increasing threat in all Canadian newsrooms. Newspapers have fewer resources – financial and human – and as budgets shrink, so do the types of stories that can be covered.18 As a result, reporters are under increasing pressure to mine social-media pages as a substitute for the pickup assignment rather than to use those pages as starting points for gaining information. None of the professionals with whom we spoke could pinpoint an exact date for when social media crept into the practice of the pickup. New technologies were imported gradually into work spaces; for example, Dubinski recalled a time when only one computer in the London Free Press newsroom could access Facebook. But almost all reporters and editors recalled a story as early as 2007 that they or their colleagues did differently because of Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin. For Dubinski, the story involved a serial killer who spent a day and a night with a teenaged girl who was unaware he was wanted for murder. When the London Free Press realized this young girl had survived her encounter with this killer, Dubinski recalled, they found a photograph of her on her Facebook page: the teenager is looking sideways at the camera, sticking out her tongue, and licking an enormous marijuana bud.19 “I remember we had a lot of discussion about using that photo,” said Dubinski. “She hadn’t done anything wrong really. She wasn’t charged with anything.” Despite the fact that this teenager had not broken the law, the photograph, pulled from Facebook without her or her family’s permission, suggested that she was not like “most of us”: perhaps, the photo seemed to suggest, she was a lawless rebel giving the finger to the community standard – in this case, federal law – that forbids possession of marijuana. Regardless of accuracy, the running of this photo cast the teenager as apart from her community. Larry Cornies was a national-page editor at the Globe and Mail when he first ran a Facebook photograph of someone who had died. A British Columbia Hydro helicopter had crashed on a street in Cranbrook.

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 33

Cornies called the Globe’s Vancouver bureau, and a reporter boarded a plane to cover the story as it unfolded. Information trickled in that four people on board the helicopter had died, but Cornies also learned of a fifth death – someone on the ground, an unidentified pedestrian. The reporter eventually tracked down a lead from the scene and found a name: Isaiah Otieno. With this information, an editor at the Globe found a match on Facebook. After making a number of contacts through the site, he received confirmation that the photograph online was that of the young man who had been killed, and the Globe ran that photograph alongside the story of Otieno: the young man was studying in Canada. He was en route to post a letter home to his parents in Nairobi when the helicopter hit him. He didn’t hear it because he was listening to music on his personal device and the headphones blocked the sound. The Globe and Mail was the only paper that had this story and the photograph the next day. Does Cornies regret the decision? “No. In fact, I worry about journalism and the whole notion becoming a bit too politically correct and overly sensitive about pickups. I think people’s stories deserve to be told and they need to be told.” In this instance, social media enabled the memorializing of a recent community member – for his family in Nairobi and for the communities of which he was a part: the academic one here in Canada and the one back home in Africa. “It’s very much the issue of the day. Facebook and Twitter have exploded and you can’t ignore them,” said Kelly McBride, Poynter’s ethics expert, in an online column by Leah Betancourt.20 McBride has worked with a number of newsrooms to help them create rules for how to manage social media in appropriate, ethical ways. Although McBride noted that the technology of social media is relatively new, many of its challenges are not, and journalists have to hold the same values: providing true and accurate information in context. McBride argued that social media, when used with common sense, is one more tool in a reporter’s toolbox.21 Like any tool, it can be used well – as in the instance Larry Cornies described in which social media facilitated the sharing of a story and an image, of which both friends and family were supportive, and which moved that story to the community with a speed and breadth that could not have been achieved without this technology. Or it can be used poorly – as with the photograph Kate Dubinski described, in which a teenager who is guilty of nothing more serious than bad judgment is forever captured in the newspaper of record licking an

34  Covering Canadian Crime

illegal plant. Similarly, after Terrell Johnson was murdered, the photograph the London Free Press chose to take from his Facebook page inaccurately depicted him looking like a gang member, potentially fuelling readers’ suspicions that he deserved his death. While the traditional practice of the pickup can lead to journalists suffering from emotional trauma, and while, done poorly, it can revictimize families who have already suffered great personal loss, the answer is not simply to allow the mining of social-media sites like Facebook to stand in for pickups, obituaries, or memorial pieces. When a reporter speaks personally to the family and asks them which photograph they would prefer to be run with the tribute story of their loved one, families retain some measure of control. In England after the Leveson Inquiry, which uncovered some appallingly unethical practices in parts of the journalism industry, the British government was considering legislation that would bar reporters from contacting grieving families for a specified amount of time. In this context, two British researchers, Sallyanne Duncan and Jackie Newton, brought together a focus group with bereaved families. What they discovered may be surprising: “More families felt they’d been left out of reports on their loved one’s death than felt intruded upon. They saw a death knock as preferable to journalists gathering vital information from less direct sources like social media. While the sample was small, the issue is clearly more complex than it appears at first glance.”22 Journalists’ Obligations to the Community Scholars and practitioners, as well as victims’ advocacy groups, have written about what journalists owe to the memory of persons who have died and to their families, but few have addressed in any depth the relationship between journalists and the public at large in this context. The group of Canadian reporters with whom we spoke felt keenly the obligation to their public when they do pickup stories, and all shared their concern that the practice is under siege. Kathy English, public editor at the Toronto Star, said she always recalls the words of Columbia University professor Melvin Mencher, who spoke about universal values and how life itself is the highest value. “And I remember those words,” said English, “and I think that life does have value and its loss is news and it matters. I am glad I still work in a community where every death is still noted. Look at Chicago or somewhere where the accident and homicide rate is so high a death doesn’t even make the

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 35

papers – it’s not news. We still think life is sacred enough to warrant a space in the paper.” Paul Benedetti, an experienced reporter and columnist and now a journalism instructor at the University of Western Ontario, shared that view: “The traditional pickups serve a very important purpose in terms of community – and that is the longer and extended recognition of a death and more importantly of a life in the community.” Benedetti, who holds a graduate degree in English, said with a wry smile, “You can quote John Donne on this: ‘Do not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.’ No one is an island. Everyone lives within a relationship inside a community and the passing of that person can really honestly go almost unnoticed if not for people doing these stories.” The opinions of the journalists interviewed converged on this point. The pickup story “helps to humanize people,” the Spectator’s Susan Clairmont said. Her paper’s city and business editor, Carla Ammerata, added, “People are members of our own community, and people have lived lives here and we need to make them into something more than what they were at that moment of their death,” she said. Jennifer O’Brien of the London Free Press said: You find often, maybe someone who hasn’t been the most wonderful person all their life, but the family will say, “he was just getting it on track” or “he was just turning his life around.” Everyone has different pictures and different portrayals, and that shows that every single one of us has a story. When you see just blank faces in a crowd, you might be thinking they’re bad or good, but everyone has another story. Everyone has a dad and a mom … so to highlight someone’s life, I think it’s very important. If I could, I would do this kind of story every week because they bring us together as a community.

In her article, “Sadly Missed: The Death Knock as a Personal Narrative of Grief,” Sallyanne Duncan noted that when families choose to speak to journalists, they are giving permission for their personal mourning to move from the private into the public domain where it becomes part of the public record that others can access and to which they can respond.23 While Duncan noted that some critics dismissed this type of story as “therapy news,” she argued that expressing grief can help not only those who do the sharing but also the wider community: “From their experiences, we learn to recognize that bad things happen routinely, that people – both the relatives and wider society – seek public

36  Covering Canadian Crime

recognition of a lost life, that an unexpected and usually violent death can be a devastating loss to a community and that publicly marking a death is an important ritual which journalism can fulfil to some extent in the growing absence of religious or traditional ceremony.”24 In practice, all Canadian reporters with whom we spoke said they now begin their stories – or at least the research for their stories – in the online world. Greg Van Moorsel, city editor for the London Free Press, said that social media offers quick leads. “I’d say social media – Facebook and Twitter – makes beginning easier, but I’m not sure it leads to an easier conclusion.” The best stories still need to be crafted by skilful, caring people who offer something that the digital memorial pages and the Facebook memorials simply do not: a coherent narrative composed by a journalist. Susan Clairmont of the Hamilton Spectator said that a lot of coverage about death – pickups, funeral stories, and so on – reports the ritualized aspects of community life in “boilerplate” language. But, she noted, what brings the story to life are “the people who are there, the rock music being played for the teenage boy who died because it’s his favourite song. It’s the colour. And it’s the same with the pickup. Yes, I can read all that on social media and on the funeral home website or Facebook or Twitter or RIP pages, but there could be forty tweets that say the same thing, and I appreciate that, but you need context and readers need more than that.” In Human Communication as Narration, Walter Fisher asserted that humans are storytelling animals and that the controlling or universal paradigm is not rational human but rather homo narrans. Unlike the rational paradigm into which we must be educated, the narrative paradigm requires no special training because it is one into which all of us are socialized. In “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument,” Fisher wrote, “Regardless of the form they may assume, recounting and accounting for are the stories we tell ourselves and each other to establish a meaningful life-world. The character of narrator(s), the conflicts, the resolutions, and the style will vary, but each mode of recounting and accounting for is but a way of relating a ‘truth’ about the human condition.”25 He believed that stories are meant to give order to chaotic human life and to encourage others to establish ways of living together “in communities in which there is sanction for the story that constitutes one’s life. And one’s life is, as suggested by Burke, a story that participates in the stories of those who have lived, who live now, and who will live in the future.”26

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 37

Conclusion: Bridging Public and Private for the Common Good The telling of how death came and what a life has meant is a ritual repeated at every family wake. When the journalist, as expert storyteller, makes a public telling of the tale, it becomes a common property, a shared wonder at the nature of the human condition. It tells how we care for one another and how we neglect that duty sometimes. It tells heroic stories and tales of humanity’s worst degradations. The journalists’ obligations to the public might require them to explore a negative side of the deceased: gang activity, drug use, or other criminal and wrongful behaviour. Yet Emmanuel Levinas said that we must respect the basic human plea not to be “killed.”27 In other words, every human being deserves to be treated with respect in her or his own context first, and judged only after that. As Carla Ammerata, city editor at the Hamilton Spectator outlined, giving this larger context is key, even – or perhaps most especially – when the deceased has a checkered past. Ammerata remembered one man who loved to bathe his two-year-old daughter and kiss her goodnight. “We can lay out his past or his previous record – but that doesn’t take away from his humanity.” The telling of pickup stories, crafted in part from contributions of closest family and friends, connects the deceased to the larger community of readers and viewers. The stories connect through the telling of a shared human narrative: a hero’s pilgrimage, a process of becoming better or trying to, and of grace and kindness in the face of adversity. Through this connection, such stories counteract the modern liberal concept of the autonomous individual and independent agent, which Alasdair MacIntyre called a myth. Modern society has become, he wrote in After Virtue, “a collection of strangers, each pursuing his or her own interests under minimal constraints.”28 Contrary to this, the pickup story nests the individual within family and community and in a particular narrative history, which MacIntyre claimed is the basic genre for characterizing all human behaviour.29 “What I am therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present.”30 Patrick Plaisance pointed out that classical scholars have long argued that human identity is not so much individual as it is rooted in community. When asked to describe themselves, people usually define their place within the family, the workplace, and other communities. Ethicists and political theorists often stake ethical lives and moral decision making in

38  Covering Canadian Crime

some notion of community. News media, which widely profess a commitment to public service, stunt their responsibilities when they fail to appreciate fully their role and dimension in the community.31 “True community allows for both diversity and individuality yet depends upon the recognition of all members that they share interests and fates,” Plaisance writes.32 “Our culture places a premium on the virtues of individual action and autonomy – personal privacy, freedom, selfsufficiency, being in control of our own destinies, and so on – in ways that often minimize or ignore the importance of community.”33 To James Carey, “conversation” through discourse and storytelling forms the basis for the creation of a community and its culture. By playing this key role in the social construction of community, journalism shoulders a great responsibility. “We must … discard the view of language as reference, correspondence, and representation and the parallel view that the function of language is primarily to express assertions about the world. Then we must substitute the view that language communication – is a form of action – or, better, interaction – that not merely represents or describes but actually molds or constitutes the world.”34 Within what Carey called a ritual model, communication is linked to terms such as “sharing,” “participation,” “association,” “fellowship,” and “the possession of a common faith.” This definition exploits the ancient identity and common roots of the terms “commonness,” “communion,” “community,” and “communication.” He counterpoised this with the transmission model of communication, more commonly found in North American news organizations: “If one examines a newspaper under a transmission view of communication, one sees the medium as an instrument for disseminating news and knowledge … over greater distances … A ritual view of communication will focus on a different range of problems in examining a newspaper. It will, for example, view reading the newspaper less as sending or gaining information and more as attending a Mass, a situation in which nothing new is learned but in which a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed.”35 The cultural emphasis on impartial information and on the individual in North America could lead journalists to focus on individual responsibility and culpability and make them less likely to explore social and community roots of problems.36 Such behaviour would be particularly problematic in tragic situations that could, perhaps, have been prevented, or where the causes of violence might have broader cultural origins. “When considering community interests as an ethical value, journalists have a duty to resist or at least question the cultural

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 39

tendency to privilege individual interests over a sense of serving a public good.”37 When reporters guide their audiences across the bridge that connects the private to the public world through the pickup story, readers may feel sympathy and even empathy for victims and families, but they do not share their personal grief as they would if they visited them in their homes or at the funeral. As consumers of news, they cross that bridge into the private world as citizens, that is, with a public sense of self. From this public view, they feel not only the empathy that one individual feels for another but also the many ways that tragedy – and the value of human life – involves emotions and responsibilities shared by all. If the story is done with a commitment to the community, readers are invited to feel desire for an improved common good, and that is a worthy goal for all citizens: respecting and remembering every one of us. Or as Thane Burnett said, “I never want to be blasé or so big city that someone can be lost to us without a word. That can happen especially when you talk about violence. I don’t think people are just stolen away by violence. They are stolen away from us all, and we have to be reminded that it’s not just another killing, that we’ve lost this person.” NOTES 1 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from journalists are from personal interviews or small focus groups conducted by the authors. 2 Romayne Smith Fullerton and Margaret Jones Patterson, “Murder in Our Midst: Expanding Coverage to Include Care and Responsibility,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 21, no. 4 (2006): 304–21. 3 Jane Sims, “The September 2012 Death by Shooting of 21-Year-Old Terrell Johnson of London Highlights a Larger Issue – Gun Violence in the Downtown,” London Free Press, 4 November 2013, http://www.lfpress .com/2013/11/04/kitchener-man-pleads-guilty-to-manslaughterin-downtown-london-shooting-death-of-terrell-johnson. 4 Jane Sims, “Family and Friends Gathered in London to Mourn Homicide Victim Terrell Johnson,” London Free Press, 7 October 2012, http://www .lfpress.com/2012/10/06/family-and-friends-gathered-in-londonto-mourn-homicide-victim-terrell-johnson. 5 For example, in Canada, refer to the Canadian Association of Journalists ethics guidelines, specifically two points under “Fairness”: “We do not refer to a person’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, gender

40  Covering Canadian Crime self-identification or physical ability unless it is pertinent to the story” and “We avoid stereotypes of race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status. And we take particular care in crime stories.” Full text available at http://www.caj .ca/?p=1776. 6 For the full text of the story Thane Burnett wrote, see “And All I Can Do IsLie … Kids of Mom Killed by Truck Ask if Mom’s Ok,” Toronto Sun, 28 August 1996, A2. 7 For example, Kings College Journalism Review in Halifax, Nova Scotia, ran a column by Barrett Limoges titled “Don’t Blame the Messenger,” available at http://thekjr.kingsjournalism.com/?p=11698. The Dart Centre’s Judith Townend also wrote a summary of a seminar given by U.K. researchers Sallyanne Duncan and Jackie Newton, who had done a post-Leveson survey. That survey found that, while families were upset by death knocks, they preferred this practice to being wholly ignored and having stories of their loved ones written only from social media sources. This is available at http://dartcenter.org/content/journalist-calls-reporting-death-in-postleveson-climate. 8 Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words (New York: Ballantyne 1998). 9 As quoted in Tom Kovach and Bill Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Crown 2001), 192. 10 Walter Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value and Action (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press 1987), 65. 11 Joseph Addison, “On Westminster Abbey,” The Spectator 26, Good Friday, 30 March 1711, http://essays.quotidiana.org/addison/westminster_ abbey/. 12 Grant McCraken, The Long Interview: Qualitative Research Methods 13 (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage 1988), 9. 13 Kira Goldenberg, “After Sandy Hook: A Daylong Symposium Addressed Covering Trauma, from Breaking News through Its Aftermath,” Columbia Journalism Review, 24 April 2013, http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/ after_sandy_hook.php?page=all. 14 Kelly McBride, “Newtown Media Blackout Forces Journalists to Do Their Job,” Poynter Institute, 13 December 2013, http://www.poynter.org/latestnews/creating-a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making-amongjournalists-and-those-who-care-about-democracy/233342/newtownsmedia-blackout-forces-journalists-to-do-their-jobs/.

The Traditional “Pickup” or “Death Knock” Story 41 15 Randall Beam and Meg Spratt’s “Managing Vulnerability,” Journalism Practice 3, no. 4 (2009): 421–38, discusses journalists’ development of emotional problems after exposure to trauma. Sue Joseph’s “Recounting Traumatic Secrets: Empathy and the Literary Journalist,” Journalism Practice 5, no. 1 (2011): 18–33, uses the little explored approach of reflective practice as journalistic therapy. 16 See more at http://journalismforum.fims.uwo.ca/default.aspx and http:// dartcenter.org/overview#sthash.pKKtjtvT.dpuf. 17 A number of sources address the need for sensitivity in approaching victims of crime or those traumatized by violent events. See for example, Roger Simpson and William Côté, Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting about Victims and Trauma, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press 2006); Sallyanne Duncan and Jackie Newton’s “‘How Do You Feel?’ Preparing Novice Reporters for the Death Knock,” Journalism Practice 4, no. 4 (2010): 439–53; or Linda Kay, Rosemary Reilly, Kate Connolly, and Stephen Cohen’s, “Help or Harm?: Symbolic Violence, Secondary Trauma, and the Impact of Press Coverage on a Community,” Journalism Practice 4, no. 4 (2010): 421–38. 18 Tamara Baluja, “Canadian Media Guild Data Show 10,000 Job Losses in Last Five Years,” J-Source, 19 November 2013, http://j-source.ca/article/ canadian-media-guild-data-shows-10000-job-losses-past-five-years. 19 The photo accompanied a 27 July 2007 article in the London Free Press. It is no longer accessible online. 20 Leah Betancourt, “How Social Media Is Radically Changing the News­ room,” Mashable, 8 June 2009, http://mashable.com/2009/06/08/socialmedia-newsroom/. 21 Ibid. 22 Andrew Pugh, “Bereaved Say ‘Death Knock’ Better Than Social Media,” Press Gazette, 14 February 2012, http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/node/48745. 23 Sallyanne Duncan, “Sadly Missed: The Death Knock News Story as a Personal Narrative of Grief,” Journalism 13, no. 5 (2011): 600. 24 Ibid., 601. 25 Walter Fisher, “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument,” Communication Monographs 51, no. 1 (1984): 6. 26 Ibid. 27 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press 1985). Original work published 1982. 28 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study of Moral Theology, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press 1984), 251. 29 Ibid., 208.

42  Covering Canadian Crime 30 Ibid., 221. 31 Patrick Lee Plaisance, Media Ethics: Key Principles for Responsible Practice (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage 2009), 197–200. 32 Ibid., 203. 33 Ibid., 199. 34 James W. Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Unwin Hyman 1989), 84. 35 Ibid., 20. 36 Plaisance, Media Ethics, 205. 37 Ibid., 220.

2  Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough? Cecil R osn er

Covering the Mafia and organized crime in general presents unique problems for the journalist, not the least of which is the simple struggle to stay alive. No fewer than 141 journalists and media workers around the world were killed by organized crime groups during the first decade of the twenty-first century.1 While the rate of violence has not been as extensive in Canada, there are sufficient documented instances to give any reporter cause for concern. A gunman walked into the newsroom of Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper in 1973 and opened fire on Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, the crime reporter who specialized in Mafia exposés. Charbonneau survived, and when the gunman was finally arrested it was revealed that he was acting as a bodyguard for a highly ranked Mafia figure in Quebec. Freelance reporter Robert Monastesse was shot in both legs in 1995 after writing articles about biker wars in Montreal. In 2000 veteran Montreal crime reporter Michel Auger, who covered the Mafia and biker gangs extensively, was shot in the back six times in a carefully planned assassination attempt. Given the propensity of organized-crime figures to strike back at journalists with methods more forceful than nasty letters to the editor or defamation actions, reporters might be forgiven for believing that the normal rules of news gathering need not apply. As conventional channels of reporting prove inadequate, reporters can turn to specialized techniques of investigative journalism. These include using hidden cameras, going undercover, organizing sting operations and scams, trading information with police, and even attempting to entrap criminals into committing more crimes. All of these practices are littered with ethical landmines, and in the early days of covering the Mafia there were few comprehensive codes of ethical conduct for journalists to follow. Some

44  Covering Canadian Crime

believed that the very nature of the target of investigation provided more leeway in pursuit of the story. After all, when a story involves cheaters and liars, should there be much hesitation in using deception and subterfuge to document their activities? As the long-serving executive producer of 60 Minutes said, “if you can catch a thief with lies and deception … that’s a pretty good trade-off.”2 If society is well served by journalistic exposés of gangsters and murderers, to what extent do these noble journalistic ends justify the means? I intend to sketch a history of early Mafia coverage in Canada during the 1970s, describing the investigations undertaken by major practitioners and examining the ethical considerations along the way. These will be assessed against the backdrop of journalistic practice at the time, and how the reporting of that decade led to more circumscribed ethical considerations today. I also intend to look at these projects, as well as contemporary reporting on criminal activity, through the ethical lens suggested by John C. Merrill. In developing his TUFF formula (truthful, unbiased, full, fair), Merrill highlighted the characteristics that are considered essential for an ethical report.3 He says that, for journalists, the formula is difficult to adhere to (hence “TUFF”) but nevertheless a worthwhile ideal. His approach is essentially a blend of deontological and teleological considerations. The first three concepts of the formula stress the primacy of truth, full-disclosure reporting, serving the public’s right to know, and maintaining the integrity of the story. Through unbiased coverage, reporters are urged not to push agendas or campaign for partisan objectives if the facts don’t bear them out. Full reporting insists on canvassing all sides of the story, again with the aim of exposing the truth. The fourth concept considers the consequences of the reporting and introduces a subjective element – the need to balance reporting the full extent of the truth against the damage that may do to the targets of the investigation, to their families, to sources, to the general public, and even to the integrity of journalism itself. Mafia is a term that is now used to describe any number of national or ethnic organized criminal groups. Its origins date back to Sicily, and popular culture has placed greatest focus on groups that emanated from that part of Italy. There is some evidence the Mafia first surfaced in North America just after the U.S. Civil War, but its activities did not become highly visible until the twentieth century.4 Even then, it was difficult for journalists to get a sound understanding of how the different groups worked. Because of the highly secretive nature of the activity, and the code of silence known as omerta,

Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough? 45

few details were ever known or reported. This changed in 1963, when Joseph Valachi appeared before a U.S. Senate investigations subcommittee. Valachi was a long-time Mafia soldier in New York who was implicated in more than thirty murders.5 He became the first Mafioso to testify against his colleagues in public, providing exacting detail of the internal structures and practices of the crime families. The “Cosa Nostra” became a popular term following Valachi’s testimony, as did the exotic Mafia hierarchical rankings of capo, soto capo, consigliere, and soldati. A book detailing Valachi’s testimony led to a Hollywood movie starring Charles Bronson, and soon Mario Puzo was creating a novel that led to the enduring Godfather series of movies. It didn’t much matter that scholars were highly sceptical of both Valachi’s credibility and the mythologies that were quickly arising from Mafia books and movies.6 By the end of the 1960s and beginning of the next decade, journalists across North America had set their sights on exposing Mafia activities in their backyards. Authorities in Quebec were particularly aggressive at investigating Mafia activities, and they initiated a series of probes. Journalists like Michel Auger and Jean-Pierre Charbonneau benefited from their police contacts and the intelligence that was gathered during the investigations. Photographs of surveillance and transcripts of wiretapping operations were often leaked to journalists. Charbonneau in particular mined the information to produce a comprehensive account of the Quebec underworld in 1976 called The Canadian Connection. His methods and explanations provide insight into the ethical considerations that informed his brand of crime coverage. “Certain people, and especially those prejudiced against the police, will no doubt complain that this account is incomplete and biased. It is! … and it could not have been otherwise,” Charbonneau proclaims in his introduction.7 He argues that reporters can either have sources in the mob or sources in the police department, but “you can’t play both sides. So I decided that time to choose my side, and I preferred to get my information from the police.”8 He credits a long line of federal agents, sergeants, staff sergeants, commissioners, and narcotics-squad members for helping him. He is effusive in his praise for their “patience, devotion, determination and sacrifice.”9 Finally, he asked two lawyers to study his manuscript in advance and suggest changes, which they did. They were the former prosecutor for the narcotics squad and chief prosecutor for the Quebec Commission of Inquiry into Organized Crime, and the assistant chief prosecutor for the crime commission.10

46  Covering Canadian Crime

How would Charbonneau’s methodology stand up to Merrill’s TUFF formula? By most accounts, not terribly well. While much of Charbonneau’s account may be true, especially those portions based on transcripts of interrogations or wiretaps, the lack of opposing perspectives makes it difficult to judge the veracity of every detail. It is the job of police to amass evidence and help prosecutors convict those who are charged with crimes, but the court process demonstrates that not all of that evidence necessarily stands up to scrutiny. In some cases, tunnel vision and prosecutorial zeal have led to wrongful convictions. The police side of a criminal investigation is just one part of the puzzle, albeit a crucial one. Charbonneau’s own proclamation of bias makes it easy to determine how the work succeeds on Merrill’s second pillar. The same might be said for the concept of fullness. Charbonneau himself says that he agreed to keep certain information confidential or to modify details in order “to respect understandings, agreements or arrangements police officers had with their informants.”11 That in itself may not be crucial, since Merrill admits that no report can ever be really complete: “Something will always be left out, for the reporter’s selective capabilities and perceptions necessarily lead to only a partial report.”12 He argues that good reports are more complete than the mediocre or poor ones. As for fairness, it is difficult to feel compassion for the mobsters who may have been portrayed somewhat untruthfully in this account. Even so, there are suspects and there are convicts, and before there is a thorough airing of all the evidence, as Fullerton and Patterson make clear in chapter 5 of this collection, it is difficult to know who may have been unfairly characterized by police suspicions alone. Submitting the manuscript for pre-publication review to critical players in the story, as Charbonneau did, would cause consternation in many media circles, though it is a practice sometimes used by investigative journalists.13 It is relevant, however, that the author chose to do so only with police and prosecutors, once again calling into question the fairness and fullness of the account. It is interesting to compare Charbonneau’s rationalizations with current media practice on the crime beat. Unlike most assignments, where two or more sides of the story are routinely sought, the crime reporter will often simply repeat what police have said. When someone is charged with a criminal offence, for instance, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to get reaction from that individual. This has led many reporters to stop trying, which leaves the police version of events as the only one reported. The result is a report that fails on the front of

Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough? 47

fullness, fairness, and, potentially, truth. Fullerton and Patterson outline in some detail in their chapter that although practices vary in a number of European countries, notably Sweden and the Netherlands where the media’s default routine is not to identify those accused of crimes, most Canadian news organizations name people charged with offences. Yet few do a comprehensive job of following up those cases to determine if the disposition is a conviction or acquittal. In extreme cases, there have been individuals charged with lurid crimes whose identities were well publicized and careers ruined, only later to have charges reduced or dropped, accompanied by little or no follow-up publicity. Even those Canadians who have criminal records, an estimated 10 per cent of the population, need to have their voices and perspectives heard if the principles of fullness and fairness are to have meaning. In conflict zones and in countries with repressive regimes, according to Benoît Hervieu, journalists also fail on the front of fullness and bias. “Under threat and with limited resources, the media often end up restricting themselves to just quoting official sources – a paradox given the public’s limited confidence in the authorities in conflict zones. When the authorities are the only source, coverage is liable to be compromised.”14 A far more ambitious and nuanced investigation into organized crime and the Mafia appeared on CBC television in 1977. Called Connections, the series presented three hours of information and images that had rarely been seen before. There were detailed portraits of mobsters and gangsters, interviews with loan sharks and murderers, and hiddencamera footage of Canada’s leading crime families. The program took three years and more than half a million dollars to produce.15 For the first time, it provided meticulous detail about large-scale Mafia activities outside Quebec, a phenomenon some Canadian politicians had argued was non-existent. The program alleged that the Mafia had penetrated key sectors of Canadian society, including politics. The reaction was rapid and predictable. There were calls for inquiries and investigations, and the program’s producers – members of a private company called Norfolk Communications – were soon commissioned to do a sequel. William Macadam and James Dubro got back to work and returned to the airwaves in 1979 with another set of startling revelations. Nearly 1.8 million viewers tuned in, and the series was hailed as a groundbreaking examination of a hitherto secret aspect of Canadian society. The Connections series, however, made use of many techniques and procedures that tested the limits of ethical investigative journalism. Hidden cameras were widely used to follow suspected mobsters, as

48  Covering Canadian Crime

well as people the producers believed were associating with crime figures. They used camera equipment that had been developed for military use in Vietnam, including a lens capable of multiplying available light 80,000 times.16 Surveillance vehicles with phony company names were used to follow people. Unlike Charbonneau, the producers felt it was essential to speak to the alleged mobsters, but they brought bodypacks fitted with miniature tape recorders along to capture audio surreptitiously. Information was freely traded with the police, and in some cases footage shot by the journalists was screened for law-enforcement officers. The journalists also engaged in sting operations. They recruited Paddy Calabrese, a former Buffalo mobster turned informant, to plan an elaborate sting on suspected Vancouver gangster Joe Romano. Calabrese offered to sell Romano supposedly stolen securities, even though no such securities actually existed. The journalists arranged a face-to-face meeting with the two and filmed it clandestinely. A second phony scheme was invented to see if Toronto gangsters would agree to move fictitious proceeds of crime out of Italy. Once again Calabrese set up the meeting in person so it could be secretly filmed. “We didn’t have to answer to any standards in those days,” said James Dubro, one of the series producers.17 That wasn’t strictly the case, since senior executives of the CBC and the corporation’s legal advisers were overseeing the series. But it’s true that the CBC had no comprehensive code of standards and practices at the time. It’s worthwhile, therefore, to examine how journalists viewed various ethical considerations in this era, particularly as they related to investigative journalism. One of the earliest post-Watergate textbooks on the topic, called simply Investigative Reporting, concedes that “most reporters use deceptive methods to gather information.”18 The authors provide the utilitarian argument that deceptive methods are justified “only when greater harm will be done to the public if the information remains concealed than the harm done individuals by its publication.”19 But it’s not always easy to calculate the costs and benefits with scientific precision. In the end, the authors – themselves journalists – provide an assessment of journalists that might explain why the profession is held in low regard by some members of the public. “In those cases which are difficult to judge, most reporters tend to err on the side of dishonesty to obtain the information. The underlying assumption is that society has more to gain from an accurate, thorough reportage of events than it has to lose from the discomfort of the corrupt.”20 Another popular text on investigative reporting, also published in 1976, goes even further

Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough? 49

in promoting questionable techniques. “Information about a person’s phone calls, credit records, airline reservations, or utility bills can be obtained by a telephone call requesting the information in a manner implying the caller is the person in question or someone acting on his behalf.”21 And in a section called “Special Tricks,” in a subcategory labelled “The Squeeze,” comes this piece of advice: “Like the prosecutor who offers immunity to turn a defendant against bigger game, reporters can convert a key figure’s silence into a torrent of words by promising to omit or downplay his guilty participation.”22 Peter Herrndorf, the CBC executive who oversaw the Connections production, had a more nuanced view of the ethical considerations needed to investigate the Mafia. Still, his analysis reveals a difference in treatment depending on whether the target is a suspected criminal or a member of the general public. “The distinction we made was that in all those cases where there was very little doubt that somebody was an active participant in organized crime, we would go along with those surveillance techniques. When there was some real question about whether somebody was essentially an innocent bystander, we tended to be much more cautious.”23 Is it justified to deceive or lie to liars because they themselves are dishonest? It’s a question many journalists and ethicists have tackled over the years. Jennifer Jackson argues that, if we concede it is all right to lie to liars, “we might as well concede simply that it is all right to lie, for virtually everyone tells a lie sometimes.”24 Sissela Bok does not rule out journalistic deception, but she says that liars often overestimate the forces pushing them to lie.25 In discussing the career of Gunter Wallraff, the German journalist who famously infiltrated all kinds of organizations in order to write exposés, Bok shows no sympathy for the argument that the powers being unmasked are allegedly deceitful and lawless. Ordinary reportorial methods should be preferred whenever possible, she writes. “For journalists as for social scientists and other probers, the infiltrator is often seeking a shortcut for which the more experienced have no need.”26 Jackson also concludes that it is “overwhelmingly typical” for lies to be told in circumstances that do not justify their telling.27 In the immediate postWatergate period, undercover journalism enjoyed renewed popularity in North American journalism. But journalists always remained divided on when or if to use the techniques. An elaborate Chicago Sun Times investigation in 1978 involved opening a tavern and seeing if city inspectors would solicit bribes from the establishment’s owners, while hidden cameras recorded the conversations. The co-production

50  Covering Canadian Crime

with CBS’s 60 Minutes was startling and effective, but a Pulitzer Prize committee later balked at rewarding the effort because of the high level of deception.28 How would Connections stand up to Merrill’s TUFF formula? When it comes to truth, which Merrill considers the most important of the reportorial guidelines,29 the series succeeded in showing the Mafia and organized crime in vivid colours. Most Canadians had never seen a moving image of a Mafia figure before, and when it came to shadowy underworld activities, observing them first-hand led to a better understanding. Merrill argues there are five fundamental levels of truth in the news-gathering process: transcendental truth, or truth with a Capital “T”; potential truth, or what the journalist can get; selected truth, or what the journalist actually does get; reported truth, or what the journalist manages to fit into the account; and audience-perceived truth, or what the audience members select and assimilate from the reported truth.30 The journalist, he notes, has nothing to say about the first and fifth levels. It’s the third level that is in many ways the most important, since the care and zealousness exercised here can influence the amount of truth actually reported. Journalists working on quick turnaround stories spend very little time at the third level, and the result is a news story that rarely succeeds in anything more than touching the surface of the truth. But investigative journalists can spend weeks or months on a single story, examining a far greater volume of evidence to arrive at a better understanding of the reality. In the case of Connections, producers adopted the methods of scholarly research to mine the public record and compile lists of people who could throw light on the topic. Many were then interviewed, and a database of some thirty-five thousand names was assembled. It was an impressive effort to go as far as possible towards Merrill’s second level of potential truth. Though it’s difficult to remove all bias in any methodology, the Connections producers adopted a far broader approach in their news gathering than Charbonneau or most crime reporters before them had. They didn’t limit their inquiries to police sources, though they did establish close connections with law-enforcement agencies in Canada and the United States. They realized the importance of seeking out information and opinions from alleged Mafia leaders themselves, and they did not take every bit of police information at face value. By interviewing so many people over the course of the multi-year project, the team achieved a fullness of coverage that is rare in journalistic projects. If there was an issue relating to bias in the series, it may have been the

Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough? 51

unrelenting – but not always supportable – assumption that the mere association of a person with an alleged figure of organized crime meant there was some sinister connection. This landed the team into some not-unexpected legal entanglements, though none proved fatal to the story’s main thrust. It is on Merrill’s fourth and critical pillar, fairness, that the series faced its biggest challenges. Close collaboration and sharing of information with police has already been noted. That practice became particularly controversial in recent years when it was revealed that journalist Stevie Cameron had provided information to RCMP about the ongoing investigation into Brian Mulroney and the Airbus affair. Most journalists would condemn such sharing of information today, though it was taken as a given in the past. The extensive use of surreptitious filming and audio recording was also taken as a given, a necessary means needed to achieve the end of showing the Mafia in action. While there is a long and established tradition of undercover and hidden-camera reporting in journalism, the explosion of investigative reporting in the 1970s increased the intensity of the practice. Controversies over how hidden cameras were used flared now and again, but it remains a legal procedure in most jurisdictions. What has changed is the proliferation of codes of conduct and guidelines for the ethical use of deception, many of them created as a result of criticism following the unfettered use of surreptitious means. Most codes focus on the importance of the subject matter to be gathered and the necessity of exploring more open means first. The Society of Professional Journalists in the United States has a typical provision: “Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods should be explained as part of the story.”31 Similarly, the Canadian Association of Journalists suggests, under the heading “Transparency,” that journalists “generally declare ourselves as journalists and do not conceal our identities, including when seeking information through social media. However, journalists may go undercover when it is in the public interest and the information is not obtainable any other way; in such cases, we openly explain this deception to the audience.”32 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil have a similar test. “1. The information must be sufficiently vital to the public interest to justify deception. 2. Journalists should not engage in masquerade unless there is no other way to get the story. 3. Journalists should reveal to their audience whenever they mislead sources to get information, and should explain their reasons

52  Covering Canadian Crime

for doing so, including why the story justifies the deception and why this was the only way to get the facts.”33 American ethics scholar Lou Hodges adds that the deception should never put innocent people at risk.34 The CBC’s current Journalistic Standards and Practices code permits clandestine reporting “only in circumstances where we believe it would be difficult or impossible to gather the information by acting more openly.”35 When the filming is to take place in a private space, the CBC insists that it needs “credible information indicating the likelihood of illegal or antisocial activity or abuse of trust.”36 It’s not entirely clear whether the extensive use of deception by the Connections producers would have met the test imposed by these more modern codes. The CBC’s handbook was created, in fact, largely as a result of the ethical considerations raised by the Connections series. As I have outlined, the series went far beyond passive hidden-­ camera work. It organized schemes and hired double agents in an effort to convince mobsters to engage in illegalities on camera. Given the extensive evidence from police files, wiretap transcripts, and other sources, it was hardly necessary to demonstrate that these criminals would indeed engage in further crimes. On that front, it violated the provision of most codes that more conventional means should always be preferred over deceptive ones. It also veered into the territory of entrapment, and it arguably put some actual people’s lives at risk. Bok, in discussing undercover police operations, had some advice that could be applied to this form of journalism as well. “Care must be taken not to set up a scheme in which an innocent person might be trapped into criminal activities; all methods of seducing, coercing, or tricking people into committing offences should therefore be avoided.”37 Paul Starobin, writing in the Dallas Morning News on 2 February 1996, provides an even harsher assessment. “Stunt journalism saps the credibility of the press and makes life tougher for honest snoops. This form of reporting has always been shoddy.” There is little doubt that the Connections producers perceived themselves to be on a noble mission and believed that the ends justified the means – especially since all means used were entirely legal at the time. This is an argument that police themselves will sometimes use in trying to solve a case or secure a conviction. But law enforcement also has to pay strict attention not to entrap suspects, even if those suspects are hardened criminals. Courts are quick to throw out evidence that they suspect is obtained improperly. The idea that ends justify the means in policing can lead, according to Cyndi Banks, to a syndrome known as

Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough? 53

noble cause corruption.38 It is a slippery slope that allows for questionable ethical decisions, albeit with the noble aim of putting ostensibly guilty people behind bars. Though Merrill does not comment directly on the Connections series, he tends to view the use of hidden cameras, stings, and deception as a variant of pragmatic egoism, or Machiavellian ethics.39 Most journalists wouldn’t relish being compared to Machiavelli, but Merrill suggests that the Florentine’s ethics were success-driven and egoistic, and that “he would represent the competitive, get-the-story-at-all-costs philosophy of many hard-nosed investigative reporters.”40 Despite differing views among journalists about the morality of using deception, Merrill arrives at a damning conclusion: “I fear that the spirit of Machiavelli pervades the ranks of serious investigative reporters, who often seem to put professional expediency before traditional ethical concerns.”41 In the end, the Connections series stands as one of the most remarkable and groundbreaking television projects of its kind, resting on exhaustive and solid research. At the same time, it employed techniques that can be seriously challenged on ethical grounds. Does the latter negate the former? Merrill himself isn’t conclusive on this point. He acknowledges that the TUFF formula is somewhat troublesome because of the wide gap between the first three letters and the final one. Reporters dedicated to full disclosure and truth telling, no matter what the consequences, could be considered ethical as long as they don’t tamper with the truth and fully disclose all the relevant facts. They might legitimately believe that being ethical means having a basic nature of honesty, with their journalism resting on their own moral character and not the specific techniques in their news gathering.42 Philip Meyer, who is seen as a founder of precision and computer-assisted journalism, believes accuracy to be journalism’s fundamental objective. If direct observation by means of deception leads to more accurate reporting, that should not be sacrificed to a rigid rule that prohibits deception. “Those who decry it [deception] in all cases are being more absolutist than critical.”43 Even so, the damage done by not paying sufficient attention to the final letter of the TUFF formula can be significant. It can lead to a mistrust of the media and a feeling that reporters will stop at nothing to get their story. It’s hard not to think of the scandal that engulfed the British tabloid News of the World in this context – a scandal that resulted in the fullblown public examination of press practices and ethics, the Leveson Inquiry. The tabloid engaged in many colourful and aggressive newsgathering techniques, including paying people for interviews, going

54  Covering Canadian Crime

undercover to entrap people, and hacking into cell phones to discover information. The newspaper’s investigations editor was renowned for dressing up as a fake sheikh and using other disguises to create exposés. Well before the full-fledged hacking scandal emerged, journalism professor and media commentator Roy Greenslade, in a column on 16 April 2006 in the Independent, denounced the newspaper’s tactics and called on it to stop using its techniques of subterfuge. In a response printed in the same newspaper a week later, then-editor Andy Coulson rejected the criticisms, stating that “subterfuge is an essential tool in the craft of investigative journalism” – a comment few journalists would make without providing a list of qualifications. “We make absolutely no apologies for the methods we employ. They will not change,” Coulson also said. Of course, Coulson eventually resigned and was ultimately sentenced to eighteen months in jail. The News of the World was shut down. Profuse apologies were offered by many officials in the Murdoch media empire, and a series of criminal investigations followed further revelations of phone hacking. While hacking is a criminal offence as well as a moral problem, the point is that the newspaper had lost its moral authority. No one challenged the truth or accuracy of the phone messages that were intercepted and printed. In fact, it could be argued that they helped to provide a fuller and more accurate account whenever they were used. But the fairness quotient overwhelmed all other factors. In Canada, a handful of journalists have built on the pioneering work of the 1970s to continue covering the Mafia and other forms of organized crime. Antonio Nicaso, Adrian Humphreys, André Cédilot, Peter Edwards (whose first-person perspective about the shooting of a native protestor, “Debwewin: The Search for the Truth about Ipperwash,” appears in this collection), and Lee Lamothe are some of the journalists who have delved deeply into the topic, tapping sources within police departments and the underworld. Nicaso’s approach is both journalistic and academic. He has produced populist books on Mafia figures as well as university lectures on the history of organized crime. Close connections with prosecutors and other justice officials in Italy have helped Nicaso keep watch on worldwide Mafia operations and how they affect Canada. Perhaps the most groundbreaking work in recent years has been done by the team at Enquête, Radio-Canada’s investigative program. Journalist Alain Gravel, along with Marie-Maude Denis and the team of producers and researchers at the program, began exposing corruption in Quebec’s construction industry in 2009. Their series of

Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough? 55

documentaries revealed the extent of Mafia control over the industry, along with the web of connections involving municipal officials and organized crime figures. Their journalism was one of the factors leading to the creation of the Charbonneau Commission in Quebec, which delved deeply into Mafia influence over the awarding and management of public contracts in the construction industry. For journalists who persist in unearthing details about organized crime, the threat of retaliation remains high. About ten journalists in Italy live under police protection as a result of their crime reporting.44 Roberto Saviano, author of a best-selling book about the Neapolitan Mafia, is one of them. He based his research on a mix of public records, court transcripts, interviews, and first-hand accounts of experiences that put him close to Mafia members. He went undercover, working with crime groups to understand how they operate, and using informants for further details. His impressionistic, first-person account, which some termed “docu-fiction,” used storytelling techniques borrowed from the world of the novel. The result, called Gomorrah, was a book that might never have been produced by conventional journalistic research-­gathering and storytelling methods, but one that struck a chord with millions of readers around the world. The internationalization of organized crime has led to many cross-border partnerships among journalists. One such venture is the Organized Crime and Cor­ ruption Reporting Project, a joint program of several journalistic organizations in eastern Europe. It is making use of modern online tools, as well as relevant databases, to build a resource centre that can be used by journalists investigating organized crime. A simple database of names and public records can be a powerful tool in checking the backgrounds of individuals suspected of participating in organized crime. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is another organization that coordinates cross-border investigations into crime and other stories. With each of these reporters and organizations, the TUFF formula remains a useful gauge for the integrity and validity of their work. Can the Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, for instance, lay claim to being unbiased when it is supported by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development? Can the Italian journalists who rely on police for their round-the-clock protection, just as some embedded reporters rely on various armies in war zones, be expected to tell a full and unbiased story? Can journalists work undercover with Mafia groups in an effort to discredit them? Do some media organizations, as in Hervieu’s view, “become a tool for spreading one crime

56  Covering Canadian Crime

organization’s bad publicity about a rival organization?”45 In such a complex and difficult journalistic field, where the truth is an elusive commodity, holding on to TUFF principles can pay dividends. NOTES 1 Benoît Hervieu, Organized Crime: Muscling in on the Media (Paris: Reporters Without Borders 2011), 2. 2 Richard Harwood, “Knights of the Fourth Estate,” Washington Post, 5 December 1992, A23. 3 John C. Merrill, Journalism Ethics: Philosophical Foundations for News Media (New York: St Martin’s Press 1997). 4 Stephen Fox, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in 20th Century America (New York: W. Morrow 1989), 64. 5 Ibid., 342. 6 Patrick J. Ryan and George E. Rush, Understanding Organized Crime in Global Perspective: A Reader (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications 1997), 21. 7 Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, The Canadian Connection (Toronto, Ottawa: Optimum Publishing 1976), xiii. 8 Cecil Rosner, Behind the Headlines: A History of Investigative Journalism in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press 2008), 93. 9 Charbonneau, The Canadian Connection, 507. 10 Ibid., xvii. 11 Ibid., xvi. 12 Merrill, Journalism Ethics, 177. 13 Steve Weinberg, The Reporter’s Handbook: An Investigator’s Guide to Documents and Techniques, 3rd ed. (New York: St Martin’s Press 1996), 494–6. 14 Hervieu, Organized Crime, 4. 15 Wade Rowland, Making Connections (Agincourt, Ont.: Gage Publishing 1979), x. 16 Ibid. 17 Rosner, Behind the Headlines, 103. 18 David Anderson and Peter Benjaminson, Investigative Reporting (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1976), 6. 19 Ibid., 7. 20 Ibid. 21 James Dygert, The Investigative Journalist: Folk Heroes of a New Era (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall 1976), 153.

Is Coverage of the Mafia TUFF Enough? 57 22 Ibid. 23 Rosner, Behind the Headlines, 101. 24 Jennifer Jackson, “Honesty in Investigative Journalism,” in Andrew Belsey and Ruth Chadwick, eds., Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media (London and New York: Routledge 1992), 97. 25 Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Pantheon Books 1978), 25. 26 Sissela Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (New York: Pantheon Books 1982), 262. 27 Jackson, Honesty in Investigative Journalsim, 110. 28 James Aucoin, The Evolution of American Investigative Journalism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press 2005), 78–9. 29 Merrill, Journalism Ethics, 175. 30 Ibid., 114. 31 Jay Black and Chris Roberts, Doing Ethics in Media: Theories and Practical Applications (New York and London: Routledge 2011), 207. 32 “Ethical Guidelines,” Canadian Association of Journalists, http://www.caj .ca/?p=1776. 33 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Three Rivers Press 2007), 98. 34 Lou Hodges, “Undercover, Masquerading, Surreptitious Taping,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 3, no. 11 (1988): 26–36. 35 “Journalistic Standards and Practices,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, http://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/reporting-to-canadians/ acts-and-policies/programming/journalism. 36 Ibid. 37 Bok, Secrets, 279. 38 Cyndi Banks, Criminal Justice Ethics: Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Sage Publishing 2009), 42. 39 A. David Gordon et al., Controversies on Media Ethics, 3rd ed. (New York and London: Routledge 2011), 19. 40 Ibid., 20. 41 Ibid. 42 Merrill, Journalism Ethics, 181–2. 43 Philip Meyer, Ethical Journalism: A Guide for Students, Practitioners, and Consumers (New York: Longman 1987), 78–85. 44 Hervieu, Organized Crime, 7. 45 Ibid., 4.

3 The Inherent Drama of Courts: An Interview with National Post Columnist Christie Blatchford Chris R i c har ds on an d Ro m ayne Smith F ul l e rt on

Christie Blatchford, a columnist for the National Post, is an award-winning journalist who has worked for all the major newspapers in Toronto. She began her career as a sports reporter for the Globe and Mail, then became a columnist at the Toronto Star before moving on to the Toronto Sun. She returned to the Globe before she joined the National Post in 2011. One of Canada’s most well-known columnists and crime reporters, she is also the author of numerous books including Fifteen Days: The Story of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army, Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed Us All, Close Encounters, and Spectator Sports. In this chapter, Blatchford speaks frankly about her unique and influential style of reporting, why she thinks television ought to cover courts differently, and whether in her coverage she ever judges defendants before they are convicted in a court of law. The courts are like a very confined sporting arena. I’m lazy and I’m an old sports reporter. It’s easy to do this work: you have set times and set hours and there are two teams and one result at the end. Everything is there for you and so what makes your copy different from everyone else’s is the quality of your observations. I think that’s neat. There was one moment in the Rafferty case that nobody else noticed, but I did and I was proud of it.1 They were playing some video from the Home Depot where Rafferty was sitting in the car and the little girl, Tori, was in the back seat. You could see him but not her. And TerriLynne McClintic was going in to buy the murder tools. As she’s walking towards Home Depot, she passes a happy little family with their van and they’re loading stuff into the van, like you see all the time in Home Depot or Ikea parking lots. The little boy is bored and standing



The Inherent Drama of the Courts 59

by the car. He’s swinging his leg. And it struck me: the proximity of good and evil … how we never really know. That’s what I mean about the quality of observation, the thing you can notice and maybe no one else will see, or maybe everyone else will see, but it depends on you and how much you’re paying attention. I like courts for that. Courts are just about the last place on earth where print has the advantage over TV because it depends on what you see and how much you’re paying attention. TV reporters are not known for paying attention. I’d like to see someone cover courts the way I think TV could cover them. It would require assigning a reporter to be there every day just like print is. It would require someone smart – and there are lots of smart people in TV – and instead of coming out and doing that wretched kind of stand-up thing they do, they could actually come out and tell a story. Just do it differently. If I were younger or more photogenic or actually liked television, I’d try and do it. But somebody should try and do it – somebody smart – because there’s a really good way that courts could be covered and nobody’s doing it. I don’t think that I alone have changed how courts are covered, but together with Rosie DiManno [columnist for the Toronto Star], I probably have. We both covered the trial of Paul Bernardo and the coverage wasn’t unique, but it seemed so at the time.2 There was a unique set of circumstances because the chief witness against him was already a convicted felon, as I delighted in calling Karla Homolka. So you had a case where the actual crime wasn’t in dispute. You had this person who said this is what happened and had pled guilty in her now famous plea bargain. Because guilt wasn’t really in question, it felt like we had a lot more licence to write colourfully or less drily. It’s not the only case I’ve covered like that, but certainly it was a dramatic enhancement of a change that was probably already under way. It stuns me, though, that more people still don’t write about courts the way they could be covered. They use the old-fashioned inverted pyramid style, or write things like, “The defendant stood impassive.” I mean, fuck, who would ever read that? It’s so dull. This kind of story would get you an A in journalism school, but it’s boring copy. It’s like, “We heard yesterday that X didn’t kill Y.” For fuck’s sake, that’s so boring – but particularly in the courts, where everything is so dramatic. Courts are inherently dramatic. I don’t know if it was a conscious decision for me to write about them in a different way, but I just didn’t want to write that dully.

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Do I blame my education? Well, I am a graduate of Ryerson University, and Ryerson told me to write the same dull crap people had been writing for years! I loved Ryerson, but I regarded it as a chance to practice. I think the emphasis in j-school was on more traditional reporting and that’s not necessarily bad. You have to learn how to be a traditional reporter first. You have to find out how to find information. But that isn’t innately dull. It doesn’t have to be anyway. Sometimes I’m a judge for the Southern Ontario Newspaper Awards so I occasionally see copycats of my way of writing. The only thing that concerns me is that some are too young to have earned their stripes. As a good example, when Rafferty was convicted, the defence lawyer held a scrum, and while I don’t usually do scrums, I went to this one because the trial was over. And one of the first questions someone asked Dirk Derstine, Rafferty’s lawyer, was, Did his client want to testify in his own defence (because he hadn’t)? That’s protected by solicitor-client privilege. Those are the rules. I can’t believe anyone would ask that. I can’t believe someone wouldn’t know that Derstine can’t answer that. Earlier in the Rafferty case, someone also tweeted from the overflow room something that went on in the court when the jury was absent. That’s verboten. We old court reporters know that. But sometimes, young people don’t. And as newsrooms are skeletonized across this country, there are fewer editors and senior reporters and more people like me who work at home. The danger of the kind of reporting that I do is that people don’t know the rules and aren’t guided properly in knowing the rules. I’m not blaming young reporters, but they sometimes get too much freedom and too little control. And television is particularly guilty of this – they aren’t in the courtroom for all of the case and you can walk in one day and form one impression, then have your mind changed the next. … I make mistakes every fucking day. I don’t know if one’s more awful than another. I can’t think of all the big mistakes I’ve made – I think we tend to gloss over them. I am sure there are all kinds of things I wish I hadn’t said. I was hard on Tara McDonald [Tori Stafford’s mother], but I wrote a column saying I was sorry. There was a column where I said we were all pretty hard on her. I don’t think we were wrong to be hard on her initially – you have no idea how bizarrely she was behaving: holding daily press conferences,



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full makeup on, throwing out all her kid’s things, it was weird. And now we know why (and some of us figured it out quickly): she was on drugs. Like any addict, she was fundamentally denying her addiction, at least publicly in those days, and that made her seem like a liar on the fundamental question of her daughter’s disappearance. I do regret how harsh I was. I wish I had known then what I know now and I would have modified it as I did in the trial, where you can see what she was lying about and what she was telling the truth about. Other than Rosie DiManno, who naturally identifies with the underdog and is a contrarian, most of us thought Tara behaved strangely and it naturally raised suspicions. I remember thinking, “She’s the mom and I can’t be too tough on her.” So what I tried to do was to describe her behaviour and readers could think as I did, “Wow. This is fucked up.” Or they could say, “Why are you writing this? It’s too harsh” – as some did. It was complicated. It’s easy to be fooled or to get it wrong as a reporter. Even when you are meeting and seeing Tara every day – we all thought that she had some questions to answer, that she was hiding some knowledge. But the point is that I got it wrong. Despite seeing her looking into the eyes of her child, or watching her with her boyfriend, or watching her with people, in crowds, spending way more time than reporters usually spend, and I still got it wrong. I wrote about this in a column about the necessity – the one necessity – to be cautious about drawing conclusions. Yes, it’s important to have people on the ground (like senior editors) giving advice; then we are less likely to get it wrong. But we still can – that’s the scary part. … I don’t think I ever pass judgment on someone before a judge or jury does. I do pass judgment on individual portions of the trial. Here, I’m thinking about the trial of Francis Carl Roy, who was arrested for the murder of Alison Parrott.3 He took the witness stand in his own defence. He was arrested some eleven years after the little girl was killed because there was no DNA at first. Then they did DNA testing, and, sure enough, it matched. At the trial, he testified that, yes, that was his sperm in the little girl’s body. But here’s how he said it happened. He woke up and whacked off, then went out for a run. He spied the body of this dead little girl in the bushes when he stopped to take a piss, and he was moved to do what all of us would do given half a chance, he stuck his finger in the dead girl’s vagina.

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Did I pass judgment on the quality of his explanation for his DNA being in her body? Fucking right I did. Who wouldn’t? My colleagues didn’t; they treated it with some seriousness. I didn’t, because it was worthy of mocking. But did I pass judgment on his guilt? I don’t think so. All the jurists listening to that asshole testify would be thinking exactly the same thing. I think jurors are entitled to believe some, all, or none of what’s said in the courtroom and so am I. … You can put an end to the myth that I’ve never been edited. I’ve always been edited. The deal papers make with columnists is if they’re going to edit you, except as a copy editor, they talk to you about it. And I’m famous for burying my leads. About two nights ago, I had the lead about paragraph six. Rob Roberts, who is my primary editor at the Post, rewrote it, sent it to me, and said, “I think this is better, but if you like the original, we’ll keep it.” I said, “Fuck no! This is way better.” So, of course I get edited. What would I do without editors? I’d make more mistakes. That’s a really funny myth. One true story about being edited was when I was at the Sun, and someone changed my copy without discussing it with me. I was a columnist and it was against the rules and the piece made it into the paper. I famously sent this guy an e-mail (it was in the early days of email when it was just internal) and I copied it to just about everybody. I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret. And I actually wrote, “If you ever touch my copy again, I’ll cut your dick off.” And you know what? He never touched it again. … I’ve been writing four or five stories a week for most of my career, so I can’t remember all the ones I’ve done. But one of the cases I’m proud of, that I covered recently, was a pretty ordinary shooting of a black guy named Kenneth Mark.4 Most days, I was the only reporter in the courtroom. It wasn’t a very sexy case. I think there was some sort of institutional racism – just another black guy who got shot. But this guy was a lovely man – as I’m sure many victims are – and for some reason, I got sucked into covering it and the Post let me, even though the trial wasn’t being covered by anyone else. I was proud of that because I gave the victim some attention and dignity that I thought his death and murder deserved. I feel the same way about some of the stuff I have covered on child deaths – murders – that I’ve written about where the Children’s Aid Society has been involved and they wouldn’t otherwise have been



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so excoriated if I hadn’t covered it. Stories like the ones about Sara Podniewicz, a little girl who was killed by her crack-addled parents.5 Her father had already served time for beating his son – who is now thirteen or fourteen – so badly he has the mental capacities of a sixmonth-old, the age he was when his father did this to him. This man was not supposed to be allowed to live with Sara’s mother. One of the conditions of his parole was that he was not to live with his wife. But both the National Parole Board and the Children’s Aid Society oversaw them living together. They had Sara and they killed her. So there’s a number of cases – maybe half a dozen or more – where the murder trial wasn’t about the role of the child welfare agency and their role would not have become as big an issue if I hadn’t covered those trials. … Journalists don’t experience crime the way that victims or their families do. They live it; we don’t. There’s a common saying that you don’t have to have cancer to know what it’s like to have cancer – or to be poor for that matter – but, as a journalist, you have to be reasonably empathetic and make reasonable efforts to understand and you will be able to feel their pain and write about it properly. There was an inquest I covered where a mom and two kids burned to death in a house fire. I was writing about smoke detectors at the time, and I was interested in this, so I went to the court every day. Their house didn’t have working smoke detectors. I was interested because of the smoke detectors, but I also learned about poverty. I’m not poor. I was raised in a blue-collar family, but we were never poor. Here [at the inquest] was this woman trying to get her townhouse fumigated because she had roaches. She had five kids and a couple survived the fire and she had no man. She had to juggle being home with the baby, the older kids, juggle everything. There was no way out. If I were younger, I’d go and live in those empty houses in Detroit that nobody’s buying. You know: it’s the story of the decimated nature of industrial America. It would be very interesting to live in one of those houses for six months and write a book about that. There are all kinds of ways to do this with new journalism. Black Like Me – it’s not really a new idea, but it’s still a good one.6 In daily journalism, you don’t get opportunities to do that kind of thing. I do one thing for a long time – like cover an inquest – and I write about it until people want to scream that they’ve had enough of it. But that way I learn something. And so do the people who read me. That’s what I like about courts – you get smarter every day. You learn something every day.

64 Contents NOTES 1 In the spring of 2012, Michael Rafferty was found guilty of kidnapping, ­sexual assault, and first-degree murder of an eight-year-old Woodstock girl, Victoria “Tori” Stafford. Rafferty’s girlfriend, Terri-Lynne McClintic, had been convicted a year earlier. 2 In September 1995 Paul Bernardo was convicted of kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, and first-degree murder in the deaths of Kristin French and Leslie Mahaffy. His wife, Karla Homolka, had agreed to testify against him in a plea bargain made two years previously, the details of which were protected by a publication ban. She served twelve years for manslaughter despite videotape evidence that depicted her intimate involvement in the sexual assaults, including one on her younger sister. 3 Eleven-year-old Alison Parrott was raped and murdered in July 1986. Nearly a decade later, Francis Carl Roy, forty-one, was arrested. He was convicted in 1999 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. 4 See, for example, Christie Blatchford, “A Man of Principle, Silenced: Trial Begins in 2009 Murder of Kenneth Mark,” National Post, 2 February 2012. 5 See, for example, Christie Blatchford, “Failing Our Most Vulnerable: B.C. Teen’s Case Shows Social Agencies Making the Same Mistake,” National Post, 2 July 2011. 6 Black Like Me is a 1961 non-fiction book by a white journalist, John Howard Griffith. It detailed a trip he took through the southern states passing as an African American.

4 Sometimes the Law Is an Ass: Reflections on Publishing the Record of a Juvenile Kirk L a Pointe

Kirk LaPointe has been a media executive for a quarter-century and led such organizations as CTV News, Southam News, and the Hamilton Spectator. He has been the managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, the founding executive editor of the National Post, the Ottawa bureau chief and general news editor of the Canadian Press, and the ombudsman for CBC’s English Services. At present, he is the vice president of audience and business development at Business in Vancouver Media Group, morning radio host at Roundhouse Radio, the executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, and an adjunct professor and executive-in-residence at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of British Columbia. But in 1999, when he was editor-in-chief of the Hamilton Spectator, he pled guilty to contravening the Young Offenders Act by deliberately publishing the youth criminal history of a young man who broke parole and was at large in the community. In this chapter, LaPointe offers an introspective look at the issues that informed his decision to stick up for transparency and the public’s right to know, and he suggests, in hindsight, what he might have done differently. I have rerun the scene many times and ask you now to play along in this test of a newsroom’s judgment. Suppose this is what the law stipulated you could say: A man is at large in your community. He has violated parole conditions the day he was released from jail by associating with certain others. He spent time in jail on three convictions in the year since he qualified for adult court. He has a picture you can publish, but police will not comment on him. Imagine that this is what the law stipulated you likely could not say: The man is considered extremely dangerous by police (this you learn from intercepting police radio discussions and understanding some of

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the inner language). Fifty-seven charges were withdrawn when he was convicted of the three others as an adult (this you learn from the plea bargain and might impugn his character). And now, here is what the law stipulated you definitely could not say: He had a lengthy, consistent and often violent criminal record as a young offender (this from information protected under youth justice law). He boasted he wanted to die in a shootout with police (ditto). He threatened a ten-year-old with a gun (ditto). He was considered so problematic that a judge waived the publication ban on his identity as a juvenile to help police apprehend him when he was a wanted teen (ditto). Be aware of some twentieth-century context for a twenty-first-­century reader: It was 1999 and these were only the early, non-influential days of digital journalism, well before the web and social media might widely circulate information, so the newsroom’s focus was on what we would publish the next morning in the newspaper and not at all what we would post online. This time period is in sharp contrast to today and the concerns that Susan Harada and Mary McGuire raise in chapter 9, or the enthusiasm of Canada’s first reporter to tweet live from court, Kate Dubinski, outlined in chapter 12. Our reality: Twitter and Facebook weren’t yet invented. Blogs were only emerging. The clock was fast approaching time for the presses to roll. The business day had passed and the Crown was not appealing to a judge to overturn a publication ban on his juvenile record, so the matter was in our hands. Bear in mind, too, some particular context to our situation: We were a newspaper that had struggled for a dozen years that was again on the upswing, with gradually stronger circulation, revenue, and reader satisfaction and a culture that was taking more risks and more confidently taking them. This was during a small (and all-too-brief) renaissance in newspapering before the significant declines in circulation and revenue would arrive. There was no reason to believe that digital media were ever going to hurt newspapers; rather, we were too busy thinking that we were hurting ourselves with bland, indifferent, inconsequential papers. Our choice, we thought, was to publish anodyne details unlikely to strike the appropriate concern in the community and then sit idly by – perhaps to witness violence we might have prevented – or act in defiance of the law and publish what we considered relevant if unlawful

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information. We thought that a decision to publish might signal a commitment to community and add boldness to our voice, but we also knew that it might come at a high price – not least was a criminal conviction of us, not just the man-at-large. Knowing what we knew, hearing what we had heard about the man-at-large on the police radio, realizing that a judge would not lift the publication ban on his juvenile record before our deadline, and recognizing what would be the consequences of our detailing his juvenile record, we had only hours to wonder what we should do as a newsroom. What would you do? At the Hamilton Spectator in 1999, we chose not only to break the law but also to criticize it. We tried to make clear that we respected the law and believed in its general intent to permit discreet rehabilitation and second opportunities for young people making a mistake. But we argued that sometimes it just didn’t feel right to do so, that the law was open to abuse, and that we couldn’t just stand back in these circumstances. In a less-than-well-considered moment, we adapted a line from Charles Dickens – that the law is an ass – to express indignation as part of an editorial explanation of our decision. We wrote news stories that day and in the days ahead identifying the man and explaining what we were doing. Our publisher gave the approach his blessing. The man was eventually apprehended – in typical Hamilton fashion, in a Tim Horton’s – and it would not be the end of his criminal spree. I will not name him, because it would repeat the breach of the law. In publishing his details and violating the ban on publication of a juvenile record, we felt we had done what the Crown should have done within the law before a judge who could have given us permission to do with legal blessing what we would do without it. Our Canadian attitude about the need for transparency here is in sharp contrast to the practices of Holland or Sweden, where, as Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson point out in chapter 5, accused and even convicted criminals are voluntarily and routinely not identified by media. Our concern was protection of our community. What followed was not always what we expected. We expected the police to be at our door the next day, but nothing happened. Officers told our reporters they were privately relieved we had published the material. It was going to help them find him and, more importantly, keep the public from confronting him.

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But, just when we expected the official silence on our actions would remain, long-time critics of the paper filed a public complaint, so an investigation and charges ensued. Once reporters and I who had written about the matter were charged, the journey took on a different, darker light. Police did an about-face and used the opportunity to grill the reporters, sometimes for hours and far beyond the simple case at hand, largely to gain insights into their attitudes and their managers’ attitudes on the force. Even with counsel present, the reporters were subjected to disproportionate interrogation. In my case I had one uneventful session with an officer on the youth crime squad, but for others the ordeal was a significant eye-opener. So much for the police’s appreciation. Thankfully it was the only disturbing element to the saga. Apart from those complainants, the public response was exceptionally supportive. Cheques arrived to pay for legal bills, letters arrived offering to petition MPs for a change in the law, and I was astonished to be alerted to websites (a jaw-dropping one in Saskatchewan, for instance) that had been doing repeatedly what we had done once. A few wrote to say that they wished we hadn’t felt we had to do what we did, but they understood under the circumstances and appreciated that they now knew more. I also received an e-mail from the man-at-large himself, who said what we had written had hurt his feelings and that he had given up on a life of crime. I believe he wrote this the same week he and friends allegedly broke into a men’s clothing store. A few months later I was invited to a symposium on youth crime, where a federal bureaucrat defended the notion of a law that shielded details on younger criminals and permitted them to rehabilitate and relaunch their lives with no attendant publicity. A few of us spoke up and suggested that the law was being flouted in some cases, like the one over which I was now facing charges. He was impatient with any discussion about this and asked me: “What would you do? Lock up ten-year-olds and throw away the key?” Well, of course, that wasn’t the point, but I found his rhetoric curiously defensive and clearly out of touch with public sentiment. We were just on the cusp of a movement that would demand stronger sentencing, more adult courts for serious juvenile offenders, and the introduction of a tough-on-crime tactic with much greater public support than many of us imagined, as Chris Richardson points out in chapter 16.

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Given that I was accountable for the decision in the newsroom, I was the only one who wound up in court. Charges were rightfully but slowly dropped against the reporters after many hours of harassing inquisition. A year later (by this time in another job), I came to court, agreed to plead guilty, and was given an absolute discharge. It turned out that the judge had seen our man-at-large in court as a juvenile, acquiesced to a plea for a light detention-centre sentence and the promise of the straight life, then watched him offend quickly upon release. When I reflect on this episode now, I have a few regrets. The in-your-face tone of our defiance wasn’t appropriate to the circumstances. We had operated lawfully as an institution in that city, respected the delicate balance of rights and responsibilities that gave our craft a reasonable boundary, and counselled our audience to participate in a civil society. When we broke the law, we should have been more clearly remorseful in doing so. As it was, we appeared only a little less brazen than the man-at-large. I regret not reporting about the police interrogation of our reporters. We decided, upon reflection, not to jeopardize their situation by publishing the details of their inquisition. If any of those reporters read this, I apologize, and police got away with one. We suggested then, as we had earlier, that at times the law wasn’t in step, and that there was something taking place in society among wizened, habitual young offenders who were taking great advantage of a law framed delicately with higher, more honourable purpose. In some way, it was as if age sixteen were the new twenty and the law hadn’t reset to take account. I regret that the paper didn’t continue this campaign, because there was a then healthy debate on that subject – somewhat healthier than the tough-on-crime debate we have lately seen. More than a dozen years later, I wish we had felt that we had more than a dozen hours to decide.

5 Not Naming Names?: Crime-Coverage Rituals in Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands Ro m ayne Smith F ul l e rt on a nd Mag g ie J on e s P at t e rs on 1

Setting the News Scenes

The Netherlands On Queensday, 30 April 2009, a national holiday in the Netherlands set aside to celebrate the queen’s birthday, Karst Tates drove a small car through two police barriers and into a crowd of spectators, who were hoping to catch a glimpse of the royal family in an open-air bus. Using his car as a weapon, the man killed seven people and seriously injured ten more. Then he ran into a stone memorial. Before he was removed from his vehicle, he told police that he had intended to assassinate Queen Beatrix. He later died of head injuries sustained in the crash.

Sweden Anna Lindh, Sweden’s foreign minister, was attacked in a Stockholm department store where she was shopping for clothes on 10 September 2003. She was repeatedly stabbed in the chest, arms, and stomach and died the next day at the age of forty-six. Her assassin, Mijailo Mijailovic, who was born in Sweden to Serb parents, was arrested a few days later and eventually received a life sentence.

Canada In the spring of 2009, eight-year-old Victoria “Tori” Stafford disappeared from her school. She was caught on videotape walking with a woman in a white puffy jacket. A large search turned up nothing.

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Eventually, a young woman, Terri-Lynne McClintic, who had been arrested for a misdemeanour, confessed to the kidnapping, saying her boyfriend, Michael Rafferty, had made her do it. Introduction Crime stories like these rivet public attention. They unite a fragmented population in common concern across class, ethnicity, and racial divides. Sociologist Martin Innes calls them “signal crimes.” News stories about them articulate “popular fears about the seeming encroachment of the forces of disorder, drawing upon diffuse and inchoate existential anxieties about the state of contemporary society.”2 Such fears pervade Canada, the United States, and western Europe as immigration, technology, and global economic forces remake the world. Each signal crime brings forth “widespread popular concern that it signals that something is wrong with … society and its criminal justice process, which requires some form of corrective response.”3 News reporting of crime and deviance can agitate such fears or calm them; reporters can spread discontent and scapegoating or help to shape reconciliation by the way they frame their stories. Yet research shows that, more often than not, reporters select their frames based on longstanding habits rather than on concerns for social consequence.4 James Carey, in Communication as Culture, calls these often unexamined and perhaps unconscious news reporting practices “rituals” because they are repeated with almost religious dedication across the Western world. But, while they may be both powerful and unacknowledged, the journalistic rituals employed in covering our introductory crime examples also varied widely, reflecting deep cultural and ethical differences.

The Netherlands Most reporters sought to protect the family of the would-be assassin. No one in the Netherlands learned Karst Tates’s full name or other identifying information – at least not if they relied on information provided by the Dutch Press Agency ANP (Algemeen Nederland Persbureau).

Sweden Although most Swedish news organizations show similar concerns for privacy by withholding the identities of criminal defendants, Mijailovic

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was an exception. The country was still haunted by the failed investigation of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’s murder in 1986. Journalists believed that the public interest in the Lindh murder was high enough to overcome their usual practice of protecting those accused in crimes from public scrutiny.

Canada Before Terri-Lynne McClintic was charged, some members of the press thought Tori’s mother was behaving suspiciously and said so in their copy. At her trial in 2010, McClintic contended that her boyfriend, Michael Rafferty, had raped and murdered the girl. Although the story had riveted public attention for more than a year, the court imposed a publication ban on McClintic’s trial in order to protect Rafferty’s right to a fair hearing. Two years later, at Rafferty’s trial, McClintic changed her testimony and said that she herself killed Tori. As suspicions shifted, the press sought to reveal all it could about each suspected villain as well as gruesome details of this child killing. Both McClintic and Rafferty were ultimately convicted of kidnapping and first-degree murder and were sentenced to life in prison, but Canadian journalists still suggest that they should have been able to tell more and sooner. Our research project seeks to understand the cultural attitudes that lie behind these significantly different reporting practices. In the Nether­ lands and Sweden, names are clearly printed on court documents and accused people are named in court, but they are not routinely identified by mainstream media outlets. In contrast, in Canada, not only is naming names part of the routine, but journalists suggest that it’s not enough: they say they feel hampered by publication bans that limit when and how much information they can share with their public. Our findings, largely based on interviews conducted in these three countries, revealed clues about how crime coverage fits into the traditions, laws, ethical codes, and accountability practices in these locales and their respective news organizations. This comparative study seeks to push beyond the taken-for-granted nature of these practices in order to understand better their ethical and political causes and implications. The Study and Resulting Thesis We conducted this study in three parts: (1) a sample reading of the reporting of case study “signal crimes” by news organizations in these

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countries; (2) a consultation of the prevailing ethics codes and accountability practices of national professional organizations, press councils, and journalists’ unions in order to understand the accountability practices in each country; (3) open and in-depth interviews with nearly sixty journalists and scholars in Canada, the Netherlands, and Sweden about press practices and the cultural values they reflect.5 We codified the interviews to identify how journalists prioritized the reasons for their coverage practices, noting both which concerns were mentioned first and which were given the most emphasis. In each of the three countries, we spoke to journalists who had experience in covering signal crimes (usually the case-study crime for that country); editors who make decisions about their publications’ standards; ombudspeople who deal with complaints; academics who study the media and/or criminology; and leaders in each nation’s press council, journalists’ unions, and professional organizations. We began each interview with a question about the signal crime we had selected as our case study. In the Netherlands, we asked each subject to describe how decisions were made about coverage of the 2009 Queensday incident. In Sweden, the first question asked about the coverage of the 2003 assassination of Anna Lindh; in Canada, we asked about the disappearance of Tori Stafford. We chose these cases because they had public significance and raised questions about journalistic practice and ethics policies. We employed a similar methodology to that outlined in chapter 1, “The Traditional ‘Pickup’ or ‘Death Knock’ Story: Its Role, Its Value(s), and the Impact of Social Media.” After we asked about interviewees’ impressions of covering the case under consideration, our follow-up questions were based on these initial answers as we requested further elaboration, explanation, or examples. We attempted to probe news professionals’ own sense of what coverage of serious crimes “means” in the context of their ethical codes and regulatory bodies. Thus, the body of the interview was held within the frame that the interview subject provided and not one imposed by the researchers. Interview subjects told their own stories with their own perceptions. By using this open approach to interviewing, we are applying grounded theory as first articulated by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss in 1967, which is characterized by the practice of allowing a thesis to arise from the research, rather than precede it. We also adhered to the ideas of Walter Fisher in respecting the narrative framing of the interview subjects, who own the stories of why they act as they do.6 In The Long Interview, Grant McCracken called this style of interviewing “one of the most powerful methods” in qualitative research because it allows

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researchers to “step into the mind of another person, to see and experience the world as they do themselves.”7 The coding of each narrative identified the ethical concerns each subject raised and with what emphasis. We then examined what they collectively revealed about core journalistic values beneath the distinct ethical practices. We used a semiotic approach to connect patterns emerging from the interviews with cultural values and myths. From the three branches of this research, we have built a thesis. The common Canadian journalistic frame sets persons accused or convicted of a signal crime outside society’s legal and moral boundaries, as people expelled from community, whereas, in the Dutch and Swedish journal­istic frame, the defendant is defined as a part of that community, regardless of legal outcome. To Canadian journalists, all crimes and criminals – their names, personal details, background, and so on – are part of the public’s right to know. The journalist’s main duty is to ensure that right. Justice, they said, must not only be done but seen to be done through the eyes of a watchdog press. Dutch and Swedes, on the other hand, balanced the duty to inform the public with their belief that most accused criminals and their families deserve privacy, even though court processes are open to the public, like those in Canada. Even after conviction, most news outlets in Holland and Sweden continue to hold back from identifying the convicted person by name in order to allow for his or her rehabilitation without an irrevocably damaged reputation. We situated our findings in the context of the political and media systems of these three democracies. Although the sample countries share similar values and traditions, they differ in governing styles. All guarantee basic human rights, recognize a separation of powers in government, allow for free expression, and respect freedom of religion and a general and equal right to vote. All attempt to balance freedom of the press against the criminal defendant’s right to a fair and open trial. All rely on an informed citizenry. But the tone, kind, and quality of information that citizens receive in order to be self-governing is heavily influenced by the style and structure of the news media that brings it to them. The news media, in turn, are influenced by ownership, legal restrictions, their relationship with government, political parties, and other institutions, and the ethical practices and accountabilities to which they abide. Existing literature documents all but the last of these influences. Our study compares crime-coverage practices, the institutions that enforce them, and the differing values that underlie them in democracies similar enough to invite comparison. We make this comparison at a time when

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globalization of media through the Internet and cross-national commercial ownership threatens to dissolve these (inter)national distinctions before their value and importance have been fully explored. We selected our sample countries based on the models that Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini identified in Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. The authors, in an examination of western Europe and North America, distinguished these models by their historic relationship with government, political parties, and major institutions, such as churches.8 We follow their seminal work by exploring journalistic practices within two of the three models Hallin and Mancini identify. Canada, along with the United States, Britain, and Ireland, belongs within Hallin and Mancini’s North Atlantic liberal model: the press traditionally has been politically independent and privately owned. As early champions of press freedom, Britain forms the foundation for this model in which the mass-circulation press is dominated by market mechanisms. The role of the state is limited, and journalists have a strong sense of professionalism and autonomy, which are more likely to be pressured by commercial than political interests. Sweden and the Netherlands are classified within Hallin and Man­ cini’s north/central European democratic-corporatist model, which also comprises all of Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium. Here, news organizations historically have been affiliated with churches and political and civic-interest groups. Commercial and politicized media co-exist. Self-regulation is institutionalized and provides autonomy for journalists. State involvement is at a structural level, and it includes press subsidies. Except for Germany, these countries have small populations. Their media systems share a strong tendency to express partisan and other social divisions, a high level of journalistic professionalism, including consensus on standards of conduct, and a welfare state that co-exists with limitations on state power. The media, for example, may enjoy state subsidies while state intrusions upon their conduct are tightly controlled.9 We adopted Hallin and Mancini’s comparative approach in anticipating that practice follows the historic structures they identify, but we did so without assuming what those patterns would reveal. We used crime stories as our key to practice because we accept Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranek, and Janet Chan’s argument that deviance and control define many news stories and are woven in to journalists’ methodologies.10 We also believe the framing of these stories could be vital in

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determining how well this part of the world copes with the increasing migration of peoples and globalization of news media. Situating the Findings Informing the public was the primary ethical motivation for journalists in all three countries. After foregrounding this obligation in their interviews, each then talked about modifications of it. In part, what emerged as one of the greatest differences is how journalists and other news professionals and academics interpret the notion of “informing the public” and its correlative phrase “the public’s right to know,” which we will address in our Discussion and Conclusion sections. Our primary investigation is an ethical rather than a legal one, but we allowed the cases we chose to help frame the matters discussed. In Canada, it became apparent that the legalities of coverage were intimately connected to how journalists reported on the Stafford disappearance and the subsequent trials. Because the two suspects accused of Tori’s murder were tried separately, the judge enacted a publication ban on the first trial in order, from the justice system’s perspective, to protect the right of the second suspect to a fair trial. As we will show below, Canadian journalists perceived publication bans as roadblocks that hamper their primary duty to inform. While the courts seek to protect the potential jury pool from publicity that might taint its ability to hear the case impartially, journalists chomp against the bit of these restrictions and envy their counterparts nearby in the United States who are relatively unencumbered in their coverage. Also, the Canadian press is routinely permitted to attend but not report on many preliminary proceedings – such as bail hearings, hearings to determine if the case will be held over for trial, and evidentiary challenges – in which the Crown is likely to paint a particularly negative picture of the defendant. In open court when the jury is sitting, unless another publication ban is imposed, much of this information gathered previously can be reported. In Sweden and the Netherlands, journalists face few outright legal restrictions on their coverage; their decision not to name names is essentially voluntary. Neither country has jury trials; judges alone decide criminal cases. As in Canada, judges are appointed (not elected as they are in much of the United States). In all three countries, court hearings and records are open to the public and, by implication, to the press.

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Both Sweden and the Netherlands place high value on openness and transparency, yet journalists we talked with subscribed to self-imposed modifications on their mission to inform. Their primary decision in framing their coverage of a signal crime was how best to inform the public while interpreting and implementing their national Press Council and Journalist Union codes of ethics to which their news organizations “voluntarily” subscribe.11 The most frequently mentioned was whether the suspect’s name should be withheld from publication or broadcast. While some journalists worried that their failure to protect defendants voluntarily could lead to the passage of restrictive legislation, most still believe that honouring the accused’s privacy and that of their families was an important thing to do. Canada does not have a national press council, although a number of newspeople have suggested it may be time to consider one.12 But for nearly forty years, Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia have had provincial press councils; all are voluntary organizations, and their primary function is to adjudicate public complaints about press coverage and practices. None can enforce their findings, but members’ papers are obligated to print the outcome of their investigations in their own papers in a place of similar prominence to that given to the original news story. While many large organizations have their own in-house guidelines,13 individuals may also choose to belong to the Canadian Association of Journalists. It has a comprehensive ethics policy, titled “Ethics Guidelines” and available at http://www .caj.ca/?p=1776, as well as a separate listing titled “Principles for Ethical Journalism” available at http://www.caj.ca/?p=1785.14 Findings in Canada The story of eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford’s kidnapping and murder unfolded in a series of events that played a part in how Cana­ dian journalists talked about their coverage decisions: • 8 April 2009: The abduction of Tori Stafford from her school in Woodstock, Ontario, by a mysterious woman in a white jacket was caught on surveillance tape. While reports of missing teens and even pre-teens routinely turn out to be runaways, a missing eightyear-old immediately pricked reporters’ sensitive ears, and many converged on Woodstock within a day.

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• April and May 2009: A massive search for Tori was conducted while her family, especially her mother, held a series of sometimes peculiar press conferences on her front lawn. • 19 May 2009: Terri-Lynne McClintic, eighteen, was charged with kidnapping and accessory to murder; shortly afterward, her then boyfriend, Michael Rafferty, was charged with kidnapping and firstdegree murder. • July 2009: With McClintic’s help and through some intuition and luck on the part of a police officer, Tori’s body was discovered in a secluded rural area near Guelph, Ontario. • April 2010: McClintic appeared in a Woodstock court, pled guilty, was convicted, and began serving her life sentence; in an agreed-on statement of facts read by the Crown, reporters heard the details of her collaboration with Rafferty in the kidnapping, rape, and murder of the child; but under a wide-sweeping court-ordered publication ban, they could tell no one. • March-May 2012: Rafferty was tried, and full details of the crime were made known. While we encountered differences in the ways in which Canadian journalists framed their coverage of the Tori Stafford murder, most expressed a remarkably similar set of values and priorities when we interviewed them. We list them here, reflecting both what most reporters mentioned first and what they emphasized most strongly. 1. The Watchdog Role and the Law Canadian journalists with whom we talked stressed their dedication not only to inform the public but also to act as a watchdog for it. They were, therefore, frustrated with the publication bans that they saw as restricting them from fulfilling this primary duty in covering the Tori Stafford murder, as well as crime in general. They framed this story as a pitched battle of good versus evil. Victim Tori Stafford – a pretty, blond, good-natured eight-year-old – stood on the side of “good” and innocence. Many reporters took up the story while she was still missing but feared the worst from the start. They searched then for the story’s villain. Initially, some pointed the finger at Tori’s drug-addicted mother, as Christie Blatchford outlines in chapter 3. But when the true killers were found, Canadian law stepped in between the accused and the journalists, who were eager to report their story. The court sought to

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protect the pool of potential jurors by shrouding the crime’s details and blocking publication. Journalists, who had spent months detailing the story of the missing girl and attended the trial of Terri-Lynn McClintic, were prevented from giving any details about it. They were gagged for many more months before they could tell the public just what had happened to little Tori. In every instance of crime reporting, Canadian journalists note that they are determined to ensure that police and prosecutors are doing their jobs in the service of justice. As Linden MacIntyre and Bert Bruser point out in chapters 8 and 11, this is often a challenge, but it’s one that journalists must take up. The people need to know how and how well the police and court system work, said the National Post’s Christie Blatchford, whose columns about the Rafferty case then appeared in the Globe and Mail. “We are the eyes and the ears of the public,”15 she said. In their attempt to serve that function, many reporters set their shoulders against the liberal laws – imposed by both common law and Criminal Code dicta – intended to protect the defendants’ right to a fair trial. Over the last thirty years, the courts have loosened their enforcement of contempt laws and, to some extent, the use of publication bans, reported Bert Bruser, well-known media-law expert and in-house counsel at the Toronto Star.16 But he has found the progress slow, erratic, and generally unsatisfactory. Before 1982, common law held that news organizations should not publish anything likely to prejudice a jury or jeopardize the accused’s right to fair trial. This was generally interpreted to mean that, once a person was charged, the news media did not publish whether the accused had a previous record, had confessed to police, or even had a bad temper. “So in old days,” said Bruser, “we would try to get everything in the paper before the charge. Once he was charged, that was it until the trial.”17 Even once the trial was under way, the press was still restricted from reporting in a prejudicial way, and there were no opinion columns about court cases. The balance, then, fell on the side of protecting the accused rather than freedom of expression or freedom of the press. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, enacted in 1982, enshrined freedom of expression and established the public’s right to know as a constitutional value, Bruser said. But because of the Charter’s vague wording, little changed immediately. The first milestone came in a 1994 Supreme Court of Canada decision – Dagenais v. CBC – a case that established the relationship between publication bans and the right to freedom of the press under section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

80  Covering Canadian Crime

The decision held that judges do have discretionary power to impose publication bans that limit reporting some or all of the information in a criminal trial, but they must balance this against competing rights like freedom of expression. In essence, this case established that the right to a fair trial does not automatically take precedence over the right to a free press. In the mid-1990s, with the high-profile murder trial of Paul Bernardo, those covering trials expanded from news reporters to include columnists who tested the limits by writing colourful accounts of the goings-on. Because of the established facts of the Bernardo case and the existence of incriminating videos depicting him having sex with young girls, he had no reputation to protect. Reporters and columnists alike published prejudicial comments, and no contempt citations ensued. “Since then, my view is that the law of contempt – the old common law as it applies to stories written at the time of arrest or right after – does not fly anymore,” Bruser said, and neither defence attorneys nor the Crown is asking to revisit it.18 When Terri-Lynne McClintic and then Michael Rafferty were arrested in late May 2009 for the abduction and murder of Tori Stafford, police revealed little about how Tori died. Consequently, reporters were eager to get those details when McClintic finally came to court. To ensure a good seat, Allison Jones, reporter for the Canadian Press (CP), arrived at the small courthouse in Woodstock at 7 a.m. in April 2010 for the 10  a.m. hearing. As the Crown attorney read McClintic’s lengthy statement of agreed-upon facts, Jones struggled to keep pace. “I am not ashamed to say that my notepad is tear-stained,” Jones said.19 Reporters were aghast as, for almost two hours, McClintic spelled out how she and Rafferty had raped the child, then wrapped her in garbage bags and bludgeoned her with a claw hammer. At last, the public would know the horrible story of what had happened to the missing girl. “Your first instinct is to rush out and report everything,” Jones said. But instead, everyone was asked to stay in court while defence attorney for Michael Rafferty, Dirk Derstine, requested and was granted a publication ban on all the details of McClintic’s testimony – including her plea. Reporters were banned from telling not only what was said but also the fact that a proceeding had even been held. In a handwritten note photocopied by a clerk and handed out to journalists, the judge told them they could only say that McClintic was scheduled to appear – not even whether she actually did. “That was the step that raised the most hackles,” Jones recalled, because most reporters believed this

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discretionary publication ban went beyond the stated reason: protection of Michael Rafferty’s right to a fair trial.20 While no major publication defied this ban and all appealed the decision in court,21 the Toronto Star perhaps protested in the most public fashion, carrying three front-page articles decrying the judge’s decision: a staff editorial, a headline that read “gagged,” and a piece by columnist Rosie DiManno with sections blacked out. “Our worry was that rumour and innuendo would be given leeway on the web,” said Kathy English, the Star’s public editor.22 “Open courts and freedom of expression are both Canada’s values and the media’s values,” she said, reflecting the view, widely held among the North American press and articulated by American Justice Louis Brandeis, that sunlight is the best disinfectant for government institutions. But reporters would have to wait almost two years before the whole story could come out – when McClintic testified at Rafferty’s trial in March 2012. “As a reporter, obviously I want to give people information when it happens. I don’t want to say the government decided to bring in a new tax last month, and I’m just telling you about it now,” Jones said. 2. Justice Must Be Seen to Be Done Repeatedly, Canadian reporters paraphrased the British saying: “Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.”23 “We are there [in court] to show people what’s happening,” CP’s Allison Jones said. “Then they can make informed decisions about what they think about crime and punishment. When we keep something so huge [as McClintic’s guilty plea] from them, we are doing a disservice.” The “disservice” grew more complicated. McClintic had blamed Rafferty in her own confession, but, when she testified at Rafferty’s trial, she then changed her testimony to say that she was the one who had wielded the fatal hammer blows. Reporters had to be careful not to reveal anything said at McClintic’s own trial unless it was also stated in open court at Rafferty’s trial because her proceedings were still covered by a publication ban that would cease only after a verdict was delivered on Rafferty. Randy Richmond, reporter for the London Free Press, was one of the reporters who stayed with the story from beginning to end. He was surprised to see how emotionally affected many seasoned reporters became at the trial, especially those who had become close to Tori’s family.24 Some became invested in seeing Rafferty brought to justice. It was

82  Covering Canadian Crime

hard not to. At the trial, Richmond said, “there were days when I was balancing protecting the memory of Tori and the family, and wanting people to know every nasty thing that was done so they’d know the seriousness of what she’d been through that summer.”25 Many reporters told us that the testimony caused them psychological suffering. “There were things said in that trial that no one wrote about,” Richmond said. “My job is to decide what is important and what’s salacious, what’s just for titillation and what was for hard-hitting impact.” CBC Radio’s Colin Butler saw two considerations in his obligation to inform the public. “Going in, you don’t know if Rafferty is guilty, and you have the little girl’s story to tell. You have to do her justice and [tell] how she was wronged ... like Rafferty’s yawning at pictures of the little girl’s skull [as they were introduced into evidence]. That will stay with me for the rest of my life.”26 But this was a detail that an editor pulled from his radio copy. Kirk Makin, justice reporter for the Globe and Mail, agreed that the press must bear public witness in the court.27 But he also believes that some – especially the colourful columnists – indulge their licence to determine who wears the white or the black hats and pay too little respect to the presumption of innocence. The details chosen give shape to the good-versus-evil frame. Some reporters, who asked not to be named in this regard, said that they heard some of their colleagues insulting Michael Rafferty while he stood inside the defendant’s dock waiting for court to begin each day. In the early days of the case when Tori Stafford was still a missing child, columnist Christie Blatchford, working then for the Globe and Mail, was tough on Tori’s mother, Tara McDonald, because “she presented as a suspicious whack job.”28 As Blatchford saw it, McDonald’s demeanour was inconsistent with a grieving, frightened mother. She held daily press conferences on her front lawn. One day she was dressed for a barbeque, the next for a nightclub, and on another she was crying. Her stories about who was to pick Tori up after school the day she disappeared and other seemingly relevant details changed from day to day. She was giving away and selling her missing daughter’s belongings. McDonald seemed to be hiding something, according to Blatchford. And she was, as it turned out – her own and her boyfriend’s Oxycontin addiction. When the true nature of the secret came out, Blatchford apologized in print. McDonald was not the villain the press was looking for. “I think in court coverage, we are playing out a pageant between good and evil and reassuring people that there is order in the system,”

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the Globe’s justice reporter Kirk Makin argued. In doing so, the larger story of crime, as a symptom of pernicious social maladies, is left untold by a press too narrowly focused on the individual drama. But looking at the bigger picture opens “a big door” on a fundamental social debate, Makin said. 3. Society’s Issues CBC Radio reporter Colin Butler sees nothing wrong with the goodversus-evil frame. Journalists tell stories for the same reason human beings have told them for thousands of years, he said, and stories have heroes and villains. “The heroes in the Tori Stafford case were the police officers. They pursued justice relentlessly.” Specifically, he meant their massive search for the missing girl and the dogged determination of Detective-Sergeant Jim Smyth of the Ontario Provincial Police to find her body. Smyth, who had convinced McClintic to tell all, and in another notorious case had led serial killer Colonel Russell Williams to crack in interrogation, was unsuccessful with Rafferty. But the officer tracked down the tower in Mount Forrest that Rafferty’s phone bounced off the day of the murder. Smyth drove around the area “to get the lay of the land for an air search when he spotted a place described to him by Terri-Lynn McClintic,” Butler reported. Smyth, through persistence and intuition, had stumbled upon Tori Stafford’s hidden grave. Rafferty and Smyth “represent opposite ends of the spectrum when we talk about good and evil,” said Butler. “I think people need heroes as much as they need villains, and I think both heroes and villains need to be named. We need heroes to personify and celebrate humanity’s inherent goodness, just as we need villains to personify and feel ashamed of humanity’s inherent evil … Shaming is part of punishment, plus it reminds us all that evil could be lurking anywhere.” Butler said he strove to keep in mind that the defendant was innocent until proven guilty and to refrain from making the coverage too personal, but it became almost impossible. At his lawyer’s bidding, Rafferty never testified at his own trial. When he finally rose to speak at his sentencing, “his voice cut into my soul,” Butler said. Rafferty was a buff body builder, but he had a soft, effeminate, almost child-like voice. “It was the voice of evil,” Butler said. After the sentencing, he sat in his car and cried. The Globe and Mail’s Timothy Appleby, a seasoned court reporter, thought he had handled the case routinely until he was chopping wood in his backyard shortly after the trial and the falling of

84  Covering Canadian Crime

his own axe recalled the descriptions of the claw hammer’s blows to Tori’s body in the garbage bags. Appleby had to stop and struggle for composure. The frame of the trial, with its advocacy structure, dominates the day-to-day reporting in part because legal restrictions force reporters into that frame. After the Rafferty trial, CP’s Allison Jones did a long piece about McClintic’s and Rafferty’s backgrounds and how they had combined. “There really is no explanation to what happened, but I tried to lay it all out: Here is McClintic’s well-documented history with violence and anger and Rafferty’s of sleeping around and downloading child porn.”29 Some of this material – particularly the details about Rafferty downloading child porn, including one movie that was remarkably close to what actually happened to Tori Stafford – was known to journalists, but again, because it was presented in a voir dire and excluded for the jury, the reporters could not share it with the public until after the guilty verdict was passed. Few reporters, for a variety of reasons, push open the “big door” to take a look at what crime reveals about the social malaise. Columnist Christie Blatchford has tried. “McClintic’s life was a mess,” Blatchford said. “I wrote about it. I did a story about her background after she was charged. Terri was sexually abused by the time she was fifteen, and she would have learned how to dissociate and so on. A lot of her testimony rang true because of her background.” Blatchford has written about child abuse before. “I have covered countless cases of child homicide or death … solely because of the institutionalized failures that went beforehand,” she said. When a pair of crack addicts murdered their child, Blatchford pointed at the failure of Catholic Children’s Aid Society to intervene before it was too late. “I think we [journalists] do connect the dots,” Blatchford said. “But it doesn’t matter because the agencies don’t hear, and no oversight body makes them learn.” In Canada, this distrust of institutions – courts, police, government – informs journalists’ attitudes about information and access to it. CBC Ombudsman Kirk LaPointe finds it worrisome that few citizens realize what they are being denied, and he senses apathy about this situation.30 He joked that he dreams about the day he sees Canadians protesting in the streets and waving placards that read, “Release the Documents.” But his serious attitude, espoused by many Canadian journalists, is that institutional processes ought to be clear and transparent so that the public can know about, understand, and even monitor them. This

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conviction lies at the heart of how news professionals discuss and arrange their priorities in telling the stories about courts, crime, and criminals. Still, other advanced capitalist democracies don’t necessarily execute the details in the same manner even though their journalists also believe in a freely accessible open system of justice. Sweden and the Netherlands Similar to our experience in speaking with Canadian journalists, in Sweden and Holland, each in-depth interview took on its own character, and yet the subjects’ descriptions of how they framed crime stories – and particularly their reasons for abiding by the no-names policy – were remarkably consistent from one person to the next and between the two European nations. In addition, the importance given to each reason was highly comparable although harder to quantify. What follows is – roughly – the hierarchy we heard in the interviews, beginning with the most important. Most believed that their obligation to inform the public was bound by their own sense of decency, of what makes a “civilized society” as one member of the Dutch press council put it, and a respect for individual’s privacy. In practice, these journalistic obligations led them to protect those accused and convicted of crime primarily to shield their families, to respect the presumption of innocence, and to facilitate the convicted criminal’s ability to reintegrate into society. 1. Privacy and Protection of Innocent Family Members Most discussions at the Dutch Journalists’ Union about whether to publish the names of accused or convicted criminals centre on “the privacy of the family, of the people who have not chosen to be part of the problem,” Thomas Brunig, general secretary, said.31 Many – but not all – Dutch news media withheld the Tates family name of the wouldbe Queensday assassin. (See Effting et al.’s article and “Karst T.,” for example.32) ANP honoured a request by the Tates family to continue to withhold it even when family members granted the news service exclusive interviews after his funeral. “[The Tates family] needed some peace and quiet and didn’t want to be haunted by journalists all the time,” said Fleur Halkema, the ANP crime reporter who covered the story.33 “Normally when suspects die, we do use their names, but in this case, it was a favour to the parents … It was quite an exception.”

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However, ANP news editor Liesbeth Buitink explained, Karst Tates’s full name was sent to media clients in a file separate from the story so that they could keep a full historic record and each organization could make its own decisions about what to publish.34 In Sweden, the concerns about protecting family hold similar weight. Morgan Oloffson, head of news, Swedish Public Television, said, “We have to weigh that pain we inflict to the person and their family against the benefits society can render from naming that person. That is a task that is difficult. The job does not come with a manual, and you have to answer it every time it happens … It is not about how keen people are to know but how important is it for people to know, how important to the audience compared to how much we affect the family … and [it’s] especially hard if the suspect has school-age children because we have to take into account the surrounding people, kids mobbed in schools and so forth.”35 In Sweden and the Netherlands, the threat of restrictive legislation loomed in the background. Ethics policies for withholding the names of suspected and convicted criminals were strictly observed in the 1960s when the press associations were negotiating with the Swedish Riksdag (Parliament) about what should be made into law and what left to ethics, said Lennart Weibull, senior researcher at the SOM Institute and professor in the Department of Journalism, Media, and Communication at Gothenburg University.36 But the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 changed the conversation. Journalists came to believe that “you might be able to publish if it were a public person and public event, but not a private person and a private event,” Weibull said, drawing a version of the table below. Although social forces may again be pushing on this policy, Weibull said, sentiment among journalists remains that criminal events in quadrant one, a private person committing a private crime, such as domestic violence, should not be published, but those in quadrant four, a public person committing a public crime, such as a public official engaged in fraud with public monies, should be named. More difficult questions arise in situations that fit into quadrants two and three. The press is more likely to publish the name of a private person involved in a public event, such as an assassination of a public official, than the name of a public person involved in a private event, such as one involved in a domestic dispute, Weibull explained. Most Swedish journalists we spoke with noted that the decisions made in the coverage of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh’s shooting were

Not Naming Names? 87 1 Private person Private event

3 Public person Private event

2 Private person Public event

4 Public person Public event

affected by the earlier 1986 Palme assassination when, despite the arrest of several suspects, no one was ever convicted. When Lindh was stabbed in 2003, “we had pictures from ANK – a big store in the city centre. There are cameras everywhere. This guy was filmed … And because of Olof Palme, people pointed him out quick and printed the name,” said Mats J. Larsson, former news editor and then political reporter at Dagens Nyheter.37 In this exceptional case, great public interest overrode privacy concerns. “The nation was in shock and it was the second time in ten years, and this is Sweden and historically we have a low rate of criminal cases,” explained Larsson. In addition, Svenska Dagbladet Managing Editor Martin Jonsson said, cases like the assassination of Lindh move quickly from being “part of a news story to being part of a history book … and it is of importance to tell his [the perpetrator’s] whole story. And that’s easier if you have a name and a picture.”38 Sentiments were similar in the Netherlands. “My view is that by killing a politician you intervene in the public debate. Then your name should be in full. If you kill your wife, that is a private act,” said Arendo Joustra, editor-in-chief of Elsevier (an upscale weekly magazine) and former chair of the Dutch Society of Editors-in-Chief.39 2. Innocent until Proven Guilty and Rehabilitation The Dutch and Swedes mentioned prominently both the possibility of innocence and a commitment to rehabilitation of criminals. “We protect the identity of people certainly until they are found guilty,” said Liesbeth Buitink of the Netherlands ANP. Martin Jonsson, managing editor for the Svenska Dagbladet, also raised this concern, echoed by virtually all of our interview subjects. “If you publish the name and the photo and he is found innocent, the damage may have been greater. The person’s name may be remembered, and people think where there is smoke there is fire.” But despite Jonsson’s concern, he argued that the

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question is primarily one of “journalistic relevance, and that can come at any time in the story, but it has to have public interest and relevance. Not just curiosity.” “A suspect should not be convicted in the media before he or she goes to court. We have this value,” Daphne Koene of the Dutch Press Council said, “that the court decides the punishment, and there shouldn’t be extra punishment by publication.”40 Bernadette Kester, assistant professor at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, agreed: “We would say it is totally unfair – to be condemned by media.”41 The North American system where media routinely publish names, addresses, ages, and so on of those charged with crimes means that “you let the media accuse and punish the alleged perpetrator … That is a contradiction. That is not justice,” said Kester, who went to school in the United States. Apparently, even the Dutch courts agree. Thomas Brunig told the story of Jan-Dirk Paarlberg, who was so confident he would be vindicated when he was being investigated for money laundering, tax evasion, and falsifying documents that he told news organizations to use his name and photograph. Despite his confidence, he was convicted, but the judge shaved a year off his sentence, saying that the negative publicity in the mainstream press about Paarlberg was punishment and had amounted to the equivalent of time served. But the concern goes beyond the unfairness of publicity to a faith in redemption. “When a criminal has done time, he or she has the right to be reintegrated into society” without having to overcome the hurdle of a damaged reputation, Koene said. Brunig put it pithily: “In America, you have the right to make a million dollars. In Holland, you have the right to start again.” “A journalist is always a filter,” ANP reporter Halkema said. Buitink agreed: “You have a responsibility for what you write and the effect it will have.” Helena Gieretta, editor of Journalisten, published by Sweden’s Jour­ nalists’ Union, highlighted many of the same concerns for the Swedes. “We don’t want it to be harder. We see criminals as victims as well.”42 3. Trust in the State and the Role of Journalism The Dutch generally trust the courts and other social institutions, Kester said. “I don’t think there is a real example where I would say the Dutch were really misled by the government,” she added. Reporters did not describe themselves as watchdogs. Lennart Weibull noted: “Swedes are

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extremely trusting in the state – 60 per cent say that they believe in the state as ‘true.’ So in Sweden, the state is a friend, and in the U.S. [and Canada], it is an enemy.” While the role of journalism in a democratic society was not a direct focus of the interviews, the subject came up frequently. “[North America] is more rights-based for individuals, rather than focused on the good of the whole, and that’s a difference in our societies,” Kees Streefkerk, member of the Netherlands Press Council, said.43 Lennart Weibull also stressed the importance of the group in Sweden, as opposed to the individual. “Our society has been formed by associations, groups, and typical of all Nordic countries, strong associations and political parties … So collective ideas have been prominent in Swedish society and not individual.” But to Netherlands Press Council member Froukje Sanling, the question about the role of the press is both more fundamental and more normative: “What is the role of the press in a decent society?”44 The role of the press is to help balance between the openness of society and the abuse of that openness, as Ester Pollack, a journalism professor at Stockholm University, put it. “We have a very wide-ranging freedom of speech … The price you have to pay is to be careful … And this is why there has been so much co-operation with the journalism organizations because they want things to stay open.”45 And, she added, journalists prefer to restrict their coverage voluntarily so as to avoid legislative action that would mandate limits on their freedom. Discussion Regardless of locale, towards the end of our interviews, we spoke to journalists and academics about practices in other countries that contrasted with their own. With the exception of those who had done foreign correspondence, few, if any, knew about them. Their responses indicate that comparison of one country’s practices with those of another is unlikely to change minds, but it can be a valuable part of the ethics conversation on both sides of the Atlantic. It can persuade reporters and editors to look more thoughtfully at what they do and lift journalistic practice out of semi-conscious, rote custom. Such reflection might be particularly informative to North Americans. Hallin and Mancini found that journalism scholars working within the North Atlantic liberal model often express a bias towards this model, judging “the world press systems in terms of their distance from the

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liberal ideal of a neutral ‘watchdog’ press free from state interference.”46 An assumption about the superiority of the liberal model – with its “objective” voice and political diversity within each publication – can blind American (and Canadian) journalists to any understanding that their practices sometimes stray into “celebrating consensus values.”47 Most Dutch and Swedish journalists we spoke to expressed shock at the practices of their North American counterparts. “Why would you do that to someone?” Fleur Halkema of the Dutch ANP news service gasped when told that North American reporters routinely identify alleged criminals as soon as charges are filed. “What if they had children?” she asked. Colleagues in the Netherlands and Sweden echoed her response and added to it. Thomas Meens, ombudsman for De ­Volkskrant in Amsterdam, and many others worried that Dutch practices of privacy protection might become a quaint relic of the pre-Internet age.48 Arendo Joustra, editor of Elsevier magazine, admired the American system and believed that readers should vote for the practices they endorse by choosing which newspaper they buy. Peter Berger of Leiden University minimized the importance of withholding names, saying that news reporting in the Netherlands still characterized the criminal as a folk devil regardless of personal identification.49 Nonetheless, no one with whom we spoke in Sweden or the Netherlands said that concern for perpetrators’ perspectives or the practice of withholding their identities in criminal cases were without merit or that they should be abandoned. On the other side of the comparison, some Canadians saw merit in protecting those accused of crime from publicity, but they stopped short of endorsing such protection after conviction. Many believed that identification at all levels was critical to an open justice system. In the Canadian system, crime is against the state, Dave Seglins of the CBC pointed out.50 By state, “I don’t mean the prosecution. I mean we the people,” he said, underscoring why he felt publication bans violated that ostensibly republican principle. “We need to know. We don’t want police operating in secret,” said Kathy English of the Toronto Star. But she thinks that the press can cause unnecessary harm in this pursuit. She herself came to regret a time when, as a reporter, she repeatedly referred to Susan Nelles, a nurse who was charged with killing newborns, as “the accused baby killer.” Nelles was ultimately exonerated. “To this day, I feel guilt that I wrote that,” said English. “We too easily hold up the public interest as an excuse to be right over the top in certain cases,” she said. Innocent people are

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harmed unnecessarily, she said, when criminal charges appear on page one but exonerations are buried on page twenty. When Kirk Makin began reporting in the 1970s, the Globe and other news media did withhold the name of an arrested person unless the papers were committed to following the case through to its outcome. “But now no one would say there is an effort to do that,” he said. No Canadian journalists agreed with their European counterparts that a criminal’s family or his ability to be rehabilitated should be protected from harmful publicity. Most saw the family as collateral damage. “I don’t want my name and family dragged into something publicly because my relative is guilty, but that’s the way it goes in an open society,” said Seglins of the CBC. No one even took up the subject of rehabilitation. Most Canadians said that news media oversimplified crime reporting but they disagreed about the causes and effects of the good-versusevil frame. Competition sometimes pushes reporters to go too far, a number of reporters admitted, and the Internet has turned up the heat. To Christie Blatchford, for example, technology and its use by so many untrained citizen journalists was a persuasive reason to consider only reporting details about crimes and not reporting names. “It’s what we do when covering young offenders anyhow,” she said. Colin Butler thinks that the legal bans on the press can be a reasonable antidote. “If the government isn’t holding the press in check, we can get out of control,” Butler said, specifically mentioning the autopsy photos of Tori Stafford, which the court did not release. “People don’t need to see that. I think sometimes it takes the courts to say you can’t do this.” Some reporters argued that thoughtful and complete coverage of crime was available to the discerning audience but that competitive trends towards short-form journalism were steering reporters towards punchy stories about villains and victims. While his CBC colleagues focus on what is breeding crime in the community, Seglins said, legal restrictions that force coverage into the court proceeding also narrow the focus, for stories are tied closely to what is being said in the court and there is neither space nor opportunity to go bigger. Covering a gang shooting, for example, without being able to put it into a pattern of cocaine dealing renders it meaningless, he said. Linden MacIntyre’s scepticism leaned towards cynicism: “People don’t want to sit at home watching earnest TV anymore,” he argued.51 “It’s unclear to me if that is because there isn’t very much of it to watch, or because people have greater attention for amusement … The question

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is, to what extent is this a response to the dumbing down and trivializing in what I call the ‘age of sentiment.’ ‘That’s OK because that’s what I feel.’ ‘When I look at TV, don’t make me feel bad unless you show me something that makes me feel removed so I am titillated and can say: “Thank God I’m not like that.”’” As we have argued elsewhere, titillation and what the public considers comprises a “good story” may not be considerations that move communities towards responsible, ethical discussions about crime – its causes, impacts, implications, and forms of redress. Conclusion Our research shows that the differences in journalistic attitudes in Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands do correlate with Hallin and Mancini’s first two models. Indeed, journalistic practices both illuminate and expand understanding of the interaction between media and the political and economic systems in which they are situated. It appears that economic and cultural histories – reflected in Hallin and Mancini’s models – hold more sway over journalistic behaviour and reader expectations than do factors such as media market and population size, which Jeremy Tunstall used in his models. 52 The journalistic styles of murder reporting in our sample countries also correlate with the comparative models identified by communication scholar James Carey. He associated the “transmission model” of communication, practised by the North American press, with terms like “transmitting,” “sending,” or “imparting” information to others.53 The style, he said, fit North American, individualistic culture, focused on individual rights. The press was a watchdog. Crime was reported openly as a guarantee of the right to public trial. On the other hand, much of Europe practised a “ritual model” of communication, which Carey linked to terms like “sharing,” “fellowship,” “participation,” and “association.” Reading the news was a ritual that reinforced culture and tradition. Applying this model, the news portrays contending forces. Protecting the accused or convicted criminal’s privacy reflects concern for his or her role in the community. Our analysis shows that the journalists within the English-language, North Atlantic liberal model are applying an ethic that values equal treatment and individual autonomy, one in which the perpetrator of crime bears sole responsibility for his or her action, while those in the North/Central European democratic-corporatist model adhere to one

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more rooted in the community bonds that tie people to each other. Crime, our interview subjects in Sweden and the Netherlands told us, is a failure of society as well as the fault of the criminal. The challenge for Canadians, as Peter Edwards of the Toronto Star experienced it, was shifting some responsibility onto the public’s shoulders.54 Stepping back to include the larger context of crime is necessary to draw the community into the picture, argued Edwards, who often reports on gang activity and related drug trafficking. “I want readers to think for themselves and take some responsibility,” he said. People in the mainstream who use recreational drugs need to look at the part they play in the illegal activity and gang violence behind their purchases. Similarly, Edwards argued, the public has to see what really works to reduce crime. A good community worker, an arts program, or a sports outlet can effectively cut into the attraction that gangs hold for teenagers who want a sense of belonging and just something to do, he argued. But the public often dismisses policy recommendations based on such thinking, referring to them pejoratively as “hug-a-thug” attitudes. People opt instead for more extensive and expensive jail sentences.55 Locking people up and throwing away the keys provides a band-aid solution for a serious social ill, Kirk LaPointe, ombudsman for the CBC, lamented, but “in a hyperactive media environment,” the story of the villainous criminal is easier to tell. “We’ve been pushed pretty heavily by media and politicians, to some degree, to vilify criminals … We are steeped in a near mythology of the sinister nature of the criminal and the divide between the lawful and the lawless.” In the end, he said, the Canadian value system might have the ability to right itself at least partially: “I think people have greater faith in due process and its ability to exonerate and ultimately restore someone’s good name in the case of innocence than they do in the notion of concealing the identity and never letting the public know.” As Jack Katz wrote, crime stories help a community to define which behaviours it finds acceptable and which lie outside its boundaries.56 Crime narratives pull audiences into the social-construction process. But in order for this process to help build a healthy society, the narration must reach beyond the simple characterization of the criminal as “folk devil.” Robert Reiner and his associates studied the British press, but their description applies to a large portion of the Canadian crime reporting: “Offenders are portrayed not as parts of social relations or structures that the victims or the public are also embedded in, but as pathologically evil. Any attempt to understand, let alone any concern

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for their point of view or their rehabilitation, is seen as insensitive to the suffering of their victims.”57 Indeed, Canadian journalists told us that including some hideous details of Tori Stafford’s rape and murder fulfilled an obligation they had to the crime’s victim. “Readers find the stories difficult to read, but we have a responsibility to tell the public that terrible things happen to children,” said Sylvia Stead, public editor at the Globe and Mail.58 “Part of it is that society must learn from these things.” But what lessons do they take away? Not all readers found the lessons they needed in the gruesome details. Kathy English, public editor for the Star, noted, “During the Rafferty trial ... I got a lot of feedback from readers saying, ‘That’s enough; we don’t need to know’ … But the culture of Canadian journalism in general is that if things are reported in open court and are critical to the charges, then that horror is part of the news report.” Star columnist Rosie DiManno said that if the victim had to endure it, then the public should not look away, English reported. Others whom we interviewed expressed similar sentiments. To some extent, then, the press adopts the courtroom’s frame as the one in which “not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.” The wider frame of social justice that Reiner and his associates referenced is largely ignored. As the latter found in British coverage, personalized storytelling presents crime as problematic “not because it violates that law or other moral reference points, but because it hurts individual victims with whom the reader is led to sympathize or empathize.”59 Concentrating on the personal aspects of crime and pushing aside perpetrators as “other” provide the public with temporary relief from anxiety and the satisfaction of a good-versus-evil morality tale, but the long-term product of this process is more likely to be political cynicism than problem solving. Jean Bethke Elshtain claimed that politics is displaced when private matters become grist for the public mill and everything public “is privatized and played out in a psychodrama on a grand scale.”60 Julia Kristeva, outlining her concept of the abject in Powers of Horror, suggested that the forces that disturb a community’s identity, system, and order, that cross an imaginary border into the anti-social, must be expelled because they threaten that society’s unity. At the same time, the “expelled” must be tolerated because their presence reminds citizens that margins are constantly being drawn and redrawn.61 If this is

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the case, then the press that leads the public merely into an act of expulsion without the complementary one of examination fails its public mission in favour of a more private and somewhat voyeuristic one. A news story’s frame, said Art Charity, “almost predetermines the kind of solution we will find and whether there will be any shared sense of purpose.”62 The signification process at work in crime reporting can generate moral panic. Innes wrote: “In my terms, the presence of physical and social disorders are enacted as signal crimes by residents, indicative of the need for protective action.”63 Those actions “may include either a retreat from public space by members of the community, or alternatively, the instigation of informal or formal social controls to deal with the perceived causes of deviance.” In England, David Green has pointed out, the exaggerated drama of tabloid reporting gave politicians ammunition to use crime as a “wedge issue” and frame it as a national crisis. This tendency was encouraged by the bend of England’s political economy towards neo-liberalism during the 1980s Thatcher administration, Robert Reiner told us in a personal interview.64 Now that Canadians have expelled Rafferty and McClintic with a sentence of life in prison for kidnapping and murder of Tori Stafford, they might sit comfortably until the next signal crime comes to their attention. But they will not be conducting the hard work of citizenship. Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil’s study, The Elements of Journalism,65 concluded that the oft-stated mission of journalism is to serve as public trust. If so, news organizations are obligated to shine their light on the ways in which the social fabric is torn and in need of repair because, in the public mind, that is what such crimes signal. Without such an examination, how can citizens perceive, much less fulfil, their duty? If Canadians need to look at the suffering Tori Stafford endured, they also need to look at the problems of abused and neglected children, the mentally ill who are not reasonably cared for, and malignant drug abuse, which all played parts in the undertold stories of Rafferty and McClintic and the communities that bred them. Within such a larger frame, the details of the crime broaden beyond the private experiences of the victim, the consideration of which the public often condemns as prurient, and beyond even the individual perpetrator’s right to a public trial. Instead, signal crimes open up the opportunity for discourse about the social ills that cause and control deviance, engaging the public not just as audiences or readers but as citizens.

96  Covering Canadian Crime NOTES 1 Professor Fullerton would like to express her gratitude to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Internal Grant, Western University, and Professor Patterson would like to express her gratitude to the National Endowment for the Humanities, Internal Grant, and the Duquesne University Faculty Development Fund. The research for this chapter could not have been completed without this support. 2 Martin Innes, “‘Signal Crimes’: Detective Work, Mass Media and Constructing Collective Memory,” in Paul Mason, ed., Criminal Visions: Media Representations of Crime and Justice (Cullompton, U.K.: Willan Publishing 2003), 52. 3 Ibid., 51. 4 See, for example, Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press 1978); Richard V. Ericson, Patricia M. Baranek, and Janet B.L. Chan. Visualizing Deviance: A Study of News Organizations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987). 5 These findings are part of an ongoing study, and on average we interview twenty people – news professionals and academics – in each country. In some cases, other journalists offer to be interviewed, and we include them where appropriate. 6 Walter Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press 1981). 7 Grant McCracken, The Long Interview Qualitative Research Methods 13 (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications 1988), 9. 8 Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini, Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Mediaand Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004). 9 Hallin and Mancini’s third model is the Mediterranean or polarized pluralist model found in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, where media have been affiliated with political parties. Public broadcasting has been politicized and journalists’ professionalism is limited. Three of these countries – Greece, Portugal, and Spain – threw off the last remaining authoritarian rule in western Europe and moved towards democracy only in the mid-1970s. Press traditions remain rooted in ideological expression and political mobilization, often on behalf of their owners, combined with a somewhat weak commercial base. 10 Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranek, and Janet Chan, Representing Order: Crime, Law and Justice in the News Media (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1991), 239.

Not Naming Names? 97 11 How voluntary membership in the press councils and journalist unions is in these countries may be subject to interpretation. The vast majority of news organizations choose to belong, with a few tabloids and rogue news websites operating outside them. The ethics codes are open to interpretation and exception. However, a number of journalists, especially in Sweden, felt compelled to toe the ethics line out of fear that legislatures would take action against them if they did not impose self-restraint. 12 See study launched by Newspaperscanada.ca. 13 For the Toronto Star, see http://www.thestar.com/opinion/public_editor/ 2011/12/07/toronto_star_newsroom_policy_and_journalistic_standards_ guide.html; for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, see http://cbc .radio-canada.ca/en/reporting-to-canadians/acts-and-policies/programming/journalism/. The Globe and Mail is also writing a similar document, but at the time of publication it was not yet available in hard copy or online. 14 “Ethics Guidelines” can be retrieved online at http://www.caj.ca/?p=1776 and the separate listing titled “Principles for Ethical Journalism” can be retrieved at http://www.caj.ca/?p=1785. 15 Christie Blatchford, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 31 October 2012. 16 Bert Bruser, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 2 August 2012. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Allison Jones, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 2 November 2012. 20 Ibid. 21 In December 2011 the Supreme Court of Canada lifted a sweeping publication ban on some of the details of McClintic’s trial, including her guilty plea. Rafferty’s lawyer, Dirk Derstein, requested that the ban remain in place, but all major Canadian news outlets had opposed this ban in the name of the public’s right to know. 22 Kathy English, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 31 August 2012. 23 Originally said by Gordon Hewart in Rex v. Sussex Justices ex parte McCarthy, 1924. 24 For more about this, see Timothy Appleby’s musings in chapter 6 on his own emotional response. 25 Randy Richmond, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton, London, Ontario, 13 August 2012.

98  Covering Canadian Crime 26 Colin Butler, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 1 November 2012. 27 Kirk Makin, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 1 November 2012. 28 Blatchford interview. 29 Jones interview. 30 Kirk LaPointe, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton, Toronto, 25 July 2012. 31 Thomas Brunig, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Amsterdam, 10 June 2012. 32 Maud Effting, Weert Schenk, and Jeroen Tommelen, “Karst T.: Kind Man, Unreachable and Depressed,” Noord Hollands Dagblad, trans. Elke Bun, 30 April 2009. Also: “A Man Who Seldom Contracted a Real Conversation,” De Voklskrant, trans. Elke Bun, 30 April 2009, updated 5 May 2010; Internet, 7 July 2010. 33 Fleur Halkema, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Amsterdam, 14 June 2012. 34 Liesbeth Buitinh, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Amsterdam, 14 June 2010. 35 Morgan Olofsson, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Stockholm, 22 June 2012. 36 Lennart Weibull, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Gothenberg, 17 June 2012. 37 Mats J. Larsson, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Stockholm, 21 June 2012. 38 Martin Jonsson, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Stockholm, 22 June 2010. 39 Arendo Joustra, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Amsterdam, 15 June 2010. 40 Daphne Koene, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Amsterdam, 11 June 2010. 41 Bernadette Kester, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Rotterdam, 15 June 2010. 42 Helena Gieretta, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Stockholm, 21 June 2010. 43 Kees Streefkerk, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Amsterdam, 11 June 2010. 44 Froujke Sanling, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Amsterdam, 11 June 2010. 45 Esther Pollack, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Stockholm, 18 June 2010.

Not Naming Names? 99 46 Hallin and Mancini, Comparing Media Systems, 13. 47 Ibid., 13. 48 Thom Meens, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Amsterdam, 10 June 2010. 49 Peter Berger, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Leiden, 16 June 2010. 50 Dave Seglins, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 31 October 2012. 51 Linden MacIntyre, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 31 October 2012. 52 Jeremy Tunstall, The Media Were American: The U.S. Media in Decline (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008). 53 James Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Unwin Hyman 1988). 54 Peter Edwards, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 31 August 2012. 55 Ibid. 56 Jack Katz, “What Makes Crime ‘News’?” Media, Culture and Society, 9 (1987): 47–75. 57 Robert Reiner, Sonia Livingstone, and Jessica Allen, “From Law and Order to Lynch Mobs: Crime News since the Second World War,” in Mason, ed., Criminal Visions, 31. 58 Sylvia Stead, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, Toronto, 1 August 2012. 59 Reiner, Livingstone, and Allen, “From Law and Order to Lynch Mobs,” 31. 60 Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 1981), 38. 61 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press 1982). 62 Art Charity, Doing Public Journalism (New York: Guilford Press 1995), 66–7. 63 Innes, “‘Signal Crimes,’” 53. 64 Rob Reiner, interview by Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, London, 22 June 2011. 65 The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Three Rivers Press 2007), 98.

6 “I Sleep Really Well at Night”: The Globe and Mail’s Timothy Appleby on Covering Thirty Years of Grief Chris R i c har ds on an d Ro m ayne Smith F ul l e rt on

Timothy Appleby is one of Canada’s most prolific crime writers. He joined the Globe and Mail in 1982. While Appleby was both a foreign correspondent and a member of the Globe’s editorial board, chiefly he was a crime reporter. He covered one of Ontario’s most horrific stories – the sexual assault and murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford – from her initial disappearance to the eventual conviction of her killers, Terri-Lynne McClintic and Michael Rafferty. Appleby’s most recent book, A New Kind of Monster, detailed the life and chilling crimes of Colonel Russell Williams, a decorated military pilot and Canadian base commander who is now serving two life sentences for first-degree murder, forcible confinement, and nearly a hundred breaking and entering charges. In this chapter, Appleby speaks about the realities of covering crimes like these, the toll hearing such gruesome details takes on a reporter’s mental health, and why he loved the job. Appleby retired from the newspaper business in 2014. In crime reporting, you might think you’re going to go down the wire to find the hit man and it’s all very dangerous. Well, it’s not like that at all. What you’re really dealing with is grief. That’s the number one thing that never goes away. So if you can’t put up with it, then don’t do this job because that’s what it is. You’re not asking people about their taxes going up. You’re dealing with stuff that’s much more unpleasant. As a crime reporter, you learn to become really discreet. I’ve heard so much, so many great stories that I’ve never told because they would burn somebody. You learn to respect the business of “off the record” for absolutely what it means. If I’m talking to a cop – and I have lots of police friends – they’ll know they don’t even have to ask me if this is off the record. Everything is off the record unless otherwise stated (or unless you’re in a public forum).

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Make sure that you’re always up front. There are a couple of people at one of our competitor newspapers who are really sneaky. They’ve had trouble with the police because they’ve pulled all sorts of tricks. You only do that once. It takes years to build a reputation, and you can undo that in a heartbeat. Out there in the land of readers, they only have so much time. With a complicated crime story, you can really only say one thing. So just say that one thing. Build your story around that. It’s the KISS rule: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Often, crime can be a real tangle of facts. You know, he said, she said. It’s all over the place: competing lawyers, cops’ perspectives. You have to keep issues stripped down to something reasonably comprehensible. It’s good to think, “What would the headline say?” The mistake people make is that they want to get in everything. And you can’t. Crime reporting goes from informative to exploitative when you provide more information than is necessary to tell the story. Less really is more. Surprisingly, I think crime reporting isn’t usually that exploitative. I can think of some other areas of journalism that are much worse. The big sin is to talk about the suffering that’s involved and the trauma that people have gone through and perhaps weaving in some other stuff that doesn’t really need to be there, but people throw it in because they think it’s interesting. I think the most exploitative form of journalism dwells on the bereaved and what they’ve been through. Canada is a very different environment than America. One of the things I think is really great in this country is our jury system. It’s absolutely off-limits. It’s illegal if jurors even talk about what they’ve been discussing in their deliberations. If I go and knock on the door of a juror and ask, “Can you give me some insight into” – I’m breaking the law. Never mind having TV trucks outside their houses like they do in Florida. That’s a huge difference and another kind of exploitation. I take great comfort in the strictness of Canada’s rules. Crime stories in the United States are absolutely milked, much more than they are here. Often, it’s because the television audience is just so dumb. I don’t mind saying that; they are. Fox viewers don’t really get it. And they never will. Crime reporting shouldn’t be a bad thing. It doesn’t have to be depressing. Obviously we have depressing stories. But I think the day that it starts taking over your life and you start carrying that baggage around everywhere is the day to start doing something else. I sleep really well at night. I really do. I never have to worry about anything I’ve

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said to anybody. I might not tell you the whole story. I might not tell you anything, but I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not one of those reporters who has spent his life in a war zone (that’s a completely different species). I’ve dipped in and out of trouble. I’ve spent plenty of time in the Middle East, in the Balkans, Central America. When you do these really difficult stories, you go in, you get the story, and you get out intact. That is the mantra. I learned a lot overseas as a foreign correspondent. There, you’re dealing with the big boys. You can be on the plane and you’re feeling great and then, aw fuck, there’s the New York Times in front of you! It’s hard because those guys are really good. Mostly, they know the region really well; they’ve probably got the language. They’ll have a rolodex that you would die for. And they’re really experienced. I went to Iraq a few times and I just felt completely outgunned by some of the competition – reporters who could speak fluent Arabic and who have been living in Beirut for years. It’s the big league. But that’s overseas. We used to have jokes here at the Globe and Mail: “Oh look, the Globe reporter’s here. The story is over.” The Six Day War in 1967: we got there on the seventh day. That’s true. But we don’t do that anymore. Not in this age. One thing I’ve learned, I can say in three words: Be. Flipping. Early. Don’t be late. For now and for the rest of your life, don’t ever be late. There’s no need. It’s easier to be early than it is to be late. You build in a margin. Assume the 401 is going to get plugged up that morning. And guess what, you’re there an hour ahead of time and you can go and have a coffee. And you feel great because there’s no stress. The people who are constantly running from fire to fire and are always arriving late, they make mistakes. They get things wrong. Of all the stresses and difficulties, I’d say that scheduling is probably as important as anything in crime reporting. There are so many courtrooms in Toronto going on at different times, and you can’t just hit a button and get the information. Do as much preparation and planning as you can. Be ready, and then you can sleep at night. … What set the Rafferty trial apart was the level of cruelty and the viciousness inflicted on this helpless little girl.1 You had a lot of time to think about what happened covering the trial. Aside from the rape itself and the physical violence, which was absolutely nightmarish, what was also bothersome is that she was eight, nearly nine; she would have known what was going on. And there was much discussion about what he was going to do to her in the car in the three hours that she was

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captive. “You know I’m gonna fuck her,” he said to his girlfriend, TerryLynne McClintic, at one point. We couldn’t print that. But, you know, Tori would have heard that. She would have been absolutely terrified. She asked to go home. She said she would even come up with some excuses as to where she’d been. She would have known exactly what this was about. If she had been younger – five or six – probably not. But she was a very bright little eight-year-old. So that was the other dimension that was just … and the screaming. There was a great deal of screaming when the rape and the murder took place. She was screaming for a long time. We heard this from Terri-Lynne McClintic. You can’t not cover a story like that. It was of enormous importance. If you don’t want to be doing that, then you should be writing about real estate or lingerie or something. That’s what crime reporting is. But the detail in this one … we heard everything. Even though it was a very unusual kind of crime, it wasn’t that complicated. There were no layers – with other crimes, you’ll have layers of complexity that make it interesting. This was straight horror. There really wasn’t much need to talk with other journalists about how we felt because we all knew. We just had to look at each other. The day of the pathologist’s report, for example, was a really awful day because she was describing the wounds. They were really frightful. Rafferty used a hammer (or McClintic did), and did terrible damage with the hammer – the spikey end of the hammer. It was a claw hammer. He smashed Tori’s ribs – sixteen of her ribs. Lacerated her liver. All those injuries would have been enough to kill her. And he’s sitting there on that day in court wearing his purple shirt because that was Tori’s colour. So he came in to mock them. And he’s sitting there in this purple shirt with this little smile on his face. When you see something like that, you don’t come out to each other and say, “Oh, that was dreadful, wasn’t it?” That would be ridiculous. That would be superfluous. People would just come out of there and be silent. We’d just be staring at each other, like “my God.” I don’t think the jurors are ever going to be the same again. I’ve been doing this for a really long time. I’ll probably be much less damaged from this than some of them. The Globe has offered me psychological help in dealing with such trauma. But I’ve done war zones too and I’ve spent a lot of time overseas. I don’t know what I would say to that person that I wouldn’t say to you. This is a little bit of therapy. I don’t mind talking about it. I’m proud of everybody who took a role in this trial. The thing you’ve got to remember, however bad it gets, is that it’s

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your job. It comes and it goes. It was a few very unpleasant weeks. But I was paid to do it. In a terrible way, it was interesting. … I’ve been at the Globe and Mail for such a long time. I’ve been there for thirty years. I do have a pretty strong sense of who my readership is. And it’s a different readership than other newspapers. If you were to ask the people who run the Globe and Mail, they’d tell you that it’s a more upscale, prosperous, worldly, well-travelled, power-broking, blah, blah, blah kind of audience. In other words, the haves of Canadian society. It’s a different audience than the Toronto Sun, let’s put it that way. Obviously they know as much about life as anybody else. But I don’t think that our audience really wants to be beaten over the head at breakfast time with the kind of graphic stuff that you could do. Covering Russell Williams’ guilty plea, for example, much of it was too horrific to describe.2 What Williams did to the two women before he killed them was just unspeakable. And you have all that material because it was read in [to the court record]. Do you print it? Absolutely not. We really pulled back on that and I know that readers really appreciated it. We got a lot of feedback saying, “thank you.” They could read it without being assailed by this torrent of torture and filth and violence. Many of our competitors provided more detail about Russell Williams than we did. And it was the same with Tori Stafford. Other people went full tilt. But we did not. You don’t need to know. It doesn’t serve any purpose to know everything. I wish I didn’t. … In my backyard, there’s a little fire pit. A couple days ago, I went to start a fire and I was smashing up some kindling with a hammer. Suddenly, this wave of nausea went through me. I was just hitting this wood as hard as I could. And it was like, Oh God, can I ever really use a hammer again? It comes as stupid stuff like that. … People who don’t think we need professional journalists in the Internet age should get out more. That is an absurd argument. It’s not even an argument. It’s like saying you don’t need plumbers because tools are cheaper than they ever were. Do you know how to use it? Well no … One of the things that surprises people, even though they may be somewhat aware of it, is the speed at which things are going on. It is really, really fast now. I’m not saying it takes a genius to go into the courtroom every morning and file a story to the web, which is basically what I’ve been doing for the last eight months. You might be able to do

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that. But how quickly can you do that? You take one of those civilian journalists who thinks that it doesn’t take any real ability and that’s when they’ll fall on their face immediately. Sure, they could put something together in a couple of days. I’m sure they could come up with a nice little story. But not in this age. And there’s so much else that they’d have to know. The day after Rafferty was convicted, we had a full page in the paper. We were there until half-past eleven at night. Then around midnight, I was told that in the morning they needed a piece about where he’s going next. I could wake up at seven o’clock and write that in an hour. Here’s where he is. Here’s where he’s going to go. Here are the rules. Here’s what life in prison is. You have to know that. It wasn’t a difficult story to do. But you have to know it. You can’t be thinking, gee, where will he go? How long will he be there? Can he get parole? It’s not complicated, but you have to know that stuff. It’s no different than any other area of expertise. … One of the very first stories that I ever had on the front page of the Globe was in 1988.3 I’m still quite proud of it; it had a one-word lead: “Missing.” It’s the story of two very disparate disappearances. Two young women, not connected to each other. Both of whom, around the same period of time, up and disappeared. The connecting thread was that in both cases, these two nice young women had completely vanished. Their families were stuck with the question, what do we do now? We don’t have a body. And you really want a body in that situation. It sounds perverse, but you really do. You want that person to be found so that you can have some sort of closure. And when you don’t, and it’s open-ended for the rest of your life, that’s really, really hard. That was the real dimension to that story: it was the not knowing. I remember both these families saying to me – separately, because they didn’t know each other – “I just wish we could have something instead of having this big unknown.” And, as far as I’m aware, neither of those two young women have ever been found and there have never been any charges. That made a really big impact on me. I realized that even bad news can be better than no news. I would feel the same way. If it was me, I would want the bad news because you can’t help fearing the worst anyway. That’s a very, very tough business of losing somebody without a trace. I always remember that, even though I’ve covered so many other things: gangsters, hit men, paedophiles, suicide bombers, crazy husbands who do unspeakable things. That had a big impact on me. There are many people who are just so glad to have their stories told, and have it told

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truthfully and fairly. Not everybody. But frequently. It was absolutely the case with Tori Stafford. It was unbelievably horrible and yet it was really important to that family that the full story be told. Crime touches on the most private parts of people’s lives. Often dreadful things have happened. People are raw and usually they don’t have much to say about it. Tori Stafford was an exception because both her parents were there most of the time and they would go out there and they would talk. Everybody was glad that they did. But if somebody’s not going to talk to you, they’re not going to talk to you. They’re not going to say, “Oh jeez since you keep banging on my door, well, okay.” All you can do is try to be straight with them. You can say, “Look, I’d like to talk to you about so-and-so. Tell me a little bit about him.” And if they say no, you have to say, “Okay, that’s fine.” You put the phone down and that’s the end of it. Don’t be under any kind of illusion that if you keep hounding them they’ll change their minds. They won’t. They’ll just get really hostile. And I don’t blame them. Timing is always of the essence. One truism is that when something terrible happens, the sooner you can reach the people who are affected, the more likely it is that they will talk to you. It’s because when something has happened very recently, they do feel talkative in a way that they will not twenty-four hours later. Most crime reporters know that. The likelihood of somebody opening up that same evening is much greater than it will be a day from then, especially once they’ve talked to the police. The police always say, “Don’t talk to the media.” That’s the first thing they say. And once participants have been told that, they never do. … I think a great thing for a reporter is to not be a reporter. Go and get some experience at the desk and see how the suitcase gets packed every night. Learn about that. This business is full of reporters who have never done that. They have no desk experience. All they can see is their little story and then they’re disappointed the next morning when it didn’t quite work out. If they’d spent a few years on the production side, they’d know what it’s like to be on the other end. And it really is like packing a suitcase: the big stuff goes in; the stuff you don’t care about or that you can bring out next week gets taken out because you’ve only got so much room. It’s a group effort, a joint exercise. There are twenty different things going on. Some reporters will write a story and it doesn’t get in the paper that night or it gets cut to rat shit and they’re mortified. There’s only so much room in the suitcase. That’s all

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it is. It has nothing to do with the content. Understanding that process really helps. … When you’re reading a story, one of the first things to ask is, “Where did all this information come from?” Sometimes, it comes from a police handout. Sometimes, it comes from a court proceeding. Very often, it comes from people and you don’t know who they are because they’re anonymous sources. Lots of news organizations have struggled with this over the years, the business of anonymous sources. We at the Globe certainly do allow the use of anonymous sources because you have to. Generally, lots and lots of people are willing to talk to you. But they’re not authorized to talk to you so they don’t want their name attached to it. They’re quite happy to see the story go out. They just don’t want their name on it because they’re not allowed to talk officially. And if you were – as has been tried in the past – to have only named sources throughout, it doesn’t work. Because the whole world of information will dry up really, really quickly. But beware that invisible sources are just that – invisible. They’re not really accountable to anyone. But I think people have to accept that that’s what journalism is; it depends on people being frank with you and they won’t do that unless they’re protected. A healthy scepticism is good for readers. The information age, in one way, has made reporters much more accountable. There’s so much information out there, that if you were to try to float a story about something or to really exaggerate or embellish a story, which I think happens now less than it used to, there are ten other news sources and if something’s not true, you’re going to get called out really, really, fast. Somebody’s going to say, “Really? I didn’t know that. I’m going to check it out.” There is a lot of unreliable information out there, but the information age has provided a big plus for readers I think. The difference is that journalists used to control the information and we really don’t anymore. We used to sit at the top of the mountain and decide what the peasants down below were going to read for breakfast. And that age is just gone. It’s not coming back. The information went flat and democratic, and the landscape is utterly different. Every kid in Somalia has a cell phone now. Things have changed, mostly I think for the better. … Almost by definition, crime reporting deals with really unpleasant things. So ask yourself, “How much of this do I want to read?” And if you don’t, turn to the sports section, or lifestyles or something. Also,

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you have to remember that you’re only reading a fraction of what’s gone on. When people are involved in the stories, when the microphone is put in front of them and the story then appears later on, a very common reaction is, “Yeah, I said that. And it’s true … But there was all this other stuff I said that didn’t get into the story at all.” It’s a very, very common reaction, which of course is true because we end up using 10 per cent of the material. And often people don’t like that because they think that we’ve missed the stuff that they emphasized. Usually, when someone is interviewed and then they see it in print or on the air, they’re disappointed because they’ve seen what’s left out. That’s a given. I think one of the big misconceptions is that being a crime reporter turns you into some hard-nosed nasty person who’s seen everything and doesn’t give a damn about anything. Actually, it’s not like that at all. The crime reporters I know are really good people. They have a moral compass, a strong sense of right and wrong, and they’re very supportive of each other because the work is so difficult. It’s very different on Parliament Hill and some other environments I can think of where there are a lot of sharp elbows. Really cut-throat stuff. It’s just not like that in the world of crime and courts. We’re all friends. We’re all good to each other. But I don’t know why we do it. I suppose it’s because it’s really interesting. It’s very dramatic. Often, at least for the Globe, you’re writing stories that do matter. You don’t see a lot of ambulance chasing and small stuff. Human wickedness and perversity is fascinating. I wish it wasn’t, but people marvel at the wickedness of which people are capable. They love to read about clever police stuff. You want to know what the bad can do. NOTES 1 On 8 April 2009 Victoria “Tori” Stafford, eight, was abducted from Woodstock, Ontario, sexually assaulted, and murdered. In 2012 Michael Rafferty was found guilty of the crime along with his girlfriend TerriLynne McClintic, who had been convicted two years earlier. 2 A former colonel in the Canadian Forces, Russell Williams pleaded guilty to murder and sexual-assault charges after investigations led authorities to him in February 2010. 3 Timothy Appleby, “Without a Trace: Anguish of Knowing 2 Missing Women’s Fate Bedevils Friends, Relatives,” Globe and Mail, 23 August 1988.

7 A Case of Prairie Justice: The Murderer, the Jury, and the Spirit of Durkheim Ja m es S. M c Lean

Shortly after moving to Saskatchewan in the mid-1980s to take the position of assignment editor at a Regina television station, I was nabbed for speeding on my commute home. There were extenuating circumstances having to do with recent car repairs, gears, and speedometers. A friend in the local RCMP detachment advised me to fight the ticket – to plead “guilty with an explanation” – an option I did not know existed. At the very least, he said, my $50 fine would likely be reduced. So I put on my best game-face and went to court, paper evidence in hand (a work order for the repairs) and visions of a brilliant closing argument dancing in my imagination. From the moment I stepped into the courtroom I knew my dreams of legal brilliance would have to be adjusted. For one thing, the courtroom was the community hall in the small town where I lived, reserved on this day for a kind of travelling catchall court dealing with a full range of smallish Criminal Code and other disputes. There were no black-robed Crown prosecutors or counsels for the defence conferring in hushed tones. There were a lot of police officers, one harried-looking judge in a tweed jacket that came off as the prairie sun heated up the building, a no-nonsense court clerk to keep the paperwork straight, and rows of people, some sheepishly awaiting their turn at justice’s wheel of fortune, others so stressed I feared their gaskets would pop. There was an ungodly grinding sound emanating from somewhere in the room. As the judge called the court to order he pointed his chin at a man in a row near the back. An RCMP officer walked over and gently shook him awake. The sound stopped. The court got down to business. The snoring man was first up, charged with possession of twelve vials of hashish oil, eleven of them

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empty and rolling around on the floor of his car at the time of arrest, the twelfth in the process of being consumed. “What were you doing?” said the judge, “Waiting for a full dozen so you could get your deposit back on the empties?” I perked up. This was going to be interesting. I got out my pen and notepad. “Um, guess so,” mumbled the defendant. “How do you plead?” “Um, guilty I guess.” The judge looked over at the senior RCMP representative at the “prosecution” table. There was a barely perceptible nod. Things had been worked out beforehand: a $350 fine and ninety days to pay in full. And so it went. One by one the usual suspects stepped up to face the music. There was a small-town councillor turned in by a nosy neighbour for shooting rabbits from his back porch. His home was on the edge of town and his porch faced the endless prairie; should a bullet go astray there was nothing much to hit between the back fence and the wide, blue horizon. The rabbits, he said, had been relentlessly chewing their way through his wife’s prized vegetable garden. Surely these charges lacked common sense? “Sorry,” said the judge, “I like vegetables, too, and I have some sympathy, but the bylaw says no discharge of a weapon within town limits. You should know that councillor.” Mumble. Nod from the cop. Fine levied. “Hope you got a decent stew out of those rabbits” said the judge. Next, a man accused of stealing snow tires from a wreck in a local salvage yard. Mumble. Nod. Fine and restitution. Next, a half-­dozen young people, all charged in separate incidents after leaving their year-end graduation celebrations. (“Cheaper to car pool,” quipped the judge). Lecture. Mumbles. Nods. Fines. Licence suspensions. And a hint of malice: “Your parents will be happy to have you around the house for a few months. Next!” That meant me. “How do you plead?” “Guilty with an explanation, your honour.” I handed over my paperwork and launched into a detailed account of car repairs, differentials, and speedometer calibrations. Thirty seconds in, the judge politely interrupted. “How about we lower the fine to ten dollars?” “Sir?” “Ten dollars? The fine.”



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“Um, yes sir, that would be very good.” A glance towards the RCMP representative. The familiar nod. “Do you need some time to pay the fine, Mr McLean?” “Sorry, your honour?” “Time. Do you need time to pay the fine? Say ninety days?” “No sir. I can pay the full amount now.” “Very good. Please pay the clerk. Cash only. Don’t forget your receipt. Court is adjourned!” Thus ended my first and only personal involvement with Canada’s court system. I recall this experience because it describes the way that a significant part of our system of justice works. Here was a relatively pedestrian set of interactions, repeated daily in designated places across the land, where the world of small-time drug consumption, petty theft, drunk driving, even the discharge of a firearm met the institutional imperatives of the vast and complicated legal administrative machine. A great deal of common-sense justice is meted out in these lesser-court venues, though seldom with the comic commentary of the judge in my own experience. Yet to most of us this corner of our judicial system is invisible unless for some reason we choose to account for a personal transgression or are compelled to do so. The events that populate the administration of daily law slip with ease below the radar of newsroom gatekeepers, buried largely without notice in the accumulative glut of occurrences. Journalists are rarely inspired to show up to report on these small dramas. The reporters in my own newsroom stared me down in stony silence when I suggested that there were some fine stories to be found in the rural Saskatchewan provincial court circuit. To avoid rebellion in the reportorial ranks, I let the matter drop or, rather, failed to pursue it further. Yet there has always been this niggling sense – even a full quarter-century later – that we somehow missed something important. It would take an encounter with a voice from the nineteenth century, Émile Durkheim, to put into perspective what that niggling “something” was and why, today, it remains important to our understanding of the role of journalists in addressing matters of crime and punishment in Canada. A central objective of Durkheim’s seminal work The Division of La­ bour in Society (1893) was to explain the depth of dislocation that had emerged as industrial modernity transformed the social and eco­nomic landscape of Europe. He attributed this dislocation to a fundamental

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shift in the way that society was organized, a shift away from homogeneous societies, what Durkheim called mechanical solidarity (cohesion through similarity), to a more heterogeneous and specialized social formation, a condition he called “organic solidarity” (cohesion through difference).1 In the older, more “primitive” social form, members of extended family groups “shared in a common structure of beliefs, values, and traditions.”2 Under the conditions of urban industrialization, social relations generated in the workplace, relations that tended to emphasize individual difference over collective belonging, displaced these clan or tribal affiliations. In other words, the cultural map was forced to move from a collectively understood and reproduced system of beliefs, values, and traditions to one where the individual increasingly took precedence. This change was bound to cause tension because, in Durkheim’s view, modernist individualism driven by new economic realities ran headlong into the much older, hard-wired collective sensibility. “In a general way,” he wrote, “the precept which commands us to specialize appears everywhere to be contradicted by the precept which commands us to follow the same ideal.”3 It was Durkheim’s great concern that the demands of specialized industrial life, the division of labour, would drive individuals ever farther away from the safety of their group identity or conscience collective. In such a case, society itself ran the risk of coming apart at the seams. This was the reason, Durkheim surmised, for increased levels of suicide, violent social behaviours, and street crime.4 Only by somehow communicating legitimate social norms to individuals ever more isolated in their daily lives could modern society hope to maintain any semblance of solidarity. But just how would this communication take place? Durkheim recognized that people in close proximity, the social density afforded by industrial plants and urban neighbourhoods, would talk among themselves and exchange news about their world. He saw this as the principal means that cohesion through difference would be maintained. He also gestured towards a shift in “the number and speed of the means of communication and transmission” that had become more evident in the practices of everyday life, a soft acknowledgment of emergent communication technologies such as the telegraph and telephone, the rotary press, and the mass-produced newspaper.5 But there his interest ends. The Division of Labour remains silent on the late-nineteenth-century explosion in newspaper production, a central part of the industrial and social milieu Durkheim sought to describe.6



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Mass-produced newspapers are not embraced as a means to fill the information gap that occurs when ever-increasing specialization through the division of labour creates ever more isolated individuals. While a number of journalism scholars have made passing mention of the apparent coincidental emergence of mass-produced news and Durkheim’s vision of the social world, few have done more than scratch the surface of what this implies.7 At the very least this relationship supports John Hartley’s characterization of journalism as the “sense making practice of modernity” grounded in the assumed truth of circulated reality and its “real and imagined power to affect other systems, actions or events.”8 In a world of social and economic realignment, a world where the authority of village voices was ever less prominent, massproduced daily news afforded general explanations of proper conduct presented through real cautionary tales. In the women’s pages, stories about politics, news from the empire and beyond, reports from the courts, serialized novels, even the outrageous inventions of the yellow press, a web of structure and meaning was constructed among those seeking comfort in an imagined community that was no longer entirely their own. The press, with its new technological reach, was positioned to fill the interpretive voids that were bound to emerge as new social, cultural, and legal sensibilities were decided and implemented by various systems of power and control. Durkheim’s contemporary, Max Weber, understood this. In Weber’s view, the institutions of modern industrial life took on a pedagogical function: efficiently to inculcate successive generations in “the prescribed rules of behaviour.”9 His thoughts form the basis for the functionalist view of the role of social institutions, the organizational structures empowered to “help to preserve society, moving it from stage to stage as they serve to socialize new generations” even as “they temper the rate at which change occurs.”10 Weber, who was a practising journalist in one guise or another throughout much of his adult life, looked to journalism as a social institution in its own right. But the pedagogical role of journalism was special, regarded not just as a means to inform the public but as a training ground for political activism.11 For Weber, therefore, journalists were not simple conduits for the dissemination of institutional rules and norms; they were meant to be thoughtful interpreters and critics of those rules and norms. Journalism itself was regarded as a means to train for political power, one of the few avenues available for engaged citizens to participate actively in the construction and application of institutional messages.

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For Durkheim, who did not grasp the full import of an emergent media landscape, and for Weber, who did, mass-produced newspapers (and, arguably, radio and television) arose as a credible replacement for more intimate, but increasingly less effective, forms for communicating social position, responsibility, and meaning. Of course, the opportunities for profit on a vast scale were apparent to those who owned and operated the presses, but the appetite for understanding new social and cultural norms through a credible and authoritative rendering of truth laid the foundation for a system of mediated reality that remains with us to this day. To apply a notion from the work of James Carey, the imagined community that comes into being under the conditions of Durkheim’s division of labour is, therefore, one that is largely constructed through the control of messages in space, big messages that include a Weberian vision of a national, institutional identity charged with meeting “problems of human existence”; acting “as agencies of social control providing norms of conduct to protect against chaos”; and representing “the embodiment of ideas.”12 Yet, as Carey points out (with a backhanded reference to Durkheim), the older, more “primitive” social order is tenacious. It does not completely disappear but continues to give “life an overall form, order, and tone.”13 Community associations continue to attract members; conversations continue to occur in barbershops and church basements; neighbours look out for one another. This is what prompts Carey to argue for a “ritual view” of communication: one grounded “not in the extension of messages in space, but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs.”14 It is also the point where the concept of the mass-produced message intersects the notion of the law: what Durkheim saw as the central index of social life, organized and codified in its most stable form. And, while Durkheim may have largely side-stepped the implications of the mass-mediated world that was coming into being around him, he placed the law at the very centre of his concern for this new and individualistic social order. Under conditions of mechanical solidarity, argues Durkheim, the law is harsh and unyielding because it is empowered to be so. Authority with “power to govern” is a simple reflection of the conscience collective, charged with upholding “respect for beliefs, traditions and collective practices – namely, to defend the common consciousness.”15 In this form of society, there is no room for individual challenges to the



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governing authority. The very purpose of the authority, legitimized through its representation of a homogeneous and tightly knit group, is to keep everyone in line, to protect the conscience collective by enforcing the conditions of its being. Durkheim writes: “The energy immanent within the consciousness is communicated to that authority, just as affinities of ideas are transmitted to the words they represent. This is how the authority assumes a character that renders it unrivalled. It is no longer a social function of greater or lesser importance, it is the embodiment of the collectivity.”16 Through an act of communication, therefore, the authority that is created upholds and enforces the common interest because it is the common interest and, as such, assumes the power of the group “over the consciousness of individuals.”17 This, says Durkheim, is the basis for repressive or penal law, the no-nonsense, eye-for-an-eye dispensation of justice meant to protect “group solidarity” based on commonly held “internalized norms, expectations, value orientations and sets of moral standards.”18 This works well as long as social groups are small and cohesive; but in a vast, complex, diverse, and divided social formation, the imposition of swift and sure justice based on what Durkheim called “the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society” is highly problematic. Who are the “average members” of this society? What are their “beliefs and sentiments?” What happens when the needs of the many outstrip the values of the few? Durkheim’s response was to suggest that a new order of law would necessarily arise as society grew to be more complex and that it would form the basis for social cohesion among differentiated individuals and groups. Instead of the predominance of law based on some kind of punishment, disputes would be handled through restitution; that is, perpetrators would no longer necessarily suffer for their deviances but would be charged with restoring disrupted relationships. In his examination of The Division of Labour, Anthony Giddens marks this as a key moment in Durkheim’s argument because it speaks to the establishment of new agreements, open and normalized contractual understandings on how daily life will be conducted. From these organic contracts, says Giddens, “a body of moral practice develops out of the increase in individual contractual obligation.”19 It follows that the rules of this new system of moral obligation must somehow be disseminated to the largest possible number of people if they are to have any standing in pansocietal normative practice. Yet, even in the face of this fundamental shift in the legal order, Durkheim asserts that it is not possible for repressive law to be entirely

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supplanted by a form based in restitution. A socially empowered institutional body charged with enforcing the common will must still handle the punishment of crime, offences to the body of moral practice.20 In other words, there are limits to the extent that a growing body of moral practice based on informal contracts between individuals can deal with the most egregious offences. The rituals of crime and punishment must be maintained in order to ensure confidence that the fabric of life’s overall form, order, and tone is not shredded by murder and mayhem. Which brings us, perhaps strangely, back to that courtroom in Sas­ katchewan. While it could not be argued that the cases before the judge represented anything close to murder and mayhem, the rituals of the court were all about maintaining form, order, and tone. The people who were judged had nothing to fear from the administration of justice. They may have been remorseful about having been caught, but the penalties imposed, even for minor Criminal Code offences, had more to do with restitution than punishment under a system that, for practical reasons, combines elements of penal law with the restitutive form. Certainly no one lost his or her freedom that day, unless you counted a group of teenagers who were effectively grounded by impaired-driving convictions. On the contrary, the judge’s demeanour was respectful; his humour was aimed at making an unpleasant task as palatable as possible. There was reasonable recourse for offenders like me to make an argument for leniency as long as we were willing to first admit the error of our ways. Even the police, who would return to the task of enforcing the law in the community, seemed willing to compromise when it was reasonably warranted. To push the example further, it could be argued that the court proceedings in small-town Saskatchewan were as much about theatre as they were about justice. The people facing the bench resembled a kind of participatory audience, each treated to the mild spectacle of a member from their community facing the figurative music. The very act of bringing the court from the centre of administrative influence to the local community hall speaks to the calculated sensibility of a travelling road show rather than the imposition from afar of a big institution’s coercive power. The comic commentary of the judge would not have worked had he not known his audience and been a master player upon that stage. In almost every respect, the performance of justice that day was about engaging the community in a lesson about its own rights and obligations. To mobilize another thought from James Carey’s ritual view of communication, this was about drama, the portrayal of “an



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arena of dramatic forces and action,” inviting “our participation on the basis of our assuming, often vicariously, social roles within it.”21 This is meaningful because it reveals a tacit admission: the law is not a topdown affair. It requires participation from the community in order to communicate the value orientations and moral norms it is required to uphold. The participation may be reluctant – after all, some level of punishment is meted out – but it is unambiguously participatory. In fact, sometimes it is made to be formally so: for what is a jury if not the ritualized and codified representation of the community? At this point I want to introduce a second example from my experience with the Saskatchewan justice system, this time as a working journalist covering the second trial of Robert Latimer. It is my contention that the journalists covering that trial missed something essential and, by doing so, did not fulfil their obligation to communicate the full meaning of Latimer’s murder conviction. I also assert that the “something missed” was, and remains, deeply implicated in the community’s share of the common interest that, in Durkheim’s view, is the legitimizing force behind the authority to judge criminal acts. The bald facts of the Latimer case are bleak. Robert Latimer was a Saskatchewan farmer who admitted to killing his twelve-year-old daughter in October 1993 by wrapping her in a sleeping bag, placing her in the cab of his pickup truck, and poisoning her with carbon monoxide. Tracy Latimer had the most devastating form of cerebral palsy. She was confined to a wheelchair, suffered excruciating pain from an intermittent dislocated hip, was severely developmentally challenged, and had undergone a number of painful operations to try to correct her physical problems. She weighed forty pounds. At the time of her death she was facing more surgery to attempt to fix her hip. The court was also told, however, that “Tracy loved music, could smile, laugh and move her hands, relate to her friends and siblings and was in no immediate mortal danger from the debilitating effects of cerebral palsy.”22 Robert Latimer insisted that he killed his daughter to end her suffering: that he had been left with a terrible choice and that euthanizing Tracy was the only humane remedy left open to her. It was a case that both galvanized and polarized the country. On the basis of the “mercy-killing” defence, Latimer pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He was tried and convicted in 1994 of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after ten years. Latimer appealed, but the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal upheld the conviction. “It is no defence for a parent

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to say because of a severe handicap,” wrote the court, “a child’s life has such diminished value that the child should not live any longer.”23 However, on further appeal the Supreme Court granted Latimer a new trial after it was revealed that an overzealous Crown prosecutor had, in effect, tampered with the jury by seeking jurors’ views prior to the trial on issues such as euthanasia and abortion. This is a critical point. By raising the possibility that Latimer’s first jury may have held a moral bias against euthanasia, the Supreme Court had in effect affirmed that Latimer should be held accountable by a fully representative group of people who were likely to understand, express, and practice “the totality of beliefs and sentiments” common to his community.24 As the second Latimer trial, held in Court of Queen’s Bench in North Battleford, drew to its conclusion, I was assigned to produce the news reports for the regional CBC television newscasts and to assist with the national coverage. I was in the courtroom when the jury returned a guilty verdict, once again for second-degree murder. At that moment, just as Latimer’s wife, Laura, jumped out of her chair, faced the jury, and cried out “No, No, No, No!” most of the journalists in the room headed for the exits. Newsrooms across the country were standing by to receive news of the verdict and deliver it to the country. And what most of those journalists missed in the rush to file the story was a very unusual development. The jury recommended to the judge in the case, Mr Justice Ted Noble, that Latimer be given a sentence of one year. I distinctly recall Justice Noble’s reaction. He smiled through gritted teeth. Then he warmly thanked the jury for its involvement in the trial and wound down the proceedings. The jury’s sentencing recommendation was unusual for two reasons. First, the obligation to deliver a sentence is the sole purview of the judge. In a proceeding separate from the trial, he or she hears arguments from the defence and the Crown on the severity of the sentence, and while judges must follow sentencing guidelines contained in the Criminal Code, they do have latitude to apply the law using a certain amount of their own discretion and reasoning. Second, the tone of the jury’s recommendation made it clear that the twelve members who had decided Latimer’s guilt were convinced that the mandatory minimum sentence for second-degree murder – life in prison with the possibility of parole after ten years – would not be appropriate, that the punishment did not fit the crime. This was quite remarkable. In an extremely formal setting, in the face of all the intimidating institutional rules of legal procedure, in the literal glare of the media spotlight, the average people representing Latimer’s community had decided to send the



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Canadian legal system a message based on their own values and judgments. They agreed that Latimer was guilty but considered a sentence of “life with the possibility after ten years” to be too harsh under the circumstances. In effect, the jury had listened to Robert Latimer’s notguilty plea, found him guilty as charged, then accepted that he was “guilty with an explanation” and recommended what they considered to be appropriate punishment. Perhaps more remarkable is that Justice Noble listened, though not to the extent that the jury had recommended. In sentencing Latimer, the judge agreed with a defence request to consider a constitutional exemption from the mandatory sentence, an option reserved for cases with extreme extenuating circumstances. In his decision on sentencing, Justice Noble said that the mandatory life sentence would breach Latimer’s right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. He characterized the death of Tracy Latimer as “a rare act of homicide that was committed for caring and altruistic reasons.”25 “That is why for want of a better term this is called compassionate homicide,” wrote Justice Noble. He described the relationship between Latimer and his daughter as “that of a loving and protective parent” and pointed out that, in the opinion of the court, Latimer “is not a threat to society, nor does he require any rehabilitation.”26 Yet it is likely that, without the jury’s recommendation for a one-year sentence, the door would not have been opened for the defence to argue for a constitutional exemption and for Justice Noble to consider that he could legitimately sentence Latimer to two years less a day, a sentence that would permit the time to be served in a provincial jail rather than a federal penitentiary. The Crown appealed. A year after the second trial, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal found in the prosecution’s favour, accepting the argument that Tracy Latimer’s life had value and quality in spite of her many hardships, and that Robert Latimer had no right to take it.27 The life sentence was reinstated. Once again, Latimer’s lawyer appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that his client had no choice but to “end the unrelenting suffering” of Tracy Latimer.28 The court disagreed. In 2001 the court ruled that the mandatory sentence would stand, with a minimum of ten years to be served.29 Latimer applied for full parole at the end of 2010 and his request was granted. As a convicted murderer on parole he will be subject to some form of court-ordered supervision for the remainder of his life sentence. What did journalists miss in this long, complex, and polarizing legal process? The Supreme Court, having ordered a second trial for Robert Latimer on the basis of a compromised jury, chose to ignore the

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recommendation of the uncompromised jury that decided his guilt in the second trial. As the Latimer case wended its way through the provincial appeals process to the highest court in the land, the wisdom of the twelve people from Latimer’s community who had decided his fate receded into the background. The institutional legal process took over. The one-year sentence recommended by Latimer’s jury became a point of odd fact in a growing list of related facts, an anomaly thrown into the roiling mix of an emotionally complex chain of trials and appeals. The jurors in the case were released from duty and returned to their lives, their unusual intervention in the life of Robert Latimer all but dismissed as a strange response by untutored folk who misunderstood the rules, who perhaps had been led by a clever defence lawyer to step out of bounds, who really did not know what they were doing. But I was in that courtroom. The jury knew exactly what it was doing. The judge recognized this and acted accordingly when the time came to pass sentence. The journalists covering the Latimer trial failed to put into context the importance of the jury’s recommendation and opted instead to report on legal arguments as they were presented in the various levels of appeal. And while journalistic coverage of the Latimer case would seek out and present many inputs and interventions from interested groups and individuals – representatives from religious organizations, the disabled, those lobbying for “right to die” legislation, and others – as a means to investigate the wider issues around the quality of life and death in our society, the unusual recommendation of Latimer’s jury was never truly invoked as a reason to hold the legal establishment’s feet to the fire. In retrospect, it should have come as no surprise that the hierarchy of Canadian courts would eventually overturn the sentence imposed by Justice Noble. It is the very nature of institutional imperatives that the long history of legal judgment and precedent guides the decisions that affect every one of us. This was part of the acquired DNA of the Appeal Court and Supreme Court justices who decided the Latimer case. The rules of the institutional system could always be expected to revert to the legal default setting: that a person convicted of second-degree murder must be sentenced to life in prison and that the convicted person may apply for parole only after having served ten years. Yet, if it is a social institution’s responsibility “to implement society’s decisions about how it intends to govern itself,” the Latimer case provided an opportunity to acknowledge where the power to judge is legitimated.30 And that’s where the voice of Durkheim, speaking across the judgments of a century and more, still carries weight.



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It is the conscience collective, the complex living embodiment of norms, expectations, value orientations, and moral standards that informs authority, not the other way around. Latimer’s jury did not ask the legal system for a reduction in the mandatory life sentence; it advised and instructed that this should be done. Justice Noble understood this and, under the guidance of his own judgment and legal expertise, invoked a constitutional exemption, reduced Latimer’s sentence on compassionate grounds, and fulfilled his obligation to the jury and to the law. This is the argument that should have been put before the wider Canadian public, a reminder that we were all collectively represented by the Latimer jury and, by extension, sat in judgment and came to a conclusion in this excruciatingly difficult case. Whether we agree with the verdict, whether we agree with the sentence, whether we agree that euthanasia is an abomination, is immaterial: through the judgment of twelve trusted souls we collectively decided Latimer’s guilt and his punishment. Yet the failure of the institution of journalism to pick up on this fundamental and pivotal point in the whole sad Latimer story should also come as no surprise. Journalists, like those who practise and interpret the law, are creatures of routine. To mobilize a thought from Weber, the institution of journalism with its own immanent rules and resources is inclined to show deference to the senior, more august legal establishment with its codified rules steeped in history. Certainly the journalists who covered the Latimer case showed little interest in questioning the procedures of the various levels of the legal system, preferring to defer in their reporting to the language and reasoning of the court rather than question, interpret, and critique. This, too, is addressed by Durkheim (via Giddens): “While on occasion there may be conflict between customary modes of behaviour and law, this is, according to Durkheim, exceptional, and occurs only when law ‘no longer corresponds to the state of existing society, but maintains itself, without reason for so doing, by the force of habit.’”31 Finally, we are left with a question: Why do we, as individual and collective beings, care about how crime is reported, or even if it should be reported at all? To take the matter to the extreme, if juries and lower court decisions have so little influence over the big issues that confront us as a society, why not revert to a system of repressive law, one that simply metes out sentences strictly defined by the Criminal Code? The shallow answer from Durkheim is that we all have a stake in understanding how the rules of conduct in our fragmented and diverse society will apply to us. The deeper concern, also from Durkheim, is that we

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are responsible for conferring upon the institutions that organize our lives the meaning of the totality of beliefs and sentiments, the norms, values, and moral codes that make institutional power legitimate. Our social formation relies on journalists thoughtfully to disseminate that meaning and, by doing so, to take responsibility for its ritual as well as transmitted aspects in order to ensure that the overall form, order, and tone of life in our dispersed yet connected communities is not trampled by institutions. The place for that to happen, for journalism’s own pedagogical responsibility to take hold, is not in the various rarefied atmospheres of high courts with their black-letter decisions on life-altering cases, but in the places where hash-oil smokers, petty thieves, and highway speeders meet basic justice. These are the places where community values and common sense intersect in a delicate play, where authority is legitimately tempered by the face-to-face regard of those who empower the right to decide, and where journalists would be well inclined to begin to understand their own empowered and empowering role. These are the places where Durkheim’s spirit whispers loudest. NOTES 1 Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (New York: Free Press 1984), 31. 2 Andrew Osler, News: The Evolution of Journalism in Canada (Mississauga, Ont.: Copp Clark Pittman 1993), 65. 3 Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, 44. 4 Osler, News, 65. 5 Durkheim, The Division of Labour, 203. 6 Richard Butsch, The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals (New York: Routledge 2008), 82–3. 7 James Carey, “The Communications Revolution and the Professional Communicator,” in Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren, eds., James Carey: A Critical Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1997), 129–30; Barbie Zelizer, Taking Journalism Seriously: News and the Academy (London: Sage 2004), 45–6; Michael Schudson, “The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism,” Journalism 2, no. 2 (2001): 151–2. 8 John Hartley, Popular Reality: Journalism, Modernity, Popular Culture (London: Arnold 1996), 13. 9 Schudson, “The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism,” 152.



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10 Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1989), 20. 11 Hanno Hardt, Social Theories of the Press: Constituents of Communication Research, 1840s to 1920s (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) 131. 12 Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America, 20. 13 James Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, rev. ed. (New York: Routledge 2009), 17. 14 Ibid., 15. 15 Durkheim, The Division of Labour, 42. 16 Ibid., 43. Emphasis added. 17 Ibid., 43. 18 Paul Colomy, Neofunctionalist Sociology (Brookfield, Vt.: E. Elgar Publishing 1990); Heine Andersen and Bo Kaspersen, eds., Classical and Modern Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 2000), 213–34. 19 Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press 1971), 77. 20 Durkheim, The Division of Labour, 204. 21 Carey, Communication as Culture, 17. 22 David Roberts, “Latimer Convicted of Murder Judge Grants Bail until Sentencing,” Globe and Mail, 6 November 1997. 23 Kent Roach, Due Process and Victims’ Rights: The New Law and Politics of Criminal Justice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999), 235. 24 Durkheim, The Division of Labour, 38–9. 25 Alanna Mitchell, “Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Latimer Mercy-Killing Appeal,” Globe and Mail, 7 May 1999. 26 “Compassionate Homicide: The Law and Robert Latimer,” CBC.ca, 6 December 2010, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/compassionatehomicide-the-law-and-robert-latimer-1.972561. 27 R. v. Latimer, S.J. No. 731 DRS 98–18049, (Saskatchewan Court of Appeal Regina, 1998), http://www.spmlaw.ca/scdla/latimer.htm. 28 Mitchell, “Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Latimer Mercy-Killing Appeal,” Globe and Mail. 29 R. v. Latimer, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 3, 2001 SCC 1 (Supreme Court, 2001),http:// scc-csc.lexum.com/en/2001/2001scc1/2001scc1.html. 30 Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America, 26. 31 Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory, 74.

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PART TWO Court Access and Information Technology

In our second section, we consider the many ways that practical and tangible aspects of crime reporting – court exhibits and search warrants, publication bans, financial pressures, and social media – can challenge journalists in their quest to find information and tell crime stories. While the subject can seem dry and bureaucratic on the surface, these contributors demonstrate how such issues as access, transparency, and case history can lead to significant changes in how we live our lives in Canada. Authors like television personality Linden MacIntyre, Toronto Star lawyer Burt Bruiser, London Free Press reporter Kate Dubinski, and many journalists-turned-academics like Susan Harada, Mary McGuire, Barbara Freeman, April Lindgren, and Mary Lynn Young demonstrate how the courts are not out there, but rather here, shaping our society right now. Leading off this section is Linden MacIntyre, long-time host of CBC’s documentary television show, the fifth estate. His chapter, “Courthouse Culture,” uses the fatal shooting of four police officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, by James Roszko, as a meditation on the functions of journalism: both to detail the story of what became a tale of national grief and to provide rational reflection about human nature and the public. In seeking to unveil the truth at Mayerthorpe, MacIntyre recollects his attempts to access search warrants and related documents – a process that was continually blocked by the RCMP. But the CBC veteran is no stranger to fighting for access: in 1979 he went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, where, by a slim margin of 5 to 4, judges upheld the principle of transparency in courts. MacIntyre recounts these two anecdotes, widely separated by time and geography, to illustrate what he calls “courthouse culture,” a term he uses to refer to the power

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of civil servants who, through their control of public documents, can actually confound what ought to be the virtues of public service and the justice system. In some respects, chapter 9 answers MacIntyre’s call for more transparency by suggesting that technology may be moving courts towards more openness. “The Virtual Courtroom: Journalistic Practice, Social Media, and Information Flow in Canada’s Courts,” by Susan Harada and Mary McGuire, examines how the intersection of new technologies, new social-media sites, and shifting tool-based journalistic practices has thrust journalists and citizens into virtual courtrooms constructed through as-it-happens coverage of legal proceedings. They argue that the live-tweeting of the 2010 sentencing hearing of then-Colonel Russell Williams underscored the myriad issues raised by social media in court. Journalists with every major news organization in Canada provided live coverage of the court proceedings by live-blogging and/ or tweeting using their smartphones and laptops. Using the Williams hearing as a foundational case study, this chapter examines social media and changing journalistic courtroom practice, with the view that media organizations must revisit the professional standards and practices guiding their court reporting in light of new realities affecting information flow, or face the risk that courts across the country will do so in their stead. Barbara M. Freeman continues this examination of transparency and accountability in chapter 10, focusing on how journalists today must balance the privacy of victims in sexual-assault cases with the right of the accused to a fair trial. In “‘Did She Consent to This Sex Act with This Accused?’: The News Media, Sexual-Assault Myths, and the Complainant’s Private Records in Court Testimony,” Freeman provides an historical discussion of the various ways in which sexual-assault cases have been covered by Canadian mainstream media, in light of the 2012 Senate review of a 1997 law written ostensibly to protect sexual-assault victims from unnecessary revelations of private information. Using a selection of coverage from the Globe and Mail, the Canadian Press news agency, and the Toronto Star, Freeman offers a brief history of sexualassault legislation so that readers will better understand our current rules of evidence and the reasons behind them. Chapter 11, “Fighting on the Side of the Angels,” offers well-known Toronto Star media lawyer Bert Bruser’s view of the biggest challenges facing crime and court reporters today. Bruser presents a brief historical overview, suggesting how and in what ways covering crime has

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changed in his more than thirty years at the Star, including some observations on the impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as the ground-breaking trial of Paul Bernardo. He argues, however, that the single biggest issue facing court and crime reporters today is access to documents to which members of the press, like ordinary citizens, are legally entitled. He urges journalism schools to better teach both the importance of access and the skills to bring this about. Chapter 12, “The Bandidos Murder Trial: All A-Twitter about a ­Canadian First,” offers London Free Press journalist Kate Dubinski’s inside view of what it was like to live-tweet the details of what came to be known as the “Shedden massacre,” where in April 2006 eight men were found stuffed into cars on a country road in southwestern ­Ontario, shot to death. The London Free Press was the first newspaper in the country to gain permission to live-tweet from inside the London courtroom custom-designed for this enormous trial, and Dubinski was the reporter tasked with the job. In this chapter, she shares her observations, insights, and in retrospect, her caveats, about Twitter’s impact on coverage of this case and how such technologies will likely shape future reporting practices. In chapter 13, “Aiding and Abetting: How Police Media-Information Units Shape Local News Coverage,” April Lindgren interrogates the sophisticated media-relations work within police departments that supply reporters with all the news the police deem fit to print. This chapter­ looks at the consequences of this “enabling” behaviour by police departments, beginning with a brief overview of the resources police in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) devote to media relations, followed by a discussion of the consequences that can result when limited newsroom reporting budgets combine with easy access to a non-stop supply of crime news provided by law enforcement. The chapter also looks at the impact of police media-relations departments on the news coverage of the Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao (Toronto edition). Lindgren’s content analysis and mapping of local news content in the newspaper found that Ming Pao has easy access to crime/fire/accident news but only limited access to local news about other topics (education, health, political news, etc.). Concluding this section is chapter 14, “‘Scoop Was King’: Media Com­ petition, Crime News, and Masculinity,” by Mary Lynn Young. Young examines the gendered working practices that are central to understanding collective amnesia about women’s contributions to journalism in Canada, with a focus on how crime was covered in the last

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century. Young suggests that these practices were deployed during two of the most intensely competitive newspaper wars in the latter part of the twentieth century. Through the narratives of working journalists, Young chronicles competitive practices in the media landscape in order to ground the relationship among gender, media economic power structures, and the reporting of crime in Canada. Ultimately, this section is about the architecture of information – how it is collected, accessed, and disseminated. Contributors demonstrate that the perimeters in which journalists operate – and have operated – dictate, in many ways, the outcomes that are more or less likely to occur. While this view does not relieve journalists of choices and responsibilities, it does allow us to see if and when we – journalists and members of the public – should push for change, protest policies, challenge conventions, or affirm certain rules already in place. Judges’ decisions in Ottawa can affect what citizens can and cannot do in Vancouver. Editors’ competitive instincts in Toronto can lead to women being virtually dismissed from crime reporting. As some authors illustrate, how we define things such as rape and free speech can lead to circumstances in which reporters find themselves side by side with biker gangs or getting punched and bitten to be the first with a photograph. All of these situations point to underlying issues that go beyond individual journalists to focus on structures that, while not impermeable, necessitate larger group participation and organization to bring about significant change.

8 Courthouse Culture Linden M ac I n t y re

Linden MacIntyre is an award-winning author and journalist. The recipient of ten Gemini awards for broadcast journalism, MacIntyre began working at the CBC in 1976 and became the co-host at the fifth estate in 1990. His first novel, The Long Stretch (1990), was nominated for a CBA Libris Award. His memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence (2006), won both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction, and The Bishop’s Man received the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize. He retired from the CBC in 2014. In this chapter, he links two seemingly unrelated anecdotes – the shooting of RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, and his attempt as a young reporter to access a search warrant that led to a Supreme Court challenge – to explore and uphold the ancient principle of transparency in the courts and to illustrate its crucial importance to the public’s right to know. On a frosty morning in early March 2005, a violent misfit named James Roszko, who had a pathological hatred for police officers, ambushed four members of the RCMP on his farm near Mayerthorpe, Alberta, killing all four. It was a national tragedy. One of the officers was fresh out of basic training. One was unarmed. Coverage of the event focused on the well-known psychoses of the killer. The dead officers were victims of a wicked, deranged man. It was an evil deed, on the face of it, inevitable. The inevitability of tragedy is always a distressing thought. It leaves people uneasy, distracted by echoes of a dark philosophical theory that human existence is, not far below the surface of things, brutal and unpredictable. It is especially distressing when the victims of a brutal and unpredictable event are police officers, people trained to defend

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themselves in the often precarious business of maintaining public order, people who should also be protected by a civil consensus that what they do is necessary and good. The immediate aftermath of Mayer­ thorpe was a journalistic reflection of national public grief with overtones of outrage and hostility towards the perpetrator. But journalism also has a parallel responsibility, beyond reflecting emotional response, to generate rational reflection about what happened so that there might be an improved understanding of human nature and human institutions and, in the end, perhaps a reduction in the existential peril in the daily lives of people like police officers. The point of rational reflection is to challenge the notion of inevitability. Could it have been foreseen and prevented? Can we predict and thus prevent something like this happening again? Time would reveal two tracks of rational reflection in the aftermath of Mayerthorpe, one by some investigative elements of the mass media, and one by the RCMP itself. I was part of the former. Producers where I worked, on CBC’s the fifth estate, immediately recognized the need for a major effort to find out as much detail as could possibly be unearthed about Roszko’s history and about the circumstances that placed four policemen in harm’s way on that March morning. In that undertaking we assumed that the process would be relatively straightforward. After all, we thought, the RCMP would see our objectives as not unlike their own – rational reflection, approximate truth, improved safety for police officers. It didn’t take long to discover the naivety of that assumption. Search warrants are vital investigative tools for the police. A search warrant suspends basic privacy and property rights in pursuit of a higher public good – the collection of evidence of crime. For a journalist, such evidence offers a factual basis for the stories we are obliged to tell, and, indirectly, provides public oversight for a process that compromises fundamental civic rights. The Mounties made their first discoveries of illegal activity on Roszko’s property under the cover of a civil warrant, issued to a privately employed bailiff to enforce a court order to repossess a truck. RCMP officers attended to provide assistance if it was necessary. By happenstance they discovered that Roszko was growing marijuana on his farm. They quickly got their own warrant to launch a criminal investigation. We at the CBC found out about their search warrant. The first sign that we might have different objectives came when the police attempted to prevent us from seeing it. With the help of a good lawyer we overcame their objections.

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Examining the documents relating to the warrant, the fifth estate producer, Scott Anderson, noticed that it made no reference to marijuana plants. That omission raised the possibility that there was a second warrant. Inquiries revealed that in the weeks following the crime, the RCMP had in fact obtained five search warrants that, up to this point, nobody knew about. These warrants were temporarily sealed. When the RCMP discovered that we knew about the documents, they quietly went to court and got an order sealing them indefinitely. It was disappointing, but not at all surprising, part of a dreary pattern established by the attitudes and phobias of police officers and court officials in the course of many years. In the fall of 1979, attempting to find out why RCMP officers were seizing documents from the offices of prominent businessmen in Halifax, I eventually found myself in the presence of an inspector in the whitecollar crime section. We vaguely knew each other and the conversation was guarded. I had ascertained that the common denominator distinguishing the raids was that the subject businessmen were well-known political fund-raisers. Near the end of our chat, the policeman, in a tone that seemed defensive to me, suggested that an examination of the search warrants and supporting documents would reveal that the searches were legitimate and that the investigation was scrupulous. Innocently, I asked where I could see these documents and he helpfully suggested that all I had to do was present myself at the local courthouse and ask for them. A senior official in the provincial Attorney General’s Department confirmed what the policeman had told me: I was entitled to see the relevant documents. The gatekeeper at the courthouse thought differently. He was a former policeman, a justice of the peace, and a court clerk. All his instincts compelled him to dismiss my request. I warned him, colourfully, that I was prepared to take the argument before a judge in chambers “upstairs.” He, equally colourfully, scoffed at the idea. In due course we found ourselves before Justice Peter Richard “upstairs” and at the end of a surprisingly brief legal process the judge affirmed what I had already been told by a policeman and a government lawyer. In his decision, the judge expressed an attitude that might have warned us that this was but the beginning of what would become a long legal struggle, one that bluntly reflects a deep and abiding distrust among many public servants of the public as represented by the media.

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The judge wrote, in his decision: “It is therefore with some reluctance [emphasis mine] that I find the applicant is entitled to a declaratory judgment … I say ‘reluctant’ because I am not unmindful of the possible harm which could be done.” The harm that he anticipated had to do with potential jeopardy for people “without fault or blame” who may be subject to publicity about searches. It seemed not to have occurred to the judge that the prospect of publicity and consequent accountability might offer safeguards for public privacy by deterring searches that were spurious. In any case, we had won. Before we had a chance to see the documents in question, the provincial attorney general (notwithstanding the opinion of his own advisers) would successfully send the Richard decision to the appeals division of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court. It would be mid-March 1980 before the appeal court judges upheld our right of access, too late to be of use for the story I had been pursuing six months earlier – but a legal precedent that would provoke yet another political counter-attack, this time in the Supreme Court of Canada. The appeal judges in Nova Scotia had given us more than we had asked for and, from a public-policy point of view, made the further challenge unavoidable. The judge who wrote the appeal court decision had gratuitously added: “… this declaration should not be limited to executed search warrants but should apply to any informations presented to the court.” We hadn’t asked for that. We went to court as citizens, not reporters, and only wanted to see documents, known as informations, related to executed warrants. The learned judges in Nova Scotia had turned our bland application into a provocation that would mobilize extraordinary opposition when it went before the Supreme Court justices in Ottawa. By the time it got there, the Nova Scotia attorney general was joined and supported by the federal Justice Department and the attorneys general of six provinces. We eventually won, but only by a narrow 5–4 margin. And the judgment of the five, while endorsing an ancient principle of transparency in the courts, articulated a couple of other principles that, in their minds, were of equivalent importance: personal privacy and investigative integrity. The four dissenting justices bluntly warned that too much judicial transparency could harm the innocent and impair the efficiency of a search warrant as a weapon in society’s fight against crime. Parlia­ ment was listening and, in subsequent amendments to the Criminal Code, responded to that fear, attempting to reduce the transparency so

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reluctantly upheld by the majority judges in Nova Scotia and Ottawa. One Criminal Code amendment set out grounds (and a general invitation) to seal search warrants and supporting documentation where they might reveal the identity of a confidential informant, compromise the nature and extent of an ongoing investigation, endanger someone involved in an investigation, prejudice the interests of an innocent person (leaving the meaning of the word “innocent” ambiguous), or “for any other sufficient reason.” Requests to seal search warrants would become the rule rather than the exception and police officers have become extremely creative in obtaining sealing orders and even concealing the times and places where they do it. Following the Mayerthorpe tragedy in 2005, the Mounties used all the now familiar excuses to justify the sealing of search warrants: privacy; protection of informants; integrity of investigation, and so on. Once again, I found myself sitting in the back of a courtroom while lawyers at the front articulated familiar arguments for public access to public documents. It would come as a pleasant surprise, as it had many years before in Nova Scotia, when a judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta agreed with our lawyers and instructed that the Mayerthorpe search warrants be unsealed. The warrants were revealing. It became clear, reviewing the sparse details of the sworn affidavits, that the RCMP had embarked on a mission to prove that the murders on Roszko’s farm were the result of a conspiracy. In other words, they were seeking evidence to reinforce the notion that the tragedy was inevitable, leading to the useful corollary conclusion that the RCMP, as an institution, was in no way accountable for what had happened. The process, however, was even more revealing: notwithstanding years of legal precedent, reinforced by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the default position of police and courthouse functionaries is still to exclude the public any time they feel it is expedient to do so. Two anecdotes, widely separated by the passage of time, illustrate a syndrome that I have come to regard as “courthouse culture.” It is a state of mind that is a common feature of attitudes prevailing in bureaucratic systems, most problematically in public service. It is a sense of proprietorship rooted in a virtuous regard for duty in the care of public documents that impinge on private lives. But, like all virtues,

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a sense of public duty is easily corrupted by the powers that go along with it, small clerical powers of exclusion, large powers of law enforcement. And, all too often, it is power broadly exercised by small minds and hostile instincts that defeats the virtues and responsibilities of public service – especially in the justice system. The principle of transparency in the courts is rooted in a British imperial statute dating back to 1372. It has been refined and reaffirmed by philosophers and scholars many times since then. In 1982 the Supreme Court of Canada applied that principle to search warrants. It is enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And yet hardly a day goes by in the justice systems of this country when, somewhere, someone finds a way to defeat this ancient principle – a clerk’s arbitrary refusal of access to a public document, a policeman’s careful ambiguities in affidavits, imaginative ploys by court officials to conceal important documents – all now commonplace. Over time, and with a great expenditure of expertise and money, we have set in place important precedents that undermine the alltoo-human impulse to work within what Jeremy Bentham called “the darkness of secrecy.”1 We have more than six centuries of tradition on our side when we confront the darkness. We have charter rights and legal precedent. Most important of all, we have a generally, if sometimes reluctantly, conscientious judiciary, which, when forced by the media to consider tradition, principle, and the law, will usually end up doing the right thing. The list of such instances grows longer every year: MacIntyre v. the Attorney General of Nova Scotia; the CBC in Dagenais2 and in numerous other cases; the Vancouver Sun on Air India; the Toronto Star, with the CBC and the London Free Press, on tainted meat-packing; the Edmonton Journal taking on the province of Alberta on the issue of open courts. On and on it goes. Thanks to Dagenais alone there are now stringent tests to be passed before the principle of open justice can be violated. But the fondness for secrecy is undiminished, and perhaps even thriving in a political environment of public cynicism and disengagement. There is no end to the potential for abuse by individuals who, for palpably bad reasons, will try to block legitimate inquiry and frustrate the purpose of inquiry, which is accountability. It is an impulse that must always be contested on principle but also to sustain the credibility of the system itself. In the words of Peter Cory, a retired justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, “anything that prevents light being shed … can only lead to dark suspicion of the process.”

Courthouse Culture  135 NOTES 1 Jeremy Bentham, Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 9 (Edinburgh: William Tait 1843), 493. 2 Dagenais v. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [1994] is the leading Supreme Court Decision about the use of publication bans and how they relate to the right to freedom of expression as outlined in s.2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Lucien Dagenais and three other men (known as the respondents) were members of a Catholic religious order and all were charged with physically and sexually abusing young boys while they were teachers at a Catholic school for boys in Ontario. The CBC began advertising a fictional mini-series, The Boys of St. Vincent, that outlined sexual and physical abuse of boys at a Catholic institution. The respondents, Dagenais et al., asked for an injunction to prevent the broadcast of this fictional series until after their trials because it could have an impact on the fairness of the trials. The Supreme Court ruled that, while judges have a common law authority to impose publication bans on information in a criminal trial, they must weigh competing rights such as freedom of expression with the right to a fair trial. Moreover, the ruling held that ­media have a right to appeal a decision of a publication ban.

9 The Virtual Courtroom: Journalistic Practice, Social Media, and Information Flow in Canada’s Courts S u san Har ada an d Mary M c Gui r e

Introduction The live-tweeting and live-blogging of the 2010 sentencing hearing of then-Colonel Russell Williams was a turning point in the use of socialmedia tools, such as Twitter,1 by Canadian journalists in their coverage of judicial proceedings.2 Williams, the former commander of Canada’s largest air force base, CFB Trenton, appeared in court after pleading guilty to the brutal slaying of two women, the sexual assault of two others, and a string of fetish break-ins.3 Although his was not the first Canadian judicial proceeding to be live-tweeted, Williams’s was the first to be tweeted4 so extensively by reporters from every major news organization in the country. The live information flow, via the smartphones and laptops that reporters were permitted to bring into court, resulted in a unique form of social-media journalism that was both praised and criticized. It was real-time, play-by-play coverage that created a virtual courtroom stretching well beyond the Belleville, Ontario, venue, giving people across the country an interactive front-row seat and exclusive view into how one of Canada’s most notorious killers was brought to justice. At the same time, the journalistic challenges inherent in explaining court proceedings and describing the disturbing details of Williams’s crimes in short, rapid posts – a process quite unlike conventional news gathering and reporting – raised questions about the value of such coverage. It led to calls for a national discussion about the impact of social-­ media tools on court proceedings, and the need to develop ground rules to guide the judges who decide when, and under what conditions, those tools should be wielded.



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Background and Methodology Transmitting short-text bulletins from open court seemed a logical evolution in the way journalists covered judicial procedures in Canada. Whereas reporters traditionally exited the courtroom to send news ­updates – whether by phoning their newsrooms or sending stories via Internet-connected laptops – Twitter and other micro-blogging software allowed them to publish a continuous stream of text about what was unfolding without leaving their courtroom seats. Tweeting could thus be viewed as the latest method of print-based news reporting; the wireless laptops and handheld devices that enabled it were simply a new form of printing press. However, social-media court coverage enabled by new technologies was contentious, even within a judicial system that acknowledged the crucial role the media play in ensuring that justice is seen to be done. Canada has a strong open-court tradition derived from England5 and underscored by the Section 11(d) Charter right that guarantees a fair public hearing to anyone charged with an offence. Alongside that is the assumption that what transpires in open court may be made public beyond the courtroom walls – an understanding bolstered by the press freedom guarantee in Section 2(b) of the Charter.6 While noting that there can be justifiable limitations, the Supreme Court of Canada has consistently supported this view, as it did again in early 2011 in Canadian Broadcasting Corp. v. Canada, when Justice Marie Deschamps cited extensive case law in reiterating that “freedom of the press is essential to the open court principle.”7 Even so, courts have long favoured a cautious approach to new technologies, and this caution dictated how social-media journalism was viewed. This was not surprising, given the history of the debate over cameras in our courtrooms. While the broadcasting of trials has become routine in many international jurisdictions, courts in Canada have responded unevenly on this issue. The Supreme Court of Canada’s proceedings are now regularly broadcast, but, aside from occasional experiments, provincial courts have resisted cameras. The debate has changed little over the years.8 In summary, those in opposition argue that cameras would have a deleterious impact on trials and their participants, are not essential for the maintenance of the open-court principle, and could distort, through selective presentation of only portions of a trial, the judicial process.9 Those in support maintain that the notion of a public hearing extends beyond courtroom walls, that wider publication encourages the

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integrity of proceedings, and that cameras “would permit a much more dignified, realistic and representative presentation of the process.”10 In addition, there is the issue of the camera as an essential journalistic tool. As Justice Peter Cory noted in a dissenting opinion in a 1993 Supreme Court judgment involving the media’s ability to film proceedings in the Nova Scotia legislature from the public gallery: “Reporting in all forms has evolved over the ages. Engraved stone tablets gave way to the baked clay tablets impressed with the cuneiform writing of the Assyrians and the papyrus records of the Egyptians. It is not long ago that the quill pen was the sole means of transcribing the written word. Surely today neither the taking of notes in shorthand or the use of unobtrusive tape recording devices to ensure accuracy would be banned from the press gallery. Nor should the unobtrusive use of a video camera.”11 At the newest point of that continuum of stone tablets to cameras are the wireless devices that make live-tweeting possible. The debate about their use has echoed the “cameras in courts” discourse: the impact on trials and participants; access to public hearings; and the quality and value of the resulting coverage. However, as was evident from the Williams coverage, social-media journalism can be, in some ways, more complex. This is, in part, because it requires instant interpretation and judgment by a mediator – the reporter – and, in part, because it can result in a more accessible and participatory form of reportage.12 Thus, it could arguably have a greater overall impact than would cameras. In examining the implications of such journalism, our analysis will focus on the Williams hearing and the live Internet-based coverage provided by four major Canadian news organizations: the Ottawa Citizen; the Toronto Star; the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC); and the Globe and Mail. Related social-media/court issues, such as impacts on judicial players, are acknowledged, although a thorough examination is beyond the scope of this chapter. The tweets posted by the above-mentioned organizations’ journalists over the four-day sentencing hearing were analysed, with a focus on key points of the proceedings: the introduction of the details of Williams’s crimes into the record; Williams’s video confession; and the final sentencing. Our empirical analysis of the tweets was based on a set of practical and ethical challenges unique to live-tweeting: the need to make instantaneous editorial judgments, usually without editorial oversight, in the production of a constant stream of tweets; the difficulty of supplying context while providing play-by-play coverage; and the pressure to respond to the instant feedback from readers made possible by



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the participatory nature of social media, while heeding the public appetite for a dose of the personal along with the facts. These major challenges were identified during a series of semi-structured interviews with journalists and editors, alongside secondary-source material including news reports, editorials, conference proceedings, and news organizations’ social-media policies. We also briefly review some earlier instances of live-tweeting from Canadian judicial proceedings to chart the development of the social-media-based approach. Early Twitter Court Coverage In chapter 22, in the third section of this book, Sarah Berry and Rob Whitley explore the 2009 case of Vincent Li to expose the links between criminality, violence, and mental illness. For us, the Li case is notable because it may be the first criminal trial in Canada to be reported via Twitter,13 and it was live-tweeted without explicit judicial authorization. Li was charged with the gruesome slaying and dismemberment of a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba in July 2008, as described at a court hearing during which a psychological assessment was ordered to determine if he was fit to stand trial. He was ultimately deemed fit, admitted to the killing, but pled not guilty owing to mental illness. The trial, by judge alone, focused on the assessment of his mental health by doctors.14 The Winnipeg Free Press assigned reporter Bruce Owen to send updates from court via his BlackBerry. That it was a novel form of journalism at the time is evident by the paper’s explanation to readers: “For the uninitiated, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Owen will send ‘tweets’ from the courtroom, as new information is unveiled in the case.”15 Owen went on to live-tweet subsequent trials in Winnipeg and, as was the case with Li, did not ask for leave to do so: “We didn’t ask for the court’s permission, and likely never will. We believe court is an open, public process.”16 At the time of the Li and Williams cases, Manitoba did not have a written policy about laptop or wireless communication device usage in courtrooms, or the ability of the media or general public to transmit from court to social networks such as Twitter, leaving it to individual judges’ discretion. That changed in 2013.17 Some jurisdictions had banned courtroom use of laptops by the media,18 or restricted Internet connectivity, which in effect prohibited tweeting.19

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Nova Scotia, for one, had an Electronic Devices policy that permitted text transmission but only “if it does not interfere with proceedings or the courtroom recording system.”20 Ontario’s courts are governed by the Courts of Justice Act.21 At the time of the Williams hearing there was no written policy dealing specifically with social-media tools, so here, too, it was left to judicial discretion. Judicial consent was tacit for the province’s first live-tweeted trial in 2009, during what was known as the “Bandidos” case. It was Ontario’s worst mass murder, involving six people connected with the notorious Bandidos biker gang, charged for the execution-style slayings of eight members of the same gang in April 2006.22 London Free Press reporter Kate Dubinski, who details her personal recollections of the trial and technology in chapter 12, was assigned to provide coverage along with reporter Jane Sims. Dubinski decided to live-tweet the trial, by judge and jury, from the outset: “I was riveted by the Winnipeg Free Press’s in-courtroom tweeting of the trial of Vince Weiguang Li, the accused in the case of the Greyhound bus beheading, complete with graphic testimony. Call me morbid, but I thought the Bandidos trial would be just as perfect to tweet. It had a compelling cast of characters, a judge who was willing to let media use the Internet in one of the courtrooms, plenty of visual evidence and all kinds of drama built right in – the biker lifestyle is a big draw.”23 All electronic devices were banned in the main courtroom, “due to security concerns,”24 but reporters could use them in a viewing courtroom, set up with an audio/video feed from the main courtroom to accommodate the numbers attending the high-profile trial. Dubinski live-tweeted from her BlackBerry and laptop while Sims reported for the newspaper from the main courtroom. Sims notes that the judge and lawyers knew the reporters were tweeting – one lawyer even followed the Twitter feed at times – but they never objected in court.25 Only at one point were electronics banned from the viewing courtroom; it was during the testimony of a key prosecution witness – a Bandido-turnedinformant who witnessed the killings and who received immunity and a new identity in exchange for his testimony. Not until the spring of 2009 – about six weeks into the Bandidos trial – was the live-tweeting issue formally put before a judge, specifically in the case of then-mayor of Ottawa, Larry O’Brien, who faced trial, by judge alone, on charges of influence peddling.26 Given the enormous public interest in the case, the Ottawa Citizen decided to apply formally to use electronic devices in the courtroom in order to provide live, play-by-play



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coverage on Twitter and/or blogs.27 Justice Douglas Cunningham allowed unobtrusive “instant text transmission”28 from devices such as BlackBerrys, but only for the O’Brien trial, not as a general court policy. While acknowledging concerns about the potential negative impact of live-tweeting court proceedings – the possibility of inappropriate disclosure of private or protected information, the prospect that it would prove to be a “genie in the bottle”29 – he remarked that instant blogosphere transmission “is the world in which we live.”30 He also noted that social media could have a greater impact on jury trials and so in those cases the issue might need to be approached differently. Although not the first instance of Twitter court coverage, the O’Brien trial was the first in which the practice received explicit judicial sanction. The media hailed the decision, describing it as an acknowledgment of the Internet as the new “public commons” where citizens could watch over the “institutions of democracy.”31 That new space – the virtual courtroom – was built and populated within a few short months in 2009 during a handful of live-tweeted court cases. However, not until the 2010 Williams hearing did the major journalistic and legal strands come together in a significant way, when the nature and volume of information flow clearly demonstrated the implications of Twitter-based court reporting for the public, the media, and the courts. The Williams Protocol and Hearing Even without the use of social media, the sentencing hearing of Russell Williams would have attracted enormous media attention. He was in court in October 2010 for four days as the Crown presented a detailed accounting of the crimes he had himself recorded with both still and video cameras. In planning their coverage, media lawyers developed a consent agreement that was subsequently endorsed by Justice Robert F. Scott.32 The protocol authorized journalists from “recognized” Canadian media organizations to bring electronics such as BlackBerrys and laptops into court in order to transmit texts of the proceedings. Given the foreign media attracted by the notorious case, individuals who could prove they were journalists and who agreed to submit to the court’s jurisdiction could do the same.33 Only members of the public were barred from bringing in electronic devices, a proviso meant to ensure that photographs of unpublishable exhibits, for example, did not end up on the Internet.34 Our examination of the resulting Twitter or live-streaming coverage published by the Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto

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Star, the CBC, and the Globe and Mail focuses on the implications of posting speed, context limitations, and public feedback. News organizations sent in teams of reporters, some of whom were there to cover it in traditional ways, writing stories for the next day’s papers or preparing reports for evening newscasts. Others, however, were assigned to provide live updates on Twitter or live-blogs. We found that their resulting material was a collection of the mundane amidst the horrific – bits of information that sometimes lacked unifying context. Typing at high speed, reporters posted everything – from the challenge of keeping their BlackBerrys and laptops fully charged, to graphic details of Williams’s depravity as evidence was presented, to the fact that they had to skip lunch for fear they would lose their courtroom seats if they left. Halfway through the first day, for example, Toronto Star reporters tweeted descriptions of disturbing photographs of Williams, followed by tweets about how the hearing might “play” internationally after journalists scrummed a New York Times reporter outside the courthouse. On the second day, details of Marie-France Comeau’s murder were introduced in court. In the space of half an hour, a series of thirteen tweets from the Ottawa Citizen’s Meghan Hurley jumped from this: #ColRW35 covered her nose with duct tape. She suffocated to death. 11:00 October 19, 2010. #ColRW took photos of Comeau after her death. Then, he washed her bed sheets with bleach. 11:01 October 19, 2010.

to this: Lunch break. 11:15 Oct 19, 2010. Williams’ lawyer is getting his car towed. 11:31 Oct 19, 2010.36

Without time to reflect or consult senior editors, journalists made editorial decisions on the fly as they wrote their updates, often minute-by-minute, in the race to keep up with courtroom proceedings as well as with the competition. Furthermore, they were making those decisions as they saw the shocking photographic evidence and heard Crown lawyers describe the horrors Williams inflicted on the women he raped, tortured, and killed. Hurley said that there were times she had trouble typing because her eyes, like those of most people in the courtroom, were filled with tears.37 Midway through the second day



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the CBC’s Greg McArthur posted this: “It is difficult to describe what it is like to sit here, behind the man who did this, and the sobbing family to my left. Much of this is too graphic to describe here. 1:55 Oct­ ober 19, 2010.”38 As they struggled over what to include and exclude, they didn’t always make the same choices. The first day focused primarily on the evidence that Williams had broken into forty-eight homes, some of them multiple times, and photographed himself modelling underwear belonging to young girls. There were also images of other things he did while in their bedrooms. At first, some reporters used the phrase “pleasured himself” in their tweets, while others used the word “masturbate.” At one point CBC reporter Dave Seglins reported that the images were becoming increasingly disturbing. With a warning that “graphic content” followed, his post included this line: “Williams is seen handling one pair of girls’ underwear with a noticeable blood stain in them. 3:30 October 18, 2010.”39 The tweets from the Ottawa Citizen went further, describing in more detail what Williams did with the underwear. The Toronto Star’s tweets, on the other hand, avoided any mention of this. Instead, after a tweeting pause, the Star’s Joanna Smith posted a progress report on the list of incidents that led to eighty-two counts of break and enter: “We’re now at count 43, and glad to be moving on from count 42, which was particularly uncomfortable to see. 2:41 October 18, 2010.”40 As an experienced journalist, Smith rejected the notion of verbatim tweeting, and applied her news values and judgment as she composed her tweets: “I would ask myself before each tweet, ‘is this necessary? Does this say something new about a) Russell Williams b) the investigation, the police, the victims, the family, the whole process?’ If I couldn’t answer those questions of myself in a way that satisfied me then I would just not tweet it, essentially.”41 Reporters also made different choices when tweeting about the moments surrounding the death of Marie-France Comeau, all of which were photographed or recorded on video by Williams (the visuals were not shown in court, only described by the Crown). The Globe’s Timothy Appleby sent this series of posts: The description of the murder/rape is unsparing. Nobody in this courtroom has heard such an account delivered in a public forum. Every small detail of what the killer colonel did to his victim is being presented. 11:39 October 19, 2010.

144  Covering Canadian Crime He performed his atrocities naked, save for a black balaclava. And constantly the photos and videos are being taken. At one point he grins at the camera. 11:44 October 19, 2010. Members of the public are weeping. 11:45 October 19, 2010.42

That same morning, Hurley sent these tweets: Family members are sobbing as gruesome details are read out by the Crown attorney. Some are too graphic to publish. 10:41 October 19, 2010. It’s very hard to listen to some of the details surrounding Comeau’s death. 10:45 October 19, 2010.43

At times, reporters posted tweets that said material was being excluded. From Smith, about Comeau’s death: “I am not tweeting these details, but I want everyone to know that she tried to fight him. She told him no. 11:40 October 19, 2010.”44 While they could not consult with editors before publishing, as they would if they were reporting traditionally, they were monitored by their newsrooms. Hurley received messages from her editor at times to “tone it down a bit.”45 Smith directly responded to questions from her editors about the images of Williams in the girls’ underwear in her Twitter feed: “Editor just asked me to describe facial expression of #ColRW in his self-portraits. I’m struggling for words, but would say defiant/bored. 12:40 October 18, 2010.”46 The reporters faced another challenge that conventional reporters do not. Some received queries via Twitter from their followers, which they felt compelled to answer even as they were simultaneously monitoring and tweeting details of the hearing. For example, when Hurley tweeted that Williams had given Jessica Lloyd some fruit after he raped her, a follower tweeted wondering what kind of fruit she was given. Hurley responded, in a tweet, that the court was not told. Smith fielded questions from followers about why, since Williams pled guilty, his crimes were being described in such detail: “Lawyers say they need to go through agreed facts, demonstrate his obsessions. It matters for possible future parole hearings 12:00 October 18, 2010.”47 On the third day, as the court was about to watch the video of Williams’s police interrogation and confession, Smith had an exchange with one follower, @katiemjy, about her use of the word “interesting” in a tweet.



The Virtual Courtroom 145 The video shown will be edited down to about two hours, 45 min (from 9 hours). Will be interesting to see at which point #ColRW “breaks.” 8:28 Wednesday, October 20, 2010. @katiemjy Why? The video will also be difficult to watch, but please explain why the word “interesting” is strange. 9:00 Wednesday, October 20, 2010. @katiemjy Hm ... I thought the word interesting was rather neutral, but that’s an (something) perspective on it. 9:23 Wednesday, October 20, 2010.48

The live interactivity is something Smith, for one, embraces as a new journalistic tool linked to a responsibility to engage: “I’ve unleashed this on people. I’ve burdened people with it, and if they have questions about it, then I should be answering their questions.”49 Overall, the Williams hearing was a particularly shocking case involving an upper-echelon member of the Canadian military; the resulting social-media coverage clearly delineated – in a way that no other case likely would have – the journalistic and legal challenges posed when the doors of the virtual courtroom were thrown wide open. The Challenges of Live-Tweeting from Court

Journalistic Challenges Within traditional news coverage, the reporter’s role is to sift through the facts and provide readers and viewers with a summary of what is most important, along with background information and context, while keeping their own opinions to themselves.50 The nature of social media changes that. First, reporters provide live updates without time for measured judgment about the importance of details. The traditional approach of filter, then publish, is turned on its head.51 As those covering both the Williams and Bandidos hearings said, the pressure to make snap editorial judgments about graphic testimony is greater because of Twitter’s immediacy. Second, critics note that Twitter reporting generally does not allow for the presentation of the larger context of the trial.52 While our findings suggested that individual reporters handled context differently, this charge was not borne out by Smith’s exchanges with followers. In this example, she answered a legal question about why consecutive sentences are not handed down in Canada: “Current rationale is one can’t

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sentence one person to more than one life, but new law wld prevent 25-yr parole hearings 9:21 October 20, 2010.”53 It must also be remembered that Twitter reporting of a trial is usually only one aspect of the coverage offered by media organizations. The context and nuance that were traditionally available in newspapers or on newscasts in the pre-Twitter era are still offered alongside instant, play-by-play coverage. Senior editors at the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and CBC all published notes defending the breadth of their coverage of Williams.54 Finally, the interactive nature of social media is an invitation for reporters to share personal reactions to the stories they cover, which can make navigating between fact and opinion difficult. Although it is argued that an expression of emotion is an element of even “serious” journalism,55 some practitioners, such as Owen of the Winnipeg Free Press, objected to the insertion of personal thoughts, although he provided colour along with factual updates. During Williams, Smith often provided both emotion and colour: I now believe that anyone who says break-and-enter, theft are a “victimless crimes” is wrong. 11:17 October 18, 2010. On break from court, women give each other sympathetic looks, shudder as we pass each other in the hallway; while washing hands 11:34 October 18, 2010.56

The very nature of Twitter court coverage can attract both positive and negative attention. Journalists who live-tweeted the Bandidos trial and Williams gained many new followers. But, while social-media journalism was welcomed by some who wrote, for example, that “the world needs to know what a monster Williams became,” others complained that it was too overwhelming to follow.57 Our findings highlight the need for news organizations to have established policies and practices about when and how they will use social media in their court coverage. Journalists assigned to live-tweet from court need guidance on a number of fronts: how to ensure their reporting goes beyond what critics call mere stenography or “verbal belching”;58 how to balance fact, opinion, and emotion in their posts; and how to engage interactively with followers. In the months that followed the Williams hearing, as the use of social-­ media tools by reporters grew, some news organizations updated their journalistic standards and practices to guide reporters.59 Here in



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Canada, the Toronto Star, for example, circulated new guidelines internally in mid-2011. Similar to other news organizations’ policies, they read, in part: “Never post information on social media that could undermine your credibility with the public or damage the Star’s reputation in any way, including as an impartial source of news. Such postings could be construed by readers as evidence that the Star’s news coverage is biased. Remember, readers will hold the Star responsible for its staff participation in social media.”60 The CBC’s published guidelines stated, “If we would not put the information on air or on our own website, we would not use social media to report that information.”61 Similarly, at the Globe and Mail, journalists were told to apply the same newsroom standards to their Twitter journalism as they would to their traditional journalism: “While social media may be a less formal medium than print or online, there is no lesser standard for use of social media for Globe journalism.”62 Still, the Globe directed readers disturbed by graphic Twitter details about Williams to accompanying news stories with more limited content.63 Of the policies from the Toronto Star, CBC, BBC News, and Associated Press, we noted that reporters were generally encouraged to use socialmedia sites to engage audiences and find sources and story ideas; at the same time, they were warned to avoid posts that could tarnish the reputation of their news organizations. The organizations recognized the need to establish social-media protocols, but many had yet to develop consistency between theory and practice – ways of allowing for organizational oversight for live-tweeted trials, while acknowledging social media’s potential, the need for speed associated with live coverage, and the desire to match the competition.

Legal Challenges As is the issue of cameras in courts, the debate over the use of social media in courtrooms is anchored in the open-court principle and press freedom; however, the accessible nature of the Internet and social media, and the publication possibilities inherent in that accessibility, have pushed the discussion further. Even accounting for a variance in approach between different provinces, levels of court, and types of proceedings, the way in which courts handled Twitter coverage in the months that followed the Williams hearing shifted significantly. In a short time the practice evolved from journalists live-tweeting without explicit judicial permission to journalists tweeting with significant

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judicial restrictions. The shift arguably began with the Williams protocol, which clearly differentiated between members of the media and members of the public. As noted above, only journalists could use social-media tools in court, and only if they were members of a “recognized” Canadian media organization or authorized foreign journalists. The protocol raised questions about how a “recognized” media organization could be defined, and who would do the defining. CBC lawyer Daniel J. Henry argued that the word “recognized” captured everyone from professional journalists to weekly bloggers – the test being “are you a journalist, are you fulfilling a media function, are you going to obey a court order.”64 But in an age of online publications and citizen journalists, there is a danger that such questions may not always be easily answered. As Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin noted in the Supreme Court of Canada’s Grant v. Torstar Corp. decision, when a new “defence of responsible communication on matters of public interest” was added into defamation law, “the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of communicating on matters of public interest, many of them online, which do not involve journalists. These new disseminators of news and information should, absent good reasons for exclusion, be subject to the same laws as established media outlets.”65 In Grant, the recognition that the Internet provides citizens with an ability to publish commensurate with that of professional journalists pulled them under the umbrella of the new defence. However, a legal line was still drawn when it came to who could live-tweet from the courtroom and who could not. That was the case five months after Williams, during the first-degree murder trial of Mark Twitchell before the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta, when only accredited journalists were permitted to live-tweet.66 In that case, the definition of “accredited” was not put to the test. Most reporters present were from traditional or legacy media; the one independent journalist/author was a former member of traditional media who was treated like the others, and no members of the public requested media privileges.67 However, what did become an issue was the fact that reporters were barred from using electronic devices in the main courtroom. According to Matthew Woodley, Justice Terry Clackson’s reason was that electronic posting could adversely affect the jury trial: His concern was that members of the jury would see people in the media typing or making notes on their BlackBerrys at certain points in the trial



The Virtual Courtroom 149 which could potentially make the jurors think that that piece of evidence was more important than other pieces of evidence.68 Instead, the media live-tweeted out of the jury’s sight in a separate room.69

This solution was hailed as a solid compromise in some quarters, as it allowed the public to attend the trial, either in person or virtually through the real-time tweets, in order to ascertain for themselves whether justice was being served.70 Still, such a compromise rested on the assumption that electronic note taking is more disruptive than traditional note taking. It also risked constraining accurate journalism: reporters would lack visual context – context critical in the Williams coverage, for example. Live-blogging from the audio-only room during Twitchell, the Edmonton Journal’s Ben Gelinas noted that journalists heard someone crying during the screening of the defendant’s taped police interview but could not ascertain who it was: “That was a sort of pretty important moment in the coverage of this trial but I just wasn’t able to report that moment as it happened.”71 In the Bandidos trial, even with a video feed in the viewing courtroom, it was not always possible to deduce if the jury was present, at times making it difficult to determine instantly if the discussion was for publication. It was akin to tweeting “in a vacuum.”72 The Twitchell solution also did not resolve a basic issue identified by those such as the lawyer who represented both O’Brien and Williams, namely the impact of social-media court coverage on trials involving witnesses and jurors. Not all of the latter adhere to judicial orders to ignore published reports of proceedings. Michael Edelson noted that, during O’Brien, at least one witness under orders not to follow the testimony of others nevertheless tapped into a Twitter stream about the trial.73 However, this problem was not unique to live-tweeting. Up-to-date information was also readily available through online news sites, radio and television newscasts, and newspapers. That new technologies could unduly influence witnesses and jurors had long been a key argument against cameras in courtrooms, although there is little evidence to support it in jurisdictions that allow cameras.74 Banning tweeting from court altogether would not solve the problem of errant witnesses and jurors, and would likely only create others. As happened at one point during the Bandidos case when the use of electronics was temporarily banned, reporters simply left their seats regularly to tweet outside the courtroom door. Dubinski would listen to the testimony, then step out

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to send tweets on her BlackBerry; she noted that it was a less-than-ideal method of reporting accurately and with context. In addition, the potential disruption of continuous in-and-out traffic on court proceedings could be considerable. With Twitter now entrenched as a journalistic tool for news dissemination, judges considering these issues have to weigh the value of banning live-tweeting from the courtroom if it only serves to create a different sort of disruption in its place. Conclusion Most news organizations will not abandon the use of social media for court coverage, especially now that newsrooms have gauged the unique benefits of tools like Twitter for publishing breaking news and attracting more readers and followers.75 First, it helps them meet the appetite for instant information. Second, it allows newspapers to compete with broadcasters in publishing instantly. Traditionally, broadcasters were always first to break news on high-profile court cases; Twitter has levelled that particular playing field. As noted by an Ottawa Citizen reporter who tweeted O’Brien, “local radio stations were reading my tweets on air, like the news was coming in on the ticker tape ... We beat broadcasters, who had to run out of the courtroom to do their live hits.”76 Third, Twitter allows reporters to engage with members of the public and, based on their tips and questions, even expand their coverage. As Dubinski notes in chapter 12, she and her colleagues had numerous interactions with people during the trial – including a Bandidos biker then living in the United States, family members of the victims, and even a lawyer involved in the trial – none of which would have happened if it weren’t for tweeting. And finally, there is the argument that social-media coverage opens the courtroom doors to the public more widely than can traditional methods of reporting judicial proceedings. Gelinas points out that live-blogging Twitchell enabled him to publish more thorough and unbiased accounts than would have been possible through usual media.77 In essence, social media can be viewed as a powerful and valuable public-service tool, providing journalists with yet another means of supporting a transparent and accessible judicial system. As Canada’s Supreme Court has noted, “openness fosters the fair administration of justice and, like a watchdog, protects citizens from arbitrary state action.”78 Following Williams, there were calls for a national roundtable of judges and lawyers to discuss the implications of new media and court



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coverage, and to develop new rules of practice and professional responsibility.79 As observed in many quarters, while a debate was required about use of social media and journalistic coverage of judicial proceedings, the conversation needed to be grounded in a confirmation of the open-court principle and, alongside that, the role the media plays in fostering that principle. The key question was whose interests should be uppermost, because social-media court coverage had indeed proved to be the “genie in the bottle” referred to by Justice Cunningham in O’Brien.80 Once the judiciary and the journalists gained some experience with the live-tweeting of court cases, and identified emerging issues connected to such coverage, it became clear that the time had come to develop some best practices and policies on both sides, for the benefit of the public that each professes to serve. NOTES 1 Twitter is an online social-networking service that allows users to publish short messages known as “tweets” for anyone to read online. Launched in 2006, it was not originally intended as a news platform, although it is now widely used by reporters and the public to share breaking news. 2 Although text-based messages can be sent or posted instantaneously using a variety of communication/social media tools such as e-mail, Facebook, and traditional blogs, this chapter will focus on the live, play-by-play ­coverage of the Williams hearing by select news organizations via Twitter or other aggregator software that allows short Twitter-like messages to be posted in a continuous stream. 3 See, for example, Jim Rankin and Sandro Contenta, “A Depraved Double Life: Crown Attorneys Expose Disturbing Details of Col. Russell Williams’ Crime Spree, from Fetish Break-ins, to Sex Assaults, to Murder, all Carefully Catalogued in His Own Photos and Video,” Toronto Star, 19 October 2010. 4 Although “tweeting” is commonly associated only with Twitter, our use of the term is intended to capture instant micro-blogging as well, unless otherwise specified. 5 Allen M. Linden, “Limitations on Media Coverage of Legal Proceedings: A Critique and Some Proposals for Reform,” in Philip Anisman and Allen M. Linden, eds., The Media, the Courts and the Charter (Toronto: Carswell 1986), 301. 6 Robert Martin and G. Stuart Adam, A Sourcebook of Canadian Media Law, 2nd ed. (Ottawa: Carleton University Press 1994). 259.

152  Covering Canadian Crime 7 Canadian Broadcasting Corp. v. Canada (Attorney General), [2011] 1 S.C.R. 19. para. 2 8 For an overview, see, for example, Daniel J. Henry, “Electronic Public Access to Court: An Idea Whose Time Has Come,” in Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice, ed., Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice – Open Justice Conference (Ottawa 1994). 9 See, for example, A.W. Mewett, “Television in the Court-Room,” Criminal Law Quarterly 26, no. 4 (1984); and Michel Proulx, “Comment: No Cameras Please,” in Anisman and Linden, eds., The Media, the Courts and the Charter. 10 Daniel J. Henry, “Electronic Public Access to Court: A Proposal for Its Implementation Today,” AdIDEM Canadian Media Lawyers’ Association (1985), http://www.adidem.org/Electronic_Public_Access_to_Court:_A_ Proposal_for_its_Implementation_Today, para. 14. 11 New Brunswick Broadcasting Co. v. Nova Scotia (Speaker of the House of Assembly), [1993] 1 S.C.R. 319, s. IV. 12 Tamara Small, “What the Hashtag?” Information, Communication & Society 14, no. 6 (2011). 13 Li is the first trial for which we could find evidence of Twitter coverage. 14 Justice John Scurfield’s oral judgment in R. v. Vince Weiguang Li, [2009]. Winnipeg CR08-01-29010 (Man. Q.B.) 15 StaffWriter, “Case on Twitter,” Winnipeg Free Press, Online Edition (2009), http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Case-on-Twitter40641912.html. 16 Bruce Owen, e-mail message to Mary McGuire, 5 August 2011. 17 Manitoba, “Manitoba Courts: Court Policies/Practices Affecting Media Coverage,” http://www.manitobacourts.mb.ca/site/assets/files/1133/ electronic_device_policy.pdf. 18 Personal communications to Susan Harada: Judy Turpin (Court Services manager, PEI), e-mail message, 22 August 2011; Catherine Simpson (manager, Court Administration, Yukon), e-mail message, 30 August 2011; Anne Mould (director, Court Services, Northwest Territories), e-mail message, 23 August 2011. 19 Dawn Blaus (courts communications officer, Saskatchewan), e-mail ­message to Susan Harada, 16 November 2011. 20 Nova Scotia, “Use of Electronic Devices in Nova Scotia Courthouses,” https://web.archive.org/web/20101027114902/http://courts.ns.ca/ media_access/electronic_devices_policy_08_03.htm. 21 Courts of Justice Act R.S.O. 1990, c.43. 22 Christie Blatchford, “Crown Lays out Tale of Bikers’ Slaughter,” Globe and Mail, 1 April 2009.; Peter Edwards, “6 Guilty in Bandidos Killings: Biker



23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

The Virtual Courtroom 153 Gang Member Explodes in Anger, Spits at Lawyer after Jury Convicts Group,” Toronto Star, 30 October 2009. Kate Dubinski, “Tweeting a Trial,” J-source.ca: The Canadian Journalism Project (2009), https://web.archive.org/web/20120711010247/http:// j-source.ca/article/tweeting-trial. “Amended Media Information Package: R. v. Sandham et al” (Ministry of the Attorney General, 2009). Jane Sims, in discussion with Mary McGuire, 10 August 2011. R. v. O’Brien [2009] O.J. No. 5357, 249 C.C.C. (3d) 237. Glen McGregor, e-mail message to Mary McGuire, 2 August 2011. R. v. Larry O’Brien: Ruling on Use of Recording Devices, [2009]. Ont. Sup. Ct. Ibid. Ibid. Editorial, “Technology in the Court,” Ottawa Citizen, 6 May 2009. Daniel J. Henry (CBC lawyer), in discussion with Susan Harada, 3 August 2011. Ottawa Citizen (a division of Postmedia Network), and Meghan Hurley v. David Russell Williams, Her Majesty the Queen and the Attorney General of Ontario, and between Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Dave Seglins v. David Russell Williams, Her Majesty the Queen and the Attorney General of Ontario, [2010]. Ont. Sup. Ct. Henry, 3 August 2011. This is a shorthand reference to Colonel Russell Williams, known as a Twitter hashtag. Hashtags funnel all tweets into one searchable stream. @meghan_hurley. Twitter post, Twitter.com. Retrieved from Hurley e-mail to Mary McGuire on 21 July 2011. Meghan Hurley, in discussion with Mary McGuire, 8 August 2011. Greg McArthur, Web log post, cbc.ca. Retrieved from cbc.ca on 19 October 2010. Dave Seglins, Web log postm cbc.ca. Retrieved from cbc.ca on 18 October 2010. @smithjoanna. Twitter post, thestar.com. Retrieved from thestar.com on 18 October 2010. Joanna Smith, in discussion with Mary McGuire, 2 November 2011. Timothy Appleby, Web log post, theglobeandmail.com. Retrieved from theglobeandmail.com on 19 October 2010. @meghan_hurley, 29 October 2010. @smithjoanna, 19 October 2010. Hurley, 8 August 2011. @smithjoanna, 18 October 2010.

154  Covering Canadian Crime 47 48 49 50

51

52 53 54

55 56 57

58 59

60 61

Ibid. Ibid., 20 October 2010. @katiemjy’s tweets were not retrieved. Smith discussion, 2 November 2011. We acknowledge that journalistic objectivity is a contested concept, ­beyond the scope of this chapter. See, for example, Stephen J.A. Ward, “Pragmatic Objectivity,” in The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond (Montreal and Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2004). See, for example, Natalie Fenton, “Drowning or Waving? New Media, Journalism and Democracy,” in Natalie Fenton, ed., New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age (London: SAGE Publications 2010). Michael Edelson, “Tweet Justice: Live-Blogging the Courts,” in Canadian Association of Journalists: Journalism and the media 2011 (Ottawa 2011). @smithjoanna, 20 October 2010. Esther Enkin, “Covering Col. Williams,” CBC News (2010), http://www .cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/10/19/enkin-williams-coverage.html. Sylvia Stead, “Why Tuesday’s Front Page Did Not Include a Photo of Russell Williams in Women’s Lingerie,” Globe and Mail, 19 October 2010; Kathy English, “Why the Star Ran Williams Photo,” Toronto Star, 23 October 2010. Chris Peters, “Emotions Aside or Emotional Side? Crafting an ‘Experience of Involvement’ in the News,” Journalism 12, no. 3 (2011): 304. @joannasmith, 18 October 2010. Pat Hewitt, “Crime Disclosure ‘Unprecedented’: With Russell Williams’ Guilty Plea on the Table, Critics Ask Why the Public Needs to Know so Much,” Toronto Star, 20 October 2010. Rosie DiManno, “Real Journalism’s Not a-Twitter,” Toronto Star, 29 January 2011. BBCNews, “Social media guidance,” bbc.co.uk, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/ shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/14_07_11_news_social_media_guidance.pdf.; Steve Myers, “AP Updates Social Media Guidelines a Week after Warning Staffers about Expressing Opinions,” Poynter.org, http://www.poynter.org/latestnews/mediawire/139117/ap-updates-social-media-guidelines-a-weekafter-warning-staffers-about-expressing-opinions/.; Washington Post, “Digital Publishing Guidelines,” washingtonpost.com, http://www .washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/guidelines/index.html. Kathy English (public editor, Toronto Star), e-mail message to Mary McGuire, 28 July 2011. CBC-Radio Canada, “Journalistic Standards and Practices: Use of Social Media,” cbc.ca2, http://web.archive.org/web/20120418191334/http://



The Virtual Courtroom 155

www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/docs/policies/journalistic/xml/policies. asp?pol=209_en.xml. 62 Jim Sheppard (executive editor, globeandmail.com), e-mail message to Mary McGuire, 4 August 2011. 63 Stead, “Why Tuesday’s Front Page Did Not Include a Photo of Russell Williams in Women’s Lingerie,” Globe and Mail. 64 Henry, 23 August 2011. 65 Grant v. Torstar Corp., [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640. para. 96 66 Alexandra Zabjek, “Fairness Cited in Courtroom Electronic Devices Ban,” Edmonton Journal, 17 March 2011. 67 Matthew Woodley (CBC and Edmonton Journal media lawyer), in discussion with Susan Harada, 25 August 2011. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. Audio was fed in with a delay of a few minutes. The delay, and lack of video, was not a deliberate decision of the court but rather due to logistics and courthouse infrastructure. 70 Editorial, “Tweets, Twitchell and Transparency,” Edmonton Journal, 26 April 2011. 71 Ben Gelinas, in discussion with Susan Harada, 11 October 2011. The Edmonton Journal chose a live blog over Twitter, believing it to be a more thorough tool. The relative merits of social-media tools are discussed in our forthcoming research. 72 Sims, 10 August 2011. 73 Edelson, “Tweet Justice.” 74 Henry, “Electronic Public Access to Court,” 1985, 1994. 75 Dan Gillmor, “Arizona Shootings: Take a Slow-News Approach,” Salon (2011), http://www.salon.com/2011/01/08/ arizona_shootings_slow_news/. 76 McGregor, 2 August 2011. 77 Gelinas, 11 October 2011. 78 Canadian Broadcasting Corp. v. Canada (Attorney General), para. 28. 79 Rob Tripp, “Behind the Scenes,” Canadian Lawyer (2011), http://www .canadianlawyermag.com/3555/Behind-the-scenes.html. 80 As of June 2013 most jurisdictions had policies in place, ranging from allowing tweeting from court, subject to judicial discretion, to the banning of tweeting and texting (in Quebec, for example). See the Canada-wide Summary of Court Policies on Live, Text-based Communications from the Courtroom at http://wiki.modern-courts.ca/images/5/57/Policies_on-Live-Text_ Based_Communications.

10 “Did She Consent to This Sex Act with This Accused?” The News Media, Sexual-Assault Myths, and the Complainant’s Private Records in Court Testimony Ba rbar a M. Fre e man Introduction In late December 2012 a Senate committee released its long overdue review of a law that was supposed to protect sexual-assault victims from unnecessary revelations about their private lives in court. Specifically, these members of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs examined the impact of the former Bill C-46, passed in 1997 and originally slated for review in 2002. This contentious law limits defence lawyers’ use of complainants’ private records, such as their medical histories, school documents, or counselling records, held by third parties such as their doctors, teachers, or therapists. The Senate committee recommended few substantial changes in the law but asked that the government of Canada report back in two years regarding any action it plans to take in response. Since then, proposed Criminal Code amendments pertaining to complainants’ private records have been included in the new Bill C-32, an Act to Enact the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and to Amend Certain Acts, legislation that is in itself controversial for different reasons but is now the law.1 This legislative review process has implications for journalists because it could conceivably result in more publication bans, partly in response to the speed and reach of today’s electronic media. It also offers a timely opportunity for journalists themselves to consider the ethical implications of releasing the contents of private records, regardless of what the law allows. Bill C-46 was an attempt to resolve the highly politicized, legal issue of a complainant’s possible consent to specific sexual acts with the defendant by introducing rules of evidence that would balance her rights

“Did She Consent to This Sex Act with This Accused?” 157

to personal privacy with his right to a fair trial. Feminist legal critics have long insisted, however, that the resulting regulations have not been effective enough in safeguarding complainants’ personal records from fishing expeditions instigated by defence lawyers. Specifically, they accuse them of using these records to invoke sexual myths and gender stereotypes regarding the complainants’ personal demeanour, previous sexual behaviour, or mental stability in order to discredit her as a witness. They have further argued that this practice is counter to gender-equality rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on a number of counts: most victims of sexual assault are females and their attackers are almost always male; victims of other kinds of crimes and their personal records are rarely subjected to the same kind of scrutiny in court; and most of the complainants whose records are produced as evidence tend to be those who sought trauma counselling or were previously in therapy for other reasons. Many of the most vulnerable young women and girls are of Aboriginal or other racial-minority heritage and/or have been in the care of mental-health or social-service professionals, or in police or penal custody, residential schools, or other public institutions.2 Defence lawyers and civil libertarians, on the other hand, have historically defended the use of personal information about complainants and their private records in the interests of a fair trial for the accused. They argue that all suspects must be considered innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.3 The issue for journalists in sexual-assault cases is how to balance the privacy of the complainant, the rights of the accused, and the freedom of the press. There are specific legal protections against invasive publicity in the news media aimed at striking that balance. In Canada, there have long been provisions banning publication of the identities of sexual-assault victims as well as the names of the accused if they are related by blood or marriage. Testimony in preliminary or in-camera hearings, designed to weigh the evidence before proceeding with a trial, is normally restricted. The actual trials are usually open to the media and the public, however, so that complainants often feel that they have little personal privacy left, even if the courts protect their identities.4 This chapter will provide a brief history of sexual-assault legislation so that today’s journalism students and rookie court reporters will better understand our current rules of evidence and the reasons behind them. The historical coverage cited here from the Canadian Press news agency, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star demonstrates that news coverage of sexual assault and of the changes in the legal rules of evidence

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in those cases was not nearly as one-sided or unfair as some academic critics claim. Rather than automatically absorb and disseminate sexist myths about female victims,5 the media, it can be argued, have taken feminist arguments about complainants’ rights and the trauma they may have experienced into account in the interests of fairness and balance. The resulting coverage can be uneven, however, which suggests there are still ethical issues for journalists to consider; otherwise, there could conceivably be further legislative or court-imposed limits on media freedoms.6 This is particularly true when it comes to avoiding sexual-assault myths, unnecessarily subjective language, and racial and other minority stereotypes, as Yasmin Jiwani and Mary Lynn Young have pointed out in the case of the missing and murdered Aboriginal and other marginalized women in Vancouver.7 Media scholar Helen Benedict, who is a former journalist and volunteer rape-crisis counsellor, points out that sexual assault is a violent act perpetrated by one or more persons on another, using sex as a weapon. It is not a mere flirtation or mutually agreed-upon sexual encounter and journalists should never report it as such, even by implication, unless proven in court, and the charges against the accused are dismissed. Yet she found that, as late as the 1980s, the following myths appeared in news coverage of high-profile American cases: sexual assault stems from uncontrollable male lust, not violence; the victim provoked or deserved the sexual assault through her own appearance, dress, or sexual or non-traditional behaviour; and it is common for women to falsely accuse men of sexual assault, often for revenge.8 Benedict’s perspective is still relevant today and could be further strengthened by a fairly new concept in journalism studies, an “ethic of care” approach to reporting sexual assault and related news stories. It would lead to better public understanding of crime and its consequences for the victim, the perpetrator, and the community. In “Not Naming Names? Crime-Coverage Rituals in Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands,” found in this book, Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson explore how journalists in Sweden and the Netherlands appear to employ this ethic of care in the coverage of serious crime, where the accused and the victim are not routinely named or identified because of concern for innocent family members, the need for an accused’s rehabilitation, and his or her right to privacy. Fullerton and Patterson in an earlier article showed how, in the absence of an ethic of care, coverage could generate great quantities of news stories and commentaries but not deepen or even ignite community discussion or

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understanding. These news stories, they argue, are often presented as simplistic narratives about the victim and the criminal but offer little in-depth analysis of their life experiences, the impact of these crimes on the community, and the public’s responsibility to deal with the underlying problems that can lead to them. Fullerton and Patterson contend, “The coverage must be done with public, not prurient, interest at its core, if citizens are to take these seemingly random, isolated acts of extreme violence and use them to generate community discussion and introspection.”9 Journalists should recognize that “deep-seated societal misogyny” could well be a factor in sexual assaults that end in murder, as in the case of the infamous Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka crimes in southern Ontario.10 These insights certainly apply to court coverage of sexual assaults, including use of complainants’ private records, since traumatized victims experience the resulting media coverage as especially invasive and that can have a chilling effect on women who might otherwise report these crimes to the police. All the more reason to consider the history and context of the legal and judicial decisions governing sexual-assault convictions, pay attention to the recent parliamentary review on the use of complainants’ private records as evidence, and, on an everyday basis, report sexual-assault cases in the media with an ethic of care. “No Means No!” The Fight for Better Laws There was a time when all kinds of myths and gender stereotypes about sexual assault and its victims were imbedded in the Canadian judicial system and echoed in the news media.11 That situation began to change in the 1970s with the resurgence of the women’s movement, whose advocates questioned gender stereotypes and set up women’s services, including rape-crisis centres, to counsel and aid the victims. Intense feminist lobbying of the federal government, the legal profession, the police, social services, and the media resulted in a growing respect and sympathy for the complainants and new rules of evidence broadly referred to as rape-shield laws.12 These reforms were designed to give sexual-assault victims more protections, thereby encouraging them to come forward and brave police questioning, defence cross-­ examinations, and possible exposure in the media. The very idea that a defence lawyer could ask a complainant intrusive questions about her sex life in court was based on the existing

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patriarchal attitude that every woman was essentially male property; in fact, at the time, there was no law against marital rape. When a woman was attacked by either an acquaintance or a stranger, her morals and personal behaviour were considered relevant evidence and could be used in court to disprove her credibility, especially when there were no other witnesses. In those cases, the judge was legally obliged to caution the jury against conviction. It was thought that a “good” woman would strenuously fight her attacker and quickly report him to the police. In contrast, it was assumed that an “immoral” woman who had already consented to sex outside of marriage might willingly do so again, and be more likely to lie about it. In short, it was really up to the complainant to prove, first to the police and then to the courts, that she really was sexually assaulted and that she was not to blame. Her personal character was on public trial more than that of the accused since he did not have to testify. The social standings of both victim and attacker also played a role in how seriously the police, judges, and juries settled these cases. The more privileged the complainant, or conversely, the defendant, the more she or he was likely to be believed.13 As sexual mores changed during the 1970s, the courts in the different provincial jurisdictions began to make some adjustment in the rules of evidence, giving more credence to the complainant but offering few guidelines regarding the judge’s discretion in each case. Women who dared to take their complaints to the police and the courts could still receive a rough ride from defence lawyers anxious to discredit their testimony. They routinely questioned the complainants’ dress, behaviour, and emotional and mental health, prompting feminist lawyers and other critics to decry the existing rape law as a “farce.”14 In response to their complaints, a 1975 amendment to the Criminal Code limited the questions the defence could ask a complainant about her sexual history, but in 1980 the Supreme Court of Canada made two appeal decisions that, taken together, did little to acknowledge sexual-assault victims’ vulnerability. The first case involved a preliminary hearing of charges against an accused Toronto rapist, Gregory Forsythe, to see if there was enough evidence against him to warrant a trial. His lawyer wanted to ask the complainant questions about her sexual history with people other than his client. The judge said that he did not need to hear her answers in order to determine that there was already enough evidence that Forsythe should stand trial and that a private hearing about her sexual history could be held, if necessary, later in the proceedings. When the lawyer appealed his decision, the

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Supreme Court backed the judge, saying that if an accused gave proper notice of the questions to be asked of a complainant about her sexual conduct and a pertinent reason for them, a judge had the discretion to decide when and if to allow an in-camera hearing. The Supreme Court also said that, if the judge decided to hold such a hearing, she was compelled to answer the questions the defence asked. The judge could then decide whether her responses constituted important evidence that should be heard in open court during the trial.15 A few months later, in R. v. Pappajohn, the high court ruled that a defendant could validly argue his honest but mistaken belief, no matter how unreasonable, that a woman he was accused of raping had agreed to have sex with him. In making that ruling, the Supreme Court noted that such testimony would rarely be successful, since it must still carry the burden of proof; in fact, Pappajohn lost the appeal because his testimony wasn’t credible. Nevertheless, women’s rights advocates objected to the very idea that mistaken belief could be a valid defence for rape because it still put the onus on the complainant rather than the accused.16 The Influence of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms In 1981–2 the federal government repatriated the Canadian constitution from Britain and established the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which included sections that protected the rights of women as well as those of people accused of crimes. The issue of consent in sexual-­assault cases became even more highly politicized as the federal government and the Supreme Court of Canada, both invoking the Charter, presented opposing views on how to interpret and amend the existing laws.17 The news media covered the debates every step of the way. By that time, feminist lobby groups had finally persuaded the federal government that Parliament should change Canada’s rape laws to encourage more victims than merely one out of ten to come forward, and to improve the even more dismal prosecution statistics.18 In the spring of 1981, Michele Landsberg of the Toronto Star devoted several of her columns to the topic of violence against women. Landsberg was preparing her readers for the fall, when the government was planning to introduce a new bill on sexual assault that would shift “attention to the violence, and away from the dangerously emotional and myth-haunted realm of sex.” She hoped that it would allow the courts to protect the complainant’s privacy and deal with what was really the crucial issue

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in these cases, and still is today: “Did she consent to this sex act with this accused?”19 In 1982, after much debate and ongoing pressure from feminist groups, Parliament unanimously passed pivotal amendments to the Criminal Code. They specified that perpetrators and victims could be either male or female, and replaced the word “rape” with three levels of “sexual assault,” reflecting the extent of the violence used in the attack and the injuries incurred. It was thought at the time that a change in nomenclature might mitigate the shame still associated in the public mind with the word “rape,” encouraging more victims to come forward. These new levels of sexual assault, the media reported, ranged from unwanted kissing, grabbing, and fondling, to use of a threatening weapon, to aggravated sexual assault that wounded, maimed, disfigured, or endangered the life of the victim. Penetration was no longer a necessary condition for laying charges of sexual assault. The crime did not have to be recent. The complainant did not have to prove that she strenuously resisted the attack. There was no more spousal immunity, meaning that husbands could now be prosecuted for sexually assaulting their wives, and wives their husbands.20 Furthermore, judges were no longer compelled to caution juries against convicting a defendant when there were no other witnesses to the crime aside from the complainant; however, the onus was still on the Crown to make a convincing case. The new law restricted the use of a woman’s sexual history with the accused or anyone else, imposing limits on the defence counsel’s arguments that she was of loose moral character and therefore “not rapeable”; in fact, her sexual history was to be used “only in the rarest of cases.” As a further protective measure, the law also banned publication of complainants’ names in sexual-assault cases.21 The defendant’s name could still be published but his criminal record remained off-limits unless and until he was convicted of the current offence, as is the case with most crimes.22 Before the law was changed to protect the complainant’s sexual history, one feminist group had argued that the judge should be given the discretion to admit as evidence the defendant’s previous sexual-offence convictions “‘in the same as way as a complainant’s past sexual experience is admissible’” during the trial.23 The key legal question remained as to whether the complainant consented to sexual activity with the accused, or if he violated her sexual integrity against her will.24 More women did start to come forward after being sexually assaulted, feeling that the court system would deal

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with their accusations fairly, only to suffer a sudden setback in 1991. A federal Justice Department report said there had been a 127 per cent increase in the number of rape charges filed between 1982 and 1988. That same week, however, the Supreme Court of Canada, in a 7–2 decision, ruled that the Canadian law imposing restrictions on cross-examining the complainant in sexual-assault cases threatened the legal rights of the accused to a fair trial and their rights to life, liberty, and security of the person under the Charter. The case involved an appeal from two accused rapists who wanted to cross-examine their accusers on their sexual histories. The court cited the lack of guidelines on judicial discretion as a major problem with the current law. At the same time, it ruled that judges should make their decisions about the admissibility of evidence on a case-by-case basis, in private, and only if the evidence offered about the complainant’s sexual history was specifically germane to the case. As a consequence, both complainants in the case that was appealed refused to testify, partly because they were afraid of the public exposure, and the charges against their accused rapists were dropped.25 Feminists, who trusted neither inconsistent judicial discretion nor the well-established prejudices of jurors, were upset with the Supreme Court’s ruling. They were not convinced by civil-libertarian arguments that, under new guidelines, the rules of evidence would allow only exceptional incursions into a complainant’s sexual history. The media carried those debates26 but also focused an inordinate amount of attention on the disagreement between the only two female justices then on the Supreme Court, Madam Justice Beverley McLaughlin, who wrote the majority report, and Madam Justice Claire L’Hereux-Dubé, who declared that a complainant’s sexual history was “irrelevant.”27 Almost immediately, the federal justice minister, Kim Campbell, who had been concerned that the difference between rape and sex was still misunderstood in the court system, drafted a new bill, C-49, with stronger rape-shield guidelines regarding the issue of consent and judicial discretion. Campbell had the support of female MPs from all parties, as well as women’s groups, whom she invited to help her.28 A Gallup poll taken at the time revealed that 55 per cent of the respondents believed that a complainant’s sexual history was irrelevant as evidence in sexual-assault trials, versus 36 per cent who thought it was relevant and 9 per cent who had no opinion. A gender breakdown of the results showed that 45 per cent of the men and only 28 per cent of the women thought a woman’s sexual past was relevant.29 Evidently,

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sex-assault myths still had an appreciable hold in Canadian society, especially among males, although social attitudes appear to have become generally more progressive. Campbell’s new law reflected that trend and, after much debate, received all-party agreement in the House of Commons. For the first time, Canadian legislation defined the term “consent” in sexual-assault cases “as a voluntary agreement to engage in the sexual activity in question.” It put the onus on the defendant to describe the “reasonable steps” he took to make sure the complainant did so willingly. He could not easily argue that he honestly believed she consented if she signalled in any way that she was reluctant or revoked any prior agreement to have sex with him. Further, she could not “consent” under the law if she were “incapacitated,” induced into sex with someone in a position of trust or authority, such as her doctor or boss, or if a third party, such as her father, forced her into sexual activity with someone else. Campbell agreed to include in the preamble of the new law consideration of the safety of women and children, but she refused feminist pleas to denote those who were especially vulnerable, including Black women, Aboriginal women, immigrant women, or women with disabilities as well as lesbians and prostitutes. These changes to the Criminal Code also provided the judges with principles and strict guidelines to help them weigh whether any of a complainant’s sexual history or other personal details might be admissible in the interests of a fair trial for the accused. The rules specified that such evidence must be heard in private in the absence of the jury and the public, and that the complainant would not be required to testify herself.30 The original bill had also banned journalists from reporting the judge’s reasons for allowing or disallowing a complainant’s personal history as evidence, but Campbell amended that section after the media strenuously objected. Under the new law, journalists could report the reasons for allowing it, but the judge was to decide whether they could report the reasons for disallowing it.31 The new law passed after a great deal of public debate. Beyond the usual dissention over complainant’s rights versus those of the accused,32 there was a strengthening, right-wing, religious contingent that vociferously claimed that feminists, and some judges, had gone too far in their advocacy of women’s rights in Canada. Gwen Landolt of REAL Women, a traditionalist group, declared that Bill C-49 was a radical feminist “Despise Men Amendment,” arguing that it was unfair to men and that it was women who should take responsibility for their own

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­ ehaviour.33 Sheila McIntyre of the feminist Legal Education and Action b Fund (LEAF) countered, “The law should refuse to exculpate the belief, however honest, that if a woman agrees to a kiss, she agrees to intercourse, if she agrees to intercourse while at dinner, she has forfeited her legal right to change her mind on the way home, or if she agrees to sex for money, she cannot refuse sex for free.”34 The media also took editorial sides over the issue. Before the bill was passed, the Globe and Mail declared that it allowed for too much inconclusiveness over the question of the complainant’s consent, adding, “The law would leave little room for that most ambiguous of human acts: seduction. Not to mention such procedural niceties as presumption of innocence.”35 The Toronto Star, on the other hand, twice gave its stamp of approval, declaring that the new legislation struck the right balance between the dignity of the complainant and the rights of the accused.36 The 1992 amendments to the Criminal Code were subsequently challenged in appeals but the Supreme Court of Canada declared them constitutional and strengthened them through further legislative amendments that ruled out, for example, the extreme intoxication of the accused and the so-called “implied consent” of the complainant as a defence.37 There were also half a dozen cases in which defendants accused of attacking sleeping or intoxicated women were allowed to argue that they understood the complainants’ lack of resistance as consent. They were acquitted, or allowed to appeal, or their cases were sent for retrial.38 The Question of the Admissibility of Complainants’ Private Records The new law contained a major gap. It did not assuage the privacy concerns of sexual-assault complainants because it did not deal with the production of their private records held by third parties, such as their counsellors, in court; moreover, there was a great deal of confusion in the legal system over which records were admissible and which not. One of the key cases that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada was R. v. O’Connor (1995), which prompted the government to introduce Bill C-46 two years later to restrict access to personal documents. Hubert O’Connor, a Roman Catholic bishop, was accused of having sexually assaulted four young Aboriginal women at the residential school he ran in Williams Lake, British Columbia, in the mid-1960s when he was a priest. The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously agreed that the now adult complainants’ therapeutic records could be relevant in such cases, but there was a complicated 5–4 split among

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the justices over the circumstances under which their admission as evidence should be allowed. In sending O’Connor back for retrial, the justices instituted processes under which complainants’ records in such cases could be produced to the trial judge. If the trial judge decided, after weighing them in private, that they were relevant, the record holders and the documents would be subpoenaed as evidence. Therapists and spokeswomen for rape-crisis centres criticized the O’Connor decision as “regressive,” one of them insisting that giving an accused rapist such access to confidential therapeutic records would amount to “another rape” and Parliament should pass a new law to protect them.39 “Let’s make clear what is meant by ‘records,’” Michele Landsberg, who also advocated a new law, wrote in her Toronto Star column. “Nothing is sacred, nothing is private, nothing is too ancient or irrelevant for the defence lawyer to demand. Diaries, letters, files, notes and documents from doctors, psychiatrists, schools, abortion clinics, rape counsellors – all are handed over to the judge who is supposed to vet them for ‘relevance’ but more often than not places them straight and unedited into the hands of the accused.” Once these records were ruled admissible, the counsellor had to stop seeing the complainant, leaving her isolated.40 Apparently, defence lawyers had been doing everything they could to subpoena them in cases of sexual violence, in the hope that the trial judge would find them relevant, which was often the case. Permission to use them would, for example, allow defence lawyers to seize upon any statement from the complainant to her counsellor that she blamed herself for the assault, which is common among women who have absorbed cultural myths about rape. Defence lawyers argued that those records would show if the counsellors had been “overzealous” in their support of “suggestible” complainants, a reference to socalled “false memory syndrome,” the highly debated contention that bad therapists can plant false memories in their clients. Complainants found the court process very painful and some feminists declared it was just another way of discrediting victims by skirting the rules of evidence that supposedly put an end to the use of sexual-assault myths.41 Parliament listened to their objections and introduced a more restrictive law, Bill C-46, governing the release of third-party records to the defence, the same law recently reviewed by the Senate.42 This law does not prevent defence questioning of the complainant during preliminary inquiries on the very existence of her private documents because there is a legal right to cross-examine during that stage in the proceedings. The defence must then persuade the trial judge that these documents

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are “likely relevant” to a fair outcome of the case. The trial judge has to use a specific formula to weigh those arguments against the privacy and confidentiality rights of the complainant before making a determination about their admissibility as evidence.43 Specifically, before and after perusing the records in private, the judge must consider the following factors: whether they are likely necessary for full answer and defence; the probative value of the records; the nature and extent of the reasonable expectation of privacy; the influence of discriminatory rape myths; the complainant’s privacy rights; the integrity of the trial process; and society’s interest in the reporting of sexual offences and the obtaining of treatment by complainants.44 Bill C-46 has also had implications for journalists. Unless the judge allows it, the news media may not report on the preliminary or in-camera hearings regarding the admissibility of evidence from private records held by third parties – specifically, the contents of an application for the complainant’s records, any evidence, information, or submissions made at the hearing, or what the judge decided about their admissibility and the reasons for that decision.45 In a separate decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Bill C-46 did not cover cases in which the accused already possesses her diary, or her school, employment, medical, or psychological records. As he was very likely to be the complainant’s former partner, teacher, boss, or health professional, he would have read them already. Therefore, they are not considered “private,” third-party records under the provisions of Bill C-46 and could be introduced during the trial. Unless the judge imposes a publication ban, journalists can report on this evidence once it is ruled admissible.46 The new law did not satisfy critics such as Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who argued that counselling records may well be important to the defence. While the R. v. O’Connor decision “did not make it easy for the accused to peruse these confidential records,” he wrote, the newly passed Bill C-46 made it “impossible” and “was a model of unfairness.”47 Almost immediately, there was an unsuccessful appeal to the Su­ preme Court on the constitutionality of Bill C-46. R. v. Mills involved a case in which a twenty-five-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting a twelve-year-old girl was refused access to her psychiatric records. At the time, journalists were beginning to frame news stories about Supreme Court decisions around a perceived conflict between the judiciary and legislators. They specifically focused on the issue of whether the court was using the Charter to make new laws over the heads of

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members of Parliament, an angle that, arguably, diverted the reporters from fully explaining the legalistic reasons behind the high court’s decisions and their impact.48 Lise Gotell of the University of Alberta has argued, for example, that this Supreme Court decision actually “privileges defendants’ rights and emphasizes the importance of judicial discretion and authority in decisions about access.” In other words, in cases of doubt, the judge should err on the side of the production of records.49 She and others maintain that, since the R. v. Mills decision, defence lawyers have tried to get waivers to go after therapeutic records, or to persuade judges that other kinds of private records may be of value. Because judges rarely invoke the gender-equality provisions in the legislation in their decisions regarding admissibility, they allow the defence to pursue questions such as whether the complainant behaved “responsibly” during the events leading up to the sexualassault charges.50 The Senate Hearings on Bill C-46 During the 2011 Senate review of Bill C-46, Statistics Canada researchers presented startling, recent statistics on sexual assaults and the use of complainants’ private records during trials. There were 30,000 recorded sexual assaults in Canada in 2009, of which half were prosecuted. Seventy per cent of the victims were female. The most vulnerable group were teenage girls aged thirteen to seventeen; specifically, about one in 160 of them had suffered a sexual assault, outnumbering teenage male victims by nine to one. Most of the victims already knew their assailants, who were usually males. Further, 88 per cent of sexual-assault victims still did not go to the police, or follow through to court hearings.51 Most of the victims questioned in a number of surveys and studies over the years preferred to deal with the attack privately, especially if it involved level one sexual assault, that is, forced kissing, touching, or grabbing, as 81 per cent of the most recent reported cases did. Other complainants did not trust the police or were afraid of their attacker. Regardless of the circumstances, most of them did not understand how their personal records might be either protected or used in court or did not want their private lives exposed in any case. Fourteen per cent of them said they feared media publicity.52 Since 1999 and the R. v. Mills decision upholding the law, there have been approximately 139 known court cases involving defence attempts to obtain third-party records. In about 50 per cent of those applications,

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the defence successfully persuaded the judges to examine the records in private and decide whether they were admissible and should be released to the defence. In an average of 30 per cent of the applications, the judges, who must consider the privacy provisions adopted under Bill C-46, agreed to allow either partial or full disclosure of those records. According to testimony at the Senate hearings, these judges were careful to detail exactly which information was admissible, and which not; however, few of them explained the factors, listed in the pertinent sections of the law, that influenced their decisions.53 Yet all the witnesses at the Senate hearing generally agreed that Bill C-46 had done little to encourage assault victims to report these crimes to the police in the first place, which was one of the main reasons it had originally been introduced. Professor Karen Busby of the University of Manitoba, who is an authority on sexual-assault cases, told the senators that every year since Bill C-46 was passed in 1997, she has asked her female law students if they would go to the police if they were sexually assaulted, or encourage another victim to do so. Almost all of them said no, unless they thought they could stop the accused from hurting someone else. “If these smart and articulate women do not think they will be believed or they do not want to humiliate themselves in court, what chance does a girl or woman has who does not enjoy the same social privileges as a law student? They will not go either,” Busby told the senators. “Records should rarely be released,” she insisted. “If 50 percent of the time they are released to the judges and 30 percent of the time they are released ultimately to the defendant that is not the rarest of cases. Somehow that is not capturing that idea.”54 She joined other witnesses, including Canada’s privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddard, rape-crisis workers, and other leading academics, such as Gotell, to argue for tighter restrictions on personal privacy for complainants. Both Stoddard and Busby also recommended that the defendants be made to submit victims’ records they already possess to the judge, who would decide on their admissibility, just as in the case of the thirdparty records. In all such decisions, the judge’s reasons should be case-­ specific and made publicly available. They and others also emphasized the need for independent counsel for sexual-assault victims whose records were vulnerable to court scrutiny, since protecting them from intrusive questioning was not the function of the Crown, which represents the state, not the complainant.55 Lee Lakeman, representing sexual-­ assault centres, held fast to the position that complainants’ private

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records should never be used as evidence, saying that victims are not coming forward because they do not want to be questioned about the details of their private lives, such as an abortion, or their mental stability if they have been in counselling. “The very thought of being exposed publicly for women is analogous to being shamed,” she said, adding that judges should be made to take gender-sensitivity training so that they fully understand women’s equality rights. She also said that she has not seen a case since the law was passed where it was ever necessary to use private records as evidence. “I am not saying we should undermine the rights of the accused; I am simply saying that I do not see an interference with the rights of the accused.”56 Gotell, however, cautioned that an outright ban on their use might well result in another Charter challenge, but she did want judges to be more rigorous in interpreting the law. Referring to the known statistics on non-reporting of sexual assaults, she told the senators that, in the case of intimate relationships especially, the victims do not necessarily want to acknowledge that a rape has occurred or an incident has fallen within the legal definition of sexual assault “because it will often mean that you have to revise your entire life. There is a lot hidden behind that ‘I did not think it was serious enough’ category.”57 Representatives of the federal Department of Justice, Manitoba’s justice minister and attorney general, the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, and Sarah Kaplan of the Cornwall Community Hospital Assault and Sexual Abuse Program testified, on the contrary, that the law has generally worked well, with judges striking the correct balance between the privacy rights of the complainant and those of the accused to a fair trial. Law professor Donald Stuart of Queen’s University was the most critical of Bill C-46, saying that it and the R. v. Mills decision have resulted in too many anomalies and inconsistencies in the ways it is applied. Given the presumption of innocence and the need for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, he argued, judges should be able to privately peruse complainants’ personal records for relevant evidence during an earlier stage in the court proceedings. He further argued that there were circumstances in which there might have been consent, or a mistaken belief that the complainant consented. “We should think of cases, for example, where it is quite clear that there was consensual activity in advance and then the parties diverge as to whether or not there was further consent to whatever happened next. We should also think of cases where there are multiple actors and quite

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a lot of alcohol consumed, so credibility of the various witnesses should be tested.”58 Several of the witnesses, regardless of their perspectives on Bill C-46, regarded the lack of updated research on sexual-assault cases and how they have been settled in court as a serious issue.59 There was little mention of media coverage of sexual-assault cases during the Senate hearings, but there was some discussion of tougher publication bans on the details of private records when the senators questioned Privacy Commissioner Stoddard. As her office does not deal with criminal matters, she had no specific recommendation on how freedom of expression versus privacy rights in court might be reconsidered in light of fairly recent media developments, such as televised court proceedings and the ever-broadening reach of the Internet, including Twitter tweets from the courthouse. But Regan Morris, the legal counsel for her office, did observe that “there may be scope in the publication ban provisions of the Criminal Code to protect, in addition to the identity, some of the more sensitive information.” Commented Senator Serge Joyal in response to Stoddard: “This brings me to conclude that in particular, publication on the Internet should be one of the factors judges have to consider in order to better protect the victim’s right to privacy,” as should electronic communication in general. Witnesses and senators also discussed the privacy rights of the accused. Stoddard noted that outdated media reports, especially online, continue to harm the reputations of defendants who have been acquitted.60 In a later session, Phil Downes, representing the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, stated that publication bans are already “fairly rigorous” and that there should also be equal media coverage of acquittals, although “I do not know what you can do about that.”61 There was very little media coverage of the Senate committee hearings themselves, perhaps because the journalists were focusing on the political debates concerning Bill C-10, the omnibus “tough on crime” legislation that passed in the majority Conservative Parliament in March 2012.62 The Senate committee’s subsequent report did not garner much media attention either, perhaps because the senators did not recommend major changes to sections of the Criminal Code governing the production of third-party records in sexual-assault cases. The committee recommended several amendments regarding the procedures for the production of personal records, regardless of when the alleged assaults took place. These are some of the same issues the witnesses raised during the review hearings. The Senate report states

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that records about the complainant that the defence already legitimately holds should be admissible as evidence only with the permission of the case management or trial judge, who would maintain the same scrutiny and considerations that govern the release of all third-party records. The court would give the complainant the opportunity during an in-camera hearing to ask for limits on the admissibility of her personal records held by the accused. Further, those records would be returned to the complainant immediately or when all court procedures concerning the case, including appeals, are over. The report also recommended that judges, in deciding what personal records are admissible, pay more attention to the issue of the complainants’ equality rights under the Charter, as well as their rights to security and personal safety, and that of other persons involved as well. When records are released as evidence, they should go to both the defence and the Crown. It would still be up to the judge to allow the media to report on any aspect of those personal records, but the Senate report did not specifically address how social-media practices among journalists and other observers, such as tweeting from the court house, might still compromise the complainant’s personal privacy. The report’s other recommendations focused mainly on federal and provincial mechanisms that would better support the complainants without jeopardizing the rights of the accused, including the importance of complainants having access to their own lawyers so that they fully understand what is at stake when their personal records are introduced as evidence in court.63 Today, judges can still order and peruse third-party records, with marginally increased protections for the complainants and potentially greater restrictions on the media. The new Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, or Bill C-32, amends the Criminal Code, so that, in alleged cases involving “a violation of the complainant’s sexual integrity, the judge, in deciding the admissibility of third-party records, must weigh the rights of the accused “to make a full answer and defence” and “the right to privacy, personal security and equality of the complainant or witness … and … of any other person to whom the record relates.” The phrase “personal security” is new, and the act also makes the complainant’s right to her own legal counsel more explicit. In addition, the new act broadens the judge’s discretion to ban the media from reporting the identities of complainants and witnesses, including police officers, in sexual-assault cases. Parliament must review the Victims Bill of Rights in five years.64

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Conclusion The slow progression of Canada’s sexual-assault legislation over the past forty years reflects changes in social attitudes about female sexuality and the complainant’s right to privacy, but it also underlines the highly politicized gender war between feminist advocates and defence lawyers, as well as jurisdictional sparring between Parliament and the courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Journalists must understand that historical context and the meaning of the current legislation if they are going to do a truly ethical job of reporting sexual-assault cases, especially those involving private records, or resist legislative attempts to further curtail their freedom to report on them. For pragmatic news reporters and editors, strict adherence to the concept of fairness and balance can be demanding enough as it is, but incorporating a related “ethic of care” will be especially challenging in today’s fast-paced news environment. Journalists are increasingly expected to file their stories and columns from the courthouse in print, broadcast, and online versions, as well as supply additional blog posts and up-to-the-minute tweets when allowed, making it more likely that the context and meanings behind a story will be missed.65 Although Benedict never used the term “ethics of care,” as it is fairly new to journalism studies, her suggestions incorporate some of the principles put forward by Fullerton and Patterson and by Jiwani and Young. A more careful use of language is one way to improve fastbreaking news coverage of sexual-assault cases and court proceedings, as well as more analytical follow-ups and even opinion pieces. One can avoid using descriptive nouns and adjectives that make the complainant seem immature, out of control, or sexually provocative, especially because of her race, and any words and phrases that make an alleged or proven sexual assault sound titillating, such as “fondled” rather than “molested” and “had sex with” rather than was “sexually assaulted.” Attribution and real-life context, rather than a simple litany of sexist myths, go a long way in explaining the circumstances involved in the complaint. Benedict explains: “The purpose would be to avoid vocabulary that in any way suggests the victim deserved or enjoyed the assault,” because such language implicitly suggests that the defendant is not guilty.66 This is particularly true when the complainants are especially vulnerable, such as the ones whose private records are most likely to be used as evidence in the first place. It would not be misplaced to ask ourselves whether these private records are really necessary to the

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media coverage or are rather just red herrings used to discredit the witness. The same care should be applied to reporting Crown or witness testimony about the accused, especially if he belongs to a racial or other minority group because these men are most likely to be stereotyped as dangerous to women. The principles of fairness and balance with an ethic of care equally apply to follow-up and analytical stories; for example, one can provide profiles of both complainant and defendant and investigate the gaps in both their court testimonies. One should follow up on court cases, tracking the seriousness of the crime and its traumatic effects on the victim and the community, as well as the impact on the defendant of a false accusation if that happens to be the case. Feminist advocates and judicial champions of the accused are all crucial sources since they can equally lay claim to appreciable legal expertise, regardless of their respective points of view.67 It is simply unacceptable to arbitrarily dismiss feminist arguments on behalf of complainants as “irrelevant” or “politically correct” and highlight only the opinions of the legal experts most likely to support the defence. Each source has to be balanced against the other, with references to other authorities as well, so that there is plenty of room for context and variation beyond the usual “she said/he said” conflict scenario. It is also time to rethink undue journalistic attention to the news values of “conflict” and “unusualness” since those elements can actually give media audiences the false impression that women are just as likely to commit sexual assault as men are, or that males are just as likely to be victims of sexual assault as females, when the reverse is true. Insertion of the relevant statistics, with a proviso that most sexual assaults go unreported in the first place, will enlighten the public as to the genuine scope of the problem. Journalists also need to pay attention to the real story; for example, they should outline the changes in the rules of court procedure in sexual-assault cases without getting overly distracted by conflicts between judges, and between judges and legislators. These legislative or judicial changes, after all, may affect how journalists are able to approach and report the testimony of both complainant and accused. Thoughtful coverage employing an ethic of care with fairness and balance will not only promote journalistic accuracy in coverage of sexual-assault cases but also will demonstrate to legislators, the judiciary, and the public that there is no need to impose further limits on media freedoms in court.

“Did She Consent to This Sex Act with This Accused?” 175 NOTES 1 Bill C-32, available at https://openparliament.ca/bills/41-2/C-32. The matter did not appear on the 2011 agenda of the Commons Justice Committee, so the Senate decided to hear witnesses and draft a report for Parliament to consider. Senate of Canada, transcript of comments made by Senator Joan Fraser, chair, Senate LCA committee hearings, 3 February 2011. The committee’s recommendations can be found in Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, “Statutory Review on the Provisions and Operation of the Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Pro­ duction of Records in Sexual Offence Proceedings),” Senate of Canada, Ottawa, December 2012. Available at http://senate-senat.ca/lcjc-e.asp. While all federal political parties, lawyers’ associations, and several victims’ rights groups generally support the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights as a first step, they have still complained that, among other problems, ­ it includes no enforcement procedures or federal financial commitments, will not be uniformly administered across the country because of different victims’ rights protocols among the provinces and territories, and an amendment to the Criminal Code allowing judges to decide if certain witnesses should be allowed anonymity in court could eventually be ruled unconstitutional. House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, transcripts of meetings nos. 46 to 52, 54, and 56, held on 9, 21, 28, and 30 October; 4, 6, 18, and 25 November; 2 December 2014. http://www.parl.gc.ca/CommitteeBusiness (accessed 16 January 2015). 2 Lise Gotell, “The Ideal Victim, the Hysterical Complainant and the Disclosure of Confidential Records: The Implications of the Charter for Sexual Assault Law,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 40 (2002): 251; Lise Gotell, “Canadian Sexual Assault Law: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of FeministInspired Law Reforms,” in Clare McGlynn and Vanessa E. Munro, eds., Rethinking Rape Law: International and Comparative Perspectives (London: Routledge-Cavendish 2010), chapter 15; Karen Busby, “Discriminatory Uses of Personal Records in Sexual Violence Cases,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 9 (1997): 148–51, 161–4, 172–6. 3 Helen Worthington, “Women Back Rape Law, Maloney Says It Is Unfair,” Toronto Star, 14 August 1976, H5; David Paciocco, “In Some Cases, Evidence of Prior Sexual Conduct Can Be Crucial,” Toronto Star, 8 October 1991, A17; David Paciocco, “Bill C-46 Should Not Survive Constitutional Challenge,” Ontario Criminal Law Newsletter 18, no. 2 (1997); Alan Borovoy, “Privacy Law Unfair to Sexual Assault Suspects,” Toronto Star, 21 October 1997, A19.

176  Covering Canadian Crime 4 Canadian Newspapers Co. v. Canada (Attorney General), [1988] 2 SCR 122, http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/357/index.do ­(accessed 2 December 2015); David Vienneau, “Anonymity Upheld in Sex Assault Cases,” Toronto Star, 22 December 1995, A29; Kirk Makin, “Top Court Upholds Victims’ Anonymity,” Globe and Mail, 22 December 1995, A5; Stuart M. Robertson, Media Law Handbook: A Guide for Canadian Jour­ nalists, Broadcasters, Photographers and Writers (Vancouver: International Self-Counsel Press 1983), 56–7; Catherine McKercher et al., The Canadian Reporter: News Writing and Reporting, 3rd ed. (Toronto: Nelson Education 2011), 236–8. 5 See, for example, Shannon Sampert, “Let Me Tell You a Story: EnglishCanadian Newspapers and Sexual Assault Myths,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 22, no. 2 (2010): 301–28. 6 Carolyn M. Byerly, “An Agenda for Teaching News Coverage of Rape,” Journalism Educator, spring 1994, 59–69. 7 Yasmin Jiwani and Mary Lynn Young, “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse,” Canadian Journal of Communication 31, no. 4 (2006): 895–917. 8 Helen Benedict, Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes (New York: Oxford University Press 1992), chapter 1. 9 Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, “Murder in Our Midst: Expanding Coverage to Include Care and Responsibility,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 21, no. 4 (2006): 305. 10 Ibid., 310. 11 Constance Backhouse, Carnal Crimes: Sexual Assault Law in Canada, 1900–1975 (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History/Irwin Law 2008). 12 Margaret Denike, “Dignifying Equality: The Challenge of Reform and Sexual Assault Proceedings,” Canadian Woman Studies 19, nos. 1–2 (1999): 81–5, accessed through ProQuest, 1 February 2012. 13 Loreen M.G. Clark and Debra Lewis, Rape: The Price of Coercive Sexuality (Toronto: Women’s Press 1977), chapters 3, 4, 5; Christine Boyle et al., “Tracking and Resisting Backlash against Equality Gains in Sexual Offence Law,” Canadian Woman Studies 20, no. 3 (2000): 72ff, accessed through Academic OneFile Web, 22 March 2012. 14 Maureen McTeer, “‘Let’s Make Rape Laws Firm and Fair,’” Globe and Mail, 22 July 1978, 10; Clark and Lewis, Rape, chapter 3. 15 Canadian Press, “Rape Hearings Can Demand Sex-Life Data,” Globe and Mail, 28 June 1980, 1; see also “In-Camera Rape Quiz Ruled Legal,” Toronto Star, 28 June 1980, A11; “Crisis Centre Critical of Court Ruling on Rape,” Toronto Sunday Star, 29 June 1980, A13.

“Did She Consent to This Sex Act with This Accused?” 177 16 Elizabeth Sheehy, “From Women’s Duty to Resist to Men’s Duty to Ask: How Far Have We Come?” Canadian Woman Studies 20, no. 3 (2000): 98ff, accessed through Academic OneFile Web, 22 March 2012; Kathleen Crook, “Fewer Women Will Complain,” Toronto Star, 1 September 1980, A9. 17 Denike, “Dignifying Equality.” 18 Clark and Lewis, Rape, chapter 3. Barbara Roberts, “All Our Lives: Sexual Assault and Other Normal Activities,” Canadian Woman Studies 4, no. 4 (1983): 7–9. 19 Emphasis in original. Michele Landsberg, “New Rape Law May Cut through the Sexism,” Toronto Star, 8 May 1981, C1. 20 Bruce Ward, “Rape Bill Stymied by System,” Toronto Star, 24 July 1982, B4; CP, “Tory Dissension Blocks Passage of Assault Bill,” Globe and Mail, 4 August 1982, 8; David Vienneau, “MPs Approve Stiffer Laws for Sexual Offences,” Toronto Star, 5 August 1982, A3; CP, “Senate Approves New Sex Law in Unanimous Vote,” Toronto Star, 27 October 1982, A19; CP, “Senate Approves Assault Law,” Globe and Mail, 27 October 1982, 10. See also Gotell, “Canadian Sexual Assault Law”; Clark and Lewis, Rape, 56–7. 21 David Vienneau, “Getting Tough on Exploitation,” Toronto Star, 22 April 1982, A20; Gotell, “Canadian Sexual Assault Law”; Katharine D. Kelly, “‘You Must Be Crazy if You Think You Were Raped’: Reflections on the Use of Complainants’ Personal and Therapy Records in Sexual Assault Trials,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 9 (1997): 180–1. 22 Denike, “Dignifying Equality.” 23 Canadian Press (CP), “Women’s Group Wants Rape Laws Reformed,” Toronto Star, 22 September 1976, A24. 24 Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46, ss.150–61; Senate of Canada, official transcript of the testimony to the LCA committee of Catherine Kane, director general and senior general counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section of the Department of Justice, 2 February 2011. 25 Justice Department’s statistics cited in William Walker, “Reports of Sex Attacks Rose after ‘Rape Shield’ Law Passed,” Toronto Star, 24 August 1991, A1; R. v. Seaboyer; R. v. Gayme, [1991] 2 S.C.R. 577; Elizabeth Sheehy, “Legal Responses to Violence against Women in Canada,” Canadian Woman Studies 19, nos. 1–2 (1999): 62–73, accessed through ProQuest, 1 December 2011; David Shoalts, “Victims’ Histories Sought,” Globe and Mail, 27 March 1991, A8; David Vienneau, “Can Victims Keep Sex Life Private?” Toronto Star, 27 March 1991, A3; Gary Oakes, “Victim Won’t Testify in ‘Rape Shield’ Case,” Toronto Star, 23 November 1991, A10; Gary Oakes, “Crown Withdraws Charges in ‘Rape Shield’ Case,” Toronto Star, 20 February 1992, A2.

178  Covering Canadian Crime 26 T. Brettel Dawson, “Is a Rape Shield Law Needed? By Striking It Down, the Supreme Court Has Put Women at Risk,” and David Paciocco, “In Some Cases, Evidence of Prior Sexual Conduct Can Be Crucial,” Toronto Star, 8 October 1991, A17; Paula Todd, “Ontario to Fight for Law on Rape Victim Testimony,” Toronto Star, 28 August 1991, A2. 27 See, for example, David Shoalts, “Judges Seem Split on Victims’ History,” Globe and Mail, 1 April 1991, A4. 28 CP, “New Law to Restore Rape-Shield Protections, Campbell Vows,” Toronto Star, 6 September 1991, A14; David Shoalts, “Law to Limit SexHistory Evidence,” Globe and Mail, 6 September 1991, A1-A2; David Vienneau, “Men Don’t Understand Sexual Fears, Campbell Says,” Toronto Star, 2 December 1991, A1, A20; David Vienneau, “Delegates Urge Campbell to Overhaul Justice System,” Toronto Star, 13 June 1991, D27. 29 Gallup Canada. “Sex History Irrelevant, Most Say,” Toronto Star, 13 January 1992, A11. 30 In the final version of the bill, the phrase “all reasonable steps” had been amended to “reasonable steps,” and the word “incapacitated” was substituted for the original term, “intoxicated,” because of fears that the new law would not otherwise survive a challenge under the Charter. Gotell, “Canadian Sexual Assault Law”; Lise Gotell, “The Discursive Disappearance of Sexualized Violence,” in Dorothy E. Chunn, ed., Reaction and Resistance: Feminism, Law and Social Change (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 2007), 130–1; David Vienneau, “Rape Law Will Give Definition of Consent to Sexual Activity,” Toronto Star, 12 December 1991, A14; CP, “Rape Law to Be ‘Fairer’ Not Weaker, Ottawa Says,” Toronto Star, 2 June 1992, A11; CP, “Lawyers Win Concessions from Ottawa on Rape Bill,” Toronto Star, 3 June 1992, A3; Geoffrey York and Jeff Sallot, “Campbell Agrees to Amend Bill on Sexual Assault,” Globe and Mail, 3 June 1992, A4; Bob Cox, “MPs Approve New Rape Law: No Means No,” Toronto Star, 16 June 1992, A1; Sean Fine, “Sexual-Assault Bill Wins Approval,” Globe and Mail, 16 June 1992, A12. 31 Editorial, “Secrecy in Court,” Toronto Sunday Star, 31 May 1992, B2; CP, “Lawyers Win Concessions from Ottawa on Rape Bill,” Toronto Star, 3 June 1992, A3. 32 See, for example, Michele Landsberg, “Will Rape Law Protect Victims from Courtroom Smear Tactics?” Toronto Star, 15 August 1992, E1; David Vienneau, “No Means No Rape Law Spells Danger for Bosses, Critics Fear,” Toronto Star, 1 June 1992, All. 33 Geoffrey York, “Sexual Assault Legislation Attacked,” Globe and Mail, 20 May 1992, A6; Boyle et al., “Tracking and Resisting Backlash against Equality Gains in Sexual Offence Law.”

“Did She Consent to This Sex Act with This Accused?” 179 34 David Vienneau, “New Rape Law Is Ammunition in War of the Sexes,” Toronto Star, 20 May 1992, A2. 35 Editorial, “An Assault on the Law, Not to Say Common Sense,” Globe and Mail, 19 May 1992, A14. 36 Editorial, “Fine-Tuning a Law,” Toronto Star, 5 June 1992, A26; Editorial, “Improved Rape Law,” Toronto Star, 17 June 1992, A20. 37 Gotell, “The Discursive Disappearance of Sexualized Violence,” 144–6; Sheehy, “Legal Responses to Violence against Women in Canada”; Tu Thanh Ha, “Parliament Set to Foil Drunkenness Defence,” Globe and Mail, 21 June 1995, A1, A9. 38 Sheehy, “From Women’s Duty to Resist to Men’s Duty to Ask.” Some cases involving the defendant’s “mistaken belief” of the complainant’s consent dated back to before the 1992 rape-shield law. Sean Fine, “Women’s Group Seeks Limits on Defence Tactics and Trials,” Globe and Mail, 1 December 1994, A9. 39 Kirk Makin, “Court Rules against Rape Victims,” Globe and Mail, 15 December 1995, A1, A15; David Vienneau, “Court Opens Rape Records to Accused,” Toronto Star, 15 December 1995, A3; R. v. O’Connor (1994), 89 C.C.C. (3d) 109 (B.C.C.A.); Karen Busby, “Discriminatory Uses of Personal Records in Sexual Violence Cases,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 9 (1997): 148–51, 156–8, 160–1, 167–72. 40 Michele Landsberg, “Where Is Promised Law to Protect Sex Assault Victims?” Toronto Star, 5 January 1997, A2. 41 Busby, “Discriminatory Uses of Personal Records in Sexual Violence Cases,” 148–51; Kelly, “You Must Be Crazy if You Think You Were Raped.” 42 David Vienneau, “Bill Aims to Curb Use of Victims’ Files,” Toronto Star, 13 June 1996, A12; editorial, “Clearer New Rules for Rape Cases,” Toronto Star, 14 June 1996, A24; Anne McIlroy, “Law Protects Assault Victims,” Globe and Mail, 13 June 1996, A4. 43 Susan McDonald, “Bill C-46: Records Applications Post-Mills, A Caselaw Review,” Ottawa: Department of Justice, 2006, 24, 31–7. Bill C-46 is ­outlined in appendix A. 44 Lise Gotell, “Colonization through Disclosure: Confidential Records, Sexual Assault Complainants and Canadian Law,” Social & Legal Studies 10, no. 3 (2001): 335; McDonald, “Bill C-46,” appendix A, 48. 45 McDonald, appendix A, ss.278.1–278.9 of the Criminal Code. 46 Kane testimony; Senate of Canada official transcript of the testimony of Karen Busby of the University of Manitoba, 3 February 2012. 47 Borovoy, “Privacy Law Unfair to Sexual Assault Suspects.” 48 R. v. Mills, [1999] 3 S.C.R. 668; Kirk Makin, “Top Court Bows to Will of Parliament,” Globe and Mail, 26 November 1999, A1, A9; Kirk Makin,

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49 50

51

52

53

54 55

56

“Ruling ‘a Sign of Things to Come,’” Globe and Mail, 27 November 1999, A3; Jill Mahoney, “Ruling Brings Joy, Hope, Relief – and Dismay,” Globe and Mail, 26 November 1999, A9; Nahlah Ayed, “Sex Victim’s Privacy Is Upheld by Top Court,” Toronto Star, 26 November 1999, A1, A16; editorial, “Balancing Privacy against the Presumption of Innocence,” Globe and Mail, 26 November 1999, A20; editorial, “Important Victory for Victims’ Rights,” Toronto Star, 26 November 1999, A34: Florian Sauvageau et al., The Last Word: Media Coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 2006), chapter 6. Gotell, “Colonization Through Disclosure,” 316. Lise Gotell, “Tracking Decisions on Access to Sexual Assault Complainants’ Confidential Records: The Continued Permeability of Subsections 278.1– 278.9 of the Criminal Code,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 20, no. 1 (2008): 111–54. See also Gotell, “The Ideal Victim, the Hysterical Complainant and the Disclosure of Confidential Records”; Karen Busby, “Third Party Records Cases since R. v. O’Connor,” Manitoba Law Journal 27 (2000): 355–90. Statistics Canada compiled these figures from police records, a General Social Survey of Sexual Victimization of victims aged fifteen and older, and other studies. Senate of Canada, official transcript of the testimony of Julie McAuley and Mia Dauvergne of Statistics Canada before the Senate LCA committee, 3 February 2011. Testimony of McAuley, Dauvergne, and McDonald. See also McDonald, “Bill C-46,” 14–15, citing statistics from StatsCan’s 1999 General Social Survey on Sexual Victimization, which did not include numbers of spousal sexual assaults. Most of these surveys involved both male and female respondents, with females predominating. Erroneous information appeared in Sampert, “Let Me Tell You a Story,” 302n5. There was a proviso that they should do so in the original legislation, ­although the SCC ruling in R. v. Mills said it was not necessary to go through the entire list. Testimony of McDonald, Kane, Busby; Senate of Canada official transcript of the testimony of Donald Stuart, professor, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University, 16 November 2011. Busby testimony. Senate of Canada official transcript of the testimony of Jennifer Stoddard, 20 October 2011; Busby testimony; Lise Gotell, professor, Women’s Studies, University of Alberta, 24 November 2011; Phil Downes, director, Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, 3 November 2011; Andrew Swan, justice minister and attorney general of Manitoba, 17 November 2011. Senate of Canada official transcript of the testimony of Lee Lakeman, ­regional representative, Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres,

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57 58

59 60

61 62 63

64

65 66 67

26 October 2011. During the same session, the senators also heard from Sandy Onyalo, executive director, Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre; Stefanie Lomatski, executive director, Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women and the Sexual Assault Network; and Steve Sullivan, executive ­director, Ottawa Victims Services. Gotell testimony. Testimony of Downes and Swan; Senate of Canada official transcript of the testimony of Sarah Kaplan, manager, Cornwall Community Hospital Assault and Sexual Abuse Program, 24 November 2011; Stuart testimony. See, for example, the testimony of Busby, Stoddard, Stuart, and Gotell. Senate of Canada official transcript of comments from Stoddard; Regan Morris, legal counsel, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; and Senator Serge Joyal, 20 October 2011. Downes testimony. See, for example, James Mennie, “Quebec Looks to Soften Bill C-10,” The Province, 14 March 2012, A22. The report also asked, for example, that the federal government consider amending the Criminal Code so that Ontario’s “likely relevant” standards for admissibility of evidence, which effectively curtail defence “fishing expeditions” aimed at weakening complainants’ credibility, be applied in the other provinces and territories. The Senate committee also wants a longer notice period for the production of records and translation of those notices, when relevant, into the Aboriginal languages of the north. And it called for more government research on sexual-assault crimes and cases that involve the production of personal records. Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, “Statutory Review on the Provisions and Operation of the Act to Amend the Criminal Code.” Bill C-32. An Act to Enact the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and to Amend Certain Acts, https://openparliament.ca/bills/41-2/C-32. The amendments to the Criminal Code, s.278, specifically address the production of complainants’ private records, adding consideration of their personal security as a factor. The amendments to s.486 deal with protecting the privacy of complainants and witnesses during the proceedings and in the media. Available at http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/ Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=7935412&File=50#7 ­(accessed 3 December 2015). See Harada and McGuire’s chapter 9 in this volume; McKercher et al., The Canadian Reporter, 240–1. Benedict, Virgin or Vamp, 259. Ibid., chapter 1.

11 Fighting on the Side of the Angels: The Toronto Star’s Newsroom Lawyer Bert Bruser on the Changing Challenges of the Law in Canada Chris R i c har ds on an d Romay ne S m i t h F u ller ton Bert Bruser is currently the Toronto Star’s newsroom lawyer. He has acted for newspapers and others in the publishing business for more than thirty years. He was a partner at the Toronto law firm of Blake, Cassels and Graydon until 2011 when he became a partner emeritus. For many years, he headed the firm’s media-law group. He has defended hundreds of libel actions and has appeared in all levels of courts resisting such things as publication bans and subpoenas to reporters. Bruser is recognized in the Canadian Lexpert Directory as one of the leading lawyers in Canada. With Brian Rogers, he has written a book titled Journalists and the Law: How to Get the Story without Getting Sued or Put in Jail. He has also published articles on various aspects of media law while giving lectures and conducting seminars for journalists. Bruser is an adjunct professor at both the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and the School of Journalism, Ryerson University. In this chapter, he offers his insights about what he considers to be one of the greatest challenges today for courts and crime reporters: getting access to public documents. He also gives a retrospective look at the Paul Bernardo trial in 1995 and suggests how it affected the crime-coverage landscape in this country. I view my role at the Star as trying to get stories in the paper. I don’t want to kill stories. That’s so easy. Instead, my job is to figure out ways to publish what some might consider dangerous stories. I have always loved the newspaper business – I started out as a journalist – and I’ve had a wonderful career mostly because I can combine the law and investigative reporting. I love the pace, the urgency, the deadlines, the technology, the discipline of investigative reporting. Figuring out with the reporters and editors how you get the highest quality of information so that the story becomes unassailable. That’s where someone like me can be a big help to reporters.



Fighting on the Side of the Angels 183

… I think the biggest problem facing reporters covering crime today in this city and in this province is obtaining information from the courts and the police, getting access to things like court exhibits. It’s really stupid because we have a court system that doesn’t think the public is entitled to this stuff. And it’s incredibly frustrating to journalists. They have to spend an inordinate amount of time going to the courts and saying, “Can I have a copy please?” And the court officials saying no, you have to make an application before a judge before you can get an exhibit, and this can take weeks, months and sometimes years. It’s so “un-American” and frustrating to people. That’s the most serious problem in covering crime. If you’re talking about aggressively covering courts and crime, you’re not likely to get sued over libel, but you are likely to run into confrontations with bureaucrats, court officials, judges, and the like. Journalists ought to work together to develop a kind of cooperative synergy in which the attitude is not to passively accept court officials telling you that you are not entitled to exhibits which have been filed in court. I think the education of reporters could be improved so that they insist on obtaining and aggressively seeking court documents, so they don’t take the word of some clerk at a court that you can’t have it. [This is exactly what a young Linden MacIntyre did not do, and his frustration with being denied access to information as well as the landmark Supreme Court decision that eventually ensued are outlined in MacIntyre’s own words in chapter 8.] I think you want reporters to be more and more aggressive in trying to get information from the courts. I think you want laws changed where necessary so it’s more clear that you are entitled to court exhibits – all of which goes on in the context of less and less resources, the diminishing resources that media have. We need to educate reporters about how to use the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – to stand up in court and say, “I want access to that. I have a constitutional right to obtain access. The public needs to know what is happening in our courts,” and so on. They don’t generally do this, and I think that is a real problem. … There has been tremendous change in how crime has been reported over the last twenty years. The real threshold came with the Bernardo case and after that, everything just changed.1 The Bernardo trial created an incredible media frenzy, a circus, and it was massively covered, and aggressively covered. It was about ten years after the Charter, and prior to that I think people were worried about how the Charter was

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going to be interpreted and what restrictions were going to be around. Somehow Bernardo seemed to – perhaps illogically – loosen things up. People started to do more, cover more, and nothing happened to reporters. It takes time to figure out: Holy shit! We’re freer than we used to be. The more that happens, the freer you feel to report information that wasn’t previously reported. The two major changes are: 1) columns are now being written during jury trials; and 2) the media is publishing much negative, or what used to be called “prejudicial,” material about the accused in stories written at the time of the arrest. Bernardo, I think, was the first case where Christie [Blatchford]2 and Rosie [DiManno]3 were writing columns during the trial. Prior to Bernardo, newspapers did not publish columns during jury trials. The media wouldn’t publish columns during trials in case a juror might read it contrary to instructions from the judge. The fear was that the jury would decide the accused was guilty based on what he or she read in the paper, not on the evidence presented in court. I don’t know how technical we want to get, but during the Bernardo case, we didn’t worry about saying bad things about Bernardo, but we worried about columnists attacking the credibility of witnesses, particularly Homolka, and somehow tainting the process. This concerned the court because in Canada, jurors are not sequestered and they can read the papers and be influenced by coverage. And after the Bernardo trial was over, we had Patrick Lesage, the trial judge, here [at the Star] to talk about what he thought about the media coverage.4 He was a great, media-savvy judge and he said that he didn’t have any significant troubles with the media coverage. So after this, it was not only Christie and Rosie pushing the envelope but others as well. You have to remember that Bernardo went into this trial as a horrendous sexual assaulter of thirteen-year-old girls. The issue at the trial was: Did he kill them? So nobody was worried about what bad things reporters might say about him and the same was true with Karla Homolka. That’s a very important point and people don’t remember that. It’s a contrast to the Tori Stafford case where Michael Rafferty was charged.5 Rafferty was presumed to be an innocent man going into his trial; Bernardo was presumed to be innocent of murder, but not of kidnapping and sexual assault. You have to be very experienced to write columns like Christie and Rosie do. I think Rosie could give a course on how to write columns during trials because she knows how to say things, how to write things so she stays inside the law. She’ll say it’s not for me to say this guy’s



Fighting on the Side of the Angels 185

guilty. That’s for the jury to say, and Christie does the same. But they skate close to the line, those two. My fear is that one day there could be a mistrial. This worry is very much magnified by technology [as outlined in chapters 9 and 12] – especially in the hands of less experienced reporters. The most important change in how crime is being covered today is that prior to the Bernardo trial, when a person was arrested, the media would never publish the kind of prejudicial material that is routinely published now. That, I think, is the most fundamental change in our coverage of crime. Now, when there’s a crime, the media publishes all kinds of bad things about the accused and in the old days this would not have been done. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s, the media would never publish an accused’s previous criminal record in a story written at the time of the arrest. This would have been regarded as contempt of court. The concern was that a juror might have seen a news story a year or two before the trial, noticed that the accused has a previous criminal record and decided the case not on the evidence before him or her, but on his or her recollection that the accused had a previous record. This seems absurd today, but that’s the way it was before Bernardo. … The National Newspaper Award the Star won in 2012 [for a 2011 story], that’s a very good example of something where the law was being broken clearly – at least, the law as it was written.6 The story ran on the front page and there was a picture of the woman in her prime – she is a famous Canadian portrait artist, and then a picture of her on her nursing home bed, which we took of her, and she is suffering from severe Alzheimer’s. So what you had is a reasonably well-known person in the care of a nursing home and she was raped – and I use that word deliberately – by a male nurse. It is a disgusting story but it was done in the context of quite a lot of reporting that the Toronto Star has done of how elders are abused in homes over the years. The reason we decided to break the law is that we thought identifying her was in the public interest. The pictures are very dramatic and we got the consent of her guardian and relative, which doesn’t make what we did legal necessarily, but it comforted us. It was clear as soon as we saw those photographs and knew who that person was, this was going to be a front-page story and that the photos would move people. We knew that naming and identifying her would have an impact. So as soon as we saw the material for that story, we started to think about how we could get it in the paper and what our defence would be if we needed one.

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Whether to run something or not – that’s not my decision. What someone like me can do is lay things out, say if a law is being broken or not, but decisions about what to run are made at the highest possible level of the newspaper. This nursing-home story led to changes in the law to provide more protection for seniors. NOTES 1 Paul Bernardo, a convicted Canadian serial killer and rapist, and his wife, Karla Homolka, videotaped their sexual assaults on young girls, including Homolka’s sister. Homolka’s trial was protected by a wide-sweeping ­publication ban made ostensibly to protect Bernardo’s right to a fair trial. Homolka made a contentious plea bargain with the Crown (twelve years for manslaughter) in exchange for her testimony against Bernardo. In September 1995 Bernardo was convicted of first-degree murder and ­aggravated sexual assault of fourteen-year-old Leslie Mahaffy and fifteenyear-old Kristen French. He was sentenced to life in prison. 2 Christie Blatchford, interviewed in chapter 3, is one of Canada’s bestknown crime journalists and columnists. She has worked for the Toronto Star, the Toronto Sun, and the Globe and Mail and currently writes a column for the National Post. 3 Rosie DiManno is a provocative and very well-known columnist for the Toronto Star. 4 Patrick J. LeSage is a lawyer and a well-known judge who spent nearly thirty years on the bench. In 1995 he presided over the trial of Paul Bernardo. 5 In the spring of 2009, Michael Rafferty was convicted in the abduction, rape, and murder of eight-year-old Tori (Victoria) Stafford and in May 2009 he was sentenced to life in prison. His former girlfriend, Terri-Lynne McClintic, testified against Rafferty. McClintic had already pleaded guilty to first-degree murder but, to protect Rafferty’s right to a fair trial, the ­details of McClintic’s trial were covered by a publication ban. 6 Moira Welsh and Jesse McLean, “Nursing Home Residents Abused,” Toronto Star, 17 November 2011. In the story, the Star chose to identify a sexual-assault victim, a seventy-one-year-old woman suffering from ­advanced dementia, who had allegedly been raped in her bed in a nursing home. This identification contravenes the statutory ban on identifying ­victims of sexual assault as set out in the Criminal Code of Canada.

12 The Bandidos Murder Trial: All A-Twitter about a Canadian First Kate Dubi n ski

Kate Dubinski is a multimedia journalist at the London Free Press in London, Ontario. After graduating from Queen’s University, she worked in Edmonton and Fort McMurray, Alberta, before moving to the Free Press in 2005. She has been a general-assignment reporter and columnist for several years. Now, she covers the education and digital-trends beat. Dubinski’s interest in social media and how technologies affect our daily lives began during the Bandidos biker murder trial. The case, believed to be Ontario’s largest mass slaying where six men were convicted of killing eight members of their biker gang in what they called “internal cleansing,” came at a time when Twitter was just starting to debut in the mainstream. In this chapter, Dubinksi outlines how using the then-brand-new technology of microblogging brought this courtroom drama to life not only for thousands of local readers but also for audiences around the world. Not much remains of the thousands of tweets I hammered out during the seven-month trial of six outlaw bikers in 2009. The only way to see anything that I, or any of my colleagues, tweeted is to look in the archives of print editions of the London Free Press because each day we published a small smattering of representative tweets in the courtroom. Recently, I’ve requested an archive of my tweets from the trial so the newsroom can have a physical copy. It was the beginning of Twitter, and it was certainly the beginning of it for our newsroom – and for me as a reporter.1 We used the microblogging site to broadcast a play-by-play of the court proceedings in the biggest mass-murder trail in Ontario history. We had no idea that Twitter, at the time, didn’t archive its 140-­character bursts, and while we knew we were making history, being the first

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newspaper to have permission to tweet from inside a courtroom, we were operating more by trial and error than with a thought-out plan of attack – at least at first. We had no idea who, if anyone, would read the tweets, and whether or not it was worth using two reporters to cover one trial. The story was big, it was juicy, and it cried out for extensive coverage: eight men were found on April 8, 2006, stuffed into cars at the side of a rural southwestern Ontario road, shot to death. Six men were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. The bloodshed was the result of internal cleansing and a power struggle within the Bandidos outlaw motorcycle gang. The trial in London, Ontario, required a special courtroom to accommodate all the lawyers. Free Press reporter Jane Sims and reporters from several other media organizations negotiated with the judge about how exactly the trial coverage would proceed, and a special Internet-ready overflow room with closed-circuit cameras was prepared that would allow the trial to be tweeted live as it happened. Sims wrote the daily stories from the main courtroom, usually one at lunch that would get posted online and another main story for the next-day’s paper. I was in charge of tweeting from the overflow room, giving our readers a taste of being at the trial. It was up to my discretion what I would tweet – whether the minutiae of a cross-examination or commentary of what the accused were doing or wearing. The single rule was simple: I could only tweet what the jury saw. As the trial went on, the cast of characters – the six accused, the lawyers, the judge, the members of the public gallery, the security guards in the overflow room – became players in a tweeting drama. Readers asked all kinds of questions – about the people in the gallery, what the lawyers were wearing, how the accused were interacting, etc. And they got almost-immediate answers from me. As the trial went on, I developed a sense for what information the regular readers wanted, and offered it before they had to ask. We got to know each other, so to speak, over Twitter. People who were reading the live coverage from their living room or cubicle had a sense of being in the courtroom with me – the tweets kept them hooked. During the course of the seven-month trial, the court heard from seventy witnesses – including one biker-turned-informant whose identity was protected and during whose testimony we were not allowed to use electronic devices, lest someone take a picture of him and distribute it for public viewing. Evidence was released at the end of the day



The Bandidos Murder Trial 189

– pictures taken by police, audio recordings, videos – and most of it was posted on lfpress.com as quickly as possible. We became people’s link to the trial, whether interested observers, family members, or other bikers, and on days when I didn’t tweet, we heard about it. During the testimony, I tried to give readers a way to picture the evidence without actually having access to it. If, for example, a police officer testified that he was looking for a .22-calibre Cooey rifle in connection with the murder, I searched Google images for pictures of that particular gun and gave a link to it, saying that was a gun similar to the one police were testifying about. Or, when officers said they found Bandidos memorabilia – a tank top and thong-style underwear – in one of the dead men’s homes, I tweeted a link to the online store where people can buy such items (or just check out the merchandise). The tweets allowed me to interact with readers, in real time, like I never have before. Some people were interested in the details of the law, others about how the accused were interacting with each other, how family members reacted to certain evidence, or what was going on in the public gallery. Eventually, my Twitter followers included men who knew the accused, or who knew the victims, and people from as far away as New Zealand. Family members of the murdered men said they appreciated being able to follow the trial closely without having to come to London (the murdered men were from Winnipeg). Bandidos Motorcycle Club members and former members tweeted inside information, usually by direct message, about the accused or victims. That information wasn’t useful for our trial coverage, per se, but it did give us some interesting perspectives on the evidence, and it gave readers the knowledge that they were being listened to – a valuable tool in retaining those people and keeping them coming back for more. At least one high-ranking Bandidos member from Texas followed the tweets every day and interacted with me extensively, including days when he was being mentioned in trial evidence. Both the prosecuting lawyers and the defence attorneys also followed the coverage on Twitter, often watching the trial live while at the same time reading the tweets about the proceedings. The excitement of being part of the story, being able to ask a reporter questions and getting instant answers, interacting with “the players,” so to speak, was important to our readers. The value of back-and-forth communication between a reporter and his/her audience (through tweets, Facebook posts, or comments online) has grown exponentially

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since 2009, so that interaction would be even more central to trial coverage today. But the proceedings lasted for seven months and I wasn’t in the courtroom for every single day of the trial. Sometimes, I had a vacation day, or I was scheduled to work a night shift, or we knew that the evidence was such that it would be incredibly boring, and so I could be better used in the newsroom working on some other story. Lags in Twitter coverage didn’t go over well. People who followed the trial diligently every day complained when the tweets stopped. They were angry that we, as a newspaper, decided what evidence was interesting enough to cover, and what was too boring to warrant the use of two reporters. Other times, reporter John Miner or others would tweet, but their followers weren’t the same as my followers (and those reporters didn’t have as many because they weren’t consistently tweeting the trial) and the hashtag we used (#bdos) didn’t always ensure that people knew who was tweeting which day. Lessons Learned Twitter now allows you to request your Twitter archive, which is e-mailed to you. That’s new. The American Library of Congress is also archiving Twitter. We didn’t back up the tweets at the time of the trial and I’d advise backing up your own feed, just in case you don’t want to rely on Twitter or other archiving sources to be the keeper of your information. And while my daily coverage eventually garnered me close to a thousand followers, with a handful of people joining every day, there were those who were turned off by the coverage. They’d followed me to get other news, or my personal commentary on the weather, and now were getting dozens of tweets a day about a rather gruesome murder trial. Some people simply unfollowed me for good and others said they’d be back once the trial coverage was over. The #bdos hashtag wasn’t enough to keep people who followed me to make the switch to other reporters, so we lost some readers on days when I wasn’t the one tweeting. These days, rather than have me tweeting from my personal account, we’d make a devoted Bandidos twitter account so readers who wanted to tune in could. (That’s what we did for the Tori Stafford murder trial and it worked very well).2 That would ensure, too, that it didn’t matter which reporter was tweeting – people would be following the trial, not the person covering the trial.



The Bandidos Murder Trial 191

The Free Press coverage was phenomenal because it relied on two people to do two very different things: one to tweet a blow-by-blow of the courtroom proceedings and another to offer longer analysis of the day’s trial. As newsroom budgets tighten and as resources (read: reporters) become scarce, it would be tempting to just send one person to cover a trial – tweet it, then write a longer story using the tweets as notes. For all the reasons that [Susan] Harada and [Mary] McGuire detail in chapter 9, “The Virtual Courtroom,” and then some, that would be a mistake. For those (still rare) cases where tweeting from a courtroom (or overflow courtroom) is allowed, having one person completely devoted to the quick-hit play-by-play details is essential. I didn’t have to think of the broader context of a witness’ answers, and sometimes I was too busy typing (I began the trial tweeting on my BlackBerry, then moved to using a laptop) to watch the face of the accused at a particular time. Reporter Jane Sims, who wrote the longer pieces for the next-day’s paper, was there for that – to take the play-by-play, weed out what didn’t matter, contextualize what did, and analyse the drama for our readers. It was a perfect combination of coverage and would be impossible to do with just one person. … Six years after we became the first newsroom to tweet from a courtroom trial, micro-blogging is just part of what we do. The first thing Jane Sims does when a verdict is delivered in a trial she’s been covering is tweet the decision to her followers. For larger court cases, a second reporter is often in the courtroom to tweet while Sims takes notes for the context story for the paper. Editors and reporters still grapple with similar ethical issues they did before Twitter – but with a twist. Should a detail that wouldn’t make it into the next-day print story, for example, be tweeted, or left out of the coverage completely? Often, such questions are left to the discretion of the reporter, making the need for ethics training just as important as it ever was. It’s difficult to take back a tweet, especially if it’s been retweeted, making accuracy paramount. The Bandidos murder trial taught the London Free Press, and indeed many other media organizations in Canada, about the hunger for value-added journalism that exists across our audience, and showed us how rewarding it can be when we satisfy that appetite. But as Harada and McGuire also make clear in chapter 13, there are risks.

192  Covering Canadian Crime NOTES 1 Twitter, which now publicly trades on the New York Stock Exchange, launched on 21 March 2006. Nick Bilton, Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal (New York: Penguin 2013). 2 Michael Rafferty was tried and convicted in the kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, and first-degree murder of eight-year-old Victoria “Tory” Stafford in February 2012. Some of the details of this case are outlined by Tim Appleby in chapter 6 and Christie Blatchford in chapter 3 of this book. Rafferty’s trial was held in the same courtroom in London, Ontario, as the one used for the Bandidos trial.

13 Aiding and Abetting: How Police Media-Information Units Shape Local News Coverage A pril Lindg re n

The Toronto Police Service is a $930-million-a-year operation that includes a sophisticated public-information unit offering reporters all the news the police deem fit to print. In 2010 the unit issued 2,138 press releases, published 246 Internet stories, and maintained a website that made everything from homicide maps to then-Police Chief Bill Blair’s videotaped remarks available to 1.5 million visitors. In addition to the three uniformed officers who worked full time in the unit answering questions from journalists, three civilians with other responsibilities also responded to media inquiries.1 For Toronto-area reporters, this police-orchestrated news stream adds up to an easily accessible, low-cost, plentiful supply of news. Recent studies by the Local News Research Project (localnewsresearchproject .ca) at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, however, suggest that the consequences for local communities are more problematic. A study of the Toronto Star’s coverage of disadvantaged city neighbourhoods,2 for instance, found that police and crime-related news dominated coverage of these areas even though police statistics suggest violent crime was more prevalent in other city neighbourhoods. A separate investigation into the sense of place conveyed in the Toronto edition of the Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao3 found that police and crimerelated news was the number one local news topic in that publication during the period studied. In addition to squeezing out other essential news, the preoccupation with crime-related stories raised concerns about Ming Pao’s role in shaping newcomers’ perceptions of local safety and security. This chapter explores the role of the Toronto Police Service in influencing the news agendas of these two very different newspapers.

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The results are a cautionary tale about the consequences of combining what cynics might call the enabling behaviour of a well-funded police media unit with a financially challenged industry struggling to satisfy the twenty-four-hour news cycle’s insatiable appetite for more stories, more quickly, in more formats. Background and Context Crime reporting has always been a news staple. Part of the appeal is that tales of malfeasance, murder, and mayhem allow readers and viewers to take moral stands against anti-social behaviour, a mutually reassuring activity that reinforces the group sense of what is socially acceptable.4 The emphasis on crime news in the media and its role in naming and shaming has also been interpreted as the modern-day equivalent of punishment spectacles that once included being put on display in stocks or publicly executed.5 At a fundamental level, however, crime stories appeal to audiences because they are easy to understand, provide material for public discussion,6 and tend to offer relatively straightforward narratives that pit good against bad, right against wrong. This “black and white” narrative style spills over into court reporting as well, where its simplicity is appealing to reporters as well as to audiences. Christie Blatchford, in chapter 3 of this volume, likens covering trials to covering a sporting event where there are two teams and a clearly defined outcome. While news organizations recognized the value of crime news as an audience draw almost from the very beginning, police departments took much longer to understand what could be gained by defining the news and packaging it for reporters and public consumption. Indeed, it wasn’t until the late 1970s and 1980s that policing organizations began seriously to introduce formal media-relations operations.7 Up to that point, police departments operated as relatively secretive paramilitarystyle organizations that released information only when absolutely necessary.8 The job of police reporters back then involved developing good contacts within the police force and mining those contacts for the best stories of the day.9 Several factors precipitated a more deliberate, organized approach to dealing with the news media. Police department officials realized that they could make greater use of the media in the fight against crime. The front pages of early newspapers had occasionally served as policing tools in that they doubled as “wanted” posters publicizing the names

Aiding and Abetting 195

and faces of criminals on the lam.10 Modern police forces recognize that the news media still have a valuable role to play in soliciting information from the public about the whereabouts of suspects11 through the organized distribution of photographs and descriptions, appeals for witnesses, and working cooperatively with non-profit charitable organizations such as Canadian Crime Stoppers. The news media’s contribution to more effective policing also includes the dissemination of information during emergencies and deterrence through the publication of targeted campaigns against speeding, drunk driving, and other crimes.12 The proliferation of news outlets with non-stop demands for around-the-clock information encouraged the centralization of police media-­relations units simply in the interest of greater efficiency.13 Police departments, like other public-sector agencies, began to introduce private-sector-­style performance indicators that required communicating messages about efficiency, transparency, and accountability to the public.14 Finally, self-interest also fuelled police departments’ efforts to communicate their stories through the news media. Both police bureaucracies and unions have learned to use publicity arising from the shooting of an officer, for instance, to highlight the needs of the police force and press for more funding.15 Faced with concerns about legitimacy resulting from corruption and other scandals in the 1970s and 1980s,16 many police departments also sought to impose greater order on how they are portrayed in the news. It became increasingly apparent that effective media strategies can play an important role in fostering perceptions of the local police force as a successful crime-fighting machine, reassuring the public and inspiring trust in the organization. Trust fosters legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, and legitimacy fosters a willingness to pay for, support, and cooperate with police officers as they go about their jobs.17 “A proactive approach to the news media is useful in controlling the version of reality that is transmitted, sustained, and accepted publicly,” Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranek, and Janet Chan observed in their authoritative study of how sources protect and promote their organizations.18 Releasing a steady supply of information has the added benefit of keeping snoopy reporters busy so they have less time to “prey”19 on topics that officials would prefer to keep out of the limelight, police sources told the researchers. The emergence of police media-relations units that protect and advance police interests has been made easier by news-gathering practices.

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Considerable research on the sources that reporters rely on for information shows that public figures and official sources dominate the news in large part because they are readily available, reliable, and efficient.20 Reporters know that if they go to these usual suspects – in this case official police sources – they will likely get the information and quotes they need to make their deadlines. The result is that a small group of sources “provide their perspective of the way things are. At the same time, those with the coveted status as news source amass legitimacy from this position.”21 This arrangement suits police media strategists just fine. Although good police-beat reporters will always have other sources within the police department,22 the easy availability of news releases and media-relations officials means that the police version of reality often turns up in news stories. Ericson, Baranek, and Chan observed that police departments’ media strategies control which version of reality is transmitted in that police officers decide what constitutes a crime and then decide which crimes are newsworthy and should be highlighted in press releases or major incident reports.23 “Constituted in this way, even routine crime-occurrence news releases have a promotional character for the police,” they observed. “The world is depicted as rife with crime and deviance and the police as the authority for keeping the lid on it.”24 In the same vein, a more recent examination of police mediainformation units in Britain concluded that, although the units’ formal goals are to improve accountability and provide effective service to reporters, “these developments invariably include attempts to control and shape policing and crime news.”25 The evidence suggests that these efforts are largely successful. Report­ ers in one study of police media relations in the United States found that almost 75 per cent of crime-related information is provided to the media by law-enforcement agencies.26 Another study by Australian researchers concluded that approximately one-third of police-related news stories published in two newspapers simply copied news releases issued by the New South Wales police media unit. This reliance upon police media releases, the researchers observed, points to the power of police organizations in framing and influencing crime-related news. “It also raises questions about journalistic integrity and the shrinking resources available for the maintenance of the high quality news journalism vital to liberal or social democratic societies.”27 Implicit in this discussion is the assumption that police management of news has an impact on audiences and can shape popular perceptions about crime and policing. While direct evidence of media effects has

Aiding and Abetting 197

been difficult to come by, “it is undeniable that media representations are a major source of popular perceptions of crime and policing, and frame public discourse about them,” Robert Reiner observed.28 Indeed, when Londoners were asked where they obtained information on policing, news media was the most frequently mentioned source, with 80 per cent of respondents citing television, newspaper, and radio news.29 Methodology The Local News Research Project investigates news coverage in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to better understand how the content, the amount, and the geographic patterns of local news reporting shape local debates, define issues, and influence perceptions of people, places, and events. A methodology that combines the content analysis of news items with mapping and spatial analysis techniques is used to support these inquiries. Crime news surfaced as a subject of interest when the Local News Research Project undertook a study of how disadvantaged areas in the city of Toronto are covered by the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest general-circulation newspaper.30 It emerged again in a separate study that explored the sense of place conveyed by local news coverage in the Chinese-language daily newspaper Ming Pao, one of the largest-­ circulation ethnocultural publications in the Toronto area.31 Both newspaper studies involved the content analysis and mapping of local news. Although research suggests that two constructed weeks of newspaper coverage are adequate to produce reliable data that is representative of a full year,32 this study examined twenty-eight issues of each newspaper between 7 January 2008 and 23 August 2008. Coders, including two who can read Chinese-language publications, identified local news items that appeared in both papers and assigned each local item a subject category. Local news items are defined as stories and photographs that deal primarily with events, people, issues, and places in the GTA. The subject categories included police/crime; education; transit/gridlock/sprawl/traffic; fire/accident; business; sports; social supports/poverty/social justice; local aspects of national security/terrorism/disasters; health/medical; business; arts/entertainment; environment/weather; land use/urban design/development; municipal politics/services/budget; local aspects of federal politics/ provincial politics; religious-cultural diversity/multiculturalism/ immigration; and “other.”

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For the purposes of creating news maps, references to places in local articles and photographs, and the addresses of sources associated with a residence, business, or organization, were also identified. After entering the geographic locations into the database, ArcGIS, a geographic-­ information system that stores, retrieves, maps, and analyses geographic data, was used to translate the spatial references into maps indicating the geographic references for each local news item. The software assigned points to specific address locations. Where larger geographic spaces such as parks, neighbourhoods, entire cities, or the whole GTA were mentioned, polygons were used to represent those areas. Individual maps were then merged to generate a map for the Toronto Star that showed all spatial references contained in local news items. A similar map was created to show the pattern of spatial references of local news coverage in Ming Pao. Coders were trained to identify the local news items and geographic references in stories and photographs and to assign a subject category for each news item. Following coder training, a full intercoder reliability test was conducted based on the standards and guidelines outlined by Matthew Lombard, Jennifer Snyder-Duch, and Cheryl Bracken.33 Toronto Star Results In 2005–6 the municipal government, United Way Toronto, and a task force of civic leaders identified rising poverty levels, inadequate social services, infrastructure problems, and high social needs in thirteen areas of the city of Toronto and designated them “priority areas”34 for public investment. Government and non-profit agencies subsequently committed nearly $100 million to these geographically defined pockets of social need and poverty.35 The money was directed to service and infrastructure investments in the priority areas. To enhance community engagement and local governance, it was also used for programs designed to encourage residents’ ability and willingness to get involved and influence what happens in their neighbourhoods.36 The first step in this study involved identifying the 1,737 Toronto Star stories and photographs that referenced at least one location in the city of Toronto. News items that contained only references to locations outside the city boundaries were excluded from the data set. Mapping of the Toronto results (to simplify, the map polygons aren’t shown) revealed that the newspaper’s local coverage was heavily concentrated in the downtown area near Lake Ontario (Figure 13.1). For the purposes of

Aiding and Abetting 199 Figure 13.1. Toronto Star 2008 geographic-point references for all local news items mentioning Toronto locations37

comparison, the data represented on the Toronto map were then sorted into three distinct geographic categories based on subsets of the city’s 140 officially designated neighbourhoods.38 • The priority area category consisted of 22 official city neighbourhoods, with a population of 483,321.39 A total of 122 news stories and photos referenced locations in this geographic area. • The downtown core category consisted of 22 official city neighbourhoods, with a population of 334,985.40 A total of 1,249 news items referenced locations in this geographic area.

200  Covering Canadian Crime Figure 13.2. Breakdown of local news coverage by geographic category and subject41

• The non-priority, rest-of-the-city category consisted of 96 official city neighbourhoods, with a population of 1,684,975.42 A total of 650 news stories and photos referenced locations in this geographic area. The total number of news items for the three geographic categories was greater than the number of news items for the city of Toronto as a whole (1,737) because some news items contained references to locations in more than one geographic area. In addition to significant differences in the amount of reporting on each geographic area, major variations in the type of news coverage accorded each area were immediately evident (Figure 13.2). Sports coverage and arts and entertainment coverage featured most prominently in news coverage of the downtown core. Together, they

Aiding and Abetting 201

accounted for 38.4 per cent of all downtown news items. Police and crime-related news dominated the news coverage in the priority areas, accounting for nearly one-third (31.1 per cent) or 38 of the 122 news items. By comparison, police and crime-related news in the downtown study area represented only 11.3 per cent of news coverage. In the nonpriority, rest-of-the-city neighbourhoods, it was also the most popular topic (15.5 per cent), but to a lesser degree than in the priority areas. The 38 police and crime-related news items that mentioned the priority areas included 11 photos, one letter, and 26 stories. Fourteen of the 26 stories, or 53 per cent, relied upon the police as the sole source of information or were focused on an event initiated by police such as a press conference or door-to-door search. The remaining 12 stories were a mix of ambitious investigative stories about crime patterns, news coverage of court cases, or stories about specific crime incidents where reporters interviewed a range of people (witnesses, family members, neighbours) in addition to the police sources (Table 13.1). Further analysis showed that the high proportion of crime news in the priority areas does not reflect higher-than-average crime rates in those areas. Data obtained from the Toronto Police Service on violencerelated calls for service were used as an indicator of neighbourhood crime rates.43 Violence-related calls for service are defined by police as calls related to homicides, shootings, stabbings, wounding, person with a gun, person with a knife, sound of gunshot, robberies, sexual assaults, fights, assaults in progress, assaults just occurred, and assistance for a police constable. Each city neighbourhood was categorized according to the number of violence-related calls for service for the study period January-August 2008. Neighbourhoods that generated between 7 and 82 calls for police service during that period were categorized as lowcrime rate areas. Those neighbourhoods that generated between 83 and 184 calls were placed in the medium or moderate range while those areas that were the source of 185 to 415 calls were categorized as having a high crime rate. When these categories were mapped (Figure 13.3), the results showed that the highest volume of violence-related calls for service occurred in the downtown area. By comparison, the priority areas typically fell into the low and medium categories. Ming Pao Results With a daily circulation of 51,000, a weekly readership of 227,000, and 500,000 visits per month to its website, Ming Pao is a major ethnocultural newspaper in the Greater Toronto Area.44 The newspaper, published

202  Covering Canadian Crime Table 13.1. Toronto Star police/crime-related stories about the priority areas by information source Court coverage/crime-incident stories that cite multiple sources/ other crime-related stories that cite multiple sources

12

Police-initiated stories (press conferences, other events)

3

Stories with police as sole source

11

Total number of stories

26

Table13.2. Police/crime-related stories in Ming Pao by information source Court coverage/crime-incident stories that cite multiple sources/ other crime-related stories that cite multiple sources Stories where sources could not be identified Police-initiated stories (press conferences, other events) Stories with police as sole source Total number of stories

59 7 10 41 117

in Chinese (traditional version), caters to the second-largest visible minority group in the GTA after South Asians. Almost 10 per cent (486,300) of the GTA population is of Chinese background. One-fifth of this group arrived between 2001 and 2006 and three-quarters were born outside Canada.45 The analysis of Ming Pao’s news content identified 1,157 photographs and stories dealing with people, places, and events in the Greater Toronto Area. While mapping of the Toronto Star’s local coverage indicates an obvious preoccupation with news in the downtown area, the geographic pattern of Ming Pao’s news reporting is dramatically different. The Chinese-language daily’s dot-density map reveals a cluster of coverage in Toronto’s downtown near the largest of the original Chinatowns, located along Spadina Avenue between College Street and Queen Street West, and another cluster in the northeast part of the GTA (Figure 13.4) where large numbers of recent immigrants have settled. Eighteen per cent of local news published in Ming Pao during the period studied dealt with police and crime matters, making it the most common topic. Of the 209 police and crime-related items that appeared in the newspaper, 92 were photos and 117 were stories. In 51 of the 117 stories (43 per cent), police were either the sole source of information or initiated the news coverage by holding an event (Table 13.2).

Aiding and Abetting 203 Figure 13.3. Toronto violence-related calls for service by city area46

Unlike the priority-areas study, which focused on the Toronto Star’s coverage of the city of Toronto, the investigations of Ming Pao’s local news coverage encompassed the whole GTA. This meant that other regional police departments emerged as sources in news stories. Of the news items that explicitly identified a police department, however, the Toronto Police Service was mentioned most often (sixty-three times), suggesting that it is a key source of information for Ming Pao journalists. By comparison, York Regional Police were mentioned just thirteen times, Peel Regional Police were cited seven times, Durham Regional Police were mentioned five times, and the Halton Regional Police Service was mentioned once. The mapping of Ming Pao’s local news topics revealed two patterns of interest. The first pattern was evident in the mapping results of the religious-cultural diversity/multicultural/immigration subject category. The dot-density map for news stories and photos related to this topic indicated that news coverage was largely confined to areas where the Chinese population is highly concentrated (accounting for 25 per cent

204  Covering Canadian Crime Figure 13.4. Concentration of Chinese-origin population and distribution of Ming Pao 2008 news-item spatial references in the GTA47

or more of the census tract population). As the lighter-coloured dots in Figure 13.5 indicate, news items about this topic also tended specifically to reference the Chinese community. This pattern of focused news coverage in areas with a large Chinese population, and an emphasis on Chinese community involvement, prevailed for almost all news topics. The pattern did not hold for three subject categories where there were too few news items to analyse. In two other subject categories (police/ crime and fire/accident), meanwhile, the spatial patterns of news coverage illustrated through mapping were strikingly different. In these cases, news coverage was much more dispersed throughout the GTA

Aiding and Abetting 205 Figure 13.5. Concentrations of Chinese-origin population and distribution of geographic references in Ming Pao’s 2008 coverage of religious/cultural/ multicultural/immigration issues48

and much less likely to reference the Chinese community (Figure 13.6). Both these categories of news are heavily reliant upon information provided by the police. Discussion: What’s Going On? The patterns of crime coverage evident in the Toronto Star and Ming Pao can be attributed to a combination of police information-unit practices, reporters’ use of sources, and how newspapers organize their news coverage. As a major metropolitan daily newspaper, the Toronto Star puts

206  Covering Canadian Crime Figure 13.6. Concentration of Chinese-origin population and distribution of geographic references in Ming Pao’s 2008 coverage of police/fire and accident news coverage49

significant effort into police and crime-related reporting. The newspaper has played a leading role in holding the police accountable and challenging questionable police practices with tough investigations of issues such as racial profiling50 and police conduct during the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto.51 This study, however, focuses on day-to-day crime coverage produced by the newspaper’s police-beat reporters and the student reporters who provide around-the-clock monitoring of police radio communications in the newsroom’s “radio room.” Radio-room reporters are responsible for calling the police to follow up on potential stories and conducting regular rounds of calls to police to check for

Aiding and Abetting 207

new developments. Add to that mix the steady flow of press releases distributed to newsrooms by fax and on the Internet by the Toronto Police Service’s public-information unit, and the result is a plentiful supply of police and crime-related stories. This easy access to police-facilitated crime news plays out in the Toronto Star’s coverage in that police and crime-related news dominated reporting about priority areas (Table 13.3), accounting for 38 of 122 local stories and photographs and easily out-distancing the next most prevalent news topics (transit/gridlock/traffic and social supports/affordable housing/poverty issues). Crime news emerged as the number one subject in priority areas, even though crime, as measured by calls to the police regarding violent incidents, was more problematic in other parts of the city. The extent to which stories based solely upon police sources or police-orchestrated events figured in the newspaper’s coverage (53 per cent or 14 of 26 police/crime stories) also points to a reliance on police information and is consistent with research that suggests reporters look to official sources for easy access to news.52 The organization of the Toronto Star’s reporting staff reinforces newsroom reliance upon police sources for stories about the priority areas. At the time of this study, the newspaper did not operate any bureaus in the city’s suburban areas.53 No bureaus mean no reporters stationed full-time in the neighbourhoods cultivating contacts and digging up stories. Moreover, the reporters working out of the downtown newsroom who do attempt to chase leads for stories about the priority areas run a greater risk of having their stories fall apart because they aren’t familiar with the communities and the people who live there. In the downtown area, where police statistics indicate there were more frequent calls to police related to violent incidents, there was a significant amount of crime coverage but it was counter-balanced by extensive reporting on other topics such as arts, entertainment, and sports. As a result, crime news represented just 11.3 per cent of all local stories reported about the downtown area. The difference in the amount of crime reporting for the priority areas versus other surrounding neighbourhoods is more puzzling. Both areas are primarily located in the suburbs. The statistics on the number of calls to police related to violent incidents suggest they experience the same low to medium crime rates. And there is no Star bureau in either area. Yet crime stories accounted for nearly one-third of the news items (31.1 per cent) from the priority areas compared to just 15.5 per cent in

208  Covering Canadian Crime Table 13.3. News items in the priority areas by topic in the Toronto Star Topic

Number of news items (stories and photos)

Police/crime

38

Transit

10

Social supports/affordable housing/poverty

10

Business

9

Fire/accident

8

Sports

7

Health

7

Education

6

Municipal Politics

6

Other (topics with five or fewer items) Total

21 122

nearby suburbs. One possible explanation that would warrant further investigation is that the city’s decision to officially identify the priority areas as disadvantaged amounted to a form of stigmatization. To the extent that the designation made these areas more top of mind for both the police information unit and reporters, it may have influenced decisions as to which incidents to highlight in press releases and which stories to write. So why does it matter that the Toronto Star published a crime-­ dominated portrait of the priority areas? It matters because coverage of crime consumes newsroom resources and takes up space in newspapers, displacing news about other aspects of life in the city’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The breakdown of priority-area news coverage by topic, for instance, suggests that subjects such as arts and entertainment, diversity, land use, and local environmental concerns merited five or fewer items each during the study period. Municipal politics, education, and health issues fared only slightly better. Yet theories of social capital suggest that there is an important link between residents’ social engagement and the information provided through the media about their community.54 As Lewis A. Friedland put it: “Democratic groups are more likely to form in communities that are integrated through communication.”55 News organizations are key players in this communication process.

Aiding and Abetting 209

Consistently negative portrayals of neighbourhoods are also reason for concern because they shape how a place is perceived. One study of geographic stigma and Dutch housing estates noted that it is particularly problematic when both residents and outsiders see an area as unsafe and undesirable.56 A neighbourhood in decline attracts negative media coverage, which shapes negative perceptions of the place. This contributes to problems such as high turnover rates among residents who have no stake in the community. The French-American sociologist Lois Wacquant’s study of urban poverty in Chicago and Paris concluded that residents who believe they live in a terrible neighbourhood do not get involved in trying to resolve local issues. Instead, they concentrate their efforts on moving away, fuelling neighbourhood instability.57 People who don’t live in the neighbourhood, meanwhile, make determined efforts to avoid the place. A disproportionate amount of crime coverage, therefore, has the potential to foster alienation, on the part of residents and outsiders alike, in Toronto’s priority areas, potentially undercutting extensive public investment in programs designed to encourage citizen engagement. Ming Pao, a much smaller news operation than the Toronto Star, was notable for its emphasis on crime coverage in the paper’s overall mix of local news reporting. At the time of this study, the Toronto edition of the newspaper averaged approximately eighty pages per issue and appeared seven days per week. An editorial staff of thirty-five people worked in the Ming Pao newsroom, including a fifteen-member team (two senior editors, nine general news reporters, one local business and finance reporter, and three photographers) responsible for local news coverage. Reporters who cover police and crime stories are based in the newsroom. On any given day, thirty to forty pages of the paper were designed and produced by a centralized newsroom in China that serves all of Ming Pao’s international editions. In most cases, the content of those pages focused on news and events within China. Even with this outside support, Ming Pao has a significant news hole to fill, a reality that helps explain the newspaper’s appetite for police and crime coverage. With just thirteen people to gather local news and two editors to assemble the local news pages, Ming Pao published an average of 41 GTA-related stories and photographs each day. This substantial workload hints at why 43 per cent of police and crime-related stories cited the police as the sole source of information or were based upon police-initiated events such as press conferences: additional research takes time. Ming Pao’s editor, Tak Yin Lam, admitted frankly in

210  Covering Canadian Crime

an interview that crime news is a popular topic with readers. He also acknowledged, however, that the limited size of his local news staff is his biggest challenge in terms of providing a broad range of coverage.58 The mapping results for Ming Pao’s crime, fire, and accidents coverage are particularly striking in that they revealed that reporters, in these cases only, cast a net that went beyond incidents involving members of the Chinese community and areas of the GTA with high concentrations of Chinese-Canadian residents. This is a major departure from the general pattern of the newspaper’s coverage, which is to focus geographically on where its readers live and to write about the Chinese community. One likely explanation for this departure is that that citywide crime, fire, and accident stories were easy and fast and inexpensive to generate owing in large part to the availability of information from the Toronto Police Service. Under pressure to fill the paper each day with only a limited news staff, few other sources generated the necessary copy with so little effort or cost to the newspaper. Again, it is important to explore why any of this matters. Newspapers have long played a role in helping newcomers understand and adapt to their adopted place. Ethnocultural publications such as Ming Pao act as interpreters by introducing people – particularly people who are still struggling with English – to the rules, norms, and preoccupations of their adopted place.59 In this way, the newspaper conveys a sense of place to newcomers. To the extent that crime reporting dominates Ming Pao’s news coverage, and to the extent that research suggests there is a link between media reports on crime and people’s fear of crime,60 there is a real risk that newcomers who look to Ming Pao in order to understand the GTA will perceive of it as a place with serious, ongoing crime problems that put them at risk. In light of data suggesting a long-term, marked decline in GTA crime rates,61 this impression is seriously at odds with reality. A related concern is that with crime and police-related photos and stories accounting for nearly one in five local news items, other information essential to newcomers’ understanding of how their adopted community works is crowded out of the paper (Table 13.4). Indeed, the amount of attention devoted to police, crime, fire, and accidents is almost as great as the combined total of nine other major news topics that communicate important information about local political institutions, powerbrokers, and social and political norms. There were 257 news items about police, crime, fire and accidents. Meanwhile, a total of just 299 news items dealt with matters related to education,

Aiding and Abetting 211 Table 13.4. Local news items by topic in Ming Pao Topic

Number of news items (stories and photos)

Police/crime

209

Religious-cultural diversity/multiculturalism/immigration

164

Business

145

Arts/entertainment/local attractions

121

Local impact of national security/terrorism/foreign policy/ foreign disasters/human rights

102

Education

72

Sports

69

Health

66

Fire/accident

48

Municipal politics

36

Federal/provincial politics, local angle

27

Transit

26

Other

23

Environment/weather

21

Social supports/affordable housing/poverty

21

Land use/urban development Total

7 1157

health, municipal politics, local aspects of federal and provincial politics, transit, miscellaneous local matters, environmental and weather conditions, social supports, and land-use issues. Summing Up This research is a wake-up call about how everyday news-gathering practices, when combined with sophisticated public-information units run by police organizations, can result in distortions of reality. A pessimist would argue that little can be done to address this problem in an era when newspapers are under increasing pressure to do more with less. Much of the time, reporters are so busy putting out the news they don’t have time to see the bigger picture. An optimist, however, would argue that committed journalists are not in the business of deliberately

212  Covering Canadian Crime

misleading their audiences and that greater awareness of how police media units can and do influence the mix of news can lead to changes in practice. There are good reasons for journalists and news organizations to address the issues highlighted in this chapter. Providing more varied news reporting of priority neighbourhoods to counter-balance crime coverage would result in a more realistic picture of the issues in those neighbourhoods and hold authorities accountable as to whether the investments in local residents, services, and infrastructure have made a difference. This sort of quality journalism gives people a reason to follow the news. In other words, it is good for business. A similar argument can be made in the case of Ming Pao: placing less emphasis on crime coverage in general and limiting the reporting of crime to stories of immediate interest and relevance to the Chinese community would free up resources for in-depth investigations and reporting on a wider range of issues. There are about a half-million residents of Chinese background in the Toronto area. Producing the sort of journalism that gives the community, and newcomers in particular, the information they need to understand and participate in the political, social, and cultural life of the GTA is one way to draw readers to the paper and its advertisers. Finally, this chapter is not an argument against the release of copious amounts of information by police organizations. It is, however, a reminder of the need to be wary of a news source that never stops giving. NOTES 1 Mark Pugash, in discussion with author, 12 August 2012. 2 April Lindgren, “News, Geography and Disadvantage: Mapping Newspaper Coverage of High-Needs Neighbourhoods in Toronto, Canada,” Canadian Journal of Urban Research 18, no. 1 (2009): 74–97. 3 April Lindgren, “Interpreting the City: Portrayals of Place in a TorontoArea Ethnic Newspaper,” Aether: The Journal of Media Geography 8A (2011): 68–88. 4 Garth Lewis Crandon and Sean Dunne, “Symbiosis or Vassalage? The Media and the Law Enforcers: The Case of Avon and Somerset police,” Policing and Society 8 (1997): 80. 5 Richard V. Ericson, Patricia M. Baranek, and Janet B.L. Chan, Visualizing Deviance: A Study of News Organization (Toronto: University of Toronto

Aiding and Abetting 213 Press 1987), 58–9; Suzanne E. Hatty, “Police, Crime and the Media: An Australian Tale,” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 19 (1991): 173. 6 Richard V. Ericson, Patricia M. Baranek and Janet B.L. Chan, Negotiating Control: A Study of News Sources (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1989), 91. 7 Ibid., 93. 8 Raymond Boyle, “Spotlighting the Police: Changing U.K. Police-Media Relations in the 1990s,” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 27 (1999): 238; Ericson, Baranek, and Chan, Negotiating Control, 92, 95; Ray Surette, “Public Information Officers: The Civilization of a Criminal Justice Profession,” Journal of Criminal Justice 29 (2001): 108. 9 Boyle, “Spotlighting the Police,” 238. 10 Ericson, Baranek, and Chan, Negotiating Control, 91. 11 Rob C. Mawby, “Continuity and Change, Convergence and Divergence: The Policy and Practice of Police-Media Relations,” Criminology and Criminal Justice 2 (2002): 306. 12 Steven Chermak, “Image Control: How Police Affect the Presentation of Crime News,” American Journal of Police 14, no. 2 (1995): 35; Ericson, Baranek, and Chan, Negotiating Control, 161; Mawby, “Continuity and Change,” 306. 13 Boyle, “Spotlighting the Police,” 238; Mawby, “Continuity and Change, Convergence and Divergence,” 304; Rob C. Mawby and Steve Worthington, “Marketing the Police: From a Force to a Service,” Journal of Marketing Management 18 (2002): 859. 14 Mawby and Worthington, “Marketing the Police,” 860. 15 Richard V. Ericson, “Patrolling the Facts: Secrecy and Publicity in Police Work,” British Journal of Sociology 40, no. 2 (1989): 221. 16 Rob C. Mawby, “Chibnall Revisited: Crime Reporters, the Police, and ‘Law-and-Order News,’” British Journal of Criminology 50 (2010): 1062. 17 Boyle, “Spotlighting the Police,” 247; Murray Lee, “Force Selling: Policing and the Manufacture of Public Confidence” (Proceedings of Australia and New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference 2010, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2010), 2. 18 Ericson, Baranek, and Chan, Negotiating Control, 93. 19 Ibid. 20 Matt Carlson, “Dueling, Dancing or Dominating? Journalists and Their Sources,” Sociology Compass 3, no. 4 (2009): 529; Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press 2004), 282; Michael Schudson, The Sociology of News (New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc., 2003), 150.

214  Covering Canadian Crime 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29 30 31 32

33

34

35

36

Carlson, “Dueling, Dancing or Dominating,” 527. Mawby, “Chibnall Revisited,” 1071. Ericson, Baranek, and Chan, Negotiating Control, 123, 143. Ibid., 144. Mawby, “Chibnall Revisited,” 1072. Steven Chermak and Alexander Weiss, “Maintaining Legitimacy Using External Communication Strategies: An Analysis of Police-Media Relations,” Journal of Criminal Justice 33 (2005): 510. Alyce McGovern and Murray Lee, “‘Cop[ying] it Sweet’: Police Media Units and the Making of News,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 43, no. 3 (2010): 451. Robert Reiner, “Policing and the Media,” in Tim Newburn, ed., Handbook of Policing (Oregon: Willan Publishing 2008), 317. Marian Fitzgerald et al., Policing for London (Cullompton, U.K.: Willan Publishing 2002), 77–8. Rita Trichur, “The Star Stable in Tough Market,” Toronto Star, 26 March 2009. Shirley Chan, “The Rise of the Ethnic Media” (presented at the Canadian Journalism Foundation panel presentation, Toronto, 19 January 2010). Daniel Riffe, Charles F. Aust, and Stephen Lacy, “The Effectiveness of Random, Consecutive Day and Constructed Week Sampling,” Journalism Quarterly 70 (1993): 139. Matthew Lombard, Jennifer Snyder-Duch, and Cheryl Campanella Bracken, “Content Analysis in Mass Communication: Assessment and Reporting of Intercoder Reliability,” Human Communication Research 28 (2002): 587–604. City of Toronto and United Way of Greater Toronto, “Strong Neighbourhoods: A Call to Action” (a report of the Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force, Toronto, 2005), 14. Scott Perchall, in discussion with author, 17 February 2009; City of Toronto, “Proposed Project Model and Implementation Plan for Youth Gang Prevention Pilot Project” (staff report, Toronto, 22 January 2009), 2, 6; City of Toronto, “2009 Budget Briefing Note: Meeting the City’s Commitment to Priority Neighbourhoods, the Partnership Opportunities Legacy POL Fund” (Budget report, Toronto, 13 November 2008), 1; “Fact Sheets,” last modified 1 September 2009, http://youthchallengefund.org/index.php/ pages/fact-sheets; “What We Do,” Youth Challenge Fund, http:// youthchallengefund.org/index.php/pages/what-we-do (accessed 14 November 2011). City of Toronto and United Way of Greater Toronto, “Strong Neigh­ bourhoods,” 14.

Aiding and Abetting 215 37 CanMap RouteLogistics 2007.3 (Greater Toronto Area), 2007.3 ed. (Markham: DMTI Spatial 2007), Digital resource: vector; GeoPinpoint 6.4 (Markham: DMTI Spatial 2007), Digital resource: vector; GTA Boundary, 2006: Boundaries (Ottawa: Statistics Canada 2006), Digital resource: vector; GTA Municipal Boundaries, 2006: Boundaries (Ottawa: Statistics Canada 2006), Digital ­resource: vector; TCHC Housing Developments with over 6 Units: Postal Geography (Toronto: Toronto Community Housing 2008), Digital resource: vector; April Lindgren, “The Local News Research Project” (unpublished dataset, Ryerson University), http://www.localnewsresearchproject.ca. 38 “Toronto Neighbourhood Maps,” City of Toronto, http://www.toronto.ca/ demographics/profiles_map_and_index.htm (accessed 14 November 2011). 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Lindgren, “The Local News Research Project.” 42 Ibid. 43 “Violent Calls for Service by Neighbourhood: January-August,” Postal Geography (Toronto: Toronto Police Service 2008), Digital resource: vector. 44 Chan, “The Rise of the Ethnic Media.” 45 Statistics Canada, 2006 Census. Canada’s Ethnocultural Mosaic: Canada’s Major Census Metropolitan Areas (Ottawa: Statistics Canada 2006). 46 Ibid; City of Toronto Priority Areas 2008: Boundaries (Toronto: City of Toronto Social Policy Analysis and Research Division 2008), Digital resource: vector. 47 2006 Census: Toronto CMA Ethnicity Profiles (Ottawa: Statistics Canada 2006), Digital resource: vector; GTA Municipal Boundaries, 2006: Boundaries; Lindgren, “The Local News Research Project.” 48 2006 Census: Toronto CMA Ethnicity Profiles; GTA Municipal Boundaries, 2006: Boundaries; Lindgren, “The Local News Research Project.” 49 2006 Census: Toronto CMA Ethnicity Profiles; GTA Municipal Boundaries, 2006: Boundaries; Lindgren, “The Local News Research Project.” 50 Robert Cribb et al., Digging Deeper: A Canadian Reporter’s Research Guide (Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press 2006). 51 Rosie Dimanno, “This Help Chief? The Face of the Toronto Officer Who Beat G20 Protestor Adam Nobody Is Clearly Visible in Images of a Separate Takedown, as Are Name Tags of Other Cops on the Scene,” Toronto Star, 8 December 2010. 52 Carlson, “Dueling, Dancing or Dominating,” 529; Gans, Deciding What’s News, 282; Schudson, The Sociology of News, 150. 53 Bob Hepburn, in discussion with author, 17 June 2009. 54 Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach, Kim Yong-Chan, and Sorin Matei, “Storytelling Neighbourhood: Paths to Belonging in Diverse Urban Environments,”

216  Covering Canadian Crime

55 56

57 58 59

60

61

Communication Research 28 (2001): 398; Jack McLeod, Dietram A. Scheufele, and Patricia Moy, “Community, Communication, and Participation: The Role of Mass Media and Interpersonal Discussion in Local Political Participation,” Political Communication 16 (1999): 330. Lewis A. Friedland, “Communication, Community, and Democracy,” Communication Research 28, no. 4 (2001): 359. Frank Wassenberg, “Large Social Housing Estates: From Stigma to Demolition?” Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 19 (2004): 226; Frank Wassenberg, “Renewing Stigmatised Estates in the Netherlands: A Framework for Image Renewal Strategies,” Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 19 (2004): 272. Loïc Wacquant, Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (Cambridge: Polity Press 2008), 184. Tak Yin Lam, in discussion with author, 3 May 2010. Tim Cresswell, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996), 9, 61; Tim Cresswell, “Place,” Elsevier (http://booksite.elsevier.com/brochures/hugy/ SampleContent/Place.pdf; accessed 14 November 2011); Min Zhou and Guoxuan Cai, “Chinese Language Media in the United States: Immigration and Assimilation in American Life,” Qualitative Society 25, no. 3 (2002): 435. Jason Ditton et al., “A Note on the Curious and Changing Relationship between the Media, Crime and Fear of Crime,” British Journal of Criminology 44 (2004): 596–7; Mirka Smolej and Janne Kivivuori, “The Relationship ­between Crime and Fear of Violence,” Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 7, no. 2 (2006): 218. Francine Kopun, “Crime Down in Toronto,” Toronto Star, 18 July 2008, http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/462663.

14 “Scoop Was King”: Media Competition, Crime News, and Masculinity1 2 M a ry Lyn n Youn g

Introduction This chapter examines how journalists develop an elaborate hierarchy of gendered news practices and strategies when covering crime and sensational news content to gain the upper hand in competitive media environments. Gendered working techniques are an entrenched part of the professional knowledge system surrounding media competition in Canada, normalizing distinct and lesser roles for women journalists.3 These roles change over time such that the gendered state of Canadian journalism is maintained, but in varying ways and forms depending on the historical context. Illustrative of these shifts are the changing news norms, practices, and labelling involved in covering crime during newspaper “wars” over the latter half of the twentieth century. I intend to show that both male and female journalists have had to mobilize wellestablished journalism strategies to be the frontrunners during these intensely competitive periods. Gender has often been omitted in understanding media competition as it relates to competitive strategies and the resulting competitive behaviour of media institutions4 despite the fact that past research indicates that competition as a media practice is seen through a gender lens.5 Competition and aggression have been constructed as more positive traits in men, such that these actions become constitutive of both masculinity and commercial success.6 Studies that explore how competition is related to commercial viability have tended to focus primarily on the economics of competition, which include the impact of competition on circulation and advertising rates. Many of these studies document

218  Covering Canadian Crime

that intense competition tends to create conflicting results: improved ratings for news7 and/or an overall tabloidization and decline in quality of the news media.8 More recent research, however, has considered  how workplace or sociological understandings of competition affect content.9 Examining the relationship between gender and media competition is important because, when scholars explore competitive media environments through commercial pressures alone, they are constructing the components relevant to market success and, through inattention, those that are less relevant. As Meryl Aldridge explains, understanding competition and the commercial and cultural underpinnings of news is relevant because women’s participation in journalism in Canada is marked by a “fragility of progress” that has been explained by some women journalists and media managers as a result of market-based competitive pressures.10 In this chapter, drawing on interviews with numerous players in the newspaper business, I address these gaps by exploring how gendered labelling, norms, and routines were employed in crime-news content and practice during periods of intensified competition over the latter half of the twentieth century in Canada (my methodology, with respect both to the research in general and to the interviews, is explained in appendices A and B). More specifically, I examine how these competitive strategies were mobilized during two of the most well-documented and intensely competitive periods of Canadian media history. These periods involve two newspaper wars in Toronto. The first occurred in mid-century, starting in 1948, among the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Telegram, while the second began in 1998, when Conrad Black launched a new national newspaper in Canada. I situate the competitive practices within their historically specific economic landscapes in order to demonstrate how constructions of competition became one way to support gendered social and economic power structures. I argue that gendered competitive practices and labelling were deployed during intensified market conditions. These strategies specified ways to achieve commercial success, yet often had little or no proof of their efficacy other than the fact that they were consistent with understandings of hegemonic masculinity. It is important to note that this study is concerned with a specific subset of journalists, crime and general-assignment journalists, because crime and sensational media content are some of the most consistent categories of news over the past 150 years and are often resorted to in

“Scoop Was King” 219

competitive media contexts. Among feminist media scholars such as Liesbet van Zoonen, crime content is considered one of the most masculinist within the news genre.11 The audience for crime news is also considered a reflection of “journalism’s predominantly male and white constituency.”12 As explained by media economists, economic competition involves the economic structure and behaviour of the media market, which in turn includes the number of firms, extent of product differentiation, market share of the largest firms, and turnover of customers. Content competition draws from research by news sociologists13 and genre theorists such as Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway who approach genre like the “inverted pyramid of a news story” as a convention of “form and content” as well as a “social action” with “cultural, institutional and disciplinary factors at play.”14 The Marketplace/Workplace Distinction: Competing Understandings of Competition In Canada, media markets have largely been studied through a marketstructure lens as scholars focus on questions of the nature of newspaper competition, in particular concerns about concentration of ownership and the impact of monopoly media towns.15 This focus is salient given Canada’s approach to media ownership, which Robert Picard has described as “far greater media concentration than [in] other countries. It has permitted media concentration levels two-three times higher than those found in US and Europe and has one of the most concentrated media markets in the world.”16 An outcome of the focus on market structure is that the closure of one newspaper and its impact on the quality of content and advertising in the remaining newspaper have been the important variables of analysis in studies of media competition in Canada. While these relationships are important to unpack, they assume a rational model of perfect competition such that the ideal media market consists of many homogeneous media companies competing for similar demand to optimize profits. The approach, however, does not account for the inconsistencies identified in behavioural economics by which market players can – and often do – behave in less rational ways. For example, behavioural economists identify a number of firm behaviours that can affect competition, such as collusion, owners motivated by more than maximizing profit, complex firm structures, imperfect information, and “social influences on choices and approaches to decision making.”17

220  Covering Canadian Crime

Content Competition Separate from economic competition that operates at the market structure and behavioural level, Matthew Ehrlich writes that a “competitive ethos,” created by a “set of norms and values about competitiveness,” pervades newswork.18 He argues that this reliance on competition creates news content that is fairly homogeneous, validating pack journalism and a reliance on precedence in order to provide easy comparison. Barbie Zelizer claims that media competition creates an “interpretive community” of journalists in which individual competition is emphasized to the extent that it becomes an oppressive force creating a situation where journalists are more focused on talking to each other than the audience.19 This claim is supported by the research of Steven Lacy, David Coulson, and Charles St. Cyr which surveyed 312 city hall reporters at 226 American daily newspapers and found that competition influenced their behaviour and news content in specific ways.20 Competition reinforced hierarchical management structures in which “editors have a great deal of influence,” journalistic practices that involved digging “for new angles,” and rivalries between like media.21 The critical gap in the media-economics and sociological literatures that examine competition is an understanding of the factors on top of market structure that drive the competitive behaviour and strategies of media companies, organizations, and personnel.22 For example, Aldridge examined the impact of the last Canadian newspaper war of the twentieth century on gender. She argued that, from afar, Canada would likely have a strong claim that it had one of the most conducive environments to women’s advancement in journalism in the world. Yet, in effect, the gendered division of labour was perceived to be worsening because of the “response to greater competition and the attitudes of some of the managers brought in to fight the Toronto newspaper war” from the United Kingdom.23 Aldridge’s analysis suggests that the workplace – through cultural gender norms imported from the United Kingdom – was another factor in addition to the economic context that needs to be considered in understanding media competition in Canada. Feminist media scholars identify crime content and sensational media stories, one of the main ways that media compete for audiences and an entry-level genre for journalistic progression through the ranks, as one of the most overt examples of gendered media content.24 Van Zoonen writes that the masculinist or gendered cast to news is reflected in scoops, sensationalism, and crime news making.25 Scholars such

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as Carolyn Byerly and Karen Ross argue more generally that an “enduring sexism … characterizes both the newsroom hierarchy and its products.”26 Feminist scholars have long identified the hard-soft news dichotomy as problematic and examined how certain masculine behaviours are justified and even celebrated. These include the creation of an environment of “masculine camaraderie” fed by deadline pressure, aggression, and heavy drinking.27 The tendency, however, among feminist media studies scholars has been to describe these traits in the classic masculine-feminine dichotomy, which has focused on identifying sites of problematic gender representation, gender annihilation, or discrimination within journalism and media studies.28 They have also neglected, as Gertrude Robinson asserts, to link these elements together in a “holistic” way that examines the complex relationships among “class, gender, ethnicity and power” and how they “function interactively in the heterosexual newsroom.”29 Thus, while important additions to the literature, these studies tend to encourage a reading of the relationship between femininity, masculinity, and journalism as static and detached from the newsroom’s commercial power structures. This reading obscures the fact that female journalists have various forms of agency, and that discursive understandings of the role of men and women in newsrooms, as well as their material realities, have changed relative to time, place, and market.30 Indeed, these tensions are important since they may show how gender is “rehearsed, refined and modified” depending on the commercial and historical context.31 The genealogy of the assumption that crime or sensational content sells media in competitive media situations32 can be traced to research by Marie-Christine Leps on the growth of the mass-circulation press in mid-nineteenth-century France, and to Frank Luther Mott’s work on turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York, where media competition resulted in “bad taste, coarseness, which sometimes became indecency, overemphasis on crime and sex, and disreputable advertising.”33 Lance Bennett and Richard Ericson, Pat Baranek, and Janet Chan have also linked intensified competition to greater amounts of crime content and/ or more sensational news content.34 Indeed, some media studies scholars argue that an increase in the amount of crime news on U.S. television during the 1990s (ironically as American crime rates declined) was related to the economics of television news, which included both increased competition and declining overall viewership.35 This argument has provoked much debate, but it is limiting because it lacks conclusive evidence across time and market context.

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An Old-Fashioned Newspaper War

Historical Background Competition was widely considered the key concept informing the norms and procedures for creating and evaluating media content in mid-twentieth-century Toronto, a period described as one of the most intensely competitive in Canadian media history, when newspapers “went at each other hammer and tongs until one or the other gave out.”36 Numerous contemporary media stories and histories describe this period in English Canada’s media history as so competitive that it marked the last of Front Page style journalism in Canada, referring to a well-known American play in 1931 that described journalistic competition at its most virulent.37 In fact, during this period, a prominent American magazine devoted a cover article to the largest daily newspaper in Canada, the Toronto Star, comparing its competitive techniques to the “pattern of the Hearst papers and the New York tabloids of a couple decades ago.”38 The newspaper landscape in mid-twentieth-century Toronto involved three competing daily newspapers, the Toronto Star, known for its Liberal political leanings, the Globe and Mail, which was the only morning newspaper in the market, and the Toronto Telegram. The latter two newspapers were recognized to hold a Conservative political affiliation.

Economic Dimensions Of the three, the Star had the highest reported average daily circulation, at 321,000, and was in the most financially viable position since it had made the greatest circulation gains before and during the Second World War, adding 148,000 readers between 1933 and 1948.39 It also had access to the most resources, with the largest newsroom in Canada including seventy news reporters and thirty editors. The Telegram, which was the Star’s direct competitor in the afternoon newspaper market, had the lowest average daily circulation, at 178,000.40 The Telegram was struggling financially in part because of a leadership vacuum after its founder died, leaving it in the hands of a trust. In 1948 the owner of the Globe bought the paper, which launched a newspaper war.41 Its purchase for $3.6 million was seen as the result of an ideological feud between the owners of the Star and the Globe, but more importantly, according to the autobiography of a senior Telegram manager, it offered a strategic

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economic opportunity for the owner to enhance his market position.42 J.D. MacFarlane’s biographer writes that both owners were in the business and “both out to win.”43 Despite the apparent market clout of two daily newspapers owned by the same individual, the Telegram was in a vulnerable economic position because it was the smallest of the three newspapers, competing with the largest newspaper in the afternoon market. According to the “circulation spiral theory” of media economics, the smallest newspaper is the most vulnerable to closure in competitive newspaper markets. As the larger-circulation newspaper gains readers through home delivery and single-copy sales and therefore more advertising revenue, the smaller one loses them, eventually moving into decline.44 Evidence for this theory was particularly stark during this period, as North America had been experiencing an industry-wide rationalization with a trend towards single-newspaper towns since the early part of the twentieth century.45 The competitive market landscape for these newspapers, then, was one in which there was a distinct market leader, with the purchase of the Telegram signalling a renewed competitor with increased resources and economic vulnerability. The nature of the afternoon newspaper business during the midtwentieth century in Toronto involved producing and distributing at least five editions of the newspaper that were available for sale on the street fifteen minutes after the newspaper emerged from the presses. The Toronto Star had an average of nineteen stories on the front page, which was considered one of the main content opportunities to attract street sales.46 Newspaper revenue models saw advertising account for the highest proportion of revenue, with single-copy newspaper sales forming a significant proportion of circulation figures (40 to 45 per cent for the Toronto Star during this period) in relation to home delivery.47 Scholars such as Roy Lotz have argued that a decrease in the importance of single-copy sales has “conspired to undercut” the impact and/ or function of certain kinds of content within news organizations.48

Content Dimensions: “Scoop Was King” On a sociological level, “scoop was king.”49 Competitive techniques involved a mix of aggressive, sometimes violent, and illegal behaviours that gave reporters an edge over the competing news organization.50 As suggested by the economic context, Star and Telegram journalists and managers engaged in virulent competition. One former journalist

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recalled: “The Star was pathological about getting pickup pictures of any victims. I have been chased by dogs and punched out and taken pictures off the walls in front of Tely reporters. You do the damnedest things to please the boss and make sure the competition doesn’t get it.”51 Another example of the extent of competitive strategies involved the 1954 media coverage of Marilyn Bell, the first individual to swim across Lake Ontario: “The stage was now set for one of the legendary battles between the Star and the Tely, the one against which all others would be measured. It would not be an even contest. The Star had more men – and women – more money and more resources in yachts, taxis and airplanes.”52 In an attempt to level the playing field, Telegram journalists eventually stole an ambulance “and reporter Dorothy Howarth was told to get into a nurse’s uniform” to make sure they were first to access an interview of the swimmer.53 Still another memoir recalls this period and the Star-Telegram newspaper war as marking the “most vicious and unethical” coverage of a Canadian federal election.54 These practices were performed by a corps of journalists who were largely white men, from working-class backgrounds with limited education. Only two of the twelve reporters interviewed from this period had a post-secondary education, and one of them was one of the two women journalists in the sample. She spoke seven languages and had a degree from a local school of journalism. Two of the journalists were also Second World War veterans.55 One of the most famous journalists from this period, who worked for the Toronto Star and is remembered for his competitive ability, was a high-school dropout.56 A senior editor at the Star recalled that this journalist, despite his numerous journalism awards and vaunted position as a newsroom star, had limited writing ability, so much so that the rewrite desk and editors were heavily involved in his copy even “during the heyday of his career.”57 Writing was recalled as less of a priority by these journalists, who often had to telephone their news information to editors who rewrote or compiled the information for deadline in largely an inverted-pyramid-style news genre. Legendary crime reporter Jocko Thomas remembered that his editors at the Star wanted him to call in new information before the printing of the largest street edition, and that he quickly did his rounds of the police station each morning because it was one of the easiest ways to access “new” content.58 Thus, the economic nature of the media landscape, combined with newsroom norms and practices, foregrounded certain categories of masculinity and certain kinds of formulaic news genres such as the inverted pyramid because it was easy

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to compile on deadline. Indeed, the competitive techniques lionized by the newsroom and the economic landscape combined to highlight a certain type of masculinity that was considered the ideal masculinity of the period: white, working class, and heterosexual.59 It was during this time that some of Canada’s earliest women news reporters started to encroach on the largely male newsroom. Some of the most prominent examples include Alexandrine Gibb from the Toronto Star, June Callwood from the Globe and Mail, Dorothy Howarth from the Toronto Telegram, and later Dottie O’Neill Wilson from the Star. By the mid-twentieth century, these women were still exceptions in major daily newspaper news departments in Canada and the United States, and largely relegated to the “so-called … women’s pages” or the role [of] freelance/staff magazine writers.60 Women journalists had a difficult time infiltrating the news-making process because of the separation between the hard- and soft-news domains of the newspaper, which mirrored distinctions between the public and private sphere. Dottie O’Neill Wilson explained that she received her first opportunity to work on the Star’s police beat in 1957 when one of the only two other women in the newsroom, Angela Barnes or Alexandrine Gibb, was no longer on staff.61 Opportunities to raise women’s visibility in the news section arose during this period, largely through gendered assumptions of ability, with female journalists seen as news workers who “specialized in sentimental or human interest stories, or, more generally, a woman writer ‘who could wring tears’”62 and improve the newspaper’s competitive position within the media landscape and assist the legion of male journalists and editors.63 “Sob sisters,” as they were commonly known, performed two functions: the first to help male journalists access interviews, and the second to supply the sentimental and sensational elements of the news.64 One memoir suggests that editors believed that “women were better reporters at disaster scenes or capturing the tragic moment in people’s lives. They could empathize more strongly and get the victim’s photograph better than men.”65 For example, during the newspaper war, Toronto Star reporter Alexandrine Gibb was sent to interview a wounded police officer in the hospital “from a women’s point of view.”66 Gibb had known the officer and arranged to go to the hospital with the family. Her role as a journalist was to construct a “touching, emotional account of what she saw.”67 As referenced in Brian Vallée’s history of the Boyd gang, this comment ran in her article in the Star: “Mrs. Tong found a quip from somewhere. I was all right, she said.

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I had a girlfriend of yours with me. Oh, did you? the detective said. Who was she? Alex Gibb of the Star, Mrs. Tong said. Good for her, Det. Tong said ... He grinned, closed his eyes again and the only sound was his breathing.”68 However, these elements were constructed as secondary to the importance of hard news or a “just-the-facts” approach to journalism. O’Neill Wilson recalls that she could not understand the gender separation in duties: “To me a crime was a crime.”69 Indeed, women journalists in Canadian newsrooms were still referred to as sob sisters during this period, decades after the term was coined for their American counterparts.70 Yet, amid all of this competition, there was either conflicting or nonexistent data on who won. The Star’s circulation department kept track of daily circulation figures and managers understood what kinds of stories sold newspapers, but they compiled no systematic data that could pinpoint or confirm the efficacy of specific newsroom practices compared to others.71 Within the newsroom, there was no systematic monitoring of content, with journalists’ cultural currency moving up and down depending on their most recent contribution.72 One of the only attempts to clarify appropriate news norms and practices during this period involved Telegram editor J.D. MacFarlane’s daily assessment notices to his staff about their performance in comparison to that of their competitors. Much of the information was anecdotal, such as a notice that compared the front page of the two competing newspapers: “Our front page yesterday looked prettier [Grace’s baby crib and all] but the Star outsold us, which only goes to show that people would rather read about baby killing than baby birth.”73 So, with limited confirmation or denial, the nature of the economic landscape informed an understanding of appropriate competitive techniques that reinforced hegemonic masculinity and, through labelling, normalized a distinct but lesser role for women’s participation. The Last Newspaper War of the Twentieth Century

Historical Background Fifty years later, Toronto was still considered one of the more competitive newspaper cities in North America, with four English-language daily newspapers (the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the National Post, and the tabloid Toronto Sun). This time the two main players – the existing Globe and Mail, a conservative broadsheet that had a national

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audience but was still largely Toronto-focused, and a newcomer, the National Post, which was owned by then-Canadian media baron, Conrad Black – involved a new genre of national newspaper with its genesis in the latter part of the twentieth century. The launch of the National Post in the fall of 1998 started the war, with popular commentators suggesting that the existing national newspaper in the marketplace, the Globe, had the most to lose in a fight over circulation.74 The Globe was aware of its vulnerability to the extent that, according to Chris Cobb, in an early “defensive measure,” it acquired the rights to a number of newspaper titles so they were unavailable to the then-unnamed Post.75

Economic Dimensions The economic landscape for newspapers had changed since the midcentury. Fewer editions and a shift to morning newspapers accompanied a consistent decline in the number of front-page stories from an average of nineteen in the mid-twentieth century to five on the front page of the Globe by the end of the century.76 Market segmentation, or as Shelby Hunt puts it, “groups of consumers whose tastes and preferences with regard to an industry’s output are relatively homogeneous,” as opposed to general circulation figures, had become one of the most important factors in defining newspaper audiences.77 That is, in the competition for advertisers, who was buying the newspaper became almost as important as how many were buying. Competitive advantage or disadvantage, according to Hunt, became a function of a combination of market niche and resources.78 Home delivery had also become a larger proportion of circulation compared to street sales for most newspapers in Canada, other than the Toronto Sun, the daily formed following the closing of the Telegram. Segmentation, then, meant attempting to differentiate products from competitors, which included a new focus on national news. Given that circulation among traditional metropolitan daily newspapers had been largely in decline since mid-century in North America, the industry was looking for new ways to distinguish or revitalize itself.79 Indeed, prior to the National Post, the only two successful daily newspaper start-ups in North America since 1971 had been the Toronto Sun and the national American newspaper USA Today in 1982. That the newspaper war was being fought for the first time on a national terrain in Canada would also shift the nature of competition and news production from the city or metropolitan newspaper area to the country as a whole.

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Content Dimensions: “Professional” Masculinity and a Modern-Day Sob Sister The Post tried to distinguish itself in the national marketplace in a number of ways. The most important involved a neo-conservative ideological focus, visual presentation, and hiring away high-profile columnists and journalists from competing organizations.80 On a sociological level, the working-class masculinist image associated with the nature of competitive techniques in the earlier period appeared to have disappeared. Competitive practices that replaced the physical aggression and illegal actions of the previous newspaper war were more restrained. For example, “stealing” referred to the theft of ideas or employees from competing news organizations, not property. Indeed, Post editor Ken Whyte systematically approached British editors, Canadian columnists, and journalists, offering generous salaries in order to build the newspaper and wound the competition.81 Editors also played a major role in the assignment process and determining the nature of what approximated “competitive” news content.82 One journalist recalled that both newspapers were in a “dance watching each other,” each creating their own identity, while at the same time saying, “Let’s steal what is going on over there.”83 For example, Cobb writes, “Black’s team got into the daily habit of analyzing The Globe and Mail, second-guessing its content, and trying to create a formula to compete – with different political slants and different interpretations on human interest stories.”84 These practices were part of a larger content focus that also involved trying to produce more “higher-minded” and in-depth media content, written by a corps of journalists who were increasingly better educated.85 According to a senior journalist at the Globe, “we weren’t so much concerned about matching the other papers story for story … The Globe tried to hold the edge on quality.”86 On a content level, journalists at the Post suggested that they were attempting to provide the “biggest,” “most bizarre” national news story for audiences.87 The fact that a new national paper had a specific set of content norms is consistent with research by Michael Schudson and Herbert Gans, who suggest that national newspapers are focused on broader understandings of news values and therefore utilize different kinds of news practices.88 Within this mix, however, the Post also had certain gendered understandings of competitive content. As one senior Post editor suggested, the aim during the newspaper’s conceptualization phase was to provide a “daily template that would be different and

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appealing to [Conrad] Black … He isn’t afraid of sex, which Canadians certainly were, and he isn’t afraid of a front-page picture of a nice-­ looking tennis star bending over.”89 On a superficial reading, this strategic decision seems counter to the demographic shifts occurring in most Canadian newsrooms. Since the 1970s, women had been making professional gains, becoming senior editors at major publications and starting to work in every section of the newspaper as newsroom demographics shifted, with more women and journalists with post-secondary education entering the newsroom.90 Yet, while the overall perception was that the position of women was improving, the proportion of women in Canadian newsrooms had not substantially increased since the 1970s. Indeed, a 1994 study of women in Canadian newsrooms found women relegated to less important beats and as a result less likely to gain prominent placement in the newspaper than they had twenty years earlier.91 A more recent and complex study of gender differences in Canadian newsrooms by Robinson found that, while women had made progress in some areas such as moving up the corporate ladder, gender still had an impact on salary and the “informal means by which her primarily male peers will assess her performance.”92 Thus, although the gender balance had improved, Aldridge suggests that a number of newly arrived, mostly male British managers, brought in by the two national newspapers to help fight the newspaper war, complicated the role of women in the newsroom.93 These managers were thought to be at least partly responsible for the anti-feminist or sexist nature of the news content during the newspaper war that Aldridge’s interviews with women journalists uncovered.94 “Male colleagues were deferred to, safe editorial policies were pursued; and unreconstructed sexism had returned to the newsroom, the editorial meetings and even into the news coverage.”95 This reification of gendered roles occurred paradoxically at a time when Canadian journalists were improving their education levels in general. And so, despite an evolving women-innews relationship, a new “ideal” masculine subjectivity emerged in this era, comprising a more educated, middle-class, and “professional managerial” structure yet still retaining the white, heterosexual elements of the past.96 This construction of masculinity was also consistent with the types of imagined professional/managerial audiences these new publications hoped to attract according to the market research.97 Gendered labelling also re-emerged during this intensified period of competition. One of the most well-known women columnists in

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Canada, Christie Blatchford, has been described as “the journalistic personification of the National Post.”98 Blatchford, as she herself outlines in chapter 3 of this book, had worked for a number of publications in Toronto including the Toronto Sun in a variety of roles before she was hired to write a column about crime and criminal-justice issues for the Post. Blatchford’s column resembled an old genre with a new twist, a strong neo-conservative bias, which was constructed as novel within the journalistic community: “The Post has probably done as much as any paper recently in raising [regional] crime to national proportions. It is all happening at the trial stage with Christie Blatchford getting in and making moral judgments about the case. It is something that she invented, more the style than what we have traditionally known as crime news. It has shifted the nature of their crime coverage from the original crime details to who is right, guilty, who is innocent, do I believe them and the moral outrage that you can express when you are watching.”99 Blatchford recalled that her approach evolved from earlier journalism experiences, largely involving the criminal-trial process, where she could write “lots of detail of what was going on in the court room, and the demeanour of the witness.”100 She also believed that she offered a new and innovative approach to court coverage: “After we had been there for a while, Erin Anderssen was showing up at trials writing the kind of thing I do – sort of – with a more traditional kind of format.”101 That the Post attempted to sell Blatchford’s column as a new genre of journalism is not surprising given that the newspaper was endeavouring to make a mark in a competitive media landscape. Journalists, too, seemed content to see her work as novel, despite the fact that women journalists had been providing similar, sensational, and human-­interest testimony to criminal-justice reporting since the turn of the twentieth century in North America.102 (This lack of historic memory is problematic, however, given that these women journalists or “sob sisters” had been pioneers in the human interest genre, such that Jean Lutes suggests that the role of these early women journalists needs to be rewritten as an example of changing power relationships to authorship, marking significant shifts in the agency of women writers.103) That the journalism profession exhibited amnesia with respect to how Blatchford’s contribution built on past accomplishments of women in media, at the same time that she received individual recognition and reward, with one of the top salaries in Canadian journalism and her voice and image foregrounded by her picture that appeared beside each column, is emblematic of the paradoxical nature of women in news.104 She was also not the only woman journalist to benefit financially from the intensified competition.

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A f­ emale colleague at a competing newspaper was offered a “new VW Beetle” as a signing bonus to go to the Post.105 During the negotiations, National Post editor Ken Whyte met Blatchford and another well-known woman columnist at numerous Toronto bars. Cobb writes: “[The two women would] drink a lot, although it was mostly Christie and I who were drinking, because Ken hardly ever drank anything but coffee. That sort of annoyed me, because I would get increasingly pissed, as would Christie, and yak, yak, and yak, revealing all kinds of things.”106 The quote constructs Blatchford as incorporating a male persona during the negotiation process, compared to the senior male editor. During an interview, Blatchford explicitly situated herself within the male mystique, suggesting that the term “filled with testosterone” described her as well as other journalists covering criminal-justice issues.107 Indeed, her columns often took issue with feminists and what she termed “political correctness.” Christie Blatchford’s contribution, then, to women-in-news is complex. Her financial success and increased visibility represented real material gains for women. Yet these have to be juxtaposed with the fact that her journalism saw the re-emergence and submergence of the gendered genre of content resorted to in competitive media situations, while her authorship masked a distinctly anti-feminist ideology. Charles Bazerman’s contributions to genre theory are helpful in understanding why the sob-sister genre re-emerged similarly – yet differently – in both periods. He suggests that individuals perceive similarities over time in “circumstances that encourage them to see these as occasions for similar kinds of utterances” and that these utterances become recognizable forms and features and “appear as ready solutions to similar appearing problems.”108 The utterances, in this case the sob-sister genre, became appropriate as part of the solution in a competitive newspaper environment. This period also saw the nature of masculinity in news mellow from one infused by the largely working-class masculinity of the mid-­ century newspaper war to a more muted form of masculinity informed by the shift in class and education levels of Canadian journalists. The changing definition of the newspaper, to a national focus providing more in-depth and complex news context for a segmented, professional audience, was also in part accomplished by this new construction of masculinity that cultivated male journalists of a different class and socio-economic status. Indeed, the nature of the economic competition therefore once again informed the shifting constructions of “ideal” understandings of masculinity within the newsroom. And once again, it too was limited in explaining how appropriate competitive techniques were constructed or validated. Finally, while the material situation

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of women-in-news had improved significantly since the earlier period, these steps forward marked a re-emergence of gendered labelling – in this case the reinterpretation of the court genre as a call for a more “emotional” angle to crime reporting – thereby disguising existing gendered news norms and practices and annihilating women’s historic contribution to journalism. Conclusions This chapter has examined the relationship between gendered competitive techniques and commercial or economic factors during two newspaper wars separated by almost fifty years. The evidence suggests that, in two different economic contexts, workplace understandings of competition and the genres appropriate to “win” in those environments privileged a distinct yet still lesser role for women journalists. Gendered understandings of women’s role in journalism manifested themselves as new competitive strategies in the marketplace for news, suggesting that patriarchy, in addition to market demands, drives the competitive behaviour and strategies of media firms, organizations, and personnel. The strategies and their resulting competitive behaviours masked gender, race, and class tensions inherent in each period. They also obscured the enduring masculinism embedded in newspaper power structures such that the context of working-class masculinity in the early period and its shift to a more professional or educated masculinity in the later newspaper war remained largely unquestioned. The re-­emergence and reinterpretation of the “sob sister” genre further diminished women’s contributions in news by disassociating Christie Blatchford’s journalism from the genuine historical contributions made by women journalists who came before her. This historic amnesia, coupled with existing power structures that allow hegemonic masculinity to inform news norms and practices, remains an impediment to the advancement of women journalists to this day. Appendix A: Methodology For this study, narratives were examined from twenty-two Canadian crime journalists and media managers who worked in newspapers during two periods of intensified competition in the Canadian media landscape over the past fifty years. This included interviews with

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journalists and managers who were in decision-making roles at the competing newspapers. The majority of the interviews were with male journalists. Specifically, sixteen of the twenty-two interviews were with men; and all were largely rank-and-file journalists. Seven interviews involved newspaper owners, chief news editors, and circulation department managers. I sought out these journalists in a number of ways, starting with a list of well-known journalists from each period, reading front-page news content, and through word of mouth. In addition to interviews and in order to access industry histories, contemporary biographies and individual histories were examined (see, for example, works by Chris Cobb, Val Sears, Jocko Thomas, and Brian Vallée). I also used industry data from two Canadian federal government studies of media competition. The objective was to ascertain how journalists understood the competitive media threat and their response on a personal and institutional level. In particular, the intent was to determine the overall focus that emerged between media at various historical junctures and at the same time understand how competitive norms and practices or commercial pressures to sell news content intersected with the institutional, economic, social, and historical context. Appendix B: Sample Interview Questions • How do you define media/newspaper competition? • Was there a link between decisions to place crime or sensational crime content on the front page and economic or circulation decisions at the newspaper? • How did the newspaper war/wars affect crime and or sensational crime coverage? How much did the historical context, i.e., social, political, and economic factors, affect your understanding of competition? • How did gender affect your ability to compete or how you defined competitive news content? Interview subjects included former crime reporters, generalassignment reporters, or media managers who had worked at the Toronto Star, Toronto Telegram, Globe and Mail, and National Post. These were individuals who had had an impact on content or commercial decision making during the two newspaper wars. I conducted my interviews in person and on the telephone, in a semi-structured manner. The interviews were organized around a specific list of questions;

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however, sometimes in the course of the interview, when probing the conceptual structure of concepts such as gendered news practices and media competition, additional questions were included. NOTES 1 My tremendous gratitude goes to Carolyn Strange, Minelle Mahtani, Gertrude Robinson, and Robert Picard, who offered constructive suggestions on earlier drafts. I also owe an enormous debt to the women and men who shared their memories with me during the interview process. 2 Portions of this chapter are excerpted from an unpublished PhD dissertation: Mary Lynn Young, “Crime Content and Media Economics: Gendered Practices and Sensational Stories, 1950–2000” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2005). 3 Gertrude Robinson, Gender, Journalism and Equity: Canadian, U.S., and European Perspectives (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press 2005). 4 Liesbet Van Zoonen, “One of the Girls? The Changing Gender of Journalism,” in Cynthia Carter et al., eds., News, Gender and Power (New York: Routledge 1998), 33–46. 5 Meryl Aldridge. “Lost expectations? Women Journalists and the Fall-Out from the Toronto Newspaper War,” Media, Culture and Society 23, no. 5 (2001): 607–24; Van Zoonen, “One of the Girls?” 6 Aldridge, “Lost Expectations?” 607–24; Cynthia Carter and Linda Steiner, eds., Critical Readings: Media and Gender (Maidenhead, U.K.: Openhead University Press 2004); Robinson, Gender, Journalism and Equity; Van Zoonen, “One of the Girls?” 7 Stephen Lacy and Todd F. Simon, The Economics of Regulation of United States Newspapers (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing 1993). 8 John McManus, Market-Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage 1994). 9 See, for example, Matthew Ehrlich, “The Competitive Ethos in Television Newswork,” in Daniel Berkowitz, ed., Social Meanings of News (London: Sage 1997); Stephen Lacy, David Coulson, and Charles St Cyr, “The Impact of Beat Competition on Weekly Newspaper Advertising Rates” (paper presented at the annual Media Management and Economics Division at the AEJMC Convention, Washington, D.C., 1999); Barbie Zelizer, “Journalists as Interpretive Communities,” in Berkowitz, ed., Social Meanings of News. 10 Aldridge, “Lost Expectations?” 608. 11 Van Zoonen, “One of the Girls?”

“Scoop Was King” 235 12 Gregg Barak, “Media, Society and Criminology,” in Gregg Barak, ed., Media, Process & the Social Construction of Crime: Studies in Newsmaking Criminology (New York: Garland 1994), 26 (citing Benedict). 13 Zelizer, “Journalists as Interpretive Communities,” 401–16. 14 Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway, eds., Genre and the New Rhetoric (London: Taylor and Francis 1994), 1–2. 15 Doris Candussi and James Winter, “Monopoly and Content in Winnipeg,” in Robert Picard et al., eds., Press Concentration and Monopoly: New Perspectives on Newspaper Ownership and Operation (Norwood, N.J.: Albex Publishing 1988). 16 Robert Picard, “Canadian Media Merger Creates High Market Power and Runs against Concentration Trends Elsewhere,” The Media Business (blog), http://themediabusiness.blogspot.ca/2012/08/canadian-media-mergercreates-high.html (accessed 30 August 2012). 17 Robert Picard, e-mail message to author, 2 September 2012. 18 Ehrlich, “The Competitive Ethos in Television Newswork,” 256. 19 Zelizer, “Journalists as Interpretive Communities,” 402. 20 Lacy, Coulson, and St Cyr. “The Impact of Beat Competition on Weekly Newspaper Advertising Rates.” 21 Ibid., 335. 22 Picard, e-mail message to author, 2 September 2012. 23 Aldridge, “Lost Expectations?” 616. 24 See, for example, Carolyn Byerly and Karen Ross, Women and Media: International Perspectives (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2004); Robinson, Journalism, Gender and Equity; van Zoonen, “One of the Girls?” 25 Van Zoonen, “One of the Girls?” 35. 26 Byerly and Ross, Women and Media, 109. 27 Carter and Steiner, Critical Readings; Van Zoonen, “One of the Girls?” 28 Carter and Steiner, Critical Readings; Gaye Tuchman, Making News (New York: Free Press 1978); Van Zoonen, “One of the Girls?” 29 Robinson, Journalism, Gender and Equity (citing Rakow, Bleier, Cirksena, and Cuklanz). Emphasis in original. See also Minelle Mahtani, “Representing Minorities: Canadian Media and Minority Identities,” paper commissioned by the Department of Canadian Heritage (2001), 1–42, http://canada.metropolis.net/events/ethnocultural/publications/ mahtani_e.pdf (accessed 14 December 2015). 30 Barbara Freeman, The Satellite Sex: The Media and Women’s Issues in English Canada, 1966–1971 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2001). 31 Mia Consalvo, “The Monsters Next Door: Media Constructions of Boys and Masculinity,” Feminist Media Studies 3, no. 1 (2003): 27–44.

236  Covering Canadian Crime 32 See, for example, Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport, Conn.: Praeger 2001); Marie-Christine Leps, Apprehending the Criminal: The Production of Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Discourse (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press 1992); McManus, MarketDriven Journalism; Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History: 1690–1960 (New York: Macmillan 1962), 52. 33 Mott, American Journalism, 52. 34 Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion. Fourth Edition (New York: Longman 2001); Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranek, and Janet Chan, Representing Order: Crime, Law and Justice in the News Media (Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press 1991). 35 Bennett, News. 36 Walter Stewart, ed. Canadian Newspapers: The Inside Story (Edmonton: Hurtig 1980), 27. 37 See, for example, Ron Poulton, The Paper Tyrant: John Ross Robertson of the Toronto Telegram (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin 1971); Val Sears, Hello Sweetheart … Get Me a Rewrite (Toronto Key Porter 1998); Maggie Siggins, Bassett (Toronto: James Lorimer 1979). 38 “The Star That Keeps Toronto Blinking,” Saturday Evening Post 218, no. 37, (16 March 1946): 10–85. 39 Richard MacFarlane, Canada’s Newspaper Legend: The Story of J. Douglas MacFarlane (Toronto: ECW 2001), 24. 40 “Daily Circulation Figures,” Toronto Star archive, 1948. 41 Poulton, The Paper Tyrant. 42 MacFarlane, Canada’s Newspaper Legend. 43 Ibid., 25. 44 Picard et al., Press Concentration and Monopoly. 45 Ibid.; Paul Rutherford, A Victorian Authority (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1982). 46 Kevin Barnhurst and John Nerone, The Form of News (London: Guildford 2001); Young, “Crime Content and Media Economics.” 47 Roy Lotz, Crime and the American Press (New York: Praeger 1991). 48 Ibid., 16. 49 Jocko Thomas, personal interview, 25 February 2002. 50 Robert Johnstone, personal interview, 20 February 2002; Thomas, personal interview. 51 Johnstone, personal interview. For a discussion about the ethics of the pickup, what it is, and how technology is changing this practice, see ­chapter 1 of this book. 52 Sears, Hello Sweetheart … Get me a Rewrite, 107.

“Scoop Was King” 237 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Ibid., 109. Siggins, Bassett, 78. Young, “Crime Content and Media Economics.” Thomas, personal interview. Nick Van Rijn, personal interview, 30 September 2002. Thomas, personal interview. Consalvo, “The Monsters Next Door,” 30 (citing Hanke). Kathleen Cairns, Front-page Women Journalists (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2003), 4. Dorothy O’Neill-Wilson, personal interview, 10 July 2000. Jean Lutes, “Sob Sisterhood Revisited,” American Literary History 15, no. 3 (2003): 504–32, 504. Young, “Crime Content and Media Economics.” Lutes, “Sob Sisterhood Revisited.” MacFarlane, Canada’s Newspaper Legend, 129. Brian Vallée, Edwin Alonzo Boyd: The Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang (Toronto: Doubleday Canada 1997), 202. Ibid. Alexandrine Gibb, Toronto Star, 1952, as quoted in Vallée, Edwin Alonzo Boyd, 202–3. O’Neill-Wilson, personal interview. Lutes, “Sob Sisterhood Revisited.” Marlow Newby, personal interview, 13 August 2002. Thomas, personal interview. JD MacFarlane papers (held by his son, Richard MacFarlane, Toronto), Assessment Notices, 1952. Chris Cobb, Ego and Ink: The Inside Story of Canada’s National Newspaper War (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart 2004). Ibid., 18. Young, “Crime Content and Media Economics.” Shelby Hunt, A General Theory of Competition: Resources, Competences, Productivity, Economic Growth (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage 1999), 137–8. Ibid. Picard et al., Press Concentration and Monopoly. Cobb, Ego and Ink. Ibid. Adrian Humphreys, personal interview, 20 November 2002. Kirk Makin, personal interview, 30 May 2002. Cobb, Ego and Ink, 19–20. Henry Hess personal interview, 10 December 2002.

238  Covering Canadian Crime 86 Ibid. 87 Aldridge, “Lost Expectations?”; Cobb, Ego and Ink; Humphreys, personal interview. 88 Herbert Gans, Deciding What’s News (New York: Vintage 1979); Michael Schudson (presentation, Centre of Historical Consciousness, University of British Columbia, November 2002). 89 Cobb, Ego and Ink, 20. 90 Freedman and Medway, eds., Genre and the New Rhetoric, 1–2. 91 Liss Jeffrey, Progress in Canada towards Women’s Equality and the Media: Access to Expression and Decision-Making 1980–1994 (Toronto: Offline Research 1995), 14. 92 Robinson, Journalism, Gender and Equity, 52. 93 Aldridge, “Lost Expectations?” 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 619. 96 Consalvo, “The Monsters Next Door,” 30 (citing Hanke). 97 Cobb, Ego and Ink. 98 Ibid., 1. 99 John Miller, personal interview, 30 July 2002. 100 Christie Blatchford, personal interview, 7 January 2003. 101 Ibid. 102 Cairns, Front-page Women Journalists; Lutes, “Sob Sisterhood Revisited.” 103 Lutes, “Sob Sisterhood Revisited.” 104 Cobb, Ego and Ink. 105 Ibid. 64. 106 Ibid. 107 Blatchford, personal interview. 108 Charles Bazerman, “Systems of Genres and the Enactment of Social Intentions,” in Freedman and Medway, eds., Genre and the New Rhetoric, 82.

PART THREE Constructing Criminals and Crime News

Constructionism is an often-used but just as frequently misunderstood concept in journalism studies. The simplified version involves the idea that journalists do not passively reflect the world around them but actively construct it. This simplification, however, hides many complex layers. For instance, it is true that journalists – we hope – do not make up or construct the facts. But individuals, as well as the institutions for which they work, choose what facts they report and what facts get left out. They also choose to pursue certain facts in the course of their research while letting other questions fall by the wayside. In doing so, journalists can construct fears, point to patterns that may not actually exist, and perpetuate dangerous assumptions about certain people, places, and phenomena. Looking back on examples of moral panics like the “yellow peril,” in which Chinese immigrants of the nineteenth century were seen as mystical and dangerous,1 or the late-twentieth-century fears of “superpredators,”2 whom certain experts claimed would represent a perfect storm of childhood delinquency, criminal appetites, and unprecedented violence, it is easy to see how the media can help construct fears by focusing on specific “facts.” While it may be true, for example, that some Chinese immigrants are arrested or that certain personality types are more likely to commit crimes, it clearly matters how journalists construct these facts and relate them to readers and audiences. The following chapters highlight many of the major contemporary concerns that journalists should think about when covering things such as mental illness, First Nations groups, “gangs,” and youth. Con­ tributors consider how various media like blogs, photography, video games, and film can influence public understandings. Frequently these

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explorations reveal that, in most cases, it is not so much racist journalists or extremist commentators that should concern us – though, of course, they are a problem – but rather, it is the journalist who doesn’t consider how his or her construction of a “dangerous neighbourhood” or an “illegal street race” can colour the perceptions of readers that present the most troublesome issues today. The way journalists cover issues can have significant consequences for community members in terms of policing practices, election promises, social anxieties, and sentencing of offenders. There is a great deal more to reporting crime or court stories than simply getting the facts right. Kicking off this section is “The People’s Servant: Vancouver Sun Crime Reporter Kim Bolan’s Breakthrough Blogging,” in which this legendary reporter talks about her roller-coaster-like adventures with new media. In 2008 she began blogging about a biker party after making a quip that piqued her editor’s interest. She garnered massive attention and soon received something in the vicinity of three hundred thousand readers per month. Everyone from mobsters to homemakers seems to be interested in the access Bolan provides as she frequently responds to posts and brings together disparate groups of readers through her online platform. She recounts connecting with Anton Hooites-Meursing, selfconfessed murderer-turned-police-informant, through her blog and eventually published some of her best work after exchanging e-mails with him for months. While she cautions against some of the dangers of crime blogging – potential police interference, offensive commentators, even death threats – she sees such interactive platforms as invaluable journalistic tools for constructing twenty-first-century crime narratives. In chapter 16, co-editor Chris Richardson examines the link between Canadian politicians and criminal gangs in the discourses surrounding the election of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2011. “‘Everyone Kept Ganging up on Harper’: Political ‘Gangs’ and the Language of Criminal Justice in Canadian Journalism” assesses how the North American political landscape has changed since the time Fredric Thrasher devoted a chapter of his canonical 1927 study of Chicago gangs to politics. Richardson argues that the utility of “gangs” within mediated political discourses remains strong in the twenty-first century. In 2011 the Conservative Party of Canada won a majority government, running on a tough-on-crime platform that specifically targeted gangs as a threat to citizens’ safety. Simultaneously, Prime Minister Harper argued that a coalition of opposition leaders was ganging up on him, conflating these political competitors rhetorically with young criminals. Soon, many

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journalists took up such language. Relying on speech-acts theory, and the more contemporary work of Pierre Bourdieu, this chapter reveals the power of mixing crime reporting with political journalism, suggesting that it represents a significant concern for democratic communication in both areas of news. In chapter 17, “Guns, Gangs, and the Underclass Revisited: An Analysis of Courtroom Coverage from the Jordan Manners Trials,” William O’Grady and Patrick Parnaby, with Sabah Fatima, revisit their 2010 work in the aftermath of the trial. By analysing data gathered from local press coverage, this chapter examines how the shooting death of fifteen-year-old Jordan Manners at a Toronto high school was framed by journalists and provides insights into the possible consequences for journalists seeking to inform readers while not falling into ready-made narratives. In particular, the authors examine why journalists’ initial attempts to contextualize the event vis-à-vis the tragedy of past school shootings eventually gave way to an interpretive frame rooted in ideological presuppositions about Toronto’s underclass. The chapter concludes by outlining what crime reporters can take away for future situations of a similar nature. In chapter 18, former crime reporter and current Ottawa-based crimefiction writer Rick Mofina explores the nature of crime narratives today. “Telling Great Stories” is based on an in-depth interview with the author by Chris Richardson and Romayne Smith Fullerton. Beginning with his experiences reporting for the Calgary Herald, Mofina discusses the events leading to his publication of books such as If Angels Fall, Cold Fear, and Vengeance Road, assessing what makes a truly great crime story – fact or fiction – and providing helpful hints that journalists can take from our collective writing histories. As Mofina tells the editors, “really, you’re just storytelling …You’ve got the greatest canvas – though it’s also the most difficult canvas to work with – because it’s a living canvas ... It’s extremely stressful. It’s extremely rewarding.” In “Covering White ‘Just-Us’: What Did Journalists ‘Really’ Say about Ipperwash,” co-editor Romayne Smith Fullerton, with Virginia Whitehouse and Maggie Jones Patterson, focus on the shooting of Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park to pick up on how language used in news reports conveys different realities to different peoples. Employing analytical approaches from critical race studies, journalism ethics, and semiology (Roland Barthes in particular), they explore how taken-for-granted newspaper reporting practices have furthered misunderstandings between the Indigenous and largely white communities

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in southwestern Ontario, and ultimately how the reporters failed to engage citizens in meaningful dialogue that could strengthen connections rather than highlight differences. The chapter concludes with some considerations of ways in which journalists today can encourage discussions among and between individuals and communities to facilitate understanding. In chapter 20, “Debwewin: The Search for the Truth about Ipperwash,” Toronto Star reporter Peter Edwards, whose works were the object of analysis for Fullerton, Whitehouse, and Patterson, offers his own personal retrospective after covering Canada’s original peoples for decades. He details how a straightforward reporting question posed to the brother of slain First Nations activist Dudley George led Edwards to a different understanding of truth, peace, respect, and even friendship. Next, Stephen Muzzatti’s “Did Need for Speed Kill?: ‘Street Racing’ Legislation and the Mediated Reality of Crime” examines the media frenzy that took place around speeding legislation and considers Canada’s obsession with crime and cars. From news stories about the stolencar and car-parts market to live-television-news helicopter footage of high-speed police chases, from reports of drunk drivers and road rage to illegal street racing and bank-robbery get-away cars, automobiles are central to numerous crime-news narratives. So when the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) announced the creation of a new regulation under section 172 of the Highway Traffic Act (HTA) colloquially referred to as the “street-racing law,” Muzzatti argues that it is unsurprising – yet highly problematic – that this legislation redefined the terms “race,” “contest,” and “stunt.” With the focus on interpretation and language, this chapter pays particular attention to the mediated reality of these crimes, and cautions that many everyday citizens now stand to be labelled criminals. Chapter 22, “Representing Risk: Criminality, Violence, and Mental Illness in Canadian News-Media Reporting” by Sarah Berry and Robert Whitley, analyses six years of data (2005–2010) from the first major Canadian study of mass-media representations of mental illness. Berry and Whitley argue that the vast majority of media representations of mental illness centre on the alleged links among criminality, violence, and mental illness. In other words, individuals who commit crimes are often presumed to be mentally ill, particularly in cases where abhorrent acts are committed, and persons who are mentally ill are also frequently assumed to be prone to violence and criminality. The authors highlight particular case studies within their work, including the media coverage

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of the 2008 murder of Tim McLean by Vince Weiguang Li, to encourage journalists who cover Canadian crimes to support more informed and reflective understandings of such problematic associations. Finally, in chapter 23, “Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media:­Turning Transcendental Illusion on Its Feet,” Hans Skott-Myhre explores the similarly spurious relationship among young people, crime, and reporting practices by questioning the linguistic and institutional power within the justice system and the media. Skott-Myhre argues that there has been much critique of news media in its coverage of young people, including the propagation of moral panics, the commodification of the bodies of children and youth, and the inaccurate shaping of public opinion through both the sanctification and the demonization of all non-adult subjects. He also problematizes the common-sense view that children, youth, and adults constitute distinct and meaningful categories. His chapter utilizes emerging theories of global capitalism to analyse what Antonio Negri calls the realm of immaterial labour or the production of affect, information, and knowledge to the ends of capitalist appropriation, and calls on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of mass communication as well as Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the society of control to elaborate the relation of young people, crime, and the media today. The subjects of these chapters are diverse, moving from blogging with killers to dialoguing with First Nations communities to countering associations that link mental illness and crime. But the approach in all of these studies shares the common understanding that what is being reporting, while not “wrong,” is clearly constructing troublesome understandings of our world. Referring to political rivals as “gangs,” speeding commuters as “illegal street racers,” or today’s youth as inherently criminal is just as problematic as not referring to the meaning behind the clothes a First Nations man might wear to a trial or situating the greater socio-economic factors that lead many working-class communities to look much different than the places in which most journalists may have been raised. All of these news stories were constructed by multiple journalists at multiple – albeit, increasingly consolidated – new sources. Yet, as many of these authors point out, the coverage continues to construct links between certain groups and the fear of crime, exacerbating stigma and perpetuating stereotypical narrative tropes through the choices each journalist made. Each chapter offers not only a critique of past coverage but an important outline of what can be done to improve these stories. While there is

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no magic-bullet solution, becoming more conscious of the constructionist nature of crime journalism is a good start. These chapters highlight how meaning is derived from more than a collection of facts and show us that journalists must think not only about the quality of their sources and the timeliness of their news hooks, but also about how their specific stories may fit into common narratives and ask how they might make people more aware of issues like discrimination and fearmongering rather than perpetuate them. Mainstream journalists may no longer report on alleged witches in our midst, but a good question to keep in mind while constructing the next crime story or reading the next justice column is: What will future citizens consider analogous to previous generations’ witch hunts? Rethinking the way our media has criminalized drivers, youth, mental illness, or any number of topics covered in this collection provides a useful starting point. NOTES 1 See Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press 1993). 2 See William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr, and John P Walters, Body Count: Moral Poverty … And How to Win America’s War Against Crime and Drugs (New York: Simon and Schuster 1996).

15 The People’s Servant: Vancouver Sun Crime Reporter Kim Bolan’s Breakthrough Blogging Chris R i c har ds on an d Ro m ayne Smith F ul l e rt on

Kim Bolan, a reporter for the Vancouver Sun since 1984, began covering crime through her blog in 2008 in addition to her print work. The blog now receives 250,000–300,000 readers per month, which include many criminal “insiders” who have been known to weigh-in on current events. Bolan’s first book, Loss of Faith: How the Air-India Bombers Got Away with Murder, received much praise as well as controversy upon its release in 2005, two decades after she began covering the event and its political and cultural repercussions. She has received many awards, including the first Press Freedom Award in 1999 from the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom for pursuing her investigation of the Air India bombing despite threats of violence against her. She lives in Vancouver, B.C., with her two sons. The blog is a fairly gritty place to go. I had no idea what it would turn into when I started it. It’s tended to pull out a lot of criminal elements who then end up chatting with normal people. For me, it’s become an interesting journalistic tool. It is a lot of work – extra and unpaid. But, at the same time, it’s so fascinating that it’s hard to pull away from it. I started the blog [http://blogs.vancouversun.com/author/bolankim/] in 2008. At the time, everyone at the Vancouver Sun was being encouraged to do blogs, particularly beat reporters, as newspapers moved into multimedia platforms. I was interested in trying it out. At first, I thought I would make it all about the backstories to the things I’ve covered. But, in fact, it ended up being directly related to my beat. I post my articles and a little bit of background content. Nothing more than that on my end. But it was open for comment. That’s what really took off – the interaction among people.

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A lot of new journalists, when they begin something like this on the Internet and people start commenting, you think, “Oh, people are commenting. I better be polite and respond.” Within the series of comments, I began to interact with people. I came up with my own way of doing it, going in through the comments section and plugging in my responses to differentiate them from everyone else. I would write “KIM SAYS”: and people seemed to really like that. In my blog, I may have two hundred comments, half of which will be from people directly involved in organized crime. When I started, rightfully or wrongfully, I immediately responded to people. That’s the pattern that’s evolved. They continue to talk to me, to ask me questions, to challenge me, and I continue to interject throughout their conversation. It did create a bit of an unrealistic expectation. People are constantly asking questions: “Can you tell me what’s happening in this case?” Initially, I would go and look things up for anonymous people online – even criminal cases that I wasn’t covering at the time. You really do become the peoples’ servant. The reverse of that is you also get a lot of information that people would never tell you as a journalist or that you would never be able to ask. My newspaper was really into live-blogging. They were sending a bunch of people to a music festival. I appreciate technology, but I was thinking, they have five or six people live-blogging for a music festival; won’t the people who are interested in the music already be at the festival? I couldn’t imagine them reading a blog about it. The same weekend, the Hells Angels were having their twenty-fifth anniversary party for their entry into British Colombia. I, as a joke, said to editors, why don’t you get me to live-blog outside the Hells Angels party? They called me on it. They said, “Oh Sure, that’s a great idea.” So I had to go sit across the street on this country road late at night blogging about this party. I’m there and I’m thinking, there’s not much news – but I was literally changing journalism as I knew it sitting on that log across the street from all the bikers. It was a bit like a red carpet. It became a running commentary, little vignettes of what was happening. We had tens of thousands of hits online. I was there Friday, then I went back Saturday. That night, a guy who was at the gate of this party, a security guy for the Hells Angels, had a little chat with some of the cops. Then he looked over at me and yelled, “Why don’t you put that on your fucking blog!” I realized that they were actually, in their party, reading it. This was fascinating to me. As a journalist, you’re not really supposed to be changing the way events unfold. But, in reality, through social media you are often doing

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just that. And I loved the idea that they were really bugged by it. I thought, wow, instead of just enjoying their party, they have to worry about what a reporter on the other end of the street is writing about them on the Internet. I found that to be fairly powerful, even though that example was more amusing than anything else. Just the idea that live-time reporting has the ability to impact the people you’re covering was really interesting to me. Also, other media were paying no attention to this event as I’m starting to write little blog posts about a fullpatch member who has his monster truck impounded by the police. Suddenly, all the other media started coming to the event. I mean, they knew about it from the beginning too. They just didn’t assign anyone to cover it. But then these little scenes attracted attention. And I’ve been at it ever since. I’ve put in thousands and thousands of hours over the years. With the blog, I’ve been able to put a lot more information out a lot more quickly than the traditional daily newspaper. I’ve also been able to appeal to the public for information. Amazingly, stuff – like who the victim is in a murder – will come back to me within an hour. Of course, this will typically be posted anonymously online. Our policy has been to let people post directly. During the day, I’ll go through and take things down if they’re inappropriate. So far, so good: I haven’t had any lawsuits. I have had the police threaten to go to court to find out the identity of someone they thought was a missing witness in a murder case. That’s currently unresolved. It’s not just that you get specific information about this crime or that crime. You also find out that there are problems that aren’t as obvious to the general public or even to journalists and the police. It made me realize that there really wasn’t support for these kinds of people out there and I ended up writing a story about this issue. I joke sometimes that it’s a bit like a Ouija board: I ask it questions and then I just wait for the answers to come. And they usually do. It’s kind of humbling in a way. You think you’re such a hot-shot journalist and then everyday people are telling you ten or twenty things you don’t know – that you should know. It makes you realize that this beat is a whole lot broader than you thought it was. The exchanges are the most interesting part of the blog. As an investigative tool, these comments give me insights about what’s happening that I can use as a starting point to go and verify through official contacts. It now has, on average, 250,000–300,000 readers per month. Within the Post media chain, it’s the most-read blog in the country. It’s

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become a powerful thing and I constantly grapple with how to manage it. I don’t always like it. I’ve had death threats posted against me. I usually leave those up and people tend to get outraged and they respond. Sometimes, when it’s clear that someone is a player and they’re posting information that’s extremely detailed, I feel I have to take that down for legal reasons. I will remove it and send a note to that person saying that they have to contact me off-blog. And they usually will. I’ve managed to find some incredible sources because they feel comfortable going online and talking, whereas they never would have called the newsroom or come up to me in court. The most dramatic example would be Anton Hooites-Meursing of the Surrey Six. What happened throughout late-2008 and early 2009 is that both sides in a gang war that was playing out on the streets of Vancouver were also playing it out on my blog. Often, there were things posted of which I didn’t even understand the significance at first. At that point, several people who are now facing criminal charges, prominent gangsters, were clearly going on the blog and calling out people on the other side. Some of it was in code. But there were also specific examples like “I remember when you did this and that …” It was supposed to be anonymous but sometimes they used nicknames that I’m sure they understood, although I may not have. Someone started posting in 2009 and he was commenting about things he’d done with people who were now on the opposite side. They really started calling each other out. It got a bit out of hand. I then realized that this guy posting was actually Anton Hooites-Meursing. I removed the comments and I asked him to contact me off-blog. Within twenty-four hours, he e-mailed me. We began corresponding via e-mail for months. And he, I find out, has been cooperating with police in this major murder investigation – even though he’s an admitted killer himself. I get his side of the whole story. He’s not exactly in witness protection, but he’s out of the country. He’s cut off from everyone and you can tell that he’s isolated and lonely. It was a pretty fascinating electronic relationship. If I had questions about cases that were going on in Vancouver, I could ask this guy because he’s been an organized criminal for twenty years. It came to a head in April 2010. We’d been talking for quite some time. Journalistically, it was interesting but I never imagined I’d be able to publish most of this stuff. Then he tells me big news is going to be breaking. I asked him what he meant. Anton tells me that he’s going to be pleading guilty to a couple of other murders and that he’s made the

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final decision to be a witness in the Surrey Six murder investigation. I was like, “Oh my god, that’s amazing. Can I write this for the paper?” He says, “Yeah, I’m at peace with all of this. You can write anything I’ve told you over the last ten months.” My instincts were good because I had kept all the e-mails and I had kept talking to him even though I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to use any of it. So I wrote a huge feature, over two full pages, in the Vancouver Sun that I think was one of my most fascinating stories ever – after twenty-eight years on the job.1 It was inside the mind of an admitted killer. He went to jail for twenty-five years. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder – so it wasn’t a case where someone was trying to minimize responsibility or get a deal that allows him out earlier. He got the maximum. I had photos that he provided me. I had 65,000 words worth of e-mails to turn into this story. And he is a character that I never would have met without my blog. Social media is great, but it increases the amount of hours you work in a day. It’s very hard to turn it off – and I don’t want to. I’m fascinated by what I do and I want to get the information as a journalist. It’s also greatly enhanced my ability to get information from law enforcement. They read my blog too. It’s so dynamic and I don’t want to shut it down just because I haven’t completely figured out a successful way to cut down on the amount of time it takes. It’s like I’ve got my own paper. The exchanges have also become more nuanced. The first year I started it, people were pretty black and white. You know, criminals are bad. Gangsters deserve to die. That’s the kind of response you get from the public. They would trash-talk the girlfriends of the gangsters on there, for example. And I didn’t really argue with them. Then, the mothers of some of these girls came on and they would say things like, “Look, you have no idea; I’ve been desperate to find so-and-so.” We got people whose kids were caught up in this and they would use the blog almost as therapy. There were some amazing things that happened. For example, there was a mother worried about her daughter. She had apparently moved in with this gangster and was in trouble. The mother was afraid that her daughter had now become addicted to Oxycontin. Another gangster e-mailed me and agreed to give his contact information to her and they started supporting one another off-blog. There was this whole network of parents who wanted to get their kids out of this whole scene. All kinds of people met one another through the blog. … I have to confess that I don’t even touch my own paper or any other newspapers anymore. Is that bad? I’ll probably get in trouble for saying

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that. But I read everything online. I think the printed paper will still be around for a while, but there will come a time when we don’t have one anymore. Five years? Ten years? I don’t know when exactly. Within this digital age, traditional competitive boundaries don’t really exist. You can’t really hold back information. With everyone connected, you can get so much more information than you ever could before. The beauty of online is that, to some degree, it gives journalists a lot more autonomy. I’m publishing what I want when I want. My editors recognize that I put a lot of time into my blog for which I don’t get paid. I’ve never been told I can’t write a story for online. Today, people really have to be aware. To tell the difference between a quality blog and garbage floating on the net, you should ask yourself: Is the blogger doing any original research? Or are they just posting stuff – taking stuff – from other places? If so, are they sourcing it? I’m out doing my own stories every day. Primarily, I’m doing the research myself, so readers know the sources. They can trust me or not trust me. I will also link to a lot of primary sites. If I’m writing about a court case, I’ll link to court documents. The reality is that because I have the blog and I’ve operated it for a long time, a lot of people who read my blog will contact me off-blog. I’m talking about players on the fringes of the criminal world. I get a lot of e-mails. And these are people who have probably never read the Vancouver Sun. I would say to new journalists, always respect the people who are out there. Even when I get a little ruckus on the blog, I try to respect the people who are taking the time to read it. I would say that the first year I did it I was a little too punchy with people. I’m not now. Ultimately, these people can be valuable sources. I’m a proponent of fairness. I don’t think there is any absolute objectivity. Sometimes I find that readers can have really unrealistic expectations about what you’re doing and/or getting. It’s almost like if you do a really good job, they just expect more and more. There’s more of an expectation that people are going to learn everything, in great detail, about what’s going on in their communities and that’s not very realistic. In my view, it’s all about the impact of a story and the response you get. NOTE 1 See Kim Bolan. “Can a Murderous Gangster’s Heart Be Rehabilitated?” Vancouver Sun, 24 April 2010.

16 “Everyone Kept Ganging up on Harper”: Political “Gangs” and the Language of Criminal Justice in Canadian Journalism Chris R i c har ds on

The political boss finds gangs, whether composed of boys or of men above voting age, very useful in promoting the interests of his machine. Fredrick Thrasher1

Introduction On 15 March 2011 Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that his government would provide $37.5 million over five years and $7.5 million thereafter to the Youth Gang Prevention Fund.2 His renewed interest in the 2007 program relied on the argument that “gangs are an increasing concern across the country.”3 In response, Harper pledged that “our Government will continue to take action to protect young people against the lure of crime and gangs.”4 That same year, Harper accused members of the Bloc Québécois, the Liberal Party, and the New Democratic Party of ganging up against him during a heated election campaign. As a Vancouver Sun headline declared: “PM keeps his composure, swatting attacks from three-way gang.”5 These events paint two distinct pictures of the “gangs” Harper opposed: one ostensibly refers to young hoodlums causing terror on street corners; another denotes well-dressed party representatives who engaged the prime minister in “dishing dirt in a bid to grab crucial ground.”6 Ironically, journalists and political commentators often accused Harper of being a gang leader.7 Of course, not many citizens would confuse Canada’s twenty-second prime minister of flashing gang signs and dealing drugs as he hobbled around in baggy jeans (as common media tropes imply young gang members do today). Even political cartoonists

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would likely have trouble rendering that image. This use of the term, however, points to a peculiar ambiguity when it comes to gang discourses within the mainstream media in Canada. As Chris Richardson and Liam Kennedy have demonstrated, “gang” can evoke not only young men on street corners or gun-wielding muggers in inner cities but also groups of artists, political activists, sports teams, and even children’s puppets.8 While it primarily describes criminal groups, the term colloquially refers to any assemblage of people or things. This issue of language highlights a broader theme within Canadian crime reporting that this chapter seeks to explore. While “crime” remains a fairly straightforward term, indicating an offence that is punishable within a society, the various descriptions journalists often employ to represent criminal and non-criminal events can open possibilities of interpretation that not only stand to confuse and obfuscate public understandings but, in some cases, can literally create new categories of crimes and criminals simply by being uttered in certain ways and under certain conditions. If journalists are not cognizant of the power their words hold to transform social realities, as I argue many journalists and sources in the 2011 election were not, discourses may take on new meanings within public debates that hurt democratic communication within the country much more than any criminal element. This study builds on the work of speech-acts theorists J.L. Austin and John Searle as well as one of their more recent interpreters, Pierre Bourdieu, to interrogate the significance of gang discourses in Canada’s mediated political landscape.9 I argue that, while no satisfactory definition of “gangs” exists in law-enforcement organizations, public policy, or the Canadian Criminal Code, the imagery of gangs – borrowed in part from North American crime coverage – has become a staple for Canadian political commentators. It is now embedded in party strategies and tactics, particularly because it evokes a seedy, violent, and dangerous underground economy while remaining ambiguous enough to avoid libel laws or direct refutation from those to whom it is applied. Gangs and politicians in North America share a long, intertwined history, and the language journalists use today to describe both elements of society relies on this overlap in order, as Austin would argue, to do things with words.10 A Recent History of Gangs and Politics In the 1980s Léon Bing became one of the first journalists to gain access to a number of street-gang members in Los Angeles, bringing their

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stories of guts, gats, and graves to an eagerly awaiting public. As a panel moderator for a forum on gangs, she asserted that “it would be hard to write a morality play more likely to strike terror into the hearts of the middle class.”11 She was right. Within the next few years, literally hundreds of local anti-gang initiatives were launched in North America and dozens of national organizations arose with the sole purpose of monitoring and suppressing gangs. Canadians living near the American border observed cautiously as U.S. organizations began performing gang surveys, painting alarming portraits of a neighbouring nation under siege by violent young predators. While recent statistics demonstrate a decline in gangs since 1996, the first twentieth-century surveys indicated a meteoric rise in gang-infested American municipalities from 6 in 1975 to 1,492 in 1996.12 Furthermore, an assessment in the late 1990s reported 23,388 youth gangs and 664,906 members across the country.13 Gene Meuhlbauer and Laura Dodder, as well as Pamela Richards, Richard Berk, and Brenda Forster, warned citizens against encroaching gangs lurking in the nation’s seemingly pristine suburbs.14 Others, such as John Hagedorn and Malcolm Klein et al., more recently cautioned readers against “a world of gangs,” bringing the focus international.15 The United States soon coordinated dozens of organizations, including 160 Violent Gang Safe Street Task Forces working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Youth Gang Center (NYGC),16 the National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC), the National Alliance of Gang Investiga­ tors Associations (NAGIA), the National Gang Targeting, Enforcement and Coordination Center (GangTECC), and the Organized Crime and Gang Section (OCGS) within the Department of Justice (DOJ). If these acronyms seem too convoluted to process, they likely are; even the various departments that employ them seem confused (or simply unable to update their websites quickly enough).17 Hand-in-hand with these revelations came politicians who promised to stamp out any traces of such deviance, leading to sweeping conservative movements such as threestrikes laws, wars on drugs, and mandatory minimum sentencing.18 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, more than thirty U.S. states passed legislation allowing juveniles to be tried in adult courts and many enacted statutes that specifically targeted gangs in their jurisdictions.19 The most wide-ranging legal changes designed to battle gangs stemmed from President Clinton’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which allocated more than $30 billion towards policing, imprisonment, and crime prevention.20 As Pierre Bourdieu argues, such manoeuvres have allowed the right hand of the state (banks, economic

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organizations, and law-enforcement agencies) to become much stronger politically while dissolving the abilities of the left hand (community outreach workers, counsellors, and teachers) to intervene meaningfully in the problems facing vulnerable groups and neighbourhoods.21 As a result, bureaucrats frequently cut social programs in the name of trimming budgets and eliminating waste while the right hand inevitably requires exceedingly higher funding to control, enforce, and imprison those whom it has cast out of these social-safety nets. “The right hand no longer knows, or, worse, no longer really wants to know what the left hand does,” argues Bourdieu.22 “In any case, it does not want to pay for it.” Towards the end of the twentieth century, American fears about gangs spread north. Myriad documents on gangs and organized crime surfaced within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Department of Justice Canada, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC), and Public Safety Canada. Politicians supported initiatives such as the Na­ tional Crime Prevention Centre’s Youth Gang Prevention Fund, the Vancouver Gang Task Force, the Manitoba Integrated Organized Crime Task Force, the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), and Quebec’s Sans frontières group. In 1997 legislators modified the Canadian Criminal Code to provide prosecutors more tools to pursue violent biker gangs and other criminal organizations while also making membership in such groups illegal.23 While the word “gang” does not appear in the Canadian Criminal Code, the Prime Minister’s Office and political figures frequently refer to these laws as “anti-gang” initiatives.24 Harper’s 2011 omnibus crime bill represented the latest in a series of movements that highlight the centrality of gangs in governmental law-enforcement discourses and initiatives.25 The first major Canadian gang study, based almost word-for-word on the National Youth Gang Surveys in the United States, reported more than four hundred youth gangs and more than seven thousand gang members across the country.26 In the academic sphere, interviews with gang members and associates have been conducted by Scot Wortley and Julian Tanner in Toronto; by Robert Gordon in Vancouver; by Michèle Fournier, Marie-Marthe Cousineau, and Sylvie Hamel in Montreal; by Melanie Nimmo in Winnipeg; and, among Aboriginal youth and prison gangs across the country, by Jana Grekul and Patti LaBoucaneBenson.27 These researchers uncovered diverse membership compositions and self-reported reasons for joining gangs ranging from a desire to impress girls to a penchant towards violent expression. Virtually all

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Canadian researchers argue that gangs represent an increasing concern within the country, but they admit that relatively little information is currently available to answer questions such as what exactly gangs are and what they do. A Deeper History of Gangs and Politics With the rapid deployment of legal and political task forces directed towards monitoring, prosecuting, and suppressing gangs in North America, it may surprise many citizens that gangs are neither new nor definitively more dangerous than those of previous generations. The English word “gang” entered circulation during Europe’s early modern period (circa 1400–1700 AD).28 In the early seventeenth century, the term changed from denoting a journey or a trip to denoting a set of things that travel together. Eventually, people referred to groups, primarily sailors or workmen, as gangs, and because of some of their habits, the term acquired negative connotations that implied criminal activities. Gangs terrorized the eastern seaboard as pirates and privateers who pillaged and plundered in the New World.29 In 1623 the Marquis de la Rade’s four-hundred-man crew raided St John’s and other British settlements, which perpetuated a feud that led English Secretary of State George Calvert to give chase into the Atlantic Ocean.30 The term “gangplank” entered popular usage not long after this period, as did the term “press gang,” denoting a group of seamen or marines led by a commissioned officer who forced able-bodied men to join the navy.31 Press gangs bandied wooden clubs, and occasionally pistols or swords, to intimidate citizens. In Nova Scotia and other eastern provinces, citizens fought and protested these groups vigorously.32 Violent riots erupted in St John’s in 1794 and Halifax in 1805, creating major social unrest in urban areas of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Quebec (Lower Canada).33 Thus, the association of violent gangs with politicians has existed within Canadian history, literature, and journalism for hundreds of years – long before the moral panics of the late twentieth century. In the 1920s, Frederick M. Thrasher published the first major gang study in North America based on seven years of ethnographic research in Chicago.34 Thrasher posited that gangs emerge spontaneously as play groups that become solidified through conflict. He focused on the many young men who gathered on street corners, engaged in acts of petty larceny and violence, and found identity in turbulent and unwelcoming environments. Thrasher noted the close relation that many gangs held

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with politicians who would fund their groups in return for certain favours. He argued that “the study of gangs conveys a very vivid impression that the whole structure of municipal politics is at base a complex of personal relationships and mutual personal obligations which make service in the interest of an impersonal public and an abstract justice very difficult.”35 Politicians have long employed gangs in certain vicinities to protect individuals and threaten others, generally by disrupting polling stations and intimidating or brutalizing opposing candidates.36 Ironically, Thrasher allegedly had to leave Chicago after uncovering such deep political corruption that he feared violent reprisal from local politicians and their goons.37 Closer to home, Mark Maloney has written an interesting account of the first municipal elections in Toronto in which gangs played an integral role by bulling voters in certain districts.38 During Prohibition, the gang line in North America blurred as bootlegging became a significant source of income for certain groups.39 “The forerunners of today’s drug barons and money launderers were not underworld figures but respectable merchant banks and brokerage houses,” writes Edward Behr.40 Throughout this period, eminent families linked to bootlegging like the Bronfmans, the Kennedys, and the Seagrams were also respected citizens and prominent figures in political circles.41 In many places, the American bootlegger and gangster Al “Scarface” Capone was – and still is – considered a political “hero,” helping those on the lower end of the economic spectrum.42 When questioned about his connection with Canadian bootlegging, however, Capone famously announced to the laughter of the crowd: “Do I do business with Canadian racketeers? I don’t even know what street Canada is on!”43 This is not to say that everyone approved of such practices; some Canadian publications reported that politicians were in an “unholy partnership with a gang of millionaire bootleggers.”44 But by his death in 1947, Capone was a household name, providing the quintessential image of the American gangster (and looking surprisingly similar to modern politicians in dress and rhetorical repartee). In Canada, federal administrations since Pierre Trudeau have appeared happy to increase immigration numbers to augment the population of low-wage workers filling service and labour positions; however, these governments have failed to provide adequate assistance for integration, resulting in what a number of authors call a vertical mosaic of raised and lowered tiles.45 Furthermore, gangs and criminal organizations such as the Chinese Triads and the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa

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Nostra, as well as biker gangs originating among California and South American drug runners, all established themselves in Canada during the twentieth century.46 Though the criminal elements of ethnic communities like Chinatown and Little Italy have been greatly exaggerated in popular Canadian discourses,47 it remains true that elements of these gangs continue to thrive in Canada and have been known to exert political pressure on civic leaders.48 Popular culture continually brings this relationship into stark relief as historical and contemporary television shows like The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, and even The Simpsons feature plotlines about politicians who moonlight as gang leaders or who publicly denounce these criminal organizations while privately making deals with them. Films such as Serpico (1973), The Untouchables (1987), Bad Lieutenant (1992), and Donnie Brasco (2004) all rely on common understandings of political corruption and a shared distrust of state representatives. As Jonathan Munby argues, “postwar gangster films told stories of how the average guy was trapped within large determining and corrupting systems.”49 He suggests that gangster films have traditionally been so successful because they “revealed how everyone was now living in a kind of gang land.”50 Many popular understandings that link politicians with gangs highlight the doublespeak and rhetorical slights that allow such political manoeuvring to take place. Consequently, conducting a closer examination of recent discourses about gangs in Canada permits an analysis of how these issues conflate crime reporting and political journalism, merging with popular cultural imaginaries and official rhetoric to form a problematic hybrid. In the following section, I explore the broad discourse of pundits, journalists, politicians, and concerned citizens to examine the kinds of statements Canadians produce, both officially and unofficially, about crime in the realm of politics. Speech Acts and Bourdieu In the mid-twentieth century, J.L. Austin set out to examine the performative nature of language, producing a widely read and highly regarded posthumous book entitled How to Do Things with Words.51 One of his major insights was to subdivide speech acts into three elements: locutionary (simply put: saying something); illocutionary (the ­action performed through saying something – apologizing, confessing, promising, etc.); and perlocutionary (the outcome of saying something – convincing, enraging, persuading, etc.). Through the illocutionary

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elements of speech in particular, Austin examined how one could modify the social and moral order around oneself simply by uttering certain words within certain contexts. In this way, judges condemn, officers arrest, and gang members threaten without necessarily moving anything more than their lips. Soon after Austin, John Searle published Speech Acts. Among other things, this work convincingly breaks down the supposed line separating descriptive statements from evaluative statements. For example, Searle controversially argued that a sentence like “The Prime Minister stated ‘our Government will continue to take action to protect young people against the lure of crime and gangs’” entailed that “the government ought to continue to take action to protect young people against the lure of crime and gangs.” Prior to this work, virtually all linguists and philosophers since David Hume took for granted that descriptive statements could not entail ethical or evaluative statements without additional reasoning and argumentation.52 Searle demonstrated not only that this line of separation is permeable but that in some cases it is quite possible to derive evaluative statements from descriptive ones. Furthermore, Pierre Bourdieu’s contribution to these debates helps readers better negotiate the social context through his emphasis on the position of the speaker in social and symbolic space. “Practical competence involves not only the capacity to produce grammatical utterances, but also the capacity to make oneself heard, believed, obeyed, and so on,” writes John Thompson in his introduction to Bourdieu’s Language and Symbolic Power.53 While Austin argues that to perform a “felicitous” speech act one must be properly qualified to do so, and Searle emphasizes the constitutive rules of institutions, Bourdieu draws attention to the symbolic conflicts that arise through the field in which speakers operate and compete for specific forms of capital. As Bourdieu specifies, “grammar defines meaning only very partially: it is in relation to a market that the complete determination of the signification of discourse occurs.”54 In Canada, the market for law-and-order discourses within the political field appears to be growing, as indicated by the success of the previous Conservative government’s pledge to increase criminal penalties and penitentiary funding while taking away certain rights to parole and pardons. Using speech-acts theories and Bourdieu’s interventions, I argue that the Prime Minister’s Office successfully conjured fears of violent criminal organizations in the minds of many voters while opening the definition of gangs to include members of the opposition parties it sought

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to defeat in a forthcoming election. Unfortunately, journalists and commentators were also quick to adopt such rhetoric. As Bourdieu argues, “in politics, ‘to say is to do,’ that is, it is to get people to believe that you can do what you say and, in particular, to get them to know and recognize the principles of division of the social world.”55 With the prime minister’s position in the political spotlight, the Conservative leader was able to blur the line between description and prescription while using the imagery of gangs from crime reports to vilify others in the public sphere. As the money spent on prisons, law enforcement, and the legal system increased, Conservatives specifically targeted gangs to the detriment of social programs involving the arts, child care, and education – despite a decline in crime over the last few decades. Thus, Harper’s words did something that the facts on the ground could not: create an increasingly fearsome and urgent situation where there was none before he uttered his statements. In the next section, I turn to a number of examples from major Canadian newspapers during the time leading up to and just after the 2011 federal election to explore how this market for anti-gang discourses extended into the non-criminal realm, thereby enlarging the threat and adding credence to Canadians’ fears of the ganglands in which they began to find themselves. Canadian Election Coverage The term “gang” appears thousands of times each year in Canadian newspapers.56 Some political commentators refer to all Canadian parties as gangs while others use the word to specifically attack certain individuals. The Globe and Mail reporter Jeffrey Simpson writes that “in a normal democratic culture, when people are disillusioned or angry or disappointed with one gang in power, they close their eyes, hold their noses, and vote in the official opposition.”57 Covering a campaign stop in Quebec, Philip Authier writes that “the gang’s all here,” referring to all the major party candidates. Elsewhere, he quotes a source who describes the current political system as “paralyzed in its bi-partisanary and gang warfare.”58 These kinds of descriptions are equally spread across the political spectrum, just as Thrasher described an election in 1926 in which all parties arranged illegal gang interventions in roughly equal amounts. An official told Thrasher that “in every precinct where votes were stolen for certain Republican candidates, there were also votes stolen for certain Democratic candidates. It was a perfect bi-partisan alliance.”59

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On other occasions, commentators use the term “gang” humorously to describe politicians. For example, Allan Fotheringham labels the federal candidates “the boring gang of four,” while R.M. Vaughan refers to them offhandedly as the “four little horsies of the apocalypse.”60 He writes, “No, those are not my nicknames for the four federal leaders working the barbecue circuit (my pet names for that gang are unprintable).” While not all readers may find these comments funny, few are likely to assert that they represent major political concerns. I argue that the real power of gangs in media discourses appears when candidates and media commentators direct the term towards competing politicians. “Gang” floats from the lips of journalists and politicians in all levels of politics and along many ideological lines, freely passing from criminal discourses to political criticisms and back without pause to consider the differences. In Toronto, Robyn Doolittle satirically refers to Councillor Adam Vaughan as “an outspoken leader with ties to council’s left-wing gang,” while Marcus Gee mentions Mayor Rob Ford’s “gang of like-minded councillors.”61 Christie Blatchford refers to the days when the “inept Rae gang” in Ontario made her life as a journalist easy.62 In Vancouver, former energy minister Bill Bennett created a stir when he accused B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell of being an abusive bully and stated, “I rather expect the premier’s gang will want to eject me.”63 Interestingly, Barbara Yaffe writes that the premier worked well with the federal government and “refused to join any gang-ups by provincial premiers.”64 Less than one month later, B.C. headlines filled with references to a “gang of 13” that ousted NDP leader Carole James.65 It remains difficult to say definitively which media organizations or politicians first introduced the imagery of gangs and gunslingers into elections coverage. Regardless of its origins, gangs appeared prominently in the 2011 federal election, integrating best with the Conservative’s law-and-order platform. Josh Freed provides the most explicit example of this with his playful description: “Now you can smell an election burning like leaves in the fall air as Canadian politicians attack each other as savagely as ... U.S. politicians. Last week saw The Gunfight at the Ottawa Corral where Iggy Earpe and his gang narrowly outgunned Doc Harper’s gang over the long-gun registry bill.”66 This story is clearly tongue-in-cheek, but, as I explore below, it highlights something that appears frequently in political journalism in less explicit ways. Without a doubt, the most successful use of gang imagery to generate political force appeared when Harper’s team successfully labelled the opposition parties as such prior to his 2011 election victory. Before the

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election became imminent towards the end of 2010, Harper had already brought in allies who would support his tough-on-gangs approach. Former Toronto police chief, York regional police chief, and commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police Julian Fantino entered the House of Commons in November 2010, while “anti-gang fighter” Don Meredith entered the Senate in December that year in what John Ibbitson described as a “one-two law-and-order punch that the Conservatives hope will pay dividends.”67 By February 2011, Conservatives had launched attack ads directed at the Bloc Québécois for voting against street-gang legislation, insinuating that it was weak on crime and sympathetic to gang members.68 During this time, columnist Pete McMartin pulled no punches, describing those opposing Harper as “the gang of jackals who have the gall to call themselves the Loyal Opposition,” while a Toronto Star editorial referred to the Liberals as “a gang that can’t count.”69 It is important to note that while these references to gangs may not have been part of an explicit strategy among those who employed them, at the level of discourses – statements within a shared discursive formation – they function as descriptions that begin to build a common connotative bias that further cements the strength of such associations with each utterance, whether coming from a politician’s quotation, a journalist’s description, or a columnist’s quip. During federal debates, Harper frequently accused the opposition of ganging up on him, perpetuating an image the media reiterated ad nauseum. The Montreal Gazette referred to debates as “a four-against-one gangup on Harper.”70 Antoine Bilodeau, associate professor of political science at Concordia University, complained that “the four-person debates lasted forever, and everyone kept ganging up on Harper.”71 And Yaffe argued, in a point that becomes even more salient in retrospect, that “Harper became the subject of a threeway gang-up that, ironically, will help him with messaging about a demon opposition coalition.”72 Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff challenged the prime minister on his characterization of the opposition parties during a televised debate: “This is a debate. It’s not some pesky little irrelevance that gets in the way of your power. This is how democracy works. I ask questions. I hold you accountable. It isn’t bickering. This is what democracy is about. It’s about time you respected it.”73 Unfortunately, the moderator moved from Ignatieff’s challenge to another question before Harper could respond. Later in the debate, however, the issue of crime and gangs arose more directly. Not surprisingly, each candidate argued that he was interested in public safety

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and opposed crime. Again, Ignatieff attempted to subvert Harper’s speaking points: “Crime is always a serious problem … but you have to understand that crime in our country is not increasing, the politics of fear is designed to exploit and create fear. Mr. Harper specializes in the politics of fear and the crime agenda.”74 And again, Harper argued for stricter punishment, insinuating that the other politicians did not support his anti-gang policies and were therefore soft on crime, perhaps even encouraging it through weaker punishments and stronger social reintegration programs. Sticking to this message allowed Harper to remain firm: he opposed any and every gang – criminal, political, or otherwise. Some journalists and politicians outside the Conservative circle attempted to use such “gang” language against Harper and his party; however, they were not successful in getting this imagery to stick because it did not cohere as well within dominant discourses, particularly when the image of Harper taking on the gang of Jack Layton, Gilles Duceppe, and Michael Ignatieff was already so prominent. Bloc MP Michel Guimond called Conservative MPs “a gang of ‘yes men’ who defend Harper.”75 After Conservatives legitimized the idea of unemployed women in Canada working as escorts, NDP MP Pat Martin argued that “this is such a contradiction for the holier than though family values gang.”76 Elsewhere, Bill Brownstein alluded to a “gang of wild and crazy Tories,” Sarah Barmak referred to a “Tory gang of cynics and liars,” and a reader from Cambridge wrote to the Toronto Star stating that she feared the consequences of “what will happen to Canada if this man and his gang get a majority.”77 After a kerfuffle about the census, Star columnist James Travers wrote in July 2010 that “jarred into wakefulness by the sound of summer gunfire, Canadians are confronted by the spectacle of a wounded Prime Minister leading a gang that can’t shoot straight.”78 At this point, the election seemed anybody’s race. By May 2011, however, it was clear who won this gunfight. The opposition quickly became defensive in the campaign because of their perceived collusion in Parliament, while the Conservative’s tough-on-crime policies and singular approach within debates made it difficult to paint them as a “gang” in popular media discourses. As Bourdieu argues, the symbolic domain recreates the physical world through the manipulation of forms. “It is only when this is realized that one can turn linguistic analysis into an instrument of political critique, and rhetoric into a science of symbolic power.”79 When the debates subsided, not only had Harper successfully conjured fears of

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a coalition of political parties ganging up against him, he had also established a motif that allowed him to avoid future confrontations, even when others might consider them part of a necessary democratic debate. For example, when issues of medical care arose among the provinces in May 2011, political columnist André Picard pointed out that “going into a room where all the premiers can gang up on him is not the current PM’s style.”80 One sees here Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power at work, “a power which presupposes recognition, that is, misrecognition of the violence that is exercised through it.”81 Not only is it inconceivable to this political commentator that Harper would enter a debate in which he was not ensured victory, but he (mis)recognizes many dissenting voices as a “gang up” rather than a majority consensus that makes Harper appear a victim of bullying instead of an outvoted member of a democracy. This is symbolic violence at work. Leaving aside the question of actual criminal gangs and the best ways to approach this criminal-justice issue, I would like to propose one possible interpretation of how the Harper government effectively manipulated such discourses within the mediated political field. In the middle of the campaign, the prime minister pledged $45 million to the Youth Gang Prevention Fund, arguing that he “will continue to take action to protect young people against the lure of crime and gangs.”82 Taking this statement as exemplary of the Conservative’s campaign message, one can convert it à la Searle into the statement “The Prime Minister ought to protect young people from gangs” by plotting a transformation as follows: 1 The prime minister utters the words “our Government will continue to take action to protect young people against the lure of crime and gangs.” 2 The prime minister promises to protect young people from gangs. 3 The prime minister places himself under (undertook) an obligation to protect young people from gangs. 4 The prime minister is under an obligation to protect young people from gangs. 5 The prime minister ought to protect young people from gangs. This five-step process of deriving an ought from an is may seem obvious and uncontroversial to many readers – of course the government ought to prevent gang involvement, especially if it is an increasing concern to citizens and if the prime minister has undertaken such

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an obligation. But, as the press coverage demonstrates, the definition of “gangs” can stretch to include party representatives themselves and other groups of non-criminals. Consequently, Harper’s obligation blurs. Logically, if (a) gangs exist, then (b) the government should protect citizens, specifically impressionable youth, from these groups. However, if the leaders of the opposition parties are labelled “gangs” during the election, the message seems to be: if (a) a gang of opposition leaders exists, then (b) the government should protect citizens, specifically impressionable youth, from these groups. Of course, critical readers could easily point out flaws in the logic of this argument. Even if the parameters were all in place to make the first statement valid (e.g., he is genuine about his promise, he is in a position to fulfil it, he is not contradicted, etc.), it remains the fact that: a) criminal gangs ≠ politicians; b) gangs are never satisfactorily defined; and c) many scholars remain unconvinced by Searle’s method of deriving an ought from an is. I argue, however, that the government disseminated its message not through a process of analytic reasoning akin to Searle’s own arguments, but simply through a visceral understanding that if gangs exist then the government ought to protect its citizens from them. If a then b. One does not need to provide sound reasoning or rigorous analysis of the rationale behind such movements.83 Rather, they seem to take on a life of their own within the media landscape, changing in various ways but retaining their basic discursive form (e.g., the opposition is ganging up on Harper). In fact, when in power, the Conservative Party traditionally sought less supporting evidence that gangs represent a major problem by dramatically cutting funding to Statistics Canada while claiming exponential increases in criminal gangs across the nation and backing up its assertions with very little actual research.84 Elsewhere, Canadian organizations either held competing definitions of “gangs” or none at all.85 Thus, Harper’s claim that gangs were an increasing concern was contentious at best. Yes, as noted earlier, the National Youth Gang Survey reports more than four hundred youth gangs and more than seven thousand gang members across Canada.86 But the government was remiss to acknowledge that the survey measures the number of gangs by how many individuals “the respondent or other responsible persons in their agency or community were willing to identify or classify as a gang.”87 In other words, the number of gangs is based on how many gangs the respondent believes exist. As many gang scholars have argued, the numbers can easily be manipulated.88 With the proliferation of gang discourses comes the proliferation of gangs, which is to

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say that more people are likely to interpret troublesome youth, groups of people, or cooperating politicians as “gangs” when the discursive formations in which media operate reach a tipping point. Thus, by opening the definition of gangs and promising to defend citizens from whomever they are, the prime minister relied on gangs to (rhetorically) support his campaign – much like politicians in North America have done (physically) for the last few centuries. Conclusion Canada has come a long way from the days when thugs would beat and intimidate voters in order for their candidates to win elections. Nevertheless, “gangs” remain powerful in mediated political discourses today. This word has the power to condemn, denounce, stigmatize, vilify, and, in some cases, hold life or death consequences for those on whom it is imposed. Consequently, journalists and commentators have a duty to critically interrogate the ways gang imagery influences coverage of candidates and their platforms. There is no doubt that criminal gangs pose a danger to the well-being of communities within Canada. In no way do the arguments within this chapter seek to downplay the violent realities of crime in the country. Furthermore, I believe that programs seeking to address and curb criminal gangs are important and deserve funding. Despite these realities, however, certain discourses within the government and the media clearly appeal to the negative imagery associated with street gangs to vilify persons and massage interpretations of democratic debates. This function of gang discourses within Canadian journalism, while not confined to the Conservative Party, is most effective for those seeking to secure the power of the right hand of the state, while stripping the left hand of its ability to perform meaningful work in the realm of education, social assistance, and welfare. When Thrasher observed gangs in the 1920s, his major political concern involved collusions of government officials and violent criminal groups. Today, politicians continue to use gangs – but in significantly different ways. Prime Minister Harper claimed that “gangs are an increasing concern across the country,” using gangs to support a toughon-crime platform that sought to dramatically increase funding to police and prisons (despite the falling crime rates), while taking away funding from social programs like affordable daycare and educational bursaries, which help to prevent gangs in the first place.89 Furthermore,

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he successfully characterized the opposition parties as “gangs” who joined forces to intimidate and unfairly censure him as he stood alone against them. This discursive arrangement reveals the power of gangs in political communication today and represents a significant concern for journalists covering both crime and democratic elections. As Thrasher observed nearly a century ago, “the political boss finds gangs, whether composed of boys or of men above voting age, very useful in promoting the interests of his machine.”90 It may be wise to reconsider these words in the context of Canadian journalism today. NOTES 1 Fredrick M. Thrasher, The Gang: A Study of 1, 313 Gangs in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1927/1963), 313. 2 Kelvin K. Ogilvie and Art Eggleton, “In from the Margins, Part II: Reducing Barriers to Social Inclusion and Social Cohesion,” Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, http://www .parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/411/soci/rep/rep26jun13-e.pdf 3 Ibid. 4 “PM Announces Renewal of the Youth Gang Prevention Fund,” NationTalk, 16 March 2011, http://nationtalk.ca/story/pm-announces-renewal-ofyouth-gang-prevention-fund. 5 Barbara Yaffe, “PM Keeps His Composure, Swatting Attacks from ThreeWay Gang,” Vancouver Sun, 13 April 2011, A2. 6 Ibid. 7 Josh Freed, “Fall Marks the Start of the Real New Year,” Montreal Gazette, 25 September 2010, A2. Lawrence Martin, “A Big Anniversary Bash for Mulroney? Why Not?” Globe and Mail, 9 April 2009, A21; Ted Shaw, “New Rules Create a Big Bang,” Windsor Star, 15 October 2008, A2. Such language is most prevalent in letters to the editor where writers appear to feel freer to harness such imagery. See, for example, “Back Chat,” The Province, 14 April 2011, A19; “Budget Officer More Important Than PM Photos,” Star-Phoenix, 16 March 2009, A6; Melanie Deveau, “Need Liberal Voice in Ottawa,” Windsor Star, 14 March 2011, A7; Ralph Goodale, “Showdown in Ottawa: Sask. MPs Speak Out,” Leader Post, 5 December 2008, B10; “PM’s Gang of Seven Provides a Glimpse of Reform Politics,” Toronto Star, 7 February 2010, A13. 8 Chris Richardson and Liam Kennedy, “‘Gang’ as Empty Signifier in Canadian Newspapers,” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 54, no. 4 (2012): 443–70.

“Everyone Kept Ganging up on Harper” 267 9 John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (London: Cambridge University Press 1969); John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, ed. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1955/1975); Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. J.B. Thompson, trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press 2010). 10 Austin, How to Do Things with Words. 11 Leon Bing, “When You’re a Crip (or a Blood),” Harper’s Magazine, March 1989, 51–9. 12 Malcolm W. Klein and Cheryl L. Maxson, Street Gang Patterns and Policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010); G. David Curry and Scott H. Decker, Confronting Gangs: Crime and Community (Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing 1998). 13 Curry and Decker, Confronting Gangs. 14 For more recent reiterations, see Sarah Garland, Gangs in Garden City: How Immigration, Segregation, and Youth Violence Are Changing America’s Suburbs (New York: Nation Books 2009); Dan Korem, Suburban Gangs: The Affluent Rebels (Richardson, Tex.: International Focus Press 1994); Daniel J. Monti, “Wannabe” Gangs in Suburbs and Schools (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994); Gene Muehlbauer and Laura Dodder, The Losers: Gang Delinquency in an American Suburb (New York: Praeger 1983); Pamela Richards, Richard A. Berk, and Brenda Forster, Crime as Play: Delinquency in a Middle Class Suburb (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing 1979). 15 John M. Hagedorn, Gangs in the Global City: Alternatives to Traditional Criminology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 2007); Hagedorn, A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2008). 16 In 2009 the National Youth Gang Center merged with the National Gang Center. 17 The FBI, for instance, lists the National Gang Targeting, Enforcement and Coordination Center (GangTECC) as a gang taskforce in 2011; however, this group merged into the Organized Crime and Gang Section (OCGS) in 2010 along with the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section (OCRS) and the Gang Unit. 18 While scholars continue to debate whether voters already sought toughon-crime politicians or were conditioned to vote in such figures through media and political campaigns, the aftermath of such reforms is widely ­accepted to have been heavily detrimental to society. Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (Boston: Little, Brown and Company 1996); Joe Domanick, Cruel Justice: Three Strikes

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19 20

21 22 23 24

25

26 27

and the Politics of Crime in America’s Golden State (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press 2004); Marc Mauer and the Sentencing Project, Race to Incarcerate (New York: New Press 1999). Richard C. McCorkle and Terance D. Miethe, Panic: The Social Construction of the Street Gang Problem (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall 2002). Chris Richardson, “The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,” in Kathleen R. Arnold, ed., Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood 2011), 487–9. Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market, trans. R. Nice (New York: New Press 1998). Ibid., 2. “Penal Justice File,” Canadian Journal of Criminology, April 1998, 195–9. “Working Together to Combat Organized Crime: A Public Report on Actions under the National Agenda to Combat Organized Crime,” Public Safety Canada, http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/cmbtngrgnzd-crm/cmbtng-rgnzd-crm-eng.pdf (accessed 15 December 2015). Walter. S. DeKeseredy, “Canadian Crime Control in the New Millennium: The Influence of Neo-Conservative US Policies and Practices,” Police Practice and Research 10, no. 4 (2009): 305–16; Paula Mallea, “Harper’s Tough-on-Crime Agenda Is Wrong on Many Counts,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor 18, no. 6 (2010): 1; Paula Mallea, “Harper’s ‘Tough-on-Crime’ Bills Costly, Counterproductive,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor 16, no. 10 (2011): 16; Robyn Maynaro, “Incarcerating Youth as Justice?” Canadian Dimension 45, no. 5 (2011): 25–7. Astwood Strategy Corporation, Results of the 2002 Canadian Police Survey on Youth Gangs (Toronto: Astwood Strategy Corporation 2003). Scot Wortley and Julian Tanner, “Social Groups or Criminal Organizations? The Extent and Nature of Youth Gang Activity in Toronto,” in Bruce Kidd and Jim Phillips, eds., From Enforcement and Prevention to Civic Engagement: Research on Community Safety (Toronto: Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, 2004), 59–80; Robert M. Gordon, “Street Gangs in Vancouver,” in J.H. Creechan and R.A. Silverman, eds., Canadian Delinquency (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice-Hall 1995); Robert M. Gordon, “Street Gangs and Criminal Business Organizations: A Canadian Perspective,” in Kayleen M. Hazlehurst and Cameron Hazlehurst, eds., Gangs and Youth Subcultures: International Explorations (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers 1998), 165–87; Robert M. Gordon, Criminal Business Organizations, Street Gangs and Related Groups in Vancouver: The Report of the Greater Vancouver Gang Study (Victoria: Ministry of Attorney General 1998); Robert M. Gordon, “Criminal Business Organizations, Street Gangs and ‘WannaBe’ Groups: A Vancouver Perspective,” Canadian Journal of Criminology 42,

“Everyone Kept Ganging up on Harper” 269

28

29 30 31

32 33 34

no. 1 (2000): 39–60; Michèle Fournier, Marie-Marthe Cousineau, and Sylvie Hamel, “La Victimisation: Un Aspect Marquant de l’Expérience de Jeunes filles dans les Gangs,” Criminologie 37, no. 1 (2004): 149–66; Melanie Nimmo, The “Invisible” Gang Members: A Report on Female Gang Association in Winnipeg (Winnipeg: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 2001); Jana Grekul and Patti LaBoucane-Benson, When You Have Nothing to Live For, You Have Nothing to Die For: An Investigation into the Formation and Recruitment Process of Aboriginal Gangs in Western Canada (Ottawa: Public Safety Canada 2006); Jana Grekul and Patti LaBoucane Benson, “Aboriginal Gangs and Their (Dis)placement: Contextualizing Recruitment, Membership, and Status,” Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice 50, no. 1 (2008): 59–82. Chris Richardson, “The Violent Gang in American Popular Culture: From Pirates and Cowboys to Bikers and Gangstas,” in David Schmid, ed., Violence in American Popular Culture (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger 2016), 165; Chris Richardson and Liam Kennedy, “‘Gang’ as Empty Signifier in Contemporary Canadian Newspapers,” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 54, no. 4 (2012): 445. Stephan Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada (Mississauga: John Wiley and Sons 2009). Ibid. This expression actually existed since medieval times but is most frequently applied to practices of the British Navy in the eighteenth century. While little is written on press gangs in Canadian contexts, exceptions include: Julian Gwyn, Frigates and Foremasts: The North American Squadron in Nova Scotia Waters, 1745–1815 (Vancouver: UNC Press 2003); Keith Mercer, “Sailors and Citizens: Press Gangs and Naval-Civilian Relations in Nova Scotia, 1756–1815,” Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 10 (2007): 87–113; Keith Mercer, “Northern Exposure: Resistance to Naval Impressment in British North America, 1775–1815,” Canadian Historical Review 91, no. 2 (2010): 199–232. American and British studies provide many detailed accounts of these events. See Daniel J. Ennis, Enter the PressGang: Naval Impressment in Eighteenth-Century British Literature (Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press 2002); Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2004); Isaac Land, War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750–1950 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2009). Mercer, “Sailors and Citizens” and “Northern Exposure.” Ibid. While earlier works that use the term “gang” exist, such as Joseph A. Puffer’s (1912/2008) The Boy and His Gang, the majority of scholars cite

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35 36

37

38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45

46

47

Thrasher as the founder of contemporary gang research. See Klein and Maxson, Street Gang Patterns and Policies; Hagedorn, Gangs in the Global City; Thrasher, The Gang. Thrasher, The Gang, 320–1. Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York: Random House 1927/2008); George W. Knox, An Introduction to Gangs (Bristol, U.K.: Wyndam Hall Press 1994); McCorkle and Miethe, Panic: The Social Construction of the Street Gang Problem. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 2002). Gregory Dimitriadis, “The Situation Complex: Revisiting Frederic Thrasher’s The Gang: A Study of 1,131 Gangs in Chicago,” Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies 6, no. 3 (2006): 335–53; Knox, An Introduction to Gangs. Mark Maloney, “Scoundrels, Rogues and Socialists,” Toronto Star, 3 January 2010, IN04. In Canada, alcohol laws varied from province to province. At one point, the majority of Canada was dry, with only a majority of Quebec politicians voting to allow its consumption. Cheryl K. Warsh, ed., Drink in Canada: Historical Essays (Montreal and Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1993). Edward Behr, Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America (New York: Arcade Publishing 1996), 130. Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner 2010); Schneider, Iced. Okrent, Last Call; Schneider, Iced. Schneider, Iced, 206. R. de Brisay, “‘Byng or King’: The Issue in the Canadian Election,” The Nation, 8 September 1926, 213–15. Augie Fleras, Unequal Relations: An Introduction to Race and Ethnic Dynamics in Canada, 6th ed. (Toronto: Pearson 2009); John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1965). John Dickie, Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2004); Ronald C. Huff, ed., Gangs in America (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications 1990), and 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage 1996); Ronald C. Huff, Gangs in America III (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications 2002); Schneider, Iced; Federico Varese, Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 2011). See Kay J. Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875–1980 (Montreal and Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen’s University Press

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48

49 50 51 52

1991); Robert F. Harney and Vincenza J. Scarpaci, Little Italies in North America (Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario 1981). Peter Edwards and Michel Auger, The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime: From Captain Kidd to Mom Boucher (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 2004); Klein and Maxson, Street Gang Patterns and Policies; Schneider, Iced; Varese, Mafias on the Move, 2011. Jonathan Munby, Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1999), 141. Ibid. See n.9. To illustrate just how controversial this position has been since John Searle (Searle, “How to Derive ‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” Philosophical Review 73, no. 1 [1964]: 43–58) first introduced it, see his many critiques and replies: William H. Bruening, “Moore and ‘Is-Ought,’” Ethics 81, no. 2 (1971): 143–9; Vogel T. Carey, “How to Confuse Commitment with Obligation,” Journal of Philosophy 72, no. 10 (1975): 276–84; T.D. Crawford, “On the Uses of ‘Is’ and ‘Ought,’” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 39, no. 4 (1979): 592–4; Gerald F. Downing, “Ways of Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” Philosophical Quarterly 22, no. 88 (1972): 234–47; Arthur J. Dyck, “Moral Requiredness: Bridging the Gap Between ‘Ought’ and ‘Is,’” Journal of Religious Ethics 9, no. 1 (1981): 131–50; Anthony Flew, “On Not Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” Analysis 25, no. 2 (1964): 25–32; Barbara Fried, “Is as Ought: The Case of Contracts,” Virginia Law Review 92, no. 7 (2006): 1375–89; Alan Gewirth, “The ‘Is-Ought’ Problem Resolved,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47 (1974): 34–61; Robert V. Hannaford, “You Ought to Derive ‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” Ethics 82, no. 2 (1972): 155–62; W.D. Hudson, “The ‘Is-Ought’ Controversy,” Analysis 25, no. 6 (1965): 191–5; Evan K. Jobe, “On Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” Analysis 25, no. 5 (1965): 179–81; Joseph B. Kadane and Patrick D. Larkey, “The Confusion of Is and Ought in Game Theoretic Contexts,” Management Science 29, no. 12 (1983): 1365– 79; George I. Mavrodes, “‘Is’ and ‘Ought,’” Analysis 25, no. 2 (1964): 42–4; James E. McClellan and B. Paul Komisar, “On Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” Analysis 25, no. 2 (1964): 32–7; Dorothy Mitchell, “Must We Talk About ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’?” Mind 77, 308 (1968): 543–9; Edgar Morscher, “From ‘Is’ to ‘Ought’ via ‘Knowing,’” Ethics 83, no. 1 (1972): 84–6; Kai Nielsen, “On Deriving an Ought from an Is: A Retrospective Look,” Review of Metaphysics 32, no. 3 (1979): 487–514; William J. Samuels, “You Cannot Derive ‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” Ethics 83, no. 2 (1973): 159–62; Aaron Sloman, “How to Derive ‘Better’ from ‘Is,’” American Philosophical Quarterly 6, no. 1 (1969): 43–52; Burleigh T. Wilkins, “The ‘Is’-‘Ought’ Controversy,” Ethics

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53

54 55 56 57 58

59 60

61

62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69

80, no. 2 (1970): 160–4; Ken Witkowski, “The ‘Is-Ought’ Gap: Deduction or Justification?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 36, no. 2 (1975): 233–45; Jonathan Yovel, “What is Contract Law ‘About’? Speech Act Theory and a Critique of ‘Skeletal Promises,’” Northwestern University Law Review 94, no. 3 (2000): 937–62. John B. Thompson, editor’s Introduction, in Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. M. Adamson (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press 2010), 7–8. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 38. Ibid., 190. Richardson and Kennedy, “‘Gang’ as Empty Signifier in Canadian Newspapers.” Jeffery Simpson, “End of a Dynasty: Conservative Ferment Is Fertile Soil for Wildrose,” Globe and Mail, 22 January 2010, A15. Philip Authier, “Week 1: Bumpy Ride in Quebec,” Montreal Gazette, 2 April 2011, A3, and “I Feel Your Angst, Curzi Tells Riding Faithful,” Montreal Gazette, 22 June 2011, A3. Thrasher, The Gang, 325. Allan Fotheringham, “The Boring Gang of Four,” Globe and Mail, 14 April 2010, A19; R.M. Vaughan, “Four Little Horsies of the Apocalypse,” Globe and Mail, 7 July 2010, R1. Robyn Doolittle, “‘Give it Back,’ Budget Chair Says of Missing Piggy Bank,” Toronto Star, 16 June 2011, GT2; Marcus Gee, “Mayor Shows Bold Fashion with Which He’ll Govern,” Globe and Mail, 8 December 2010, A1. Christie Blatchford, “The People’s Choice, in Spite of Themselves,” Globe and Mail, 26 October 2010, A20. Ian Bailey and Mark Hume, “Bennett Says He Expects ‘Premier’s Gang’ to Eject Him from Caucus,” Globe and Mail, 19 November 2010, A11. Barbara Yaffe, “All Eyes Are on the New Official Opposition: How Will Jack Layton’s Gang Operate?” Vancouver Sun, 25 May 2011, B3. Gary Mason, “Inside the Downfall of Carole James,” Globe and Mail, 7 December 2010, A5; Rod Mickleburgh, “Back to Being an Alternate Political Universe,” Globe and Mail, 7 December 2010, S3. Freed, “Fall Marks the Start of the Real New Year.” John Ibbitson, “Tory Anti-Gang Fighter Joins Senate,” Globe and Mail, 22 December 2010, A10. Dave Leblanc, “Tories, Bloc Team up to Toughen Parole System,” Globe and Mail, 3 February 2011, A4. Pete McMartin, “Not Running for Political Office? How about Walking?” Vancouver Sun, 16 November 2010, A4; “Liberal’s Tactical Goof,” Toronto Star, 25 March 2010, A26.

“Everyone Kept Ganging up on Harper” 273 70 “Hard and Fast Rules Needed for Federal Debate,” Montreal Gazette, 31 March 2011, A22. 71 David Johnston, “Last Night’s Debate: Expert Reactions,” Montreal Gazette, 13 April 2011, A6. 72 Ironically, Yaffe’s “Greens Have Not Earned a Place in Televised Leaders’ Debate,” Vancouver Sun, 13 March 2011, A5, suggested that Green Party candidate Elizabeth May was able to join the leaders’ debates in 2008 ­because of the public outrage that “all the male party leaders appeared to be ‘ganging up’ on her.” Evidently, that anger subsided by 2011 and she was unable to return for the televised debates. 73 “2011 Federal Leaders’ Debate” (transcript), Canuck Politics, 12 April 2011, http://canuckpolitics.com/2011/04/12/transcript-201-federal-leadersdebate-transcript. 74 Ibid. 75 Kelley Dougherty, “Quebec-Area Ridings Vulnerable,” Montreal Gazette, 18 April 2011, A6. 76 Richard J. Brennan, “Conservatives Say Escorts Good, Prostitution Bad,” Toronto Star, 14 October 2010, A1. 77 Bill Brownstein, “John Hastings Can’t Get away from Montreal,” Montreal Gazette, 16 July 2010, C9; Sarah Barmak, “Canada’s New Political Divide,” Toronto Star, 7 May 2011, IN2; “Election 2011,” Toronto Star, 16 April 2011, IN7. 78 James Travers, “Census Clamour Wakes Sleeping Nation,” Toronto Star, 29 July 2010, A6. 79 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 213. 80 André Picard, “Why This Health Accord Will Be Different,” Globe and Mail, 28 May 2011, A16. 81 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 209. 82 “PM announces an Extension of the Youth Gang Prevention Fund.” 83 For recent debates and scholarship on the politics of emotions, see Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (London: Routledge 2004); Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and Act Up’s Fight against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2009); Catherine A. Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds., Language and the Politics of Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990); Michael E. Morrell, Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking, and Deliberation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 2010). 84 The only study that exists for Canadians on the number of gangs in the country is produced by a corporation led by Mike Chettleburgh, a self-­ proclaimed gang expert whose public vita outlines no significant qualifications or training on the subject.

274  Covering Canadian Crime 85 Richardson and Kennedy, “‘Gang’ as Empty Signifier in Canadian Newspapers.” 86 Astwood Strategy Corporation, Results of the 2002 Canadian Police Survey on Youth Gangs. 87 Ibid., 5. 88 Scott Cummings and Daniel J. Monti, Gangs: The Origins and Impact of Contemporary Youth Gangs in The United States (Albany: State University of New York Press 1993); Curry and Decker, Confronting Gangs; Huff, ed., Gangs in America; Huff, Gangs in America, 2nd ed.; Huff, Gangs in America III; Malcolm W. Klein, The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence, and Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995); Malcolm W. Klein, Chasing after Street Gangs: A Forty-Year Journey (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall 2007). 89 An example being the Youth Gang Prevention Fund. See Cummings and Monti, Gangs: The Origins and Impact of Contemporary Youth Gangs in The United States; Curry and Decker, Confronting Gangs; Hagedorn, Gangs in the Global City and World of Gangs; Huff, ed., Gangs in America; Huff, Gangs in America, 2nd ed.; Huff, Gangs in America III; Klein, The American Street Gang; Klein, Chasing after Street Gangs; Malcolm W. Klein and C.L. Maxson, Street Gang Patterns and Policies; Chris Richardson and Hans Skott-Mhyre, eds., The Habitus of the Hood (Chicago: Intellect Press 2012). 90 Thrasher, The Gang, 313.

17 Guns, Gangs, and the Underclass Revisited: An Analysis of Courtroom Coverage from the Jordan Manners Trials W ill iam O’G r ady an d P at rick Pa r na b y (w ith Sabah F at ima) 1

Foreword When our article “Guns, Gangs and the Underclass: A Constructionist Analysis of Gun Violence in a Toronto High School” was published in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice in January 2010, the trial for the two males accused of murdering Jordan Manners had yet to commence. But four years after the shooting and two trials later, the same two males were acquitted of the crime and set free after spending four years in custody. The text of our original article, with only minor editorial emendations, is found below. First, though, we offer an additional, critical commentary about how the print media (the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post) covered the two trials relating to the May 2007 shooting death of Jordan Manners.2 As stated in the original article, because the two youth charged with murder were under the age of eighteen, the Youth Criminal Justice Act prohibited the media from releasing their identities to the public. To this day the two accused have been known only as “JW” and “CD.” The first trial began on 3 February 2010. The Crown contended that fifteen-year-old Jordan Manners was dragged down the stairs at C.W. Jeffery Collegiate by two young men who then robbed and killed him. However, on 26 March, Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian Nordheimer declared a mistrial since the eleven-member jury was unable to agree on a verdict against WD and CD, who were facing charges of first-­ degree murder. A new trial began on 21 March 2011. Relying heavily on the eyewitness testimony of four witnesses, the Crown once again argued that Manners

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was robbed and then shot in the chest by JW and CD inside C.W. Jeffries Collegiate. Notably, during the second trial, key eyewitness testimony for the Crown was recanted, thus weakening severely the case against the co-accused. After eleven hours of deliberation, the jury found the accused not guilty of first-degree murder. Rather than being the victim of a botched robbery, the defence argued that Manners had in fact been a victim of an accidental shooting in the school washroom where the two accused were simply innocent bystanders. A careful review of the print media’s coverage of both trials revealed that the underclass theme persisted during the court proceedings, manifest in the Crown and the defence attorney’s rhetorical arguments. Defence council, for example, used gang/underclass cultural references on several occasions while building the argument that the glorification of a gang/underclass subculture ultimately led to Manners’s tragic death. Consider these words from a National Post report obtained from the first trial which describes what Manners was wearing the day he was shot: “There was a slight burn hole visible at the top of the zipper on the sports-style G-Unit jacket, the clothing line produced by hip hop performer 50 Cent. Underneath the jacket, he wore a black T-shirt and a vintage ‘Washington Bullets’ singlet with the number 41 and the name ‘Unseld’ on the back, referring to Wes Unseld, a 1970s era basketball star in the NBA.”3 This theme continued during the second trial. The following two passages report the defence’s argument that Manners had accidently shot himself: What makes sense is that Jordan Manners was a young man who had a healthy interest in firearms. He and two other young men – who looked very different from the defendants – entered a second floor washroom to examine a handgun, and may have played around, resulting in a “horrible tragic accident.”4 A picture of ammunition boxes and one of a poster for the movie Killa Season were found on Jordan Manners’ cell phone after he was fatally shot in a school stairwell, a murder trial has heard. Defence lawyer James Silver suggested Tuesday that the movie depicted on the slain teen’s phone “essentially glorifies gang culture,” but Crown prosecutor Tom Lissaman objected.5

The courtroom rhetoric was certainly in keeping with broader assumptions about the nature of gang/underclass culture, which has, for years, been associated with the lifestyles of young Black males from the Jane

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and Finch area in northwest Toronto: for it is there that Black, impressionistic young males have allegedly come to glorify media accounts of American inner-city gang culture and violence. Indeed, Manners was depicted as the victim not of others’ malicious intent but of his own lionization of guns and gangster culture. The gangster/underclass theme did not end with depictions of the young victim. During the second trial, similar connotations surfaced in the press after witnesses for the Crown recanted their original testimony, opening the possibility of perjury charges. Police and lawyers for the Crown suggested that the original testimony, which alleged Manners had been murdered by the accused, was, in fact, accurate and that the reason why the witnesses had recanted their testimony was because youth from high-crime communities learn not to snitch on criminals for fear of reprisal. For example: He [Barsky] agreed prosecuting people who are already under pressure in marginalized communities by the non-snitching culture could exacerbate the problem. “We run that risk by even considering charges like perjury against a witness.” Under the Criminal Code, anyone who gives misleading evidence under oath is guilty of perjury, but it is a difficult offence to prove and a charge rarely laid. Prosecutors have to show not only that the evidence was false, but that it was intentionally false. In the case of the recanting witness at the Galloway gang trial, police charged him with perjury and attempting to obstruct justice. The case is still before the courts.6

A similar point surfaced in a pre-trial hearing for the second trial when a lawyer for the crown suggested that one of the witnesses feared one of the defendants: “During her testimony, the most important witness, Y.M., pointedly refused to look at the defendants, one of whom had previously tried to date her. When asked in court by the Crown if she was afraid, she repeatedly said she was not.”7 Indeed, the Crown implied that, because the key eyewitnesses were from a high- crime neighbourhood, their recanting of previous testimony should not be deemed unusual; the witnesses, the Crown argued, did not want to violate the street’s non-snitching code. In fact, an analogous reference was made to a different murder trial from an entirely different neighbourhood8 where witness testimony was also recanted.9 At the same time, the defence argued that Manners had accidentally shot himself because, like many youth from the Jane and Finch area, he glorified hand guns and gang culture – an argument substantiated entirely on the basis of how Manners dressed and the images discovered on his cell

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phone. While members of the press cannot be criticized for reporting the arguments presented in court, we were unable to find any opinion pieces or editorial commentaries that were critical of the unfounded underclass rhetoric used by the Crown and defence during the two trials. Similar to our original article, where we argued that journalists latched on to taken-for-granted gang and underclass explanations, the subsequent court reporting suggests, once again, that the proclivity to typecast individuals and communities in this fashion persists. Our argument here is not that typecasting of this kind is inevitably and always misguided – in certain communities some youth do glorify gang violence and witnesses do recant evidence because they are afraid.10 However, in the Jordan Manners case, the damaging stereotypes emerged in popular media and courtroom discourse on the basis of scant evidence and dubious logic. Of course, we are not in a position to attribute malicious intent to any of the claims makers involved, but that may in fact be symptomatic of what is most disconcerting: that gang and underclass explanations now roll easily off the tongues of individuals in positions of authority, not as a result of careful attention having been paid to the lived realities of those involved but because such explanations gel with (misguided) conventional wisdom. Our original article now follows. Guns, Gangs, and the Underclass: A Constructionist Analysis of Gun Violence in a Toronto High School On 23 May 2007 a fifteen-year-old boy was shot and killed in a Toronto high school, the first event of its kind in Canada’s largest city. According to the local press, Jordan Manners, a grade 9 student who attended C.W. Jefferys Collegiate (CWJC), was shot in the chest in a hallway not far from the school’s cafeteria. Immediately after Manners was found wounded on the floor, the school was placed under a four-hour “lockdown,” meaning that no one but authorities could leave or enter the school. Four days later, two seventeen-year-old male suspects were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. At a press conference, members of the Toronto Police Service revealed that the two accused lived in the same neighbourhood as Manners and that their identities could not be released as a result of the restrictions imposed by the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA): The police offered no additional information. Although the media initially sought to contextualize Manners’s death by referring to previous school shootings (e.g., Dawson College or W.R.

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Myers High School in Taber, Alberta), within approximately forty-eight hours, a very different, dominant framework appeared, one that framed the killings as if it were a tragedy that had its roots in the very nature of Toronto’s Black, urban “underclass.”11 What makes this transition entirely unique, however, is the following: Because the school was locked down and there was no information pertaining to the motives and identities of the accused (and, at the time of this writing, there still isn’t), all attempts by the media to explain the event were inevitably grounded in speculation.12 Thus, the pertinent questions are, How does one account for this transition? And, given myriad alternatives, why did the press opt for the underclass framework in particular? Using data gathered from an analysis of local press coverage, we offer the following argument. The media was confronted with a newsworthy event that appeared to have all the markings of “another school shooting”; however, in the absence of critical information, the organizational requirement of producing a viable story encouraged the adoption of a well-established interpretive framework. Leaving behind the initial references to prior school shootings and the culturally ingrained imagery they now seem to evoke, the media embraces the well-­recognized urban-underclass framework and constructed Manners’s death as if it were an anticipated extension of the neighbourhood’s troubled history. We begin with a review of the literature looking at the media’s role in the construction of crime as a social problem, followed by a more directed examination of how school shootings in particular have been constructed in North America. Following a review of our methodology, the genesis of the urban-underclass framework is examined. We then conclude by exploring the social and political implications of these dynamics in relation to (a) what we know about the media’s role in the construction of criminal events and (b) how the media and other claims makers are responsible for perpetuating discriminatory ideologies that have serious implications for understanding crime and violence in disadvantaged Canadian communities. Literature Review This study draws heavily from two interrelated bodies of literature: social constructionism as it pertains to the media’s role in the construction of crime as a social problem, and the literature on school violence and/ or school shootings. Our analysis will move back and forth between these two areas, tying them together whenever possible.

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For the past fifteen to twenty years, constructionism has had a profound impact on how social scientists understand the nature of social problems. The work of Blumer and Spector and Kitsuse, for example, provided important critiques of conventional social-problems research by calling for a focus on the processes through which problems are defined, responded to, and maintained over time.13 Thus, social problem status was not to be understood as an objective condition but rather as a function of the claims made by individuals or groups who sought the problematization of a particular condition.14 Social problems are, therefore, not to be seen as inherently immoral or problematic conditions but merely as definitions of and orientations to putative conditions.15 Constructionism has also had a profound influence on how scholars understand the relationship between the media’s depiction of crime, on the one hand, and public perceptions of crime, on the other.16 Though perhaps antithetical to strict versions of constructionism (see Woolgar and Pwaluch), its appeal stems, in part, from its ability to help explain the media’s tendency to distort and amplify crime-related news.17 For example, scholars have long argued that, while the media tend to focus on crimes of violence (see Doyle; Jerkins; Sacco), official police data suggest that violent crime represents a relatively small proportion of all reported criminal activity. This trend towards distortion or what some moral-panic scholars might call disproportionality (see Burns and Crawford; Cohen) often leads to a self-reinforcing media hype (see Vasterman) that derives much of its momentum from the sheer profitability of crime-related news and the extent to which crime news caters to the organizational requirements of the news industry (see Sacco).18 Also of interest is the research examining how the media have constructed school shootings as a serious social problem worthy of public attention. In his analysis of post-Columbine media coverage, Muschert, for example, reveals the extent to which the media have perpetuated the myth of the child “super predator” – a vicious killer utterly devoid of feelings and incapable of remorse.19 Thus, according to Herda-Rapp, the media have helped to usher in a new typology of school shootings20: they are brutal crimes committed by young, white males in suburban or rural hamlets across the United States. These shootings are pitched as a new kind of violence, perpetrated in areas once thought to be immune from malevolence of such magnitude.21 Burns and Crawford, for example, argue that, in contradistinction to the media-generated moral panic, American data suggests that “recent school shootings were idiosyncratic events and not part of any recognizable trend.”22 Similarly, Best refers to school shootings as a “phantom

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epidemic” brought on by the media’s intense coverage of particular events and its affinity for statistical distortion.23 Moreover, research indicates that intense coverage of school shootings over time is, in part, a function of the media’s tendency to engage in “frame-changing” (Hsiang and McCombs) as a means of keeping news about school shootings salient.24 That said, constructionist research has allowed scholars to contrast what is believed to be the reality of school shootings with their image in public and media discourse. In the post-Columbine era, popular and media discourse have tended to construct school shootings in a rather dark, typological form: a bullied, marginalized, and seemingly deranged young male leaves innocent victims in his wake while shocking the community.25 Victims, too, have been constructed in rather predictable ways as young, promising citizens, whose suburban or rural refuge from a heartless world is irrevocably violated. As Muschert argues, school shootings as “problemdefining events” have come to characterize the state of youth violence in North America, where threats to and threats from children now play a pivotal role in prevailing discourses of fear.26 It is, therefore, not surprising that scholars have focused so intently on the etiology of school shootings and that myriad explanations had come to the fore.27 For some, answers can be found in prevailing constructions of heterosexual masculinity and the alienation experienced by those unable or unwilling to conform.28 Others have set their sights on the impact of violent media, popular culture, or access to firearms.29 More comprehensive explanations have focused on the intersection of community, family, and organizational relations within the school environment.30 However, in this article we are not principally concerned with the objective causes of school shootings, nor are we interested in furthering the development of a school-shooting typology as proposed by Muschert.31 Instead, we seek to explain why and under what circumstances particular constructions of school shootings emerge. Thus, with respect to the event in question, given the absence of information about a motive or about the offenders’ identities, we attempt to understand why the killings of Manners was initially framed in relation to past school shootings before quickly being recast as if it were a “targeted shooting” carried out within the broader context of an underclass social environment.32 Borrowing from constructionist research and from media-studies scholarship, we seek answers to this issue, prompted as it was by the unusual circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Jordan Manners on 23 May 2007.

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Methodology The data collected for this article were derived using a case-study content analysis that, according to Altheide, involves the reflexive analysis of textual documents so as to understand the communication of meaning in and of itself while forming and verifying theoretical concepts.33 In a more concrete sense, content analysis also involves the identification of important patterns, themes, and apparent biases.34 In total, 266 newspaper articles from three widely circulated news-papers – the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Toronto Star – were obtained from the Canadian Newsstand (CN) electronic database. Borrowing from Ericson et al., these newspapers can be classified into two publication categories: quality and mass. As national papers with a history of catering to the middle- and upper-class business communities, the somewhat conservative Globe and Mail and National Post (“quality” publications) claim to be concerned with matters of national and international significance.35 As a “mass” publication, the Toronto Star attempts to appeal to both ends of the market, while generally espousing a more liberal point of view than the other two. These three newspapers represent a significant proportion of the daily print media in Toronto. The 266 articles were electronically sourced using the keywords “Jordan Manners.” The search spanned a period of one year, beginning with the day of Jordan’s death – 23 May 2007 – and ending on 23 May 2008. Thematic coding was then carried out through a process of systematically reviewing each article while paying particular attention to how the event was framed. According to Entman, to frame something is to select “some aspects of perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.”36 Of particular interest was whether the article attempted to explain or contextualize the killing and, if so, how this was done. Finally, the date of the article’s publication relative to Manners’s death was also recorded.

Was It “Another” School Shooting? Manners’s death attracted considerable media attention. Once news broke that a shooting had taken place at CWJC, the media began searching for details about the event while gathering outside the school, which had already been placed in lockdown. A line of yellow police tape circled the school and no one, including the press, was permitted

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to enter. There were also reports that two television helicopters were flying over the school trying to get live aerial coverage of the event. Less than twenty-four hours later, media discourse began connecting the shooting death of Jordan Manners to past school shootings. For example, according to one report published the day after the event, “Outside, a crowd of anxious, grim-faced parents and family members massed along the police tape in front of the school. Many were frustrated with the waiting and uncertainty; they spoke of security concerns, of the shooting at Virginia Tech and Dawson College.”37 Similarly, the Toronto Star wrote, “The shooting comes a little more than a month after a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech before taking his own life. In September, a gunman at Montreal’s Dawson College killed a student and wounded 19 others before he died from police gunfire.”38 Finally, and in a more detailed fashion, Associated Content reported, The last school shooting in [Ontario] occurred in 2000, when four students and a member of the staff were stabbed during an attack at Cairine Wilson High School in Orleans, Ontario. In September 2006, 25-year-old Kimveer Gill entered Dawson College located in Montreal. When Gill was done shooting, he had killed student Anastasia De Souza. Gill also injured 20 additional students before turning the gun on himself. This shooting [Manners’s] lies in the wake of the worst shooting in United States history just last month at Virginia Tech. Student Cho Seung-hui killed 31 people on the campus and then killed himself. 39

In the latter two excerpts in particular, the media thematically connect Manners’s death to the carnage of past school shootings by calling the reader’s attention to a temporal sequence of similar events (i.e., “the shooting comes a little more than …” and “this shooting lies in the wake of …”). By implication, Manners’s death was therefore constructed as being part of a larger trend involving disturbed and/or marginalized young males killing their classmates. What makes this early media discourse especially interesting are the circumstances under which it emerged. As mentioned above, immediately after the shooting, the media had little, if any, information about what actually happened because (a) the school was placed immediately under lockdown; (b) the offenders had not been apprehended; and (c) unlike in the case of other school shootings, the offenders did not leave clues suggesting a potential motive.40 Thus, we would argue that the initial placing of Manners’s death in the context of past school shootings appears to have been a function of the media’s need to organize

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and present the story quickly in a way that would be consonant with pre-existing conceptual frameworks (see Ericson et al. 1989) – a common media practice, often instrumental in the construction of what become known as crime trends or, under particular circumstances, crime “waves.”41 However, when the media began interviewing neighbourhood residents, it did not take long before an entirely new frame emerged. While still lacking factual information, the news stories then began to suggest that Toronto had witnessed yet another teenager shot dead in a crime-ridden environment known for gang violence – references to past school shootings ceased entirely. Gangs, Guns, and the Underclass The gang framework actually made its initial debut on the day of the shooting. The Globe and Mail, in an attempt to provide context, described the neighbourhood as a place where people “have long endured violent outbreaks of street crime” and where gangs known as “Bloods” and “Crips” were known to have operated – an obvious nod to American gang culture.42 Less than twenty-four hours later and after all references to previous school shootings had ceased, the gang framework began to take its more robust form. The National Post acknowledged that two Toronto filmmakers featured Jordan Manners in a CBC documentary called Lost in the Struggle, which followed the lives of three young men who while involved in the illegal drug trade grew up in Toronto’s notorious Jane and Finch neighbourhood.43 Manners was said to have appeared in the film, but his role was apparently edited out before it was shown on the CBC public-affairs program the fifth estate six months before he was killed.44 During an interview, filmmaker Paul Nguyen was asked what might have led to Manners’s death. Nguyen suspected that Manners had been the victim of retaliation, commenting, “From what I heard, it was probably some sort of beef. Usually, that’s the case anyway … I don’t know specifically, but I just hear on the streets it’s a beef. That’s just what’s on the street.”45 Shortly thereafter, the media began interviewing residents in the area and soon embraced the gang framework wholeheartedly. For example, the Toronto Star engaged in gang-related discourse by means of an interview with Stu Auty, chair of Ontario’s Safe Schools Task Force, who, in reference to Manners’s death, stated, “Gangs are a form of family that can appeal to marginalized kids, kids who feel they’re outside looking in.”46 Another article in the same edition went one rhetorical step further when it asked, “Who and why would somebody hunt down and kill 15-year-old Jordan

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Manners in broad daylight inside his Toronto high school?”47 The article then proceeded to share portions of transcribed interviews with particular students who suggested that Manners had been hanging out “with the wrong crowd and was a poor influence.” Thus, on the basis of nothing more than speculation, the press opted to frame the event as though it was potentially gang-related. Interestingly, everything changed when, on 29 May, the Toronto Police Service held a news conference to announce they had arrested two young offenders who could not be identified under the YCJA. As if deliberately calling into question the press’s arbitrary decision to frame the event in relation to gangs, Toronto Police reported that, while the accused were thought to have known Manners, the event was “absolutely not gang-related.”48 Since only in rare and unusual circumstances does the YCJA permit the identities of offenders under the age of eighteen to be released, the media found itself unable to shift its emphasis to considering exactly who the suspects were. Indeed, once it became apparent that the shooters might actually have been Manners’s friends, or at the very least acquaintances, the media frame began to shift away from gangs as an explanatory framework, although not entirely. Broadly speaking, the event remained framed within the broader idiom of gang culture, both in the school and in the community. With the story now off the front page seven days after the shooting, one commentator noted that the tragedy was caused by “a larger culture of gun violence” and that “recent reports that CWJC was chaotic and often dangerous may be confirmed through an inquest.”49 The idea that not only the community but the high school was a dangerous place was reinforced when a former English teacher was quoted in the press saying that she “was not surprised at the shooting” and that her impression was that “the students were running the school.” Finally, the teacher noted that “students threw textbooks and even desks at teachers and once a group of male students surrounded a female teacher and repeatedly taunted her with chants of ‘suck my d–– .’ The list is endless, she said.”50 In short, Toronto’s print media appeared to be holding tightly to the remaining threads of a consonant and newsworthy framework that sought to position Manners’s death in relation to gang culture. The media’s use of the gang-culture framework was then predictably coupled with explanatory references to Toronto’s “underclass.” A former police officer and community activist who used to work to “undo gang violence in the schools during the 1990s” expressed his views about teens in the area: “They’re confused about who their father is. Not that they don’t have loving moms, but their influences, their role

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models are guys with guns, guys who act like thugs and act like gangsters.”51 These views were reinforced in an op-ed that appeared in the Globe and Mail a few weeks after the shooting. Responding to a group of law students (Community and Legal Aid Services Program [CLASP]) who went to a middle school in the Jane-Finch area to do a presentation on legal rights, Margaret Wente drew the connection between gang culture and single-parent families: “Many students come from disorganized, single-mother families where discipline is scarce, and they have a multitude of learning problems. The unwitting effect of the messages the CLASP sends will be to keep things in the underclass forever.”52 For Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star, Manners’s death was “symbolic of something rotting in our midst, it’s a flesh-eating disease, a corrosion of respect that claims victims throughout the city, not just in the Jane-Finch corridor.” Lest one imagine that DiManno was envisioning a widespread deterioration of morality transcending race and class boundaries, she concluded with a more focused understanding of where the “flesh-eating disease” was taking its highest toll: “There have been, especially up here in Jane-Finch, too many funerals for slain youths.”53 Interestingly, even though the press framed the CWJC as a violent school, there is clear evidence to suggest that neither the school nor its students conform to the frame of “lawless war zone.”54 In fact, on the basis of data currently available, comparisons can be made between levels of crime and victimization at CWJC and levels of crime and victimization in other Toronto high schools. Just one month after Manners’s death, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) commissioned Julian Faulkner to write a report about school violence in Toronto and a selfreport survey was administered at CWJC. The survey was anonymously completed by a total of 453 students, representing over 50 per cent of the student body. The report compared data from this survey with the data collected from Toronto schools in 2000. The latter research – The Toronto Youth Crime and Victimization Survey – was carried out by two sociologists from the University of Toronto and undertook a random sample of 3,393 high school students from 30 different high schools in the Toronto region.55 Both surveys asked similar questions relating to crime and victimization. Despite the seven-year gap between surveys, the 2000 data did provide some opportunity to compare the experiences of CWJC students to the experiences of other high school students in the Greater Toronto Area. Such a comparison revealed the following: • In 2007, 45 per cent of the students from CWJC reported that they had been the victim of a minor theft in the previous two years. By

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contrast, in 2000, 38 per cent of a random sample of Toronto high school students claimed that they had been the victim of a minor theft in the previous twelve months, with 72 per cent indicating that they had been the victim of minor theft at some time in their lives. • In 2007, 39 per cent of survey respondents from CWJC reported that they had received physical threats in the previous two years. By contrast, in 2000, 39 per cent of Toronto High School students claimed that they had received physical threats in the previous twelve months. • In 2007, 37 per cent of C.W. Jefferys students claimed that they had been physically assaulted at school in the previous two years. In 2000, 39 per cent of Toronto high school students stated that they had been physically assaulted in the previous year. • In 2007, 18 per cent of CWJC students claimed that they had been threatened by someone with a weapon in the previous two years. By contrast, in 2000, 15 per cent of Toronto high school students had received weapon threats in the previous year, and 28 per cent had been threatened by a weapon at some time in their lives. • In 2007, 11 per cent of students from CWJC claimed that they were assaulted by someone with a weapon in the previous two years. In 2000, 8 per cent of Toronto high school students indicated that they had been the victim of a weapons-related assault in the previous twelve months and 16 per cent had been assaulted with a weapon at some time in their lives. (For the points in this list, see TDSB, Appendix H: vi) The Faulkner Report concluded that the rates of victimization obtained from CWJC were not exceptional when compared to those obtained from other Toronto schools. “Put simply, crime and victimization may be a problem faced by students at many schools throughout the Toronto region and … life at C.W. Jefferys may not be particularly exceptional in this regard.”56 Interestingly, even though the media covered the release of the Faulkner Report in January 2008, the trends noted here did not appear to alter the way in which Manners’s death was framed. Nevertheless, the framing of Jordan Manners’s death was very much in keeping with the idea that the community at Jane and Finch represents an urban underclass – the term was coined by Charles Murray – with a high concentration of welfare-dependent, visible-minority, single-­parent households residing in subsidized housing. In recent years, concern and anxiety have been expressed in many Western societies about how growing numbers of marginal groups have become

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culturally distinct from the “traditional” working class.57 Although ideas about an underclass have been expressed by people with different ideological viewpoints, from the perspective of the New Right, the withdrawal of the state over the past two decades has been justified by a discourse that visualizes the urban poor, single mothers, and many immigrants (particularly those of colour) as members of an underclass that is welfare-dependent, reluctant to work, and highly criminalized.58 In fact, Garland has argued, in recent years a discourse of the “alien other” has emerged, where criminals are represented as dangerous members of distinct racial and social groups that have little resemblance to “us.” This otherness is juxtaposed with a dominant cultural discourse of family values, individual enterprise, and the limits of welfarism.59 We contend here that the way in which Manners’s death was framed is consistent with this position. While views about the existence of such an underclass remain popular (in fact, as noted earlier, the term underclass was used by the press to describe Manners’s community), British and Canadian research has effectively criticized the underclass thesis. For example, in Britain, the underclass argument has been challenged on the grounds that birth rates for unmarried Black mothers are not substantially greater than those for their unmarried White counterparts.60 Moreover, Murray’s notion of the underclass has been criticized for its reliance on anecdotal evidence, “case” histories, and a narrow interpretation of statistical data.61 In a recent summary of research examining the underclass thesis in Canada, Krahn, Lowe, and Hughes conclude, The majority of Canada’s poor are not welfare-dependent but “working poor,” seeking to maintain their standard of living on jobs with low pay and short hours. There is actually considerable movement in and out of poverty as individuals lose jobs, move from social assistance to low paying jobs, become divorced, or enter retirement without adequate pensions. In regions or cities where unemployment is high, a great deal of productive work continues to take place in the informal economy, including subsistence work performed by street people and the homeless. Such widespread initiative is hardly evidence of a failing work ethic.62

In the United States, where the urban-Black-underclass thesis originated, research has shown that what is attributed to the so-called underclass – which has generally been identified as urban, Black, and poor – is actually representative of behaviours across the class and racial structure. Behaviours such as drug use, divorce, laziness, and empty

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consumerism exist no less in upper-status neighbourhoods than in inner-city ones. According to Reed, “The difference lies not in the behavior but in the social position of those exhibiting it.”63 In fact, some commentators have gone as far as to suggest that support for the underclass thesis amounts to nothing more than a neo-liberal ideological justification for cutbacks to the welfare state.64 Within an American context, the construction of a Black inner-city pathological culture lays the ideological groundwork for a public-policy agenda that endorses workfare, demolition of public housing, and the massive expansion of the police and prison complex.65 While it is beyond the scope of this article to provide a systematic review of this debate, suffice it to say that the media framed Manners’s shooting in a fashion that had clear ideological overtones. Because it was framed as a shooting that took place in an already violent, underclass neighbourhood, the death of Jordan Manners was constructed as tragic but not surprising; it was framed as a logical extension of the pre-existing socio-economic and cultural conditions that had come to define the broader neighbourhood. Toronto’s violent underclass had spawned yet another victim. Alternative Frames Analytically, and as Loseke argues, dominant frames should be understood in relation to those that are less prominent or those that fail to emerge entirely.66 Indeed, framing a problem in one way is tantamount to saying the condition is a certain kind of problem, and that, by implication, means alternative frameworks are marginalized or excluded.67 If Manners’s death was ultimately framed as a shooting with its etiological roots in gang violence and social disorganization, what other frames were overlooked? Given how little was known immediately following the shooting, it is interesting that the media did not choose to frame the event in ways that would have resonated more clearly with previous school shootings. In fact, if we compare the media’s claimsmaking techniques after Manners’s death to those that have characterized school shootings in the past, important distinctions emerge that tell us a lot about how school shootings in low-income communities are likely to be framed. As secondary claims makers, experts play a critical role in the process of defining and thus resolving a social problem.68 In the wake of previous school shootings, for example, the media sought expert opinion in order to explain what seemed so difficult to comprehend. According

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to Lawrence and Birkland, these experts usually point to individual or systemic causal factors, ranging from flawed character, on the one hand, to violent video games, rock, or rap/hip-hop music and teen culture, on the other.69 At the same time, claims that youth in general face an ubiquitous risk of being victimized are often made. For example, in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, the Globe and Mail sought insight from the chief of psychology at Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado. Paraphrasing the psychologist, the article suggested that the teens “developed a warped value system that allowed them to believe that what they were doing was right, just like the Nazis did during the Holocaust. ‘They were, in fact, young Nazis,’ he said … The risks, he said, are that others with that same set of values are walking around, holding within themselves the possibility of other horrific acts of annihilation.”70 However, in the case of Jordan Manners, expert analyses rarely, if ever, appeared in media discourse immediately following the event. The only occasion when expert opinion was consulted involved the interviewing of grief counsellors, where commentary typically focused on how students in a state of shock could best recover from the experience. However, there were no articles where experts were asked to comment on the possible causes of the shooting. In fact, we would argue that the durability of the dominant framework – grounded in pre-existing typologies of violence that conflate stereotypical notions of race (Black), gender (male), and socio-economic status (low) – set the stage for a “common-sense” explanation that required no further confirmation. Some of the language used to describe Manners’s death is also interesting to note, as it does not coincide with the expressions typically used to describe other school shootings. While the media generally used words such as “a shooting in a school,” “fatal shooting,” or “a shooting death” to describe the event at CWJC, phrases that would perhaps seem too callous if used to describe other school shootings were also used, including “gunned down,” “blown away,” and “put a bullet in him.” (This discourse is even more intriguing given that we still do not know whether the event was the result of an accidental discharge of the firearm.) We argue that this discourse is in keeping with the gangster/ underclass frame used to describe and explain the shooting’s etiology. A third point that illustrates the contrast between the framing of Manners’s death and that of other school shootings is that, while Manners was held in high regard as a victim, his death was not constructed as if it symbolically shattered the innocence of youth in general, a common

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feature of frameworks typically applied to other school shootings.71 Instead, Manners’s death was framed as if it were iconic of localized neighbourhood violence. The following passage, taken from a report describing Jordan Manners’s funeral, supports this view: “To his friends and relatives, he was an artistic teenager with a fascination for snakes and pranks, who still sucked his thumb at times – a star that burned out ahead of its time … But to the hundreds of mourners who knew him little yet showed up to celebrate his memory yesterday, Jordan Manners became an icon for the damage gun crime has brought to their community.”72 To be clear, the article did not suggest that Manners’s death had come to symbolize the shattering of innocence in general. Rather, it suggested that Manners had become an icon for the damage brought about by gun violence in his community in particular: discursively, the risk of victimization was therefore localized, while the shooting’s etiology was made exclusive to his community. Conclusion We are not going to conclude this article with suggestions as to how the media should have framed the shooting of Jordan Manners. However, if the media had only reported the “facts” on the day of – and days following – the shooting, it is entirely possible that the story would have been seen as less newsworthy: one deceased boy, with no concrete information about a weapon, suspect(s), or motive. We do believe that the existing framing is telling because it is illustrative of essentialized and stereotypical thinking about crime in poor communities inhabited mainly by people of colour. The underclass ideology tends to conceptualize poor Black males as a homogeneous group and presumes that there can only be a negative response to socio-economic dislocation: crime and violence.73 The underclass view, which we argue the mainstream media adopted largely because it was in sync with “commonsense” views about “high crime” in inner-city neighbourhoods, fails to appreciate that individuals can react quite differently to apparently similar environments (i.e., living in the Jane and Finch area) and that these reactions are never clear or predictable. This static view of the “underclass culture” which informed media accounts ignores the complex and changing life experiences of people who find themselves living in difficult circumstances. In addition, since the “cause” of the shooting was framed in a fashion that was suggestive of social and/or cultural inferiority (single-parent families, unwed mothers, welfare dependency, a high concentration of

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subsidized housing, etc.), by logical extension, the obvious “solution” to end such gun violence must lie in efforts by those who inhabit such areas to change their attitudes and behaviours (e.g., more respect for and cooperation with authorities such as police and teachers, better parenting, ending “welfare dependency,” more “positive” male role models, a better prepared workforce, etc.). One could go as far as to argue that, because of the way in which this event was framed by the press, a dysfunctional local community was seen as ostensibly the root cause of Jordan Manners’s death. We find it both interesting and disturbing that the widespread societal outrage characteristic of media reports on other school shootings was undetected in our content analysis of this Toronto school shooting. Despite decades of criticism by prominent scholars who argue that descriptions of the poor as being culturally unique have little explanatory power, our research here shows how the concept of a poverty/underclass culture is alive and well in Canadian popular culture.74 Thus, we have established the media’s important role in framing Jordan Manners’s death in a manner consistent with an underclass ideology. While this frame was not monolithic in the sense that issues of gun control did appear at times (particularly in the Toronto Star), we do contend that the media and other claims makers ultimately framed the event in terms of the underclass framework because it so easily fit into a pre-existing, taken-for-granted schemata about the Jane and Finch neighbourhood in northwest Toronto. Moreover, the underclass frame never seriously wavered, nor was it ever challenged in the press over the course of a one-year period following the shooting. That said, coming to terms with how Manners’s death was framed provides a sobering backdrop and/or corrective that, we would argue, may help to ensure that the causes of violence in other poor, racialized Canadian communities are no longer simplistically derived from their reputations as crime “hot spots.” Indeed, the efficacy of our social and economic policies and the integrity of our communities are at stake. NOTES 1 Bill O’Grady and Patrick Parnaby co-wrote the original article and this updated version. Both are faculty members in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph. Sabah Fatima, a University of Guelph undergraduate research assistant, collected most of the newspaper articles used in this study and assisted with the analysis.

Guns, Gangs, and the Underclass Revisited 293 2 Using the keywords “Jordan Manners” and “trial,” Factiva and Newsstand search engines resulted in a total of seventy-two articles that were collected from the three papers: thirty-four from the Toronto Star; nine from the Globe and Mail; and twenty-nine from the National Post. 3 Shannon Kari, “Manners Killing Part of Robbery,” National Post, 4 February 2010, A9. 4 Peter Small, “Court Told of Ammunition Photo,” Toronto Star, 23 March 2011, GT4. Emphasis added. 5 Peter Small, “Manners Shot Himself, Lawyer Argues,” Toronto Star, 17 May 2011, GT4. 6 Peter Small and Betsy Powell, “Judge Declares Mistrial in Manners’ Case,” Toronto Star, 27 March 2010, A1. 7 Shannon Kari, “Hearing Set to Arrange Manners’ Retrial,” National Post, 1 April 2010, A8. 8 Galloway is a neighbourhood in Scarborough, which is several miles to the east of the Jane-Finch corridor. 9 During the second trial, the court heard a very different explanation as to why one witness in particular recanted her testimony: “because her aunt forced her to come forward … [and] she didn’t want to get in trouble” (see Mathew Coutts, “I Retold School Rumours: Key Witness; Girl Did Not See Manners Slaying, Court Hears,” National Post, 19 February 2010, A8). In this case, defence counsel argued the witness had provided a coerced confession because she wanted the police to see her as a legitimate source and because she was being pressured by her aunt, with whom she lived with at the time, to comply with authorities. It was subsequently argued that the external pressure and a general fear of being branded and punished as a liar prevented her from recanting her statement earlier. Interestingly, ­research in the field of the psychology of law has found young people are more likely to be suggestible and more compliant, and that those between the ages of 15 and 16 are approximately 72 per cent more likely to make a false confession compared to adult eyewitnesses (from Gisli H. Gudjonsson, The Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions: A Handbook (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley 2003), 409. 10 For more, see Michael Chettleburgh, Young Thugs (Toronto: HarperCollins 2007). 11 We are using the term underclass to refer to a welfare-dependent culture that is associated with single parenthood and counter-cultural values that encourage dependency and criminality. 12 Iris Chyi Hsiang and Maxwell McCombs, “Media Salience and the Process of Framing: Coverage of the Columbine School Shootings,” Journal of Mass Communication Quarterly 81 (2004): 22–35.

294  Covering Canadian Crime 13 Herbert Blumer, “Social Problems as Collective Behavior,” Social Problems 18 (1970): 298–306; Malcom Spector and John I. Kitsuse, “Social Problems as Collective Behavior,” in Constructing Social Problems (Menlo Park, Calif.: Cummings 1977). 14 Blumer, “Social Problems as Collective Behavior”; Donileen Loseke, Thinking about Social Problems: An Introduction to Constructionist Perspectives, 2nd ed. (New York: de Gruyter 2003). 15 Gale Miller and James A. Holstein, Constructionist Controversies: Issues in Social Problems Theory (New York: de Gruyter 1993); Spector and Kitsuse, “Social Problems as Collective Behavior”; Loseke, Thinking about Social Problems. 16 Katherine Beckett, “Setting the Public Agenda: ‘Street Crime’ and Drug Use in American Politics,” Social Problems 41 (1994): 425–47; Joel Best, “‘Road Warriors’ on ‘Hair-Trigger Highways’: Cultural Resources and the Media’s Construction of the 1987 Freeway Shootings Problem,” Sociological Inquiry 61 (1991): 327–45; Joel Best, “Monster Hype: How a Few Isolated Tragedies – and Their Supposed Causes – Were Turned into a National ‘Epidemic,’” Education Next 5 (2002): 1–5; Mark Fishman, “Crime Waves as Ideology,” Social Problems 25 (1979): 531–43; Vincent Sacco, When Crime Waves (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage 2005). 17 Aaron Doyle, “How Not to Think about Crime in the Media,” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 48 (2006): 867–84; Fishman, “Crime Waves as Ideology”; James D. Orcutt and Blake Turner, “Shocking Numbers and Graphic Accounts: Quantified Images of Drug Problems in the Print Media,” Social Problems 40 (1993): 190–206; Steve Woolgar and Dorothy Pawluch, “Ontological Gerrymandering: The Anatomy of Social Problems Explanations,” Social Problems 32 (1985): 214–27. 18 Vincent Sacco, “Media Constructions of Crime,” in Robert A. Silverman, James J. Teevan, and Vincent F. Sacco, eds., Crime in Canadian Society (Toronto: Harcourt 2000); Sacco, When Crime Waves; Doyle, “How Not to Think about Crime in the Media”; Philip Jenkins, Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial Homicide (New York: de Gruyter 1994). Ronald Burns and Charles Crawford, “School Shootings, the Media, and Public Fear: Ingredients for a Moral Panic,” Crime, Law, and Social Change 32 (1999): 155; Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London: MacGibbon 1972); Peter L.M. Vasterman, “Media-Hype: Self-Reinforcing News Waves, Journalistic Standards, and the Construction of Social Problems,” European Journal of Communications 20 (2005): 508–30. 19 Glenn W. Muschert, “The Columbine Victims and the Myth of the Juvenile Superpredator,” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 5 (2007): 351–66.

Guns, Gangs, and the Underclass Revisited 295 20 Ann Herda-Rapp, “The Social Construction of Local School Violence Threats by the News Media and Professional Organizations,” Sociological Inquiry 73 (2003): 545–74. 21 For a detailed typology of school shootings, see Glenn W. Muschert, “Research in School Shootings,” Sociology Compass 1 (2007): 60–80. 22 Burns and Crawford, “School Shootings, the Media, and Public Fear.” 23 Best, “Monster Hype.” 24 Hsiang and McCombs, “Media Salience and the Process of Framing.” 25 See Burns and Crawford, “School Shootings, the Media, and Public Fear”; Herda-Rapp, “The Social Construction of Local School Violence Threats by the News Media and Professional Organizations”; Donna Killingbeck, “The Role of Television News in the Construction of School Violence as a Moral Panic,” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 83 (2001): 186–202; John Springhall, “Violent Media, Guns and Moral Panics: The Columbine High School Massacre,” Paedagogica Historica 35 (20 August 1999): 621–41. 26 Muschert, “The Columbine Victims and the Myth of the Juvenile Superpredator”; David L. Altheide, “Children and the Discourse of Fear,” Symbolic Interaction 25 (2002): 229–50; Glenn W. Muschert, “Research in School Shootings,” Sociology Compass 1 (2007): 60–80. 27 Muschert, “Research in School Shootings.” 28 Mona J.E. Danner and Dianne Carmody, “Missing Gender in Cases of Infamous School Violence: Investigating Research and Media Explanations,” Justice Quarterly 18 (2001): 87–114; Michael S. Kimmel and Matthew Mahler, “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence,” American Behavioral Scientist 46 (2003): 1439–58; Jessie Klein, “Cultural Capital and High School Bullies: How Social Inequality Impacts School Violence,” Men and Mascu­ linities 9 (2006): 53–75. 29 Springhall, “Violent Media, Guns and Moral Panics”; Regina G. Lawrence and Thomas A. Birkland, “Guns, Hollywood, and School Safety: Defining the School-Shooting Problem across Public Arenas,” Social Science Quarterly 85 (2004): 1193–207. 30 Katherine S. Newman, Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (New York: Basic 2004). Springhall, “Violent Media, Guns and Moral Panics.” See also Muschert, “Research in School Shootings.” 31 Muschert, “Research in School Shootings.” 32 Muschert, “The Columbine Victims and the Myth of the Juvenile Superpredator.” 33 David L. Altheide, “Ethnographic Content Analysis,” Qualitative Sociology 10 (1987): 65–77.

296  Covering Canadian Crime 34 K. Dowler, “Sex, Lies, and Videotape: The Presentation of Sex Crime in Local Television News,” Journal of Criminal Justice 34 (2006): 383–92; Robert P. Weber, Basic Content Analysis (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage 1985). 35 Richard Ericson, Patricia Baranek, and Janet Chan, Negotiating Control: A Study of News Sources (Toronto: University of Toronto 1989); William Ramp, “Moral Spectacles: Norm and Transgression in the News Media,” in Lori G. Beaman, ed., New Perspectives on Deviance: The Construction of Deviance in Everyday Life (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice Hall 2000). 36 Robert M. Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43 (1993): 52. 37 “Boy, 15, Dies in Toronto School Shooting,” National Post, 24 May 2007, A1. Emphasis added. 38 “Deadly School Shooting,” Toronto Star, 24 May 2007, A1. Emphasis added. 39 “14-year-old Toronto Student, Jordan Manners, Killed in Shooting,” Associated Content, last modified 4 May 2007. Emphasis added. 40 For example, prior to the 13 September 2006 shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College, Kimveer Gill updated his personal web page, where he not only voiced his despair about life but also referred to himself as the “Angel of Death” (see “Shooting in a Montreal College,” CBC News, 15 September 2006). 41 Interestingly, Lippman once argued that newspaper reporting is a process of supporting cultural stereotypes with news that is readily available; Edward J. Epstein, News from Nowhere: Television and News (New York: Random House 1973). See also Fishman, “Crime Waves as Ideology”; Sacco, When Crime Waves; Loseke, Thinking about Social Problems. 42 “School Shooting Shocks Toronto,” Globe and Mail, 23 May 2007, A1. 43 The Jane and Finch area of northwest Toronto is a low-income community that has had a reputation for crime and violence since at least the early 1990s. 44 “Victim ‘Was Always Happy, Joyful,’” National Post, 24 May 2007, A12. 45 Ibid. 46 “Mentors Preferred to Detectors,” Toronto Star, 25 May 2007, A1. 47 “Police Mum on Shooting Motive,” Toronto Star, 25 May 2007, B1. 48 Toronto Police Service, “Two Charged in Teen’s Murder,” http://www .torontopolice.on.ca/print.php?sid=2877 (last modified 29 May 2007). 49 “Jordan’s Family Calls for Inquest,” National Post, 31 May 2007, A13. 50 Ibid. 51 “The Father Factor,” quoted in National Post, 2 June 2007, A21 52 “So, What Did You Learn in School Today,” Globe and Mail, 12 June 2007, A21.

Guns, Gangs, and the Underclass Revisited 297 53 “A Heartbreaking Send off for the ‘Prince of Shoreham,’” Toronto Star, 1 June 2007, A6. Emphasis added. 54 Toronto District School Board (TDSB), “The Road to Health: A Final Report on School Safety” (2008), appendix H: i. 55 Julian Tanner and Scot Wortley, The Toronto Youth Crime and Victimization Survey: Overview Report (Toronto: Centre of Criminology 2002). 56 TDSB, “The Road to Health,” appendix H: vii. 57 Walter S. Dekeseredy, Shahid Alvi, Martin D. Schwartz, and Andreas Tomaszewski, Under Siege: Poverty and Crime in a Public Housing Community (New York: Lexington 2003). 58 Charles Murray, The Emerging British Underclass (London: Institute of Economic Affairs 1990). 59 David Garland, “The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society,” British Journal of Criminology 36 (1996): 460. 60 David Ellwood and Lawrence Summers, “Is Welfare Really the Problem?” Public Interest 83 (1986): 57–78. 61 Miriam David, Fundamentally Flawed: Charles Murray and the Underclass – The Developing Debate (London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit [No. 33], 1996). 62 Harvey Krahn, Graham Lowe, and Karen Hughes, Work, Industry and Canadian Society (Toronto: Thompson 2007), 429. 63 Adolph Reed, “Black Urban Regime: Structural Origins and Constraints,” Comparative Urban and Community Research: An Annual Review 1 (1988): 190. 64 A. Buckingham, “Is There an Underclass in Britain?” British Journal of Sociology 50 (1999): 49–75. 65 John Arena, “Bringing Back in the Black Working Class: A Critique of the ‘Under-Class’ and Urban Politics Literature” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Philadelphia, 2005). 66 Loseke, Thinking about Social Problems. 67 Joel Best, Social Problems (New York: Norton 2008). 68 Loseke, Thinking about Social Problems. 69 Lawrence and Birkland, “Guns, Hollywood, and School Safety.” 70 Globe and Mail, 23 April 1999, A17. 71 Newman, Rampage. 72 Globe and Mail, 1 June 2007, A14. Emphasis added. 73 Ibid. 74 Judith G. Goode and Edwin Eames, “An Anthropological Critique of the Culture of Poverty,” in George Gmelch and Walter P. Zenner, eds., Urban Life: Readings in Urban Anthropology (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland 1996).

18 Telling Great Stories: An Interview with Reporter-Turned-Thriller Writer Rick Mofina Chris R i c har ds on an d Romay ne S m i t h F u ller ton

Rick Mofina worked in Canadian journalism for many years, beginning as a summer student at the Toronto Star and continuing at the Calgary Herald, the Ottawa Citizen, and Southam News Wire Service. In 2000 he published his first novel, If Angels Fall, which introduced a long-standing series featuring San Francisco Star crime reporter Tom Reed and SFPD Inspector Walt Sydowski. The two later appeared in Cold Fear, Blood of Others, and No Way Back. In 2003 Mofina earned the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel and decided to pursue fiction full-time. He continues to combine his passion for fiction writing with his expertise in fact finding, and now has close to two million books in print. There was a fatal accident on the Deerfoot Trail in Calgary. I was working night cops. A car had rolled off the expressway and the driver, a young guy, was dead in the car. It was kind of lonely that night. There was an inspector and some police and paramedics responding – there weren’t many people. It was two or three in the morning. The inspector asked if I wanted to have a look. The car was rolled way off into a grassy embankment. The guy was still in there, buckled up. He had a hockey bag. He’d been playing hockey that night. He was pretty much my age. I just stared at him and something happened to me at that moment as I thought: this stuff matters. You could say that the crime beat found me in the middle of the night on that Calgary expressway. I was looking at a person who was breathing not too long ago, who had a life. And it all stopped right there. That’s when it hit me. As a crime reporter, you come that close to death. This beat offered everything I was looking for. It all just flowed from there.

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You see the best and the worst of the human condition in crime stories. It touches on fundamental pillars of a democratic society. It’s when freedom of the press comes up against people’s rights to privacy. People don’t die anonymously on the streets when there’s a free press. We have the right to inquire about what happened. And the community expects to know the next morning. It’s the application of all the other beats applied at full throttle. Whether it’s corruption, unrest, a breakdown in political trust, it will all come down to a crime. That’s when you go up against the yellow tape. That’s why the beat matters. I talked to cops late at night. I talked to detectives. I rode along with them. I learned the anatomy of an investigation, of police work. It made me a much better reporter. It helped me gain wisdom – fast. Sometimes people would recognize me, but more times than not I was bumping into new faces who didn’t have a clue who I was. And they didn’t care. They had jobs to do. As a journalist, I learned that with tragedies the community wants to know what was lost. You’ll always have naysayers on either side of this argument. That’s part of freedom of expression. But, generally, the community wants to know what was lost. I see that now, even out of the business, when my wife and I watch the news and you get a face behind a tragedy. Who was this person? What did they contribute? What were their aspirations? What were their disappointments? And in that way you provide a fuller picture. You want to tell this story with the cooperation of those who can give you that information: generally family or loved ones. I found that most of the time they did. They have every right to slam the door in your face. They have every right to call you a name. I always braced for that and I never took it personally. I went into the situation accepting that because I couldn’t imagine what they were going through. There is no rulebook or manual for how people should react. What you do as a journalist is refine your approach based on your experiences of the best ways, the most professional, ethical, and humanitarian ways, to go into that situation knowing that a clock is ticking. And knowing that there are competitors working against you who might play by different rules. You’ve got to be cognizant of all those forces when you’re doing this kind of work. Journalists receive very little training on how to confront people at the worst points in their lives. Paramedics are trained. Firefighters are trained. Police officers are trained. Reporters aren’t usually trained to deal with victims, with criminals, with those who have been – I hate

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this term – impacted. You learn on the job. And you learn by a tradition in which those who are more experienced than you pass along the basic dos and don’ts. Maybe that’s the best way to do it. Maybe that kind of education survives because it works. But, eventually, you’re on your own. And I’ve seen reporters who just could not do this job. They shouldn’t have been making the calls. They shouldn’t have been going to these places. And they should have made it clear to editors that they couldn’t do it. … I think my fiction is a continuation of the tradition, going from the real thing to immortalizing it with imagined tales. The stories I present have a foundation in reality – in my reality on the crime beat. It helps me, for the most part, write with a little more confidence, and present the reader with a richer story. My experiences have enriched my fiction. There’s certainly an emotional connection. If I’m writing a story, I’ve lived it. And I can draw on that. I would hope that that resonates with people. In Cold Fear, the death-row scenes in Montana State Prison are drawn from my interviews with Ron Smith.1 So I had a good sense of what it was like to walk into that prison. I used that in the book. I was also walked through the execution protocol in Texas. That’s something I’ll never forget. I used that in Vengeance Road.2 They literally walked me through it, to the cell, the execution gurney – the very gurney that only a short time before someone was executed on and a short time after someone would be executed on. I’ve definitely used those types of experiences in my stories. … When you write crime fiction, you certainly have all the freedom in the world to go wherever you want with the story. You certainly don’t when you’re a journalist. You’re constrained as a journalist. I don’t mean that in a negative way; it’s just a different type of assignment. When you’re telling a crime story, you have a larger canvas. You can go into any style of writing. You can tell the story any way you like. In my case – and I know this is true for most successful authors who come from the reporting tradition – I look to the foundation of reality for my fiction and build on it. If it resonates with you, if you feel an emotional connection to it, it’s because I’m using reality to stitch it up. I’m not limited to sticking to the facts. But I find myself – and a lot of ex-reporters [do] – wanting to get it right even in our fiction. For example, I was

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writing a scene in If Angels Fall, in which a character is driving over the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.3 This was pre-Internet. I’d been over that bridge before but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what colour it was. So I called up the tollgate from my desk as I was writing. I could hear the cars going over. The guy couldn’t make sense of this. “You want to know what?” I said: “What colour is the bridge today?” He said, “umm … it’s grey.” And I said, “What kind of grey are we talking about? Is it battleship grey …” That was me being a reporter, trying to get the facts right. I do that from time to time. I’m doing a similar thing now for a future story. I’ve sent a freedom-of-information request to one of the provinces that might serve as a skeleton for the story. There’s a case I’m very interested in that goes way, way back. I was happy to find out there was a file on it, a huge one. For any kind of writing, to have a skeleton to hang the story on is a great start. And if you know it’s built on the bones of something true, it stands up better. … What you need to ask as a reader is: Did I feel something? You should feel something. The story should hit you at some level. That’s good crime reporting. If someone put you in a situation and said here are the facts, you have an hour, give us a four-hundred-word story. The question becomes, how do you use those facts? Some people will try to jam in everything. But really, it’s about how you choose and arrange the details. As a writer, you have free reign to rely on any form of literary tradition and all of your talent. That’s the artistry of journalism. It’s inherent in any tragic story, any homicide, any death, you’re going to feel sad. That’s a given. But you don’t need to hammer home the sadness. When I say “did you feel the story?” I mean did you get a sense of what was lost? What did you learn from this story? Good crime reporters are always there. Our human experiences are very cyclical. We’ll always have cemeteries. We’ll always have crimes. So crime reporting has a very good tradition. Like everything, you have the standard fare, which is just about getting things online. And then you have those gems. I know the pressures people are under. But when people do have a little time – or even if they’re quick on the fly – you’ll see a nice turn of phrase, a brilliant metaphor, a little more depth. I think that’s always been the case. As we enter more of an online society, maybe we’re losing a little bit of the tradition of allowing the journalist time to go deeper. It’s not

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gone today. But, with newsrooms closing all around us and the evolution from print to online, we are beginning to lose a little something. I think the fear is that we’ll lose the whole storytelling tradition. But, rather than lose a tradition, I think we’re seeing an evolution, a shift. People are still telling great stories. We’re seeing less War and Peace style reporting. But some of the writing you see today is just as strong and resilient as it ever was. … I read everybody I can get my hands on. I used to have a rule – I’ve gone off track since – I would read a classic piece of literature and then I would read a contemporary work, whether it was general fiction or genre. I think that’s really important. When you’re well-read, you can say things like “I think I remember how Hemingway, or Conrad, or Chekov, dealt with this in that short story.” When you pick it up, it might not be as you remembered it, but it gets you on the right track. As a writer, I know the first step is to stay on track. What is the scene? What is the information? How am I moving the story forward? What character revelations am I going to achieve at this point? Then, as I start to get that down, I know I can’t be lazy. I have to give it my all. That’s the next step. I ask myself: Is there a better way to relate this information? Sometimes, I’ll go to my own library and ask: How did Dostoyevsky move this guy across the room at this point? Or how did Dickens handle that certain night scene? And that will give me something to think about. That’s your toolbox as a writer – any writer. You look at how others have handled it before, from Elmore Leonard to Steinbeck to Kafka ... What I’d like to see is the carrying on of the storytelling tradition. I’d like to see the next generation of crime reporters extend it even further. Really, you’re just storytelling. You have to remember that. You’re writing about the human condition. Tell a good story. You’ve got the greatest canvas – though it’s also the most difficult canvas to work with – because it’s a living canvas. You’re talking about real people, in real situations, and you’ve got to be the filter and handle all of that and think clearly at the same time. It’s extremely stressful. It’s extremely rewarding. I want to see that carried on. And I think it will be. One friend made the observation that I’m using my fiction career to go back and write happy endings and tie up loose ends. That’s one luxury you don’t have as a news reporter. When you’re covering real life you just hang on and do the best you can.

Telling Great Stories 303 NOTES 1 Cold Fear (New York: Pinnacle 2001) was Mofina’s second Reed-Sydowski thriller (see n.3 below). Ron Smith, originally from Red Deer, Alberta, pleaded guilty to murder in 1983. As of 2015, he remained on Death Row, pending a civil suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Smith’s behalf. For examples of Mofina’s reporting, see: “I Participated in a Murder,” Calgary Herald, 4 June 1995; “Doubts on Death Row: Former Albertan Ron Smith Races Execution in Montana for Killing Two Men. Now, Another Man Says He Was Responsible for One of the Killings,” Calgary Herald, 5 March 1997. 2 Rick Mofina, Vengeance Road (Toronto: MIRA 2009). 3 If Angeles Fall (New York: Pinnacle 2000) was Mofina’s first full-length crime novel, introducing crime reporter Tom Reed of the San Francisco Star and SFPD Homicide Inspector Walt Sydowski. It was a finalist for “Best First Novel” in 2001 at the Arthur Ellis Awards.

19 Covering White “Just-Us”: What Did Journalists “Really” Say about Ipperwash? Ro m ayne Smith F ul l e rt on, Ginn y W h iteh ouse, an d Maggie Jon e s P at t e r s o n

“All in all, the Ipperwash crisis was not journalism’s finest hour.” Journalism Professor John Miller “The judge spoke to the audience in a patronizing, condescending tone of ‘this is my courtroom and there will not be any drumming outside …’” Native journalist Dan Smoke about Warren George’s trial

Truth and justice, the very foundation of journalism’s mission and its ethics, cannot be practised in an offhand manner when telling stories across cultures. These principles require deliberate application and, as ethics scholar Edmund Lambeth has said, do “not generate like a Platonic spark generated by rubbing two press cards together.”1 When journalists fail to pursue conscientiously what truth and justice mean for all those they cover, they fail in their responsibilities. After a Canadian land dispute that had gone very wrong and a subsequent series of court trials, one First Nations man derided the white judiciary as a system of “Just-Us.”2 The same could be said about many Ontario journalists who covered these events but failed to widen adequately their news frames to include nuanced perspectives of the First Nations peoples they both served. This is the case even in the examples written by some of Canada’s best, most experienced journalists, who are excellent storytellers with a keen sensitivity to Indigenous issues. (One such journalist is Peter Edwards of the Toronto Star, whose own perspective on these events and coverage of First Nations issues generally is detailed in the next chapter.)

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Background In September 1995 about twenty-four Stony3 Point First Nations people began an occupation of Ipperwash Provincial Park in southwestern Ontario. They gave two reasons: • Campers and tourists were desecrating a Native burial ground and had been since the park opened in 1937. • They wanted to draw attention to a neighbouring tract of reservation land taken from the Stony Point Nation4 by the Canadian government in 1942 under the War Measures Act. The government had removed Natives’ houses – in some cases while the men who had lived there5 were fighting for Canada overseas – and used the land as an army-training base. Two days into the occupation, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) in full riot gear and protected by members of an elite force, the Tactical Rescue Unit, marched on the unarmed occupiers in the dead of night. One Stony Point man, Anthony “Dudley” George, was shot and killed by Acting OPP Sergeant Kenneth Deane. Another Native man, Cecil Barnard George, was beaten so badly by police that paramedics had trouble finding a pulse. A third, Warren George, got into an old school bus and drove it into the fracas in what he later said was an attempt to stop the police from beating Cecil George to death. On the other side of the clash, one police officer suffered minor injuries. In 2005, after a great deal of public pressure, the Ontario government called a public inquiry into the events of Ipperwash. That inquiry, in turn, commissioned a report from Ryerson University Journalism Professor John Miller. In the lengthy document released in 2007, Miller analysed Canadian news coverage from one month before the shooting to one month after. Using evaluative frameworks from Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel’s Elements of Journalism, an article by sociologist Augie Fleras, and a piece by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, Miller detailed the many ways Canadian journalists failed in their duty to bear witness to the events before, during, and immediately after Ipperwash. He found that, while there were some excellent examples of journalism and news stories did improve over time as more information became available, much of the coverage fit common stereotypes of First Nations people as violent troublemakers who benefit from double standards in

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the legal and judicial systems. Miller concluded that, overall, Canadian journalists framed the story not as one about patient people who had a legitimate claim to the land but rather as “violent lawless First Nation people who were making a fuss.”6 Although he had neither time nor resources to expand his report, Miller noted that it would be interesting to evaluate the coverage of the high-profile trial of the OPP officer who shot and killed Dudley George.7 In this chapter, we take up this challenge and use, as a point of comparison, news coverage of the trial and sentencing hearing of the OPP officer and of First Nations occupier Warren George. These two cases were the result of the most serious charges stemming from the standoff at Ipperwash. The police officer, Kenneth Deane, was charged with criminal negligence causing death. He pled self-defence and argued that the Natives fired at police first; however, at his trial, the judge found him guilty. The judge condemned Deane for showing no remorse; moreover, he said that Deane lied under oath by concocting a story to cover up the fact that he shot an unarmed man. Despite the judge’s strong words at the trial’s conclusion and the finding of guilt, he spared Deane any jail time, sentencing him instead to 180 hours of community service.8 In contrast, Warren George (a cousin of deceased Dudley George) was charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon; he had driven a vehicle into the crowd of police officers to try to stop them from attacking his friends and family, he said at his trial. One officer suffered minor injuries. George was convicted of both charges and sentenced to two years less a day; he served six months in jail. The judge said that his punishment needed to reflect the seriousness of the charge. Speaking about Warren George, one Native said, “Out of the whole thing, he is the only one to go to jail. How fair is that?”9 In retrospect, it is similarly unfair that the press marginalized George’s perspectives and that of the other First Nations people involved in the conflict. The amount of coverage each of the two trials garnered was grossly imbalanced and speaks to this point: among the three newspapers studied for this paper, more than 15,000 words were dedicated to the trial and sentencing of Deane. In contrast, George’s trial, sentencing hearing, and two appeals accounted for less than 800 words. Thesis To many, the outcomes in both court cases illustrate a miscarriage of justice. While correcting judicial imbalances does not fall within the

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purview of journalism, the manner in which those imbalances are reported does. Journalists in a democratic society have an ethical responsibility not only to present all sides of a story but also to convey the differences in world views, beliefs, and traditions that underlie the dispute, so that genuine understanding and public discussion may ensue. The principle of justice is foundational for ethical reporting because it highlights the journalistic value of fairness. Stories that are incomplete cannot be called fair and are, therefore, unethical.10 Although the trials provided the news peg in these cases, the journalists were not restricted – as lawyers, judges, and juries may be – to legal definitions and constraints. Looking at the news stories through a combination of close reading and discourse analysis, we apply aspects of semiotics and critical race theory to argue that in the aftermath of the Ipperwash incident, the coverage of the trials of OPP Officer Kenneth Deane and First Nations occupier Warren George reflects a fundamental media bias embedded in the culture and accepted journalistic practices. We consider the ethical challenges this case poses using Emmanuel Levinas’s belief in obligation and the Other.11 Analysis of this single dispute can inform journalistic portrayals and media criticism of future land disputes involving First Nation populations, as well as broader ethnic minority news coverage. In his formulation of a new kind of ethics, forged in the horrors of the Holocaust, Levinas insisted that the ethical obligations start simultaneously in our obligation to and acknowledgment of the deep and eternal mystery of the Other. All human encounters, he said, begin with an unspoken plea not to be “killed” and instead to be taken care of. This plea from the Other and the duty it calls forth precede all knowledge and language, Levinas argued. Journalists covering Ipperwash ignored that obligation when they effectively “killed” the Stoney Point band by failing to actualize them in their news coverage. “Ethics is always relative to a particular Other” and that Other’s particular needs, in Levinas’s view.12 This obligation rewrites the Golden Rule so that it now becomes: “Do unto others as they would have us do unto them.”13 The change in pronouns from self to others speaks all the difference. Human institutions – including journalism – must be governed by the primal ethical obligation to the Other, Levinas argued, or human beings will drift away from their ethical moorings. Several days after the OPP officer’s sentencing, an opinion piece in the London Free Press quoted a long-time Stony Point resident about the

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outcome. The editorial said, “Clifford George is critical of what he calls the Just-Us system – white society’s justice system – and says this is just one more example of how that system doesn’t work for Natives.”14 While in this context George’s comment reflects only on the processes and practices of the judiciary system, we contend that the statement also describes the sum total of media coverage of these two trials. Journalists in some instances did dig deeper into the stories behind the outcome of the criminal proceedings,15 but the larger story remained a saga for and about a system that is for and about “just us” – the White people comprising majority newsrooms and newspaper audiences. Thus, the news coverage in essence did the one thing Levinas says ethical people should not do: kill a person’s humanity. Because virtually all news has become simultaneously hyper-local and global, journalists need a more sophisticated hyper-awareness of cultural difference. They cannot simply fall into the newsroom habits that Gaye Tuchman documented in her 1978 book.16 Standard practice does not substitute for deeper ethical considerations and responses to today’s world. Covering two sides in a trial is insufficient to fulfil the journalistic obligation to fairness when the reporting ignores cultural assumptions built on a White world view. What makes the negligence of the Ontario journalists especially egregious is that they were not covering the odd customs of a foreign people from a far corner of the world. In fact, they were telling – or actually not telling – the story of a people who live among them and whose laws, customs, and sovereignty long precede their own on this land. Canadian law, assuming all land belongs to the Crown, stands outside of and in conflict with Chippewa understandings of land ownership and possession. The law might bind the court, but the press cannot remain oblivious to the contradictions being experienced by one side of the argument. Miller found reporters lacking in their coverage of the Ipperwash incident, and our study of the subsequent trials and sentencing hearings comes to the same conclusion. The most pernicious bias sits in a kind of blind spot to cultural difference and it was from this lacuna that Canadian reporters suffered. Critical Race Theory and semiotics help bring that bias into sight. When reporters painted Deane as a multidimensional character but defined Warren George only by race and his criminal act, they mistook their own familiar culture for the news value of proximity. The physically close but culturally foreign First Nation of Stoney Point required reporters to give George the same care that they gave Deane, not because

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it came as naturally to them but precisely because it did not. Similarly, they had an obligation to explore the background and perspectives that Natives brought to the initial confrontation precisely because it was not familiar to them and most of their readers. Native journalist Dan Smoke noted that many of the reporters covering the trials of Deane and George were shocked that First Nations people would not swear on a Bible; instead, they asked for an eagle feather. “We have our own prophets,” Smoke said, “and the eagle feather helps us to speak the truth. It’s moments like that that reveal a lack of cultural sensitivity and awareness on the part of most journalists.”17 Methodology

Practical We compare the coverage of the trials and sentencing hearing of Deane and George in the Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper; the Toronto Star, arguably the province of Ontario’s most popular daily; and the London Free Press, the local daily newspaper whose reach covers the Kettle and Stoney Point Reserves and Ipperwash Provincial Park. In order to locate and compare the coverage, we used the first and last names of each of the men and the tag “Ipperwash.” We searched the database “Factiva” for coverage in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail during the time periods of one week before the trials were scheduled to begin, to one month after they concluded. Similarly, we searched for one week before the sentencing hearings were to begin, and up to one month after they were concluded. The local paper, the Free Press, is not accessible by Factiva or any of the other databases offered through our universities, but the newspaper granted special permission for the authors to search for the stories using its own computer databanks. The same search parameters and time periods were employed. This chapter focuses on the coverage of the day after the verdicts were delivered and the day after the sentences were handed down. Despite the release of the report of the provincial inquiry in 2007, the land dispute is still only partially resolved and the communities – both the Kettle and Stoney Point Reserves as well as the surrounding township and neighbouring largely White towns – continue in an uneasy truce. While Ipperwash Provincial Park was returned to the Natives in 2009, its future remains uncertain and it sits vacant. On the former Canadian Army base, Camp Ipperwash, a small number of Native families now

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live in the abandoned barracks in extremely squalid conditions.18 Signs at the gate and posted periodically around the perimeter warn people that the area contains unexploded explosive ordnance (UXOs) and other dangerous war paraphernalia. “Nothing is really resolved there, not even between the two Native groups. There is much violence, much sadness. They are downtrodden and besieged and their culture has fallen by the wayside … these stories are still not being told.”19

Theoretical At the centre of the untold story of Ipperwash is a widely divergent notion of what “land” itself means. Canadian First Nations people, in this case particularly the members of the Stony Point band, themselves a subgroup of the Chippewa or Ojibway nation, have a concept of and connection to the earth that differs widely from that of the Canadian culture in which they are situated. The Stoney Point link to land is ancestral, respectful, communal, and deeply spiritual. “The journalists did not understand this. Instead, they saw the Natives as criminals. They were just defending what they saw as theirs.”20 And beyond the differences between contemporary colonial notions of land ownership and the sacred ideas of space and place held by Natives, journalists face an additional problem in the language they use. When journalists assume that all English speakers share the dominant culture’s connotative and denotative meanings, they bring their cultural biases to the story. Failure to recognize those biases means that the language used not only deepens the divide but also belittles the Native perspectives and experiences. Several theoretical approaches help to elucidate and explore the challenges and inherent biases in the reporting of Ipperwash and the context of a land-claims dispute that was, at the time, more than several hundred years old. The first is Critical Race Theory, and the second is a discourse-based view of how the power of the dominant class becomes the norm and is reflected in court reporting. This latter approach borrows from the work of Roland Barthes, specifically from “Dominici, or the Triumph of Literature,” found in his Mythologies. The Framework – A White Man’s Trial Critical race theory is rooted in systematic examination of bias and unfairness within judicial systems. American lawyer, professor, and activist

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Mari Matsuda argued that those in power, perhaps unwittingly but still with purpose, distort justice to their own ends and that prosecutors’ claim of neutral application of law is inaccurate, and even impossible. For a person of colour on trial for sedition, for example, a jury of peers would mean one that included people of colour so that the accused could feel he or she might be judged by others who understood the disparity of power and not just by those who assume equality exists. Rather than imagining justice from another’s perspective, Matsuda calls on legal scholars to really listen to the stories of oppressed people’s experiences.21 This kind of genuine listening clearly could be considered part of what Levinas called “embracing the Other.” Matsuda admonishes scholars – and, by extension, journalists as conveyors of public information – to hear what people of colour understand justice, truth, rights, and other concepts to mean. But journalists covering Ipperwash failed to bring this act of listening forward to the public. In addition to the journalists’ confusion about what the eagle feather means to his people, Dan Smoke outlined another instance where First Nations people were misunderstood. Smoke and his wife, Mary Lou, were in the courtroom on the first day of Warren George’s trial. From outside, the sound of drumming could be heard. Smoke said the judge told the court that this drumming had to stop: “He said, in a patronizing and loud voice, ‘There will be no drumming in my court room.’” And the bailiffs were sent outside to remove the Native drummers. Smoke explained that the drumming provides “strength to the Native person and a connection to our ancestors.” He recognizes that drumming might cause fear in some non-Natives, but, from his perspective, that fear also demonstrates a lack of awareness of what First Nations customs entail. “Our way is we listen, and we listen twice as much as we speak, because we have two ears. We listen to learn and learn to listen.”22 But the journalists were having trouble hearing what the First Nations people were saying – and this is clear from the less than 800 words devoted to George’s trial compared with the more than 15,000 words allocated to that of Officer Deane. In part, this disparity can be explained by the nature of the charges themselves – criminal negligence causing death versus criminal negligence causing bodily harm – and by the fact that the perpetrator of the more serious crime was a police officer, someone in a position that commanded respect. But the coverage is so lopsided that it implies what happens to White people and especially to White people in positions of authority is more important and

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newsworthy than what happens to Natives, given that the two cases stemmed from the same incident. To Roland Barthes, the court and the reporting of its processes are problematic for those outside the system of power that the law carefully preserves. Barthes argued that assumptions of transparency and understanding are not “common sense” but rather belong to those of the prevailing elite, the people in positions of power; in this instance, that group included both members of the judiciary and the reporters who covered the goings-on. In the case of Ipperwash, the coverage aligned the White people, the police, and the journalists with the “good and just.” The First Nations people, and especially Warren George, were pitted against this norm. Just like French peasant Dominici, whose trial for the murder of his elite landowner Barthes documented, George was tried in a court not of his own making or understanding of justice. This court not only judged him by its own standards but also refused to allow him to explain his own version of justice, and then condemned him under its own standards – the only one the dominant culture acknowledged as “legitimate.” In Barthes’s own words, “whatever the degree of guilt of the accused, there was also the spectacle of a terror which threatens us all, that of being judged by a power which wants to hear only the language it lends us. We are all potential Dominicis, not as murderers, but as accused, humiliated, and condemned by it. To rob a man of his language: this is the first step in all legal murders.”23 Language is used to minimize the humanity of others, to turn less powerful people into objects, and to imply that the court process and its result are “natural.” In this way, Barthes argued that those in positions of power use the norms established by their idiosyncratic language (like the language specific to the courts) to “describe and to condemn in one fell stroke.” Language itself becomes part of the dominant culture’s means to separate itself and dismiss oppression. In reconstructing the crimes and the motives of those involved in the stand-off at Ipperwash, the courts and the press engaged in the kind of cultural imperialism that Barthes described. While it was not done with deliberate intent, the prosecutor’s charges framed the news stories, and a selective application of Canadian law provided the journalists’ paradigm. Michel Foucault argued that the moral dilemma of our time is not the issue of good versus evil but rather the acceptance or resistance of the tangible effects of power. Power operates, he said, not so much from the top down as it is energized and amplified along the conduits of discourse, including the criminal-justice system and the mass media.

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Having lived through the Second World War in Europe, Foucault, a homosexual, and Levinas, a Jew, saw first-hand the menacing progression of a culture that presumes its own superiority.24 The Power of Words As Matsuda explained, justice is clearly a legal concept, but the understanding of justice is an ethical value, and one that raises significant concerns for journalists covering crimes, especially when people of colour are involved. These two different meanings for a concept like justice create what Jean-Francois Lyotard calls differend. Those who belong to the subordinate culture struggle to explain their experience to those in power because language itself works against them.25 To place differend in context of First Nations, the very notions of rights, property, and sovereignty exist outside the Mi’qmaq (Mohawk) and Chippewa traditions and vocabulary, said Canadian legal scholar Patricia MontureAngus. In her own law school experience, property-law courses did not include mention of First Nation treaties, and when she taught property herself as a professor, she struggled to explain to her students the differend of the assumption that “all land belongs to the Crown.” She was never asked to teach an Aboriginal law course, nor would she have accepted if offered because these courses most often are not about First Nations laws but rather about how Canadian law has an impact on Indigenous people. As a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk woman), Monture-Angus appealed to the Ontario Supreme Court when she went up before the bar because she did not wish to swear allegiance, as a lawyer, to the queen. She already considered herself part of another sovereign nation.26 The closest thing to the concept of “rights” in Mi’qmaq is something more akin to the word “relationship” – the way people interrelate with the earth, the plants, the sun, the moon.27 Even the very concept of race is untranslatable in most Native languages. Instead, pride in identity is connected to land and stories of creation. So too is the history of oppression and treaty violations: that broader narrative provides a means to combat belittling language. Identity and history merge.28 When an oppressed people encounter a new injustice like the shooting of an unarmed protestor with a legitimate land claim, that history comes to life. At Ipperwash, Stony Point people took a post-colonial stance against the continued re-colonization of land and thus attempted to recapture their very identity.

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For Native people, then, the connection to the land is central to identity and tribal sovereignty.29 Appropriation and desecration of burial grounds, as experienced at Ipperwash Provincial Park, are not just about moving dirt around for a horseshoe pit. Smoke noted that the ideas about what land really means to all First Nations people, but the Stony Point people in particular, were completely absent from the mainstream news coverage of the entire Ipperwash affair and the subsequent trials. “We believe that our ancestors loved us so much that they entrusted us with this land.” Most land treaties use the word “surrender” for what the Crown expected of the First Nations people, but the closest word in any Native language was something closer to “share.”30 What the Stony Pointers were doing was defending what they saw as handed down to them, entrusted to them, by their ancestors. They certainly did not see this as a criminal act. But Smoke argued – and we concur – that the coverage of the trials criminalized the Natives who were involved. Desecration of a burial site means a loss of connection to the ancestors, to the story of the birth of the people, to their very cultural identity. Land itself is tied to the creation story, and the creation story shapes identity. In the Chippewa creation story, earth is called mother and man is created when life is breathed into her four elements.31 For White people, though, land is something to be used. From the times of early settlers, not developing it was perceived as wasteful. In the United States, Thomas Jefferson admonished the Cherokees to give up hunting for agriculture. He wrote: “I rejoice in the day the red man, our neighbors, become truly one people with us … Indians must learn how a little land, well cultivated, was superior in value to a great deal unimproved.”32 Hunting and living off what land naturally provided, to Jefferson and other colonizers, was a boy’s game. Developing and cultivating land was a man’s vocation. This differend on work and land served as a basis initially to juvenilize and ultimately dehumanize Native people. Once a people’s very identity has been compromised, it is possible to justify slaughter and downplay the stories of their death. Again, these are the very things of which Levinas warned. Just as the Sioux were first portrayed in 1890 as rowdy children and then rowdy animals at Wounded Knee,33 so too were the Stony Point people reported to be “acting up” first in Ipperwash Provincial Park itself and then again in court at the trials and sentencing hearings of Kenneth Deane and Warren George. As John Miller noted in his evaluation of the news reports of the brief occupation and subsequent shooting of Dudley George, the news

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stories that tended to get picked up and reprinted were often ones that relied on stereotypes of First Nations people as unruly and violent, while those that challenged these beliefs – like the fact that the Stony Point protestors did not have any guns, or that their claims to the land were legitimate – tended to die on the vine.34 The newspapers also were guilty of the sin of omission: when the verdict against Warren George “outraged” the Stony Point band, the London Free Press story provided just one sentence of background: “The Ipperwash confrontations with police came two days after protesters occupied the park, arguing they were reclaiming land where a burial ground had been desecrated.”35 The sentence scarcely hints at broken promises dating back to at least the 1930s when the provincial park was formed and the many decades of smoldering resentment, which boiled over that day outside the court. Neither this nor other recounting of the sentencing unpacked the meaning and long history of “reclaiming,” “burial ground,” or “desecrated” from within the Stony Point perspective, all words laced with differend. Within the court stories themselves, while the Natives appeared pleased when Acting OPP Sergeant Kenneth Deane was found guilty of criminal negligence causing death, they were upset with the surprisingly light sentence handed to the officer: 180 hours of community service and no jail time. Covering the court on the day the sentence was handed down, a Toronto Star reporter noted that Deane showed no emotion, “but cries of ‘Murderer!!’ ‘Rotten cop!’ and ‘He’s still a murderer!’ came from Indians in the courtroom while some of the officer’s friends and supporters smiled.”36 The story juxtaposed the quiet stoicism of the officer, his family, and his colleagues with the emotional and angry cries of the First Nations people, whose rage to the newspaper audience may appear out of proportion to the situation. On the one hand, the First Nations perspective was articulated by a woman from Stoney Point who said, “The jails are full of native people who stole a carton of cigarettes, but if you kill a native, you’re free.”37 On the other, the family of Kenneth Deane offered a measured, and likely lawyered, written statement that in part read: “The family of Ken Deane wishes to extend their sincere thanks and appreciation for all the love and continuing support that we have received throughout this trial. As always, our family will continue to support our son and brother with the expressed confidence that justice will prevail.”38 The “bad” behaviour of the First Nations people is again presented in the stories of both the conviction and the sentencing of one of their own, Warren George. When George was found guilty, the Free Press reporter

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focused the story on how Natives “screamed abuse” at police officers in attendance and tried to prevent an officer from reaching his car outside the courthouse.39 At the sentencing hearing where George was ordered to do jail time, the lede said that Natives “complained bitterly” and quoted George’s aunt as saying, “Don’t talk to me about respect for the law” while waving a placard outside the court.40 As police officers led George off to jail, the reporter wrote that “a woman identified as his stepmother jumped forward, screaming, ‘You’re not taking him. He didn’t kill anybody.’”41 The contrast between the depictions of Kenneth Deane, his family, and his fellow officers and those of Warren George, his family, and other First Nations supporters could not be more clear: the responses of the former group appeared measured, reasonable, and civil. Their media representations placed them within the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in these particular circumstances. But the latter people, with no reporting on why they found the outcome or the punishments unjust and no explanation of their perspectives about justice or land or their own rights, appeared like the stereotypes that are so often employed: they are unruly and belligerent and refuse to accept the rule of (White) law. The details of these stories about George work against any understanding or sympathy among the surrounding White community for First Nations people and their land rights. Rather than explore the responses of the Stony Point people, the coverage devolved to the superficial, effectively “killing” the Other. Again, in part, the problem for reporters is exacerbated by an assumed transparency of language and the belief that words largely connote and denote the same thing, regardless of history or cultural background. As storytellers, journalists have the opportunity to stretch across the differend by giving voice to the subordinate culture’s narrative “while providing opportunities for members of the majority to meet them halfway.”42 Effective storytellers bring readers into the experience of others and avoid relying on false assumptions of common language. Stereotypes of the crazed, violent Indian should not be the central force of narrative, even as that stereotype becomes the language used in the courtroom. If the stereotype can be constructed as a way to justify brutality, then the stereotype can be deconstructed in a news story. The only photograph that appeared in Canadian newspapers of Warren George showed him standing outside the courthouse awaiting his verdict. His appearance contrasted strikingly with those of others around him: his hair is long, his beard unshaven, a T-shirt instead of

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coat and tie; he holds a cigarette and a feather. White people looking at the photo might see an Indian disrespecting the court, but Natives see something different entirely. His shirt indicated his clan and it was sewn specially for the occasion, and the eagle feather revealed something spiritual beyond himself. Moreover, using Barthes’s second order of signification, George is likely to be interpreted not only as a particular Native man charged with a crime. The photograph moves him to the realm of myth where historical facts and individual attributes recede, replaced by the photo’s mythic reading: George stops being a single man in unique circumstances and instead becomes representative of “all First Nations young men – shifty, untrustworthy, unkempt, disrespectful of white conventions of dress, personal appearance, and behavior.”43 Warren George, emptied verbally and visually of all that he truly is, becomes a vessel to be filled with negative assumptions about being “Indian.” He was and is defined in news coverage only by his age and the crime of which he was accused. He neither speaks nor is spoken about. In contrast, when Kenneth Deane was sentenced almost a year earlier, the Toronto Star led with a description of his character: “A police officer convicted of shooting an Indian activist dead was described in court yesterday as honest, thoughtful, and one of the top members of an elite Ontario Provincial Police unit.”44 Dean was dressed in the costume of the “good cop,” whose dignity was constructed in statements by family and friends, testifying to past deeds that tell of his strength, character, and caring attitude. In Peter Edwards’s 436-word article, supervisors, fellow officers, friends, and neighbours praise Deane as “exceptional, even within the elite paramilitary tactics and rescue unit,” “the standard bearer, in terms of the model we would compare others to,” and “exemplary in the manner in which he conducted himself.”45 A Healing Truth Ipperwash was a complicated multilayered story embedded in a largely undocumented history of treaties and land claims, and with contemporary political, economic, and social consequences. These issues held significance for First Nations and non-Natives alike in the small county of Lambton and in the larger area of the province of Ontario. They deserved the press’s attention. Because news requires a timely peg, both trials and sentencing hearings offered journalists opportunities to discuss many aspects of the confrontation between police and occupiers and to explore a variety of past and present land claims in White/First

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Nations relations. Some stories about Kenneth Deane did include the voices of Natives, especially the family of deceased Dudley George, whose brother Sam’s victim impact statement was carried nearly verbatim by the Toronto Star. However, no Natives were quoted or paraphrased in the coverage of Warren George’s trial or sentencing hearing, except for the “outraged” and nameless Natives screaming abuse or drumming outside the courthouse. George’s court appearances offered the three newspapers opportunities to broaden the story to include Native perspectives on the centrality of the land about which the entire dispute had begun many years earlier. But no journalist linked the First Nation’s background, history, and and present-day situation to the events that had led to George’s charges, conviction, and jail time. Instead, readers were left adrift to draw their own conclusions about the Natives’ behaviour. Journalists might do well to grow in their awareness of Critical Race Theory and semiotics to reach a better understanding of how dominant power “naturalizes” and “normalizes” itself and thus becomes “invisible.” The biggest step in addressing bias is to recognize the lens through which one is viewing the world. In the next chapter, Peter Edwards, Toronto Star reporter and author of One Dead Indian, writes about his personal experiences covering First Nations stories generally, as well as those about the shooting at Ipperwash. He details how he met Dudley George’s brother Sam within hours of Dudley’s death. He asked him, as he often does at crime scenes, “Whom do you blame?” Sam replied, “I’m not blaming anyone. I just need to know the truth.” Edwards writes about how this was not a useful quote at the moment for the story he was trying to frame; as we have argued here, in part from some of Edwards’s own copy for the Toronto Star, this answer simply didn’t fit the standard concept of journalistic narrative. Still, the phrase haunted Edwards to such a degree that he had to find venues other than his employer, the Star, to explore these perspectives. As he became more closely acquainted with Sam George, he realized that what Sam was seeking – for himself and for the other members of his Stoney Point community – was something that does not really exist in a White person’s world. Sam George’s elder, Tommy White, explained to Edwards that what Sam sought was something that cannot be translated directly into English. In Ojibwe, “truth” is Debwewin, but Debwewin means “from the heart” or “healing truth.” Sam wanted to learn what happened to his brother so that it wouldn’t

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happen again, White said. But the larger implication is clear: journalists themselves must strive to aid the community’s search, in its largest sense, towards the same kind of truth. NOTES 1 Edmund Lambeth, Committed Journalism: An Ethic for the Profession (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press), 25. 2 Julie Carl, “The Deane Sentence,” London Free Press, 5 July 1997, C5. 3 Two spellings of this First Nations group are regularly employed in media reports and government documents: “Stoney” with the “e” is used in relation to the Stoney Point Reserve. When referring to the band designated under Canada’s Indian Act, the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, no “e” is used. Here we have used “Kettle and Stony Point” to refer to the people who reside at the two reserves and their ancestors. We are following the spellings as set out in the Ipperwash Inquiry (established in 2003 by the government of Ontario), with specifics provided here: https://www .attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/ipperwash/report/vol_1/ pdf/E_Vol_1_CH02.pdf]. 4 The Chippewa of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation’s reserves are ­located in southwestern Ontario along Lake Huron about forty kilometres north of the city of Sarnia. The Chippewa in other parts of Canada refer to themselves as Ojibway. 5 Depending on their financial situations and the arrangements with their band councils, some Natives own their houses, but they do not own the reserve land, which is held in trust by the Crown. 6 John Miller, “Ipperwash and the Media: A Critical Analysis of How the Story Was Covered” (report submitted to the Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, October 2005), 8, https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/ inquiries/ipperwash/policy_part/projects/pdf/ALST_Ipperwash_and_ media.pdf. 7 While numerous charges were laid against some Natives involved in the clash, most were relatively minor and almost all were later dropped because of lack of evidence. Some involved people under the age of eighteen whose identities were protected under the Youth Justice Act. None – e­ xcept Warren George – was convicted. The Special Investigations Unit – a branch of the police force that investigates itself when citizens are seriously harmed or killed by officers – found that the police did not use excessive force in

320  Covering Canadian Crime arresting Native Cecil Barnard George, despite medical evidence in court that he had been hit on the head twenty-eight times with a blunt object and that paramedics had struggled to find a pulse. 8 Several months into Deane’s trial, the government enacted new legislation that changed the minimum sentence for conviction on this charge to four years and the maximum to life in prison. 9 Harold Levy and Peter Edwards, “Court Upholds Assault Ruling,” Toronto Star, 19 May 2001, A1. 10 Lambeth, Committed Journalism. 11 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1985). 12 Jeffrey W. Murray, “The Other Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas: Communication Beyond Relativism,” in Sharon L. Bracci and Clifford G. Christians, eds., Moral Engagement in Public Life (New York: Peter Lang 2002), 186. 13 Ibid., 176. 14 Carl, “The Deane Sentence,” C5. 15 See, for example, Toronto Star journalist Peter Edwards’s book One Dead Indian, where he offers an in-depth history of the people and land of Stoney Point, the long-standing disputes between First Nations people and the Canadian government, and the happenings at Ipperwash the night Dudley George was shot and killed by the OPP officer. 16 Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press 1978). 17 Dan Smoke, interview with Romayne Smith Fullerton, London, Ontario, 5 March 2012. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Mari Matsuda, “Critical Race Theory and Critical Legal Studies: Contesta­ tion and Coalition,” in Kimberlé Crenshaw et al., eds., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New York: New Press 1995), 62–79. 22 Dan Smoke interview. 23 Roland Barthes, “Dominici, or the Triumph of Literature,” in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang 1972), 43–6. 24 Martha Cooper and Carole Blair, “Foucault’s Ethics,” in Bracci and Christians, eds., Moral Engagement in Public Life, 257–71. 25 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. G. Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1988).

Covering White “Just-Us” 321 26 Cynthia Gray, “A Question of Sovereignty: Patricia Monture vs. The Queen,” Canadian Woman Studies: La Cahiers de la Femme, 10 (1989): 146–8, http://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/viewFile/11195/ 10284. 27 Candice Metallic and Patricia Monture-Angus, “Domestic Laws Versus Aboriginal Visions: An Analysis of the Delgamuukw Decision,” Borderlands 1 (2002), http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol1no2_2002/metallic_angus .html. 28 Perry G. Horse, “Reflections on American Indian Identity,” in Charmaine Wijeyesinghe and Bailey W. Jackson III, eds., New Perspectives on Racial Identity Development (New York: New York University Press 2001), 91–107. 29 Ibid. 30 Dan Smoke interview. 31 Darlene Johnston, Respecting and Protecting the Sacred, report to Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General (2012), http://www.attorneygeneral.jus .gov.on.ca/inquiries/ipperwash/policy_part/research/pdf/Johnston_ Respecting-and-Protecting-the-Sacred.pdf. 32 Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multi-cultural America (New York: Back Bay Books 1993), 48. 33 Ibid., 228. 34 Miller, “Ipperwash and the Media,” 10. 35 John Hamiliton, “Ipperwash Protestor Sent to Jail, Natives Angered over ‘Injustice,’” London Free Press, 4 April 1998, A3. 36 Peter Edwards, “Officer Praised at Sentencing Hearing,” Toronto Star, 31 May 1997, A9. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Hamilton, “Ipperwash Protestor Sent to Jail,” A3. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press 2001), 44. 43 Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson, “‘Killing’ the True Story of First Nations: The Ethics of Constructing a Culture Apart,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 23 (2008): 214. 44 Peter Edwards, “Community Service Ordered by Judge,” Toronto Star, 4 July 1997, A1. 45 Ibid.

20 Debwewin: The Search for the Truth about Ipperwash Peter Edwar d s

Peter Edwards has written for the Toronto Star for nearly thirty years, covering crime and justice issues. He has authored numerous non-fiction books including One Dead Indian: The Premier, the Police and the Ipperwash Crisis, A Mother’s Story: The Fight to Free My Son David (with Joyce Milguard), Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War (with Antonio Nicaso), Unrepentant: The Strange and (Sometimes) Terrible Life of Lorne Campbell, Satan’s Choice and Hells Angels Biker, and The Encyclopedia of Organized Crime (with Michel Auger). He has been awarded an eagle feather from the Union of Ontario Indians and a gold medal from the Centre for Human Rights and was part of a team that won a National Newspaper Award for spot news reporting. In this chapter, Edwards muses about covering a variety of Indigenous issues and offers personal thoughts about the inspirational friendship he formed with the brother of the Stony Point man who was shot dead by provincial police in an unarmed land-claims stand-off in Ipperwash Provincial Park in southwestern Ontario. The first time I spoke with Maynard (Sam) George was less than six hours after his younger brother Anthony O’Brien (Dudley) George had been shot to death by an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer with a sub-machine gun on 6 September 1995. “Who do you blame?” I asked him. It was the type of question I have asked at countless crime scenes. It’s a good question. It gets right to the point. It usually gets me good quotes. “I’m not blaming anybody but I need the truth,” Sam replied. He spoke so softly that I had to lean forward across a table in the back of a tiny restaurant to hear him. I got him to repeat it, just to be sure. I had never gotten an answer like that. I couldn’t help but feel

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a little disappointed. I was tired from being up all night and his words sounded a little nebulous and unfocused. This wasn’t the type of quote that easily finds its way onto the front page. I wrote down the words but had no idea what he was really talking about. I also had no clue about the power of what I had just heard. So began a connection with a man who went from being a stranger to a source to a friend to an inspiration. The last time I spoke with him, in May 2009, Sam asked me to carry his casket. He also asked me to keep the story of what happened to his brother alive. Sam died of cancer six days later. I wasn’t a stranger to reserves when I showed up that night as a Toronto Star reporter at the Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation on Lake Huron. I don’t have to read reports or hear speeches to know there are plenty of bad things going on at reserves. I also know there are lots of good people living in them. The first eleven years of my life were spent in the hamlet of Lytton, B.C. (population 500), between the Thompson or Nlaka’pamux reserve and the Anglican-run St George’s Indian Residential School. I delivered the Vancouver Sun to one-storey, tarpaper shacks on the reserve. Many of the Native kids who attended my school didn’t have electricity at home. Several of their parents got about in horse-drawn wagons. Not surprisingly, those former classmates didn’t go on to university. No one expected them to. Sometimes, I would ride my bicycle into the hills to visit friends, White and Native. On one Saturday morning ride, I saw a huge pool of blood and glass on the road. I followed the trail of blood to where it finally ended in another large pool. It was a ball’s throw from the home of Sonny Raphael, a Native teenager who had always been friendly to me. I remember him as being a happy relaxed kid from a good family. The pool of blood – just around the corner from where his mother hung out the family’s laundry – was where Sonny Raphael died. Also that weekend, I and other kids studied blood and damage to the front of a white Camaro in town. We all knew about it. So did the only Mountie in town. There was no great rush to clean up the Camaro. The Mountie didn’t lay any charges against the White teenager who owned the Camaro and who killed Sonny Raphael that night. No one expected him to, although some people, like my mother, were upset nonetheless. There were no protests from Native people in town. It didn’t feel right but no one expected things to turn out any differently. White kids from Lytton and Native kids from the reserve didn’t have much contact with the First Nations kids across the Fraser River at St

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George’s Residential School. It wasn’t until decades later, through the Internet, that I learned of sexual and physical abuse of those students, who were far from their homes. It came as a shock. No one expected that ministers and teachers would do things like that. One of my first jobs after graduating from the University of Western Ontario’s Journalism School was at the Yukon News. I was sent out one day to do a dreaded “streeter,” where a reporter asks people a usually inane question. Their comments, along with a snapshot, are amusing filler for a paper with no wire copy. I was advised not to bother asking Native people questions for streeters, even though there was a First Nations band right in town. I was told that they wouldn’t go along with it and that asking for their viewpoints would just be a waste of time. I tried anyway and got a few answers, but most of the Native people I approached just shied away. They didn’t expect to be asked and were mistrustful of my questions. I remember calling one First Nations leader for his comments on a wilderness development story. He also was clearly uncomfortable with the press, especially over the phone. I said something to the effect of how I was letting him express his point of view. He said something to the effect of, “I just want to be left alone.” I thought something to the effect of, “It’s way too late for that.” My next job was at the Regina Leader-Post. I was quite junior there and upset that I wasn’t asked to be part of the pack covering the Colin Thatcher murder trial. Thatcher was a cabinet minister and the son of a former premier. He was charged – and ultimately convicted – of hiring a hitman to murder his wife. It was a huge story and ended up being the subject of at least three books and a movie. At the same time that Thatcher was on trial, I noticed an item in the back pages of the paper that ran only a few paragraphs. It was about the disappearance of an eighteen-year-old Cree girl named Patsy Favel. I started to wonder why Patsy Favel’s tragedy barely rated a hiccup in the news cycle, while the death of Joanne Thatcher played at an operatic pitch. Both victims felt the same human emotions. They both left families who loved them. Maybe they even felt the same way when they looked into the eyes of their killers. It didn’t take long to learn that Patsy Favel was a prostitute working the city’s downtown. I remember a police officer laughing when I asked him about the disappearance and suspected murder. When I asked when they expected to find her, he said something to the effect of, “when the snow melts.”

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I got to know Patsy’s mother, Alice, who sometimes accompanied me downtown in her search for answers to what happened to her daughter. She told me that she personally had been troubled and messed up after leaving a residential school, where she was denied Native language and culture and contact with her parents. Alice freely admitted that she hadn’t been much of a mother to Patsy. But she was proud that she had finally cleaned up her act and was ready to be the mother she had always wanted to be. But now Patsy was gone and she felt lost again too. She also spoke of the responsibility of caring for Patsy’s thirteen-monthold son, who had just spoken his first word. It was “Mama.” I spoke with several of the teenaged Native hookers who worked alongside Patsy and some of their pimps. One girl explained how she had to inject the narcotic Talwin into her veins to do her work, servicing White out-of-town farmers who arrived for an agricultural trade show. It made sense to me why she would want to be drugged when she went out onto the 1900 block of downtown Osler Street. Who would want to have all of their senses functioning fully to do a job such as that? I saw many qualities in Patsy Favel’s mother that I later saw in Sam George. She needed the truth too and no one in any official job seemed remotely interested in helping her find it. She needed to be a good mother, even in death. The story about Patsy’s disappearance got good play in the Leader-Post and readers seemed to genuinely care about her fate. Despite all of the sympathy, there was no great heat on the police when they didn’t solve the case. No one expected them to. There weren’t many First Nations stories to cover when I got to the Toronto Star and I didn’t go out of my way looking for them. I was sent to the Akwesasne reserve on the St Lawrence River at the height of the cigarette smuggling furore in the mid-1990s. There clearly were Native thugs and bona fide mobsters operating on the reserve, just as there were outlaw bikers and White and Asian mobsters trafficking their cigarettes. There were also mainstream businesspeople from major tobacco firms supplying all of them the cigarettes in the first place. That was the last big Native story I covered before I met Sam George that morning, about six hours after his brother died. I don’t know if Sam ever actually expected the truth. I am also convinced that, with or without me, he would have kept asking his questions until he got answers or until he was unable to ask them any longer. Two and a half years after Dudley’s death, Sam and I were in court when a judge found Acting Sergeant Kenneth Deane guilty of knowingly shooting an unarmed man and then lying about it. This verdict in

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the Dudley George slaying rang true but hearing it was a shock nonetheless. There certainly had been no rush by Deane’s fellow officers to bring him to justice. He was promoted after the conviction, pending the outcome of his appeal, and never served a day in jail. There was even less enthusiasm to examine the political climate that sent Deane and about forty other heavily armed police officers down to the park that night. Sam didn’t make a big point of it, but five members of his family were police officers. He didn’t talk publicly of how he counselled his nephew not to give up on his dream of being a police officer. Sam told his nephew that what happened at Ipperwash Provincial Park showed the need for more non-white faces in policing. Sam often talked about needing the truth for his community, not just for himself. Without the truth, he feared that First Nations kids would think that they should resort to violence. Dudley George and other protestors in the park that night were unarmed and look what happened to them. Would the police have marched directly on the protestors if they knew they might shoot back? I worried that Sam was killing himself when he pressed on with his questions. He collapsed from an apparent heart attack. His diabetes flared up. He was invariably homesick when on the road, speaking to small community groups or the press. His elder, Tommy White, explained to me that what Sam sought was something that didn’t easily translate into English. In Ojibwe, “truth,” is “Debwewin, but Debwewin means “from the heart” or “healing truth.” Tommy said that Sam wanted to learn what happened to his brother so that it wouldn’t happen again. He also needed to make things right with his dead brother Dudley. Sam wasn’t trying to blame anyone. He just needed the full truth so that healing could take place. As Romayne Smith Fullerton, Ginny Whitehouse, and Maggie Jones Patterson suggest in chapter 19, Sam saw a role for the press in this search. I tried to write a book on this story but no one would publish it. At the time, I had published four other books and the sales had been good. I tried to give it away, including to First Nations publishers. No one wanted it for free either. Sam kept asking his questions and Harold Levy from the Toronto Star and I kept writing down things about his struggle. When One Dead Indian: The Premier, the Police and the Ipperwash Crisis was finally published in 2001, Don Bastian, editor of Stoddart, said the story of the police march on Ipperwash Provincial Park bothered him for religious reasons. He asked why there couldn’t have been mediation and quoted

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from the book of Proverbs in the Bible, which says, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” Sam’s push for the truth began to assume a political and religious tone, but the publicity was interrupted by 9/11. That seemed somehow appropriate, but the story kept bubbling along nonetheless. The book I couldn’t give away became my greatest career success and eventually it became a movie by Sienna Films for CTV. We were big on the idea that there be no White heroes leading the charge for truth, since this was clearly a Sam story. I had hoped that maybe 500,000 people would watch it when it aired. There were 1.2 million viewers that night. I worried about a backlash from members of the First Nations media and accusations that we had expropriated their story, but this never came. One Native reporter said to me, “If we told the same story, no one would believe us.” That seemed to be the general view. I figured that this was a non-Native story as well, since my tax money helped pay for the bullet that killed Dudley George and the years of cover-ups that followed. We asked plenty of questions and plenty more popped up. Clifford George, an elder, laughed at how some people insisted on calling members of his band terrorists and criminals. Clifford and his two brothers had volunteered to fight for Canada in the Second World War. When they came home, the land they thought they were defending had been taken by the Canadian military for a base. His brother slept in a ditch the first night he was back at Stoney Point, since a barbed-wire fence around the military base blocked him from getting in. Clifford eventually got a menial job at the base. There, he noticed that someone had done target practice on his mother’s grave. So Clifford laughed when he and Dudley and others were called terrorists for occupying a part of the park that they said held a burial ground. “Is a terrorist someone who attacks in the middle of the night and then runs away?” Clifford asked, clearly referring to the OPP the night Dudley was killed. Clifford said it with a laugh. Like Sam, he laughed whenever he could and like Sam, he wanted friends, not enemies, as well as the truth. The book gave me plenty of chances to talk about Sam’s story. On one country radio station, a caller told me that Dudley George wasn’t a good person. I replied that plenty of people who knew Dudley loved him and thought he was just fine. The caller said that Dudley was a criminal, referring to a conviction for arson when he was a teenager, during a stupid prank at a lumber yard. I replied that the three White friends with him that night walked free. Should we shoot them dead too? I asked. The caller was now livid. “You people make me so mad,”

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she shouted. I thought she was talking about reporters from the big city. I was ready to tell her about my childhood in Lytton and how Toronto sometimes bugged me too. “Which people is that?” I asked, thinking I was setting her up for my big response. “You Indians!” she shouted. The announcer was mortified. I found it hilarious and replied, “I’m as white as you are, lady.” The announcer cut to commercials and the callin segment ended. As Sam’s story caught hold, there were plenty of efforts to discredit him. Some members of the press gleefully jumped on the violence and unresolved tensions at Caledonia and used it as an example of what happens when Native people aren’t dealt with harshly. It was startling how many times I heard the phrase “those Indians.” It would sound idiotic to say “those Asians” or “those Blacks” or “those Whites” but somehow collective guilt was okay, when applied to First Nations people. There was also criticism about the cost of the public inquiry into Dudley George’s death. I can’t recall anyone who complained about the cost of the inquiry also saying how it wouldn’t have been needed if elected and publicly paid politicians hadn’t repeatedly lied in the legislature. Former attorney general Charles Harnick admitted this in a defining moment of the Ipperwash Inquiry before Justice Sidney Linden. After Sam heard Harnick’s confession, he repeatedly praised his courage. In Sam’s view, Harnick had done something painful and brave and the truth delayed was far better than no truth at all. It would be great to say the good guys won in the end. Sam did get a government law library named after him. There’s a tree dedicated to him outside the OPP headquarters. There was a scholarship fund in his name. He was given the Order of Ontario. I know Sam wasn’t in it for the glory and there’s something bittersweet about posthumous honours. Still, I can’t shake the memory of Sam saying in the midst of his struggle that he wished he could get the truth quickly, so that he could get back home and coach his grandkids in hockey. Sometimes Sam would talk about spiritual things, such as how his brother Dudley lives forever in a spirit world and how he was trying to put Dudley’s spirit at rest by fighting to tell his story. I like to think that Sam is out there at rest now too. I also like to think that Sam is thrilled that his grandson Cameron studied from a new grade 11 textbook that tells the story of the push for the truth at Ipperwash. Back here in my day-to-day life, I often think of how Sam taught me and so many others that we should expect more from ourselves and our institutions and look beyond blame towards healing.

21 Did Need for Speed Kill?: “Street-Racing” Legislation and the Mediated Reality of Crime S tephen L. Mu z z at t i

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”1 H.L. Mencken

Canada is indisputably a car-centric culture. In 2014 we bought almost 1.9 million new vehicles, and, considering our relatively small population, we are not far behind the United States, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and a few western European automobile markets. This is clearly evident in Ontario, the most populous province and home to 9.5 million licensed drivers and 11.4 million registered vehicles (most of which are privately owned passenger vehicles).2 The province’s Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, better known as High­ way 401, stretching over 800 kilometres from the U.S. border crossing at Detroit to the Quebec border, is the busiest highway on the continent, with the 40-kilometre stretch through Toronto carrying over 440,000 vehicles daily. The manufacture of automobiles and related parts and services in communities like Oakville, Pickering, and Windsor are a significant part of what remains of the province’s industrial sector. Cars streak and (ever more frequently) crawl along our highways, urban arteries, and rural roads. They fill vast parking lagoons, line secondary roads, and anchor private driveways. The long-standing and increasingly ubiquitous presence of the automobile in our culture is undeniable. Dealers’ advertisements for cars fill newspapers, television, magazines, and websites; giant automobile billboard ads are a common sight; and even public-transit services are reappropriated as advertising

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space, with car ads festooned on the sides of subways, streetcars, buses, light-rail transit, and other public transportation conveyances and property. This, of course, is in addition to the highly fetishized images of cars and driving which, though not openly recognized as advertisements, fill the storylines of our television programs, feature films, and video games and have a host of books, magazines, Internet sites, and television channels devoted to them. Cars and driving also feature prominently in a host of diverse crimemedia texts. Indeed, the examples from both the entertainment and news media are legion. From stories about the stolen-car and car-parts market to live-news helicopter footage of high-speed police chases, from reports of drunk drivers and “road-rage” to bank-robbery “getaway” cars and drive-by shootings, automobiles are central to numerous crime-news narratives. They are perhaps an even more prevalent image in the entertainment media. Car chases, crashes, and explosions are a staple feature of many Hollywood blockbusters, with films featuring illegal street racing and risk-laden driving practices now constituting a distinct action movie subgenre (e.g., The Fast and the Furious series). Cars also play central roles in music videos and video games (e.g., Carmaggedon, Interstate/76, Midnight Club, etc.) and in both dramatic and “reality” programs (Street Fury, Knight Rider, Canada’s Worst Driver, etc.). Certainly, the social, economic, and criminal significance of automobiles and driving under prevailing late-modern conditions makes news about car-related crime and transgression an obvious site for the articulation of highly stylized presentations – and an area ripe for analysis by critical media scholars. Given a cultural milieu in which cars and driving are increasingly notorious elements of the carnivalesque life of the people, it is not surprising that they constitute a prescient concern for lawmakers and regulatory agencies. When coupled with late modernity’s highly controlled yet unstable environment, opportunities for discursive bricoleurship on the part of politicians and the corporately owned news media abound. Under such conditions, in early June 2007 the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) announced the creation of a new law. Colloquially referred to as the “street-racing law,” this piece of legislation redefined several extant legal terms, provided police with new powers, and prescribed harsh penalties for those charged. What follows is an examination of the media frenzy that took place surrounding this piece of legislation, with an emphasis on the time period between the original political-legal ruminations in 2006 and when the law was implemented by the province at 12:01 a.m. on 30 September 2007.

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Particular attention will be devoted to the mediated reality of this crime as a moral panic. Moral Panic The concept of moral panic has informed the work of many sociologists and criminologists for almost forty years.3 While it was originally formulated to provide a tool for understanding the sets of interrelations among youthful transgressors, the public, politicians, agents of social control, and the mass media that serve to constitute the complex reality of crime, its value as a conceptual tool is by no means restricted solely to that area of inquiry. The term “moral panic” was coined by British criminologist Jock Young in an article that he authored for a book that his colleague Stanley Cohen edited,4 but it was Cohen who first systematically outlined the indicators/elements of, as well as the actors involved in, a moral panic in his monograph Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers published the following year. In it he defines a moral panic as follows: A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something that has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the society conceives itself.5

Cohen’s work focused on the reactions of the media, politicians, agents of social control, and the general public to relatively minor clashes between youth subcultures (the Mods and the Rockers) in England during the mid- to late 1960s and, as the above excerpt illustrates, the ways in which these reactions influenced the formation and enforcement of law, social policy, and societal conceptions of the youth culture-delinquency nexus. While many subsequent scholars have similarly applied the concept to youth subcultures (punks, goths, ravers, skaters, tag artists, etc.),

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others have gone beyond the original focus to apply it to more generalized and adult manifestations of deviant and criminal behaviour (soccer hooligans, motorcycle gangs, immigrants [both illegal and legal], welfare mothers, Satanists, paedophiles, squeegee merchants, serial killers, terrorists, etc.). While some forty years old, with antecedents perhaps even a generation older, the concept of moral panic continued to grow in importance in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, spurring considerable theoretical development, particularly the resurgence of critical criminology and the emergence of cultural criminology. Actors Simply put, a moral panic is an exaggeration or distortion of some perceived transgressive behaviour or criminal activity. According to Cohen, this includes grossly exaggerating the seriousness of the events according to criteria such as the numbers of people taking part, the number involved in violence, and the amount and effects of violence and/or damage. This is, of course, not something that happens spontaneously but rather is a result of a complex interplay of behaviours and responses involving several actors. For a moral panic to take hold, there needs to be a set of actors, including folk devils, rule enforcers, politicians, and, of course, the mass media. Folk devils are the individuals responsible for the deviant or criminal behaviour. Unlike “normal” deviants or criminals, these people are “unambiguously unfavourable symbols”6 – the embodiment of evil. While members of youth subcultures (zoot-suiters, hippies, skinheads, gamers, etc.) are designated as folk devils, the label is not solely restricted to them. As the work of many scholars illustrate, folk devils are highly stylized images of despised and marginalized masses of people (immigrants, people of colour, the working class, gays and lesbians, etc.). In short, folk devils are demonized groups that are all that “we” (i.e., good clean living, law-abiding folks) are not. As those responsible for the enforcement of norms, codes of conduct, and law, rule enforcers are a vital part of the moral panic. These organizations, particularly the police, prosecutors, and the judiciary, are expected to detect, apprehend, and punish the folk devils. Theses agents often present the social situation as one that teeters on the brink of chaos; if it were not for them, crime, transgression, and all that these things entail would abound. They present themselves, often quite melodramatically, as the “thin blue line” which separates “order and civilization”

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from “mayhem and anarchy.” Depending upon the strength of the discourse, it often includes calls for increased numbers of rule enforcers and more extensive authority (i.e., greater power) for them. Politicians are also vital actors in a moral panic. As individuals who live and die in the court of public opinion, it is extremely important that politicians present themselves as purveyors of the moral high ground. In so doing, they often align themselves with the press and the rule enforcers in a struggle against the evils perpetrated by the folk devils. Self-righteousness and the politics of rage characterize the response of politicians in dealing with crime.7 Even the most “liberal” politicians usually take a moralistic, no-nonsense, “war on crime” stance, advocating punitive, even reactionary strategies to deal with this new threat. Common calls include special hearings or subcommittees to deal with the problem, zero-tolerance policies, increased police powers, tougher laws, and harsher sentences. The media is likely the single most influential actor in the orchestration and promulgation of a moral panic. Media coverage of certain kinds of deviant/criminal behaviour, particularly those involving perpetrators of the aforementioned type, is usually distorted. It serves to inflate the seriousness of the incidents, making them appear more heinous and frequent than they truly are. Public anxiety is whipped up through the use of journalistic and linguistic devices. “Special cover story,” “in-depth exposé,” or “investigative report” coverage employs dramatic photos, video, and sound bites along with highly moralistic editorializing. In such instances, terms/phrases such as “plague,” “scourge,” “hordes,” and “orgy of violence” serve the function of making the occurrences appear, falsely, as serious and rampant. Alienated and frustrated youth become “teen super-predators,” small cohorts of young people “rampaging mobs,” minor property damage “wholesale destruction,” and scuffles “riots.” Characteristics How is a moral panic to be distinguished from normal levels of societal concern over transgressive or criminal behaviour? Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda define five characteristics that indicate that a moral panic has taken hold.8 These are: 1) heightened concern; 2) hostility; 3) consensus; 4) disproportionality; and 5) volatility. While there is always social concern about crime, heightened concern refers to an increase in the level of public consternation about a

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particular group, their behaviour, and its impact. This, as Goode and Ben-Yehuda point out, can be quantified (public opinion polls showing increased fear, greater media coverage of the problem, etc.). Hostility refers to a greater level of intolerance for the behaviour and contempt for those responsible for it. Consensus, as the name implies, pertains to an increased level of public agreement on the behaviours as harmful and the situation as something in need of greater scrutiny, police attention, and, ultimately, a solution. Disproportionality is likely the most telling of the characteristics. It refers to a collective overreaction to the problem in terms of its frequency, scope, and severity. Finally, moral panics, while always having historical and structural antecedents, are volatile. They “appear” quickly and to the casual observer often “without warning.” It is interesting to note that, while they often dissipate just as quickly, they usually leave in their wake a litany of repressive social-control strategies and mechanisms.9 The Moral Panic over Street Racing Speeding on Ontario roads is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, speeding has existed for as long as speed laws have existed. Drivers, for a host of reasons (tardiness, inattention, excitement, impatience, attention seeking, etc.) have a long history of exceeding the speed limit. The first recorded recipient of a speeding ticket was an English man named Walter Arnold. In 1896 Arnold was caught by the police in East Peckham, Kent, for travelling at four times the posted speed limit. He was caught going 8 mph – by a policeman riding a bicycle. He was fined a shilling (5p), the equivalent of about $10 today, and sent on his way. Needless to say, if one of Arnold’s descendants in Ontario was caught exceeding the speed limit in this manner today, the outcome would be very different. S/he would be charged with “street racing,” resulting in an immediate seven-day licence suspension and roadside vehicle seizure, and would be responsible for the administrative costs associated with each. If convicted, s/he would face a fine as high as $10,000 and a jail term.10 Indeed, s/he would be subject to arguably the most punitive traffic law in North America.

Origins of Ontario’s Street-Racing Legislation In early 2006 Frank Klees, MPP for Newmarket-Aurora, a long-serving Tory and minister of transportation during the last eight months of the

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Ernie Eves government, proposed Bill 203. At the time, the bill, which would eventually transmogrify into the province’s street-racing law, received little support in the legislature and soon died, primarily because MPPs felt that police were given too much discretion, and also because some recognized that it caught in its web two entire segments of the law-abiding motoring populace: modified car enthusiasts and sportbike riders. Bills frequently die in the legislature, so it is not surprising that the media paid relatively little attention to it. The tragic events of the evening of 24 January 2006 resulted in a sea change. The media, politicians, and consequently the general public’s attention was soon transfixed by what quickly became known as the “growing problem” of street racing. At approximately 10:30 p.m. on 24 January, two university students, Alexander Ryazanov and Wang-Piao Dumani Ross, were driving their respective parents’ cars northbound on Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Road well in excess of the 50 km/h speed limit when Ryazanov’s car struck a left-turning Diamond taxicab driven by Tahir Kahn. The impact, which police estimate to have occurred at a speed of 80 km/h, propelled Kahn’s vehicle broadside into a light standard, which effectively cut it in half. Emergency personnel pronounced Kahn dead at the scene. Sadly, Tahir Kahn’s death was just one of the 769 motor vehicle deaths on Ontario’s roads and almost 2,900 across the country in 2006.11 What made it unique, however, was the fact that police, politicians, and the media attributed it to what they termed street racing. By the following morning, all the news outlets in Toronto, and many others throughout Ontario, had seized upon the dreadful death of Kahn as evidence of an alleged epidemic of street racing on the province’s roads. This was perhaps no better illustrated than by the notorious Toronto Sun front-page headline which accompanied photos of Ryazanov and Dumani Ross in handcuffs: “Did Need for Speed Kill? Cops Say High Octane Videogame Found in Car of One 18-Year-Old Charged in Alleged Street-Racing Crash That Left Cabbie Dead” (Toronto Sun, 25 January 2006).12 In a vein similar to American politicians, law-enforcement figures, and media outlets pronouncing on the connection between the music of Marilyn Manson and the 1999 Columbine High School shooting,13 the Canadian media established in the minds of news audiences a link between the extreme driving in the videogame Need for Speed and the collision on Mount Pleasant Road. It was widely reported that the police seized not only the cars driven by the young men but also the videogame itself, which, it was said, the Crown might use as possible evidence of

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“state of mind.”14 This deliberate blurring of the everyday/night lives of Ryazanov and Dumani Ross with the fantastical life-worlds of videogames featuring extreme driving was a common theme in the media’s coverage of this collision and others. For several days after the collision, a variety of stories appeared in the media. Some of these focused on Kahn. News audiences learned a little about his life, including the fact that he was an immigrant from  Pakistan just days away from receiving his Canadian citizenship, and the devastated family he left behind. Indeed, the coverage mirrored that of most street-crime news stories involving “stranger” violence: an innocent (i.e., virtuous and honourable) victim harmed by a shameful and unscrupulous offender). Police and politicians, ­including Toronto Police Chief William Blair, Ontario Provincial Police ­Commissioner Giuliano Fantino, Toronto Mayor David Miller, Premier Dalton McGuinty, and even Prime Minister Stephen Harper, all spouted pieties about Kahn as a “model immigrant.” The portrayal of Kahn as a hard-working, devoted husband and father with dreams of a better life for himself and eventually his family in Canada idealized him as a victim. This process, often framed as “genuine concern,” “sympathy,” or “respect” for victims and their families, also serves the greater (and arguably truly intended) purpose of vilifying offenders/suspects. Hence the lauding of Kahn was actually a foil for the demonization of Ryazanov and Dumani Ross. Unlike the standardized strategy employed in narratives of Kahn’s victimization, the criminalization of Ryazanov and Dumani Ross departed considerably from conventional methods, in part because they were not “typical offenders.” The two young men came from privileged backgrounds, and hence the Lombrosian-­like pathologizing employed against young men from Jane and Finch, Keele and Eglinton, Rexdale, Malvern, Regent Park, or any other racially coded “at risk neighbourhood” would simply not be applicable. Instead, most of the coverage was devoted to a demonization of Ryazanov and Dumani Ross as spoiled rich kids. Media outlets regularly reported that they were university students, and while few mentioned the institutions they were currently attending (Ryerson University and York University), many identified them as graduates of the prestigious St Andrew’s private school in Aurora. Perhaps more telling was that stories made regular references to the fact that the two young men were racing their respective parents’ late-model Mercedes back to Ryazanov’s home near the Bridle Path, Toronto’s most exclusive residential street.

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Over the next couple of months, major Ontario media took every opportunity to include “street racing” in their coverage. There were numerous stories from other provinces alleged to involve street racing – stories that in a different political climate would have remained solely “local” news and “briefs.” So, too, the term “speed” was replaced by “street racing.” In a manner similar to the creation of the phrase “the new normal” by American media in the months following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the phrase “non-street-racing-related accident” entered the Ontario media lexicon. While the media, a few politicians, and moral entrepreneurs continued to beat the street-racing-epidemic drum, Klees’s private member’s bill eventually came to occupy the dustbin of public consciousness and legislative priorities. But the tragic deaths of Robert and Lisa Manchester of Newmarket on 27 May 2006 brought the issue back into the political mainframe. The Manchesters, a couple in their forties, were returning from their seventeenth-anniversary dinner shortly after 10 p.m. when their car was struck by a car driven by twenty-two-year old Ruben Rodrigues as they made a left turn off Yonge Street. Police alleged that Rodrigues was racing against a car driven by nineteen-year-old Marco Gasparro. The Manchesters’ car was torn apart by the impact, and, as in the case of Tahir Kahn, they were killed instantly. For a host of reasons, not least of which were the assumed social class and ethnicity of Gasparro and Rodrigues, the media’s demonization of these young men specifically and the construction of streetracing tribes generally was more overt than in the case of Ryazanov and Dumani Ross. It was also increasingly clichéd, mirroring the rhetoric of law enforcement and fictionalized Hollywood narratives. Again, the Toronto Sun led the way with a full-page photo of Rodri­ gues’s demolished red Honda, with his personalized plate “Redrocit”15 clearly visible, and the truism “speed kills” as its front-page headline (Toronto Sun, 28 May 2006). Despite, or perhaps because of, a court-­ ordered publication ban on evidence the police were collecting, media speculation was rampant. All the corporate news outlets highlighted the young men’s adoption of the aesethetic of street-racing tribes – and by extension their alleged connection to it. Among the most common strategies were recurring references to the cars driven by Gasparro and Rodrigues – modified Honda Civics with lowered suspensions, oversized tires, and aftermarket exhaust systems. Several outlets also took pains to document that the cars were adapted with air intakes to accommodate the use of high-octane fuel (with the concomitant allusions

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to “nitrous-oxide”). So too, as was the case in the coverage of the collision caused by Ryazanov and Dumani Ross, the media frequently reported excessive speeds, ranging from 140 to 150 km/h on a stretch of road zoned for 80 km/h. To dismiss this type of coverage as exceptional – somehow the sole purview of tabloids – is to miss broader trend towards sensationalized crime-news coverage which has accelerated rapidly over the course of the past decade. For example, in midJune CBC News Online, typically considered a bastion of journalistic integrity, featured street racing as part of its Indepth: Crime series.16 Entitled “Street Racing: Too fast, Too Furious,” the piece begins: “From Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones to even the 1978 musical Grease, street racing has been glamorized by a series of Hollywood movies. One recent example, the 2001 film The Fast and the Furious, centered on the Los Angeles street-racing subculture, spinning it into a souped-up international phenomenon, complete with action-packed video games for those too young to be behind the wheel. The reality, however, is much grittier. And it can be lethal.”17 On balance, while the piece is far less sensationalistic than most, it still relies upon trite Hollywood constructions and dubious American sources, blurred realities, and allusions to easily corrupted youth. Equal­ ly disturbing is that it uncritically parrots law- enforcement spokespeople and state techno-bureaucrats and leaves statistics and indeed the very concept of “street-racing” wholly unchallenged. A confluence of events at this time proved to be great fodder for politicians and media alike. On 15 June 2006 the federal Conservatives introduced Bill C-19, a proposed amendment to the Criminal Code to create new offences to combat the problem of street racing specifically. The following day, the third in the series of Fast and Furious films, Tokyo Drift, was released in Ontario’s cinemas. On the same day, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant presided over the destruction of two illegally modified Honda Civics in front of a huge media contingent.18 While there was considerable media coverage paid to the event, few sources informed news audiences that the vehicles had been seized separately, several years ago, and forfeited to the Crown under the Civil Remedies Act – legislation enacted in 2002 to combat organized crime, particularly illegal drugs, not street racing – as “instruments of unlawful activity.” Over the course of the remainder of 2006 and the first several months of the new year, following well-publicized speeding fatalities (again

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blamed on “street racing”) and calls to action from Harper, McGuinty, Bryant, Fantino, and others, Bill 203 received royal assent in June 2007. The Ontario Ministry of Transportation announced the creation of a new regulation under section 172 of the Highway Traffic Act (HTA) as part of the Safer Roads for a Safer Ontario Act. Ontario Regulation 455/07, HTA s.172, colloquially referred to as the “street-racing law,” redefined the terms “race,” “contest,” and “stunt.” In a press release, the MTO openly acknowledged that “while these terms already have their plain meaning, the regulation may allow that meaning to be further refined or clarified, or for certain activities to be excluded from the meaning of the terms.”19 In addition to severe and immediate sanction for “alleged” violators (e.g., immediate seven-day licence suspension and roadside vehicle seizure, as well as administrative costs associated with each), perhaps one of the most egregious components of the legislation was the modified definition of “street racing” to include “driving a motor vehicle at 50 km/h or more above the posted speed limit”20 The new law was implemented by the province at 12:01a.m. on 30 September 2007. Twenty-eight drivers were charged the first day. By the end of the month, more than 300 charges had been laid. Within a year, more than 7,000 drivers in Ontario had their licences suspended and their vehicles impounded; the following year, that number increased to 8,459. Flawed News Coverage and Moral Panics As indicated in the section on “Actors” above, the media is a significant factor in a moral panic. Their culpability lies not as genesis but as conduit. Instead of acting adversarily – as a watchdog on the provincial government on this issue – the Ontario media establishment behaved as a lapdog. With few exceptions, it failed to raise fundamental questions about the issue of street racing. In the first place, the core question should have focused on the very use of the term “street racing.” What exactly is street racing? Prior to this provincial legislation in 2007 and the federal government’s amendment to the Criminal Code, the term had no legal meaning. Even in the United States, which in many ways was far more advanced in its legislative approach to transgressive driving practices, no universal definition existed. Instead of raising this issue, the media allowed audiences to blindly flounder for meaning or, even more detrimentally, simply drew

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upon the murky cultural milieu of videogames, Hollywood films, and TV crime dramas. Under such conditions, it is little wonder that many people incorrectly associate street racing with organized activities (often including other, more serious, criminal endeavours) such as canyon running, drifting, and cannonballing. Images of a phalanx of luxury cars (Ferraris and Lamborghinis) or modifieds (Hondas, Toyotas, and Mitsubishis) weaving through busy city streets and highways, while terrified hockey moms, senior citizens, commuting businessmen, and other responsible road users are forced to swerve or pull over lest they become roadkill, was a staple mediated image. Connected to this is the cavalier way in which the media, again uncritically regurgitating the pronouncements by police spokespersons and politicians, spouted numbers. These included the speeds at which drivers were travelling, as well as fatality statistics. In both instances, even rudimentary investigation could have prevented some of this poor-quality coverage. For example, in the case of Ryazanov and Dumani Ross, the media cited witnesses who estimated the speed of the two Mercedes to be 140 km/h (in a 50 km/h zone), while in the case of Gasparro and Rodrigues reports of their Hondas travelling at 150 km/h (in a 80 km/h zone) abounded. Subsequent forensic reconstructions of the accident scenes quickly revealed that, while the two pairs of young men were definitely speeding, the speeds were well below that which the media reported (80 km/h and 100–112 km/h, respectively). The media’s fatality-statistics cadence was likewise an equally misleading piece of shoddy journalism. The most common mantra of 33 “street-racing” related deaths in Ontario between 1999–2007 could not be statistically corroborated because of the simple fact that there are no official Canadian statistics on this.21 The number “33” was provided not by Statistics Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, or any similar body, but rather by a spokesman at Project ERASE,22 a conglomeration of fifteen police departments in Ontario. Furthermore, even leaving the number aside, and respectfully acknowledging that thirty-three deaths are thirty-three too many, intellectual honesty demands that we recognize that this number pales in comparison to the over 7,300 “non-street-racing” motor-vehicle fatalities in Ontario over this same time period23 – fatalities attributed to far more banal, but considerably more insidious, driving practices: alcohol and/or other drug use, distraction, fatigue, impatience, inattentiveness, negligence, recklessness, and so on.

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The media was also guilty of glaring omissions concerning the “unconscious” nature of transgressive behaviour and impromptu facets of transgressive play. In other words, the coverage neglected to mention that: 1) motorists often “accidentally” speed; and 2) deliberate speeding is often fuelled by passion, not reason. In the first instance, the media failed to include in most of its coverage the simple fact that exceeding what many traffic experts agree is an archaically low speed limit (100  km/h) on provincial highways can easily occur inadvertently, especially when most road users are driving at between 120 and 130 km/ hr, or that there are qualitative differences in driving at 150+  km/h based on traffic volume, road conditions, season, weather, or time of day, among myriad other factors. Similarly, the fact that many regional roads in Ontario have speed limits of 80 km/h that then drop dramatically to 50 km/h, thereby consistently serving as fertile speed traps for police to catch inattentive motorists who were comfortably and safely driving at 100 km/h, was rarely raised. Second, not unlike most crime news, critical coverage of the mythology behind law’s deterrent effect was totally absent. Unequivocal acceptance of punitive measures ignores the fact that speeding (ironically, not unlike much violent crime) is frequently not premeditated. Instead, it is an immediate and emotional response. While many journalists were quick to indict, rightly, the hyper-masculinity work associated with excessive speed, none openly recognized the exhilarating, passionate, visceral desires that fuel it. Threats of an impounded vehicle, licence loss, and financial penalty, no matter how well promulgated, cannot dissuade someone from speeding in the heat of the moment. The media were also quite negligent in drawing the attention of news audiences to that which might be considered matters of law. Specifically, while there were occasional mentions regarding the application of the law, there was no studied consideration of the role of an individual police officer’s use of discretion in laying charges. Though there were certainly some officers who relished the new authority and vigorously applied the law, others may have eschewed it. Because police are the front-line agents of the justice system, their discretion is crucial in the application of law. And, as numerous pieces of empirical research demonstrate (and almost any Ontario motorist can undoubtedly attest), the reduction or inflation of motor-vehicle offences at any given traffic stop is only partially determined by law and objective fact. Equally, if not more, influential are numerous other factors such as the gender, ethnicity, age, social capital, and demeanour of the motorist; the

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make, model, type, and condition of the vehicle; and things as arbitrary as the emotional mood of the officer at the time s/he initiated the traffic stop. The media’s coverage of these and related issues were left wholly unexplored as they related to street racing. News audiences were not provided with any information about racial profiling, or any other kind of profiling, in the laying of charges. There was simply no contextual information provided on who was charged once the law took effect in October 2007. Even more egregious was the media’s categorical neglect of fundamental constitutional issues as they related to the new law. While journalists, like most Canadians, are not constitutional lawyers, it is still quite disheartening that the legislation’s rather glaring violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was completely absent from coverage as the bill made its way through the Ontario legislature and all but invisible during a subsequent court challenge in July 2009. A number of transgressive driving behaviours, such as those proscribed in Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act, are “absolute liability” offences. This means that it is not necessary for the Crown to establish the mental element of the offence. For example, if someone makes an improper left turn, but honestly did not see the sign prohibiting these turns, s/he is still guilty of the offence. Put another way, strict liability simply means that there is no defence to the charge; if someone commits the act then s/he is guilty. Capricious as they may appear, such laws continue to exist in free societies because the penalties are minor (in the case of the improper left turn in Ontario, the penalty is a $85 fine and 2 demerit points). News audiences should have been reminded (or informed!) that section 172(2) of the street-racing legislation, by specifying a jail term of up to six months, was in violation of the Charter guarantee that someone cannot be convicted of an “absolute liability” offence that is punishable by imprisonment.24 The final and perhaps most prescient issue was the complete absence of serious media investigation into the need (or lack thereof) for a new law to address street racing. Speeding and associated forms of reckless driving are not new phenomena, and laws against them have existed for almost as long as the province has regulated vehicular traffic. Prior to the enactment of this new law in late 2007, Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act clearly proscribed exceeding the posted speed limit, as well as other forms of transgressive driving, and provided for penalties including demerit points, licence suspension/revocation, and not insubstantial fines. Similarly, in instances where such behaviour resulted in collisions

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involving injury or death, Criminal Code provisions such as those addressing criminal negligence and dangerous driving were applicable. Consequently, the need for a new law was questionable at best. But the corporate news media failed to raise this fundamental question. Concluding Remarks As is evident, the corporate news media’s coverage of street racing proved to be quite poor. For a host of reasons ranging from training through professional socialization and editorial policy, journalists failed to ask the right (and, in some instances, any) questions of law-­ enforcement officials and politicians. The result was a myopic presentation of the topic, (understandably) ill-informed news audiences, politicians running roughshod, poorly allocated resources, and, ultimately, increased moral regulation and social control of Ontarians. However, it should be noted that there were bright spots in this otherwise bleak picture. There were a small number of journalists within the media establishment who provided news audiences with insightful analysis and commentary. Perhaps surprisingly, with few exceptions, they were not journalists typically assigned to “hard news” such as the crime beat or Queen’s Park, but rather those professionals relegated to what many people (both within the industry and outside of it) consider the margins. In this instance, it was “automotive journalists” who asked tough questions and raised complex issues. Of particular note were several pieces that appeared in the Toronto Star by writers including Tim Chisholm, Jim Kenzie, and Mark Richardson. Kenzie and Richardson each authored insightful pieces questioning the use of accident statistics by politicians and police, as well as challenging the overly simplistic mantra of “speed kills.” Both also exposed the empty threats of “car crushing” made by spokespersons from the attorney general’s office. Chisholm likewise provided a biting critique by demythologizing the rhetoric of politicians, and tactfully exposed some unpopular truths about the collision that claimed the lives of the Manchesters.25 Unfortunately, most of these pieces appeared solely in the Toronto Star’s weekend “Wheels” section, and/or its “Wheels.ca” website, and hence were likely overlooked by much of the news audience. As illustrated throughout much of this chapter, on the whole the news media failed miserably in providing news audiences with valuable heuristics related to the problem of street racing. Both tough and relatively rudimentary questions remained unasked. However, there

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were exceptions that offered some insight into the issue, and that can prove instructive in future instances of issues of law and government policies – not only matters of crime but also such diverse topics as environmental regulation, immigration policy, election practices, and municipal by-laws. NOTES 1 H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1920). 2 “Motor vehicle registrations, by province and territory,” Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/trade14beng.htm (last modified 29 June 2015); “Ontario Road Safety Annual Reports (ORSAR),” Ontario Ministry of Transportation, http://www.mto.gov .on.ca/english/publications/ontario-road-safety-annual-report.shtml (last modified 18 August 2015). 3 Dawn Rothe and Stephen L. Muzzatti, “Enemies Everywhere: Terrorism, Moral Panic and US Civil Society,” Critical Criminology: An International Journal 12, no. 3 (2004): 327. 4 Jock Young, “The Role of the Police as Amplifiers of Deviance, Negotiators of Drug Control as Seen in Notting Hill,” in Stanley Cohen, ed., Images of Deviance (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books 1971), 31. 5 Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1972), 9. 6 Ibid., 41. 7 Bonnie Berry, Social Rage: Emotion and Cultural Conflict (New York: Garland Publishing 1999). 8 Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, 2nd ed. (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons 2009), 137. 9 Rothe and Muzzatti, “Enemies Everywhere,” 337. 10 See Highway Traffic Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.8 http://www.ontario.ca/laws/ statute/90h08#BK264. 11 Ontario Ministry of Transportation, Road Safety Policy Office, Vehicles, Ontario Road Safety Annual Report (ORSAR), 2006. 12 Ironically, the advertising footer read, “The Excitement Starts Now” – ­offering 0 per cent financing on selected Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge ­vehicles, and featuring a graphic of two SUVs and a checkered race flag. 13 Stephen L. Muzzatti, “Cultural Criminology: Burning up Capitalism, Consumer Culture and Crime,” in Walter DeKeseredy and Molly

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14

15 16

17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

25

Dragiewicz, eds., The Handbook of Critical Criminology (London: Routledge 2012), 138–50. A legal phrase from the Latin animus nocendi, meaning the subjective state of mind of the author of a crime. This strategy is typically employed in an effort to establish premeditated violent behaviour. Rodrigues’s vehicle was red; hence the personalized plate was no doubt a play on “Red Rocket.” This pandering is particularly evident considering the other crime-related topics that the news site has featured, such as the “faint hope clause,” ­extradition, insider trading, human smuggling, and the federal pardon program. CBC, “Street Racing: Too Fast, Too Furious,” http://www.cbc.ca/news2/ background/crime/street-racing.html. As it turned out, Bryant was involved in a traffic collision fatality in August 2009 that resulted in the death of cyclist Darcy Allan Sheppard. The media could have easily employed one of their earlier constructions, “road-rage,” in their coverage of the event, but did not. Bryant was charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous driving causing death, but the charges were later withdrawn. Ministry of Transportation Regulation 455/07, http://www.ontariocanada .com/registry/view.do?postingId=980&language=en. See Highway Traffic Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.8., O. Reg. 455/07 http://www .ontario.ca/laws/regulation/070455. CBC. “Street Racing: Too fast, too furious.” Accessed January 5, 2016. http://www.cbc.ca/news2/background/crime/street-racing.html. ERASE is an acronym for Eliminate Racing Activities on Streets Everywhere. Calculation based on ORSAR’s “Persons Killed” statistics for 1999–2007. R. v. Raham, 2009 ONCJ 403. Despite this ruling, the government has indicated that it will continue to charge people and prosecute the cases until the Ontario Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada rules on the matter. Tim Chisholm, “A Hard Look at the ‘Street Racing’ Law,” Toronto Star, 17 November 2007, W24.

22 Representing Risk: Criminality, Violence, and Mental Illness in Canadian News-Media Reporting S a rah Ber r y an d Rob Wh it l e y

On 30 July 2009 Vince Weiguang Li killed a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus headed for Winnipeg, Manitoba. Details of the violent killing, which included the beheading and cannibalization of the victim, Tim McLean, were featured in headline news-media stories across broadcast, print, and online outlets in Canada and abroad. Since 2009, additional accounts of the incident, updates on related legal proceedings, and ongoing debates about the psychiatric status and legal accountability of Vince Weiguang Li have figured prominently in Canadian news media. During the summer of 2011, news that Vince Li was “responding well” to psychiatric treatment for schizophrenia and might face lighter security in the future met both support and vehement criticism in Canadian news-media reports.1 The details and reporting of the 2009 Greyhound bus killing are instructive on a number of levels, since they relate to news reporting and lay understandings of criminality, violence, and mental illness more generally. In this chapter, we marshal a wide range of evidence to disentangle the persistently associated subjects of crime, violence, and mental illness; we investigate rationales for their association; and we aim to provide compelling justifications and suggestions for alternative forms of news reporting on criminality, violence, and mental illness. Our discussions and arguments in this chapter are informed by immersion in relevant bodies of academic literature on associations among crime, violence, and mental illness, and by extensive practical engagement and consultations with Canadian media outlets and Canadian journalists. Moreover, they are influenced by our own work on a large-scale, longitudinal media-monitoring project examining representations of mental illness in the Canadian media, which has involved the collection and

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analysis of over twenty thousand mainstream news-media representations of mental illness. Mental Illness, Stigma, and Discrimination against Persons Living with Mental Illnesses in Canada Much research on the associations among criminality, violence, and mental illness is propelled by the notion of stigma. Mental-illness stigma is generally defined in terms of the negative ideas and stereotypes that exist about persons living with a mental illness. Stigma is identified as a major barrier preventing Canadians living with a mental illness from using mental-health services or social supports. The effects of stigma are reported to be wide-ranging and debilitating, and include discrimination against people living with a mental illness in employment, education, and housing, as well as the loss of friendships and of other social supports in one’s family, neighbourhood, and workplace.2 Moreover, discrimination and losses in these areas of life are alleged to work against the possibility of recovery from mental illness.3 To convey a sense of urgency in addressing the burdens and barriers of stigma and discrimination for persons living with a mental illness, facts about stigma are often presented alongside lifetime-prevalence estimates for mental illness. In Canada, for example, it is estimated that one in five Canadians will personally experience a mental illness over the course of his or her lifetime.4 These mental illnesses may include anxiety disorders, depression, personality disorders, schizophreniaspectrum disorders, and eating disorders. Evidently, rates of mental illness in Canada are estimated to be relatively high and to pose a wide range of social, emotional, and economic costs for all Canadians. Yet, anti-stigma activists and advocates point out that, in spite of such concerns about the prevalence and effects of mental illness, many persons who need mental-health services and/or social supports either cannot or do not access them. The most frequently discussed form of mental-illness stigma within recent scholarly treatises on the topic is external stigma.5 The term external indicates the source of stigma towards an individual experiencing mental distress, from the outside, as opposed to internalized or self-directed forms of stigma. External stigma is composed of negative attitudes and behaviours, including stereotypes.6 It is often expressed by the belief that mental illness is an indication of fundamental moral or character flaws.7 S.P. Hinshaw notes that, while stereotypes about

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mental illness may be based on factual information, they are most often based on overgeneralization and thus may be blatantly false.8 In scholarly accounts of stigma, authors commonly present the most significant and frequent stereotypes of mental illness, and then work to demonstrate how such stereotypes are based on unreasoning, overgeneralization, and misrepresentation.9 Where stereotypes are alleged to lie at the heart of mental illness, much empirical research has focused on public attitudes to examine their content.10 In a survey of public attitudes published in 2000, A.H. Crisp notes that most negative public opinion is centred on fear of dangerousness, and that schizophrenia and substance-use disorder (including “alcoholism”) were among the most feared disorders.11 Unpredictability is another common stereotype identified by Crisp, and one that was specifically linked to the above disorders. Crisp’s findings are supported by a number of later studies – including a review of public attitudes towards mental illness over fifteen years12 – all of which demonstrate recurring stereotypical themes of dangerousness and unpredictability. Of particular note is the finding that symptoms of schizophrenia and psychotic disorders are more often understood to be a symptom of serious mental illness – and to be feared and stigmatized – than are symptoms of depression or alcoholism, which are considered to be less serious disorders.13 Where stigma concerns depression or anxiety disorders, the nature of associated public attitudes is markedly different and involves beliefs of dependency on others and feelings of pity.14 While there exists a generalized stated desire for increased social distance from individuals with mental illness, this desire is based more on ideas of character weakness when it is investigated in relation to depression and anxiety, versus fears of dangerousness and unpredictability related to schizophrenia.15 The media, “both factual and fictional,” are also held to be primary sources of mental-illness stigma, with an alleged propensity for reporting that is “inaccurate and unbalanced.”16 This tendency is linked to the notion that sensationalism sells in news reporting, and thus journalists and media producers are often blamed for responding to market pressures and profit motives with stories about mental illness that are lurid, sensationalized, or simply incorrect in order to sell their media products.17 Stigmatizing media sources are also held to lack the voices and perspectives of people living with mental illness, while promoting stereotypical ideas of people living with mental illness as dangerous, violent, and unpredictable.18

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In the following sections, we provide an overview of relevant empirical evidence as it relates to media representations of mental illness, crime, and violence, and then we attempt to unravel the alleged association among these variables by addressing questions of causation, directionality, and the relative incidence of crime and violence among persons living with a mental illness. Media Representations of Crime, Violence, and Mental Illness Since the late 1950s, researchers have examined representations of mental illness and the potential consequences of such representations for laypersons and professionals.19 J. Nunnally was among the first researchers to examine the content of media representations of mental illness and to discuss the potential consequences of such representations for various groups in society.20 Nunnally employed content analyses in the late 1950s to examine journalists’ understandings of mental illness, and concluded that journalists and mental-health experts differed in their comprehension of mental illness. He claimed that media “inaccuracies” (taking for granted that biomedical understandings, in contrast, are accurate versions of reality) in portraying mental illness were potentially harmful in shaping lay ideas and individuals’ experiences of mental illness. More recently, researchers have underlined, not only the ongoing importance of mass media in shaping public perceptions of mental illness and treatment, but also the persistent negative and stigmatizing themes that characterize most media images. Following Nunnally’s pioneering work in the 1950s and 1960s, clusters of research studies in the 1980s analysed depictions of mental illness in print (i.e., newspapers and periodicals) and broadcast (i.e., television and radio) media.21 Like Nunnally, these researchers generally used content analysis to examine media representations. They also echoed Nunnally’s broad conclusions about the negative content and potentially harmful effects of such portrayals on understandings and lived experiences of mental illness. D.M. Day and S. Page’s (1986) Canadian study of 103 media portrayals in 8 different newspapers demonstrated that persons with lived experience of a mental illness are most often understood as lacking in a social identity, are portrayed as bereft of positive attributes, and are generally depicted as subhuman, one-dimensional characters.22 More recent studies of print-news portrayals of mental illness in the 1990s, while substantially larger in sample size (up to 1,000 stories,

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compared to earlier samples of around 100), have reached similar conclusions about the negative content of media stories. In one of the larger studies of media portrayals of mental illness conducted to date, Gary Ward examined 1,035 print-news portrayals of mental illness over the course of a one-year period (1996).23 Ward found that, in nearly half of the sample, authors negatively associated criminality, violence, and mental illness, and that such a focus was grossly disproportionate to the much smaller number of violent acts committed annually by persons with a mental illness in the United Kingdom.24 In a similar study of the Australian media, M. Hazelton collected 490 articles on mental-health issues in two Australian newspapers published in 1994, and concluded that the vast majority of articles fit into a category of “disorder, crisis, and risk.”25 Themes of risk – as identified by Ward (1997), Hazelton (1997), and others (such as W. Blood and K. Holland in 2004) – predominate as significant categories across the majority of research on media and mental illness, and are frequently associated with terms such as violence, fear, criminality, murder, crisis, disorder, unpredictability, and danger.26 Indeed, journalistic attention towards mental illness commonly centres on alleged risks of persons living with mental illness to the public, and is linked to a wider mental-health crisis that has allegedly arisen in the wake of deinstitutionalization movements. Instead of being presented with facts about the relative accessibility or quality of existing community mental-healthcare services or the needs of mental-health-care consumers, media audiences may be left with the impression that shifts towards community mental-health care pose a risk to public safety by letting loose ostensibly unpredictable and criminally volatile persons. To determine the role of the Australian mainstream press in constructing knowledge about mental illness for their readers, Blood and Holland examined two instances of escapes from an Australian psychiatric unit in 2001.27 These escapees were individuals diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, both of whom had also been convicted of separate murders and had been deemed unfit to stand trial. The authors’ conclusions, which resonate strongly with existing research in the field, point out that journalists’ framings of these and other similar events are “damaging to community understanding of mental health and illness because they explicitly linked all mental illness to violence and murder” and, furthermore, that “unfortunately, this is an all too familiar but unfounded and misinformed theme in international news discourse.”28

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Key Themes in Media Coverage of Mental Illness Three specific themes figure prominently within the existing empirical research on media and mental illness over the past several decades: 1) an emphasis on violent, unpredictable, and criminal behaviours; 2) inaccurate or inappropriate portrayals of mental-illness experiences or psychiatric diagnostic categories; and 3) an overwhelming lack of voice in media coverage for persons with lived experience of mental illness, or, in rare cases where such persons are cited, sensationalist and stigmatizing coverage. Otto Wahl summarizes the weight of these negative and stigmatizing media representations by arguing that “the public, based on what they see in the news media, are likely to presume that people with mental illness are primarily burdens to society and incapable of contributing in positive ways to their communities.”29 It is thought that a steady diet of negative and sensationalist coverage of mental illness can lead to unfounded rejection and fear of persons with mental illness, based on media associations made between criminality, violence, and mental illness. Wahl notes that “exposure to even a single media image of violent mental illness seemed to increase the expectation that those labeled mentally ill are particularly likely to do physical harm to others and to make the media consumer more fearful of those so labeled.”30

Violent, Unpredictable, and Criminal Behaviours Among the most persistent negative themes perpetuated by media are the frequent associations made by journalists among crime, violence, unpredictability, and mental illness. Journalists overwhelmingly depict persons with lived experience of mental illness as inherently or unusually prone to violence and/or criminality. Media coverage of crimes often involves speculation as to whether individuals who commit and/ or are suspected of having committed criminal activity are mentally ill, even in the absence of any evidence that they have a formal diagnosis. Conversely, where a crime is committed by a person with lived experience of a mental illness, mental illness is often discussed as a “master status”; that is, individuals are represented as being devoid of positive attributes, as inherently irrational and unpredictable, and as unable or unlikely to recover. C. Francis and colleagues conclude that, despite variations in the methodological approaches and sample sizes used by researchers over

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the past several decades, the vast majority of studies demonstrate a preponderance of highly negative and stigmatizing representations of mental illness in the news media, entertainment media, and popular literature.31 They note that, in particular, “there was found to be a strong link between mental illness and violence in the media images.”32 Riley Olstead concurs, stating that “newspaper text is replete with formulations of mental illness that consistently associate it with criminality.”33 According to P.W. Corrigan et al., these media images are often given prominent (front-page) placing within newspapers, which serves to amplify their negative effects on public understandings of mental illness.34 Corrigan and colleagues, who conducted a large (3,353 stories) six-week comparative national probability sample of print-news media, also note that nearly a quarter of all stories that discuss crime, violence, and mental illness focus on violent crime.35 To put into perspective the frequency of associations that are made in the media among violence, criminality, and mental illness, D.R. Edney points out that news media overall are not generally dominated by stories about crime; rather, news stories about crime that feature persons with lived experience of a mental illness are given greater and more negative attention.36 Edney cites the empirical work of D. Rose, who found that the vast majority (nearly two-thirds) of all news reports involving persons with psychiatric diagnoses could be classified as crime news.37 Importantly, however, Edney notes that, when Rose examined news coverage on the whole, “only 10% of stories were ‘crime news,’ with the other 90% of stories revolving around issues unrelated to crime or violence, such as politics, entertainment, and health.”38 Stories linking mental illness with violence, crime, and unpredictability are generally framed in a way that sets up a dichotomy between non-mentally-ill, non-violent, and non-criminal persons (Us), on the one hand, and dangerous, mentally ill “others” (Them) who commit crimes, on the other.39 Olstead argues that this ideological opposition is constructed through the use of a range of textual techniques that apportion individual agency and responsibility simultaneously – and incongruously – to calculating yet irrational mentally ill persons.40 Such oppositional frames are supported by the absence of contextual information about mental health and illness that might clarify readers’ understandings of the complex issues connected to a criminal or violent act.41 Blood and Holland ask, for example, whether we learn “alongside treatment of the specific [violent, criminal] events, that people diagnosed with

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mental illness are more likely to be a danger to themselves and are more likely to be victims of crime rather than perpetrators.”42 A majority of studies demonstrates the persistence and high frequency of negative associations among crime, violence, and mental illness. Nonetheless, as a counterpoint to this empirical work, some authors argue that such trends are gradually attenuating. Corrigan, for example, contends that newspapers are reporting fewer stories about persons with lived experience of a mental illness as dangerous, and that some now include advocacy themes (such as a shortage of public mental-health resources, or lack of good-quality care) in their reports.43 Furthermore, Corrigan argues that fewer stories assign blame to individuals (or their families) for their mental illness and/or behaviours and instead discuss various biological, genetic, or environmental causes of mental illness.

Absent, Inaccurate, or Homogeneous Portrayals of Mental Illness Empirical work on media and mental illness over the past several decades highlights a range of concerns around the accuracy of portrayals of persons with lived experience of mental illness. In some cases, media authors are criticized for misusing or casually using psychiatric labels in ways that stigmatize persons with lived experience of a mental illness.44 Criminal insanity and paranoid schizophrenia, in particular, are –according to Blood and Holland – “perpetually viewed and/ or labeled as ‘security risks.’”45 Wahl adds that, where symptoms are misrepresented or inaccurately linked to particular disorders, misunderstandings can hinder public understanding of both mental-illness experiences and of the potential for recovery and/or rehabilitation.46 It is feared that individuals living with a mental illness, and those close to them, might also fail to recognize the onset of specific disorders owing to confusion over symptoms; or, conversely, behaviours linked to a particular disorder such as schizophrenia may be perceived as “unrelated to the illness, and therefore without a reasonable cause.”47

Absent Voices or Sensationalist Citations of Persons with Lived Experience of a Mental Illness Persons living with a mental illness rarely have a voice in media coverage. Almost without exception, authors of empirical work on media

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and mental illness highlight an ongoing failure to include the voices of persons with lived experience of mental illness in media reports.48 A George Mason University Media Group study of mental-illness coverage, for example, found that only 7 per cent of all stories about mental illness included the voices of mental-health-care consumers.49 A similar newspaper study conducted in Alberta over a three-month period found that the voice of a person with a mental illness was present in only one of the seventy-two articles evaluated.50 Edney concludes that “the scarcity of first-person accounts by people with mental illnesses in these stories limits the perspective available to readers and conveys a false impression that people with mental illnesses are incapable of developing opinions and speaking on their own behalf.”51 Olstead has also found that very few persons who are identified as mentally ill are given opportunities to voice their opinions about mental illness in media texts.52 Such a disparity, he argues, demonstrates “the privilege afforded to certain people to speak about mental illness in the media.”53 Inaccurate, albeit well-intentioned or sympathetic, representations may also be harmful to persons with lived experience of mental illness.54 Edney argues that, “although the character may be presented in a sympathetic way, the inaccurate depiction can hinder the public’s understanding of mental illness and of people living with psychiatric diagnoses.”55 Furthermore, journalists’ neglect to use specific diagnoses of mental illness and their preference for using sweeping generalizations such as “psychiatric patient,” “crazy,” or “the mentally ill” have been cited as potentially problematic for all persons with lived experience of a mental illness: “In the absence of a clear diagnosis, audiences are left to generalize from one particular description of behaviours to all people with mental illness.”56 Canadian Media Representations of Mental Illness, 2005–11 Our own work on a large-scale, multi-year analysis of Canadian mainstream-media representations of mental illness lends credence to some of the findings and themes discussed here in relation to mental illness, crime, and violence, and has also uncovered new findings.57 The aim of the project, funded by the Mental Health Commission of Canada and supported by the commission’s Opening Minds anti-stigma initiative, was to determine whether, and to what extent, print-media representations of mental illness in Canada are stigmatizing towards persons with lived experience of mental illness.

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The study is ongoing and has involved the collection of over twenty thousand articles from online and print versions of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers such as the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, and the Calgary Sun, dating from 2005 to 2015. These newspaper articles were collected using a large online media database, FPInfomart, which allows for the retrieval of archived media materials from a wide range of Canadian and international media outlets, using keywords such as “mental illness,” “mentally ill,” “schizophrenia,” and “schizophrenic.” Each article was printed out and coded using a coding scheme designed to collect identifying information about the articles (i.e., form of media, length of article, placing of article) and content of the articles. A number of questions were included in the coding scheme to address questions related to stigma, violence, and criminality, and to measure the degree to which journalists contextualized information related to mental illness. Questions focused on whether journalists discussed factors such as the availability of mental-health services and resources, whether they included quotations from persons with lived experience of mental illness and/or mental-health experts, and whether they discussed the aetiology and treatment of mental illness. Although the collection and coding of articles is ongoing, for the purposes of this chapter we focus on a subset of the data which has been rigorously analysed. This includes 11,263 media articles from January 2005 to 31 December 2010.58 We found that people living with a mental illness most often did not have a voice in articles about mental illness, and that the possibility of their recovery or rehabilitation was rarely mentioned. Moreover, there was an absence of discussion of contextual factors such as resource shortages and/or the quality of existing care and services for persons living with mental illness. Finally, frequent associations were made between danger, violence, criminality, and mental illness – and specifically schizophrenia. Recovery and/or rehabilitation were discussed in only 18 per cent of the media representations reviewed. Danger, violence, and criminality, on the other hand, were featured more prominently throughout the media representations reviewed, where approximately 40 per cent of the stories involved a negative and stigmatizing association between these variables and mental illness. Contextualizing factors – such as a lack of access to mental-health services – that may help to explain severity of symptoms of mental distress or violent behaviours were rarely mentioned. Shortages of resources, poor quality of care, and/or poor access to care for persons living with mental illness, for example, were

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mentioned in 29 per cent of the media representations reviewed. This absence exists in spite of the fact that in Canada resource shortages and barriers to accessing timely and quality care for mental-health issues and crises are well documented in the empirical mental-health literature.59 Perhaps even more significant, however, were our findings related to the exclusion of voices of persons with lived experience of mental illness. Despite the fact that this group can contribute to improved understandings of mental-illness experiences, treatments, and recovery/ rehabilitation possibilities, they were not regularly directly quoted or even paraphrased. Eighty-three per cent of the articles lacked a quotation or paraphrased statement from someone with a mental illness. Mental Illness, Risk, and Stigma: Addressing Questions of Causation, Directionality, and Relative Incidence At the heart of debates around media representations of mental illness, and of stigmatizing or discriminatory approaches to persons living with a mental illness, are most often the notions of risk and fear. As demonstrated in the preceding discussions of media analyses, mental illness is commonly represented in association with criminality and violence in ways that imply an inherent and/or inevitable propensity for violence among persons living with a mental illness. The notion that mental illness is a direct cause of violence and crime, however, and the idea that rates of crime and violence are substantially higher among persons living with a mental illness are contested in empirical work. As Blood and Holland note, “news coverage of risks is selective and research has demonstrated that in reporting risk stories (as with most news) the news media do not simply reflect expert assessment of risk or parallel ‘official’ risk incidence data.”60 Within the empirical research on crime, violence, and mental illness, two important themes emerges in relation to the nature of the association between these variables: 1) where crime, violence, and mental illness do significantly co-occur, mental illness may not necessarily be the direct cause of violence or criminality; 2) where mental illness is theorized to be a direct cause of violence or criminality, it is important to investigate the context within which such violence or criminality was produced, particularly in terms of availability of mental-health resources and supportive services. The first point to consider in relation to the alleged links among crime, violence, and mental illness is that, where higher rates of crime

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or violence are found in empirical research, it is necessary to assess these findings in terms of their potential relationship to confounding variables. Mental illness alone has been found to be a poor predictor of criminality and violence. In some cases where authors present significant correlations between mental illness and crime or violence, they also note other factors that are more reliable predictors of violence, including gender, marital status, substance use, ethnicity, and age.61 Of these factors, alcohol and other substance-use issues are consistently the most significant confounders discussed. Increased risk of violence has been found among individuals with a mental illness and concurrent substance use;62 however, where mental illness and substance use do not co-occur, rates of violence are most often comparable to those within the general population.63 In the absence of a concurrent substance-use disorder, therefore, there is scant evidence that persons with a mental illness are more likely to commit a crime than anyone else in the general population.64 In fact, the most important socio-demographic indicators of criminal violence in Canada include being male, young, and single.65 Where subgroups of individuals are overrepresented – including Aboriginal persons, those with low educational attainment, or individuals with substanceuse issues66 – a complex constellation of social and economic variables – including racism and discrimination – are theorized to contribute to criminal violence. As Wahl points out, it is necessary to consider the overall context of a person’s life that might contribute to a greater likelihood to engage in violent or criminal behaviours.67 Mental illness may in fact co-occur with crime and violence as a result of a complex set of preceding factors that include a history of abuse, violence, poverty, homelessness, and discrimination. These contextual factors may increase the probability of violence among very specific groups of persons who live with a mental illness, but mental illness itself may not be the direct cause of such outcomes.68 S. Fazel and colleagues, for example, argue that having a family history of violence could be a significant “confusion factor” for any association between schizophrenia and violence, and E.B. Elbogen and S.C. Johnson contend that subgroup, clinical, and historic-contextual factors such as previous victimization, unemployment, and precarious living conditions contribute to an association for some persons.69 Any allegedly inherent propensity for violence or criminality among people diagnosed with schizophrenia, therefore, may be better explained by contextual rather than intrinsic factors. Social and economic disadvantage and low educational

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attainment – common among people diagnosed with schizophrenia – are predictors of criminality. Moreover, when rates of crime among people living with schizophrenia are examined, they may be found to be significantly elevated but non-violent in nature. J.S. Brekke and colleagues found that, while most (more than half of) people living with schizophrenia living in the community had been charged with offences, these offences rarely involved violence.70 In addition, similar predictors of crime within the general population – including younger age, residential insecurity, homelessness, and low social functioning – are similar predictors of crime among persons diagnosed with schizophrenia.71 The second overarching point to consider – in sharp contrast to the straightforward associations among mental illness, crime, and violence that some news- media coverage often promotes – is whether resources or supports were available to someone for whom mental illness is theorized to be a direct cause of violence or criminality. Empirical work demonstrates that higher propensity to criminality or violence can be accounted for by co-variation with and the intervention of other historical and ongoing challenges faced by persons living with a mental illness.72 Such challenges may include barriers to accessing timely and good-quality care, which may in turn lead to more severe symptoms and desperate or extreme behaviours, including an increase in the risk of harming oneself or others. In Canada, specifically, access to mentalhealth-care services is unevenly distributed and in many cases much lower than demand.73 Finally, it is critically important to keep in mind that, although some human acts may be incomprehensible, it does not follow that the persons who engage in them are mentally ill.74 It is important not only for journalists but also for members of the lay public to avoid the tendency to immediately associate such abhorrent or disturbing acts with the mental-health status of their perpetrators. While associations among mental illness, crime, and violence may function to provide some psychological reassurance about the relative predictability of experiencing crime and violence within society,75 people living with various forms of mental distress often do not display any strikingly violent or eccentric behaviours, despite the claims presented within fictional media.76 Context and Voices to Improve Media Coverage The introduction and discussion of contextual factors within media coverage of mental illness, violence, and crime can contribute a great deal

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towards putting into perspective any violent behaviours and criminal acts involving persons living with a mental illness. Given the current pervasiveness of negative attitudes, fears, and acts against persons living with mental illness, it is well worth the effort to discuss the complexities of such associations among mental illness, crime, and violence. Incidents such as the killing of Tim McLean in 2008 are tragic, abhorrent, and deeply disturbing. They are extremely rare events, however, and require careful attention to the complex contexts in which they occur, and the ways in which mental illness is understood and represented as either correlational or directly causative of crime and violence. Journalists can provide an overall context for such events by providing statistics that put into relative terms any alleged propensity for violence among persons living with a mental illness, and by introducing the notion of potential confounders such as substance use. Citing a specific psychiatric diagnosis, or including sensationalist descriptions of symptoms, contribute less to public understandings of mental distress than do broader attempts at understanding how often violent crimes related to forms of mental distress are likely to occur, or what could be done to prevent such events in the future. Contextual information provides an entrée into deeper public understandings of both relative risk and prevention. The relative availability and quality of resources (including mentalhealth-care services and social supports) that are available to persons living with a mental illness are critical contextual factors to consider in relation to associations among violence, crime, and mental illness. Lack of care or poor quality of care may in extreme cases lead to more severe symptoms or behaviours and to an increased possibility of harming oneself or others. As contextual factors, the availability and quality of care is particularly important. In the case of Vince Li, a journalist might raise questions about whether Li was able to access supportive mental-health services, and if so, whether such services were of sufficient quality to be impactful. Reports claim that Li has responded to treatment since the murder of Tim McLean, and therefore one might ask whether, if Li had been able to access earlier or better supports sooner, Tim McLean’s death could have been prevented. By raising such questions, public insight might be gained into broader issues surrounding the relative accessibility and quality of mental-health-care services in Canada. Finally, the voices of persons living with various forms of mental distress and psychiatrically diagnosed illness are important to integrate

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within coverage of mental illness. Our research, in line with previous empirical work, demonstrates that there is an ongoing silence with respect to the experiences and insights of persons with mental illness – and their advocates – within media sources, and particularly in the news media. The othering and scapegoating of all persons living with mental distress and illness is less easily accomplished when the voices and stories of such individuals – including barriers to support and treatment, experiences of discrimination, and also tales of recovery, rehabilitation, and healing – are included and heard. Some of our work with the Mental Health Commission of Canada has involved workshops with Canadian journalism students which, to improve mental-health reporting, have included the voices and stories of persons living with a mental illness. It is our hope that dialogues such as these will promote increased understanding of the challenges that persons living with mental illness face in Canada, but also draw attention to stories of recovery and the importance of their inclusion in the landscape of Canadian mainstream news-media coverage. Nonetheless, there remain significant systemic challenges to improving news reporting and to including more contextualized information for particularly horrific events. Contemporary constraints on media practice include shrinking newsrooms, fewer editorial staff, and increasing workloads and overlapping deadlines for journalists, all coupled with shorter timelines for writing news stories and a seemingly insatiable, twenty-four-hour demand for news. To demand additional context from a court reporter charged with texting news stories in realtime, often via Twitter or other social-media forms, seems out of touch and unreasonable. To navigate and overcome these boundaries will require continued dialogue, a measure of creativity and will, and attention to spaces of possibility for intervention. Conclusion As Blood and Holland point out, media production and news framing are dynamic cultural processes that reflect decisions not only about what is considered to be newsworthy but also about newsroom pressures and cultural assumptions related to media audiences.77 In addition, current media coverage of mental illness and notions of madness draw upon centuries of ideas about mental distress and functioning. There are no easy answers or formulas that will immediately work to combat discrimination, or that will so easily disentangle the pervasiveness

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of associations among mental illness, criminality, and violence; however, the stakes are immeasurably high for persons struggling to manage symptoms of mental distress while also shouldering the burdens and barriers of discrimination and neglect, and for all Canadians whose lives are indirectly affected (known or not) as a result. Fair, responsible, and careful media coverage of the issues discussed here may serve as important, symbolic, and tangible steps away from discrimination, towards the socio-cultural and political changes that will be necessary to vastly improve perceptions, care, and treatment of mental-health issues in Canada. NOTES 1 “Bus Beheader Responds to Treatment: Psychiatrist,” Canadian Press, 30 May 2011, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2011/ 05/30/mb-bus-beheading-vince-li.html. 2 Ibid. 3 Rob Whitley and Robert E. Drake, “Recovery: A Dimensional Approach,” Psychiatric Services 61 (2010): 1248–50. doi: 10.1176 4 M. Kirby and W. Keon, “Report 1, Mental Health, Mental Illness and Addiction: Overview of Policies and Programs in Canada (Chapter 5)” (Interim Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, Ottawa, 2008). 5 P. Corrigan, On the Stigma of Mental Illness: Practical Strategies for Research and Social Change (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association 2005). 6 P. Corrigan and R. Lundin, Don’t Call Me Nuts: Coping with the Stigma of Mental Illness (Champaign, Ill.: Urbana Press 2001); Corrigan, On the Stigma of Mental Illness; S.P. Hinshaw, The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change (New York: Oxford University Press 2007). 7 O. Wahl, “Mental Health Consumers’ Experiences of Stigma,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 25 (1999): 15. 8 Hinshaw, The Mark of Shame. 9 Corrigan, On the Stigma of Mental Illness; Hinshaw, The Mark of Shame; H. Stuart, J. Arboleda-Florez, and N. Sartorius, Paradigms Lost: Fighting the Stigma and the Lessons Learned (New York: Oxford University Press 2012). 10 A.H. Crisp, M.G. Gelder, S. Rix, H.I. Meltzer, and O.J. Rowlands, “Stigma­ tisation of People with Mental Illnesses,” British Journal of Psychiatry 177 (2000); N. Satorious and H. Schulze, Reducing the Stigma of Mental Illness:

362  Covering Canadian Crime A Report from a Global Association (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005); M.C. Angermeyer and S. Dietrich, “Review Article: Public Beliefs about and Attitudes towards People with Mental Illness: A Review of Population Studies,” Acta Scandinavica 11 (2006): 3; P. Corrigan, K.J. Powell, and P.J. Michaels, “The Effects of News Stories on the Stigma of Mental Illness,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 201 (2013): 3. 11 Crisp, Gelder, Rix, Meltzer, and Rowlands, “Stigmatisation of People with Mental Illnesses.” 12 Angermeyer and Dietrich, “Review Article,” 3. 13 Ibid., 165. 14 Ibid. 15 R.M. Norman, R. Sorrentino, D. Windell, and R. Manchanda, “Are Personal Values of Importance in the Stigmatization of People with Mental Illness?” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 53 (2008): 12. 16 H. Stuart, “Stigma and the Daily News: Evaluation of a Newspaper Intervention,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 48 (2003): 10. 17 Ibid. See also S. Harper, Madness, Power and the Media: Class, Gender and Race in Popular Representations of Mental Distress (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2009); and S. Cross, Mediating Madness: Mental Distress and Cultural Representation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2010), for further discussions of the difficulties of demanding media “accuracy” in news reporting. 18 Robert Whitley and Sarah Berry, “Trends in Newspaper Coverage of Mental Illness in Canada: 2005–2011,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 58, no. 2 (2013). 19 H.M. Sampietro, “Mental Illness and Violence in the Media: An Illicit Association?” Quaderns de Psicologia 12, no. 1 (2010). 20 J. Nunnally, “The Communication of Mental Health Information: A Comparison of the Opinions of Experts and the Public with Mass Media Presentations,” Behavioral Science 2, no. 3 (1957): 222–30. doi: 10.1002; J.C. Nunnally, Jr, Popular Conceptions of Mental Health: Their Development and Change, 8th ed. (Oxford, U.K.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1961). 21 L.P. Fruth, “Portrayals of Mental Illness in Daytime Television Serials,” Journalism Quarterly 62 (1985); D.M. Day and S. Page, “Portrayal of Mental Illness in Canadian Newspapers,” Can Journal of Psychiatry 31 (1986): 813– 17; M. Matas, N. Guebaly, D. Harper, M. Green, and A. Peterkin, “Mental Illness and the Media: Content Analysis of Press Coverage of Mental Health Topics,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 31 (1986): 431–3. 22 Day and Page, “Portrayal of Mental Illness in Canadian Newspapers.”

Representing Risk 363 23 Gary Ward, “Making Headlines: Mental Health and the National Press” (London: Health Education Authority Report 1997). 24 Ibid. 25 M. Hazelton, “Reporting Mental Health: A Discourse Analysis of Mental Health-Related News in Two Australian Newspapers,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Mental Health Nursing 6, no. 2 (1997): 73–89. 26 Ward, “Making Headlines: Mental Health and the National Press”; Hazelton, “Reporting Mental Health”; W. Blood and K. Holland, “Risky News, Madness and Public Crisis,” Journalism 5, no. 3 (2004): 323–42. 27 Blood and Holland, “Risky News, Madness and Public Crisis.” 28 Ibid. 29 D.R. Edney, ed., “Mass Media and Mental Illness: A Literature Review,” Canadian Mental Health Association Report (Toronto, 2004). 30 Otto Wahl, Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press 1995). 31 C. Francis, J. Pirkis, D. Dunt, and R.W. Blood, “Mental Health and Illness: A Review of the Literature” (Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing Report, Canberra, 2001). 32 Ibid., 31. 33 Riley Olstead, “Contesting the Text: Canadian Media Depictions of the Conflation of Mental Illness and Criminality,” Sociology of Health & Illness 24 (2002): 611. 34 Corrigan, On the Stigma of Mental Illness. 35 Ibid. 36 Edney, ed., “Mass Media and Mental Illness.” 37 D. Rose, “Television, Madness, and Community Care,” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 8, no. 3 (1998): 213–28, in Edney, ed., “Mass Media and Mental Illness.” 38 Ibid. 39 Blood and Holland, “Risky News, Madness and Public Crisis”; Olstead, Contesting the Text,” 641. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 339. 43 Corrigan, On the Stigma of Mental Illness, 555. 44 Wahl, Media Madness, 87. 45 Blood and Holland, “Risky News, Madness and Public Crisis,” 329. 46 Wahl, Media Madness, 87. 47 Edney, ed., “Media and Mental Illness,” 6.

364  Covering Canadian Crime 48 Heather Stuart, “Media Portrayal of Mental Illness and Its Treatments: What Effect Does It Have on People with Mental Illness?” CNS Drugs 20 (2006); R. Nairn, “Does the Use of Psychiatrists as Sources of Information Improve Media Depictions of Mental Illness? A Pilot Study,” Australian and New Zealand journal of Psychiatry 33, no. 4 (1999): 583–9; Otto Wahl, “News Media Portrayal of Mental Illness,” American Behavioral Scientist 46 (2003); R. Nairn and J. Coverdale, “People Never See Us Living Well: An Appraisal of the Personal Stories about Mental Illness in a Prospective Print Media Sample,” Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 39, no. 4 (2005): 281–7. 49 Wahl, “News Media Portrayal of Mental Illness.” 50 E.I. Hottentot, “Print Media Portrayal of Mental Illness: An Alberta Study” (Draft Report, Canada, 2000), in Edney, ed., “Mass Media and Mental Illness.” 51 Edney, ed., “Mass Media and Mental Illness.” 52 Olstead, “Contesting the Text,” 640. 53 Ibid. 54 Edney, ed., “Mass Media and Mental Illness,” 5. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., 6. 57 Ibid. 58 Whitley and Berry, “Trends in Newspaper Coverage of Mental Illness in Canada.” 59 Michael Kirby, “Mental Health in Canada: Out of the Shadows Forever,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 178 (2008): 1320–2; H.M. Vasiliadis, A. Lesage, C. Adair, et al., “Service Use for Mental Health Reasons: CrossProvincial Differences in rates, Determinants, and Equity of Access,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry/Revue Canadienne de Psychiatrie 50, no. 10 (2005): 614–19; Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Access & Wait Times in Child and Youth Mental Health: A Background Paper,” Canadian Institute for Health Information (Ottawa, 2010). 60 Blood and Holland, “Risky News, Madness and Public Crisis,” 324. 61 Wessely (1998), Fazel and Grann (2006), and Etschel, Shoech, and Soyka (2008), as cited in Sampietro, “Mental Illness and Violence in the Media.” 62 E.B. Elbogen and S.C. Johnson, “The Intricate Link between Violence and Mental Disorder: Results from the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions,” Archives of General Psychiatry 66 (2009): 2; S. Fazel, N. Langstrom, A. Hjern, et al., “Schizophrenia, Substance Abuse, and Violent Crime,” JAMA 301 (2009).

Representing Risk 365 63 Canadian Mental Health Association, “Violence and Mental Health: Unpacking a Complex Issue,” http://ontario.cmha.ca/public_policy/ violence-and-mental-health-unpacking-a-complex-issue/#.VO5vDsbtqUc. 64 J. Arboleda-Flórez, H.L. Holley, and A. Crisanti, “Mental Illness and Violence: Proof or Stereotype” (Health Promotion and Programs Branch Report, Health Canada, 1996); H.J. Steadman, E.P. Mulvey, J. Monahan, et al., “Violence by People Discharged from Acute Psychiatric Inpatient Facilities and by Others in the Same Neighborhoods,” Archives of General Psychiatry 55 (1998): 393–401; Edney, ed., “Mass Media and Mental Illness.” 65 Police Reported Crime Statistics in Canada, 2011. Statistics Canada, 2012. 66 Ibid. 67 O.F. Wahl, “Schizophrenia in the News,” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 20, no. 1 (1996): 51. 68 Sampietro, “Mental Illness and Violence in the Media.” 69 Fazel et al. (2009) and Elbogen and Johnson (2009), as discussed in Sampietro, “Mental Illness and Violence in the Media.” 70 J.S. Brekke, C. Prindle, S.W. Bae, and J.D. Long, “Risks for Individuals with Schizophrenia Who Are Living in the Community,” Psychiatric Services 52 (2001). 71 W. Heinrichs, In Search of Madness: Schizophrenia and Neuroscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001). 72 Sampietro, “Mental Illness and Violence in the Media.” 73 Kirby, “Mental Health in Canada”; Canadian Medical Association Journal 178 (2008): 1320–2; Vasiliadis, Lesage, Adair, et al., “Service Use for Mental Health Reasons,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 50, no. 10 (2005); Canadian Institutes for Health Information (CIHI), “Access and Wait Times in Child and Youth Mental Health: A Background Paper” (Ottawa, 2010). 74 Greg Philo and Glasgow University Media Group, Media and Mental Health (London and New York: Longman 1996). 75 Ibid. 76 Gary Morris, Mental Health Issues in the Media: An Introduction for Health Professionals (New York: Routledge 2006). 77 Blood and Holland, “Risky News, Madness and Public Crisis,” 325.

23 Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media: Turning Transcendental Illusion on Its Feet H a ns Sk ott-M y h re

In his debate with Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault notes that it is crucial that the apparently benign institutions of civil society be stripped of their benevolent veneer to expose their raw disciplinary force.1 Cer­ tainly, the media is no exception. Indeed, there has been much critique of the media in its coverage of young people, including the propagation of moral panics,2 its commodification of the bodies of children and youth,3 and the inaccurate shaping of public opinion through both the sanctification and the demonization of all non-adult subjects.4 While these critiques are both important and necessary in carrying forward Foucault’s political agenda, they tend to accept the fundamental premise that children, youth, and adults constitute distinct and meaningful categories, and the claim is often that the media has misunderstood or is attempting to reshape the actual nature of young people. Even those modes of analysis that use Foucauldian notions of governmentality and discourse seem to carry a subtle flavour of violation.5 That is to say that the analysis of the discourses that create and shape our social notions of what constitutes childhood and the governing mechanisms of discipline and control all seem to operate out of an oddly moral sense that the subject in question has been violated. This sense of violation is deeply rooted in a discourse of innocence premised on a profound nostalgia by adults for childhood lost.6 Innocence and nostalgia are elements in the social construction of children as developmentally distinct from adults and free of the corruptions and temptations of adult life. While still retaining traces of childhood innocence, adolescents hold a considerably more ambivalent position. Tainted with what is often seen as the corrupting force of their emerging sexuality, they pose a challenge to the adult society into which they

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will integrate or against which they will revolt. Of all of the discourses that separate children and adolescents from adults, however, few cause greater anxiety for society than that of children and crime. The existence of child criminals is generally considered to be a perversion of the natural order of human development. Childhood is portrayed, in the popular vernacular, in academic discourse, such as developmental psychology, and in political documents, such as the United Nations Rights of the Child, as a space in which social responsibility is learned and practised. Anti-social or criminal children are perceived as either tragic or monstrous. Adolescents, given their more ambivalent developmental positioning between adults and children, are depicted as inherently deviant. Teenagers or youth are seen in social discourse as developmentally rebellious against the constraints of childhood discipline. Indeed, there is almost an expectation that adolescents will engage in some degree of criminal behaviour. The social construction of adolescence, childhood, and delinquency has been traced extensively in the literature on both topics.7 The relationship of the media in the dissemination and propagation of public perception of both child and adolescent criminality and the production of adolescent behaviour as spectacle has also been well researched both in academic scholarship and by the media itself. These accounts, however, tend to focus on the corruption of young people by the media as an amoral corporate force; the breakdown in the social fabric accelerated and facilitated by the media; or the collapse of the traditional family as it is splintered by teen/tween culture disseminated by the media. This morality tale perversely spread by the media about the media is a fascinating recursively autopoietic cycle that centres the media as both the observer and the cause of that which it observes. Niklas Luhmann has described society as a system of recursive patterns of information flow. In his work on mass media, he indicates that the media generates what he terms “a transcendental illusion.”8 In other words, the media produces a system of communication premised on observation that does not produce facts through direct engagement with what is observed. While there are aspects of the media where live reporters are on the ground, this living engagement of human-to-­ human contact is not what comprises the media. Instead, Luhmann argues that it is the “technology of dissemination”9 that defines the media: “Things are printed and broadcast. Things are read. Programmes are received. Numerous communications involving preparation and subsequent discussion closely surround this activity. However, the process of

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dissemination is only possible on the basis of technologies. The way in which these technologies work structures and limits what is possible as mass communication.”10 The technology of dissemination forms the media as a closed system differentiated from other social systems. Luhmann argues that there is no actual interaction between the media as a mechanism of dissemination of information and the receivers of that information. This is the case, he says, because of the technological mediation that intervenes between the parties involved. This mediation makes it impossible for any direct intervention into the media from any source outside itself. While forces outside the media provide the raw data for the observations that are disseminated, the communications produced are those of media observing itself and producing itself. Media, in this sense, is only interested in perpetuating itself through a proliferating application of its logic and operations to an ever-widening sector of society. The logic of media, Luhmann tells us, is premised on the ability to distinguish what is and is not media. It is specifically not premised on the ability to represent objectively any kind of truth. Instead, for media to be successful, it must reiteratively and sequentially reproduce itself through representations of difference. “Each program holds the promise of another program. It is never a matter of simply representing the world in any one given moment.”11 To do this, the media must constantly seek information that exceeds and violates earlier information and produces surprising or novel information that can be reported as new: “The system presupposes itself as a self-producing irritation, without being accessible through its own operations, and then sets about transforming irritation into information, which it produces for the society (and for itself in society).”12 This means that any given topic, such as crime and young people, as a communication of the mass media, holds its value for the media in its capacity to proliferate portrayals that shock, surprise, or amaze. This is the reason that the story of young people and crime, as reported in the media, is constantly shifting terms and target groups. Of course, the development of stories about deviant young people is rooted in the discourses and social norms of a given historical period. The reporting of stories of deviance by the media, however, highlights specific and partial aspects of those norms most likely to have the capacity to generate a stream of media production. As we have noted above, this capacity is premised on the novelty or surprising elements of a given

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storyline. While the media utilizes real-world events as information, their dissemination of that information churns those facts into the ends of their own proliferation. This practice has two effects. First, it produces social information and codes that the consumers of mass-media news adopt as information about themselves. Second, it establishes clusters of information that are to the advantage of various groups vying for dominance. Luhmann is quite clear, however, that no group can control, manipulate, or direct the media. This is not to say that certain information is not valorized and other information restrained or withheld. Yet such actions will persist only if they serve the need of media to reproduce itself. No sequence of information dissemination or censorship will be sustained if it does not expand the reach and capacity of the media. In this sense, it is important to remember that Luhmann conceives of the media as a closed autopoietic system that has no direct relationship with its environment. It functions on a binary code of what is the media and what is not. In order for anything in the environment of the media to become media, it must meet the requirements of that coding. Events and information outside the media provide what Luhmann calls an irritation that prompts the media to encode it and operationalize it. The media, however, holds no investment in anything outside itself. In a sense, the relationship of the media and its environment is similar to that of plants and their environment. Plants have a logic to their growth and proliferation. They are, of course, separate from their environment but, at the same time, dependent on it for nutrients and the ability to grow. Plants are responsive to many elements in their environment, but they are a closed system that is defined by the coding that delineates them as plants. The specific modes of their proliferation and survival can be altered through interventions by human beings, climate change, foraging animals, and so on. This intervention from the outside, however, does not constitute an ability to manipulate their essential plantness. Indeed, every shift in the environment of the plant has a degree of predictability as in agriculture or genetically modified crops. It also has, significantly, a series of intended, and at times cascading sets of unintended, consequences. This is something every farmer, geneticist, and environmentalist knows. In this sense, the environment of the plant can irritate and shift some specific patterns of growth and dissemination, but it cannot do this in a way that violates the plant’s own autopoietic logic. The plant will consistently reproduce itself as a plant or it will cease to be.

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Similarly, the media is responsive to shifts in its environment but, as we have noted, cannot be directly controlled by anything or anyone in its environment. The media may shift technologies of dissemination but will never be able to have an unmediated interaction between itself and its consumers. As a closed system, the media is entirely expedient and indifferent to the actuality of power relations between groups, dominant or subjugated. The media has no inherent interest in the truth of any given story. The media industry also does not create the stories. It does select bits and fragments of information about youth and crime from the surrounding society. But it does not select this information on the basis of its accuracy or factuality. Instead, it effectively selects stories or aspects of stories based on the ability of those stories to create a sequence of more stories. This is why the stories about youth and crime are constantly fluctuating between stories of super-predators and stories of the inherent goodness of teens under harsh circumstances. Of course, there are human beings embedded in the media machinery who make selection choices about which stories to pursue and present. It is important to note, though, that such decisions will persist only to the degree that they further the logic of the media itself. The reporters, corporate heads, media magnates, bloggers, hackers, and tweeters do not comprise the media. They operate in the environment of the media as information irritants in the same way sand operates within an oyster. Sand is in the oyster, but it is not the oyster. It has no direct relationship with the oyster but prompts the oyster to transform its irritation into a composite form called a pearl. Similarly, information from the environment, such as the humans associated with the media, irritates the media in such a way as to prompt it to assemble that information into a sequence of new and novel stories. These stories are then taken up by the humans in the environment as information about themselves. They use this information to define themselves. These new definitions then provide new irritations to the media and the cycle is re-engaged. Certainly, there is an attempt by various groups to promulgate stories that will advance their agendas. It is important to note, however, that the media system is always agnostic on any agenda that it deploys. It is an incompetent holder of secrets and will leak anything at any time if it advances its own logic of self-production. In this regard, it is important to remember that the media is not monolithic. It is not made up of a single network, although corporations own much of the physical infrastructure and technologies of dissemination.

Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media 371

Indeed, many of the media moguls, as capitalists, have significant interests in common. However, media in the twenty-first century comprises infinite micro and macro sites of dissemination operating globally. The number of stories and counter-stories, streams of constantly mutating information, and fractal sequences of bits and pieces of information in any given moment are staggering. There is no one story about crime and youth that is disseminated through the media. There is an infinitude of stories operating on a foundational logic composed of binary codes that socially construct categories of youth/adult, child/youth, child/adult, criminal/citizen, crime/rebellion, and so on. These binary codes are composed into various discursive assemblages to disseminate information that forms a recursive relationship between the media and its environment. Luhmann notes two forms of this relationship, one of which he terms structural coupling. He argues that society is composed of various function systems like the media that operate on binary codes of distinction such as the economy, for example, which has a binary code of money/ not money. Other systems might include education, politics, science, law, and the like. Each of these systems is closed and operates on the logic that defines it as separate from its environment. In addition, each function system is dependent on perturbations in the environment for information that can be used to expand and proliferate its particular logic. In this sense, each function system comprises the environment for the other function systems. They have a relationship with each other and are dependent upon one another for the perturbations central to their own self-production. For example, in the case of the media, there is a mutually productive structural coupling among the political system and itself. Similarly, there is a structural coupling among media, economic, legal, and educational systems. The second form of the relationship of the media with the environment is less fleshed out by Luhmann. The question of living bodies – that is, journalists – in the environment of the media as a function system is, as I have noted above, relegated to the relation of irritant. Luhmann famously asserted that he was simply not particularly interested in people. In his reading, society comprises communications systems that operate closed off from their environment. They are, to use a different vernacular, immanent. An immanent system is one that produces itself or is its own cause. Media is just such an immanent system that reproduces itself through the proliferation of abstract binary

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codes. It is, in this sense, a transcendent immanent system. As I have noted above, Luhmann argues that the media, as a function system of society, generates a transcendental illusion. Drawing this concept from Kant, Luhmann proposes that the media derives its capacities from a foundational quirk in human reason. Human reason, Kant argued, seeks to understand the condition for the totality of conditions. Our reason, by its very nature, wants to understand the foundational and unifying ground of all understanding. To do this, it creates abstract conceptual frameworks of knowledge. Such frameworks, while they appear to provide us with information about ourselves and the world in which we live, are not composed out of any actual experience. Instead, they are composed of abstract ideals such as the perfect child, the ideal family, the perfect form of governance, or any other ideal conceptual framework that does not actually exist. Such notions, Kant argues, are illusory. Luhmann, in suggesting that the media produces transcendental illusions, is articulating Kants’s problematic in a contemporary guise. The media appears to provide information about the world and the people in it. It is, however, not of the world. It is composed specifically, Luhmann tells us, as separate from its environment. That environment is life itself. In this way, it structures and orders our definitions of the world without being of the world. This might well be read as analogous to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s famous assertion that “language is not life, it gives life orders.”13 As a communications system, the media is, of course, composed of language. Deleuze and Guattari argue that language does not actually provide information between a sender and a receiver. Instead, language commands and structures the perceptions of both sender and receiver. It does this by ordering the world according to binary coding (this is a chair, this is not a chair; this is a child, this is not a child) and by ordering our self-organization and subjective perceptions of ourselves according to these categories. In this sense, they propose that language blocks and truncates the infinite creative force of life by overcoding it into repetitive patterns of perception and action premised on abstract categories that derive from life but are not life. Indeed, they suggest that this ordering function is antithetical to the logic of life as an immanent system. They call it a death sentence. Given this insight, we might argue that the media is a communications system premised on the binary coding function of language that produces apparent knowledge about life that is not in fact knowledge about life. It does not produce information about young people

Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media 373

or crime. Instead, it orders our perceptions of both and commands us into binary relations that separate us from the actuality of either young people or crime. If we are not careful, we can come to believe the accounts of our lives as portrayed in the media over the actuality of our lived experience. To give a brief example, I was in a community meeting that included a group of young people. We were discussing new modes of political action such as the Occupy movement. In spite of the fact that there were several young people in the room who had been talking about their actual experiences in direct political action, the conversation turned to why youth were so apathetic. One theory put forth was that they were generation Y and had been raised by permissive parents who rewarded everything they did. This, it was argued, produced young people who were privileged and pampered and unable to act. As I listened, I was struck by how much of the discourse was directly attributable to information from the mainstream news media. One young person contested the Generation Y hypothesis by pointing out that, though she herself was part of that cohort, she was very capable of participating in Occupy. Another young person then began to cite psychological arguments he had read in the news media that supported the assertions of Generation Y’s pampered apathy. What was fascinating to me in the exchange was the disconnect between the descriptions the majority of young people were giving of themselves and the very fact of their participation in the community meeting. This obvious contradiction to the media accounts of their identities was directly in front of them, and yet several argued strongly for an identity based in the abstract coding of the media account of who they were and of what they were capable. Deleuze and Guattari do not suggest that language is a seamless fabric of command. They note that there are passwords beneath the order words, ways to flee the dominant coding that can be found in the moments when language fails. The meeting referenced above is just such a moment when the dominant codes describing the subjects involved fail to encompass fully the actuality of their lived experiences. Here, we see an opportunity to open language to what Deleuze and Guattari call minoritarian-language structures. By minoritarian they do not mean numerically small. Instead, they are using the term minority as that which stands in alterity to the dominant- or majority-language structures. These are what Foucault refers to as subjugated knowledges, or those ways of knowing pushed aside by dominant constructions of knowledge.14 The field of living subjects is constantly producing

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idiosyncratic accounts premised on the infinitely variable experiential field of life. Indeed, as we have noted, the media counts on this variability for its own proliferation. However, it overcodes these accounts into transcendental illusions of command. It is critical, if we are to understand the relationship of youth, crime, and the media, to form an analytic that theorizes the struggle engaged between majoritarian and minoritarian languages. To do this, we need to explicate the complicated co-­evolutionary relationship of life and transcendent, parasitic systems such as the media that represent it. How do immanent, transcendent, and dominant systems of command and control persist in the face of living system’s immanent force? One area in which this struggle surfaces with some force is in the area of innovation. Certainly, the news media relies heavily on innovative technologies to proliferate its logic. As we have noted, Luhmann identifies the mediating role of technology as a central defining feature of what comprises the mass media from its environment of living subjects. At another level, as we have also noted, the media is dependent on social innovations such as new identity formations, social constellations, struggles, and linguistic variations as irritants to spur its own growth. The question in a recursive systemic relationship such as the one of the media and its environment of living beings is to what degree the media functions as a system of rule. And to what degree is resistance to this rule possible? Antonio Negri argues that all significant social innovations by systems of dominant rule are the result of revolutions that have failed.15 This assertion is premised on his proposal that resistance precedes domination. This reformulation of Foucault’s famous assertion that there is always a moment of resistance concomitant with every moment of domination arises from a confluence of Marx and Foucault.16 The confluence occurs at the level of seminal force. For Marx, it is his famous reversal of Hegel’s dialectic from the transcendent to the material; the idea that human beings produce history out of their struggles to solve the problems of daily living is the foundation for all future revolutionary force.17 In Marx’s reading of world history, first there are those who create and produce, and then there are systems of domination, exploitation, and rule, which parasitically attach themselves to the creative life force of those who produce and turn their production to a transcendent end. In the case of Foucault, he defines power as force.18 Force is comprised of all virtual possibility and runs in infinite intersecting lines, each with its own idiosyncratic

Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media 375

virtual capacity. Where these lines intersect, some aspect of the world is produced. The trick is that each moment of production is instantaneously completed and the lines of force move on to the next collision. This implies that there is no stable moment of being, only infinite trajectories of becoming. In order for a system of domination to emerge, an overcoding of the moment of emergence must take place. The emerging system of dominance codes the instability of becoming into the marginally more stable figure of repetitive being. There are multiple codings that accomplish this end, but, for our purposes here, we can delineate repetitive linguistic codes that construct a world where it is important to know exactly what things are and a social world of repetitive and disciplined behaviours that inscribe the perceived reality of the linguistically proscribed world. Such an arrangement, in the case of both Marx and Foucault, while striving to appear stable and historically determined, is extremely unstable. To use a Marxist description, the system is functionally antagonistic and fraught with contradiction. It is antagonistic in that the lines of creative force and the struggles to solve the problems of daily living are constantly pushing against the definitional and behavioural constraints of any given system of rule. It is contradictory because the dominant system of rule needs innovation and creativity or it will stagnate and atrophy. As a result, there is an ongoing problematic for systems of rule comprising the need to manage and control the level of innovation and creative change that will sustain the existing social structure without exceeding its capacity of rule. This is what Negri is referring to when he says that all innovations are the result of a revolution that failed. The revolution is the creative force of living beings functioning in a system of self-rule that maximizes their overall capacity. This is what Marx refers to in the famous passage in which he delineates communism as the ability to do what one is capable of doing throughout the day without such activities defining or constraining one’s identity or use of time. The revolution fails precisely at the point at which the creative force of what Michael Hardt and Negri call the common is turned to the transcendent definitions that constrain both identity and time.19 If we are to read Luhmann through the post-Marxist lens of a political philosopher such as Negri, function systems such as the media constitute regimes of rule not dictated or controlled by any one person or groups of people. This does not mean that groups do not attempt to control, manipulate, and appropriate the media to their own ends.

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But capitalists are no more in control of their socially constructed role than the poorest of the poor. Of course, they benefit considerably more in that role than 99 per cent of us, but they do not create the social category nor the overcoding of living production that produces them as a social possibility. This has immense implications for political action because it indicates two significant problems for the 99 per cent. First, function systems like the media, the economy, or the political system cannot be controlled or manipulated by people. The spread of the logic of communication as a fundamental element of political revolt is a recursive dead end. This is why Deleuze and Guattari state that we have too much communication.20 They suggest that we stop communicating and start creating; that we form vacuoles of non-communication to flee the binary structures that have produced the existing system of rule by society over life. Second, there is no utility in attacking or overthrowing groups of people who appear to be in charge. They are not society. In fact, no one is society. Society, in Luhmannian terms, is composed of abstract function systems. As long as these communication systems socially construct the terms under which we define our selves and our world, any overthrow of a particular group will simply result in another group fulfilling that role under new codes of dominance. It is important to note, in this context, that function systems thrive and proliferate on irritation and difference. The media is not threatened by revolt or innovative uses of its technology. Nor is the political function system threatened by new modes of representative democracy. In both cases, these events provide novel and surprising information that can be overcoded and disseminated to form new social categories and new social identities that can be taken up by the function systems and disseminated. Under such conditions, revolt as traditionally conceived and engaged in is futile. In the broadest sense, this realization means that revolt in the age of mass media must seriously engage the question of transcendental illusion. Certainly, Foucault’s injunction that the first political task is to undo in oneself the habits and beliefs of one’s own age might hold some relevance in rethinking terms of resistance and revolt.21 Possibly even more relevant would be a reading of Jean Baudrillard that suggests we not fight over the terms and conditions of any given semiotic system, but instead rebel against the sign system. Or, as Deleuze and Guattari have asserted,22 we should quit semiotizing ourselves and quit making sense. In short, if we are to find life outside the mediated confines of society as defined by the media’s parasitic engagement with

Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media 377

us, then we must learn how to distinguish between the illusion and the actuality of any given moment. This is, of course, a formidable task, but revolutions are not for the weak of heart. In terms of crime as it is engaged within the news media and its structural couplings with the legal, political, and economic systems, we cannot hope that crime will ever be reduced or even remediated by deployment of any of these systems. Indeed, they are heavily dependent on crime as an important element in their self-production and proliferation. If any attempt to eliminate crime were to be successful, the legal system would be severely truncated if not eliminated, the political system would founder, the economic system would be thrown into chaos, and the news media would lose a significant element of its capacity to overcode life. In this sense, society has no investment in eliminating or even seriously curtailing crime. It is very interested in producing an infinitely proliferating set of codes and descriptions of crime in each of the function systems so that they can expand and grow. The same can certainly be said about children, youth, and crime. These binary categories form rich constellations of information that can be overcoded and deployed through structural coupling across multiple function systems. These would include a few we haven’t mentioned yet, such as psychology, psychiatry, child care, social work, and criminology, all of which have deep structural couplings with the media, legal, political, and economic function systems. The social constructions of childhood and adolescence might now be read as transcendental illusions perpetrated, disseminated, and recursively proliferated across our collective consciousness as true depictions of a serious social problem. Indeed, the entire discourse of parental authority and its relation to the authority of the state and economic system is widely disseminated in a dizzying array of morality plays across a wide range of media. Jacques Donzelot refers to this as the psy-complex, where the structural coupling of the psychological, legal, media, and social-work function systems allows for a constantly shifting set of intersecting definitions of young people and the causes, definitions, and treatments of deviance.23 As Jack Levinson points out, the proliferation of these stories about who young criminals are never provide a clear pathway to remediation or rehabilitation.24 Instead, these intersecting accounts proliferate across these function systems and “enable the normalization of any and all individual conduct by treating it in an indeterminate, ‘floating’ relationship to norms and providing techniques of automatic adjustment … always adjustable relative meaning.”25

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This indeterminate relationship of constantly shifting codes of normalcy is an essential element in what might be called postmodern capitalism. In terms of crime, it opens the door to a field of open coding of deviant behaviour as criminal. This operation is perhaps most obvious in the “war on terror,” where the relationship between crime and political insurrection is constantly blurred through a constant overcoding of a shifting field of signifiers of deviance and danger. As Hardt and Negri point out, the signifier of war under the regime of postmodern capitalism takes on a proliferating array of social fields including the war on drugs, poverty, cancer, and so on.26 Hardt and Negri also remind us, however, that the field of the lived social is not produced by transcendent systems such as the media.27 It is produced in our social interactions with each other. This field, they define as the common or “those results of social production that are necessary for social interaction and further production such as knowledges, languages, codes, information, affects and so forth.”28 It is this common that is produced by life and then overcoded by transcendent systems of rule. If we are to undertake a useful analysis of young people and crime, we need to understand the significant difference between society as a transcendent system of rule and the social as a shared common. Both systems produce social codes that enhance and valorize their own selfproduction. However, in the case of the media, it is an autopoietic production of pure abstraction and transcendental illusion, while in the case of the common it is the force of life itself. To struggle on the basis of an illusion in hopes of achieving a better reality is a fool’s errand. To struggle together in common to create rather than communicate is to turn that illusion on its feet. To create rather than communicate is to eschew the binary codes of language as order and command and open language to its capacity as a generator of what Deleuze and Guattari call a coming people.29 The term coming people implies a description that is open to an identity that is not yet imagined. The emerging technologies being deployed by the media in the construction of youth and crime as a series of orders and commands can just as well be turned into vehicles for unsettling these terms. In our time, the task is not to turn the dialectic on its feet, although the concern with abstract systems of rules remains constant. It is, instead, to turn the transcendental illusion of society into the material actuality of living creative force. To do this, we would need to recreate ourselves outside the vernaculars of youth, child, and crime. We would need to become the people we are not yet, deploying a media we have not yet imagined.

Rethinking Young People, Crime, and the Media 379 NOTES 1 Michel Foucault, “Human Nature: Justice vs. Power,” http://www .chomsky.info/debates/1971xxx.htm (1971; accessed 12 August 2010). 2 See Chas Critcher, Moral Panics and the Media (New York: Open University Press 2006); Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (New York: Routledge 2002); and Stephen Muzzatti’s chapter 21 in this volume. 3 See Karen Brooks, Consuming Innocence: Popular Culture and Our Children (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press 2008); Ali Rattansi and Ann Phoenix, “Rethinking Youth Identities: Modernist and Postmodernist Frameworks,” Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research 5, no. 2 (2005): 97–123; Hans A. Skott-Myhre, Youth Subcultures as Creative Force: Creating New Spaces for Radical Youth Work (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2008). 4 See Linda S. Beres and Thomas D. Griffith, “Demonizing Youth,” Loyola Law Review 34, no. 2 (2001): 747–66; Mike A. Males, The Scapegoat Generation: America’s War on Adolescents (Monroe, Mich.: Common Courage Press 1996); Skott-Myhre, Youth Subcultures as Creative Force. 5 See Peter Kelly, “Growing up as Risky Business? Risks, Surveillance and the Institutionalized Mistrust of Youth,” Journal of Youth Studies 6, no. 2 (2003): 165–80; Henry Giroux, Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence and Youth (New York: Routledge 1996); Gordon Tait, Youth, Sex, and Government (New York: Peter Lang 2000). 6 See Skott-Myhre, Youth Subcultures as Creative Force; Giroux, Fugitive Cultures. 7 The literature is too extensive to cite here but see Alison James and Adrian L. James, Constructing Childhood: Theory, Policy, and Social Practice (New York: Palgrave 2004); Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage 1979). 8 Niklas Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media: Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press 2000), 4. 9 Ibid., 2. 10 Ibid., 3. 11 Ibid.,11. 12 Ibid., 12. 13 Gille Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1987), 74. 14 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Random House 1977). 15 Antonio Negri, “Twenty Theses on Marx,” in Saree Makdisi, Cesare Casarino, and Rebecca E. Karl, eds., Marxism beyond Marxism (New York: Routledge 1996).

380  Covering Canadian Crime 16 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (New York: Vintage 1990). 17 Karl Marx, “The German Ideology Part One,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engles Reader (New York: Norton 1978), 146–202. 18 Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. 19 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2009). 20 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. 21 Foucault, “Human Nature.” 22 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. 23 Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families (New York: Random House 1979). 24 Jack Levinson, Making Life Work: Freedom and Disability in a Community Group Home (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2010). 25 Ibid., 121. 26 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin 2005). 27 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth. 28 Ibid., viii. 29 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.

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Contributors

Timothy Appleby Timothy Appleby was at the Globe and Mail from 1982 until his retirement in 2014. He has been a crime reporter, a foreign correspondent, and a member of the Globe’s editorial board. His most recent book is A New Kind of Monster: The Chilling Life and Chilling Crimes of Colonel Russell Williams. Sarah Berry Sarah Berry is a PhD candidate and course instructor in medical sociology in the Department of Sociology at McGill University. Her transdisciplinary academic and research background spans the fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, communication and media studies, and gender studies. At the intersection of these fields, she has completed research on media representations of elective caesarean sections, pharmaceutical marketing of HPV vaccines, and, most recently, she has worked as project manager for a large-scale Mental Health Commission of Canada-funded study to examine mainstream media representations of mental illness in Canada, directed by Dr Rob Whitley. She has also worked with Dr Whitley and the Mental Health Commission to present the preliminary findings of the mental-illness and media project to journalism students in Canada. Christie Blatchford Christie Blatchford is an award-winning journalist who has worked for all the major newspapers in Toronto. She began her career as a sports reporter for the Globe and Mail, then became a columnist at the Toronto Star

414 Contributors

before moving on to the Toronto Sun. She returned to the Globe before she joined the National Post in 2011. One of Canada’s most notorious columnists and crime reporters, she is also the author of numerous books including Fifteen Days: The Story of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army; Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed Us All; Close Encounters; and Spectator Sports. Kim Bolan Kim Bolan blogs about life on the crime beat – everything from gangsters, shootings, targeted murders, and police investigations to the details of criminal trials. In 2012 and 2013 she won the Canadian Asso­ ciation of Journalism Award for reporting based on her ongoing series of guns and gangs in the Lower Mainland. Vancouver Sun Editor-inChief Harold Munro calls her “the best crime reporter in Canada.” Bert Bruser Bert Bruser is currently the Toronto Star’s newsroom lawyer. He has acted for newspapers and others in the publishing business for more than thirty years. He was a partner at the Toronto law firm of Blake, Cassels and Graydon until 2011 when he became a partner emeritus. For many years, he headed the firm’s media-law group. He has defended hundreds of libel actions and has appeared in all levels of courts resisting such things as publication bans and subpoenas to r­ eporters. Bruser is recognized in the Canadian Lexpert Directory as one of the leading lawyers in Canada. With Brian Rogers, he has written a book titled Journalists and the Law: How to Get the Story without Getting Sued or Put in Jail. He has also published articles on various aspects of media law as well as giving lectures and conducting seminars for journalists. Bruser is an adjunct professor at both the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and the School of Journalism, Ryerson University. Kate Dubinski Kate Dubinski began her newswriting career in Fort McMurray and Edmonton, Alberta. In 2005 she joined the London Free Press, where she covers a variety of stories related to education and digital trends. In 2010 she was a member of the newsroom team that won a National Newspaper Award. Peter Edwards Peter Edwards has written for the Toronto Star for more than twentyeight years, covering crime and justice issues. He has authored numer-

Contributors 415

ous non-fiction books including One Dead Indian: The Premier, the Police and the Ipperwash Crisis; A Mother’s Story: The Fight to Free My Son David (with Joyce Milguard); Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War (with Antonio Nicaso); Unrepentant: The Strange and (Sometimes) Terrible Life of Lorne Campbell, Satan’s Choice and Hells Angels Biker; and The Encyclopedia of Organized Crime (with Michel Auger). He has been awarded an eagle feather from the Union of Ontario Indians and a gold medal from the Centre for Human Rights, and was part of a team that won a National Newspaper Award for spot news reporting. Sabah Fatima Sabah Fatima was a research assistant for professors William O’Grady and Patrick Parnaby when they wrote “Guns, Gangs, and the Under­ class Revisited: An Analysis of Courtroom Coverage from the Jordan Manners Trials.” She graduated from the University of Guelph in 2012 with a BA Honours in Criminal Justice and Public Policy and went on to pursue a post-graduate certificate in paralegal studies at Centen­ nial College. At present she works as a licensed paralegal with George Brown Professional Corporation in Toronto, Ontario. She continues to have a passion for advocating for access to justice and for educating others about the paralegal profession. Barbara M. Freeman Dr Barbara M. Freeman is a media historian and adjunct research professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, where she taught for close to thirty years. Her research centres on gender and diversity in the mainstream and alternative news media of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. She is the author of Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Women’s Rights in Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2011); The Satellite Sex: The Media and Women’s Issues in English Canada, 1966–71(Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2001); and Kit’s Kingdom: The Journalism of Kathleen Blake Coleman (Carleton University Press 1989). She has contributed articles to a number of anthologies and has also written articles and reviews for Feminist Media Studies, the Canadian Journal of Communication, the Canadian Historical Review, the Canadian Journal of Native Studies, the International Journal of Canadian Studies, American Journalism, Media: The Magazine of the Cana­ dian Association of Journalists, and Herizons: Canada’s Feminist Magazine. Before she began teaching, she was a newspaper reporter and broadcast journalist, working in St John’s, Newfoundland; Goose Bay, Labrador; London, England; and Ottawa, Ontario.

416 Contributors

Susan Harada Susan Harada (BAA Journalism, Ryerson; MA Legal Studies, Carleton) is the associate director of Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication and the head of the journalism program. Her research interests include media coverage of justice and privacy issues, the Supreme Court of Canada, and political journalism. She was a ­national parliamentary correspondent and a documentary journalist with CBC Television News prior to joining Carleton. Kirk LaPointe Kirk LaPointe is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Self-Counsel Press, the country’s leading publisher of financial, legal, immigration, environment, and information self-help books and e-books. He is executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen and since 2004 has been an adjunct professor and executive-in-residence at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of British Columbia. A media executive for a quarter-century, he has led such organizations as CTV News, Southam News, and the Hamilton Spectator, and has been the managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, the founding executive editor of the National Post, the Ottawa bureau chief and general news editor of the Canadian Press, and the ombudsman for CBC’s English Services. April Lindgren April Lindgren is an associate professor of journalism at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism and academic director of the Ryerson Journalism Research Centre. Her research interest is the role of news media in cities. Lindgren’s ongoing research program, the Local News Research Project, combines content analysis of local news with the mapping of news stories to answer research questions about the way localnews coverage affects civic engagement, newcomers’ sense of place, neighbourhood stereotyping, and other aspects of urban life. Before joining Ryerson’s School of Journalism faculty in 2007, Lindgren worked for more than twenty years as a journalist for the CanWest chain of news­ papers. As a political reporter in Ottawa and then at Queen’s Park in Toronto, her print and online stories appeared in CanWest publications including the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, the Windsor Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Vancouver Sun, the Edmonton Journal, and the Calgary Herald. Lindgren was the 2005–6 St Clair Balfour Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto. She has a diplome (master’s equivalent) in international studies from the Graduate School of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Contributors 417

Linden MacIntyre Linden MacIntyre is an award-winning author and journalist. The recipient of ten Gemini awards for broadcast, MacIntyre has worked at the CBC since 1976 and became the co-host at the fifth estate in 1990. His first novel, The Long Stretch (1990), was nominated for a CBA Libris Award. His memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence (2006), won both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction, and The Bishop’s Man received the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Mary McGuire Mary McGuire is an associate professor of journalism at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communications who teaches digital and broadcast journalism courses. Her research interests include the impact of new media technologies on journalism and journalism education. Before joining the faculty at Carleton, she worked for CBC Radio News as a reporter, an editor, and a parliamentary reporter for The House. James S. McLean James McLean is an assistant professor of journalism at Concordia University. He previously worked in television and radio news, current affairs, and documentaries as, variously, an executive producer, producer, and news director for CBC Television (Saskatchewan), CTV (Saskatchewan), CKX Radio and Television (Manitoba), and CJDC Radio and Television (British Columbia). His areas of interest include strategic political communication, sociology of news, field theory, technology and visual culture, public-sphere theory, press clubs in Canada, entrepreneurship, journalism, and the web. He is the author of A War Room in Canada: Politics, Journalism, Publics and the Competition for Credibility (McGill-Queen’s University Press) and co-editor of Public Art in Canada: Critical Perspectives (University of Toronto Press). Rick Mofina Rick Mofina worked in Canadian journalism for many years, beginning as a summer student at the Toronto Star and continuing at the Calgary Herald, the Ottawa Citizen, and Southam News Wire Service. In 2000, he published his first novel, If Angels Fall, which introduced a long-standing series featuring San Francisco Star crime reporter Tom Reed and SFPD Inspector Walt Sydowski. The two later appeared in Cold Fear, Blood of Others, and No Way Back. In 2003, Mofina

418 Contributors

earned the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel and decided to pursue fiction full-time. He continues to combine his passion for fiction writing with his expertise in fact finding, and now has close to two million books in print. Stephen L. Muzzatti Stephen L. Muzzatti earned his PhD in sociology from York University and is an associate professor of sociology at Ryerson University. His primary research interest is the area of cultural criminology, particularly the connections among globalization, late modernity, consumer culture and crime, transgression, and control. As such, his research sites are diverse and include the news media’s criminalization of youth culture as well as terrorism, crimes of globalization, motorcycle culture, working-class identities, the Italian Canadian community, advertising, and the commodification of violence. He is the editor (with Vince Samarco) of Reflections from the Wrong Side of the Tracks: Class, Identity, and the Working Class Experience. In 2009 he received the Critical Crimi­ nologist of the Year Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Critical Criminology. William O’Grady Bill O’Grady is a professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Guelph. He received his BA and MA in sociology from Carleton University and his PhD in sociology from the University of Toronto. O’Grady is currently involved in a research project in Toronto that is examining the enforcement activities of the Ontario Safe Streets Act in relation to homeless youth. He is also a member of the Canadian Homeless Research Network and an advisory member of Raising the Roof’s Advisory Board of Youth Works. He is the author of Crime in Canadian Context: Debates and Controversies (Toronto: Oxford Univer­ sity Press). Patrick Parnaby Patrick Parnaby is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph. Parnaby completed his PhD in sociology at McMaster University in 2004 before joining the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Guelph. Parnaby’s primary interest is in the sociology of risk and risk discourse as they relate to issues of expertise, social control, and governance. His most recent publications have looked at how discourses of risk are im-

Contributors 419

plicated in the exercising of control with respect to crime prevention through environmental design and financial planning. In addition, Dr Parnaby also researches and writes in the areas of social constructionism, social deviance, and policing. Maggie Jones Patterson Maggie Jones Patterson is professor of journalism at Duquesne Univer­ sity and former reporter for the Pittsburgh Press. Her primary research interests are media ethics, gender, crime coverage, and intercultural ­issues. She has co-authored three books: Art Rooney: A Sporting Life; Behind the Lines: Case Studies in Investigative Reporting; and Birth or Abortion? Private Struggles in a Political World. An article entitled “Nam­ing Names: Comparing Crime Coverage Rituals in Sweden, Holland, England and North America,” written with Romayne Smith Fullerton, appears in ­Media and the Boundaries of Disclosure: Media, Morals and Public Shaming (I.B. Tauris Press). In 2013 and again in 2014, the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication awarded her and co-author Fullerton the Profes­sional Relevance prize for the conference paper most useful to practising journalists. Chris Richardson Dr Chris Richardson is an assistant professor at Young Harris College. His research builds on his Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson University (2007) and his Master of Arts in popular culture from Brock University (2008) to investigate representations of crime in journalism and popular culture. Richardson’s recent publications include the coedited collection (with Hans Skott-Myhre) Habitus of the Hood (2011); “Defining Suburbs: Representation and Symbolic Violence Just Outside the City” (2011), in Public: Art, Culture, Ideas; “‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’: Symbolic Violence, Education, and Kanye West” (2011), in Popular Music & Society; and “The Empty Self in Revolutionary Road or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blonde” (2010), in the European Journal of American Culture. In 2004 he received a Canadian Association of Journalists Student Award of Excellence in Journalism for his undercover work with Joe Friesen at The Eyeopener, Ryerson University’s independent student newspaper. Cecil Rosner As managing editor for CBC Manitoba, Cecil Rosner is responsible for all editorial content on radio, television, and the web in the province.

420 Contributors

He graduated with a BA (Hons.) in modern European history at the University of Manitoba (1974) and an MA in journalism at the University of Western Ontario (1975). For the last forty years he has worked in print and broadcast media and specialized in investigative journalism. And, over the last twenty years, Rosner has been involved in journalism education at a number of levels. He conducts internal training at the CBC and has delivered numerous seminars and lectures across the country on a variety of journalistic topics. Since 2005, Rosner has taught a course on investigative journalism at the University of Winnipeg. He is the co-author of When Justice Fails: The David Milgaard Story (McClelland and Stewart, 1991 and 1997). More recently, Rosner authored Behind the Headlines – A History of Investigative Journalism in Canada (Oxford University Press, 2008). He has judged numerous journalistic awards competitions, including the National Newspaper Awards, the Gemini Awards, the International Emmy Awards, and others. Rosner has also been the recipient of a variety of awards, including two Geminis, two Michener awards, gold medals at the New York and Columbus film festivals, and a Michener fellowship. Rosner continues to write a regular chess column for the Winnipeg Free Press, as he has done for the last thirty years. Hans Skott-Myhre Hans Skott-Myhre is associate professor of child and youth studies at Brock University and adjunct faculty at the University of Victoria School of Child and Youth Care. His book Youth and Subculture as Creative Force: Creating New Spaces for Radical Youth Work is available through University of Toronto Press. He has also co-edited a collection with Chris Richardson titled Habitus of the Hood (Intellect Press). Romayne Smith Fullerton Romayne Smith Fullerton, PhD, is an associate professor at the Univer­ sity of Western Ontario who teaches in the masters of media in journalism and communication and in the undergraduate media, information, and technoculture programs, and also supervises media studies masters and doctoral students. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests and publication list broadly encompass gender, minority issues, and journalism ethics. In 2013 and again in 2014, the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication awarded her and co-author Maggie Jones Patterson the press freedom and responsibility prize, given to the con-

Contributors 421

ference paper most relevant to practising journalists. These articles are part of a book project by Fullerton and Patterson that compares mainstream media treatment of persons accused and/or convicted of serious crimes in Canada, the United States, and select countries in western Europe. Fullerton’s recent work can also be found in the Journal of Media Ethics, Media and the Boundaries of Disclosure: Media, Morals and Public Shaming, The Ethics of Intercultural Communication, and The Sage Guide to Key Issues in Mass Media Ethics and Law. Virginia Whitehouse Virginia Whitehouse, PhD, is an associate professor of journalism at Eastern Kentucky University. A former newspaper reporter, she now writes about social media and media ethics, particularly coverage of Native American and First Nations persons. Rob Whitley Dr Robert Whitley is a social scientist with considerable experience working at the intersection of psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology. Among his many research and teaching affiliations, Dr Whitley is a faculty member in the Department of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University, researcher at the McGill Universityaffiliated Douglas Mental Health University Institute, and research assistant professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School. His work has focused on the mental-health and health-service experience of marginalized groups, including immigrants, ethno-cultural minorities, the urban poor, and single mothers. Whitley is particularly interested in the concept of recovery, examining barriers and facilitators to recovery within both health services and the wider socio-cultural environment. He is currently principal investigator on a Mental Health Commission of Canada-funded study examining media representations of mental illness. Mary Lynn Young Mary Lynn Young is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and associate dean in the Faculty of Arts. She is an authority on gender and the media, newsroom sociology, and representations of crime. The overarching goal of her work is to link journalism studies, academic expertise, and practice through scholarship, teaching, and professional engagement. She has worked as a national business columnist, copy editor, and crime report-

422 Contributors

er at major daily newspapers in Canada and the United States (the Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, the Hamilton Spectator, and the Houston Post). Her list of scholarly awards includes the UBC Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies Early Career Scholar Award (2009–10) and the 2007 Rufus Z. Smith Award for the best article published in the American Review of Canadian Studies (co-authored with David Pritchard, professor, University of Wisconsin [Milwaukee]).

Index

Aboriginals. See First Nations Alberta, 7, 77, 125, 129, 133, 134, 148, 168, 180, 187, 279, 303, 354, 364, 414 Appleby, Timothy, 8, 19, 20, 21, 83, 84, 97, 100, 108, 143, 153, 192, 381, 413 Austin, J.L., 252, 257 Bandidos (biker gang), 4, 127, 140, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 390 Barthes, Roland, 241, 310, 312, 317, 320, 382 Bentham, Jeremy, 134, 135, 383 Bernardo, Paul, 59, 64, 80, 127, 159, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186 Black, Conrad, 218, 227 Blatchford, Christie, 8, 18, 20, 21, 58, 64, 78, 79, 82, 84, 91, 97, 98, 152, 184, 186, 192, 194, 230, 231, 232, 238, 260, 272, 383, 413 blogs, 4, 11, 126, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142, 148, 149, 150, 151, 155, 173, 191, 235, 239, 240, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 370, 404, 414 Bourdieu, Pierre, 241, 252, 253, 254, 257, 258, 259, 262, 263, 267, 268, 272, 273

Britain, 7, 10, 23, 26, 32, 34, 53, 65, 75, 77, 81, 93, 94, 95, 134, 161, 165, 178, 180, 196, 213, 216, 228, 229, 238, 246, 255, 269, 288, 297, 331, 361, 384, 386, 388, 389, 391, 392, 393, 400, 402, 406, 415, 416, 417, 419, 421 British Columbia, 7, 32, 64, 65, 77, 165, 178, 180, 238, 245, 260, 323, 386, 393, 394, 406, 416, 417, 421 Calgary Herald, 241, 298, 303, 401, 416 Canadian Association of Journalists, 39, 51, 57, 77, 154, 390, 419 Canadian Civil Liberties Association, 167 Canadian Press, 65, 80, 126, 157, 176, 177, 361, 385, 416 Carey, James, 38, 71, 92, 99, 114, 116, 122, 123, 385 CBC, 18, 19, 47, 48, 49, 52, 65, 79, 82, 83, 84, 90, 91, 93, 118, 123, 125, 129, 130, 134, 135, 138, 142, 143, 146, 147, 148, 153, 154, 155, 284, 296, 338, 345, 386, 387, 391, 416, 417, 419 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 79, 127, 133, 134, 135, 137, 151, 152,

424 Index 157, 161, 163, 167, 170, 172, 175, 178, 183, 342, 385, 393, 398, 404 children, 6, 25, 86, 94, 95, 164, 239, 243, 252, 281, 314, 328, 366, 367, 377 Chomsky, Noam, 366 Cohen, Stanley, 10, 15, 41, 294, 331, 344, 379, 411 confessions, 81, 138, 144, 293, 328 Criminal Code, 79, 109, 116, 118, 121, 132, 133, 156, 160, 162, 164, 165, 171, 172, 175, 177, 179, 180, 181, 186, 252, 254, 277, 338, 339, 343, 393, 408 death knock. See pickup Debwewin, 4, 54, 242, 318, 322, 326 Deleuze, Gilles, 243, 372, 373, 376, 378, 379, 380, 388 DiManno, Rosie, 59, 61, 81, 94, 154, 184, 186, 286, 389 DNA, 61, 62, 120 drugs, 5, 8, 10, 19, 32, 37, 61, 78, 82, 93, 95, 111, 130, 131, 249, 251, 253, 256, 257, 284, 288, 338, 340, 378 Duceppe, Gilles, 262 Durkheim, Émile, 4, 5, 14, 19, 21, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123, 389, 392 Facebook, 24, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 66, 151, 189 First Nations, 4, 157, 158, 164, 165, 181, 239, 241, 242, 243, 254, 269, 304, 305, 306, 307, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 357, 392, 401, 421 Foucault, Michel, 312, 313, 320, 366, 373, 374, 375, 376, 379, 380, 387, 391 framing, 19, 26, 27, 71, 73, 74, 76, 82,

83, 84, 91, 94, 95, 167, 197, 241, 281, 282, 284, 285, 286, 289, 290, 292, 318 gangs, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, 23, 24, 34, 37, 43, 48, 91, 93, 128, 140, 153, 187, 188, 214, 225, 237, 239, 240, 241, 243, 248, 249, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 284, 285, 286, 289, 290, 332, 386, 389, 390, 403, 404, 405, 409, 414, 430 Gans, Herbert, 228, 238 gender, 4, 11, 40, 127, 128, 157, 159, 163, 168, 170, 173, 217, 218, 220, 221, 225, 226, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 238, 290, 295, 341, 357, 362, 386, 388, 394, 405, 409, 412, 413, 415, 418, 420, 421 George, Dudley, 241, 242, 306, 314, 318, 320, 326, 327, 328 Giddens, Anthony, 115, 123 Globe and Mail, 18, 19, 30, 32, 33, 58, 79, 82, 83, 94, 97, 100, 102, 104, 108, 123, 126, 138, 142, 146, 147, 152, 154, 155, 157, 165, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 186, 218, 222, 225, 226, 233, 259, 266, 272, 273, 275, 282, 284, 286, 290, 293, 296, 297, 309, 355, 381, 383, 385, 390, 391, 394, 399, 400, 401, 405, 406, 407, 408, 411, 413, 421 Guattari, Felix, 372, 373, 376, 378, 379, 380, 388 Hall, Stuart, 5, 10, 14 Harper, Stephen (Prime Minister), 4, 240, 251, 254, 259, 260, 261, 262,

Index 425 263, 264, 265, 267, 268, 336, 339, 362, 394, 400 Hells Angels (biker gang), 246, 322, 415 Hollywood, 11, 20, 45, 244, 295, 297, 330, 337, 338, 340, 398, 399 Homolka, Karla, 59, 64, 159, 184, 186 Hooites-Meursing, Anton, 240, 248 ideology, 8, 17, 96, 216, 222, 228, 231, 241, 260, 279, 288–92, 352 Ignatieff, Michael, 261, 262 Innis, Harold, 6, 14, 395 interviewing, 3, 8, 27, 28, 39, 47, 50, 53, 55, 72, 73, 74, 76, 85, 89, 139, 218, 225, 229, 232, 233, 254, 284, 285, 290, 300 Ipperwash, 4, 54, 241, 242, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 326, 328, 390, 394, 395, 401, 415 juries, 4, 7, 8, 19, 60, 61, 62, 76, 79, 84, 101, 103, 109, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 140, 141, 148, 149, 153, 160, 163, 164, 184, 185, 188, 275, 276, 277, 311, 390 Kant, Immanuel, 372 kidnapping, 19, 64, 71, 72, 77, 78, 95, 184, 192 Kristeva, Julia, 94, 99, 397 Latimer, Robert, 21, 117, 119, 120, 123, 387 lawyers, 8, 45, 60, 83, 97, 101, 119, 120, 125, 126, 130, 131, 133, 140, 141, 142, 144, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 166,

168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 178, 180, 182, 186, 188, 189, 276, 277, 307, 310, 313, 342, 385, 395, 414 Layton, Jack, 262, 272 Leveson Inquiry, 25, 34, 53 Levinas, Emmanuel, 37, 41, 307, 308, 311, 313, 314, 320, 398, 402 libel, 182, 183, 252, 414 London Free Press, 24, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 36, 39, 41, 81, 125, 127, 134, 140, 187, 191, 307, 309, 315, 319, 321, 386, 394, 395, 407, 414 Luhmann, Niklas, 243, 367, 368, 369, 371, 372, 374, 375, 379, 399 Lyotard, Jean-François, 313, 320, 399 Mafia, 18, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 256, 270, 322, 389, 415 Manitoba, 18, 77, 139, 152, 169, 170, 179, 180, 254, 346, 384, 399, 417, 419 Manners, Jordan, 4, 241, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 296, 388, 390, 396, 407 Marx, Karl, 123, 374, 375, 379, 380, 392, 399, 402 McClintic, Terri-Lynne, 19, 58, 64, 71, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 95, 97, 100, 103, 108, 186 mental illness, 4, 30, 95, 157, 242, 346, 347, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 392, 395, 397, 400, 401, 402, 403, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 421 Montreal Gazette, 261, 266, 272, 273, 355, 416 moral panics, 95, 280, 331, 332, 333, 339

426 Index murder, 8, 9, 10, 24, 25, 32, 34, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 72, 76, 77, 78, 80, 83, 84, 92, 94, 95, 100, 103, 108, 116, 117, 118, 140, 142, 143, 148, 158, 159, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 243, 247, 248, 249, 275, 276, 277, 278, 303, 312, 324, 350, 359 National Post, 18, 58, 64, 65, 79, 186, 226, 227, 230, 231, 233, 275, 276, 282, 284, 293, 296, 355, 383, 384, 388, 390, 396, 414, 416 Negri, Antonio, 243, 374, 375, 378, 379, 380, 394, 402 Netherlands, 19, 20, 47, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 158, 209, 216, 411 Nova Scotia, 40, 132, 133, 134, 138, 140, 152, 255, 269, 402 Ontario, 7, 12, 24, 25, 35, 60, 77, 78, 83, 97, 100, 108, 127, 135, 136, 140, 153, 159, 175, 178, 181, 187, 188, 192, 198, 224, 242, 260, 261, 271, 275, 283, 284, 304, 305, 308, 309, 313, 317, 319, 320, 321, 322, 324, 328, 329, 330, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 344, 345, 396, 403, 409, 415, 418, 419, 420 Parliament, 86, 108, 132, 161, 162, 166, 168, 171, 172, 173, 175, 179, 262, 394, 399 photography, 17, 20, 23, 24, 32, 33, 34, 43, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 87, 128, 137, 138, 141, 143, 144, 147, 149, 157, 161, 167, 172, 188, 225, 239, 316, 317 pickup, 17, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 73, 117, 224, 236

police, 3, 10, 19, 20, 43, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 78, 79, 83, 84, 90, 100, 101, 106, 107, 108, 109, 116, 125, 127, 129, 130, 131, 133, 143, 144, 149, 157, 159, 160, 168, 169, 172, 180, 183, 189, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 224, 225, 240, 242, 247, 248, 258, 261, 265, 277, 278, 280, 282, 283, 285, 289, 292, 293, 298, 299, 305, 306, 311, 312, 315, 316, 317, 319, 322, 324, 325, 326, 330, 332, 333, 334, 335, 337, 340, 341, 343, 414 prison, 7, 64, 72, 95, 105, 117, 118, 120, 186, 254, 289, 300, 320 privacy, 4, 19, 37, 38, 57, 71, 74, 77, 85, 87, 90, 92, 99, 126, 130, 132, 133, 156, 157, 158, 161, 165, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 177, 179, 180, 181, 299, 382, 383, 390, 391, 409, 415, 419 Quebec, 15, 43, 45, 47, 54, 55, 77, 155, 181, 254, 255, 259, 270, 272, 273, 329, 401 Rafferty, Michael, 19, 58, 60, 64, 71, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 94, 95, 97, 100, 102, 103, 105, 108, 184, 186, 192 RCMP, 51, 109, 110, 111, 125, 129, 130, 131, 133, 254 religion, 5, 9, 36, 71, 120, 135, 164, 197, 203, 205, 326, 327 Saskatchewan, 68, 109, 111, 116, 117, 119, 123, 152, 404, 417 Searle, John, 252, 258, 263, 264, 267, 271

Index 427 sensationalism, 3, 6, 10, 24, 217, 218, 220, 221, 225, 230, 233 serial killers, 3, 32, 83, 186, 294, 332, 396 sexual assault, 4, 19, 64, 78, 94, 100, 102, 103, 108, 126, 128, 136, 143, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 178, 179, 181, 184, 186, 192, 391 speech acts, 241, 252, 257, 258, 267 Stafford, Tori, 19, 60, 64, 70, 73, 76, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 84, 91, 94, 95, 100, 104, 106, 108, 184, 186, 190, 192 stereotypes, 40, 157, 158, 159, 243, 278, 290, 291, 296, 305, 315, 316, 331, 347, 348 street racing, 4, 6, 242, 243, 330–45, 386 Supreme Court, 7, 79, 97, 118, 119, 120, 123, 125, 129, 132, 134, 135, 137, 138, 148, 150, 160, 161, 163, 165, 167, 168, 173, 178, 180, 183, 313, 345, 388, 401, 404, 406, 415 Sweden, 19, 20, 47, 67, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 97, 158, 419 Switzerland, 75, 416

209, 214, 215, 216, 218, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 233, 236, 237, 242, 261, 262, 266, 270, 272, 273, 275, 282, 283, 284, 286, 292, 293, 296, 297, 298, 304, 309, 315, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322, 323, 325, 326, 343, 345, 382, 383, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 394, 395, 397, 398, 403, 404, 407, 409, 410, 411, 414, 415 transparency, 13, 51, 65, 67, 77, 125, 126, 129, 132, 134, 155, 195, 312, 316, 390 trauma, 29, 30, 31, 34, 40, 41, 101, 103, 158, 159, 174, 393, 396, 407, 409 Twitter, 4, 11, 32, 33, 36, 60, 66, 127, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 171, 173, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 360, 383, 389, 407

television, 7, 8, 47, 53, 58, 59, 60, 91, 92, 101, 109, 114, 118, 125, 149, 197, 221, 242, 257, 283, 329, 330, 340, 349, 417, 419 testimony, 4, 126, 156, 157, 178, 180, 181, 409 Toronto Star, 12, 31, 34, 58, 59, 79, 81, 90, 93, 97, 125, 126, 134, 138, 142, 143, 146, 147, 151, 153, 154, 157, 161, 165, 166, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 185, 186, 193, 197, 198, 199, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208,

Vancouver Sun, 65, 134, 240, 245, 249, 250, 251, 266, 272, 273, 323, 383, 414, 416, 421 video games, 239, 290, 330, 338 violence, 4, 6, 10, 12, 30, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 66, 84, 86, 93, 102, 104, 112, 129, 139, 158, 159, 161, 162, 166, 175, 177, 178, 179, 181, 193, 201, 203, 207, 216, 223, 239, 242, 245, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 258, 263, 265, 267, 269, 275, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 284, 285, 286, 289, 290,

United States, 7, 8, 9, 30, 50, 51, 71, 75, 76, 88, 101, 150, 196, 216, 225, 234, 253, 254, 268, 274, 280, 283, 288, 314, 329, 339, 397, 412, 420, 421

428 Index 291, 292, 294, 295, 296, 305, 306, 310, 315, 316, 326, 328, 332, 333, 336, 341, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 361, 362, 364, 365, 379, 381, 384, 386, 388, 392, 393, 395, 396, 397, 402, 403, 405, 406, 407, 408, 418, 419 warrants, 35, 125, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 160, 190, 208 Weber, Max, 113, 123, 392, 394 Wente, Margaret, 12, 286

Whyte, Ken, 228, 231 Williams, Russell, 83, 100, 104, 108, 126, 136, 141, 143, 151, 153, 154, 155, 395, 403, 404, 408, 413 Young, Jock, 10, 15, 331, 344, 387 youth, 4, 6, 18, 20, 24, 25, 32, 33, 65, 214, 243, 251, 253, 254, 263, 264, 266, 267, 268, 273, 274, 275, 278, 284, 286, 291, 294, 295, 297, 319, 323, 327, 364, 365, 366, 379, 383, 385, 386, 392, 397, 402, 404, 407, 408, 412, 418, 420