October 20, 2009 Special Issue

Promoting newsroom diversity

The CBC editorial board’s main man tells all

by Kamila Hinkson

Section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants us fundamental rights including freedom of the press and freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, to name a few.

Though the media is free to report on any topic that the public needs to know about, that doesn’t mean they always do. Oftentimes, a lack of awareness on the part of those covering the news can lead to important stories, especially those concerning minority groups, being overlooked.

Hugh Brodie is the communications and community partnerships manager for the CBC in Quebec. It's his job to bring the public and their concerns into the newsroom.

Among the programs Brodie oversees are Montreal Matters, a collaborative initiative that explores topics of importance to Montrealers, and the School Needs Project, where elementary schools come up with a project and compete for grants. The goal of these community partnerships is to help CBC build long-term relationships and establish contacts within different community groups.

Brodie also organizes ad-hoc editorial boards in order to speak directly with members of various communities. Editorial boards allow the guests to tell the CBC what is important to them.

“Our own priorities [at the CBC] try to reflect those of Canadian society as a whole,” he said.
Some topics and cultural groups warrant annual boards that are convened in order to continually increase the CBCs level of understanding. Others initiatives are one-time deals, such as the upcoming board on winter amateur sports in honour of the 2010 Olympic Games.
Though diversity may be a tricky topic to discuss, Brodie said he doesn’t find it difficult at all, “unless you only look at the negatives.”

“Bad news comes easy,” he explained. “We need you to tell us who the role models are.”

But an increased understanding on the part of news producers is only the first step.

The Newsroom Diversity Census Report was produced in 2004 by researchers John Miller and Caron Court of Ryerson University. They found that “at any given daily newsroom in the country, minorities are more than six times under-represented [compared to non-minorities].”
Of the 96 daily newspapers that were invited to participate in the report, only 35 of them responded. Although the document doesn’t specify which newspapers responded or even where the respondents were located, the results are nonetheless interesting.

When asked why so few minorities work for their newspaper, most editors cited a lack of minority applicants and stated that “diversity coverage is a job for everyone, and it shouldn’t depend on hiring diverse reporters.” It's interesting to note that the correlation between newspapers that had programs to improve minority representation and newspapers that had been called out by minority groups concerning their minority coverage was very strong.
Luckily, many newsrooms have embraced the assumption that a diversity of cultural backgrounds in the newsroom will lead to greater depth and diversity in news coverage.
In 2007, CTV Montreal was named as one of the top five employers in Canada in terms of diversity (which includes the representation of women, Aboriginal people, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities). In 2008 the station received a certificate from Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn recognizing their commitment to creating a diverse workplace.

Brodie said that diversity in the newsroom is also one of the CBC’s top priorities, though he warned that measurements of diversity should not be based solely on what is visible to the public.

“If it’s not the actual host, it might not reflect [diversity directly],” he said. “You have to look at the workforce as a whole.” He was quick to dispel the idea that the downfall of print media means the visual media will have to pick up the slack in the diversity coverage.

Brodie said running editorial boards is one of the more enjoyable parts of his job, and that the School Needs Project has “plugged him in” to the goings-on in the province’s elementary schools.