by Irshad Manji
Presented at Racism in the Media, a conference
sponsored by the Toronto Community Reference
Group on Ethno-Racial and Aboriginal Access to
Metropolitan Services, Oct. 1995
Republished with permission
I'm going to address the responsibility that individuals in the media have to monitor and combat racism.
There are at least two angles from which to explore this issue. The first is the role of journalists to challenge their interview subjects, the non-media people whose "facts" journalists uses to build their story. And the second angle is the role of journalists to challenge each other.
Let me begin with the people whom journalists interview. The bottom line is this: Everybody has an agenda. To quote the American political scientist, Harold Laswell, "Politics is the process by which it is determined who gets what, when and how." Therefore everything is political. Everything.
Some people enjoy the luxury of not having to identify what they say as "political" or "ideological" because it fits into conventional wisdom.
But that's where the sonar of skepticism, the antennae of journalists must go into overdrive. Instead, what we're seeing right now is that the sonar shuts down.
Let me illustrate with a documentary that aired on CTV's "W5" on January 31, 1995. The documentary was about multiculturalism, your usual "Has Canada gone too far?" business. And excerpts from the documentary were published later that week in The Globe and Mail. So clearly, the documentary caught somebody's eye.
What I find interesting is that this documentary aired in the same week as the controversy erupted in the U.S. over the Smithsonian Institute's historical exhibit on the atomic bomb, the Enola Gay, which was dropped on Japan in WWII. The exhibit consisted of photos of Japanese victims, of burned-out shells of houses and skeletons of children's bicycles, as well as a reproduction of the bomb itself.
Veterans accused the Smithsonian of engaging in "ideology" and "political" commentary, rather than plain historical "facts" by showing pictures of Japanese suffering. Not only did they get the Smithsonian to change the exhibit, they also got a public apology from the Smithsonian that, yes, we've overstepped our bounds as a museum
To the best of my knowledge, no journalist publicly challenged the veterans on why they don't see their own position as ideological and political. Erasing human suffering from pictures is political. Revealing only the sanitized, American story is ideological. But when you're part of the dominant ideology, your statements are merely common sense. Conventional wisdom.
The same assumption applies to racism. When you're part of the "mainstream" – what I call the norm of whiteness – you don't have to take responsibility for racism. You will if you're honest, but you don't have to. It's always what the "other" does that is ideological. It's always what the "other" does that causes "racial division" – never what YOU do. Hey, you're protected by the common sense of whiteness.
And in this "W5" documentary, the journalists bought that assumption.
At one point, the reporter interviewed Karen McNulty, President of the Richmond B.C. Parents' Association, who was 1amenting the fact that a Chinese father had left that organization to start the Richmond Chinese Parents' Association. Ms. McNulty said, "I think we're going backwards." She was arguing that racism is eliminated when parents of different cultures can get together in the same room and discuss what's good for the kids.
But the story gave no thought to whose norm would prevail in that room. Indeed, the story zoomed in on editorials warning that the creation of the Chinese Parents' Association would cause "racial division." Again, it's never MY norms that cause racism; it's your resistance to my norms that causes racism, right?
Even the illustrious Eric Malling, host of "W5", exposed this assumption when he introduced part of the story by asking, "Does multiculturalism harm?" But harm what, Eric? Or harm who? With his silence on the issue – not malicious, just matter-of-fact – he meant: Does multiculturalism harm "mainstream" tolerance?
But for me, the most transparent part of the story came when the writer Neil Bissoondath was being interviewed. He said that multiculturalism has made things so bad that his young daughter is not allowed to identify herself as a Canadian. Not an iota of skepticism from the reporter, here. What I would like to see the reporter ask is: Who is disallowing your daughter from identifying as a Canadian? The opponents of multiculturalism are encouraging her to identify as simply Canadian. The supporters of multiculturalism would shrug and say, "Okay, if you want to call yourself Canadian and nothing else, fine. Just respect our right to decide how we want to identify ourselves." So in no quarter does it appear that Bissoondath's daughter is forbidden to identify as Canadian. Why didn't the reporter challenge him? Why didn't she ask him for specific incidents? Why didn't she have him explain such a sweeping statement? Because it jived with her own assumptions.
And what do we get the next week? The Globe running a transcript from the documentary, but without that particular statement. So nobody is taking Bissoondath on. That's what I mean when I talk about the sonar of skepticism shutting down.
And hence the need for diversity in the media, for different assumptions that will lead to different questions.
Which brings me to the second role of journalists – our responsibility to challenge each other. There was a time when I thought that diversity in the newsroom was enough. But since then I've realized it is not. We need more than different faces and different experiences to combat racism: we need people – people of all backgrounds – with an anti-racist understanding and a commitment to being vocal about it. Being a person of color doesn't guarantee either of those things.
My own experience in a newsroom tells me that when I sat on the editorial board of The Ottawa Citizen, there were maybe five people of color in the newsroom. Only one shared my interest in writing an article about racism for the staff newsletter. The rest hesitated for fear of being seen as complainers and making it onto the editor's hitlist at a time of recession.
What's interesting is that, at the time, two of the Citizen's top journalists were people of color. Each had their stories published regularly on the front page. And both felt uneasy about being vocal on anti-racism – not because they figured that racism does not exist, but because they worried for their professional reputations and job security. So the question arises: When are you ever established enough? When is it ever safe enough? When is there ever enough security for journalists to challenge the driving assumptions of their institution?
The answer is, it's never a 'safe' time. But it's always an 'appropriate' time. I'm not saying that speaking up changes everything. But it does plant the idea that accountability from within is crucial in a craft that purports to be driven by truth, balance and accuracy. And internal accountability is especially important given that, today, the very cornerstones of mainstream journalism stifle challenge.
One cornerstone is the soundbite. When you say something different from the norm, you have to reduce it to 20 seconds or less. And let's face it: it's not easy to debunk conventional wisdom in 20 seconds or less. But it sure is easy to reinforce it!
Another cornerstone is the myth of the two-sided story. Most issues are more than two-sided, they're multi-sided. And by not giving serious attention to the shades of gray, journalists end up by reinforcing the either/or ideology behind discrimination. The final, and most problematic cornerstone, is the "daily" nature of journalism. Often, daily newspapers and current affairs programs are so harried and hurried that there's little time for real thought and internal debate. A challenge is not looked upon well because that's just another 'barrier' to getting the product out. So it becomes a vicious cycle: racism is perpetuated and earnest, anti-racist journalists either have to leave or stay and swallow the common sense of whiteness.
As more and more journalists go freelance, my hope is that they won't have to slip into anybody's norms. Until then, the only practical answer I see is two-fold: first, for media outfits not to hire people they're comfortable with, but to make a conscious decision to hire people they're not comfortable with. That is the key to internal accountability and the honest pursuit of balance. Second, for those people hired to be strong enough to stick around (which I wasn't) or be committed enough to run the risk of ruffling a few feathers (which I was). So let me end with a story.
The first week I was at the Citizen, I questioned a senior editor, not on an issue of racism but on an issue of sexism. Of course, the two are linked. He had written an op-ed article about Sinead O'Connor, the close-cropped, female Irish pop star, and I was asked to proof-read the article for the next days edition. In it, this editor wrote that Sinead O'Connor "twitches and bitches." I said: Look, I know I'm the new kid on the block, I don't have nearly the kind of experience you do, and please understand that I'm not telling you what to write. But by using the phrase, "she twitches and bitches," you are feeding a myth, a stereotype, that all strong-willed, free-thinking, bald-headed women are aggressive, hysterical and bitchy. So, in the interest of accuracy, if not fairness, I would humbly suggest that you find an alternate, equally imaginative phrase. I was subsequently told by my boss never to challenge a person of his stature again. But in the next days paper, lo and behold, there was a change. Sinead O'Connor no longer "twitches and bitches." She "twitches and whines." Small steps.
Again, nobody said that being vocal changes everything. But being silent sure won't change anything. Thank you.
Irshad Manji is a Toronto journalist with Vision TV.
