The words that pop to mind when describing the current state of political journalism in Canada aren’t pretty. That’s why a group of journalism educators interested in the enterprise — and disturbed by some of the trending directions of Canadian politics and the press — convened a national conference at Carleton University Nov. 15-17 to hear from dozens of reporters, columnists, fellow academics and others engaged in the democratic life of the country and to begin reimagining political journalism in Canada.
The seedbed for the conference — Reimagining Political Journalism: Perils, Possibilities and What Comes Next — was a year-long series of conversations between Carleton University journalism professor Adrian Harewood, a long-time CBC Ottawa radio and television news host, and fellow journalism educators Chris Dornan (Carleton), Kathryn Gretsinger (UBC) and Andy Clarke (Loyalist College), all of whom also have extensive backgrounds in the profession.
As a prelude to the November conference, an online panel discussion hosted by Harewood was held in June 2024 and posted on YouTube. The key themes were introduced by Prof. Harewood and a preliminary discussion featured insights from Vancouver-based author, political theorist and columnist David Moscrop, Winnipeg-based author, professor and columnist Niigaan Sinclair and Montreal-based anthropologist, podcaster and columnist Emilie Nicolas.
In setting the stage for discussion, Harewood compared the temper of our times to previous eras in Canadian history and argued that “the very nature of our politics has changed” in recent years.
“It’s become more toxic, more vicious, more dyspeptic, and more hysterical,” Harewood observed. “Every day we see elected officials subjected to shocking levels of abuse, even physical threats. It seems our politicians are more prone to playing on prejudices, fears, and hatreds for political gain, without conscience, and with little regard for the larger consequences of doing so.”
The conference, which is taking place in the Richcraft Hall home of Canada’s oldest journalism school, brings together close to 50 of the leading practitioners and observers — and in some cases, subjects — of political journalism in the country. The discussion is unfolding less than two weeks after a historic U.S. election decisively won by former U.S. president Donald Trump, who has routinely characterized mainstream American journalists as “enemies of the people,” and mused in the latest campaign about reporters being killed in the crossfire if he were targeted again by an assassin.
Canadian politics, too, has seen rising animosity towards many members of the news media. Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has made pledges to defund and dismantle the CBC — one of the country’s prime sources of journalism and top employers of news professionals — and labelled all news organizations benefiting from federal funding for journalism part of a “propaganda” machine of the Liberal government.
At this fraught moment in history, the Reimagining Political Journalism conference kicked off on Friday evening.
Allan Thompson, director of the Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication, welcomed attendees to the gathering with a sobering message about the waning influence of traditional news media and serious challenges facing political journalism in particular.
“Whatever the news media were in the late 20th century — and maybe there is a certain degree of golden-age nostalgia at play here — but whatever they were, they aren’t anymore,” said Thompson, a former political reporter with the Toronto Star. “We are here to examine the role of political journalism in a very different world, and to puzzle over how educators should prepare the next generation of journalists to navigate that world.”
Thompson described a recent, conspicuous “act of political journalism” in which he led a small team of intrepid student reporters into the J-School’s underground parking lot to scrum Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who was visiting Carleton to announce the launch of a new nursing program but was not taking questions from the media.
‘We need to talk. We need conversation.’
— Adrian Harewood, associate professor of journalism and conference chair
Thompson wondered if the journalistic instinct to hold power to account is waning. He expressed concern that some critics “couldn’t fathom why journalists would follow the premier to his car to ask a question.”
He urged journalists to protect the idea that watchdogging decision-makers — “face to face” and via other means — must remain “a hallmark of our political culture” in an era of disruption, destabilization and disparagement of news media.
Harewood followed with an invocation to conference participants to engage in the kind of constructive dialogue our broader society urgently needs.
“We need to talk. We need conversation,” he said, recalling how he and his fellow conference organizers had grown so frustrated by the “coarsening of democratic politics,” “the burgeoning politics of rage” and the spread of misinformation and malice “stoked by bad-faith political actors.”
At the same time, he noted, the number of political reporters in the country is “in steep decline.” He emphasized the three-day conference needed “young journalists leading the conversations” and added: “We’re looking forward to talking about solutions.”
Next came Friday’s keynote address from the influential Canadian journalist Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for New York City-based The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, “The Time of Monsters.”
In a talk he titled “Fact-Checking Won’t Save Democracy,” Heer explored the strenuous efforts of mainstream news organizations to “weaponize” the fundamentals of journalism — most notably, in the era of Trump, a fact-checking mania aimed at exposing his relentless lying — while failing to persuade or even reach the tens of millions of voters drawn so fiercely to MAGA messaging.
He wondered aloud if alarm-ringing such as the Washington Post’s warning that “Democracy Dies in Darkness” connected only with audiences that didn’t need to be convinced and that news organizations — like U.S. Democrats — failed to understand the truism in both politics and readership-expansion that “you gotta go hunting where the ducks are.”
Heer’s key argument was that the traditional left-right conception of the political spectrum has been replaced by a struggle between “pro-system and anti-system” forces and that as part of the elite establishment, well-educated, fact-checking journalists and the legacy news media have been unable to effectively counter the institution-smashing strain of American politics.
The anti-system politician, claimed Heer, is effectively “immune” to attacks that amount to defending established legal, political and media institutions.
Heer was joined for a post-keynote conversation by author, journalist and adjunct Carleton professor Andrew Cohen — a veteran Canadian political columnist specializing in U.S.-Canada relations — and Sarah St-Pierre, a current Master of Journalism student at Carleton and former editor of the McGill University student publication Catalyst.
Cohen acknowledged the “extraordinary moment” facing American democracy and the rise of those who are “quite happy to burn it down.” He highlighted the immense challenge for political journalists gripped by fatigue and now facing a second Trump presidency — “it’s enervating to cover the White House . . . to be attacked by the president . . . to be thrown out of the briefing room.”
Heer acknowledged that Trump “wants to burn everything down” but observed that “we don’t have inherent trust” in institutions and that journalists must do more to understand Trump’s supporters and figure out: “How did we get here?”
“That’s a real challenge,” responded Heer, encouraging journalists to find ways of building audiences and influence across a range of platforms “while still doing good journalism.”
St-Pierre inquired about how the news media should be doing more to engage young people in political journalism and highlighted efforts in the recent U.S. election campaign to “sidestep the traditional media” and gravitate “towards platforms that embrace subjectivity,” particularly podcasts and powerful social media channels.
The conference agenda features panel discussions across a range of themes — strengthening youth engagement in political journalism, amplifying Indigenous voices, the challenge of teaching political reporting and much more.
Along with Nicolas, Moscrop and Sinclair, panelists include CBC senior writer and political affairs columnist Aaron Wherry, author of a best-selling book about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s years in power; The Narwhal’s Ontario correspondent Emma McIntosh, former Toronto Star columnist Desmond Cole, an award-winning journalist, author of The Skin We’re In and blogger at yeseverthing.ca; former journalist Amira Elghawaby, the Canadian government’s special representative on combatting Islamophobia; and Globe and Mail columnist Tanya Talaga, author of the 2017 bestseller Seven Fallen Feathers and the newly published The Knowing, as well as a past winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize For Political Writing.
Saturday’s sessions were launched with words of welcome from Dr. Vandna Bhatia, associate dean of Carleton’s Faculty of Public and Global Affairs and a political scientist specializing in Canadian politics and public policy.
In light of the current political polarization in society, she said, the conference “could not be more timely” as a way to begin “charting the future for responsible political journalism.” Recalling the roots of Carleton’s journalism program amid the upheaval of the Second World War to train the news professionals who would “chronicle an utterly changed postwar world . . . . It feels like we are at a new inflection point.”
Saturday’s first panel discussion — broadly scoped as an exploration of “the purpose of political journalism” — was moderated by Harewood and featured lively exchanges across the political spectrum, including insights from Cole, Elghaway and Nicolas, as well as former Sun News Network executive, conservative political advisor and media relations professional Kory Tenycke and Rick Harp, a former CBC and APTN broadcaster and founder of the podcast Media Indigena.
The discussion ranged across the economics of the news media, the intersection of journalism and advocacy, and the degree to which journalists and news organizations are capable or willing to reflect the diversity of political thought in the country.
Four other panel discussions took place on Saturday, bringing together broad spectrum of journalists and scholars to discuss the profession’s performance and sometimes disagree about their proscriptions for improving political journalism.
The other Saturday panels were:
• “What is the current state of political journalism in Canada?” Moderator: CBC broadcaster Amanda Pfeffer; Panelists: Winnipeg Free Press columnist Niigaan Sinclair, political columnist David Moscrop, The Hill Times managing editor Charelle Evelyn, Lean Out author and podcaster Tara Henley, CBC senior political commentator Aaron Wherry and King’s College journalism professor Brian Daly.
• “How do we make political coverage stronger and more relevant to more people?” Moderator: Former CBC Ottawa broadcaster Lucy van Oldenbarneveld; Panelists: Press Progress journalist Luke Lebrun, The Hill Times columnist Erica Ifill, POLITICO writer Mickey Djuric, Toronto Star political reporter Raisa Patel and former APTN, CBC, National Observer and Canadaland journalist Karyn Pugliese. • “How do we make politics and the coverage of politics more relevant to young people?” Moderator: CBC broadcaster Brett Forester; Panelists: Toronto Star reporter Mark Ramzy, WIRED journalist Evy Kwong, The Narwhal’s Emma McIntosh and Harrison Lowman, managing editor of The Hub. • “Indigenous Perspectives on Political Journalism” Moderator: Rick Harp, founder of Media Indigena; Panelists: CBC broadcaster Brett Forester, Veldon Coburn, McGill University associate professor and faculty chair of the Indigenous Relations Initiative, Winnipeg Free Press columnist Niigaan Sinclair, Pam Palmater, author and law professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and Prof. Candis Callison, author and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous journalism, media and public discourse at the University of British Columbia.
