By Tamara Merritt
“Follow the money.”
That was the popular adage about truth-seeking in journalism that framed the discussion during Sunday’s first panel at the Reimagining Political Journalism Conference at Carleton University.
But the ensuing conversation between moderator Joanne Chianello and the five panelists — journalists Emma McIntosh, Kate Porter, Martin Lukacs, John Woodside and Bob Fife — made clear that “following the money” is not as easy as it seems.
Chianello is a former Ottawa Citizen and CBC Ottawa journalist who produced award-winning work scrutinizing municipal politics in Canada’s capital; McIntosh is the Ontario reporter with The Narwhal who was part of a Narwhal-Toronto Star team that won a Michener Award for breaking the provincial government Greenbelt scandal; Porter is a CBC Ottawa reporter and deep-dive specialist on a range of local issues, including transportation and land use; Woodside, senior Ottawa reporter with Canada’s National Observer, has driven policy changes with his journalism; Fife, Ottawa bureau chief of the Globe and Mail and one of the country’s most award-winning journalists, has broken numerous national stories during a career spanning nearly five decades.
The participants discussed the challenges and limitations of reporting on corporate power. Does the media engage with corporate power? “Somewhat,” said Woodside, explaining that the reason it’s not always present within reporting is because of the fusion between corporate power and politics.
The way the government operates is to “work with industry for the benefit of industry,” Woodside said. This leads to collaboration between government and corporations. “A number of natural resource (government) employees have even told me they work with a lot of people who see their job as representing the oil and gas industry in government. They don’t see themselves as bureaucrats trying to work in the public interest,” he said.
This fusion presents complicates news coverage but presents an opportunity to dig deeper into this intersection.
McIntosh noted that journalistic probing of corporate power is severely limited by the “hollowing out of newsrooms.” A decrease in the number of journalists employed, limited time and a lack of resources, among other challenges, have plunged newsrooms into “survival mode,” she said.
Newsroom managers need to be responsible for ensuring reporters get out of this survival mindset and have to time to engage in meaningful ways with corporate powers, said McIntosh.
Her argument resounded with Porter, who agreed that the distressed state of newsrooms is having a detrimental effect on political journalism. Journalists need time, she said, to trace connections between decision-makers, businesses and other stakeholders. But that’s in short short supply in most newsrooms.
“Possibly, if we combined giving reporters more time to understand these processes, help them have the skills to do the math, then we might be able to do more on this corporate influence piece,” Porter said.
Martin’s look into the future of political journalism was pessimistic.
“I think the situation is dire,” he said. “As the joke goes, Canada is basically three oil companies in a trench coat.” He argued that corporate priorities are what actually set the parameters of policy and political debate in Canada. Further, when a consensus around such policies exist, scrutiny of these important issues is all but non-existent.
Fife said that when reporting on government, it’s always important to look for corporate connections. He recalled a story he reported on discussing “deplorable conditions” at a meat plant. Through a Freedom of Information request, he discovered that government inspectors of the business saw their role as “helping the meat plant industry.”
The inspector’s mandate, he argued, must be to “protect Canadians and not the industry,” but that wasn’t happening. These types of stories are plentiful, he said.
When looking at any story, Fife said, it’s important to take stock and say, “OK, who is going to benefit from this, who is supposed to be regulating it, and then you can pull your story together.”
While panelists outlined many of the problems facing political journalism, they also offered some suggestions on addressing the challenges.
McIntosh said more could be learned about the intersection between corporations and politicians by making sure reporters have the financial resources and time to file FOI requests. She also said journalists need to become more familiar with public records and the work of other journalists.
Fife outlined the importance of developing relationships with sources. Early career journalists should choose to build rapport with a “wide variety of people,” rather than focusing all their attention on elite figure. Your sources “have to trust you,” he said. They need to know, he insisted, that “you would go to jail for them.”