“Ministerial supporters are fond of lauding the service rendered to their party by the present Prime Minister,” reads an article in a November 4, 1873 copy of The Globe, a publication which would later become the Globe and Mail. “The ground of this presumed obligation is not very intelligible in any other sense than that Sir John […]
Case Studies
Red Flags: the PMO, the Star, the Advance and the “whole-off-the-record-thing”
The email from the prime minister’s office offered a story with strings attached. For two Ontario journalists, the conditions seemed unreasonable. Case study by Alexandra Byers, Michael Lyons and Gina Wicentowich February 2015 Introduction On June 17, 2013, the office of the Prime Minister (PMO) had a story they wanted Canada’s media to tell. Media representatives from […]
7. Epilogue
What would you have chosen to do as a journalist in this situation? Because this case study is intended primarily as a teaching resource, a password is required to view the epilogue. The purpose is to encourage readers to pause and think about how they would resolve the difficulty, before learning how the journalist(s) […]
6. The decision-making point
There was a broad consensus in the newsroom that the story contained a strong public interest. Still, the newsroom was under pressure from the police to keep the story under wraps, and the family couldn’t be reached for comment. It became evident that the reporters involved had uncovered all the information they were likely to […]
5. Unanswered questions
The circumstances of the officer’s death raised many difficult questions for journalists at The Spectator. What drove this officer to take his own life? Was there something disquieting going on within police ranks — an internal investigation, perhaps — that drove this officer to take his own life, with a police-issued weapon, while on duty? […]
4. Stigma and cop culture
Every person we spoke to for this case study noted that stigma plays a role in hindering an open discussion of suicide, in the media and general public alike. Sociologists define stigma as “an ‘attribute that is deeply discrediting’ and that reduces the bearer ‘from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one’” […]
3. Privacy versus the public’s right to know
Some critics argue journalists use the phrase “public interest” too liberally, as a convenient way to justify the publication of a contentious or sensitive story. “I think the catch-all phrase of what is in the ‘public interest’ is something that is so non-defined and not prescriptive that it can essentially be wrapped around any incident,” […]
2. Suicide and the public interest
The Spectator’s ethics guidelines indicate that suicide should not be reported unless there is a “public need to know” [1]. But how, exactly, should that public interest be defined? As a societal issue, there is no question that reporting on suicide is in the public interest, according to CBC ombudsman Esther Enkin, who co-wrote the […]
1. “We don’t routinely report on suicides”
After it became clear that the police officer had taken his own life, the first hurdle that The Spectator’s editors and reporters faced was their own publication’s policy on suicide reporting. In 2005, many newspapers followed a long-standing blanket policy that cautioned reporters against covering incidents of suicide. The Spectator was among them. Even today, […]
Officer down: reporting on police suicide
When a cop shot himself in a local cemetery, the Hamilton Spectator had to decide what the public should know Case study by Deanne Bender, Sidney Cohen and Jeanie Tran February 2015 Introduction Early in the afternoon of Nov. 1, 2005, a single shot rang out across the grounds of White Chapel Memorial Gardens, a […]