Are You Really Neutral?
Phone cameras and social media have given Black people a way to expose the oppression our communities face at the hands of police. Police violence is nothing new, but the fact that it seems new to some is a testament to how our predominantly white media organizations have failed to challenge those in power, failed to treat Black people with dignity, and failed to cover glaring injustices while enjoying their privilege.
Oumar and Hannan look into Canadian media’s friendly relationship with police forces, the sinister ways in which Canadian media organizations actively silence BIPOC journalists, and how this method of “journalism” leaves racism unchecked.
Oumar Salifou (Co-Host)
If all you do is publish articles and videos talking about how the police are victims and how they’re really stressed out and how they’re tired of being criticized, then how do you also stand with Black people who have told you time and time again how the police harass them, how the police follow them?
I’ve personally been followed by the police. You want to know what that’s like as a Black man? It’s fucking terrifying!
🎵 (Theme Music)
Oumar
So I was at a store just on Whyte Ave. in Edmonton. And if you don’t know Whyte Ave. in Edmonton, it’s a pretty busy street. You know, filled with bars, filled with different stores. And I was just running an errand and I ran into a lady. And I was just making polite conversation and she asked me, you know, “what do you do?”
And I said, “I’m a freelance journalist.” And she was like, “oh, that's interesting. What are you writing about?” And I told her, “well, I’m running about the police.” Obviously I’m not writing really, but you get the point. And basically we had a conversation around the police where she asked me a bunch of, kind of leading questions about whether or not I was for defund or abolish.
And basically she asked me, “which side are you on?”
Hannan Mohamud (Co-Host)
Oh dang. Did she mean on the side of interpreting police brutality, or writing on the deaths of people at the hands of the police? Like what does she mean by that?
Oumar
She actually meant whether or not I was on the side of defunding the police or supporting the police. So I had the uncomfortable situation of having to tell this random, nice white lady in the store that I wanted to abolish the police.
Hannan
Yeah. Right answer.
Oumar
Luckily for me, I work for a podcast now that’s all about that kind of stuff. So it’s easier for me to answer these kinds of questions. So I think I just tried to talk to her a little bit about how problems that come from policing aren’t necessary. And that... you know, this is something that Reakash Walters, who we talked to a lot for this podcast, said in a panel that she was giving… talking about how, as community members, it’s up to us to protect each other and ourselves.
Oumar
And it might seem radical to say this, but if we actually do care about each other, we can live in a world where we don’t need to pay our city $300 million for what is essentially 24-hour surveillance and a monopoly on violence with almost no consequences when things go bad. So I think putting the responsibility on the community members themselves to realize…
Hannan
Giving them that power.
Oumar
Yeah, giving them that power to realize that it’s possible to live in a world without the police.
Hannan
Yeah. So I got involved in just doing research because I was just interested in data, figuring out numbers, knowing stats for when I do want to make arguments with people. Whether it be how much schooling money is going into police institutions or the lack of funding in each district, not just our city but throughout our country. So, it finally elevated into research for policy briefs, trying to figure out what the rationale is behind these decisions in funding, and the effects of what the funding will entail.
But currently, even as a law student — and I’m doing research to figure out and understand how wide-scale police brutality is — you run into this huge obstacle, which is the media, right? Like the media is kind of that gatekeeper. And when you’re trying to figure out how many cases have happened in police brutality or police violence. And it’s kind of hard when you have to Google search “officer-involved shooting” to get those searches. And then, from there, you have to kind of filter out and figure out, “was this an officer being called to a shootout? Or was this an officer responding to domestic violence? Like, is someone dead from the officer shooting? Is the officer the one that’s perpetrating this violence?”
Hannan
So it’s just been very difficult to interpret media, and it slowly became like press releases because of the wording that was used. And Oumar, you worked in journalism. I think this is one thing we always like to talk about, not just your journey into what you’re doing now, but — how was it working as a journalist and seeing this neutral stance that takes place when words like “forcibly entered” should be used. Even a weapon, when “weapon” is used in these articles, a weapon could be a needle. A weapon could be a chair. Like what was the weapon? They don’t hesitate to use the word “gun.” We know that. So how has it been for you working in media and seeing this weird neutral dance, with trying not to call the cops out on killing a human being, you know, being the judge, jury and executioner?
Oumar
I've been lucky enough to work in media for the past couple of years. And it’s been really interesting to have conversations about how journalism is failing Canadians in a lot of ways. And in my case personally, I know directly the impacts of how journalism fails Black Canadians, because it failed me personally.
And it’s not something I think that bothers me as much as it used to, but I think that it’s still a problem that I think should be confronted and addressed. So there is something that I think everyone should be aware of when they look into the media. It’s how language is used in the media. There is a term called “journalese,” which I think is appropriate to apply to the language that journalists use when they write stories. So when you see a typical news story, there is a very specific structure and there are very specific rules for the kind of language that’s used. The phrase that you mentioned before, “officer-involved shooting,” this is something that was, you know, really fabricated and made to make it look like the police are some kind of neutral actors. That, you know, a shooting just happened. An officer was just involved, and that’s kind of it. So when you look at a lot of police coverage from major publications — I’m talking CBC Edmonton, I’m talking Global News, Corus Entertainment, which we’ll mention later, I’m talking CTV Edmonton, CityNews.
You know, there’s a lot of... not a lot, but there’s a few really big players. Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun. So, all of these publications have a very — how do I say this? — unique relationship with the police. I don't think there is any other institution that is treated as kindly and given as many favours as the police. So I’m saying that journalists treat the police very kindly, and the coverage shows that.
Hannan
Honestly, I agree. I think, even if it’s not “kindness” in the sense of favours or anything like that, we can really notice the lack of scrutiny, right? So, you know, you read coverage on political institutions, health care, you name it. You know, safe consumption sites even.
You see the language of them purposefully saying, “this is the harm done by this institution.” In this type of situation, you see race analysis, you see connections with previous issues that have arisen in that institution, right? So connecting these examples and leading to an overall conclusion that there is something that needs to be addressed. We don't see that with coverage and police media, at least in my own research. I’ve yet to come across language, unless it’s used — once someone that is white dies from police brutality —
Oumar
Yeah. And I think it’s also important to recognize that bad reporting has consequences. You know, when a story is published that depicts a Black person as a criminal, as a thug, as someone who is guilty before proven innocent in a court of law, that is negatively impacting the image of all Black people. And you may not feel it like it is, but there is a very clear pattern where Black victims of police brutality, or Black people generally, are assumed guilty before proven innocent and stories clearly lack the perspective that's needed and are clearly biased towards the police.
So I think this is a good transition to walk into one of my personal favourite podcasts. I discovered this podcast a while ago, it was recommended by a friend, and I think everyone should listen to it. It's called Citations Needed. And we’ll just play a little clip for you here, just to give you an example of the kind of conversation that they had in their sixth episode. It was released in 2017. And it’s called “The Media’s Default Setting of White Supremacy.” So that might sound a little bit inflammatory for some people, but if you listen to that episode, there are very powerful things that are said that I think predicted many of the situations that we’re in today because of George Floyd’s murder and how it was captured.
What are the real consequences? How does the media manipulate those murders? How does the media create a situation where we view victims as perpetrators and perpetrators as victims?
Adam Johnson (Co-Host, Citations Needed)
You notice certain patterns. I think the way police shootings are covered is probably, maybe almost more bullshit per square meter than anything else. And a lot of it is very subtle. It’s an incredibly sophisticated language regime, which we’ll get into, that is there to prop up white supremacy, the police department narrative, and to ameliorate —
Nima Shirazi (Co-Host, Citations Needed)
Victim smearing and shaming.
Adam
And to generally ameliorate the kind of middle-class, Bourgeois morality.
Nima
Yep. The media works, not only to defend a racist status quo and to blame victims of police killings, but also namely to protect police. It’s not only to then blame the victims, it’s also really to protect cops. One of the first ways they do this is through language. They do this through what’s called “cop speak”, which is to say the way police talk about quote unquote police matters is internalized by the media in an almost pathological way.
And this is especially true of local media and kind of beat crime reporters, who are typically very myopic in how they approach crime. So they basically act as police stenographers
Adam
Let’s start, for example, one of our favourite clichés, which we’ve all heard a thousand times. Which is “officer involved shooting.”
📰 (News Montage)
Reporter 1
There was an officer involved shooting in Newport News —
Reporter 2
— With new developments and a deadly officer-involved shooting in Muskogee —
Reporter 3
— Breaking News, police have confirmed there’s been an officer-involved shooting at Torrey Pines high school. This happened just after —
Adam
This is a brilliant turn of phrase, because it removes the guilt of the party. When a police officer shoots someone, “officer involved shooting,” it doesn’t actually say who does the shooting or who doesn’t do the shooting.
And so another tactic they use is vague or obscure language. Actually, in Israel a lot they’ll use it too. They’ll say, you know, “two Palestinians die after clashes with protesters.” This is a much more sanitized way of saying that two IDF soldiers shot two Palestinians. So it’s the idea of clashes or the idea of altercations, the idea of a fight. The most egregious example of this —
Nima
That always then justifies the actionary police violence.
Adam
Well because it obscures responsibility.
Nima
Exactly.
Adam
It’s like saying, in that specific case where you have a militarized police force. You have soldiers, you have F22s, it’s like saying there were clashes between a hammer and a nail or clashes between the elephant and the grass. It doesn’t evoke the asymmetry of power, which of course is precisely the point.
Hannan
Manisha is a journalist with Vice Canada and came out with this groundbreaking article, basically dissecting what happened to a lot of POC journalists that were being outward with the discrimination they were experiencing in their work. And I think it was groundbreaking in the sense that it was Canadian media reporting on racist Canadian media, what they’re doing to their own employees, right? For me, you rarely see anything of that nature because of the backlash that Manisha will talk about in her interview later. But it was outstanding that, you know, you had this person in this immense position of privilege and power to write this empowering piece for a lot of people. And Manisha did experience backlash on this, didn’t she Oumar?
Oumar
Yeah. It was pretty interesting to see the fallout of this, especially knowing how secretive a lot of Canadian media is and knowing how difficult it is to get a job as a journalist in Canada. It’s very, very, very competitive. And, I think it’s a situation that you find yourself in as a Black journalist or an Indigenous journalist. If someone does something racist you at work, or you think that racism is rampant in your workplace, what do you do about it? Because upper management of Canadian media is entirely white, and I’m not even exaggerating when I say that.
Hannan
No. Quick Google search.
Oumar
Yeah, it’s a very quick search, you can find it. And essentially, they haven’t taken this issue seriously. Most accusations of racism are trumped up to lies. You’re told that you’re confused or you’re misinterpreting the situation. And in Manisha’s case, when you systematically report instances of bias, clear instances of racism, and you accuse a company of fostering this kind of behavior, publishing racist stories that are very biased towards white perspectives without including balanced voices, and then also falling back on journalistic standards and practices that you’ve clearly broken with previous racist coverage. The situation that she had to go through with Global is a really unfortunate situation, and all the employees who complained about it, as you’ll find out later, it didn’t really end well for them.
Executive Leadership Team, Corus Entertainment
🎵 (Theme Music)
Oumar
From your perspective, you’ve been someone who’s been very vocal about Global and Corus specifically. And this dates back to even before you published your article. So do you mind telling me what your relationship with Global is, and how it started, and what you started noticing about their racism?
Manisha Krishnan (Vice Canada)
I really only remember criticizing them in relation to their coverage. It was following George Floyd's death and the protests, and it was because they had asked for the view of Canadians who were living in the [United] States. But these were, you know, white Canadians who were commenting on how the protesting was making them uneasy, and kind of saying that it should be done in the “proper way.” The story also interchangeably used “protest” and “riot,” which is obviously problematic for its own reasons. So I had called out that story. And that story, Global actually later unpublished it.
Manisha
And then later on down the line, when I was doing my investigation, I found out that a bunch of employees internally had flagged that story, had had multiple conversations with managers about that story, and sent emails as well. Just explaining why they felt it was problematic. And you know, what I learned was that there were 12 people who signed an email flagging that story. And half of those people were later laid off.
Oumar
That really is the crux of your story, how all these people who criticized their bosses and their colleagues were, you know, laid off essentially. So do you want to maybe tell people what those journalists were working on, and what were the circumstances around the layoffs, and what happened after?
Manisha
Yeah. So I mean, I’ll say that I don’t know how many people Global laid off in total because they haven’t revealed that. But there’s more than 20 for sure that I was able to figure out, and so Global positioned it as “we’re pivoting away from Lifestyle on the website and we’re going to focus on objective, fact-based journalism.” The wording of that is interesting, because the Lifestyle team was actually doing quite a bit of coverage around race. For example, health disparities for Black people, there was a investigation into sexual misconduct that focused on a woman of colour, investigations to do with policing, violence against women. And then, the “Wait, There’s More” podcast, the team behind that. They often took on race. My friend Tamara Khandaker is the host of that, and she actually had me on the show to talk about the troubles faced by journalists of colour. You know, before she was laid off.
I found out this morning that @rp_browne and I have been laid off, effective immediately, and that after 276 episodes, Wait There’s More has been cancelled.
— Tamara Khandaker 🌴 (@anima_tk) July 23, 2020
Manisha
So it’s interesting that Global positioned this as a move towards “objective, fact-based journalism.” When, you know, the reality is these reporters were really trying to amplify racialized voices. And it seemed, from what I gathered, they were actually internally looked at as a bit of a model for how to diversify your sources. So it’s interesting that Global is publicly saying “we’re doing all this stuff on race. We hired a firm to investigate our culture.” And then they sort of laid off a lot of the people who were doing the heavy lifting and doing that work
Oumar
Why do you think that white journalists use these terms like “fact-based journalism.” Like “objectivity.” Why is this used constantly to either discredit journalists of colour who are doing work that criticizes mainstream journalism, or used to uphold white journalists whose work is somehow more objective or more reliable?
Manisha
I think that for a long time, going right into [journalism] school and even before that, there’s been this really strong orthodoxy around this idea of objectivity and being distant from the story. And I think that, because the press has largely been run by white people and white men, the default of this objectivity has essentially come to mean — or can mean, I should say — a white male or a white lens, viewed through a white lens.
So when it comes to POC wanting to cover stories in their community, wanting to call out racism and cover racism, we get told that we’re too close to the story. We can’t be objective. I think that came up in this investigation in a number of ways, but one of the ways actually was when I sent Corus my list of questions, Troy Reeb, who’s the executive vice president of broadcast networks actually emailed my editor — my white editor — and basically said to him, “there’s ethical concerns around your reporter doing this story because she has demonstrated that she has a bias” basically. And you know, he screenshotted tweets where I was critical of that story that I had just mentioned. And so, it’s interesting that we’re having all these discussions around objectivity. Is that really being used to silence journalists of colour or to silence racialized stories. And in the midst of that conversation, Corus actually sort of used that tactic to try to discredit me.
Oumar
So this is a tweet of you criticizing an article. I think journalists generally are people who encourage criticism. We have columnists who are very white in Canada, whose entire job it is to criticize everything. You know, criticize the food we eat, criticize the music we listen to. Yet when a journalist of colour decides to criticize a company, that’s immediately used against them.
And I think there are so many other instances in your article and your other reporting where journalists of colour complain about something, and then immediately their complaints are used to say, “oh, you’re making us uncomfortable.” Or, “oh, we’re actually dealing with this properly.” Or, “oh, here’s a Black person or a person of colour that says, actually, the white people are fine and we’re doing a great job.”
So can you talk about some of these tactics that are used to kind of take the criticism and then spin it back and just say, “no, actually you’re the wrong one” or “no, you're causing something bad here.”
Manisha
Yeah, definitely one of the concerns that came up from the sources that I talked to was that many of them felt like they were being gaslit by the company when they would raise concerns.
So you know, one example I can give is: in the meetings with management over this problematic story,. these journalists were raising their concerns. And the managers continuously use language like, “well we don’t want this to become an us-and-them issue,” you know, or “I have trouble when it’s management this and the company that,” you know, I struggle with that. Or even saying that the white reporter who had published that original piece was feeling attacked, and she was feeling unsupported. And actually that journalist, I reached out to her for comment and she basically confirmed to me that she was upset that her colleagues had raised this story with management.
The other one, I think you mentioned it. I had a source who was called into HR and they were told that they were making white people uncomfortable by constantly challenging racism within the newsroom. You know, there was another producer who I talked to who said that they were called into a meeting because they declined a white colleague’s help. And her perception of this was that the white colleague just didn’t like her tone essentially. And so there was a meeting over it.
So these are all just examples that illustrate how people started to really feel worn down. You know, they felt like they were raising these concerns and that these tactics were being used to sort of dismiss them or to wear them down.
Oumar
I guess, for listeners who aren’t familiar with Canadian journalism or what a newsroom would look like, do you mind describing where some of these incidents took place? You know, what cities they’re in, and I guess, from your experience working in newsrooms, what kind of environments are these places? What kind of people get jobs there and who really thrives and who doesn’t in those kinds of environments?
Manisha
I don’t believe a diversity audit has ever been done at Corus. And in fact, several employees told me that they requested one last year after someone made a blackface joke on set, and basically the company refused to do one at that time. But what I can tell you is that the Corus’ leadership team is almost entirely white. So both their board of directors and their executive leadership is mostly white people. I think there’s maybe one POC.
And so, you know, in general, the newsrooms are really white. I mean, I’ve worked in several different newsrooms in Toronto, as well as in Alberta, and back home in Vancouver. And most newsrooms are very white and, and they get whiter the higher you go up the chain. You know, to the point where the editorial boards, the senior management is often almost exclusively white people.
And so I think, from my own experiences, I can say that can be challenging in different ways. But one of the ways is that if you’re a young racialized journalist and you want to raise stories that are about racism, and your editors are all white people who maybe don’t really have an understanding of those issues who may be don’t necessarily care, don’t think it’s a great story.
You know, I’ve had that happen a lot and you really internalize that and you really start thinking like, “maybe I’m not a great journalist, maybe my ideas suck.” And the reality is that’s not true. It’s just that there’s not enough people in the decision-making and the assigning positions who are POC and who sort of want to champion these issues.
And I do hope that’s starting to change. I think there is certainly a lot more coverage now. And I hope that we can just keep going with that momentum.
Oumar
When the media is predominantly white, and stories get written from that perspective, and that problem festers for years and never really gets resolved, what do you think is the impact on the readers?
Manisha
Well, they're not getting the full story of what’s going on in their communities. I mean, the degree to which white people have been shocked by police brutality this year really tells you something. Because police brutality is not new.
You know, this has been going on for so long. Black people, Indigenous people have been talking about this issue, have been talking about their experiences. There’s been reports done. You know, I’m not totally sure why, at this particular moment, there seems to be an awakening happening. But part of the issue is definitely the press not having been covering this issue, and also being deferential to authorities and being deferential to police.
What I mean by that is, when an incident happens and the police put out their version of what happened... let’s say that one of their officers killed someone, in which case they actually may say nothing at all. But in other cases where they do say something, it’s accepted as fact. Like their narrative is accepted as fact. And I think that we as journalists — we don’t actually accept as fact things that the government tells us. We challenge those things. We are taught to be skeptical. And so I’m not sure why that hasn’t really applied to our treatment of police up until right now. But that is one instance where I think the readers certainly are not getting the full scope of the story.
Oumar
It’s just really hard because... the thing that gets me the most is, the people who just had to deal with blatant racism and never saw justice and got denied so many opportunities. And, you know, this was pretty recent too for a lot of people — it’s still happening today! And you know, what are the consequences?
That’s what really bothers me is that people... like I guess the president of Global did step down...
Manisha
No, no. No, just Jill Krop, who is the news director in BC is resigning. But so far, no one else has.
Oumar
Oh… she’s the only one.
Manisha
Yeah. Yeah. And she’s not in the top leadership team or anything like that.
Oumar
Wow.
Manisha
Yeah. And so far, as far as what I know anyway, Corus has not addressed the allegations internally. And you know, with Jill Krop’s resignation, of course we don’t know why she resigned. She did resign the day after my story published, but Global sent out a pretty glowing review of her career. You know, talking about how she was a veteran journo, and she was a caring mentor to people in her newsroom. And other media, like the Vancouver Sun for example, picked up on that and just went ahead and published it. Didn't mention my investigation, didn’t mention any of the concerns that were raised about her behaviour.
And I think that is actually another issue. And it’s not my ego saying this, I promise it’s not. It’s not like, “oh, I want other journalists to be aggregating my story and picking up on it because of my ego.” But I did find it interesting that the Vancouver Sun didn’t even mention it, and it didn’t really get picked up by other media. I do think that if I had written this story in the US about CBS or something, other media would have picked up on it. And so the issue you have when that doesn’t happen… I think it’s easier for companies to ignore, you know, just brush one story under the rug. It’s fine, It’ll blow over. But when you have other journalists looking into things and picking up on certain threads, then you can kind of maybe get some momentum going and maybe get some pressure to make real change.
Unfortunately though, in Canadian media, we don’t have a tradition of doing that. We don’t have a tradition of calling ourselves out. There’s very much a secrecy culture here. And a lot of that ties back to people’s fears about job security, right? They don’t want to condemn someone that they may want to work for in a couple of years. So it’s falling on a lot of women of colour. You know, they’re sort of the ones who’ve been calling out their former employers and various essays that we’ve seen over the summer, and Twitter threads, and that’s a risky move.
Oumar
It’s a very small industry. There are very few really good opportunities. So putting your neck out there and speaking out against her former employer is really something else. People need to understand how much of a risk it is, because everyone speaks to each other. Like you said, the Vancouver Sun — PostMedia and Global and Corus are different companies, but they obviously have something in common. You know, obviously white corporate executives. So they get together, and their interests are the same. So if you criticize one, you’re almost criticizing all of them.
Manisha
Yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of the issues that were outlined in my story are applicable to other newsrooms. Probably most other newsrooms, to be honest. And so I’m sure that the leadership teams there are sort of watching what’s going on at other news organizations. And also, they’re obviously going to be looking at “who are the ones who are the troublemakers? Who are the ones who are calling things out right now?” I would love to be able to say that I feel secure and I feel like, “yeah, I can just report on these stories and there’s not ever going to be any career repercussions for me,” but I don’t feel that way. I do feel like there might be repercussions for me, and I’m privileged. I do have a full-time job, to be clear. And I have no reason to believe that that’s in any jeopardy right now. But there’s other people who are really putting their necks out there. And you know, maybe don’t have a full-time gig right now, do you know what I mean? Or maybe you want to leave, and so you just never know how these things will potentially come back.
🎵 (Theme Music)
Hannan
When I first read this piece, I was stunned because I mean, everyone always talks about how the media is biased, whether you’re right wing or left wing, everyone knows that there’s a bias there. Especially people that aren’t represented at all like, how are we represented? How were our opinions even there if we’re not even writing or having our stories told properly. Right?
So when I read this, I was stunned. You know, this is to me, one of the first call out pieces ever. I was also shocked that not a lot of coverage was given to that piece, that Canadian media wasn’t standing up and saying, “okay, we gotta take a step back here and actually listen.”
Oumar
Yeah. What really bothers me is that... (sighs) how do I say this? Now that George Floyd was murdered, Black Lives Matter is all of a sudden an acceptable thing to say. In 2016 and 2015, that was not the case. People who were very liberal were arguing against Black Lives Matter, “all lives matter” was a very acceptable thing to say.
That has completely changed. And I think Canadian media has a lot of soul searching to do, because if major publications are going to say that they want to support Black people, I think they should also reckon with the fact that they’ve published a lot of racist articles, and that they’ve also published a lot of things that are, very disrespectful towards Black people.
And I think that this isn’t something that’s that’s limited to white reporters. And I think that when conversations about race are had, a lot of the times people feel guilty because they think that it’s always pointing the finger at something that they can’t control. You know, no one controls what race they’re born with.
But this goes really deeper than that, and this is how the media really is used to help people who have a lot of power and a lot of money continue to have a lot of power and a lot of money. And in this case, those people are the police. And the media helps the police keep their power and keep their money using biased coverage of Black people, using techniques to make you sympathize with police officers. And unfortunately, Hannan, we have clear examples of this happening in Edmonton.
Hannan
Yeah. Like we were having this conversation earlier, how, you know, our own police refer to America or say “south of the border is where these issues stem from” and “they’re suffering the brunt of it.” And it’s just really frustrating for them to not connect that. Like wasn’t it just two months ago that the RCMP for Alberta was saying systemic racism doesn’t exist? Like “we don’t know what it is.” And then they do a Google search and the next day they’re like, “voila! We know what it is.”
Oumar
When George Floyd happened, the National Post, one of Canada’s biggest publications, decided to let one of their biggest columnists, Rex Murphy, publish an article saying Canada doesn’t have systematic racism. You know, I would love for Rex Murphy to sit across from me at a table, look at me in the eyes, and tell me that Canada does not have any systematic racism. If he can do that with a straight face and then listen to the story of my life and how, you know, I... like the amount of things that I’ve been through.
Oumar
And I wish these things were made up. These things are very traumatic. These things make you feel like you’re lesser than other people in the community.
Hannan
It’s designed to.
Oumar
Yeah! It’s designed to make people feel bad for being Black. And I think fundamentally, that’s what racism is about. It’s about making white people feel good about being white, and making Black people feel bad about the colour of their skin. And really flipping it so that the victim feels guilty. In a white supremacist society, Black victimization is necessary.
Hannan
Yeah. What a good way to summarize that, honestly. To me, it was just really frustrating that the conversation for Canada at the time was, “is systemic racism real?” Like, “do we have racism here?” Or “here’s a panelist to tell us that there is no racism.”
And it was just a huge slap in the face to be a Black person that, you know, is trying to find research and knowledge on this subject. And the only thing that you can find is “officer-involved shooting” being paraphrased around the concept of “we can’t connect this with systemic racism because we aren’t sure if there’s systemic racism.”
Oumar
Canada claims to be a multicultural society. Yet, somehow all of our mainstream media thinks that systematic racism doesn’t exist. And I only say that because that was their first reaction. When they saw a video of a Black man being murdered for 8 minutes in America, they decided that the best thing to publish in all their opinion columns was “systematic racism doesn’t exist in Canada.”
Stockwell Day
There has to be a differentiation between the tragedy of this event, and then the policies we have in place. And I’m sorry, I reject the Prime Minister insinuating that all Canadians are somehow racist because our system is systemically racist. It is not! Our system is built...
Vassey Kapelos (CBC)
I don’t think he was... do you think he was saying every Canadian is racist? Why would you take that?
Stockwell Day
I said, suggesting. When he talks about systemic racism in our system, the Canadian system is built and everyday functions to defend the rights of minorities and it should, and we celebrate that. But if you perpetuate, even in media, only one side of a story, then you’re going to get the wrong reaction from Canadians.
Vinesh Pratap (Global News)
Chief Dale McFee was hired to bring about changes within the EPS. And what a lot of people might not know is that that work was already happening before the summer protests. Now, some of those changes include building better relationships with social agencies for better societal outcomes. Here’s part of our conversation with the chief.
You know, June was a month of big change in the tone of conversation, a big change in the conversation. What’s life been like since June?
Chief Dale McFee
I think to be honest with you, obviously policing’s taking it on the chin. And our frontline members often are the blunt of that. And I just want to first acknowledge how proud I am as, obviously as the chief, of just how we’ve responded to that. We, you know, we’ve backed off when we need to back off, we haven’t, uh, uh, moved away from our jobs to keep our community safe at the same time. So, you know, I think, uh, you know, we’ve, uh, took the blunt of a lot of things that happened thousands of miles away. Not that we don’t need to make some changes. Absolutely. But I think, uh, first and foremost, it’s been tough.
Vinesh Pratap
Chief McFee says now is a good time for change, and suggests focusing on 4-5 things in the overall system. And he points out bluntly that anyone looking for an overnight fix into utopia, he says that that won’t happen. Vinesh Pratap, Global News.
Oumar
If all you do is publish articles and videos talking about how the police are victims and how they’re really stressed out and how they’re tired of being criticized, then how do you also stand with Black people who have told you time and time again how the police harass them, how the police follow them?
I’ve personally been followed by the police. You want to know what that’s like as a Black man? It’s fucking terrifying! I have never been as scared as I was. When I had a fucking cop car tailing me and basically all to ask me a question about whether or not someone was smoking behind me. This was before cannabis was legal or anything was legal in Canada. It’s a terrible situation to find yourself in, and it’s very scary. And it’s hard to explain to people who aren’t victimized by the police what that situation feels like. But we give these people $300 million and we’re supposed to trust them. And the media says that they’re really good, so we should just all, I guess, go home.
Hannan
It’s just really frustrating. Like, you would think with any kind of service you’re entitled to be questioning that service and saying, “okay, how is this service functioning? How do we improve this service? Is this service useful?” I think those questions should just be grounded in every single institution that our taxpayer dollars fund. And if those questions aren’t being raised, you need to ask yourself, “are you really neutral?”
Hannan
So this episode, Oumar… I mean, it probably resonated with you more than any other, because not only are we talking about police, that you have all this experience with, but journalism, and how a career that you love, something that you really want to do, how it’s being used as like a shield maybe, rather than a sword when talking about this issue. What are your thoughts?
Oumar
Yeah, I don’t know. I just feel like I’m disappointed. It’s one of those things where it’s a funny situation and, you know how you go into job interviews and how, you know, there’s protocol or you don’t talk disparagingly about your former employer. That’s basically what this entire podcast is, you know
Essentially that’s what it is! It’s like, I’m talking badly about people who used to pay me to write news articles about the police. And I think that there is a certain expectation for journalists, but it’s always unspoken. And the saddest part is that when you’re Black, white people don’t like speaking to you. So you don’t necessarily get in all the nice rules and how do you, you know, figure out how to carve your way into this industry.
And it’s hard enough to find a job, even if you’re not Black. So I think that I reached a point where I had just had enough. And I think, you know, nobody should let their career define who they are. And I realized that for myself. So when I realized that I felt okay with it... but it was a very tough thing to let go of. Because I’d worked for basically five years to reach the point where I could maybe apply for a few jobs as a journalist. But in January 2020 and February, I knew that there was no opportunity. COVID didn’t help the situation.
Hannan
No, it didn’t.
Oumar
So yeah, the podcast really, I think, was my last real chance of trying to do journalism. And even now that the podcast is kind of happening, I don’t know if I’ll ever return to a newsroom again. I don’t know if any newsroom will even want me to return. I don’t think they do.
Hannan
Oh man, what? Are you kidding me?
Oumar
I don’t think anyone wants to work with me. But at the same time,I’m happier because I think the work that I’m doing now is closer to the truth.
Hannan
Those are the actual skills that should be on a CV for a journalist. I don’t know about you viewers, but to me, I think the person whose article I’m reading should be someone who has those qualities. That is trying to push for truth, that is willing to call out their boss, willing to write an article about other people calling out their boss. Since when did media now become government news releases or police news releases?
Oumar
I don’t think... journalism never was what people claim it is. And I think that you really have to look at the past to find the truth. You know, look at Edmonton media for what it is, not what you want it to be, but for what it actually is. And I think if you look at it for what it is, you’ll realize that it’s very conservative. And you realize that it’s unnecessarily that way, and that we don’t need to talk about these issues this way, and that we can critically challenge the fact that our city spends more money on surveilling us and policing us than caring for basically anything else. And I think that’s a problem. If you don’t think that’s a problem, well, I think it’s worth debating. But yeah, that’s what this whole podcast is about.
Hannan
With Oumar, not me. I’m not going to debate my human rights with you.
Oumar
Yeah, no, that’s true. We shouldn’t debate our human rights. But this is the point we’ve gotten to.
Hannan
For sure. And honestly, I really think Patreon has enabled us to keep going the way we’re going with our vision. And you know, for the next few episodes we want to hear from you Patreon members! So if you follow us on Instagram, or if you follow us on Twitter, if you can send us the DMs, voice notes of why. Why do you support the podcast? Or even answer this question: do you think your human rights are worth debating on? Or is this something that should just be critically scrutinized because, you know, it involves your human rights. So answer any of those two questions, and me and Oumar more would love to play your responses in our next co-host chat, because this episode was really hard to produce.
We faced a lot of barriers. It was hard to reach out to people and then, you know, have them speak critically of their employers. Like, who’s going to do that? No one, especially if you’re a journalist. So we get you, journalist peeps. We get you. But it’s just been really frustrating having these barriers and then trying to navigate them. And I’m just so grateful for Oumar because he’s had that experience. He comes in with this wealth of knowledge of how journalism was his dream and his passion. And I really hope it still is because he’s really good at it, but how these barriers just broke down the whole thing for him. And it’s really frustrating to see that.
Oumar
And I think it’s important also to say that this isn't about me. I think I’m going to be fine. I don’t think that my life is going to be terrible. I think it's going to be fine. Nothing wrong is going to happen. This is about the fact that these barriers are put in place intentionally to help certain people and hurt certain people.
And it just so happens that, you know, in Canada, we help a lot of white people. And we hurt a lot of Black people, and we heard a lot of Indigenous people, and it seems like everyone is okay with that. I think everyone is okay with that because, if they weren’t okay with it, I think they would probably be acting on it a little bit more. I think people wouldn’t just show up for one protest or one march and then say that they’ve done enough. I think that this action needs to be continuous. And we think that the podcast is necessary. This is why we created it, because we knew Black Lives Matter would probably not last until the American election. Bashir mentioned that, and he was completely right. And we knew that we needed to keep a sustained amount of pressure so that these issues aren’t just viewed as trivial as they’ve always been viewed as.
So yeah, I just want to end the episode today by thanking all of our listeners, anyone who supported the podcast. And also thanking Manisha for being kind enough to talk with me. And yeah, we’ll see you in October!
Hannan
Yes, we will.
🎵 (Theme Music)