Stop asking if journalism is objective. Start asking if it’s responsible

Dec. 17, 2021

When the RCMP arrested two journalists on Wet’suwet’en territory in November, it set off a debate about journalistic ethics — which almost entirely missed the point

On Friday, Nov. 19, snow blanketed the ground as heavily armed RCMP officers descended upon a tiny house occupied by Wet’suwet’en land defenders in northwestern B.C. 

The RCMP’s job: clear the way for construction on the Coastal GasLink pipeline, which is planned to supply the LNG Canada terminal with fracked gas for export.

There was one small hitch — two journalists were inside the tiny house. 

One of them, Amber Bracken, was on assignment for The Narwhal. Bracken, an award-winning photographer who also works with publications like The New York Times and National Geographic, clearly identified herself as a journalist, yet was arrested, charged with contempt of court and detained in jail for three nights.

Within 48 hours, the Canadian Association of Journalists pulled together a letter signed by more than 40 news outlets and press freedom organizations, calling for the immediate release of Bracken and freelance documentary filmmaker Michael Toledano.

“The RCMP stated the reason for arresting the two was because they had ‘embedded’ with the protestors, which has never been illegal in Canada,” the letter stated.  

In this case “embedded” seems to mean that the journalists were in the injunction zone, beyond police lines — which happens to be exactly where they needed to be to document the militarized police raid. 

Alas, much of the debate that simmered in the weeks following the arrests circled around the RCMP’s false insinuation that the journalists had crossed a line between journalism and activism, stoking the small cadre of voices who falsely claim The Narwhal is engaged in “advocacy.” 

Often, this line of critique overlooks our strong code of ethics and accuses The Narwhal of having a “point of view.” Let’s look at that more closely. To accuse one news outlet of having a point of view is to assume that other news outlets do not have a point of view. But is that really true? 

As The Narwhal’s Ontario bureau chief Denise Balkissoon said in her 2020 Atkinson lecture, objectivity is an impossible ideal. Who a journalist interviews, what quotes are used, what stories are assigned in the first place — all of these are subjective decisions being made in newsrooms every day. 

“You do have a point of view. You are not coming from nowhere,” she said. “The person who can challenge your point of view is yourself, and it is something you should be trying to do as a journalist instead of pretending it just doesn’t exist.”

Meanwhile, The Narwhal operates a bit like the mythical environment section of the newspaper. We focus on a different set of issues: biodiversity, climate science, Indigenous Rights, sustainable development, the intrinsic value of the natural world. Quite often, we choose to report verified facts that may be inconvenient for those in power or others who want to protect the status quo. Do these choices represent a point of view? Sure. But no more so than the choice by a newspaper to have a business section and not an environment section. 

Another example: racialized journalists have long been told they can’t cover certain stories because they’re “too close to them,” whereas white journalists haven’t been told the same thing. In this case, the dominant white perspective is considered no perspective at all, while the perspective of a racialized person is considered a “point of view.” This is clearly an illogical and racist double standard.

Similarly, when a traditional news outlet that receives millions of dollars in fossil fuel advertising revenues calls Indigenous people on their unceded land “protesters,” that choice conveys a point of view just as much as when The Narwhal chooses to call those same people “land defenders.” One happens to come from a colonial, corporate worldview, while the other is more informed by an Indigenous worldview. But let’s be very clear: both represent a choice.

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen has argued against the “view from nowhere” approach for years.

“What authority there is in the position of viewlessness is unearned,” he writes. “In journalism, real authority starts with reporting. Knowing your stuff, mastering your beat, being right on the facts, digging under the surface of things, calling around to find out what happened, verifying what you heard.”

These are the things we value at The Narwhal: knowing your beat, verifying your facts, diving deeper, finding angles not covered elsewhere and amplifying underrepresented voices to help rebalance our discourse — a discourse that “objectivity” has kept stacked in favour of those in power.  

By all means, we all make mistakes sometimes and we must always strive to do better. But doing better doesn’t mean doing the same thing as everyone else. In fact, nearly 5,000 people have donated money to support The Narwhal this year because we do something different.

“I value how hard your team works to report on topics that mainstream media won’t cover,” wrote one new member this month. “I support the rights of Indigenous people,” wrote another. “I value the way you report on the big issues, not just the juicy topic of the day,” another new member wrote.

The very fact that The Narwhal is a non-profit organization signals that we value different things than traditional news outlets, which rely on advertising revenues and are expected to turn a profit for owners and shareholders. Conversely, we don’t run any ads and our publication’s success is built upon our relationship with our audience, whose donations comprise our single largest source of revenue. We’re also radically transparent about our sources of funding, unlike virtually any other news publication in Canada.  

Being freed from the constraints of the advertising model allows us to think outside the box and focus on one job: serving our audience. In the three years since we launched The Narwhal, there have been dramatic shifts in the Canadian media landscape. What was considered pushing the boundaries a few years ago — say, connecting a catastrophic forest fire or flood to the root issue of climate change — is now considered best practice. 

And I have no doubt that what a small and shrinking group may consider to be “advocacy” today will likely be considered responsible journalism a few years from now. 

Thankfully, if there’s one thing we’ve never been afraid of at The Narwhal, it’s being ahead of the curve. 

[Top photo: Militarized police move in to breach a tiny house at Coyote Camp in Gidimt'en territory near Houston, B.C., on Friday, Nov. 19, 2021. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal]