PDF with interactive links here. - Canadian Association of Journalists

MEDIA
T HE C A N A D I A N A SSOCIAT ION OF JOURN A LIS TS • L’A s s o ciatio n Ca n adien n e des J o u r nali st e s
2014 AWAR D S ED ITIO N • V O L.16, N O . 3
S u s p e n d e d S EN ATO R
M I K E DU F F Y
A Top Newsmaker
for all
the Wrong Reasons
2014 AWARDS EDITION • VOLUME 16, NUMBER THREE
MEDIA
Table of contents
8 CAJ: COMMUNITY BROADCAST AWARD
Abigail Bimman explains how she persevered to tell stories about inmates in one of Canada’s most notorious
prison for women.
10 CAJ / CNW GROUP STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
Allison Drinnan and Anna Brooks used their multi-media website to give sex-trade workers a voice they’ve
seldom used.
12 CAJ / MARKETWIRED DATA JOURNALISM AWARD
QMI Investigations editor, Andrew McIntosh, put his certified examiner skills to good use in teaming up with
Kinia Adamczyk to expose the scam artists bilking Quebec’s welfare system – even from behind bars.
MEDIA
A PUBLICATION OF
14 CAJ - ONLINE MEDIA AWARD
CBC News mapped the pipeline spills the Transportation Safety Board investigates. Amber Hildebrandt
explains her team’s painstaking work that involved, negotiating, cleaning, checking -- and then checking again.
16 CAJ - OPEN BROADCAST FEATURE AWARD
CBC Radio’s Ideas explored the discrimination that subjects albinos to discrimination that can have deadly
consequences. Garth Mullins takes us on a harrowing journey from his unique perspective.
THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS
L’Association Canadienne des JournalisteS
EDITOR
David McKie
1-613-290-7380
LEGAL ADVISOR
Peter Jacobsen, Bersenas
Jacobsen Chouest Thomson
Blackburn LL P
ART DIRECTION and DESIGN
David McKie
18 CAJ - OPEN MEDIA AWARD
After news broke about a senator claiming dodgy living expenses, the Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor received
a tip that led right to Mike Duffy, his old acquaintance from the Press Gallery’s “Hot Room”.
20 CAJ – OPEN MEDIA AWARD
Rehtaeh Parsons’ suicide sparked a conversation about cyberbullying among educators, lawmakers, parents and
teens. The Chronicle-Herald’s Selena Ross and Frances Willick probed for answers to troubling questions.
Printed by Mormark Print Productions Inc. Tel: 1-800-350-6991 www.mormarkonline.com
22 CAJ -- PHOTO-JOURNALISM AWARD
The Canadian Press’s Jonathan Hayward captured everything from the lost souls on the streets of Vancouver’s
Downtown Eastside to newlyweds celebrating their nuptials on water-skis.
THE CONTRIBUTORS
Abigail Bimman, Allison Drinnan, Anna Brooks, Andrew McIntosh, Amber Hildebrandt, Garth Mullins, Glen McGregor,
Jonathan Hayward, Kathy Tomlinson, Selena Ross, Frances Willick, Tarannum Kamlani, Amber Bracken, Amy Dempsey,
Grant Robertson, Jennifer Ditchburn, Karen Kleiss, Leah Hennel, Linda Bernard, Kevin Donovan
PHOTO AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE: REMEMBERING REHTAEH: Several hundred people attend a community vigil to remember Rehtaeh
Parsons at Victoria Park in Halifax on Thursday, April 11, 2013. The Chronicle Herald explored what had happened the night of the alleged rape and
how the teenagers involved perceived it.
PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
COVER PHOTO: THE DUFFSTER BACK IN THE NEWS: Mike Duffy was claiming expenses while travelling the country campaigning for the
Conservatives. The now-suspended senator was the subject of award-winning CAJ and NNA stories that dug into expense and court records.
PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
2
MEDIA
24 HR / CAJ AWARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING
After news of the building collapse that killed more than 1,000 garment workers in Bangladesh faded from the
headlines, Tarannum Kamlani and her team at the fifth estate began its quest for the deeper story.
26 CWA CANADA / CAJ AWARD FOR LABOUR REPORTING
An employee complained to the CBC’s Go Public about the RBC’s plans use temporary foreign workers. Kathy
Tomlinson explains how that concern went viral and pushed the federal government to act.
28 NNA - SPORTS PHOTO AWARD
The Edmonton Sun’s Amber Bracken takes us behind the scenes of the bloody contest for the WBC
featherweight world title.
MEDIA 3
2014 AWARDS EDITION • VOLUME 16, NUMBER THREE
The First Word
Celebrating some of the best 2014 journalism award winners
By David McKie
M
30 NNA – EXPLANATORY WORK AWARD
What does the law say about someone who commits a heinous crime, but doesn’t have to take responsibility?
For the Toronto Star’s Amy Dempsey, the answer was an eye-opener.
32 NNA - SHORT FEATURE AWARD
The accident that killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, was horrific. What The Globe and Mail’s Grant
Robertson and his colleagues discovered about Canada’s rail safety system was too shocking to ignore.
34 NNA – POLITICS AWARD
The Canadian Press’ Jennifer Ditchburn took a harder look at court records in the Mike Duffy case that raised
new questions about that infamous $90,000 cheque.
36 NNA – INVESTIGATIONS AWARD
Karen Kleiss explains what motivated her team at the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald to investigate
child deaths in the province’s foster care system.
38 NNA -- FEATURE PHOTO AWARD
It happened in a split second, but Calgary Herald photographer, Leah Hennel, captured a light-hearted moment
during the flooding that ravaged the Alberta city.
40 NNA – ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT AWARD
Toronto Star entertainment critic Linda Bernard chronicled the making of Empire of Dirt, a film about three
generations of First Nations women.
42 The 2013 MICHENER AWARD WINNER
DIGGING INTO THE ROB FORD STORY: Like most good stories, it started with tips… Ford was a drunk.
Ford was doing drugs. Toronto Star investigative editor, Kevin Donovan, takes us behind the scenes.
PHOTO AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE: The travails of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford dominated headlines, making him one the top newsmakers
for 2014. PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Russell/Toronto Star
4
2014 AWARDS EDITION
ike Duffy and former Toronto
mayor, Rob Ford, were the
newsmakers who featured prominently in
the CAJ, National Newspaper and the Michener Awards that were awarded in 2014.
This marks the third, consecutive year
that Media has combined the three awards
into one edition, which provides a greater
breadth of some of the year’s best stories
that captivated us and prodded decisionmakers to make change.
In a nod to the finalists in each category,
we have also listed them, and linked to
their stories in the PDF version of this
publication that will be eventually uploaded to the CAJ site.
The award-winners describe how they
got their stories, the obstacles they faced,
the impact their tales had, and perhaps
most importantly, tips for journalists attempting to pursue similar investigations.
There is much more in addition to the
Mike Duffy and Rob Ford sagas: accounts of the efforts that went into digging
beneath the headlines in the wake of the
heart-breaking stories of the 47 people in
Lac-Megantic whose deaths prompted authorities to tighten up the rail safety laws;
the suicide of 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons
that still has politicians, teens, educators
and police wrestling with strategies to
prevent cyberbullying and other online
misdemeanours.
The lesson in these two behind-thescenes accounts is don’t be afraid to dig
for the story beneath the headlines, especially if it involves a quest for accountability.
How is it possible for a train carrying
explosive oil to be allowed to be minimally secured just outside a small town?
How are teens allowed to circulate violent and pornographic images online with
little fear of consequences?
And why didn’t police do more when
Parsons’ parents asked for help?
MEDIA
The lack of answers to those questions
led to award-winning stories that helped to
spark change.
Perhaps, it’s being too presumptuous to
suggest this, but one of the key reasons we
-- journalists and educators -- get into this
business is to make a difference. So after
an event makes news, keep digging for
answers and push editors and producers to
give you the time for the pursuit. The same
advice applies to journalism students.
Workplace issues also figured prominently in the stories that earned the CAJ,
NNA and Michener awards.
The federal government is still attempting to deal with the political fallout after
stories exposed weaknesses in the temporary foreign worker program, an initiative
designed to help employers find workers
when local recruitment fails.
Workplaces halfway around the world
become death traps due to lax safety
laws. This was the case in collapse of the
garment factory in Bangladesh that killed
more than 1,000 workers. The tragedy
forced us to think about the evils of sweatshops where women and children toil for
pennies under hazardous conditions to
churn out inexpensive, brand-name clothing for Western shoppers.
And then there were stories that took
a hard look at Canada’s legal system.
There’s the difficulty of dealing with
people deemed to be not criminally responsible for heinous crimes that can lead
to hastily-amended laws.
There are laws that make it difficult to
delve into the deaths of children handed
over to the state for safe care, as was the
case in Alberta’s foster-care system.
Among the best were also photographs,
arguably, a forgotten part of storytelling in
the wake of digital devices that turn everyone into a potential eye-witness.
Photographs captured the heartbreak of
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a shock-
ingly drug-addled and soul-destroying area
of the country that inexplicably continues
to confound federal, provincial and municipal policy makers.
But among the despair, were lighthearted moments, as in the case of the
Alberta flood and attempts of a young
couple to celebrate their wedding anniversary despite the chaos swirling around
them. Though light-hearted, the moment
of a wife jumping across the water into the
waiting arms of her husband demonstrated
the resilience of the human spirit, perhaps
a key reason why the picture went became
a word-wide sensation.
And speaking of the human spirit, there
were the blood-splattered images in the
WBC featherweight championship bout
fought in Edmonton. The bloodier of the
two combatants overcame significant
obstacles to win the fight, a story captured
in remarkable, still images.
This coming year is also shaping up to
be one that produces equally impressive
stories. The Senate scandal will heat up
when senator Duffy makes his scheduled
court appearance in the spring.
Rob Ford, though no longer Toronto’s
mayor, will also undoubtedly continue to
make news. No doubt, his brother, Doug,
won’t be too far behind.
Sadly, there will be more tragedies and
objectionable behaviour to dig into. Fortunately, we will be up to the task.
To borrow a catch-phrase that nicely
summed up the sentiment of the CAJ
awards banquet in Vancouver, “journalism
matters”. After reading this edition, you,
too, will reach the same conclusion.
Related links
Media’s 2012 awards edition
Media’s 2011 awards edition
For more stories, pictures and accounts
of the 2013 awards on Twitter, check out
the #CAJ awards and #CAJAwardsgala
5
#CAJ 2015
The 2014
CAJ Awards
Conference will be held June 5-7, 2015, at the Atlantica Hotel in
downtown Halifax. The CAJ’s annual conference is one of the best
chances for journalists across the country to come together and
share ideas and techniques.
Applications will be accepted starting in January for the 2014 CAJ Awards and the CAJ / CNW
Group Student Award of Excellence in Journalism
MOST AWARDS CARRY $500 PRIZE
Entries for the CAJ awards must be submitted no later than:
FEBRUARY 9, 2015
General awards –
• Open media
• Community media
• Open broadcast feature
• Open broadcast news
• Community broadcast
• CAJ / Marketwired data journalism
• Online media
• Photojournalism
• Scoop
• Daily excellence
• Text feature
• JHR / CAJ Award for Human
Rights Reporting
• CWA Canada / CAJ Award for
Labour Reporting
Call for Applications
The Atkinson Charitable Foundation, the Honderich Family and the Toronto
Star have launched their annual search for an experienced Canadian journalist
who is ready to pursue a one-year, in-depth examination of an emerging or
challenging public policy issue.
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VWLSHQGRIDQGXSWRIRUH[SHQVHVEHJLQQLQJ6HSWHPEHU
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For more information about the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy and the
selection process, please visit:
www.atkinsonfoundation.ca/grants/atkinson-fellowship-in-public-policy/
Entries for the CAJ / CNW Group Student Award of Excellence must be submitted no later than:
February 28, 2015
Recipients of the 2014 CAJ Awards will be announced at the CAJ’s National Conference in
Halifax, June 5-6, 2015
For more information:
e-mail awards@caj.ca
or visit our website
Atkinson2015_12024_8401
Investigative awards –
www.caj.ca/awards
6
MEDIA
2014 AWARDS EDITION
7
CAJ: COMMUNITY BROADCAST AWARD
SHOCKING INQUEST: Dr. John Carlisle,
the coroner who presided over the Ashley
Smith inquest, arrives at the Grand Valley
Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont., on
Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013. The inquest was
an impetus behind the CTV series “Behind
Prison Walls”.
PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN
PRESS/Colin Perkel
Abigail Bimman
CTV News – Kitchener
“Behind Prison Walls”
By Abigail Bimman
I
n the winter of 2013, Ashley Smith’s
story was a tragedy known to many
Canadians. The inquest into the 19-yearold’s choking death at the Grand Valley
Institution (GVI) for Women was underway and disturbing images of the final
moments of her life were broadcast across
the country.
It all happened inside the biggest
women’s prison in Canada. The prison,
also known as GVI, sits in the heart of
Kitchener, Ontario. It’s a tiny community
inside a much larger one. Yet the majority
of the broader southwestern Ontario community CTV Kitchener serves had no idea
what happens past the barbed wire fence.
When I began to research, the in-depth
series “Behind Prison Walls” was supposed to be just that – a glimpse behind
the gates and inside the “cottages” (the
term for housing units in the general compound). The aim was to show the community what its tax dollars fund and give a
broader understanding of what life is like
inside. GVI was built under the direction
of a Brian Mulroney government task
force document called “Creating Choices,” with a focus on rehabilitation over
punishment. I wanted to show the community how equipped the women were
to face the outside world when they were
released. There was also a curiosity factor
as the Ashley Smith inquest progressed,
and some began questioning whether her
experience was an isolated incident.
That goal became a challenge as Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) blocked
me at every turn. I followed the detailed
media request requirements to shoot
inside GVI, as well as requesting interviews with a staff person and a number
of inmates. CSC media relations says it
provides “timely, accurate and meaningful information” and responds to requests
“in the shortest delays.” Not only was I
completely stonewalled, it took months to
learn every video and interview request
was turned down, and with no explanation. While incarcerated women have few
rights, speaking to the media is one of
them. I requested prisoners of varying security clearances, to improve my odds that
one of them would be cleared to speak.
Not only were all requests denied, I later
learned, according to inmates, that CSC
did not appear to follow its own policy in
dealing with the requests on the inside.
Outside of interviews, some questions
Finalists
Charles Rusnell, Jennie Russell
Imported Politics
CBC News – Edmonton
Geoff Leo, David Horth
Carbon Conflict
CBC News – Saskatchewan
Zach Dubinsky, John Lancaster,
Heather Evans, Harvey Cashore
Municipal Muckraking
CBC News – Toronto
about basic operation (What are working
hours in the on-site factory?) weren’t answered, while other simple inquiries (Can
you confirm the current warden’s name?)
took days.
I tried to appeal the decision to the Minister of Public Safety, but the office sent
me right back to the warden who denied
it in the first place. I asked CSC media
relations to whom I could appeal. After
waiting for weeks, I was told there was no
one. The bottom line? Canadian taxpayers fund GVI to the tune of $30 million a
year – but aren’t allowed to see how those
dollars are spent. Worse, no explanation
was given as to why.
“Behind Prison Walls” became a fivepart series based on interviews with former inmates, family members of current
inmates and a number of others who have
worked or volunteered inside. Finding
sources was challenging. Many former
inmates don’t want to speak publicly,
worried it could impact the next chapter
in their lives. There are, however, enough
people deeply concerned about what’s
happening behind bars that they chose to
take a stand, or, in some cases, connected
me to others who could.
In the end, I exposed concerns about
overcrowding, treatment of inmates,
self-harm, drug use and lack of access to
help. “Behind Prison Walls” showed that
rehabilitation over punishment, the idea on
which the prison was built, is not happening in many cases. It’s a critical problem
because the majority of women in GVI
8MEDIA
A MOTHER’S GRIEF: Coralee Smith,
Ashley’s mother, fielded questions about her
daughter’s death at the Grand Valley Institution, Canada’s largest women’s prison.
PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN
PRESS/Tom Hanson
will get out and rejoin their communities.
And those communities are all of our communities.
One of the most helpful tools I had in
telling this story was supportive bosses.
At CTV Kitchener we often cover issues
in-depth, but an investigative series of this
magnitude is rare. As CSC kept delaying,
my news director kept allowing me more
time to work on the project. I believe the
air date was at least two months later than
2014 AWARDS EDITION
its original slot. I was also supported in
traveling to Kingston to shoot a key interview with a former inmate, which had a
significant impact on the series overall.
I was able to do a number of follow-ups
such as a half-hour special on the prison,
with updates to the original series. I followed up with an inmate whose interview
request was denied. She had been released
on parole and I spoke to her as she transitioned back to life with her young family. I
also updated a funding issue about layoffs
looming in the already-tiny chaplaincy
program.
“Behind Prison Walls” garnered significant viewer response and a wide range
of opinions. It also saw a considerable
amount of anger over CSC stonewalling.
Most importantly, it started conversations
and shed light on an often-ignored microcosm in our community and some of the
problems inside.
Abigail Bimman is a videographer
and the weekend anchor at CTV Kitchener. She can be reached at Abigail.
bimman@bellmedia.ca, or on Twitter: @
AbigailCTV.
9
CAJ / CNW GROUP STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
Allison Drinnan, Anna Brooks
Calgary Journal / Mount Royal University
Into the Shadows: An Inside Look at Alberta’s
Sex Trade Industry
By Allison Drinnan, Anna Brooks
O
ur piece is a non-linear multimedia
website that investigates the sex
trade in Alberta. It contains video interviews, short documentaries, audio clips,
photos and text-based stories all dealing
with the main issues facing sex-trade
workers in Alberta.
The main topics regarding the sex trade
that we chose to deal with in the piece
include the following:
∙
The current legal situation: the
benefits and repercussions of decriminalizing prostitution
∙
Dispelling stigmas: society’s
view of the sex trade industry versus sex
workers’ views of the trade
∙
Safety and health issues surrounding sex workers: sexual health,
safety, abuse, etc.
∙
Case studies of criminal investigations, stories from the women who work
the street and law enforcement officials
who deal with this industry
∙
A comparison of the industries in
the two major cities in Alberta – Calgary
and Edmonton
As two born-and-raised Calgarians, we
have always been fascinated with social issues in our province. One issue we felt has
not been given the coverage it deserves,
is the sex-trade industry in Alberta. It
was something that to us, felt like it went
without a voice or a face. Any coverage
that we did find really didn’t include the
opinions of the sex workers themselves.
Each of us did an internship in parts of
the world where the sex trade is a major
issue (Anna in Thailand, and Allison in
Vancouver), and we were inspired by how
many people were trying to make a difference in these communities for the rights of
sex workers. This was clearly a topic that
needed to be investigated.
We knew it would be difficult to directly
talk to sex workers at the very beginning
of our investigation. This was something
that would require building trust with
Finalists
Hannah Kost, Danielle Semrau
The Faith of Pam Rocker
Calgary Journal /
Mount Royal University
Alexandra Posadzki
Chill Pills: The Dangers of Benzodiazepines
The Canadian Press /
Ryerson University
Laura Hubbard, Kate McKenna, Natascia
Lypny, Emily Kitagawa, Tari Wilson,
Rana Encol, Luke Orrell
Warehoused
Huffington Post Canada / University of
King’s College
Sam Pinto
Quebec Charter Faces Opposition in
McGill Community
The McGill Tribune / McGill University
members of the community in Alberta.
We began on the periphery and worked
our way in. We met with police officers,
RCMP, agencies who dealt directly with
sex workers and health care workers. Once
we began to show that we were professional and trustworthy – many doors
began to open for us.
We were able to access former sex
workers through a local agency, which
gave us insight into the sex trade in Calgary. We also met with undercover officers
who deal with the front line of the sex
trade. Our biggest break was being able
to do an all-night ride along with RCMP’s
Project Kare. This opportunity gave us unrestricted access to the women on Edmonton’s streets who told their own stories in
their own words.
In order to uncover a large majority of
our information, we had to agree to keep
the identities of certain interview subjects
secret. This was a processes that involved
a lot of the faculty we worked with at
Mount Royal University and reviewing our ethics processes as a journalism
school.
There is so much stigma associated
with the sex trade, that many of people
involved in the industry were not thrilled
at the idea of appearing on a multimedia
website. And, initially, agencies assisting
sex workers, as well as police officers,
were also hesitant to offer information.
Another challenge was trying to
understand every aspect of an extremely
complex topic (legal, social, cultural and
health-related) in a short length of time.
This is the oldest profession in the world.
There are so many layers to the way it
operates in Alberta. We dedicated our-
10MEDIA
selves to soaking up all of the possible
information we could and deciphering
what was the most important to share with
our audience.
The biggest challenge for us was on a
more personal level. Whether it was staying up for 24-hours, following the RCMP,
travelling all over the province to more
dangerous sections of Edmonton and Calgary, or hearing some of the most traumatizing stories of what those involved in the
sex trade had experienced – this project
was emotionally exhausting.
We dealt with trying to remain objective, while going through so many emotional ups and downs during this project.
Once our project was completed and
shared, we felt really encouraged by the
responses of those not only in our Mount
Royal community, but from the responses
we received from people all over Alberta.
We were contacted and interviewed by
academic researchers for further insight
into the topic, as well as sought out by
various media organizations during the
Supreme Court’s decision regarding
2014 AWARDS EDITION
revamping Canada’s prostitution laws.
Our greatest accolade so far, is that the
2013 Canadian Association of Journalists
recognized our efforts.
We have both just started out in our
journalism careers, both graduating last
spring, so as of right now there are no immediate plans for a follow-up.
Once we have both settled in to starting
our journalism careers, we have agreed
we would like to continue to investigate
social issues in Alberta – this includes the
sex trade.
As recent J-School grads ourselves, we
understand how crazy post-secondary life
can be. With multiple classes, part-time
jobs and other commitments – taking on a
project of this magnitude can be daunting
to say the least.
One of the main tips we would give is to
aim high and don’t let anyone tell you that
because you’re a student, you can’t make
it happen.
Certain people told us that we would
never be able to tackle this subject matter
because we were still students. We never
gave up and always told ourselves we
could get it done. If one door closes, keep
searching and you will find another one
that will open.
Take advantage of your instructors’
knowledge. Anytime we needed anything
from our main instructor on this project,
or other instructors at Mount Royal, they
were there to offer advice and support.
If you are doing your work with a partner or in a group, it is essential that you
work well together.
We spent long hours and countless
“all-nighters” together in high-stress and
sometimes dangerous situations. You have
to work with someone you completely
trust.
Allison Drinnan and Anna Brooks
are two former journalism students at
Mount Royal University in Calgary.
Together they comprise the multimedia
team called “A-Squared productions”.
Anna works as a reporter/photographer
for the Lacombe Globe and Allison is a
reporter/photographer at the Cochrane
Eagle.
11
patient and supportive.
We also used confidential sources inside
and outside the welfare system to help
us understand the data and the things we
found. We did an audit on our own data
to ensure its accuracy.
CAJ / MARKETWIRED DATA JOURNALISM AWARD
Andrew McIntosh, Kinia Adamczyk
Agence QMI / Journal de Montréal – Bureau d’enquête
THE DATA JOURNALISM
Four months were spent gathering and
analyzing data we extracted from littleknown Quebec government civil lawsuits
and judgements against welfare fraudsters.
We created our own database to analyze
fraud, sorting by gender, type of fraud,
address of the fraudster, the dollar amount
of each case.
Our sources said this was an exercise
the government had never done.
The quality of court records varied.
Documents about some cases were so
old -- one went back to 1977 -- original
records were sometimes hardly legible.
Others were written by hand. We identified several lawsuits where the government sued to recover money stolen and
looted by a welfare fraudster only after the
perp had died!
De L’Aide Sociale, Même En Prison
By Andrew McIntosh
W
e launched a comprehensive look
at welfare fraud in Quebec last
year, using raw data that we painstakingly
gathered ourselves from 1,381 court files
in Montreal, together with government
welfare fraud data that officialdom had
gathered between 2004 and 2012.
What we found, thanks in part to my
Certified Fraud Examiner skills, was
worse than what even we suspected we
might find.
In a three-part series published simultaneously in Le Journal de Montreal and
Journal de Québec newspapers on April
22, 23 and 24, 2013, we highlighted how
the Quebec government had blithely ignored rampant, systemic fraud and looting
of its welfare system for years, even as it
cut welfare support payments to the most
needy individuals in 2013.
We discovered major mismanagement
and poor financial controls that left less
money and resources for the people who
truly needed them.
Part 1, ‘’Welfare in Prison – Loopholes
in the system allow inmates to collect
money earmarked for Quebec’s most
needy ,’’ revealed how convicted criminals in Montreal were pocketing welfare
cheques – after being charged, convicted
and locked behind bars.
The story did not dwell on our data, but
rather on the more than two dozen cases of
repeat criminal offenders who kept pocketing welfare cheques in jail after multiple
convictions, though Quebec law forbids
them from doing just that.
DUBIOUS ‘’HONOUR’’ SYSTEM
Our data helped pinpoint this major
problem. Additional reporting led us to
uncover the failings of a dubious honour
system that required criminals to disclose
they were going to jail to their social
workers so their welfare payments would
be cut off.
Not a surprise, then, that hardened
criminals didn’t disclose convictions! We
featured a dozen examples, with names,
Finalists
Anita Elash, Amber Hildebrandt, Michael
Pereira, Kimberly Ivany, Romilla Karnick, Sina Zapfe
Rate My Hospital: A Fifth Estate Investigation
CBC News Online / The Fifth Estate
Leslie Young, Anna Mehler Paperny, Kate
Grzegorczyk
Crude Awakening
Global News
Jeff Outhit
‘A Question of Life and Death’
Waterloo Region Record
Claire Brownell
Land Grab: How a Bridge Baron Ruined a
Neighbourhood
Windsor Star
amounts looted and crimes committed.
In a two-page spread that accompanied
our Day 1 report, we also featured details
about the most egregious welfare fraud
cases our data identified:
- A man faked the death of his child
to collect a $82,000 death benefit. He was
later charged and convicted of fraud, but
brazenly continued to deny wrongdoing;
- A man collected $160,000 in welfare
for years while buying and selling cars on
the Web;
- A woman who pocketed $160,000 for
10 years pretending to be single and on the
dole while she lived with and was supported by an employed man.
- A man stole a friend’s identity to
commit welfare fraud and owed $50,000.
- A couple received $139,000 in
welfare while owning and operating a
successful car rental business. They now
owned a luxury condominium, yet the
government had failed to act to seize
any equity in the property to recover the
amounts they had stolen.
We reported that these cases were
merely part of a staggering fraud problem
in Quebec’s welfare system. Our data
uncovered 136,000 fraud cases since 2004
with unrecovered losses exceeding $500
MILLION sitting on the government’s
books.
We revealed that in many cases, these
fraudsters used legal-aid lawyers to defend
them, further delaying the Quebec government’s efforts to recover stolen or fraudulently-obtained money. A companion story
12MEDIA
told how federal and provincial public
servants engaged in welfare fraud because
there were so few deterrents.
Using the address data, we produced
online, searchable maps to show where
welfare fraudsters lived on the Island of
Montreal -- we omitted names. These defied public perceptions about low-income
neighborhoods that were home to welfare
cheats.
Part 2: ‘’Thanks for Your Hospitality”,
revealed that 15 per cent of the welfare
fraudsters sued by the Quebec government
had left the province and country without
ever repaying welfare fraud debts. Using
our data, we tracked cases involving 222
former residents of Quebec who moved to
Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia, but
also cases where fraudsters left Canada
and moved to Morocco, Germany, Algeria,
the United States and France. We identified cases from the 1990s where fraudsters
had not repaid. We shared thumbnail cases of the departed welfare fraudsters and
2014 AWARDS EDITION
where they lived now.
Part 3: ‘’For Americans, Welfare Fraud
is Not a Laughing Matter,’’ examined
how one major U.S. state government
-- Pennsylvania -- tackled and better
controlled welfare fraud. The story hold
how Pennsylvania’s Office of the Inspector General identified cheaters at the front
end of the welfare application process –
before money is handed out – to prevent
fraud and losses. Prosecutions for criminal
fraud and press releases issued about cases
served as an important public deterrent. In
sharp contrast, Quebec had few criminal
prosecutions along with an ineffective
civil lawsuit recovery process.
CHALLENGES AND OBSTACLES
The data reporting, analysis and investigative effort that went into this project
was daunting and a first time, major data
project for us. It took longer than either of
us expected at the outset. Journal managing editor George Kalogerakis was both
THE IMPACT OF THE SERIES:
OUTRAGE & NEW HIRES
Reaction to the Agence QMI –Journal
de Montréal series was swift and our
series caused an immediate sensation in
Montreal and across the province.
Quebec’s Social Solidarity Department
was mocked and derided on the airwaves
after we exposed their inefficient and ineffective collection and recovery practices –
revealing that they had barely made a dent
in uncollected fraud debts in a decade.
The Parti Québecois government
launched a review of anti-welfare fraud
efforts.
More than a year later, the newly elected
Liberals announced 10 new investigators
were hired to bolster anti-welfare fraud
efforts, even as it cut other departments’
budgets.
Andrew McIntosh is an awardwinning journalist, investigations editor
for the QMI News Agency, and certified
fraud examiner.
Kinia Adamcyzk is a journalist and
researcher whose past investigative
work included stints with Groupe TVA
Inc. and QMI news agency’s investigative unit. She is also the founder of Cosmopolitan Review, a quarterly covering
Polish and international affairs.
13
CAJ - ONLINE MEDIA AWARD
A MESSY PROBLEM: Crews clean up a
pipeline break northeast of Peace River,
Alta. on May 4, 2011. The Alberta government charged Plains Midstream Canada
for the massive oil spill that fouled land
in the northwestern part of the province.
Public interest in pipelines is at an all-time
high in Canada, but detailed information
about the lines that traverse our country is
hard to come by.
PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN
PRESS/Ian Jackson
Amber Hildebrandt, Michael Pereira, Ian Johnson, Eric Foss,
Joanne Levasseur
CBC News – Online
Pipeline Safety
By Amber Hildebrandt and Michael Pereira
P
ublic interest in pipelines is at an
all-time high in Canada, but detailed
information about the lines that traverse
our country is hard to come by.
CBC News decided to obtain raw information about the pipeline incidents —
spills, leaks, fires, deaths and more — that
were happening on the biggest lines in the
country: those that cross borders.
But as usual with government data, it
proved much harder than simply getting a
database. It took weeks of work once we
obtained the access-to-information documents before we could even determine the
resulting stories.
One thing we knew from the beginning,
though, was that we wanted to give Canadians an easy-to-understand map of the
incidents, providing both a cross-country
view and the ability to zoom in on areas of
interest, like their own neighbourhood.
Our journey into the data began with
the access-to-information request. We
asked for 12 years’ worth of data from the
National Energy Board, the federal regulator that oversees the 71,000 kilometres of
cross-border lines.
About five months later, a CD of PDFs
arrived at CBC News. The 405 pages
detailed every pipeline safety incident that
companies are required to report, including company, substance, nearest community, plus a notes field that gave valuable
descriptions of the event.
Unfortunately, NEB redacted some of
the exported data using a program that
rendered pages into grainy bitmapped text.
That made it readable to the human eye,
but posed a dilemma for CBC analysing it.
We solved part of the problem with a
combination of commercial optical character recognition (OCR) software, which
converts images of text into editable
documents. Custom scripts were also used
to convert the image back into text and
reassemble the records. The converted text
was then imported into a local MySQL
database as a data set that we could query.
We then geocoded the longitude and
latitude for the nearest population centre
noted for each of the incidents in the NEB
logs. That allowed us to create a prototype
of the map that we published internally for
our journalists across the country to sift
through.
Using geographic information sys-
Finalists
Christopher Johnson
The End of the World
Globalite Magazine
Patrick Cain
Remembrance Day – Mapping the Dead
of Canada’s Wars
Global News
Sunny Freeman
Staking Claim: First Nations and Resource Development in the Ring of Fire
Huffington Post Canada
tem (GIS), spreadsheet exports from the
database, and statistical software, we
explored a decade’s worth of incidents to
find patterns and trends. It quickly became
apparent that our data cleanup work was
not done.
Record-keeping protocols and the detail
recorded by pipeline employees changed
considerably over the years. A surprising
number of cells within our sample were
empty. Until 2005, for example, the column for “Event Type” was only filled out
in a handful of cases.
Countless incidents that involved a spill
or leak also had blanks in the “Volume
Released” column, even when an amount
was specified in the summary. Sometimes
summaries contained multiple updates
about a spill.
Even the field intended to capture the
amount of a spill or leak that had been recovered was often left blank. Other times,
there was not even enough information to
determine whether it met the criteria for an
event that companies must report.
To add clarity to the messy and incomplete database, so that it would be useful
to the general public, CBC devoted time to
sifting through each of the 1,047 incidents,
and filling in the blanks wherever detailed
information was provided elsewhere, in
the row.
This stage of data cleanup required the
creation of a content management system
and a week’s worth of careful editorial
scrutiny to standardize the records, and
ensure that we could properly and fairly
examine the incidents as a whole.
14MEDIA
MAPPING OIL SPILLS:
We hope the resulting
website is something useful for the Canadian public
— and we plan to improve
it in the future. Stay tuned.
We asked a lot of questions of the NEB
about their internal standards and also had
the board verify a sampling of the rows
where we’d filled in blanks.
One of the biggest troubles with the database is the lack of information about the
end result. Was the company reprimanded?
Was the death, a spill or an injury investigated? What was the finding?
CBC News tracked down investigation
reports of individual incidents where possible and posted the links in the website.
This involved several dozen large-scale
cases, mostly incidents probed by the
Transportation Safety Board (TSB), an
independent agency that investigates pipeline accidents.
To be able to visualize the size of spills,
we also standardized the amount of oil
or gas spilled — which was recorded by
NEB largely in cubic metres but also in
2014 AWARDS EDITION
kilograms, litres, tonnes and other units —
into one measurement: litres. NEB helped
convert the weights into volumes.
In the spirit of transparency, CBC also
made the full dataset, including original
and updated columns, available as a CSV
file that anyone can still download and
explore.
The final product was a series of stories
that examined not only the increasing rate
of pipeline incidents across the country,
but also the overall lack of transparency
around pipeline locations and incidents
at a time when Canadians are demanding
more.
We also discovered a massive pipeline
rupture involving a TransCanada pipeline
that happened five years ago. The NEB
investigated the rupture, but never made
public its findings, even to the First Nations community on whose hunting land
the explosive rupture occurred.
CBC also published an interactive map
that gave Canadians an incredible wealth
of information on each one of the 1,047
incidents.
For the first time ever, Canadians can
dig into whatever information they want
about a pipeline incident, including the
type, substance, company involved, pipeline, community and year.
We hope the resulting website is
something useful for the Canadian public
— and we plan to improve it in the future.
Stay tuned.
Amber Hildebrandt is an award-winning CBC News online producer who
tackles projects and stories with creativity and initiative. Her specialties include
investigative reporting, multimedia
projects, co-ordination among multiple
platforms, and feature writing.
15
For most of my life I have been involved in social justice struggles. But I never looked at
albinism and disability... I met Jayne Waithera (to the right), who is fighting for positive representations of albinism in Kenya.
CAJ - OPEN BROADCAST FEATURE AWARD
PHOTO CREDIT: LISA HALE
Garth Mullins, Lisa Hale, Yvonne Gall
Ideas,
CBC Radio One
The condition is so rare, that I had never really met and
talked to others with albinism. So Lisa (Hale) (to the left) and I
went to a conference where there were hundreds of people with
albinism from all over the world.
The Imaginary Albino
PHOTO CREDIT: DON SAWATZKY
By Garth Mullins
O
ur CBC Ideas documentary explores how the idea of “the albino”
has seized the popular imagination everywhere from the evil albino stereotypes of
modern cinema, to the circus sideshows of
the 19th and 20th centuries, to a gruesome
East African black market in albino body
parts.
We look at popular culture representations of “the albino” - outsider; magical
being; human embodiment of evil. In
some cultures, albinism is associated
with mystical or prophetic power or even
ghosts. The albino body has long been an
object of ridicule and fascination; of fear
and fetishism.
When my co-author and field producer
Lisa Hale and I pitched CBC on this project, we weren’t sure anybody would care.
After all, people with albinism represent
only .00005 per cent of the Canadian
population. Not a big radio market.
But I’m one of those people with albinism and the story matters to me. It turned
out that it resonated far beyond this small
community.
Vampires, Villains & Recessive Genes
Albinism is a rare genetic condition
characterized by little or no pigment in the
skin, hair and eyes, low vision and photosensitivity. In North America, only about
one person in 20,000 has the condition.
I know all the stereotypes firsthand. My
whole life I’ve been compared to the evil
cyborg from “Blade Runner”, “Casper the
Ghost”, “Billy Idol”, Spike from “Buffy
the Vampire Slayer” – even Johnny Winter, a blues guitar player who actually does
have albinism. The comments, usually
offered loudly and publically, range from
“get a tan” to “freak” and often contain a
modicum of homophobia. There have also
been assaults.
But in parts of East Africa, prejudices
about albinism can be deadly. In the late
2000s, I started hearing that Tanzanians
with albinism were being attacked and
murdered, their body parts harvested to
make bogus medications. My horror at
Finalists
Timothy Sawa, Marie-Maude Denis,
Annie Burns-Pieper, Nicole Reinert
Offshore Exposed
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Adrienne Arsenault, Stephanie Jenzer
Travels in Terror
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Sandie Rinaldo, Marleen Trotter, Mary
Dartis, Brett Mitchell, Anton Koschany
Cheatin’ Hearts
CTV News – W5
Sonia Desmarais, Sylvie Fournier
Force Policière
Radio-Canada – Enquête
this made me start to reflect on albinism,
which until then, I had not really done.
For most of my life I have been involved in social justice struggles. But I
never looked at albinism and disability,
at how they affected me, and those who
share the condition.
I started to think about the huge number
of representations in pop culture: the
albino assassin in the “Da Vinci Code”;
the evil albino twins in “The Matrix”, and
hundreds of powdered and wigged bad
guys throughout celluloid history.
Pale Majority
The condition is so rare, that I had
never really met and talked to others with
albinism. So Lisa and I went to a conference where there were hundreds of people
with albinism from all over the world. I
had never seen people who looked like me
before.
For the first time in my life, I blended
in. I was lost in a crowd. The world’s
smallest minority was, for two days, a pale
majority – at least in a St. Louis hotel.
I found it overwhelming. I was unsure
I could really participate, never mind get
out the mic and interview people. I felt
like just staying in my hotel room. But
tape had to be gathered.
I met Jayne Waithera, who is fighting
for positive representations of albinism in
Kenya. I also met a man who survived two
attacks. He heard one of his assailants say,
“this is the meat we’re looking for.”
16MEDIA
I later spoke to Peter Ash, founder of
the NGO Under the Same Sun, who is also
working to end violence against people
with albinism.
He told me the gruesome statistics of attacks and murders. He works with a group
of people with albinism in Canada and
Tanzania who are trying to change things.
The documentary process also helped
me to reflect on my own experiences with
albinism.
The discrimination and violence I had
faced throughout my life, the alienation
of never looking like peers, co-workers,
friends and family, of having crude caricatures constantly portrayed in the media.
The tape was running while I went
through all of this.
Bright Ideas
Interviewing subjects with disabilities,
like blindness and extreme light sensitivity, takes some awareness on the part of
the interviewer.
Initially, people may not know you are
addressing them unless you say their name
– and yours, as they may not be able to
recognize you simply by voice.
Also, limited or absent eye-contact is
not a sign of evasiveness; it can be part of
having limited eyesight.
People using white canes and service
dogs may have some eyesight. Those
without these mobility aids may still have
very limited vision.
One cannot necessarily determine how
well someone can see simply by observing their behaviour. Blind people like me
use tricks to hack a world designed for the
fully-sighted. You may not be able to tell
2014 AWARDS EDITION
who is blind just from looking at them.
Also, be aware when lighting video.
Too much light will force photosensitive
subjects to squint, tear up, look away or
wear sunglasses – all of which can change
the story.
I’ve been interviewed for TV many
times. It was a constant battle to be in
a studio or with a remote unit that used
bright lights.
I now realize that it’s simple to light
someone who is photosensitive using
lower light levels, indirect lighting or
lights positioned off to the side with a dark
area that the subject can look toward.
I was rarely able to convince those
shooting video or taking photos to make
this accommodation, so I look squinty, angry, evasive, or like a sunglasses-wearing
rock star in many interviews.
One of our interviewees was Rick
Guidotti, a former high fashion photographer who now takes photographs for
Positive Exposure, an arts organization
promoting diversity and tolerance through
the lens.
He agreed to an interview in exchange
for a photo. Rick knows how to shoot a
light sensitive subject: no flash.
Blind Read
I’ve never read from notes when doing
radio or public speaking before. My vision
is so low that I have to be very close to a
page, even with 20-point type.
So close, in fact, that it’s impossible to
fit a mic in between the page and my face.
So, I never learned the trick of reading
aloud.
Lisa and our producer Yvonne Gall
spent a long afternoon behind the glass in
the studio, while I stammered through the
script with false starts and lots of swearing, learning how to narrate off the page.
Eventually I got the knack. But if you
listen closely, you can hear pages touch
the mic once in a while.
People with disabilities have developed
skills to get around obstacles like this.
Producers should utilize these skills.
Working with Lisa, Yvonne and CBC
has helped me learn to narrate from a
script, but has also given me the freedom
be conversational on the tape.
Radio Changes Everything
As the airdate drew closer, it was a little
nerve-wracking. I had never told my own
story before.
But the response was great. The piece
has won a Webster, the CAJ Open Broadcast award and a New York Festivals
Radio Award.
It has also been used in support of a
motion at the UN to end the attacks and
murders of people with albinism in Africa.
Making the documentary has introduced
me to a whole community of people with
albinism and changed my relationship
with my own disability.
Garth Mullins is a writer, activist,
broadcaster and musician living in East
Vancouver. Follow him on Twitter @
garthmullins
Lisa Hale is a freelance journalist
whose work has been on the CBC, Retro
Reports, National Native News and in
the New York Times. You can find her
on Twitter, @lisa_hale
17
DUBIOUS CLAIMS: Senate records
posted online showed that Duffy
had claimed $33,000 in expenses for
inconvenience of living in the National
Capital Region, while claiming to be
primarily resident in Cavendish, Prince
Edward Island, the province from
which he was elevated to the Upper
House.
PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN
PRESS/Andrew Collins
CAJ - OPEN MEDIA AWARD -- CO-WINNER
Glen McGregor
Ottawa Citizen
By Glen McGregor
“
Senate Expenses Scandal
Did you see Fife’s story?” my source
asked.
I had.
The week before, Robert Fife at CTV
News had run a story raising questions
about the residency expenses of Senator
Patrick Brazeau. The young Conservative
appointee, Fife reported, was claiming to
live in Maniwaki, Quebec, about an hour
from Ottawa, while claiming residency
costs for a “secondary residence” in Gatineau, across the river from Parliament Hill.
Fife had travelled to Maniwaki to the
tiny walk-up apartment that Brazeau had
putatively called home -- his “primary
residence” -- and found it occupied by the
senator’s father. No one Fife spoke to had
seen Brazeau staying in the apartment.
My source told me that Brazeau wasn’t
the only one making the same kind of
questionable residency claim. Check out
Duffy, the source said.
That would be Mike Duffy, then the
most high-profile Conservative appointment to the Senate and still an active
and enthusiastic pitchman for the Harper
government.
Senate records posted online showed
that Duffy had claimed $33,000 in expenses for the inconvenience of living in the
National Capital Region, while claiming to
be primarily resident in Cavendish, Prince
Edward Island, the province from which
he was elevated to the Upper House.
But, as everyone in the Parliamentary
Press Gallery knew, Duffy had lived in
Ottawa since the 1970s, when he first arrived to begin covering federal politics as
a broadcast journalist.
Though he came from PEI and owned a
cottage there, land registry records showed
that Duffy and his wife had co-owned
a home in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata
since 2003 -- five years before his appointment to the Senate.
The residency allowance was intended
to defray the costs senators incurred while
away from home in Ottawa. Why, I wondered, did Senator Duffy need the public
to subsidize his time in Ottawa when he
already lived here since the 1970s?
My personal history with Mike Duffy
went back many years. In 1983, when I
Finalists
Kevin Donovan, Jayme Poisson, Robyn
Doolittle, Jesse McLean, Jennifer Pagliaro, Dale Brazao, Kenyon Wallace, David
Bruser, Emily Mathieu, Mary Ormsby
Mayor Rob Ford Investigation
Toronto Star
Kim Bolan
Inside the Angels
Vancouver Sun
Craig Pearson, Trevor Wilhelm
The Way of the Gun
Windsor Star
was a bashful high school student in Ottawa, I volunteered to work at the Progressive Conservative leadership convention
that elected a young Brian Mulroney as
leader. I was assigned to work the bar in
the media centre, even though I had never
even popped open a beer before.
Duffy was among my first customers. He watched in horror as I inverted
a stubby bottle over the plastic cup and,
with trembling hands, let the contents spill
out in a great foamy mess. Duffy gently
instructed me to tilt the cup and drain the
bottle slowly to avoid suds.
Mike Duffy, I can credibly say, taught
me to pour a beer.
Years later, when I took my first job
in journalism with the Ottawa edition of
Frank Magazine, Duffy became a regular
target of the satirical magazine. But when
I moved to the Citizen in 1998 and joined
the press gallery, I made Duffy my first
call to smooth things over.
For more than a decade, Duffy and I
both worked in the hot room, the space
set aside for journalists in Centre Block
on Parliament Hill. Our relationship was
always cordial, never tense, and quite
often useful to me as a journalist. Duffy
knew everyone and had a stunningly deep
institutional memory. He never hesitated
to offer help or advice on a story.
That collegiality vanished, however,
when I had to ask Duffy for comment on
the legitimacy of the residency expenses
he had billed to taxpayers.
18MEDIA
“What’s wrong with you”, he asked me
by way of response. “I have done nothing
wrong, and am, frankly, tired of your b.s..”
When the Citizen published our first
story on Duffy’s expenses, he responded
by phoning into Ottawa talk radio host
Mark Sutcliffe’s show on CFRA. Duffy
suggested that my story was retaliation for
his lawsuit against my former employer,
Frank Magazine.
He repeated the allegation in an email
that was circulated, claiming that he had
won the libel suit against Frank and that
my story, more than a decade later, was an
attempt to extract payback. The 14 years
we worked alongside each other in the hot
room was not mentioned.
Duffy was not the only one claiming
questionable residency expenses. The day
after the Duffy story ran, we published a
piece on Liberal senator Mac Harb’s claim
for residency costs while living in Ottawa.
Using voter lists and property records in
Ontario and Florida, where he also owned
property, we learned that Harb didn’t seem
to live where he claimed. Harb maintained
an apartment in the city while owning a
home in the Pembroke area, just outside
the 100 kilometre buffer zone that Senate
2014 AWARDS EDITION
rules required for such claims.
With allegations about residency
expense-fiddling against three Senators
-- Harb, Duffy and Brazeau -- the Senate
launched an investigation. All three were
asked to produce documentation proving
that they lived where they said they did -drivers licences, tax records, health cards.
Another source passed on a tantalizing tip -- to satisfy auditors, Duffy was
scrambling to get a Prince Edward Island
health card to prove, post facto, that he
lived on the Island. I was able to confirm
that he had asked the province’s health
department to fast track his application for
the card. It was denied.
Although we didn’t know it at the time,
Duffy, meanwhile, was involved in negotiations with the prime minister’s chief of
staff, Nigel Wright, to repay his expenses,
which then topped some $90,000.
Fife scored another coup, revealing in
May 2013 that Wright had cut a personal
cheque to Duffy for the full amount -- a
story for which he received the CAJ’s top
investigative award.
After the audit, the Senate ordered Harb
to pay the money back. He launched a
lawsuit against the Senate but then, in a
sudden about-face, resigned his position in
the Upper House.
He has since been charged by the RCMP
for fraud and breach of trust and now
awaits trial.
The Senate expenses story, already the
dominant Hill story of the year, mushroomed into an existential political scandal
that continues to threaten the future of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
In July 2014, the RCMP announced
long-anticipated charges against Duffy,
with a total 31 charges for fraud, breach of
trust, fraud on a government and bribery.
Among the allegations are that Duffy’s
residency expenses were fraudulent -- the
same story he told me, 18 months earlier,
was just my “b.s.”
Duffy continues to maintain his innocence and says he is looking forward to
testifying when the case goes to trial.
Glen McGregor is a national affairs
reporter with the Ottawa Citizen, covering government and politics on Parliament Hill. He also specializes in data
journalism and social-media evangelism. Follow him on Twitter at@glen_
mcgregor, or make contact by email at
gmcgregor @ottawacitizen.com.
19
CAJ - OPEN MEDIA AWARD -- CO-WINNER
Selena Ross, Frances Willick
The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax
Rehtaeh Parsons
By Selena Ross
L
ast April, I walked into the newsroom for my night shift. An editor
asked me to look into a Facebook post
making the rounds in Halifax. It was a
tribute written by a mother to her 17-yearold daughter, a girl who had died the
previous night. After the Herald wrote
about Rehtaeh Parsons’ suicide, her name
was quickly splashed across international
media, along with her family’s accusations
about what she had experienced.
They said Parsons had been gang-raped
in November 2011, and that a photo
taken that night circulated among local
high schools. Rehtaeh was shunned. She
changed schools. Her parents said the local health system let her down when she
needed counseling.
After months of talking to police,
Parsons’s parents also believed the justice
system had let down their daughter, and
they detailed all the aspects of the case
that they believed police and prosecutors
had flubbed.
A year-long investigation resulted in no
charges for sexual assault or child pornography in the case. The family had many
questions about whether Parsons’s complaint had been taken seriously. Within a
day, the online collective, Anonymous,
became involved, quickly saying it had
found a confession from one of the accused rapists. Anonymous pressured Nova
Scotia politicians to act.
While the story broke at whirlwind pace,
we took several months to investigate
Parsons’s family’s allegations against the
school system, the children’s hospital
and the justice system. I showed that a
stabbing a month before Parsons died had
been linked to her case, raising questions
about whether her peers felt safe talking
openly about her allegations.
Frances Willick, the paper’s education
reporter, wrote about how Parsons had
been stripped against her will by a male
staff member in the mental health ward of
the children’s hospital, how she couldn’t
get a counseling appointment the week
before her suicide attempt, and how her
parents believed she was worse off after
her treatment.
Together, we explored what had happened the night of the alleged rape and
how the teenagers involved perceived it.
Asking Parsons’s peers to open up about
their experiences with sex and drinking,
we showed that sex-ed is unevenly taught
in Nova Scotia, and that many teens have
misconceptions about what constitutes
rape.
I examined how Parsons’s case was pursued while she was alive, revealing serious
missteps. Police had never interviewed
any of the boys involved or seized their
phones or computers — standard procedure — and they were unwilling to use
online evidence, though it is often admissible in court.
Parsons’s phone was combed for evidence, with some texts used to discredit
her, though messages supporting her story
appeared to have been overlooked. Crown
prosecutors were unusually quick to turn
down the case.
All the stories were reported with oldfashioned door-knocking, with one twist.
We spent much time visiting Parsons’s
community, developing contacts and
building trust with young people involved
with the case on “both sides” — Parsons’s
and the boys she accused.
However, we also spent much time
tracking key online conversations connected to the case, constantly making
screenshots of important details before
they were taken down. We cultivated and
interviewed sources within Anonymous,
were provided tips around the case, and
learned about the tools Anonymous used
to look for evidence online.
The international attention threw this
story into difficult territory for our newsroom. Police tightened internal access to
Parsons’s file, which tied the hands of police sources. Crown prosecutors wouldn’t
speak about the case. I spent months
searching for police sources who had
seen Parsons’s file before it was internally
locked and who would consider talking
about it.
Legal considerations took a toll on
storytelling as well, especially since police
reopened the case after Parsons’s death,
and ultimately charged two boys with
child pornography offences. Information
of public interest was often withheld to
avoid interfering with the court process.
Ethical debates were another constant
concern. At a time when standards are
changing around suicide reporting, the
Herald had to decide how to cover this
high-profile suicide. We also had to think
about how to report on the sexual assault
allegations. Our goal was to investigate
the case fully and fairly while leaving
space to look critically at whether the legal
system had done the same. Along the way,
we faced many judgment calls about how
to maintain our focus on what was legally
important in the case.
Within a month of The Chronicle Herald’s first coverage of this story, requests
for counseling had doubled at Halifax’s
sexual assault resource centre. In another
concrete change coming out of the story,
the province announced emergency funding to cover the spike in demand, and it
20MEDIA
REMEMBERING REHTAEH: Several hundred people attend a community vigil to remember Rehtaeh Parsons at Victoria Park in
Halifax on Thursday, April 11, 2013. We explored what had happened the night of the alleged rape, and how the teenagers involved
perceived it.
PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
ultimately pledged more than $1 million
for sexual assault services, bringing them
to rural areas where there had been none.
Another $6 million has been committed
over the next three years to help prevent
sexual violence and to improve support for
victims.
Nova Scotia passed an anti-cyberbullying law in the wake of Parsons’s death,
and Ottawa introduced federal legislation,
making it a crime to distribute “intimate
images” without the subject’s permission.
Nova Scotia also created a special fiveperson unit to investigate cyberbullying
complaints.
While we don’t claim sole responsibility or credit for all of these changes,
we believe our coverage helped propel
them. Several independent reviews were
launched after Parsons’s story was published, including a review of the Halifax
regional school board’s actions involving
the case and a review of youth mental
health and addictions services.
2014 AWARDS EDITION
Related links
Canada to get new cyberbullying legislation in fall
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/
canada-to-get-new-cyberbullying-legislation-in-fall-1.1869752
Bill C-13
Nova Scotia’s Cyber-safety Act
http://novascotia.ca/just/global_docs/Cyberbullying_EN.pdf
http://www.canlii.org/en/ns/laws/stat/
sns-2013-c-2/latest/part-1/sns-2013-c-2part-1.pdf
N.S. cyberbullying legislation allows
victims to sue
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/novascotia/n-s-cyberbullying-legislationallows-victims-to-sue-1.1307338
A final independent review into how
public prosecutors and police handled the
case will probably be finished in 2015.
There will be follow-up coverage on that
review and, of course, on the case against
two young men still before the courts.
Reporting these stories involved seemingly endless door-knocking and sourceseeking. Don’t be afraid to have doors
slammed in your face. Exhaust all leads.
Don’t be daunted by covering a controversial and highly emotional issue – just be
prepared to think carefully about how you
do it, and be open to feedback.
Selena Ross and Frances Willick
are staff reporters for The Chronicle
Herald. They can be reached at sross@
herald.ca and fwillick@herald.ca or by
phone at (902) 426-2811.
Link to the stories: Selena RossFrances Willick_Rehtaeh Parsons: http://thechronicleherald.ca/
metro/1135866-rehtaehs-death-hasopened-eyes-to-the-risky-world-of-teens21
CAJ -- PHOTO-JOURNALISM AWARD
Finalist
Finalist
Jonathan Hayward
The Canadian Press
Portfolio entry
Darryl Dyck
Portfolio entry
Freelance / The Canadian Press
By Jonathan Hayward
For the 2013 CAJ’s, I entered a portfolio that I was very proud of. Pictures and topics ranged from pro sports, politics, wildlife photography and an in-depth portrait session that I did early in the year in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, DTES.
Steve Russell
Portfolio entry
Toronto Star
Newlyweds Cam Auge
and Caylee Wasilenko
share a kiss as they water
ski in Bedwell Bay in
North Vancouver, B.C.,
Wednesday, August, 28,
2013. The couple exchanged vows on the dock
at the Vancouver Waterski
Club then hit the water to
seal the deal with a waterski and a kiss.
Ash Tray and his dog Melvin are photographed on East Hastings Street in
Vancouver, B.C’s Downtown Eastside,
Wednesday, January, 30, 2013.
Finalist
One entry was of a black-and-white portrait during a session at the DTES. Late in 2012, I was
taking a picture to go with a story on the changes happening in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
While there, I ended up meeting two fellas who asked to have their picture taken in hopes that
their family elsewhere in Canada could see that they were alive and doing fine. Over the next
few weeks I thought about what these guys had said and realized how powerful it was. So in
early 2013, I returned to East Hastings, and set up a full studio right on the sidewalk. The idea
was to see who would ask to be photographed. At one point I had a full lineup of people wanting for a high-end portrait. After I would photograph them, I would take a small video of each
person asking why he or she had stopped to get their picture taken. The result was a powerful
and rare multimedia package on the Downtown Eastside.
Shaughn Butts
Portfolio entry
Edmonton Journal
22MEDIA
One of my favorite pictures of the year, happened while I
was on vacation and just happened to see a small wedding party
loading into a boat to go to the local waterski club, where I’m a
member. I was told that they were going over to the club for a
quick civil marriage, and then the bride and groom were sealing
the deal with a waterski in the bay with their wedding clothes on.
This sounded amazing. So I asked if they would mind me joining
them to take some pictures. Lucky for me, my truck with all of
my cameras was close enough for me to grab and to join them
before they left the dock. I went to the club, watched the wedding
of two people I had never met before, and then photographed
them waterskiing. This picture ended up getting play all around
the world, with the newlywed couple conducting interviews with
dozens of news outlets.
After receiving a degree in photography from Ryerson in
Toronto, Jonathan Hayward started as a staff photographer
for the St. John’s Telegram in St. John’s, Newfoundland. After
four years there, he moved to Ottawa to be a stringer for The
Canadian Press and learn from the late Tom Hanson and Fred
Chartrand, covering mostly federal politics and hockey. In 2007
Hayward became a staff photographer for The Canadian Press
in Vancouver, giving him an open canvas to cover news, sports
and features.
2014 AWARDS EDITION
Your Right To Know
By Jim Bronskill
and David McKie
- Learn how to use the law to get government secrets.
- Get what information the government hides and hold
institutions accountable.
-Includes a downloadable kit with access-to-information
(CAN) and freedom-of-information (U.S.) forms for applying in each country.
-order at http://www.amazon.ca/ or Indigo Books, or
http://www.self-counsel.com/your-right-to-know.html
Self-Counsel Press
$18.95 Paperback + Download Kit
23
CAJ - JHR / CAJ AWARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
A LIFE OF SADNESS AND LOSS: 15-year-old Aruti Das lost her leg and her mother in the
collapse. Her story of being trapped for days before being rescued, and adjusting to a life replete
with loss, left a permanent impression on us, and later our viewers.
PHOTO CREDIT: John Badcock/CBC NEWS
REPORTING AWARD
Mark Kelley, Lysanne Louter,
Tarannum Kamlani, Aileen McBride
Made in Bangladesh
By Tarannum Kamlani
W
hen the eight-storey Rana Plaza
collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh,
on April 24, 2013, killing more than a
thousand people, the world watched in
horror, as it tends to do when images of
a deadly accident far away are beamed
around the globe in real time.
But it didn’t take long for this tragedy
to feel different, as photographs from the
rubble of that shoddily-built garment factory complex began to emerge.
Tags and labels from clothing brands
immediately familiar to people in countries around the world were scattered
around the bodies of workers who died
making them.
Here in Canada, one label stood out
from the others -- a made-in-Canada
success story poised to go international:
Loblaw’s Joe Fresh.
The images of Joe Fresh clothing amidst
the rubble put a beloved Canadian name
in the middle of what Loblaw chairman
Galen Weston would call “an unspeakable
tragedy”, and by extension, put Canadians
there, too.
Watching the news coverage and
reading horrifying stories of those who
survived, we asked -- what led to Canadian clothes being made in conditions that
contributed to the collapse?
What role did we play as consumers,
with our insatiable demand for affordable
fashion?
And when Loblaw and Joe Fresh executives expressed shock that their brand
could be tied to the collapse – it begged
the question: how could it be they didn’t
know how and where their clothes were
made?
Their denials and unsatisfactory explanations helped fuel our investigation and
formed the genesis of the fifth estate’s
Made In Bangladesh documentary.
The Fashion Industry Insider
As we began our research, we knew
we had to find someone who knew the
inner workings of so-called fast fashion:
an insider who could give viewers an
understanding of what happens between a
designer’s vision and the finished product
hanging on the rack in Canadian stores.
We combed LinkedIn, looking for
anyone with experience in design and
sourcing for brands like Joe Fresh or any
company with a history of making clothes
in Bangladesh.
Finalists
Brennan Leffler, Kirk Neff, Jonathan
Wong, Laurie Few, Nisha Pahuja
Bus Rape Outrage
Global – 16X9
Carol Sanders
When Hope Runs Out
Winnipeg Free Press
We made dozens of cold calls to those
people, fired off emails -- pleading for at
least an off-the-record conversation.
We were met with either stony silence
or a curt refusal to comment, hardly surprising given how small the industry is in
Canada.
But we lucked out -- the one insider who
had begun speaking out via newspaper
essays was a former designer for a leading
company with a controversial track record
in Bangladesh: Walmart.
His name is Sujeet Sennik, a designer
who had worked on every end of the fashion spectrum.
While at Walmart, he became convinced
he wasn’t being told the truth about where
the clothes he designed were actually being made.
After Rana Plaza collapsed, he was determined to find out. And he agreed to help
us tell the story.
We found a shirt he designed on a sale
rack at a Walmart Superstore.
Now all we had to do was trace it back
to Bangladesh.
The Genius of Import Genius
While Sennik’s quest was crucial to our
story -- so was the story of how Joe Fresh
clothing wound up inside Rana Plaza.
And the tool that helped us tell both
tales was a database called Import Genius.
It’s a U.S.-based site that compiles
detailed shipping records from every U.S.
port -- including bills of lading.
24MEDIA
Using this information, we were able to
get a fairly good idea of which Bangladesh
factories were regularly used by various
brands.
It wasn’t a perfect tool -- it only painted
part of the picture.
Shipments that came directly to Canada
were not included. But, using Import Genius helped us
not only find the factory that likely made
Sennik’s shirt -- it also helped us find Joe
Fresh clothing made in Rana Plaza that
was still being sold in Canadian stores.
The Ledger
Thanks to Sennik, a few other deepbackground sources and Import Genius,
we were starting to form a picture of how
things worked on the Canadian side of the
story.
But how things worked in Bangladesh
remained unclear.
While searching for fixers and sources
on the ground in Dhaka, we had the good
fortune of finding a kindred spirit in the
form of Sarah Ferguson, a correspondent
with the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
who was on the ground with her crew
filming her Rana Plaza documentary.
She shared some valuable on-the-ground
experience and contacts with us. She also
sent us a ledger she found in the rubble of
Rana Plaza that provided clues about Joe
Fresh’s relationship with its Rana Plaza
factory.
It also helped us answer the question of
how Joe Fresh clothes wound up inside
that doomed building: by giving us the
name of the agency that acted as a middleman for companies like Joe Fresh, helping
them find suppliers in Bangladesh.
A Girl Named Aruti
To make this story resonate with Canadians six months after the fact, we needed
someone to embody both the struggle of
the workers and the consequences of the
2014 AWARDS EDITION
Rana Plaza collapse.
Looking through news footage and hospital records obtained via our fixer -- we
found her. Fifteen-year-old Aruti Das lost
her leg and her mother in the collapse. Her
story of being trapped for days before being rescued, and adjusting to a life replete
with loss left a permanent impression on
us, and later our viewers.
Planning for Key Moments and Being
Prepared When They Happen Unexpectedly
Introducing ex-Walmart designer Sennik
to the garment workers who made a shirt
he designed was a key moment in the
story.
It involved careful research and outreach to activists who connected us with
the workers once we promised them
anonymity.
They were able to confirm stories we
had heard about perilous working conditions and ill-treatment.
It was a life-changing moment for Sennik.
His ability to share that with our cameras came after weeks and weeks of trustbuilding, both in Canada and on the road
in Bangladesh
Perhaps the most unexpected revelation came during an interview with Atiqul
Islam, the powerful head of the organization that regulates most of Bangladesh’s
garment factories.
It turned out he was also the owner of
the factory that was contracted to make
Sennik’s shirt. This looked like a case of
unauthorized subcontracting, something
Walmart has publicly renounced.
On camera, Islam denied the shirt had
been made anywhere other than at his factory. After the interview, while our cameras were still rolling -- he took the shirt
and appeared to deface the tag to block
anything that could connect his factory to
the shirt.
Communicating Responsibly
Once the crew returned to Canada, we
faced the task of not only telling a compelling story, but making sure that story was
air-tight.
We went to unprecedented lengths to accommodate the Joe Fresh side of the story
-- giving them 11th-hour opportunities to
participate in the documentary, sharing
details of the allegations we were making
-- giving them the opportunity to refute
them.
For the most part, they chose not to
respond to most of our questions.
Impact and Follow Up
Based on what many of our viewers told
us and continue to tell us, the documentary
changed the way they view cheap fashion.
Many people ask how they can help survivors of Rana Plaza, especially the young
woman named Aruti.
As for the fashion industry, it has seemingly evolved since Rana Plaza. Loblaw
has signed on to an accord that promises
to hold brands legally accountable for the
working conditions of the factories they
use. And Loblaw and Joe Fresh have committed publicly to being a leader in ensuring that victims of the collapse receive
compensation. Near the one-year anniversary, we did a follow-up story about our
protagonists.
Aruti’s prospects remain bleak.
Sujeet Sennik is searching for a meaningful way to reach out to and educate
Canadians consumers about the choices
they make. And Joe Fresh? Business is
booming.
Tarannum Kamlani is an associate
producer with the fifth estate. Some of
her past stories include the hunt for
accused killer Luka Magnotta, and the
CBC’s multi-media Rate My Hospital
project that was nominated for a CAJ
data-journalism award.
25
CWA CANADA / CAJ AWARD FOR LABOUR
REPORTING AWARD -- CO-WINNER
Kathy Tomlinson, Raj Ahluwalia
CBC News – The National
BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON RBC: RBC
employee Dave Moreau wrote in, saying that
he and some 50-odd employees were losing their jobs to foreign workers. The public
reaction was far beyond anything I had ever
experienced in my 26 years as a journalist. It
certainly gave Dave Moreau his 15 minutes of
fame.
RBC Foreign Workers
By Kathy Tomlinson
RBC Foreign Workers
It started with a two-line email from
RBC employee Dave Moreau. He wrote
saying that he and some 50-odd employees were losing their jobs – being replaced
by foreign workers – and they had to train
their replacements.
He asked one question, “Is this legal?”
What a firestorm that triggered – when
we broadcast and published the resulting
story. The public reaction was far beyond
anything I had ever experienced in my
26 years as a journalist. It certainly gave
Dave Moreau his 15 minutes of fame.
We discovered it was against government rules for RBC to be doing this. Astonishingly, even RBC CEO Gord Nixon
apparently wasn’t fully aware of what was
going on, until we brought it to light.
Because of the overwhelming public
backlash, Dave and his co-workers got
to keep their jobs after all. RBC backed
down from its whole “outsourcing” project
soon after the story aired.
But back to how it came about.
I do stories for CBC’s popular investigative segment Go Public. We get thousands
of emails. Most don’t turn into stories.
Every one we do, though, comes from
people like Dave.
I emailed him back, asking if he was
willing to do an on camera interview. To
my surprise, he said yes.
My colleague Mike Clarke set it up for
the next day – even though we hadn’t verified Dave’s story. We just wanted to get
PHOTO CREDIT: CBC NEWS
the interview “in the can”, as we say.
We were worried he would tell someone he was speaking out, they would say
“Dave – are you crazy?” and poof – our
whistleblower would get cold feet.
He came through. I reached another
employee in the same boat, who said she
was so afraid of having her name used she
was shaking. I never revealed her identity,
but she was also a great help.
Then, someone sent us the internal RBC
document that verified the story. Full of
corporate speak, but enough to satisfy us
that, indeed, 45 IT professionals were being laid off – their department taken over
by foreign contractors from an Indianbased company called I-Gate.
I promised to keep that internal docuCO-WINNER
Krystle Alarcon
Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers
Controversy: Years in the Making
The Tyee
FINALISTS
Richard Littlemore
Union 2.0
Globe and Mail
Gordon Hoekstra
Asbestos Safety Often Ignored
Vancouver Sun
ment under wraps - in order to get it – and
I have never shown it to a single person.
That promise was key. I didn’t need to
use it – I just needed to have it in my back
pocket.
I searched the internet for hours and
found enough on RBC and I-Gate to
establish they’d been working together for
years. This went far beyond Dave and his
colleagues.
But, I still needed government to tell
me if any of this was against the foreign
worker rules. Instead of asking flaks politely (and getting nowhere) I pulled aside
then-Immigration Minister Jason Kenney
while he was in the CBC to do another
interview.
I launched into direct questions with a
camera rolling – without any prep for me
or him. That’s the way we used to interview politicians years ago – before the
spin masters took control.
The minister stepped up and gave me
real answers.
That turned out to be invaluable, because trying to nail down whether RBC
was doing anything wrong through any
other channels proved fruitless. Kenney
told me it was not allowed – and why –
and in the end that was all we needed.
What we couldn’t get from RBC or
from the government was confirmation of
what type of visa these foreign IT people
had.
Did they come in under the temporary
foreign worker program or some other
26MEDIA
way? Either way, did anyone tell the government jobs would be lost as a result?
An immigration lawyer who knew the
ropes educated me on the various visa
programs that could be involved – so I
knew what to ask. That was also crucial to
getting the story right.
It was I-Gate that confirmed they
used both the temporary foreign worker
program and a little-known avenue called
the “intra company transfer.” In my email
questions, I came across like I already
knew and I just needed verification. It
worked.
The first hint I had that this was big
came from a government PR person, who
called me to chat “on background”.
She said Ottawa was getting ready to
respond – but promised it would wait until
our story was slated to roll out Monday.
She broke that promise - over the
weekend – with very little notice. Lucky
for us, our stories were ready to go, so we
published on the web just as the government put out its media release, saying it
was investigating RBC’s use of temporary
foreign workers.
The story went viral. Emails poured
in by the hundreds. A Facebook page to
“boycott RBC’ popped up within hours.
One guy even wrote a song about the
story. People were outraged.
2014 AWARDS EDITION
At first, RBC tried to spin it – by saying they only had one temporary foreign
worker on the project. Technically, that
was true, because all the others came in
under that lesser known visa program, the
intra company transfer.
The bank was splitting hairs, and readers and viewers were smart enough to see
through that.
Other media outlets picked up the story
and we kept on it, too. We heard from IT
professionals from other banks and major
corporations who had lost jobs or contracts to temporary foreign workers and
“outsourcing”. We told their stories and on
it went.
Several unions threatened to pull billions of dollars of pension funds out of
RBC. Four days after the story aired,
RBC’s CEO Gord Nixon ran a full-page
ad in national newspapers, apologizing to
the employees and promising change.
The RBC story was one of the first of
many about the temporary foreign worker
program, which eventually led the government to announce a complete overhaul this
year.
When you know you are right – you
have credible sources and documentation – don’t let PR spin, fuzzy information or brick walls get in your way. When
the stakes are really high, be careful and
meticulous, but don’t back down.
My best advice is read all the correspondence you receive – in full – even if
they look complicated or crazy. You never
know when a gem of a story will be buried
in a long, rambling email from someone.
If there seems to be even a glimmer of
a story there – do a Google search right
away. It’s the quickest, easiest way to see
if something could be for real and what
other elements there may be on the topic.
Also, Google the person who wrote in
to see who you will be dealing with if you
pick up the story.
Do all of this before you email or call
the tipster, because you will be better
informed, and it will save your time and
theirs.
You also might decide not to respond at
all, depending on what you find out from
your search. Most importantly, though,
don’t be too quick to dismiss tipsters.
They hold a wealth of information.
Kathy Tomlinson hosts CBC Vancouver’s news segment, Go Public. The
investigative stories run on CBC TV,
radio and the web. Go Public stories
come exclusively from people who write
in story ideas.
The segment seeks to shed light on
untold stories that are of public interest
and hold those responsible accountable.
27
NNA - SPORTS PHOTO AWARD
Amber Bracken
Edmonton Sun
Jelena Mrdjenovich (left) battles Melissa Hernandez
in the main event on KO Boxing’s Double Jeopardy
card at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton,
Alta. on Friday, May 31, 2013. Mrdjenovich won the
WBC World featherweight title despite the fight being
stopped for her cut.
Capturing the urgency of competition
By Amber Bracken
When I began my career as a photographer in 2008, sports photography was not my priority. I’d never been a sports fan, and I didn’t
expect it to interest me. But, being eager and interested in all aspects of photography — and because I wanted to do my job well — I
dove in. I soon discovered I liked shooting sports. The hook for me is the drama and the immediacy of the stories, the key, fleeting moments I want to capture. I want to tell the entire story of the competition, the intensity of the athletes’ dedication, the kindness and the
cruelty that exists before and after the game or match. I’m interested in the element of human struggle that makes it relatable to us all.
In photographing boxing, I enjoy the challenge of anticipating the athletes’ lightning-fast strokes to get the picture, but I’m mostly
looking for a photo that shows the heart of what the athletes have worked for.
While I’m used to some drama in a boxing ring, I wasn’t expecting the scene at KO Boxing’s Double Jeopardy card.
Jelena Mrdjenovich (pictured on page 28) is a hometown favourite. I knew I would need a great shot of her fighting for the WBC
featherweight world title, regardless of how the fight turned out. For the first two rounds I did my thing, anticipating the punches and
trying to frame an image as they moved around the ring. At the very end of Round 2, the fighters’ heads collided and Mrdjenovich was
left with a nasty two-inch cut gushing blood. At that point, I thought the fight was over and I was worried because there hadn’t been
any great photos yet.
Amazingly, the referees let the fight go on for four more rounds. Mrdjenovich was gritty and determined, and her opponent Melissa Hernandez wasn’t giving up easily either. As they fought, the deep cut was spewing blood all over the fighters’ faces, bodies and
clothes. All over the mat, the ropes, the media and support people at ringside. All over my cameras, my laptop, my body and clothes.
In the end, I chose this picture, rather than a more typical fist to face connection, because of the stubbornness and fatigue in their
faces, framed in the flying, bloody mess they had fought through. I am still not a sports fan, but I will always cheer for anyone who
works that hard. The fight was stopped in the sixth round, after Mrdjenovich had fought her way to the win.
Amber Bracken is an award-winning freelance documentary photojournalist and commercial photographer based in Edmonton,
Alberta. She has been recognized by the News Photographer’s Association of Canada in 2009, 2011 and 2013.
Jelena Mrdjenovich takes a moment to collect herself
after her bout with Melissa Hernandez was stopped
for her cut on KO Boxing’s Double Jeopardy card at
the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton, Alta. on
Friday, May 31, 2013. Mrdjenovich won the WBC
World featherweight title.
Finalists
Darren Stone
Victoria Times Colonist
Spokane Chiefs Adam Smith appears to lose his head after a scrap with
Victoria Royals Tim Traber in WHL action in Victoria, B.C. March 1, 2013.
Photo by Darren Stone/Victoria Times-Colonist
Darren Stone_Victoria Times Colonist
Jonathan Hayward
The Canadian Press
Northern Ontario third Ryan Fry peers through the arms of his teammates while making a shot during
the afternoon draw against Alberta at the Tim Hortons Brier in Edmonton, Alta. Monday, March 4, 2013.
Photo by Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press
Jonathan Hayward_The Canadian Press
28MEDIA
Jelena Mrdjenovich, right, wins the WBC World
featherweight title as Melissa Hernandez looks on after the main event on KO Boxing’s Double Jeopardy
card at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton,
Alta. on Friday, May 31, 2013.
2014 AWARDS EDITION
29
NNA – EXPLANATORY WORK AWARD
Amy Dempsey
Toronto Star
Not guilty. Not innocent. Not understood. Richard Kachkar killed a police officer, but he’s not a
criminal. This is the story of how he was found
not criminally responsible.
“
Why a cop killer is not in prison”
began with a coffee-fueled brainstorming session with Rita Daly, a friend
and mentor who was a team editor in the
Toronto Star’s city department at the time.
(She has since retired.)
Our chat focused on an issue that
struck us both as interesting and lacking
in context: the not criminally responsible
(NCR) verdict. For months we had been
sending each other links to stories about
NCR cases from across Canada. The ones
that made the news tended to be deeply
disturbing, and the public reaction was
always the same: visceral.
I wanted to do a story, but I didn’t know
yet what it would be. So I started making
calls in my spare time, having informal
conversations with psychiatrists, psychologists, researchers, lawyers, politicians,
victim advocates and patient advocates in
an effort to better understand the issues. I
asked experts and researchers what they
thought was important, underreported or
ignored, and they all said the same thing:
the people who are reacting so strongly
to these verdicts do not understand how
the NCR system works, and they do not
understand mental illness.
Then in early 2013, the Harper government introduced the Not Criminally
Responsible Reform Act, a bill that would
impose tougher restrictions on mentally ill
offenders. As the government touted the
bill in the name of public safety, researchers and legal experts were showing me
evidence that the proposed changes were
not grounded in science, but motivated by
misinformed public reaction to a few highprofile cases – the Vincent Li greyhound
bus beheading, for example. It struck me
that if the public was indeed misinformed
and the proposed law was motivated by
our collective lack of knowledge, then it
was my basic duty as a reporter to figure it
out and explain it for readers in an engaging way.
The bill gave me a news hook at a time
when I had developed a strong understanding of the NCR system. I began looking
for a case study to highlight in a story I
hoped would explain what it takes, and
what it means to be found neither guilty
nor innocent in the eyes of the law.
I was pursuing another case when the
Richard Kachkar trial began heating up
FINALISTS
Wendy Gillis
Toronto Star
Cleaning up the millions of litres of crude
swamping Lac-Mégantic a mind-bogglingly complex task
John Allemang
The Globe and Mail
The answer is ‘crossword.’ On the
puzzle’s 100th birthday, John Allemang
looks at the pleasures, and the pleasurable
pain, it gives to millions every day
Claire Brownell
Windsor Star
Land Grab: How a bridge baron ruined a
neighbourhood
in Toronto. Kachkar had killed a Toronto
police sergeant with a stolen snowplow
on a winter morning in 2011 and was
facing a first-degree murder charge. He
had pleaded not criminally responsible.
Initially, I didn’t want to focus on Richard Kachkar because I thought it better to
follow an NCR story from beginning to
the end. But as the trial wore on, I realized
it was perhaps the most important case to
use an example. The timing of the NCR
bill combined with the fact that Kachkar’s
victim had been a police officer meant
there was a lot of public attention on the
case. And it was clear – from talk radio,
newspaper columns, letters to the editor,
online comments – that there was a lot of
misunderstanding about it.
Many news stories that came out of the
Kachkar trial lacked the context necessary for the public to understand why a
jury would eventually find Kachkar NCR.
Some daily stories gave readers the impression that psychiatrists on the witness
stand were torn about Kachkar’s mental
state, when that was not the case. All
three psychiatrists tasked with assessing
his mental state at the time of the offence
concluded that he met the not-criminallyresponsible criteria – even the one hired
by the Crown.
City editor Irene Gentle gave me a few
weeks to work on the story in MarchApril 2013. I attended closing arguments
in court, watched the judge deliver his
instructions to the jury, reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents and
interviewed more than 50 people. It was
30MEDIA
GRIEVING HER LOSS: Richard Kachkar killed Christine Russell’s husband, Ryan (to the right). He had pleaded
not criminally responsible. PHOTO CREDIT: MARK
BLINCH / REUTERS
a challenge to learn the ins and outs of a
complicated system and write confidently
about it in under a month. Most interviews
were on-the-record, but a few background
discussions gave me a valuable insider’s
perspective. I also visited a forensic psychiatric ward at the Centre for Addiction
and Mental Health, a facility much like
the one Kachkar would end up in, to learn
more about the life he would live after an
NCR verdict.
Kachkar remains in a psychiatric facility at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental
Health Sciences in Whitby, Ont. I have
tried repeatedly for an interview, but the
hospital says he is not well and nothing
good could come of it.
I have continued to write about the
forensic mental health system. In April
2014, the Star published “What Michael
did,” the story of a man who developed
schizophrenia and killed the person who
loved him most.
Bill C-14 passed with negligible amendments and become law in July 2014.
Amy Dempsey is a feature writer for
the Toronto Star, where she has worked
since graduating from Carleton University’s master of journalism program in
2010. She won a 2013 National Newspaper Award for explanatory journalism
and shared a 2010 breaking news NNA
with a team of Star reporters.
2014 AWARDS EDITION
SENSELESS LOSS: Kachkar killed Ryan Russell with a
stolen snowplow on a winter morning in 2011 PHOTO
CREDIT: Handout photo / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Related Links
The Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act (The Canadian Bar Association)
http://www.nationalmagazine.ca/Articles/March-2014-WEB/The-Not-Criminally-Responsible-Act.aspx
Richard Kachkar: how a cop killer was found not criminally responsible
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/04/29/richard_kachkar_how_a_cop_killer_was_
found_not_criminally_responsible.html
‘Not criminally responsible’ law misses point: Critics
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/04/19/not_criminally_responsible_law_misses_
point_critics.html
What Michael did
http://projects.thestar.com/what-michael-stewart-did/
Bill C-14, Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act – Re-introduced November 25, 2013
(Alberta Law Libraries)
http://www.lawlibrary.ab.ca/staycurrent/2013/11/bill-c-14-criminally-responsible-reform-actre-introduced-november-25-2013/
Bill C-14
http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/hoc/Bills/412/Government/C-14/C-14_3/C-14_3.PDF
31
NNA - SHORT FEATURE AWARD
EXPLOSIVE OIL: The World Fuels/Dakota Plains fuel
loading terminal in New Town, N.D., is shown in September,
2013. With the practice of moving crude oil by rail now under
scrutiny, North Dakota and its lucrative Bakken oil deposits
have a lot at stake.
PHOTO CREDIT: JERRY W. KRAM FOR THE GLOBE AND
MAIL
The Globe and Mail
Grant Robertson
North Dakota’s explosive Bakken oil: The story behind a
troubling crude
By Grant Robertson
W
hen a runaway train carrying
72 tankers of oil derailed and
exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Que., killing 47 people and gutting the town, there
was a troubling question that hung over
the tragedy. Even though the reasons for
the accident were clear – the railway had
failed to set the brakes properly, allowing
the parked train to roll down a hill into
town – those details failed to explain why
the accident was so deadly.
One comment kept coming up over and
over during interviews: why did the oil
tankers explode so violently? “Oil isn’t
supposed to blow up like that,” said one
person after another. It was a question that
seemed particularly worrisome, since the
idea of moving crude by train, as opposed
to pipelines, was a relatively new phenomenon in North America, and was growing
rapidly.
In the aftermath of the Lac-Mégantic
tragedy, the federal government, the
railway industry and the oil sector were all
quick to portray the incident as a once-ina-lifetime occurrence, a freak accident that
would never happen again. But the size of
the explosions in Lac-Mégantic suggested
there was something wrong with the oil.
It was at that point that we decided to
shift our investigative work on the LacMégantic disaster to the oil itself. Typically, crude oil will burn or smolder, but
it doesn’t explode. Unfortunately, as is
so often the case, no one was talking. We
needed to track down the oil, and talk to
people who knew about its composition.
We knew the oil came from North
Dakota, so we started compiling data on
crude from the region, which was available in company engineering reports. We
then started scouring regulatory filings for
hints of any concerns about the oil. This
proved to be an unexpected gold mine
when a document emerged from Enbridge
Inc., which was experiencing serious problems with the oil at one of its facilities in
North Dakota. The crude’s vapours were
extremely explosive and poisonous, the
company told the U.S. government in a
regulatory submission. Though the document was not publicized, it was filed with
energy regulators, which made it publicly
available if you could find it.
With this information in hand, we had a
trail to follow. The next step was to see the
oil first-hand. I headed 2,400-kilometres
West of Toronto, to North Dakota’s booming Bakken oil fields, where the doomed
crude shipment began. The short-feature
titled “The story behind a troubling crude”
was the result of this investigation. The
headline references the well-known Beverley Hillbillies theme song – “up through
the ground came a bubblin’ crude” – and
as I was about to learn, the oil being
pulled from the ground in North Dakota
was not like the licorice-black sludge
we’re so used to seeing on TV.
The train that exploded in Quebec was
loaded with crude from a place called New
FINALISTS
Foyer pour handicapés à Laval: un «paradis» menacé
Gabrielle Duchaine
La Presse
A gift for generosity and love
Gordon Sinclair. Jr.
Winnipeg Free Press
Town, which is not unlike Fort McMurray,
Alta. It is a semi-remote prairie outpost
where the economy is built entirely around
a booming oil industry. Not surprisingly,
outsiders with questions aren’t exactly
welcome.
It wasn’t clear what the journey to
North Dakota would yield, since access
to oil-loading locations and the well sites
was being flatly denied. But the trip to
New Town was an important reminder that
being on the ground is always better than
reporting from afar. After a few frustrating interviews that produced little in terms
of new information, I found myself one
afternoon sitting among oil workers who
were taking their break inside a makeshift
lunchroom. We talked casually about why
I was in New Town, and how I had heard
that North Dakota oil was different than
the crude I had encountered years ago as
an oil reporter in Alberta. That oil ranged
from black-brown muck to something
more golden brown, like maple syrup,
when it came out of the ground.
The men in the room nodded and
laughed. This oil is indeed a marvel, they
said. Refiners love it because it takes little
effort to turn it to gasoline, since it is so
“light.” It looks like “Miller Lite,” one
worker said. That is, it looks a lot more
like gasoline than mucky crude. He then
retrieved a mason jar of Bakken crude
from an adjacent room and handed it to me
to see for myself. Sure enough, it looked
nothing like any oil I’d seen before. I
opened the lid and inhaled. The vapours
hit me. It was indeed like gasoline. In fact,
this oil was so light and needed such little
refining that some people in New Town
poured it directly into their pickup trucks
as fuel, the men said.
32MEDIA
It was stories like that one that helped
set the tone for this feature. Of the many
interviews we conducted, piecing together
the science of what makes Bakken crude
different and more explosive than other
forms of oil – which the U.S. government
later confirmed through its own tests – it
was that conversation over the jar of oil I
remember most. It explained the problem
better to readers than anything else could:
This oil is like gasoline.
Surprisingly, the story about the jar of
oil never made it into a series of longer
investigative articles we wrote – mainly
because it was a first-person tale that felt
out of place with the tone of the harderhitting pieces we were trying to craft.
Rather than leave it on the cutting room
floor, though, it became the basis for a
short feature. But this created another
challenge.
Typically, the best short features are
character-driven pieces, with rich colour
and quotes. A good example is a short
feature The Globe’s foreign correspondent
Mark Mackinnon wrote in 2003, titled
“Lepers and lovers in a dangerous time.”
It is a tale of two members of a leper
colony in Iraq who cling to their love as
U.S. forces roll through town on their way
to attack Baghdad. It is one of my all-time
favourite short features, with beautifully drawn characters and heartbreaking
interviews. My biggest challenge with the
oil story, though, is that I didn’t have a
main character to build the piece around,
nor did I have great quotes -- since few
people were willing to talk on-record. The
solution was to build the story around the
crude, to make the oil the main character
by telling its backstory, which helped
explain the Lac-Mégantic disaster in a
broader economic, political and social
context.
2014 AWARDS EDITION
Since the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, there
have been three more massive oil train
explosions involving Bakken oil, in Alabama, Virginia, and North Dakota. Though
there were no casualties from those subsequent crashes, the explosions proved that
the Lac-Mégantic derailment was not the
once-in-a-lifetime, freak accident that the
industry and government claimed. No one
knew how dangerous the oil really was.
Grant Robertson is an investigative reporter for The Globe and Mail’s
Report on Business. He joined The Globe
in 2005, and before that covered the oil
industry and the railway sector for the
Calgary Herald.
The story behind a key Enbridge document
After dozens of interviews, we came across Enbridge’s “tariff filing” with the
U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A source eventually said, “Maybe
you should look at the (Enbridge filing)”. Of course, I asked “What Enbridge filing”? The source was of no help. So I had to start sifting through reams of regulatory filings in the commission database and on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval database where companies in Canada file most of
their regulatory documents. Eventually, we came across the Enbridge documents
because someone had given us the name Robert Steede as a lead. That was pretty
much all I had to go on. Then after gathering these documents, interviewing Steede
and others, it allowed me to basically go back to everybody else in the oil patch in
North Dakota and ask, “If you’re saying the oil is safe, and there is nothing different about it than oil from Alberta and Texas, then why are we seeing this happening.”? It began the conversations that begat the stories.
1. Basically the filing is an application by Enbridge to U.S. regulators to refuse to
ship oil it feels is unsafe. Enbridge operates a pipeline and a rail facility to ship oil
in the Bakken region. Under antitrust laws, railways and pipelines can’t refuse an
oil company shipment. So Enbridge, fearing that some of the oil was far too unsafe,
formally went to the government and requested special permission to refuse oil
because we think it’s potentially dangerous and this hydrogen sulfide gas could kill
our workers if they inhale it (H2S is extremely deadly and sometimes undetectable
by the nose). So this is them asking permission to do that.
2. The documents also told us that this oil is unusual. It’s not typical for high
amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas to be found in oil. So clearly companies had
concerns. And even we knew H2S was one of many light ends that make oil more
explosive. So even though Enbridge was primarily concerned about inhalation
risk, the fact it was concerned showed there was also ample explosion risk, given
that the oil was clearly lighter than typical crude. This regulatory filing gave us the
thesis, which was eventually proven in the reporting.
33
NNA – POLITICS AWARD
Jennifer Ditchburn
The Canadian Press
Conservative Senator Duffy claimed expenses while
campaigning in the 2011 election
By Jennifer Ditchburn
M
y submission in the NNA politics
category consisted of three stories
that touched on the Senate spending
scandal. The common thread among them
was that I tried to look at a document or an
issue from a different angle or lens.
The main piece, Conservative senator
Duffy claimed expenses while campaigning in 2011 election, which revealed Sen.
Mike Duffy was claiming expenses while
travelling the country campaigning for the
Conservatives, came together after I was
leafing through an independent audit.
(Editor’s note: the second piece was
entitled “Mystery binder: Documents held
by PM’s former aide raise new Duffy
questions”; the third story was called,
“Things left unsaid: government’s answers
on Senate scandal still a moving target”.)
The audit, by Deloitte, had been commissioned by the Senate. When it came
out, the Conservative leadership immediately announced that the matter of Duffy’s
expenses was closed and that he would
simply be repaying the contested amount.
No breakdown of his expenses was provided, despite our requests, and despite
the fact Deloitte had complained it didn’t
get complete information from Duffy. The
lack of transparency was frustrating, to say
the least. As far as I’m concerned, when
information is deliberately not released,
something is being hidden.
Sometimes in the heat of a story, it’s
easy to go through a document quickly,
pull out the juicy bits for the initial coverage, and then move on to the next thing.
But it’s also valuable to take the time to
read through the document more carefully
later, and see if there’s something else
that wasn’t immediately apparent during
the first go-around. In this case, it was
a calendar of expenses published in the
audit on the first page of Schedule 1 that I
had just glossed over in my first readings.
It included specific dates during the spring
of 2011 when expenses were incurred.
A lightbulb went off: that was when the
federal election took place. I recalled that
Duffy had appeared during the campaign
with various candidates. I used Twitter,
Facebook, websites and news articles to
pinpoint where Duffy had been on particular dates. The tweets and Facebook posts
of Conservative candidates were particularly useful. I cross-referenced the material
with the dates noted in the audit. Elections
Canada financial returns indicated that
some candidates had reimbursed Duffy for
expenses during the campaign
Within hours of the story hitting the
wire, Duffy had been pushed out of the
Conservative caucus. This was the straw
that broke the camel’s back. The Senate
leadership eventually asked for a more
Finalists
Gary Mason
The Globe and Mail
Anatomy of a comeback: how Christy
Clark beat the odds
Steven Chase, Boyd Erman, Daniel
Leblanc,
The Globe and Mail
Wright resigns despite Harper’s pleas:
Prime Minister’s chief of staff had agreed
to stay, but reflections over a birthday
weekend spurred decision to quit over
Duffy gift
detailed internal probe of his expenses,
which later confirmed what our story had
first revealed. Eventually, the entire file
was forwarded to the RCMP. The matter that the Conservatives so desperately
wanted to have closed was suddenly flung
wide open again.
In a similar way, a related story about
the changing language used by the Conservatives on the Senate scandal also took
information that was already in the public
domain but looked at it from a different
perspective. One weekend, after listening to days and days of weak government
answers in the Commons about the Senate
scandal, I decided I needed something that
would spell out for me what we actually
knew and what we didn’t. I compiled a
rudimentary database of comments that
had been made about the $90,000 clandestine payment by Prime Minister Stephen
Harper’s chief of staff Nigel Wright to
Duffy. Just putting together those quotes
from Hansard and outside interviews, and
looking at them together, helped me to tell
a simple story about how the Conservative
messaging was subtly changing as time
went on and what information they were
carefully leaving out.
More than anything, it emphasized how
the government was less than forthcoming
on many of the central issues – particularly who was in the loop inside the Prime
Minister’s Office? As we know now,
there were others who were aware of the
payment and of the negotiations that were
going back and forth between Duffy and
Wright.
Finally, a third story in the package was
about RCMP documents that had been
filed in court. The Information to Obtain
34
MEDIA
THE DUFFSTER BACK IN THE NEWS: Mike Duffy was claiming expenses while travelling the country campaigning for the Conservatives. The
story came together after leafing through an independent audit that the Senate ordered.
PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
(ITO), which establishes the rationale for
requesting a search warrant, detailed the
avenues of investigation the police were
pursuing in the Wright-Duffy affair.
Initial stories that came out of the police
documents focused on Senate contracts
that had been given to a friend of Duffy’s.
I had another go at the police filing, and
what stuck out for me was the reference
(ITO reference: October 8, 2013, page
14, paragraph 7) to a binder of documents
that Duffy had sent to Wright. The binder
apparently included details of his Senate calendar and other useful nuggets of
information that the Deloitte auditors had
been unable to get their hands on.
How tantalizing – the idea of a cache
of correspondence and evidence that
exchanged hands behind the scenes! The
story was picked up widely.
If I have any advice for young journal-
2014 AWARDS EDITION
ists, it’s not to assume that a story has been
exhausted once it has its first big splash.
A lot of details go under the radar, some
of them important – even pivotal. Knowing an issue inside and out, and making
yourself an expert on all the tiny little
details, can also help you see potential
stories in the weeds that others might miss.
Jennifer Ditchburn is a senior parliamentary correspondent with The
Canadian Press in Ottawa. She joined
the news agency in Montreal in 1995,
and went on to Toronto and Edmonton
before landing in the nation’s capital in
1997. Between 2001 and 2006, she was a
national reporter with CBC Television
on Parliament Hill.
Ditchburn is also a 2010 National
Newspaper Award winner. She is a
frequent contributor to television and
radio public affairs programs.
For exclusive content,
stories, interviews about
journalism turn to Media.
Visit
http://www.caj.ca/mediamagazine-archives/
Issues date back to the
spring of 1998
35
NNA – INVESTIGATIONS AWARD
Karen Kleiss, Darcy Henton, Stephanie Coombs,
Darren Francey, Paula Simons
Calgary Herald/Journal affiliation
STILL GRIEVING: (Two women by grave) Jamie Sullivan
and her mother, Marilyn Koren, sit beside the grave of Jamie’s daughter, Delonna, who was four months old when she
was found dead after just four days in foster care.
PHOTO CREDIT: Supplied
Tragedies cloaked in secrecy
By Karen Kleiss
T
he six-part Fatal Care series
revealed 145 children had died
in Alberta’s foster care system between
1999 and 2013, nearly triple the number
publicly reported by government. We
showed that most of those who died were
babies, teens and aboriginals – an analysis
the government had never done. We also
revealed the child death investigation system was an unmitigated disaster, and that
the government had no system in place
for following up on recommendations to
improve the system.
The idea for the series came in 2009,
when I was writing a routine story about a
child who died in foster care. I wanted to
add some context and to tell readers how
many foster kids had died in the past year,
and in the past 10 years. Nobody knew.
In addition, Alberta had a publication
ban that made it illegal to publish the
name and photo of a child who died in
foster care.
So these kids lived terrible lives, and
then died inside the very system that was
supposed to save them, and they died
nameless, and faceless, and nobody was
even counting them. That made me angry,
so I decided to count them myself.
I filed an access-to-information request
for all records related to the deaths of children who had died in provincial care since
Jan. 1, 1999.
The Edmonton Journal fought a fouryear legal battle to obtain those records,
and they contributed crucial information
to our reporting. We also used many other
investigative methods and techniques,
which I’ll highlight here.
First, I pulled all of the publicly available records related to the deaths of children inside Alberta’s foster care system,
including:
-Annual reports from Alberta’s Ministry
of Children’s Services;
-Internal and external reports commissioned by the Alberta government;
-Reviews and reports on the subject
from other Canadian provinces, American
states and advocacy groups;
-News stories about deaths in Alberta’s
foster care system dating back a decade;
-Multiple pieces of Alberta legislation,
regulation and Orders in Council that
governed the investigation and review
processes;
-Fatality Inquiry Reports written by
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judges after public inquiries;
-Lawsuits filed by families who lost
children in care.
This was all done long before I picked
up the phone, talked to a source, or interviewed an official. The last three points on
this list especially merit some discussion.
First, the legislative review was crucial.
Alberta’s child death investigation system
was governed by two ministries and three
laws, and implemented by six different
bodies. I was only able to figure out how
convoluted the system was by building
an old-school system map on my office
wall using paper, scissors and pushpins.
My thorough understanding of the system
won me their respect and trust of those
inside it. As a result, they were remarkably
candid and gave me quotes that lent real
credibility to our day-three story, in which
we exposed the child death investigation
system for the mess it was.
Second, I got fatality inquiry reports
the old-fashioned way: by asking nicely
over and over again. The province started
publishing fatality inquiry reports online
in 2004, but I had to engage in a sixmonth battle with the Justice department
to access the reports dating back to 1999
– even though they were public records. I
decided not to make an access-to-information request because I had a good relationship with the flack in the department, and
I thought he would come through for me.
In the end, though, I only obtained the
records after sending an email to then-Justice Minister Alison Redford, who ordered
36
MEDIA
Tips
1. The law is a powerful tool, so let’s use it to set precedent and permanently
open up records that will always be worth a story. Too many reporters spend all
their time and energy making requests for information tied to current events, and if
the government delays long enough – which it always tries to do – the records will
no longer be newsworthy when they’re released. Persuade your editors to focus at
least in part on long-term fights for evergreen records that, once opened, will shine
light in dark corners for years to come. We fought for four years because we knew
that no matter what was in those death records, we could find a story – and because
opening up government remains one of the most important jobs that journalists do.
2. While it’s tempting to pick up the phone and start making calls, always start
an investigative project with a thorough study of the system you are writing about.
Read everything you can get your hands on. If you understand the system, you will
design smarter stories, ask more intelligent questions, provide a more thorough
analysis for you readers – and you’re far less likely to get spun.
3. Be patient. It was not easy to wait four years for these documents. It was not
fun to fight for six months to access public fatality inquiry reports. Building the
database was journalistic drudge work that went on for weeks and weeks. In these
dark moments, remember that powerful systems and people would very much like
to see you give up and move on to something else.
Don’t give them the satisfaction.
them released immediately.
Third, I got the lawsuits by using skills
and leveraging relationships I built at
the courthouse over my three-year stint
as a court reporter. I had a good working knowledge of how Alberta records
lawsuits, and a strong understanding of
our province’s access-to-information laws.
So I knew what was available, and I knew
what I was entitled to, and – perhaps most
importantly – I knew who had the author2014 AWARDS EDITION
ity and the will to give it to me.
With all of this information in hand, I
started to build a database using Excel. I
cross-referenced all of the material I had
on each individual child: news reports,
fatality inquiry reports, annual reports
and lawsuits. When the province finally
released the internal death records for the
children, I added this information to the
database. This was a painstaking process,
mainly because the children’s names were
protected by privacy laws and a publication ban, so I was working with initials or
nothing at all. Still, our database remains
the only comprehensive list of children
who have died in provincial care.
At this point the Edmonton Journal
joined forces with the Calgary Herald,
and veteran journalist Darcy Henton
joined the Fatal Care team. This was when
we started all the heavy-lifting, shoe-leather reporting. The database told us interesting things about the system, but nobody
wants to read numbers; the key to making
the story work was finding the people
whose lives illustrated what we had found.
In our day-one package, Darcy told
the story of a 15-year-old aboriginal girl
who was found frozen in a ditch. She was
murdered, but nobody was ever charged;
there was no fatality inquiry, and never a
news report. I told the story of an infant
who died in a collapsed bassinet, another
story that had never been told. In all, we
interviewed more than 75 ministers, officials, experts and families.
The series dominated the political
agenda for a week, and the government
overturned the publication ban. They
passed laws that forced the ministry to
release the real number of kids who die
in care. They reformed the child-death
investigation system, in part.
Karen Kleiss is a political reporter
with the Edmonton Journal who focuses
on writing about social issues. She was
part of a team of reporters, photographers, designers and editors from the
Edmonton Journal and the Calgary
Herald that produced the multiple,
award-winning Fatal Care series. She
can be reached at: kkleiss@edmontonjournal.com
37
NNA -- FEATURE PHOTO AWARD
Leah Rae Hennel
Calgary Herald
Capturing a light-hearted moment
By Leah Hennel
D
owntown was a mess. It was the
day after the flooding started in
southern Alberta. Disaster was everywhere you looked. I had never witnessed
anything like this, as a photojournalist or
otherwise.
Near the end of a long day, I was walking around taking photos of the devastated
inner-city. I was thinking to myself how
surreal it was – no traffic, no people,
where, normally, there is congestion.
I ran into another photographer as I
made my way on foot through the flooded
streets. Near City Hall, we turned a corner
and just missed seeing a guy jumping
across a flooded road. Safely landed, he
started beckoning for his wife to join him
on the dry sidewalk.
It turns out, the Edmonton couple, Blake
and Desiree Wartenbe was here celebrating their 13th wedding anniversary. They
were staying at a downtown hotel when
the water came.
Recalled Blake: “We drove in not really
knowing how severe the flooding was. We
stayed at The Germain which was running
off their power generator which gave us no
power for our room except one socket, no
hot water and no capability to cook us dinner at Charcut, where we had plans to eat.
They ordered us in pizza for dinner by
candlelight and ended up going for a walk
downtown afterward, as there was nothing
else to do. That’s where you ran into us.
We ended up walking ourselves into a
flooded area with no way out other than to
jump that massive river.”
Meaning Desiree was next.
And that’s when I was lucky enough
to be in the right place at the right time,
shooting a couple of frames as she gracefully leapt towards the arms of her smiling
husband.
Her trip was a (dry-footed) success.
After I looked at the back of my camera
and noticed that I had at least one frame in
focus, I filed the photo to The Herald. I really didn’t think anything of it until it kind
of went crazy on social media. And when
I had time to take closer look, it reminded
me of a photo by one of my favourite photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson. More
than 50 years ago, he, too, took a photo of
a woman leaping over a puddle towards a
man offering his assistance.
Technically, my photo is not perfect.
The lighting could have been better. The
composition could have been better. But it
captures a moment – a pure, unstaged moment. After all the grief and destruction of
the morning of the big flood, it was kind of
nice to shoot a light-hearted moment.
Leah Hennel is an award-winning
photographer, who has been working as a
staff photojournalist at the Calgary Herald since 2000. She graduated from SAIT
in 1998. You can see some of her work
here:http://leahhennelphotography.com
http://vimeo.com/user1299393
http://instagram.com/leahhennelphoto
A JUMP TO COMFORT: Blake Wartenbe catches his wife Desiree as she jumps over flowing water in a flooded downtown Calgary, Alberta, on June
21, 2013. Photo by Leah Rae Hennel/Calgary Herald
Finalists
A fan is grabbed by security as he tries to climb over the outfield wall after running onto
the field and sliding into second base during a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the
Boston Red Sox in Toronto, April 7, 2013.
Photo by Tyler Anderson/National Post
A man and a woman talk between the barrier that divides the women’s and men’s praying areas before Friday prayers inside the mosque at the Mississauga Muslim Community Centre
in Mississauga, January 18, 2013.
Photo by Mark Blinch/Reuters Canada
38
MEDIA
2014 AWARDS EDITION
39
WORKING ON THE SET: Jennifer
Podemski and Peter Stebbings on the
set. They upped the credibility on the
film.
PHOTO CREDIT: KEITH BEATY/
TORONTO STAR
NNA – ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT AWARD
Linda Barnard
Toronto Star
An Empire built on love and sweat: The Star followed Empire of Dirt for 10 roller-coaster months
By Linda Barnard
I
submitted three pieces for the NNA
judges to consider: A review of
Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, a long feature on the process of making of Canadian,
ultra-low-budget movie Empire of Dirt,
and a news story about Unclaimed, by an
Edmonton filmmaker’s controversial documentary, about a missing Vietnam veteran.
I’ve been working in newspapers since
1982 and writing about film for The Star
since 2005, so while I am a movie writer,
it’s still very basic reporting that started
the process on the two stories: following
leads and tips, working contacts and slogging away on the copy to make it work.
Let me tell you about one of them.
The Empire of Dirt story came about
thanks to an email from Mario Tassone,
a freelance unit publicist on the film who
was being paid in “diapers and formula”
for doing press for Empire. Would I
consider a set visit in Keswick, Ont., for a
small indie movie he thought might have
some traction?
These calls come all the time. The movie business, like most industries, is cutting
back and often looks to media to act as de
facto extensions of their dwindling marketing departments. I often bristle at that,
although I don’t mind taking part when it
works to my advantage.
Mario had pitched stories before and
I trusted his instincts. And I knew the
director, Peter Stebbings, from seeing his
previous movies and interviewing him a
couple of times at TIFF. The same applied
to producer and co-star Jennifer Podemski,
who I saw as a consistent creative force.
They upped the credibility on the film.
The story, about three generations of
Native women, intrigued me and Mario
said one of the stars, part-Cree theatre actress Cara Gee, who was making her film
debut here, was impressive in early scenes.
On the set, Stebbings said he was
confident the movie would premiere at
TIFF, which was then 11 months away.
He’d said as much to TIFF artistic director
Cameron Bailey at a party a couple of
weeks before, when the 2012 festival was
still on. It was a bold statement for someone as low-key as I knew Stebbings to be.
Star photographer Keith Beaty took pictures and did a video of the shoot, along
with on-camera interviews with Stebbings,
Podemski and Gee for a digital accompaniment for the story. Beaty’s work looked
terrific; Gee was certainly photogenic.
I headed back to Toronto (after pulling
over to do a phone interview with Meat
Loaf for a Canadian horror movie he
was shooting called Stage Fright, which
subsequently tanked) and talked about
Finalists
Ian Brown
An interview is a dance. With Baryshnikov, I only hoped not to get kicked in
the
Teeth
The Globe and Mail
James Adams
One of these is a Hopper , The other is a
mystery
The Globe and Mail
what I had with entertainment editor Janet
Hurley.
I thought this could make a jumping-off
point for an ongoing story, a feature followed by regular updates to give readers a
behind-the-scenes look at how movies are
made in this country; the struggles to get
funding and distribution and the stories of
cast and crew.
Hurley suggested another route. If I was
so confident Empire of Dirt would be at
TIFF (I was, wasn’t I?) why not follow the
process and write one major feature to run
just before the festival bowed in September 2013?
If the film didn’t get invited to TIFF, we
could still run the story, but it wouldn’t
be nearly as impactful. Nobody at TIFF
would talk, on- or off-the-record, about
the movie’s chances, and the outcome
wouldn’t be known until Podemski got (or
didn’t get) a formal invitation to participate, probably sometime in July.
We decided to hold off. I spent the next
10 months following the film as it went
through each stage, from editing, to test
screenings, to finalizing the picture and
sending it out into the world.
Hurley also gave me an important advice: transcribe interviews, keep a log and
organize the story as you go, or risk being
overwhelmed at the finish.
Podemski, who had devoted the past
eight years to nurturing Empire of Dirt,
was my guide.
I told her I needed transparency in all
areas and she accommodated me. So
did Stebbings. They never said “no” to
a request or a question, no matter how
40
MEDIA
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER: Cara Gee, left and comforts
Shay Eye who plays her daughter in the movie.
PHOTO CREDIT: Mongrel Media
personal.
By early winter, things weren’t looking
great for the movie, which was having
growing pains. It wasn’t invited to film
fests at Sundance in January. or Berlin in
February. Changes had to be made, and
there was a point where I wondered if the
small film was going to survive.
When Podemski got the call in late
July that the movie was indeed on TIFF’s
schedule, it was a pivotal moment. Within
a few weeks, Gee was named one of
2014 AWARDS EDITION
TIFF’s rising stars. Tickets to the TIFF
screenings for Empire of Dirt eventually
sold out.
Hurley’s advice about keeping on top
of the story was valuable, but the timing
was terrible to be writing a big feature.
TIFF, with its lineup of 300-plus films, is a
marathon. It’s our busiest time of the year,
where 12-hour days start six weeks ahead
of opening night and days off evaporate.
The Empire of Dirt story was skedded
for Aug. 30, the Saturday before TIFF
opened and Hurley was a tough editor. For
several late nights, I was pretty much the
lone occupant of the newsroom as she kept
sending the story back for another rewrite.
I have Hurley to thank for pushing me
to do better. It paid off. She had trust in me
to deliver the best version of the story. I
just had to find it.
Linda Bernard is a Toronto Star writer and film critic. She is also a member
of Toronto Film Critics, and Alliance of
Women Film Journalists.
41
The 2013 MICHENER AWARD WINNER
Toronto Star
Stories about Rob Ford
By Kevin Donovan
T
he investigation of Mayor Rob
Ford and his friends was the result
of a team journalism effort – reporters,
photographers and editors – that drew on
many resources at the Toronto Star. It was
a great example of shoe-leather reporting
coupled with informed sources who placed
their trust in our promise to never blow
their cover. Lessons for us at The Star
include: Never giving up as long as the
story has legs; being creative in approach;
and developing ways of encouraging
sources to go out and gather information.
Like most good stories, it started with
tips. These tips were quite basic and raised
the first of many ethical dilemmas. Was
this a story? The tips: Ford was a drunk.
Ford was doing drugs. Ford was out of
control at public events and into the wee
hours. The ORNGE stories, which I broke
in 2011, began with more obvious public
interest tips: Public dollars were being
wasted at the province of Ontario’s $150
million-a-year air ambulance system and
lives were at risk. Though Ford was a
different type of story, we determined
an exploration of his activities was in
the public interest because he was a top
elected official, and the activities he was
alleged to be involved with were unethical
and possibly criminal.
Going into this investigation, we had
a sense his staff and other people around
him knew about his behaviour. Yet nobody
wanted to talk on-the-record. This was not
going to be a document story, that was for
sure.
One of the things we did at the start
was figure out who would be in posses-
sion of information that would help. Lists
were constantly made among reporters.
For example, the allegation that he was
kicked out of the Garrison Ball, a military
charity event in 2013. Looking at the guest
list, I spotted a half dozen people I knew
and had pretty much grown up with as a
reporter for 30 years.
I have coined the phrase “relationship
reporting” to describe this. Those six
people trusted me enough to detail Ford’s
unusual behaviour that night, including
how he appeared high on something other
than alcohol, how he stumbled and fell
down stairs, and how he was speaking
gibberish.
My colleague Robyn Doolittle (now
with The Globe and Mail) convinced a
2013 Michener Awards
Finalists
The Canadian Press
CTV News
Edmonton Journal and
Calgary Herald
The Globe and Mail
Toronto Star
The Windsor Star
city councilor to confirm that Ford was
asked to leave and we went with the story.
That tale, which was mocked and defiled
by the Brothers Ford, turned out to be a
journalist’s “search warrant.” It caused
several people to contact us, including
three people talking about Ford’s drug use
and Sandro Lisi (his sometime driver and
a man who later figured prominently in the
story), and one person talking about the
now-infamous crack video.
All the Ford stories have been like that.
Publish one, more information comes
forward. The art is to separate the wheat
from the chaff – the majority of tips have
not been that helpful, but some have been
gold. Call everyone back is the mantra.
Check out every lead. My colleague Jayme
Poisson is particularly skilled at this.
Information we developed was so strong
that we were able to publish stories detailing Ford’s time spent with alleged gun and
drug dealers and the story alleging Ford
friend Sandro Lisi tried to get the crack
video back. We published that months
before the police did anything about that
(they charged Lisi with extortion).
A note about sources
We have some excellent ones on the
Ford story and though they come from
very different walks of life, they share the
same motivation: A desire to get to the
bottom of the story. Ford’s early protestations that he was not involved in the drug
culture spurred them on. These sources
have been relentless in digging into the
story, sometimes at personal risk, to learn
new bits of information on our behalf.
42
MEDIA
DIGGING INTO THE ROB FORD STORY: Like most good stories, it started with tips… Ford was a drunk. Ford was doing drugs.
PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Russell/Toronto Star
Two of my sources say they fear for their
personal safety if word that they cooperated with The Star leaked to Ford Nation,
the term used to describe supporters of the
perennially embattled mayor. Reporters at
The Star, myself included, have been the
target of threats during the reporting of
this story.
Creativity is another hallmark of the
Ford investigation. We spend a lot of
time brainstorming different approaches.
Thinking outside the box.
When The Star’s legal challenge, joined
by other media, was successful in getting the search warrant documents made
public, most media treated it as a one-day
story. Our team did that one-day story, and
then dug in to the documents, looking for
clues and doing more reporting based on
those clues.
One example was a notation in a Ford
staffer’s notebook, suggesting that the
mayor was, for some reason, inquiring
about the utility bills at the (now) notorious crack house at 15 Windsor Drive in
north Etobicoke.
That’s where Ford was photographed
with alleged gang members the night the
crack video was filmed. That turned into
2014 AWARDS EDITION
a neat story suggesting Ford was helping
pay the bills. And earlier, in a stunning
mix of creativity and shoe leather, reporters Jesse McLean and Tim Almanciak
drove many kilometers along Etobicoke
streets until they found the house in the
photo.
There have been, and continue to be,
many twists and turns on the Ford story.
Thousands of pages of police and city
documents to pour over (when it finally
did become a document story!), obtained
by court action and freedom-of-information requests. Tailing of people involved.
Late night interviews in coffee shops.
Throughout this story, with sometimes too
many legs, we checked in constantly with
our editors and legal team. Were we going
too far? Should we do this? Should we do
that?
Journalism classes have debated the
payment issue. Why didn’t we buy the
crack video? Why did we buy the “murder
rant” video? Did The Star have the right
to publish information about Ford’s time
in rehab in Muskoka? Our story revealed
that, contrary to his public statements,
he did not have a great experience and
was verbally and physically aggressive,
causing trouble for other paying patients
who were trying to get the most out of the
experience. We determined it was in the
public interest to publish. Many disagreed.
What to do when you have a story with
so many ethical issues? I have always
found that reporters need to have good
sounding boards in the newsroom to make
sure that what you are doing is right. We
believe what we did and continue to do
on the story is right, but it is of course all
open to debate.
The Star stories have caused a great deal
to happen. The police began an investigation into Ford and his cronies, and the city
council stripped the mayor of most of his
powers, for starters. It has also polarized
the community. People either love the man
or hate him.
Kevin Donovan is an investigative
reporter and editor at The Star. He has
won three National Newspaper Awards,
two Michener Awards and three
Canadian Association of Journalists
Awards. He is the author of The Dead
Times, a mystery novel, co-author with
Nick Pron of Crime Story and author
of ORNGE: The Star Investigation That
Broke the Story.
43
Visit online for details about
how to apply and enter.
michenerawards.ca
44 2014 AWARDS EDITION