Anna Maria Tremonti’s CJF Excellence Award acceptance speech: ‘Take your journalism back’
The following is a transcript of CBC Radio One The Current's acceptance speech at the Canadian Journalism Foundation 15th annual awards gala. The Current is the winner of the 2012 Excellence in Journalism Award in the large/national media category.
The following is a transcript of CBC Radio One The Current's acceptance speech at the Canadian Journalism Foundation 15th annual awards gala. The Current is the winner of the 2012 Excellence in Journalism Award in the large/national media category.
See also: CBC Radio One's The Current wins the Canadian Journalism Foundation Excellence in Journalism Award
CBC's The Current host Anna Maria Tremonti accepts the CJF Excellence in Journalism Award. (Photo: Kaz Ehara/CNW)
Pam Bertrand, executive producer of CBC’s The Current
Well this is a thrill. I really wanted to win this award because of the criteria involved: Accuracy, accountability, social responsibility, diversity, originality, independence and yes, courage. And it’s something that I and my colleagues — some of whom are with us tonight — strive for every day. Not always successfully, but we sure do try and these are values that we live with every day. And it’s a great privilege to be able to do that and I’d like to thank CBC for this opportunity. And special thanks to our manager who is with us here tonight.
Now, I know I’m in the company of so many of Canada’s greatest journalists tonight, but I’m sorry, I’ve gotta say: I’m turning this over now to this country’s best journalist, and my colleague, friend, and partner-in-crime: Anna Maria Tremonti.
Anna Maria Tremonti, host of CBC’s The Current
This is so exciting; this is so cool. I speak for all of the producers – yes, CBC, we’re well-staffed – and Antonia Maioni [who announced and presented the award to The Current] was one of the first analysts we had on the show when we started, so it’s nice that you’re here with us.
The Current is 10 years old; we are just finishing our 10th season, and this is a wonderful recognition for us. We are all so grateful. It’s also an affirmation for all of us that hard-edged journalism – edgy, provocative journalistic efforts – will never be a liability in this country.
The Current was created 10 years ago by Jennifer McGuire at CBC who keeps getting more and more promotions at CBC – she’s head of CBC television and radio and current affairs now. We began this program with a mandate to pursue truth, accountability, to give voice to those who might not otherwise have a voice, to turn ideas around and to make people think and to make them think differently. We were told to be fearless. After all, it was only radio – nobody watches it.
And it hasn’t always been easy. Henry Kissinger walked out on me in the first season. I got 200 postcards berating me, and they were form postcards that had obviously been handed out in the United States and mailed. And some of them, they had other little comments on them. One of them said: “communist slut.” How dare they – I’m not a communist. [laughter]
We took some flak for our questioning over Maher Arar and Gitmo. We still can’t get the Prime Minister to do an interview with us – the last one either, actually. But we’ve always understood the importance of taking our journalism back, and if there is a wider message in our success tonight, it is that. We are all journalists. You heard Ted Koppel talk about the changes in journalism and how difficult it is. We can all take our journalism back.
No journalism school grad gets out of school and says, “I want to cover the vapid and superficial.” Their bosses make them do that – their bosses with experience. No one can make you stand in front of a camera and say nothing about nothing. No one can make you write a column about just yourself. No one can make you report a story about nothing – only you can do that.
So next time a boss tells you – and this is a message to all the young journalists out there, and not-so-young journalists – to do a story you don’t want to do, come up with three others you do, and fight for it.
[node:ad]Take your journalism back.
I think it’s great that Ted Koppel is here tonight because some of us remember the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. I learned to say Ayatollah Khomeini – I was a newbie journalist at my first job. Ted Koppel went on the air live every night because of that hostage crisis, seeking accountability. Nobody had done that before – it was his idea. There are always new ideas that we can get. And I think it’s really great that you’re here tonight [she says to Koppel] because that’s a reminder that every day and every year every one of us can think of a new way to bring our journalism forward and to seek accountability and to find stories.
You know, the other thing is we’re always told that the business model doesn’t work anymore; that things are getting really tough. And believe me, I don’t deal with numbers. But I did an interview this year and I just would like to share the lesson because it was so amazing.
I interviewed a man named Shawn Ryan. Shawn Ryan was living in Dawson City, Yukon in a tin shack and he was picking mushrooms seasonally for a living. He was married and he and his wife started to have kids and he thought, ‘I’ve gotta get into something else and make some money here.’ And he had, as a teenager, worked around the mines in Timmins. He had never been trained as a geologist, but there he was in Yukon: home of the Gold Rush.
And, as you know, Yukon gold – I think they call it pacer gold – you know, you pan for it. And he thought: ‘There was all that gold. Where did it go?’ And he started looking at the geological maps, and he asked a lot of questions of the Canadian geological service and he basically was self-taught and he kept asking questions. And quite frankly, they’d looked for the gold; they scraped about six inches down and they couldn’t find anything.
So Shawn Ryan got himself a tulip planter from Holland. You plunge it down, and it goes more than six inches – it goes two feet. And he plunged it down all over the place and he took those dirt samples and he tested them for gold.
Shawn Ryan holds the biggest percentage of the gold mining shares now for the gold claims in Yukon. He has started a new gold rush.
All the gold mining companies thought the gold was gone. All the trained geologists thought the gold was gone. He found the gold.
Well, journalism isn’t gone either and we can keep mining for great stories and we can take our journalism back.
For those who think journalism is dead, storytelling, accountability, the quest for the truth is age old, and we can keep going. Journalism will always be here.
We all feel really lucky at The Current that we have the journalistic freedom to pursue stories that we believe matter. But you know, we can’t stand here tonight without recognizing the woman who has been guiding us through eight and a half of the last 10 years, and that is Pam Bertrand.
Her standards are exacting, relentless, unforgiving. Her humanity is expansive, selfless and humbling. She has been at the helm, she has guided us to where we are, and she’s leaving us at the end of this season to become the executive producer of Ideas and Tapestry on CBC Radio One. It is an inspired move for her; it is a dramatic – and traumatic – change for us but because of her, we will continue to move forward. So Pam, this one’s for you.
Thank you everyone, this is such an honour. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
June 16, 2012
I wonder if Canadians at
I wonder if Canadians at large feel the same awe of those who provide their 'news' every day? I expect that I am not the only one who has a somewhat different view of how amazingly wonderfully incredible etc our 'media' really are.
Let me just quickly offer a small critique – an 'alternative view' as it were – on how an informed Cdn might assess the performance of our 'journalists', based on their own 'criteria' – "Accuracy, accountability, social responsibility, diversity, originality, independence and .. courage. "
'Accuracy' is related to 'accountability', and 'independence' – the most striking current example of these criteria being not just breached but shattered is in the 'coverage' (propaganda is a word that springs much more quickly to the tongue) of what is happening in Syria. The CBC, hand in hand with all Canadian and western media, seems to have one objective here, convincing their audience that a monster is ruling the country, running around massacring women and children willy-nilly out of sheer evil, and any civilized people would by god be getting in there and stopping that bastard! There is, however, considerable disagreement with that perspective, and considerable information the CBC et al seem disinclined to enter in to the discussion that any truly impartial media organisation would want to provide their audience, it seems to me. Certainly the American gov, and Brits, Cdns etc, seem to be of the opinion, or at least are anxious that others believe, that terrible things are happening in Syria, and are anxious to present an extremely gory story to Cdns and create a universal disapprobation of al-Assad – but is it the job of the Cdn media to be the secretariat for the governments of these countries pushing for yet another 'regime change' of a government they wish removed, a cabal **known** to lie, and lie big and egregiously, in pursuit of such goals? There are certainly reasonably presented alternatives to the propaganda that what is going on in Syria is as presented by the western 'news' sources (i.e. The Houla 'massacre' – Shades of Grey, or Various narratives, many, many others… ) – I am well aware that one should not believe everything that is available on the internet, but on the other hand it's become quite evident over the last couple of decades that believing everything one hears, sees or reads in the mainstream media, presenting press releases from our governments as unquestioned gospel, is not the best way to understand what is happening in our world either.
For a rather obvious example of what are media are *not* doing that they really should be, were they trying to really get to the 'truth' of this story – why have I not heard one single reference or question the last few months, as the Syrian leader is demonized, about the lies about 'mass graves' in Kosova, the lies about Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators, the lies about Saddam's WMDs, and etc etc etc – there is a lengthy list of these and other lies that the US gov et al have told over the years as they incited the population to support their desired military program of the day – and all of which, at the time, were enthusiastically boosted by the media as if they were unquestioned truths, no dissenting voices allowed, joining the govs etc in inciting western populations to agree to, if not always with great enthusiasm, their governments militarily arranging the desired regime changes, with great civilian death and destruction in every case – and in every case justified and initiated based on intentional lies. If the CBC, or anyone else in the Cdn media, were truly interested in 'accountability' and 'accuracy', not to mention 'integrity', they'd surely be talking about these things, these past lies, before enthusiastically jumping, once again, withut question on the demonisation bandwagon, with its endless litany of highly questionable 'reports' of the latest and greatest atrocities involving mothers and children. Rather than yet more 'outraged' relaying of yet the latest 'report' from some 'unnamed source' in the Syrian 'resistance', why aren't some of our intrepid 'journalists', looking out for 'we the people', standing tall and saying something like "Wait a minute, just wait a minute here – does anyone remember a certain Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter crying her poor eyes out as she reported on yet the latest 'outrage' of Iraqi soldiers throwing poor babies out of incubators – which was central in getting western support for Bush's invasion of Iraq – and which later turned out to be a complete and intentional PR stunt – a lie to obtain just that support of the western people for that invasion? Does anyone remember that? And since we have many other similar examples (Powell's speech to the UN later, for example, whose 'facts' that 'we KNOW Saddam has WMD!!!' – later, again turned out to be complete fabrication; 'mass graves' in Kosova? Well – actually, it turns out later after we have done out best to bomb the demon-of-the-day's country back to the stone age, not …) – although we certainly want to show appropriate concern for any actual atrocities occurring around the world (well, not so much US atrocities, actually – just the 'bad guys', US 'atrocities' are more in the nature of 'alleged' and quickly denied and forgotten rather than trumpeted hourly with outraged voices like the propaganda stuff…) – should we not at least be questioning a little bit this latest barrage of reports of terrible things, rather than urging our audience to once again accept such things as 'facts' as we foment and support insurrection and the brutal killings that such things necessarily involve, and prepare to bomb yet another country, and kill yet more innocent civilians ourselves? Isn't it, people, our job as journalists to be trying to get to the bottom of these things, rather than acting as the propaganda secretariat for the people passing on reports of outrages and urging for the removal of yet another leader, one of the few in the world not yet a puppet to US interests, which just *may* have something to do with why our rulers are so anxious to remove this man and his government, but know that 'we don't like this bastard because he won't do what we want!' will not be a very good selling point for invasion and bombing and killing our own hordes of innocent civilians, mothers and babes most assuredly included in the 'collateral damage' lists, so 'atrocities' will again be used as a selling tool for regime change? Are we as 'journalists' to be once again treated as well-meaning dupes – or will we recall the past and similar lies this time, and this time ask some serious questions when Power demands our obeisance as propagandists?
(and the rest, with working links, here if interested – http://www.rudemacedon.ca/vgi/letters/120615-AM-journ-award.html )