Jeff Lee, the Olympics reporter for the Vancouver Sun, was paid to write for the the official magazine of the International Olympics Committee, reported the online magazine thetyee.ca. But Lee is just one one reporter — and most of the mainstream media, especially in B.C., has some entanglement with the games.
The Olympics reporter for the Vancouver Sun was paid to write for the the official magazine of the International Olympics Committee, reported the online magazine The Tyee. “Jeff Lee says his editors cleared him to take freelance job, can’t recall fee,” noted the Tyee‘s sub-head.
Tyee
reporter Andrew MacLeod interviewed Lee, and quoted him saying he was
paid by an independent company hired by the IOC to produce the Olympic Review. Lee also told MacLeod: ‘”I’m being paid for it, sure. I’m freelancing,” said Lee. “I would hope nobody at the Tyee would suggest I’ve given them a free ride or this is a conflict.”‘
MacLeod quoted Lee calling the Tyee investigation “mischief making,”an “attack story,” and “thin stuff:”
“”The Tyee looking at his work for Olympic Review
would be a “cheap shot,” Lee predicted. “I know what’s going to come
out of it will probably be an attack story on me,” he said. “I think
this is just mischief making. It’s in the grand tradition of journalism
to go mischief making, but people will see this is pretty thin stuff.”
The Tyee
quoted an independent Olympic writer’s opinion that Lee’s freelancing
for an IOC publication is a conflict of interest only if it is not
disclosed to readers of the Vancouver Sun.
Kudos to the Tyee
for reporting on the issue of a journalist being hired to freelance,
even indirectly, by the same organization he is assigned to cover —
journalism issues are critical enough in public life that they deserve
far more scrutiny than they usually receive. Still, I find myself
squirming on Lee’s behalf, because he’s just one reporter and, frankly,
most of the media industry deserves scrutiny.
When citizens in
B.C. look for credible mainstream media sources on Olympics news, free
of any
real or perceived conflict of interest, there is no choice at all among
the four Canadian print dailies available in Vancouver, and little
choice among commercial broadcasters. As the Tyee notes, Lee’s employer, the Vancouver Sun, is owned by Canwest, listed on the Olympics’ web site as an official print media supplier. (Canwest owns the Sun, the Province and the National Post — that is, three of the four mainstream Canadian dailies available in Vancouver. The fourth daily in the city is The Globe and Mail — and it, too, is an official print media supplier to the Vancouver 2010 games (along with La Presse).
Canwest owns Global and its major-market television stations in
Vancouver and Victoria. The Globe is owned by the same company that
owns CTV.
As near as I can tell the only media outlets that are
reporting on the Olympics but which are NOT affiliated with the games
are the CBC, news services (not including Canwest’s own news service),
smaller commercial players, some “ethnic” media and some alternative
media like the Tyee.
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Canwest Olympics reporter paid to write for Olympics publication
Jeff Lee, the Olympics reporter for the Vancouver Sun, was paid to write for the the official magazine of the International Olympics Committee, reported the online magazine thetyee.ca. But Lee is just one one reporter — and most of the mainstream media, especially in B.C., has some entanglement with the games.
The Olympics reporter for the Vancouver Sun was paid to write for the the official magazine of the International Olympics Committee, reported the online magazine The Tyee. “Jeff Lee says his editors cleared him to take freelance job, can’t recall fee,” noted the Tyee‘s sub-head.
Tyee
reporter Andrew MacLeod interviewed Lee, and quoted him saying he was
paid by an independent company hired by the IOC to produce the Olympic Review. Lee also told MacLeod: ‘”I’m being paid for it, sure. I’m freelancing,” said Lee. “I would hope nobody at the Tyee would suggest I’ve given them a free ride or this is a conflict.”‘
MacLeod quoted Lee calling the Tyee investigation “mischief making,”an “attack story,” and “thin stuff:”
“”The Tyee looking at his work for Olympic Review
would be a “cheap shot,” Lee predicted. “I know what’s going to come
out of it will probably be an attack story on me,” he said. “I think
this is just mischief making. It’s in the grand tradition of journalism
to go mischief making, but people will see this is pretty thin stuff.”
The Tyee
quoted an independent Olympic writer’s opinion that Lee’s freelancing
for an IOC publication is a conflict of interest only if it is not
disclosed to readers of the Vancouver Sun.
Kudos to the Tyee
for reporting on the issue of a journalist being hired to freelance,
even indirectly, by the same organization he is assigned to cover —
journalism issues are critical enough in public life that they deserve
far more scrutiny than they usually receive. Still, I find myself
squirming on Lee’s behalf, because he’s just one reporter and, frankly,
most of the media industry deserves scrutiny.
When citizens in
B.C. look for credible mainstream media sources on Olympics news, free
of any
real or perceived conflict of interest, there is no choice at all among
the four Canadian print dailies available in Vancouver, and little
choice among commercial broadcasters. As the Tyee notes, Lee’s employer, the Vancouver Sun, is owned by Canwest, listed on the Olympics’ web site as an official print media supplier. (Canwest owns the Sun, the Province and the National Post — that is, three of the four mainstream Canadian dailies available in Vancouver. The fourth daily in the city is The Globe and Mail — and it, too, is an official print media supplier to the Vancouver 2010 games (along with La Presse).
Canwest owns Global and its major-market television stations in
Vancouver and Victoria. The Globe is owned by the same company that
owns CTV.
As near as I can tell the only media outlets that are
reporting on the Olympics but which are NOT affiliated with the games
are the CBC, news services (not including Canwest’s own news service),
smaller commercial players, some “ethnic” media and some alternative
media like the Tyee.
Deborah Jones
May 26, 2009
When it comes to the Olympics
When it comes to the Olympics and the IOC in particular there seems to be a singluar blind spot.
I am not even sure what the IOC is. Is it a non-profit? Is it the sports equivalent of the UN?
The public scrutiny or a lack of it is the real scandal behind Olympic coverage, not anything Jeff Lee did.
May 26, 2009
Jeff Lee says he’s not about
Jeff Lee says he’s not about to give the Olympics a “free ride.” All right, I’ll take his word for it. But then I read what he writes for the Review:
John Furlong has “a gift for oratory” and he “continued to move mountains.” The Olympics are seen as a “unifying force for mankind.” And corporate sponsors have brought “financial muscle” to the Games.
Or consider this insight: “If one of the main aims of the Olympic Games is to not build what IOC President Jacques Rogge calls ‘white elephants’ then the VANOC venues fit the bill.”
I reckon that a writer is responsible for what writes, in whatever capacity. So if I’m a Sun editor reading these sycophantic cliches, do I keep this reporter on the Olympic beat? Hardly. Do I assign him to stories analyzing the Olympic legacy? I don’t think so.
Oh, and when a freelancing journalists says he “can’t recall” his negotiated fee, the first words that come to mind are: Pants on fire.
May 27, 2009
receiving money from an
receiving money from an organization one is suppose to cover can be called by whatever name…it can be a service fee,payola, honorarium or anything but a “free ride.”
it is however a damning indictment of the newspaper Jeff Lee works for. Vancouver Sun may as well change its masthead to read Vancouver Sun Olympic Review…so everyone will know which side of the bread is buttered!
May 27, 2009
I have followed closely Jeff
I have followed closely Jeff Lee’s Olympic reporting since 2004, and often used a citizen journalism strategy called “adopt-a-reporter” to illustrate to readers of my book and blog that advertising-influenced reporting undermines our community, and in the long run, democracy.
Unfortunately, not one of Lee’s colleagues (either at his company or the competition); no politicians, or anyone for that matter who could do something about it were interested in understanding how biased reporting hurts us all, and especially journalism.
In 2006 I called for a news media inquiry regarding the incestuous relationship between Olympic advertisers and local mainstream news media, newspapers in particular, but the BC opposition party dismissed my concerns with a “thank you for writing” form letter because I suspect they didn’t want to criticize a news media that they foolishly thought they needed to get elected. http://www.olyblog.com/f/06/ShawLeeF09282006.shtml#INQUIRY
One of the reasons newspapers are experiencing bankruptcy at such an alarming rate is because mainstream news media companies fail to appreciate that readers, not advertisers, are your customers. Respect your readers and place advertisers a rung below them on the ladder.
Many journalists over the years have read my perspective of this subject, and all refused to stand up and do the right thing. Instead of investigating the process they looked the other way and allowed a colleague to undermine our community and their profession.
I am sorry thousands of journalists are losing their jobs. Unfortunately, you chose to look the other way and ended up making a bad situation worse because you didn’t have the courage to challenge your editors and publishers. It wasn’t like you couldn’t see this coming, because almost exactly the same implosion occurred in the music industry. They ignored the signs too. Some actually tried to sue their customers.
News professionals watched history repeat itself and knew that what they were doing was wrong, yet you still ignored it hoping consumers wouldn’t notice.
I’ve promoted for years that social media on an Olympic landscape is a perfect tool to demonstrate beyond a doubt to average news media consumers the news system is broken and at times corrupt.
I understand completely that at some point in their careers many experienced journalists have fudged journalistic ethics and are fearful of making this an issue because someone might point the finger at them for a past indiscretion, but the reality today is that we no longer need you to make this an issue.
Social media, and the blogs you despise so much now shoulder the responsibility you should have accepted years ago.
If senior journalists continue to ignore this issue you will continue to undermine your profession.
The choice is yours. Speak out.
If you don’t, your younger, fresh out of J-school colleagues will.
May 28, 2009
Good points, Maurice.
Good points, Maurice. Newspapers have forgotten Lord Northcliffe’s hoary old dictum, that “news is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.”
Newspapers are awash in advertising disguised as news, and stenography disguised as information. Much of the rest is what Andrew Marr calls “the industrialisation of gossip.” More and more journalists are indistinguishable from publicists.
Why should we bother read a newspaper, other than to attend at the demise of a grand old institution?
July 24, 2009
There’s been a lot of debate
There’s been a lot of debate over my decision to write a freelance piece for a contract company that publishes the Olympic Review, and whether that placed me in a conflict in my job as the Olympics reporter for The Vancouver Sun.
I’ve not much to say on that matter other than that I was not given any instructions to go soft on the IOC. Nor would anyone who knows me even begin to think that I might. What was wanted was a piece looking at the state of the Games preparation to that point. The readership of OR is Olympic family, media and others to whom the not-for-sale publication is sent to. I note that other mainstream journalists have written for OR from time to time. It is not a journal of hard-hitting investigative journalism but rather akin to an in-flight magazine. Does that make it any less worthy? I would say no.
While I maintain that I carefully cleared this assignment with editors at The Vancouver Sun, it’s clear that some people feel this is an ethics issue worthy of considerable debate. It probably falls into the category of perceived versus actual conflicts. And as any trash journalist knows, you can easily smear good peoples’reputations with perceptions rather than truth.
No one who knows me – or my track record of investigative journalism or service in teaching young journalists – would ever suggest that I could be bought. However, from the cheap seats over at The Tyee (whose owner David Beers, a disgruntled former Vancouver Sun staffer, has a long history of smacking the local media, particularly his former employer) I guess this was an easy file.
For the record, when I spoke to the hapless reporter from The Tyee who was tagged with writing this piece, I truly did not know how much I was being paid for the article. My father had just died and my mother had just emerged from a month in hospital following an accident at his service, and you will understand if sending in a bill for the article was really not top of mind. Much has been made of this omission.
I can now tell you that the fee was 530 pounds sterling. No, I haven’t yet been paid.
Jeff Lee
jefflee@vancouversun.com
July 28, 2009
I don’t think anybody has a
I don’t think anybody has a problem with a story “looking at the state of Games preparation” and written in the so-called style of an inflight magazine. But Lee knows as well as anybody (probably better than most, in fact) that the Games are a highly-controversial undertaking with many people, especially as costs skyrocket, and when this controversy is left out of an article, I think it’s natural that questions are going to be raised about the writer, and to what extent those 530 Euros influenced his critical faculties.
Suck up the criticism, Jeff. You did give VANOC a free ride (a “unifying force for mankind,” indeed), and in doing so, you did little service to your own credibility as a disinterested, independent reporter.
(That fee you earned, by the way, puts most of the rest of us critical hacks in the “cheap seats,” by the way, not just The Tyee.)
July 29, 2009
It’s interesting to see the
It’s interesting to see the standards of journalism modeled in Jeff Lee’s comment in this thread. Our piece in The Tyee was a straightforward news piece noting that Lee was paid to write an article from the family of companies he is tasked with covering for Vancouver’s paper of record.
Our reporter Andrew MacLeod sought, and published, any context from Lee he wished to provide, giving him a large proportion of space in the article. We sought comment from Sun editors, who chose not to respond, and so we don’t know the paper’s policy on matters like this. We sought comment from other observers who gave rather nuanced perspectives on the question of whether Lee had served his Sun readers well. Not one voice in our piece could be said to have ‘smeared’ Lee’s reputation.
As Deb Jones notes in this post: “The Tyee quoted an independent Olympic writer’s opinion that Lee’s freelancing for an IOC publication is a conflict of interest only if it is not disclosed to readers of the Vancouver Sun.” We waited many weeks, until the next Olympic Review was published, in case Lee might use his blog or a Sun article to let his readers in on his freelance job, but he didn’t.
So what are we to take from Lee’s criticisms of The Tyee for reporting the story as we did? Apparently, Lee’s position is that The Tyee, like himself, should have not reported the facts at all — that they were of no interest to the public and/or there is some pact among news media members that we don’t shine light on such practices even if we think the public would be grateful to us for doing so.
Certainly, judging from the response the story has received, it has proved to be of interest to the public. But all I can gather from Lee’s responses is that sometimes it’s best to hide from the public what the public might consider controversial.
There’s also the fact that Lee chooses to attack people’s character in his post. He describes veteran reporter Andrew MacLeod as ‘hapless’ as if he was unwillingly carrying out my orders to write the story. It doesn’t work that way at The Tyee. Andrew and I agreed the piece was worth doing, and he did it with skill and fairness. Lee takes irrelevant and off-base shots at me, too, and denigrates The Tyee as ‘trash journalism’, ‘cheap seats’ and a publication that ‘smacks’ the local media regularly. We do cover the local media regularly. Few other publications do. Lee may prefer there was no critical or investigative coverage of the news media, but that strikes me as an odd position to take for a investigative reporter. In any event, this story proves to us that people are interested in knowing what’s going on behind the scenes of our powerful news media institutions.