January 26, 2018 By AMANDA POPE Staff reporter The technology available to journalists is constantly evolving, but the need for strong storytelling remains central to quality journalism, says the executive producer of CTV’s flagship investigative show W5. Anton Koschany, W5’s executive producer since 2009, drew on a long career in television journalism in his October 2017 remarks to Ryerson journalism students. With 40 years of experience as an investigative journalist, he has worked in black and white film, edited the morning film reel for the CTV station in Vancouver and worked with colour negative tape when he was a producer…
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By AMANDA POPE Staff reporter Undercover work by journalists is justified only if there’s a compelling public interest and no other way to get the story, says the Toronto Star reporter who recently posed as a temporary worker at a large industrial bakery. Sara Mojtehedzadeh, who covers labour, precarious work and poverty issues for the Star, said it was difficult to get temp workers at Fiera Foods to talk about their experiences on the record so, to get the story, she went undercover in May 2017 as a temp worker in the Toronto factory. “As journalists we have an ethical…
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By JASMINE BALA Staff reporter Journalists shouldn’t worry about being branded activists because they are in fact “activists for truth,” says Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Peter Raymont. The need for hard-hitting investigative journalism is greater now than ever, Raymont said following a March 23 screening of his new documentary on investigative journalism. “It’s the best of times and the worst of times at the same time,” he observed after the screening at Ryerson University. “One thing that the election of Donald Trump has done is lit a fire under journalists and filmmakers and all sorts of people on the left and…
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By MICHAEL OTT Special to the RJRC The loss of trust between the media and audiences that has characterised the Donald Trump era in the United States also played out when Rob Ford was mayor of Toronto, says the Toronto Star’s Washington correspondent Daniel Dale. Just as many Trump supporters dismiss stories about the former real estate magnate’s lies, sexism and other potentially career-destroying behaviours, many Torontonians refused to believe the worst about their former mayor, said Dale, who covered the Ford years Dale spoke at Ryerson University earlier in February about similarities he found in covering both former Toronto…
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By STEPH WECHSLER Special to the RJRC Although Canadians value journalism and believe it is essential to a well-functioning democracy, they don’t want to pay for it, concludes a new study that examined the state of Canadian news media. A survey conducted as part of the Public Policy Forum (PPF) report, “The Shattered Mirror,” found that the Canadians surveyed do not make a connection between the news industry’s layoffs, closures and other financially-induced problems and what this means for the amount of news available to themselves as readers. “They assume much like dancers will always dance, painters will always paint,…