By ATARA SHIELDS Special to the RJRC Journalists’ tendency to report on religion in the context of war and conflict means society isn’t benefiting from an informed discussion about religious beliefs in general, says Ryerson journalism professor Joyce Smith. News stories are an important way for Canadians to learn about their own traditions and those outside of their own experiences, Smith said during The Many Gods of Canada: Religion, Secularism and Public Policy, an Oct. 19 symposium at Ryerson University. The problem, she added, is that “at the moment, religion is only covered through the lens of something else.” “We…
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BY JASMINE BALA Staff Reporter Reporters working in Canadian newsrooms should receive diversity training just like police officers and health workers do says Duncan McCue, the newly appointed Rogers Visiting Journalist at the Ryerson School of Journalism (RSJ). McCue said the training is necessary because journalists who don’t understand indigenous cultures can cause harm while reporting on these communities. “The reason that police officers get cultural training is because if there’s a cultural misunderstanding in the middle of the street, someone could wind up getting shot. The reason why health workers get diversity training is because if someone is misunderstood…
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BY: HG WATSON Special to the RJRC In a recent article in The Atlantic, Kieran Delamont tells the story of how Indigenous people have had a difficult history of representation in video games. It’s an important story that had its genesis in a classroom in Ryerson University’s journalism school. During the 2016 Winter semester, Ryerson professor Asmaa Malik dedicated her masters level digital reporting class to working on Indigenous people’s stories. The result is “This is a Canadian Issue,” a microsite dedicated to telling a wide variety of stories about Indigenous people, from the revitalization of Indigenous languages to an…
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Canada’s mainstream news outlets have covered stories from Idle No More to decades of missing and murdered indigenous women to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But what are the implications of the TRC for newsrooms? How can reporters do justice to these issues and where is the line between advocacy and journalism? Join us as we continue our series on journalism and indigenous communities with a discussion on language and activism with CBC’s Jody Porter. Jody Porter worked in community papers in small towns across the country for a decade before starting as a reporter at CBC Radio in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She is…