The balancing act: Watchdog vs. Megaphone with Randy Boswell
Accountability.
That was the central theme in the Watchdog vs. Megaphone panel at the Journalism in the Time of Crisis conference hosted by the School of Journalism at Carleton University.
Moderated by Carleton professor Randy Boswell, the purpose of the panel was to engage journalists in a conversation about how they might balance their responsibility to amplify public health directives and combat the virus with their duty to challenge political leaders and public health officials. The panelists included Evan Solomon, Aaron Derfel, Charelle Evelyn and Obi Anyadike.
Panel members began by speaking about their experience reporting during the pandemic.
In his opening remarks, Solomon, who hosts CTV’s Question Period and Power Play, said the pandemic is a dangerous time for journalists because politicians continue to attack them.
At the same time, he said these attacks make the role of journalists as watchdogs and megaphones all the more important.
“You’re always a watchdog, and being a watchdog is being a megaphone as well,” Solomon said. “You’re being a megaphone to transparency. You’re being a megaphone to accountability.”
Charelle Evelyn, the managing editor at The Hill Times, agreed. She said it’s important for journalists to challenge information from politicians and public health officials because their decisions have a significant impact on people’s lives.
“You have to be able to look at [politicians and public health officials], and say, ‘you made this choice, this is the fall out … tell us why you did it, tell us why you think this was the best decision to be made with the information that you had,’” she said.
Evelyn talked about how Canadian public health officials and politicians did not make the use of masks mandatory until the summer, making some people very angry. She said the people making these decisions need to be held accountable, and that “it doesn’t mean they get off scot-free because the science has changed.”
Obi Anyadike, the senior editor with the New Humanitarian in Africa, spoke of the different perceptions of accountability during the pandemic. He said the conversations surrounding accountability in the United States and Canada are quite different from the ones taking place in Africa where mainstream news organizations see themselves playing an important role as megaphones.
“Legacy media here is quite weak to a certain degree, and has been undermined by fall in ad revenue, and legacy titles are under pressure,” Anyadike said. “There’s a very vivid and very loud social media world where you have these conspiracy theories thrown around, so I think in a sense the media sees their role as playing a careful, balancing role in this pandemic.”
“I think the media — mainstream legacy media — sees their role as trying to correct the public record to a certain degree,” he added.
For his part, Aaron Derfel, known for his pandemic coverage for the Montreal Gazette, said in his closing remarks that accountability requires journalists to “stay humble.”
“What I mean by that is we have to listen more to our readers, to our sources, to the public. And when we screw up, as we have — as I have — we have to own up to it very quickly,” he said.
“I’m aware too that the more hard-hitting your journalism will be, the more you will open yourself up to scrutiny. But then you have to own that, you have to be able to defend your reporting,” Derfel added.
Watch the whole panel discussion here.
