Report from the CEO
The National NewsMedia Council is now one year old. Officially. Although operations did not really get fully underway until January 1st of this year with the appointment of a full-time Executive Director and Complaints Co-ordinator, the council had become duly incorporated on September 1st and we started processing initial complaints with the transition help of Don McCurdy, the last executive director of the old Ontario Press Council.
There have been four council meetings since then, typically held around noon EST, to accommodate all the different time zones across the country as our council members range from the two great islands who “guard” the eastern and western approaches to the country and continent (Vancouver Island and Newfoundland). These meetings are done either be tele-conferencing or old-fashioned phone hookups. The exception was our most recent meeting on September 22nd when most council members travelled to Toronto for the first face-to-face meeting. And that was for a special event to honour a special person.
Since I last wrote, our founding chair, the Honourable Frances Lankin, has become one of the first new-style senators and her resignation as chair became effective after she presided over that last council meeting. She has been succeeded as chair by Ms. Shelley Chrest, the last chair of the British Columbia Press Council and one of two founding vice chairs of the NNC (along with Miller Ayre of Newfoundland).
At this council meeting, by the way, I was able to pay tribute to Frances for her “foundational” good works and to wish her well in the Senate. She has been an amazingly positive force during our early days. The same can be said for Shelley Chrest who managed the transition to a national body with equal aplomb and who makes sure we don’t get into a Toronto-centric mode – ever!
These changes necessitated the need for an active vice chair for central Canada and the council was very happy to elect Joanne De Laurentiis to that position. A founding NNC council member, Joanne was also a steady hand at the old Ontario Press Council and she brings great skills in governance policy and management to our institution.
Joanne was pivotal working with Executive Director Pat Perkel in getting our governing By Law as well as our crucial Governance Policy Manual through many iterations. These were both passed at the council meeting on Sept. 22nd.
We have still much work to do in getting our organization known and up to the mark we set for it ourselves. We have had a good start though. The speed with which we can process complaints (see the complaints report below) has dramatically increased from the record of all the past press councils. We have helped to avert at least two serious and costly legal proceedings. We dealt with tricky issues that bedevil all responsible news media organizations, of which a council ruling on climate change was typical and also generated news of its own. We have moved to less expensive offices and cut costs to better represent a small but vital organization that intends to make a difference to the state of media ethics and education.
And talking about education, part of our mandate is to present the world of ethical journalism to public forums and we have done so now in a variety of ways, with more coming up. We conducted a seminar for TVOntario a few months ago, Pat Perkel and myself will be leading three seminars on media ethics at the Munk School’s special journalism programme in November and I will be leading discussions on today’s journalism challenges to members of the Trudeau Foundation at their annual gathering in Ottawa, also in November. And that’s just the start. In age of considerable challenge and turmoil in our industry, the greatest contribution we feel the NNC can give our members is the kind of support that reinforces the difference between responsible journalism and social media.
We have also started low cost links with international press council organizations in order to share information and practices, as well as learn from others. A key partner here is the Australian Press Council which has offered national service for over 40 years.
Finally, we are very excited to welcome Brent Jolly to the NNC team as our new community manager and director of communications. He joined us on August 1 from Yahoo Canada News, where he served as both a national news editor and national affairs writer. We are excited by the injection of fresh blood and ideas that he has already brought, and will continue to bring, to the organization.
That’s enough from me. In the next issue, however, keep an eye out for an announcement of a special and exciting new feature that will help fulfill the NNC’s role as a public educator.
