We will not be intimidated: A New Year's message from our newsroom

Protesters are seen outside CTV News Vancouver on Feb. 5, 2022.

My dad was a little boy in Columbus, Ohio, when some other kids in his neighbourhood pried open a manhole cover on the street and forced him to climb down inside. His was the only Jewish family in the area, and everybody knew it. He remembered being terrified in the darkness and damp, trying to escape by crawling through the drainpipe towards the light from the other manholes along the block. But the kids above could hear him down there and when he tried to push his way out, they just ran up and stood on top. My dad always told us he couldn’t remember how long they kept him trapped down there, but the message was clear: Jews belonged in the sewer.

It was that story of early 1940s anti-Semitism that came to mind last February when I looked out the window in the CTV Vancouver newsroom at an angry crowd that had gathered on the street below. Many were calling journalists covering the pandemic “vermin.” One guy wrote the word on a sign he was holding up. Vermin - you know, like rats in a sewer. Others demanded, to loud cheers, that journalists be put on trial for treason and then jailed or executed.

It was 2022 and hate had arrived at the front door.

As the protests moved to other local newsrooms around Vancouver week after week, organizers christened their gatherings with the slogan, “The Media is the Virus,” and the call for journalists to be jailed or worse was a frequent theme. Working in the news business has always meant being criticized by people who don’t like your choice of stories, but this was more than media criticism. As the calendar flips to a new year, it’s hard not to look back on 2022 as a year when the discourse in Canada around the role of journalism in our democracy reached a new low.

It was a year when criticism metastasized into hatred. At another protest a block away from our newsroom in January, a CBC journalist was punched in the face. Later, anti-mask mandate protesters spat at reporters covering a march at the Pacific Highway border crossing – and there were many similar violent incidents that took place across the country. And while the pandemic mandates have eased, the level of hatred directed towards the journalistic profession is still disturbingly high.

One of the most common misconceptions fuelling that anger focusses on how journalists pick the stories we cover each day. Some are convinced that newsrooms take their cues on what to report from corporate overlords or government masters. The truth is, story selection in our newsroom – and in every newsroom I’ve seen over the past 25 years – is much less conspiratorial. We all get together each morning to pitch ideas and the best ideas turn into stories. That’s it. No puppet masters pulling the strings, just a group of journalists representing a wide range of backgrounds and interests talking about stories and deciding together which ones to chase. When we make a mistake, we believe in owning it; if there’s an error in a story, we’ll announce it and fix it. As for standards and accountability, we’re guided by a newsroom code of ethics and by organizations like the Radio Television Digital News Association, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. As for bias, every good reporter is allowed only one: a bias in favour of the truth and the public’s right to know about it.

The hatred and threats of violence towards journalists in 2022 did have at least one positive outcome. We’re seeing newsrooms from competing organizations co-operating and supporting each other in new and encouraging ways. In Vancouver, the leaders of several local newsrooms – including this one – started meeting regularly to discuss protocols around safety and to compare notes and share information about threats to our people. That spirit of co-operation and common cause was on full display in early November as local stations pooled resources and staff to provide live coverage of the regimental funeral for fallen Burnaby RCMP officer Shaelyn Yang.

As for working as a CTV News journalist in 2022, the attempts at intimidation often seemed to have the opposite effect. Our reporters dug into investigations and pursued answers and information with a renewed sense of purpose, perhaps because it became so apparent that – just like the search for light in the darkness – our communities need high-quality journalism more than ever in this age of disinformation. From our continuing exposure of the crisis in B.C.’s health-care system to stories of inspiration as refugees fleeing actual persecution and oppression found shelter here, we continued to chase the stories we believe need to be told, no matter who tries to shut us up. It’s what journalists have always done – and it’s what we promise to keep doing in 2023.

Happy New Year from everyone in the CTV Vancouver newsroom.

This article was updated to include additional references to threats and violence against journalists.