The CCIR has signed up for the Aviva Community Fund challenge, for a chance to share in $1-million that will be distributed by Aviva to the worthwhile charitable projects that get enough votes. The semi-finalists will be announced at the beginning of December and the winning ideas will be decided in early January 2011.

We’re asking you to vote for our ‘Canadian Investigative Series Project’, where we’ll use the funds to develop multimedia investigative series on topics important to Canadians. Please vote by clicking on the banner above and following the few easy steps, but also spread the word by linking our project page to your facebook, twitter, and other social media accounts. You can vote for the CCIR once every 24 hours!

If you would also like to donate directly to this project, simply click on the ‘Donate’ button to the right of your screen, and include in your subject line: ‘for the Canadian Investigative Series Project’.  and, we’ll make sure that your donations are directed to this work specifically. All your contributions are tax-deductable. The CCIR is also proud to offer tax credit for U.S. donations over $1000!

Please help, vote for the CCIR at the Aviva Community Fund  challenge today!

Thank you for supporting public interest journalism!

All the best,

Bilbo Poynter,

Sean Holman

Over the last seven years anyone wanting to know more about who was pulling the levers of provincial politics in British Columbia inevitably turned to Public Eye, a unique online news source, created and doggedly maintained by journalist Sean Holman. After thousands of stories and many exclusives, Holman has now called it a day for Public Eye. Here he tells us in five lessons what worked and, ultimately, what failed.  This article is also available on J-Source.

Journalism might not be a cause worth donating to for most Canadians

It’s tough to convince Canadians that good journalism, in and of itself, is a cause worth contributing to.

In part, I think that’s because there’s no guarantee they’ll like the resulting coverage.

In my eight years covering British Columbia’s legislature, I have investigated both sides of the political aisle – exposing controversies within government and the opposition, as well as the Greens and the Conservatives.

As a result, I wasn’t able to make a partisan or ideological appeal for donations. And, when my reporting hit hard, I lost donors.

For example, between October 2010 and May 2011, I provided in-depth, market-leading coverage of the New Democrat Party of British Columbia’s internal struggles – from caucus infighting to the aftermath of that revolt.

During the same period, 16 of my monthly contributors cancelled their donations – a big loss for a publication that never had more than 60 at any given point.

But I think getting Canadians to donate to the media might also be hampered by the fact we don’t have a history of providing that kind of support.

By comparison, many media outlets in the United States – where the societal role of the fourth estate appears better established and is aggressively championed – have long had their hands out for donations.

Even unsolicited advertising can create problems for small media outlets

While most of Public Eye’s more than 200,000 unique visitors last year didn’t donate to the site, some of them vigorously complained when Public Eye ran paid advertisements they disagreed with.

Among the most controversial was a campaign that promoted cabinet minister Kevin Falcon’s bid for leadership of the BC Liberal Party.

“Your claim to be unbiased would look a lot better without Kevin Falcon’s face all over your front page,” one reader complained, even though all of Public Eye’s ads were unsolicited – except for banners on the site promoting the availability of that advertising space.

“How do you maintain any kind of semblance of a creditable [sic] non-partisan Legislative reporter and website with Kevin Falcon ads all over the place?” another questioned, despite the fact political parties and interest groups regularly purchase space in bigger media outlets.

My answer was to continue covering Mr. Falcon just as a rigorously as any other leadership candidate, exposing a number of his campaign’s missteps in the process.

But the complaints prompt another question: if the public doesn’t want to donate to the media and if some of its members believe advertisements can compromise an outlet’s coverage, how exactly should online journalism – especially of the watchdog or independent variety – be funded?

Perhaps subscriber pay walls, which force the public to pay for news stories, are the answer? But, so far, their success has been limited.

Investigative reporting can be done on a daily basis.

Investigative reporting is often thought of as the most time consuming form of reporting, precluding the possibility of daily publication.

That can often be the case. Certainly, one of my biggest stories took five months to break while another was four years in the making.

But I’ve also written more than 6,000 stories suggesting investigative reporting doesn’t have to be a drawn-out process.

Almost all of the articles published on Public Eye were exclusives, with usually three to six articles posted each day, five days a week.

The secret behind that quantity was twofold: first, I became the journalistic equivalent of a lint roller on my beat.

I would report about anything that hadn’t already been reported on and wasn’t in a news release – even stories that might otherwise have been written-off as being “inside baseball.”

Sometimes those stories led to bigger stories, occasionally years later. Sometimes they wouldn’t.

But they would always lead to more tips and more stories by reinforcing my reputation as a reporter who was willing to dig.

Second, I serialized many of my investigations, publishing major elements of them as they were confirmed rather than waiting to write a 1,500 word plus feature piece.

This resulted in the news equivalent of a soap opera.

“Remember, what I was telling you about yesterday. Well, you’ll never guess what I’ve found now” was the approach I took.

That kept the needle moving on Public Eye for seven years.

It allowed me to break countless stories that had a substantive impact on public policy and governance while driving daily traffic to the Website.

Show the public how reporting works

I believe the public isn’t just interested in consuming the sausage that results from the reporting process. I believe its members are also interested what ingredients went into it.

That’s why, from the very moment I launched Public Eye’s Website in 2004, I started publishing leaked documents, as well as those obtained via freedom of information requests, alongside the stories those records resulted in.

That now happens at many media outlets.

But, in early 2009, my audience had donated enough money that I could add an additional feature to the site – raw footage of interviews and scrums with MLAs and other officials.

Recorded using a Canon Vixia HF20, a Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone and a Litepanel Micro, that footage allowed me to bring to bear an extra level of accountability to the politicians I was covering.

As every reporter knows, public and private officials are trained to do anything but give a straight answer to our questions, sticking to their message box at all costs.

That dodging and weaving is often inadvertently obscured from the public due to the space, time and narrative constraints of traditional print, radio and television outlets.

Indeed, politicians rely on the compression of the 15-second sound bite to hide the fact they’re giving the media non-answers.

But, by posting the tape of those encounters in its entirety, my audience was able to see just how secretive – and downright amateurish – some of their elected officials are.

As an added benefit, it let my audience judge the fairness of my coverage by giving them an opportunity to inspect the ingredients that went into it.

And, in my life as an educator, it has proven to be an invaluable classroom tool for teaching my students how scrums and interviews really work.

Canadian media outlets need to be more generous

Most of the stories I wrote as a journalist covering provincial politics were exclusives.

Some of them were followed by bigger media outlets, while others weren’t.

But if they were followed, there was no guarantee the work I had done would be credited – an experience that isn’t uncommon in the Canadian media.

This long-standing tradition puts us out-of-step with what increasingly seems to be common practice in the United States, where the Associated Press’s policy is to credit whichever “organization that broke a story first, even when we match it – or advance it – through our own reporting.”

As a result of not adopting a similar gold standard, we are inadvertently undermining smaller and independent media outlets, depriving them of exposure along with the young and not-so-well-paid journalists who often work at them.

It is my hope that the Canadian media will revisit this practice and, in doing so, improve our industry as a whole, as well as giving journalism students a better chance at breaking into it.

Sean Holman, is a journalist and educator in Victoria, B.C. Public Eye radio will still run Sundays on CFAX 1070.

Bilbo Poynter is executive director of the CCIR.

It’s day three for the CCIR taking part in the Aviva Community Fund challenge. We’re looking good, and a number of you have signed up and voted — thank you. Now that you’ve signed up you can vote for the ‘Canadian Investigative Series Project’ once a day, up to fifteen times this round, round 2, of what is essentially a contest between many worthwhile projects, many of them community-based, all of them hoping to continue on and share in the $1,000,000 being offered by Aviva.

The CCIR is constantly looking for new and varied ways to raise enough money to pursue the complicated and often overlooked stories that cross our desks, that come from the tips that fill our voicemails and inboxes, and that cram our notebooks with ‘what-ifs?’

So far this year we’ve been able to show how trailers intended as emergency hurricane shelters in areas of Haiti  devastated by the quake were unfit for their intended purpose, and were being used as classrooms for school children. And we’ve kept on the trail of Afghan heroin as it makes it’s way into Europe and, in all likelihood, a Canadian community near you — and we’ve done all of this and more on a shoestring.

The reason that the overview for our project is a general one, where we promise simply to, “produce CCIR driven feature-length projects of an investigative nature on issues important to Canadians” is because, ideally, we’re building to a point where if a story seems important enough, we can ‘green light’ one of the hardworking investigative reporters we work with to pursue it, wherever that takes them. The way we see it every community has a story and everyone is connected.

The CCIR needs multiple sources of funding in order to do this — just as we need to continually prove that we’re up to the tasks we’ve set out for ourselves. What the Aviva funds would do is help us to tell these stories — in a big way.

There’s a whole industry that we couldn’t have foreseen even ten years ago that measures how we all interact online. We hit ‘like’, they tell us, but we don’t necessarily sign up. I’m here to ask that you sign up to the Aviva Community Fund page. It’s an easy couple of steps, and only takes a minute. Round 2 ends on November 9th. Semi-finals start in early December, where you’ll have more chances to vote. Winners are announced early in the New Year.

I plan to keep everyone updated on how the challenge is going, and would love to hear what you have to say about this, or anything else to do with the CCIR. Thanks for the votes!

After the earthquake in Haiti last year, plenty of organizations rushed in to help. One of those was former U.S. president Bill Clinton’s foundation, which promised to build several “hurricane-proof” shelter/school duos. However, in a recent investigation published by the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting two journalists discovered promises that look good on paper don’t always look great on the ground. This week, we talk to reporters Isabel Macdonald and Isabeau Doucet on how they got the story, what it was like reporting in Haiti, and sharing a byline.

J-Source: The fact that the shelters/schools were being built seems to be well-known, and indeed well-publicized, but when did you start to think an investigation was needed? What tipped you off?

Isabel Macdonald: We originally began discussing our idea for this shelters story as one part of a broader investigation (which we are still working on) into the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which is the commission co-chaired by Bill Clinton that was set up to coordinate and ensure transparency in Haiti’s post-earthquake rebuilding. There has been very little oversight or monitoring of the projects approved by the commission, and several Haitian board members had complained about lack of transparency.

Isabeau had first reported on the shelters before they were even built, as part of an Al Jazeera team, and it was from her that I first heard about the project. Before we began the investigation, both of us had visited the schools where the trailers were installed, and had spoken to the school directors, some of whom were quite disappointed with the project. So we had some sense already that there might be a story.

And given that this was one of the few IHRC-approved projects to have been completed, it seemed a good place to begin our broader investigation. But when we first began, we really didn’t realize the scale of the problems our investigation would unearth–such as the formaldhyde, and the headaches.

Isabeau Doucet: The shelter project was announced at the June 17th meeting of the IHRC, and there was a press conference in Leogane with Bill Clinton present in early august. As far as I know, there was no international press invited or present. I worked for Al Jazeera’s Haiti bureau and around mid-September, as the hurricane season’s active faze was becoming cause for concern, we decided to go find these shelters, which by then should have been installed. We found only a frustrated school principle and piles of rubble. In February an investigative reporter from Rolling Stone hired me as researcher and I told her about the shelters and she had me go see if they had been installed yet. I found out they had but were not very comfortable. They were very, very hot and stuffy, had no latrines, and the school directors didn’t seem to be impressed. I spoke to someone from IOM who had heard they were already “melting” and was encouraging me to investigate. Isabel visited in March and I told her about them.

I wanted to do on the ground on-site visits to all IHRC projects since I knew this was one of the first announced and few completed, it seemed like a good place to start. Isabel and I decided to apply for funds. She started researching Clayton Homes and how embroiled they were in the FEMA formaldehyde scandal, and we took it from there.

No one other than Al Jazeera, I think, has covered these shelters.

J-Source: Tell me a little bit more about the process of the story. How much time did you spend reporting it? Writing it? Editing, etc.?

ID: I’d say we put in a good two weeks solid researching and applying for funds, a week preparing for the on the ground reporting, a week reporting on the ground, a week writing, a week editing. So something like 5 weeks.

IM: Basically it was my full time job for two months or so. Before we began the research trip, I spent a couple of weeks doing background research–going through court records, and databases such as Lexis Nexis, and speaking with experts such as engineers about international standards for hurricane shelter construction, as well as with various scientists with experience testing indoor air quality, and with lawyers involved with the FEMA formaldehyde litigation.

A key challenge in prepping for our research trip to Haiti was to find a structural engineer who would agree to conduct a structural assessment of the shelters, despite the fact that it involved a project backed by such a major international player as Bill Clinton. Luckily, I had met Kit Miyamoto, an internationally recognized structural engineer who has been quite outspoken about problems in Haiti’s reconstruction, at a conference in Florida earlier this year, so I reached out to him. And it so happened that he was scheduled to be on the same flight as me when I flew to Port-au-Prince to begin the Haiti-based component of the investigation. He agreed to meet me in an airport lounge before the flight, where I showed him pictures of the project, and the Clinton Foundation’s proposal. We basically just talked about the research all through the plane ride, and he eventually agreed to do an assessment for our investigation, at no cost.

I began the air testing in the trailers on a reporting trip to Leogane in the third week of July, and then Isabeau joined me for a return trip to Leogane, to wrap up the testing, and begin our on-the-ground reporting. We made a couple of further trips to Leogane, one of which included the structural assessment of the trailers by Kit Miyamoto.

We then wrapped up the reporting, and hammered out the article and edits over the course of the next week or so in Port-au-Prince.

J-Source: Tell me a little bit more about the air samples. How did you get them? Did you plan from the start to do your own testing?

ID: I’ll let Isabel answer that one as she did the bulk of the legwork on getting them. I helped setting and collecting them and documenting the conditions around, but she dealt with the lab and scientist.

IM: As soon as we found out that Clayton Homes was a defendant in the FEMA formaldehyde litigation, we started thinking about how we could do this testing. At first, we tried to find someone in Haiti who might be able to do it for us, but our most well-connected Haiti contacts advised us that there was nobody who does this kind of testing in Haiti.

Given our limited research budget, we realized that we were going to have to do the testing ourselves. We got a lot of really helpful advice on this from Sheila Kaplan, a journalist who’d reported on the FEMA trailer formaldehyde controversy after Hurricane Katrina. As well as from the Sierra Club, which had conducted their own testing of the FEMA trailers. And I spent a lot of time before we went to Haiti, and while we were there too, talking to various university industrial hygienic labs, as well as to scientists who’d been involved in testing the FEMA trailers, about research protocols for the testing.

J-Source: You share by-lines for this story. How was it working with another reporter? How did you split the reporting? Writing? Tell me more.

IM: It was challenging at times to work together, especially as it really entails so much time to do this kind of research. Haiti is a relatively expensive country, especially when it comes to accommodations, and as we were trying to do the research as cost-efficiently as possible, we shared a room–and even a bed!–the whole duration of our reporting trip. So it was pretty intense at times. But I think ultimately the collaboration made for a better story than what either of us would have been able to do alone, as we brought different and complimentary skills and experiences. I have more experience with investigative journalism, whereas Isabeau has spent more time in Haiti than me, especially recently, and she speaks better Creole, and has a great current network of contacts in the country.

ID: We’d been talking about writing something together for some time and generally share some strange parallels and similarities. I had the on-the-ground experience and contacts, and had the keep eye of online databases and research, and while sharing a similar outlook, our respective strengths and weaknesses complimented eachother.

She took the lead on the formaldehyde and structural engineering problems while I looked at the IHRC process, the cholera, the community consultation, the IOM and OCHA, mayor.

There were difficulties sharing by-line and writing as we both had different interests and ideas on what the story really was. Though the hook for a US audience was the formaldehyde, living and working in Haiti for a year and seeing people die regularly of 19th century diseases and political instability, I was more interested in what this case-study says about trends on Haiti’s faltering reconstruction comission, and the general low to no regard for standards in development projects.

We also had to do quite a bit of juggling to make our schedules compatible and find an appropriate news hook. Things were set back a bit when Al Jazeera sent a crew and as I’m their usual field producer, they wanted to hire me and I couldn’t say no.

On the ground reporting, I took care of the filming and we both conducted the interviews.

J-Source: There is one quote from Maddalena that really strikes me: “You should get those kids outta there.” But you, as reporters, can’t, really. What was it like, emotionally, to report this story, and to be in Haiti?

ID: spending any amount of time in the trailers is uncomfortable and especially the formaldehyde one. I had a migraine for a day and a half after interviewing the kids in there.

There is a sense that the shelters are very unhealthy environment and I felt particularly indignant at the thought that kids would have to write exams in there. I can’t concentrate in a library that doesn’t have proper air ventilation, so thinking these kids would have to perform academically in this toxic stuffy hot box, clearly be a set back for students’ concentration, just seems like the cruellest irony given that Haiti needs education more than anything.

On the other hand, Haiti is such an insalubrious environment, that the country itself is a human rights violation, so on the scale of things, this isn’t a massive scandal, and no one is dying from it.

J-Source: I’ve heard that Clinton responded fairly swiftly to this story. What did he say? What has the reaction been like? And what do you make of it?

IM: Clinton himself, who originally declined to comment for our article, has still not commented, so far as I know. However, a spokesperson from his foundation was quoted in an Associated Press article saying they are looking into the problems we documented in our investigation, and that they will fix any “structural problems.” But we are waiting to see what they actually do.

ID: I think Clinton’s people don’t have a good excuse and don’t have experts to counter our claims, so they did what they thought would make the story go away quickly. It’s unfortunate that their top priority seems to have been mitigating the fallout of Clinton’s public persona rather than just hiring experts to begin with and getting the project done right on the ground in the first place. It remains to be seen when and if  their experts will actually assess and fix anything.

J-Source: What should a good investigative piece do?

IM: In contrast to much daily reporting, which too often merely reports on official statements by powerful sources, investigative journalism, at its best, interrogates official truths–through drawing on contrary evidence unearthed through document research, on-the-ground-reporting, and through the accounts of those marginalized in official narratives.

While investigative reporting is often associated with exposes about scandals involving individual politicians, I think some of the most important work in this genre–and this is a point that Cecil Rosner makes in his book Behind the Headlines–is to cast light on systems and power structures.

J-Source: What do you think makes a good investigative piece?

IM: At the most basic level, I think resources and time–which are unfortunately in extremely short supply for journalists working in most newsrooms today–are absolutely crucial for good investigative work.

Which is why I think the recent emergence of the CCIR–Canada’s first non-profit organization devoted to funding investigative journalism, which provided support for our investigation–is an extremely promising sign for the future of this essential form of journalism in this country.

Isabel Macdonald is a Montreal-based journalist and media scholar whose investigative reporting for The Nation magazine and other outlets has been featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, Radio-Canada’s Telejournal and Democracy Now!. In 2010, she broke the story that Lou Dobbs, the TV host well known for his rhetoric against “illegal immigrants,” had relied for years on undocumented immigrants for the upkeep of his estate. Her journalism has also been published by the Toronto Star, the Guardian, and NYC’s Spanish language daily, El Diario, amongst other outlets. The former communications director of the NYC-based media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting), she also writes about issues of media and democracy for Extra!, FAIR’s magazine of media criticism, and has published in scholarly journals such as Journalism Studies, Race & Class and the Canadian Journal of Communication. She has an MA in Communication & Culture from York University, where she completed a thesis examining Canadian press coverage of the 2004 coup d’etat in Haiti. She is currently completing a PhD at Concordia University, examining questions around the future of investigative journalism.

Isabeau Doucet is a visual artist and Port-au-Prince-based freelance producer for Al Jazeera English and reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, the Guardian, The Toronto Star, The Nation, Radio France Internationale, and Haiti Liberte.

The initial grant of $37,000 is toward the development of a project that when launched could see resources made available for investigative projects in various media in Canada to be developed through the CCIR, as well as much needed aid to long-form journalists so they can thoroughly investigative their subject matter while helping to ensure that more public interest titles from Canadian publishers appear on the shelves.

“The CCIR is ecstatic that the Chawkers Foundation recognizes in us the potential to advance the cause of public interest journalism in this country,” said Executive Director Bilbo Poynter. “We can’t wait to get underway.”

As well, the CCIR is pleased to announce project funding from the Open Society Institute. The six month grant will allow the CCIR to build on its existing investigation into the war in Afghanistan, specifically the impact of heroin.

“It’s truly exciting to be working with such an important funder of independent media,” said Poynter.

“The OSI grant allows us to thoroughly explore the issues resulting from Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, building on our existing research and taking us to Europe and beyond.”

The grant will see the CCIR expand its (print) coverage into a full multi-media investigation, intended for a global audience.

For more information contact:

905-525-4555
canadiancentre@gmail.com

It’s no secret that shrinking newsroom budgets and a demanding 24-hour news cycle are pushing investigative journalism to the sidelines. Enter the non-profit, independent news media to save the day. The lesson is clear: innovate or die. Bilbo Poynter reports.

Since I founded the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting (CCIR) in 2008 with the straight-forward mandate to produce thorough investigative research and reporting on under-reported stories, the landscape of non-profit or otherwise independent news media has changed significantly in Canada as it has elsewhere, most notably in the United States. It has grown crowded compared to what it was when the CCIR started, but this has also led some to think about that space now filled by non-commercial media and how the power of the independents can be leveraged in the public interest. What do I take away from all of this activity? Innovate or die.

Toronto daily news site OpenFile recently went live, fronted by veteran journalists Craig Silverman and Wilf Dinnick. They’re trying something new in Canada in the way they generate both stories and revenue. Readers suggest stories and topics to pursue, and OpenFile assigns a reporter to follow up. They’ve raised money through angel investors, and intend to have advertisers. They have plans to expand. They’re not the only ones: CCIR advisor Peter Klein’s students in the International Reporting Program at the University of British Columbia took home an Emmy last month for their documentary that followed the trail of e-waste from the West to Ghana and elsewhere. The program was seeded with a $1-million grant from Vancouver philanthropist Alison Lawson.

It seems there are new developments daily in the world of non-profit news delivery, what American University I-Lab founder and CCIR advisor Charles Lewis calls the “new journalism ecosystem.” (Lewis is oft cited by me for reasons you will see). A number of these changes have happened since the last time I wrote a column — in fact a number of major developments have happened in the two weeks since I first pitched what you’re reading now to J-Source. These include:

• $1 million to National Public Radio (NPR) to expand their states coverage

• The Huffington Post announces its I-Fund will merge and be absorbed by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), growing their staff of investigative reporters and researchers to over 50

• $1.7 million to the CPI from the Knight Foundation (the single biggest foundation funder of investigative journalism in the U.S.)

• The co-ordinated release of dozens of regional articles derived from a Freedom of Information release the CPI obtained which revealed that many U.S. lawmakers publicly opposed to stimulus spending nevertheless privately campaigned for it for their districts (clearly a banner couple of weeks for the venerable CPI, whose own coverage appeared in the Washington Post.)

The events described in this last point were co-ordinated through the Investigative News Network (INN), a new body comprised of over 40 non profit news organizations — including the CCIR. In fact we’re the only group outside the U.S. — other than a Puerto Rican member — to be accepted so far. The INN includes several heavyweights, such as NPR, American Public Media, the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley and WBEZ (producers of This American Life). Though it’s still in its early days, the benefits to us seem obvious: the CCIR is part of the innovation sweeping the journalism world.

Since 2006, Lewis’ I-Lab puts the number of new non-profit news outfits that have sprung up in the “new eco-system” at 38. He contrasts this beehive of activity in non-profit news delivery with the continued hemorrhaging of the mainstream commercial news media, specifically the bloodletting of resources for in-depth reporting and editorial jobs. He likes to cites Robert McChesney and John Nichols’ point that, “Even as journalism shrinks, the ‘news’ will still exist.” (Though the same conditions are widely held to exist in Canada, there hasn’t been any analysis yet of the scale of jobs lost or the availability of mainstream resources for in-depth stories.)

Many of these new investigative groups will produce their stories primarily online. After a long and bumpy road that we’re still travelling, I’m pleased to say the CCIR is close to making our first stories public. We aim for these stories to be relevant and have impact, and while we’ve never settled on any one medium you can bet that the web will be a major way we do things.

The CCIR is still the only organization in Canada whose mandate it is to produce independent investigative reporting as our sole reason for being. We have a lot of exciting things planned in the weeks ahead, and though the media landscape continues to shift under our feet we’re confident that we’re among the innovators. Stay tuned.

Bilbo Poynter is executive director and founder of the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting. His reports have been seen and heard on CBC Radio, CBC.ca, and the Canadian Press. As a researcher, then associate producer with the CBC Investigative Unit he contributed to award winning series on workplace safety and hospital infections. He was also the first Canadian to work for the Center for Investigative Reporting in California.

Is foundation-funded journalism free of ethical landmines? Absolutely not, writes Bilbo Poynter, executive director of the charitable Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting. But with a clearly defined editorial process, ethical advisory boards and the drafting of “firewall statements,” he hopes to ensure editorial integrity.

When I read Stephen J. A. Ward’s recent column,“Journalism in the entrepreneurial age”(Sept. 15, 2009) about the serious ethical considerations for the practitioners of not-for-profit and pay-for journalism when raising funds I immediately wanted to reply. The questions he poses are ones I’ve been wrestling and reconciling with for the last two years as the executive director of the fledgling and newly charitable Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting (CCIR). I didn’t reply right away however. Instead I took it as an opportunity to return to what for me has become a forever problem: How do we (the CCIR) ensure that we are both perceived, and in reality, free of the influence of financial backers over our editorial process?

Ward suggests that questions such as journalistic independence and conflicts of interest for these new models “will soon become the dominant theme in journalism ethics. These problems are brewing inside many of these new model outlets.” He is, of course, right.

Early on I approached journalists and nonprofit pioneers such as Charles Lewis, now with American University, but who nearly twenty years ago left a major network news producing gig to start the Center for Public Integrity about these issues, only to learn that the rules for acceptable sources of funding have been refined from when he started. At first, CPI accepted money from unions and businesses. “I didn’t have a clue about raising money or managing people; I was a line producer for 60 Minutes,” said Lewis in a recent conversation. CPI now lists where all their money comes from, along with sources of funding they won’t accept on their website, and is today one of Washington’s leading transparency watchdogs and one of the most successful nonprofit investigative outfits.

The CCIR is structured to meet all the legal requirements of a not-for-profit corporation and charity and so along with my position the CCIR also has a governing board of directors. As with other COO’s I have a responsibility to the board to meet or exceed our goals – including our budgetary goals – and on its face this means exploring every possibility. But the CCIR is not just any not-for-profit corporation; we are an investigative reporting organization whose mandate is to ferret out abuses of power by Canadian institutions and to educate Canadians on matters of clear public interest. So along with the directors we also have a board of advisors comprised of some of Canada’s most accomplished investigative reporters who, as the name suggests, advise us in areas such as ethics.

So the results of what we imaginatively called “Advisory Board Question No. 1″ gave us some direction as to what the journalism community expected from us when soliciting funds, with the results largely anticipated. Overwhelmingly, the answers suggested that the CCIR should not accept money from government or corporations. CCIR advisor Sheila Coronel, founder of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, in answering our questions about where to solicit funds from also succinctly summed up the forever problem. “Foundations, individuals and universities are probably the safest. But you have to vet the foundations as well. There’s a big debate on whether to take from government bodies — it’s not acceptable in the US and in other countries, but given the history of public service broadcasting in Canada and Western Europe or Scandinavia, government funding does not necessarily impinge on journalistic independence. Political parties are a no-no and trade unions have interests to promote so this may pose difficulties. Ditto with corporations,” she said.

Even though what the CCIR is doing in Canada is essentially being done for the first time, the precedence, through the experiences of Lewis and others, for what is acceptable ethically for not-for-profit journalism organizations is decades old. Simply put, we are not starting from where the CPI began. In effect many of these decisions have already been made for us.

It isn’t just a question of optics either. In order for this to work, the CCIR needs to be able to determine through our own editorial process what stories we pursue and not be concerned whether our conclusions gel with a given funder’s values. But how? What does this process look like? Is it any different terrain from what a newspaper publisher navigates daily?

Though there are many variations on the theme, essentially it looks like this: A CCIR associate reporter approaches us with a story or series of stories he or she thinks are worth investigating. Say, for instance, a story on changes to Canada’s border policies as they relate to First Nations people. If we think there’s something there we then craft a proposal with a specific funder in mind (likely a foundation), and yes that funder will be known to us to have a broad interest in our subject matter. At other points the funding may already be in place to look at broad areas of interest (likely determined on a yearly basis) that we can dedicate to a specific story brought to us by an associate. At the same time we are also thinking of likely media partners to run CCIR stories, and in the case of a story like the one cited earlier, potential international partnerships. All of these scenarios include potential outside influences, and this is not unique to the not-for-profit model.

One way we hope to ensure our editorial integrity is by use of a “firewall statement” that will state that the CCIR must retain its editorial control over any stories we produce as it concerns funding. Essentially it works as an ethical contract between the organization and our funders, and we’re working on this statement now. I don’t anticipate that the introduction of such a document will cause a stampede of potential funders away from the CCIR. The real value for their investment comes from our ability to advance a story of significant public interest. Journalistically, our value ceases if we are seen to be a mouthpiece for any special interest.

Bilbo Poynter is executive director and founder of the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting. His reports have been seen and heard on CBC Radio, CBC.ca, and the Canadian Press. As a researcher, then associate producer with the CBC Investigative Unit he contributed to two award winning series. He was also the first Canadian to work for the Center for Investigative Reporting in California.

We were thrilled with the turnout, the lively debate both during the panel and afterward with the audience Q&A. The panel was considered a top-three can’t-miss event by NOW Magazine: http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=170591.

The evening also included a reception for CCIR supporters and potential media partners, including former Ontario Minister of Culture Isabel Bassett as well as representatives of the Canadian Press, the Real News and other news organizations.

For other accounts of the evening, click on the links below. And check back here regularly for upcoming events listings.

http://www.j-source.ca/english_new/detail.php?id=4143&PHPSESSID=1677e2cf…
http://this.org/blog/2009/07/31/is-there-a-saviour-for-journalism/
http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/story.cfm?content=170584

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