Radio Canada – The Concordian

Changing the culture of representation for contemporary artists

Benjamin J. Allard, BA Concordia Communication Studies alumnus, former research assistant and Art Matters curator, currently runs Radio Atelier for CIBL 101.5. Radio Atelier a podcast about local artists and current exhibitions in the greater Montreal area, and Quebec at large.

Allard recently put forth a change.org petition, as part of the INVISIBLES group, to highlight his concerns with arts representation in the media. INVISIBLES is specifically asking Radio-Canada to rethink their approaches to coverage of artists and arts events.

The petition, which now holds 10,572 signatures (and counting) is in French, and begins as follows; “we would like to draw your attention to the fact that the coverage of the visual arts on Radio-Canada contravenes your journalistic standards and practices by not respecting the principles of equity, impartiality and integrity.” Its clarity and strong language demand attention.

“INVISIBLES is an umbrella organization for people and institutions interested in the subject of visual art representation in the media,” said Allard.“It’s super new, they had a meeting in Quebec and we’ll have our first meetings in Montreal [soon].”

The petition has also made headway with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which opened a public platform, from Nov. 25 to Feb. 20, where individuals and collectives had the opportunity to suggest ideas and provide feedback on CBC/Radio-Canada programming as they renew their broadcasting licences, which expires on Aug. 31.

“We want to make sure that the content produced and distributed by CBC/Radio-Canada reflects the diversity of Canada’s population, while meeting its needs in both official languages,” read the platform. The forum will hold and record a public hearing on May 25 in Ottawa to further address the issue of representation.

Allard, along with a team representing INVISIBLES, was invited to meet with Radio-Canada on Feb. 20 to discuss their demands. They proposed a document of suggested practices, which was received well by Société Radio Canada/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (SRC/CBC), L’Association des galeries d’art contemporain (AGAC) and the Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference (ARCA). However, SRC/CBC explained that contemporary artists need better press relations in order to receive accurate representation.

“There are some projects on their way to create something to help at that level, but nothing is confirmed,” said Allard. “AGAC and ARCA had things to say about that, it’s not something really new they told us. However, they also offered to meet radio producers, which (according to them), they never did before. It is very generous and it’s the sign that it’s the beginning of a dialogue.”

But, if pre-existing government-funded arts programmes, in and of themselves, are not exploring diverse audiences, how can we expect the media to do the same?

Since its conception, the petition has also attracted the attention of MAtv’s “Mise à Jour Montréal” who invited Louise Déry, the director of UQAM’s art gallery, to discuss the issue.

In a segment of Feb. 17’s episode, Déry reflects on how art writers for The New Yorker, The New York Times and The LA Times attend art schools’ graduating exhibitions to get a sense of emerging artists. Quebec media, on the other hand, doesn’t do that.

In most of Quebec’s newspapers, the arts section has been merged with culture, leading coverage to typically include generally inaccessible events, such operas, plays and symphonies. Rarely do they immerse themselves in art galleries outside of Montreal’s larger cultural institutions.

Allard argues that it is always the same artists who are put forward on the Quebec scene, and this way of thinking starts in university.

Allard attended Concordia’s MFA Open studios on Feb. 19 and noticed that all their visiting artists were from Montreal. “This is unacceptable,” he said. “I think that [the] university should strive to create new networks and this passes by inviting people outside current networks.”

On their social media platforms, INVISIBLES showcases a Quebecois artist or art collective a day for a project called 366 jours/366 artistes. Among the 366 artists are multi-disciplinary, video, performance and screen printing artists like Rachel Echenberg, Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf and Dominique Pétrin. Also featured in the project are some that are well represented, such as sculptor David Altmejd and Concordia Studio Arts professor, painter Janet Werner. Both artists have pieces at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montreal and the Musée national des beaux-arts in Quebec.

Tune in to Radio Atelier on CIBL 101.5 on Mondays at 6 p.m. for more from Allard, or find them wherever you get your podcasts. For more information, or to listen/download episodes online visit www.radioatelier.ca/

McGill hosts discussions with industry bigwigs, veteran correspondents and student journalists

Even though journalism is facing enormous challenges, the profession is going through somewhat of a renaissance. That was the general consensus among panelists at the Journalism and Media Conference, held in the McGill University Student Centre from Feb. 26 to 28.

The conference was co-hosted by The Tribune and The Daily publishing societies, responsible for publishing McGill’s two English-language student newspapers. The panels featured conversations with new and veteran industry insiders, moderated by editors from The Tribune, The Daily and McGill’s francophone student newspaper, Le Délit.

The editor-in-chief of the McGill Tribune, Nicholas Jasinski, said the goal of the conference was to provide McGill students interested in journalism with the opportunity to learn about the industry and its future. “Unlike Concordia, McGill does not have a journalism program, and part of the [Tribune] Publishing Society’s mandate is to act as an educational resource for students interested in journalism,” he said. Each panel related to the conference’s theme, “journalism redefined,” and focused on recent trends in the industry that have changed the way journalists do their job.

Day One: Public Broadcasting

Panels on the first day included some serious CBC heavyweights, such as Julian Sher, a senior producer at CBC’s The Fifth Estate, who led a panel on investigative reporting.

There was also a bilingual Q&A session with Hubert Lacroix, the former president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada. Lacroix was blunt when he compared the CBC’s funding model to other public broadcasters around the world. “I’ll tell you that we have a different business model, and I’ll tell you right away that it’s broken,” he said.

Lacroix explained that 65 per cent of the CBC’s revenue comes from the government, and 45 per cent comes from commercial revenue, notably television advertising. Due to the overall decrease in advertising revenue in the media industry, Lacroix was adamant that the CBC needs to be completely government-funded to ensure its future success.

“We want to go ad-free in order to have stable, multi-year funding,” he said. “You need to be able to give us a funding model that is not crumbling.”

The next panel featured long-time senior correspondent and the new co-host of CBC’s The National, Adrienne Arsenault. She was joined by Deidre Depke, the New York bureau chief for NPR’s Marketplace. Both women agreed that President Donald Trump’s animosity towards the press, and the recent increase in newspaper subscriptions seemingly in response to his attacks, have created an exciting news environment to work in. “This is an era of ‘bring it,’” Arsenault said. “This is what separates the posers from the people who really do the job.”

Hubert Lacroix, the former president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada, answers questions with Margot Hutton, the news editor at Le Délit, McGill’s francophone newspaper. Photo by Kenneth Gibson.

Day Two: Fake News and Foreign Correspondence

Day two began with Emily Kingsland, a research librarian at McGill, leading a workshop on verifying news to avoid being duped by websites masquerading as legitimate news sources.

Kingsland recommended techniques such as considering the audience an article is written for, assessing the authority or credibility of the source, and keeping an eye out for sloppiness, like typos or unprofessional tone and word choice.

Then, for a different look at fake news, Emma Overton from The Beaverton, a Canadian news satire website, answered questions about what it’s like to write made-up news for a living.

Overton talked about The Beaverton’s writing process, but also provided an eloquent explanation of the difference between fake news and satire, arguing that good satire is actually rooted in truth. “Its intent should be to expose and criticize a societal ill and make people more curious about the topic,” she said. “The intention of fake news is almost always to deceive the reader for political gain.”

In the evening, two highly-accomplished foreign correspondents, Dan Bilefsky from The New York Times and Michel Cormier from Radio-Canada, shared anecdotes about the specific highs and lows they’ve experienced as foreign correspondents. The Montreal-born Bilefsky was recently re-assigned to Montreal by The New York Times as a “Canada correspondent,” part of the paper’s push to appeal more to their Canadian readers. He spoke about the peculiarity of returning to his hometown after 28 years, and going from writing about war criminals to writing about poutine.

Day Three: Indigenous Reporting

The most compelling panel of day three was on Indigenous reporting. It featured Daniel Rowe, a reporter for The Eastern Door, Kahnawake’s community newspaper, and Christine Lussier, the co-producer of Nipivut Radio, an Inuit community program on McGill’s radio station, CKUT.

Lussier pointed out that many distinct nations and communities fall under the umbrella of “Indigenous” in Canada, and there is a common misconception that all Indigenous reporting focuses on the same broad issues. In reality, Lussier said, an Indigenous reporter’s writing will reflect the community they are reporting on, as with any other reporting.

The two panelists also discussed the role Indigenous reporting plays in creating a more diverse representation of Indigenous people in the media, rather than the handful of cliché news stories that tend to be written about Indigenous communities by non-Indigenous reporters.

Feature image by Kenneth Gibson