The Herald’s Final Article? Help Us David Fraser (& Sask Media): You’re Our Only Hope

– Editor’s note — this will be our last article. While we have had a great time over the past six weeks providing what we believe to have been interesting, informative, and worthwhile content to the people of Saskatchewan, our anonymity — a tool to protect a number of folks who have written for us while speaking about issues that are obviously important to Saskatchewan — is now creating waves for people who are completely unconnected to our website, as the media trips over itself to try to determine the identity of our writers. We explain our choice on anonymity further in this story — as we cannot go partially non-anonymous without going wholly non-anonymous, but our work is affecting unconnected people, we have a conflict that can only be resolved by shutting down operations on social media and archiving this website — which we will do in the near future. Until then, enjoy our final article.

Early Tuesday morning, journalists at Postmedia Network-owned properties the Leader-Post and the Star-Phoenix began calling the Saskatchewan Herald “partisan”, in response to a Herald article that questioned the Saskatchewan Party’s year-end fiscal numbers, and the uncritical reiteration of those numbers by Saskatchewan media.

Thanks for pointing out that our six-week old blog might have a partisan view, gentlemen.

In 2015, Postmedia, the largest news chain in Canada, directed every newspaper in its control to endorse the Conservative Party — repeating a pattern from the past four elections. Andrew Coyne, editor of editorials and comment for the National Post, resigned after Postmedia executives refused to publish a column dissenting from the Tory endorsement. The Calgary Sun, Edmonton Sun, Ottawa Sun, Toronto Sun, and Winnipeg Sun published a generic endorsement written by Postmedia, while the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, London Free Press, Montreal Gazette, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, The Province, Regina Leader Post, The Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Vancouver Sun, and The Windsor Star published what appear to have been homemade Conservative endorsements, under direction from the chain.

What a pity it would be if the Herald and its 150-odd Twitter followers turn the newspaper landscape in Canada and Saskatchewan partisan, after such a long and impressive tradition of neutrality, led by Postmedia. But let’s put that aside, and discuss the article that raised the Twitter ruckus.

The Article That Broke A Million Hearts

On Monday, the Herald published an article critical of the Provincial government’s fiscal year end numbers — noting the Sask Party press release on the province’s 17/18 year end fiscal numbers omitted the most serious fiscal issue facing the Province — a record 19.5 billion dollar gross debt at year-end — and noting that Sask media took no look behind that press release, simply repeating the Sask Party line that the deficit had been reduced to $330 mil.

Postmedia journalist David Fraser — who was not the target of our story (we targeted no specific journalist for criticism) took umbrage on Twitter with the ‘shade’ that we cast on the Province’s media. Mr. Fraser noted he had, several months ago, written as part of his budget story that the Province’s debt would reach $20 billion in 2018. And that is true. Journalists have reported on the Province’s debt before. But that was not our main argument — our main argument was that the media failed to go through the Sask Party’s fiscal year-end numbers. And we stand by that argument.

Now, David Fraser is a strong journalist, and we say that without hesitation. We find his reporting to be very fair. While the Postmedia news-chain has a conservative orientation, which is its right, Mr. Fraser is objective and balanced, and his political reporting is consistently capable. While we disagree that our partisanship is an issue, we take from Mr. Fraser his view that we didn’t fully prove our work on our criticism of Saskatchewan media in our original article.

Let’s take the opportunity to make sure the record is clear.

The Not-So-Bad, The Bad, and the Ugly: Sask Media’s Treatment of the Sask Party Year-End Numbers

Here’s the Sask Party government’s 2017 – 2018 fiscal year-end press release. Press releases from government are stories the government wants you to tell. The actual fiscal numbers are buried in a PDF document at the bottom of the press release in the government’s year-end numbers. And a basic review tells you that there is a big difference between what is in the press release and what is in the fiscal report.

No. Calling out media for not reporting a debt number is garbage. It was reported, most notably when it was actually news (2 budgets ago!) — David Fraser (@DCFraser) July 25, 2018



So were we fair in our criticism of the Saskatchewan media? Was our story, as Mr. Fraser suggests, “garbage”? Well, here’s how the Saskatchewan press treated the story on the web. We rated “not-so-bad” stories as stories that provided greater context than provided in the Sask Party release, “bad” stories as stories that provided no meaningful context but gave some space to Opposition comment on the story, and “ugly” stories as stories that simply reiterated the Sask Party press release without adding any context or Opposition comment.

The Not-So-Bad:

The Leader-Post and the Star-Phoenix — Postmedia properties — ran identical pieces which were probably the best pieces run by Saskatchewan media. The written content did not note the debt increase, the contribution of P3 projects, or the likelihood of the Sask Party meeting its targets, although a video of a reasonably in-depth interview with the Finance Minister embedded in the story did show a graph of the debt increase over time, and gave the most detail out of any story. The story included a two-line comment from the Opposition Finance Critic.

The CBC story made no mention of debt, the contribution of P3 projects, or the likelihood of the Sask Party meeting its fiscal targets — but it did link to other stories which provided deeper analysis of the debt and deficit situation and the accounting methods used by the Province. The CBC story did include a two-line comment from the Opposition Finance Critic.

620 CKRM made no mention of the contribution of P3 projects, or the likelihood of the Sask Party meeting its fiscal targets. Its saving grace is that it included the most information from the Opposition Finance Critic — a four-line comment that actually mentioned that the Provincial debt had tripled.

The Bad:

The CTV story made no mention of debt, the contribution of P3 projects, or the likelihood of the Sask Party meeting its fiscal targets, It did embed video that included a short comment from the Opposition Finance Critic.

570 News, 660 News, 680 News, and News 1130 all ran the same story from the Canadian Press, but made no mention of debt, the contribution of P3 projects, or the likelihood of the Sask Party meeting its fiscal targets. The story did include a two-line comment from the Opposition Finance Critic.

The Ugly:

Discover Humboldt ran a story that made no mention of debt, the contribution of P3 projects, or the likelihood of the Sask Party meeting its fiscal targets. The story did not include any comment from Opposition MLAs.

Global News ran with only information found in the Sask Party press release. The story was credited to “Staff – Canadian Press”. There was no mention of debt, the contribution of P3 projects, or the likelihood of the Sask Party meeting its fiscal targets. The Global News story did not include any comment from Opposition MLAs.

Discover Moose Jaw ran a story that made no mention of debt, the contribution of P3 projects, or the likelihood of the Sask Party meeting its fiscal targets. The story did not include any comment from Opposition MLAs. It links directly to the Sask Party press release — which, while hard to believe, might have saved a number of the other outlets mentioned here the trouble of writing a story. Swift Current Online ran the same story as Discover Moose Jaw, but did not link to the government press release.

650 CKOM and 980 CJME ran perhaps the most amazing story — in addition to not getting any comment from Opposition MLAs, the Rawlco properties wrote a near identical re-hash of the Sask Party press release — not even bothering to change paragraph or sentence order, and in some portions using the exact same sentences as the press release. We actually encourage readers to take a look at them side-by-side.

Fiscal year-end numbers are an exceptionally important metric for voters. While the Provincial budget is the sexier news event, with a government’s new plan for the upcoming fiscal year, year-end actuals provide the specific measure of how a government has done. Voters need that information, in context.

We didn’t assign any “good” ratings. None of the stories we reviewed provided context on the accounting methods used by the government, whether the numbers presented by the government were credible, and with the exception of 620 CKRM, gave anything more than a two-sentence blurb to the Opposition Finance critic. Every story presented relied heavily on the Sask Party press release as its basis — which is not wrong, if numbers are presented in context — but is concerning when no context or analysis is presented. Most seriously, we could not find anything suggesting any news source actually looked at the actual financial report, as opposed to the press release, before reporting. We did not find any follow-up stories. The fact that David Fraser reported on the Province’s debt three months earlier does not, in our view, absolve media dereliction on this serious story. In fact, that suggestion respectfully makes no sense.

Voters — real people with children, jobs, medical appointments, and all of the other things that keep us busy in real life — who read any of the stories posted above could be forgiven for believing that the Province is headed in the right direction, despite reaching $19.5 billion in debt, and seeing debt increase by at least $1.5 billion. Whether it is true or not that the Province is headed in the right direction is a matter of opinion — but without critical context, and basic analysis, how can voters be expected to form a reasoned opinion?

Problem is with Media Ownership and Direction, Not With Journalists

Our original story did not criticize any individual journalists. We maintain that position. In fact, individual journalists are generally victims, not perpetrators, of bad corporate-journalism policy.

Journalists at most modern media outlets are required to write numerous stories every day, post web content, and meet tight deadlines on the 24-hour news-cycle. Time for research gives way to time for content generation — bringing in more clicks, and more ad-revenue. The time required to write in-depth and cautious stories is, at many outlets, not available. The fallback, on political stories, becomes reiteration of press releases — which provides the government with a dangerous amount of power in shaping the public narrative.

We don’t fault journalists. We fault corporate ownership. But we do want journalists to consider why they chose their profession, and to challenge journalistic policies that lead to weak analysis and poorly contextualized stories.

The Beginnings of the Modern Herald

Now, before we disappear back into the bits and bytes of the internet from where we came, we want to respond to all of Mr. Fraser’s Tweets to us. So let’s discuss the humble beginnings of the Herald, and what the Herald is all about.

The modern Herald began on a warm summer evening when Doug Ford, someone the Globe and Mail uncovered as a literal ex-hashish dealer, was elected as Premier of Ontario. Ford had been involved in Provincial politics for less than half-a-year, and won the Conservative leadership over two very thoughtful conservative women, Christine Elliott and Caroline Mulroney — women with extensive experience and solid personal track records. Ford had produced no costed economic platform and suggested he would repeal modern sex education. In taking power in the largest province in the country, Ford had an exceptional amount of help from anonymous or semi-anonymous conservative news sources: Ontario Proud (just under 400,000 Facebook followers) and National Conservative News Network (just over 150,000 Facebook followers). Those outlets share constant memes and news stories that undermine and attack the Liberal Party, and to a lesser extent the NDP — and regularly, and openly, run partisan hits on Kathleen Wynne. (Story idea for Saskatchewan media: when you’re done Tweeting at us, check into how much damage those websites have done to democracy by polarizing anti-Islamic and anti-Liberal sentiment. You’ll be surprised!) The Toronto Sun, the National Post, the London Free Press, and the Windsor Star also endorsed Ford.

The brains of a few people melted just a little bit the day Ford was elected, including the folks who have delighted in bringing you the Saskatchewan Herald. So, we secured a domain name and started to write a blog. Total budget about $150.00. We thought naming ourselves after the old Saskatchewan Herald was a cute idea — we stumbled on it by typing “oldest Saskatchewan newspaper” into Google. It had been out of commission for a few years, and we thought it deserved an homage (although we later found out from readers that P.G. Laurie, the original proprietor, was a notorious racist who stirred trouble up during the Riel resistance — if you have read our articles, you may note that perhaps we didn’t mean quite the same thing by ‘PROGRESS’ as he did, but we digress). And we started to write on topics that were of interest to us. More authors volunteered their writing. And we moved forward.

The Herald’s Per-the-Outlet Voice

Now, David Fraser’s other criticism of the Herald was that we do not identify our writers. And that is true. We don’t. Which has been a deliberate choice, based on three things.

First, this website is not a “newspaper” in the traditional sense. No one ever really decided what we are, nor did we ever really expect as much interest as received in our six weeks of existence. We don’t have a circulation, a building, our annual subscription fee is $2.50 (we aren’t sure how to collect that fee or what it gets you), and we are published in the “Saskatchewan Territory”, although we lack a printing press — so we think we’re actually technically published somewhere in cyberspace. We have had some fun with making the site look loosely like the old Saskatchewan Herald paper. But we do not generally gather first-order content in the way that news reporters do. We provide second-order content and analysis — although everything we run is fact-checked, and we have accepted revision requests and have corrected minor errors in our pieces.

Second, the goal of this website was not to accumulate bylines, money, or attention. No one has received a penny writing for us, and no one who has written for us is paid or directed by the Provincial or Federal Government, the Provincial or Federal Opposition, any major corporation, any union, or any political party. We would, of course, like to know how much advertising revenue from political parties Postmedia, Rawlco Radio, and the rest of the Province’s media take in — but that is a story for another day, and another website! Please feel free to check with anyone you suspect might fund us to confirm. We existed to write fair stories of interest that fill a gap in the Province, because we like this place called Saskatchewan and we care about its people. That’s it.

Third, and most important, we wanted to protect the sharing of unpopular but critical opinions. People have written articles for this website which challenge the status quo, call actors to account, throw “shade” at people in authority, and spoken other truth to power. We want more of those writers, not less. This website has been exceptionally careful not to engage in slander or libel against anyone, or to throw any “shade” against folks without power. But a free society depends on freedom to challenge the powerful — and we have taken caution to protect free opinion. We will continue to protect those who have shared their writing talents with us.

Our per-the-outlet bylines ran on similar principles to the Economist. The per-the-outlet format certainly affects how our stories should be considered by readers. Every reader of any media source should consider its background, its ownership structure, whether an article is written by “staff” or by a named journalist, and should cross-check sources. Anonymity does not equal invalidity, or even necessarily reduce credibility — but it may, of course, affect utility.

And that brings us back to the Saskatchewan media as a whole.

The Media and the Future of Saskatchewan

The Herald is a WordPress-backed website, with no staff, no budget, a few volunteer writers and editors, and a six-week history (or a history dating back to the nineteenth century, depending on who you ask). Why we are of interest to anyone is a bit confusing to us, but apparently we are of interest. Good enough.

We are not, as David Fraser pointed out, the Province’s trained media. We have not pretended to be the Province’s trained media, although if someone wants to retroactively pay our $2.50 subscription fee, we’ll gladly accept it.

But based on our uptake, we have filled an analytical gap which seems to be missing in the Province, providing legitimate and interesting stories. We have had pieces written on topics that we believe media have missed, or failed to analyze. You may not like our methods, but the fact that you’re reading this suggests, to us at least, that the task was needed.

We do not want to be the entity that fills the media analysis gap — we receive no reward for our writing, except the satisfaction of telling interesting stories (and the fun of seeing John Gormley and his echo-chamber call us socialist NDP partisans, and blame the NDP opposition for this website after we discuss his high jinks). We are not the people who should be going through government press releases and cross-checking them with actual financial numbers. We are not the people who should be holding Gormley to account. We are not the people who should be holding Scott Moe to account. We are not the people who should be telling the stories of people who are disempowered. It’s not our gig.

That’s you, Saskatchewan media.

As an outlet, we have said, and we continue to say, that we live in strange and dangerous times. Traditional journalism is under threat. Canada faces an increasingly hostile White House, that has attacked journalists as a matter of routine. Doug Ford, the newly elected Premier of Ontario, has done the same thing on a smaller scale. Russian interference, and interference by the alt-right through social media manipulation is a legitimate problem across North America.

The slow decline of print journalism, and the deliberate transition of reporters into content-generation specialists presents a fundamental risk to democracy. That risk exists here in our Province. Say what you will about our website, and our methods — our motivation is legitimately based in the fear that democracy dies when the press becomes government’s cheerleader, as opposed to its observer. While some will continue to whine about how we have done business, we hope that a few journalists take our message to heart — and press back against corporate-appointed editors and McJournalism-based policies to tell important, critical, in-depth stories. Read through those fiscal numbers, next time, kids.

So help us, David Fraser — you’re our only hope. You, and any other capable journalist — so long as you are willing to do the heavy lifting of holding power to account.

— Herald Editorial Board