{"id":373,"date":"2021-05-28T19:59:59","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T19:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mmahdavi.com\/en\/?p=373"},"modified":"2021-05-28T20:00:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T20:00:01","slug":"ryerson-review-of-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mmahdavi.com\/en\/2021\/05\/28\/ryerson-review-of-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryerson Review of Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By 8 a.m. most days, Mir Mahdavi is walking his customary 15-minute route from his home in western Kabul, greeting the same friendly faces and stopping in the same grocery store for cigarettes before arriving at the three-storey apartment building that houses Aftab (\u201c<\/em>The Sun\u201d), <\/em>the weekly newspaper of which he is founder and editor-in-chief. There he makes his way down the first-floor hall, past the offices of his 10 employees, before settling at his desk, which overlooks a busy street. On Monday mornings, when Aftab<\/em> goes on sale, the local kiosks along the rock-strewn road outside are especially crowded. One week a typical headline might read: \u201cThe Death of Democracy.\u201d On another: \u201cReligion + Government = Despotism.\u201d Aftab<\/em>\u2019s willingness to explore incendiary issues and write harsh criticisms of corrupt warlords and fundamentalist groups has earned it a large following, but also powerful enemies. In November 2001, two months after Aftab<\/em>released its first issue, Mahdavi received a series of warnings and bribes proffered by police, fundamentalist groups and political parties; he was even offered a position in a ministry of his choosing so long as he desisted from his work. \u201cDemocracy is a big lie,\u201d the officials told him. \u201cThe reforms are not going to happen. You need to slow down.\u201d But Mahdavi was not deterred. \u201cMy voice was important. Lots of people were listening to my words, and when you feel that, you feel much better,\u201d he says today. One evening a week Mahdavi would even open Aftab<\/em>\u2019s office to university students\u2014often 75 or 80\u2014who would sit on the floor to listen to him lecture on Islam, poetry and journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eight years later, Mahdavi is barely awake at 8 a.m. as he heads toward the bathroom in his three-bedroom Hamilton home and eases himself into a hot shower. He then dresses and prepares breakfast for his two daughters, 14 and six, and goes online to review the latest news out of Afghanistan. At nine, just as his wife and three-year-old son are waking, he drops the girls off at Sanford Avenue school, then parks his 2006 Dodge Caravan cab in a nearby Tim Hortons lot. As he waits for orders, he removes a stack of square papers held together by an elastic band from the front console. Each sheet contains a different English word on one side and its use in a sentence and translation in Farsi on the other. With the windows up, he reads each word aloud\u2014\u201cVulnerable. Fury. Contemplate\u201d\u2014in what has become his de facto office. In the afternoon, still on shift, he searches for unfamiliar words in his copy of The Hamilton Spectator<\/em> or reads from an assortment of Farsi texts he keeps tucked underneath his front seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the exception of spending 2005 as a visiting lecturer on human rights and democracy in Afghanistan at George Brown College in Toronto and a year-long paid internship at the Spectator<\/em>, Mahdavi\u2019s seven years in Canada have been spent working in a sports equipment factory and as a pizza delivery man and taxi driver. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m killing myself here,\u201d the 38-year-old Mahdavi says in a slight accent as he peers down into a cup of tea. \u201cI think about my worth and what I\u2019m going to do and how I\u2019m going to get out\u2014to get back to something that fits my knowledge. At home I felt like I was doing a useful job\u2014something important for people or the future of my country. But anybody can drive a taxi.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re all familiar with the tales of \u00e9migr\u00e9 physicians or professors who arrive in Canada to find that their immediate future is delivering pizza or driving a cab. Among us, though, are also hundreds of journalists like Mahdavi, who has degrees in physics, journalism and Islamic studies and two years of experience managingAftab<\/em> in Kabul, stuck in low-skill, low-wage jobs. \u201cThe modern version of what used to be doctors coming to Canada and not finding work,\u201d says Haroon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star<\/em>\u2019s editorial page editor emeritus, \u201cis now the reality for journalists.\u201d According to John Fraser, a journalist and master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, the state of the media is so dire \u201cthat even exiled journalists looking for work will find it hard to evoke empathy here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one really knows how many foreign journalists are living in Canada, although the 2006 census indicated that one in 400 immigrants who came to Canada from 2001 to 2006 identified themselves as journalists, editors, writers or authors. And their numbers may not increase substantially in the immediate future; foreign-born journalists are not eligible for Citizenship and Immigration Canada\u2019s federal skilled-worker category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about those who are already here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOther than feeling safe and secure, I don\u2019t feel good about any other aspect of my life,\u201d Tesfaye Kumsa, a 45-year-old Ethiopian journalist, says despondently as he sips tea in a coffee shop near his home in south Scarborough, Ontario. He arrived in Toronto in 2002, and tried to launch a newspaper for the city\u2019s Ethiopian community, focused largely on issues back home. But, like other foreign-born journalists with similar ambitions, he had difficulty attracting advertisers and was forced to shut down after only six months. Asked if he has since attempted to work in the Canadian media, he dismisses the suggestion. \u201cYou don\u2019t have any fundamental human rights issues or problems related to that,\u201d he says. \u201cJournalists here are completely different. They\u2019re more commercial and concerned with serving their employers. In Ethiopia our journalism saved lives.\u201d He references an event in the mid-1990s, when as a senior editor at Urjii<\/em> (\u201cStar\u201d), an independent biweekly newspaper in Addis Ababa, his team reported on a secret underground prison where the government was holding 108 political prisoners. Urjii<\/em>\u2019s report, he says, coming to life, alarmed the International Committee of the Red Cross, which registered the detainees, guaranteeing their safety. \u201cCan you imagine what pleasure this gives you\u2014you can see the fruits of your job right away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Although he was routinely arrested for his work\u201410 times in 10 years\u2014the beatings and subsequent injuries never bothered him; he wears his wounds as if they are medals earned in battle. Kumsa says he never intended to leave his country, but had little choice after his 10th imprisonment in 1997 lasted almost four years and involved torture. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve betrayed my people. I know they\u2019re still suffering,\u201d he says despairingly. \u201cThey relied on our independent media. It was their only voice.\u201d Kumsa still tries to help his native community by researching human-rights abuses in Ethiopia for the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa website, but the guilt of not being closer to the reality still lingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across town, I meet AbeerAl Askary, a 34-year-old Egyptian journalist who spent 13 years courageously reporting on issues such as abuse by state security officers within Egypt\u2019s interior ministry. Her work, she says, made her apolice target and resulted inmore than 20 arrests. In police custody, Al Askary was often badly beaten; her nose is still crooked from breaks on two separate occasions. As she recounts these experiences, Al Askary\u2019s passion for human rights in her native country is evident, and although she\u2019s willing to write for Canadian publications, so far, they haven\u2019t been willing to give her that opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al Askary first visited Canada in November 2006 to receive an award from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. She recalls how the media honoured her as a \u201cfreedom fighter\u201d and encouraged her to settle in Canada, which \u201cmade me feel that if I stayed everything would turn out great.\u201d When she arrived for good in May 2007, her English was rough, but her network of contacts was vast. \u201cI asked people from the [event] for work and they said to improve my English and look for work in Arabic papers. They offered many solutions, but all of them involved staying away from them,\u201d she recalls. After scouting several Canadian-Arabic papers, which Al Askary dismisses as businesses, not journalism, she launched her own publication\u2014Sootna<\/em> (\u201cOur Voice\u201d)\u2014in June 2008, about human rights issues in the Arab world. Again, her Canadian colleagues briefly showed support. But then \u201call the people who said I\u2019ll help you with fundraisers and I\u2019ll write about you in our newspaper were gone.\u201d Financial constraints limited Al Askary to publishing a single 12-page edition, which she still carries in her bag, and flips through with enthusiasm, pride and longing. Today, a combination of freelance pieces for Arab newspapers and international human rights organizations keeps her afloat, but it\u2019s a comedown for an award-winning reporter with a master\u2019s degree in journalism and 13 years of experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you know what it\u2019s like to be a journalist and live for three years without writing?\u201d she says, putting her publication and her dream back into her bag. \u201cThe Canadian media doesn\u2019t accept us as journalists\u2014we\u2019re just freedom fighters to them. Yes, I was honoured when I was tortured in Egypt, but what\u2019s happening to me now is worse than torture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many journalists who come here by mischance or choice share her sense of disillusionment. Nik Kowsar, a 40-year-old editorial cartoonist from Iran, arrived in Toronto in 2003 with a portfolio that included images distributed by the New York Times Syndicate, published books of illustrations and awards from the National Press Club and Cartoonists Rights Network International. \u201cI was told I didn\u2019t have enough Canadian experience,\u201d he recounts of his attempts to penetrate the mainstream. Instead, he was urged to work in a clothing store or a restaurant to gain a better appreciation for Canadian culture. \u201cIt was very insulting,\u201d says Kowsar. \u201cIf somebody comes from a different background and has a lot to give but doesn\u2019t know how, there should be a system that helps them share their potential.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, though, the primary system at work is the precariousness of the newspaper industry. As Haroon Siddiqui says, \u201cThere are almost no jobs. It\u2019s a horrible, tragic situation that doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s going to get any better.\u201d There may be some desire to diversify newsrooms, but in a profession where the last in is the first out, it\u2019s hard to find room. \u201cOne of the great failures of modern journalism is that publications didn\u2019t make the hires when they should have. They missed the boat and now they\u2019re subject to greater forces.\u201d Siddiqui\u2019s former boss, John Honderich, now Torstar chair, argues that the mainstream media is trying to accommodate these individuals: \u201cIt\u2019s not like we are against these people\u2014quite the contrary.\u201d But Kowsar isn\u2019t so sure: \u201cAny new person from another country is trouble for them. They think they\u2019ll have to start at square one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking to Roger Gillespie and Jim Poling reveals a different perspective. Both work in the mainstream media and share a track record of dedication to the foreign-born journalist cause. Gillespie has been the training and development editor at the Star<\/em> since June 2008, after working at the Spectator <\/em>for 20 years. As the Hamilton paper\u2019smanaging editor, he would often stay in the newsroom late into the evening to assist interns such as Mir Mahdavi with their articles. \u201cIt\u2019s not patience but resources that are required,\u201d he says today from his office at the Star<\/em>. \u201cNot very many newspapers are prepared to put in those resources and that\u2019s a shame.\u201d However, any publication serious about integrating foreign-born journalists should offer several years of training to those who need it, not just a few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a short time, the Spectator <\/em>came close to achieving this,offering a year-long paid internship through its Internationally Trained Journalist program. Hanging on managing editor Jim Poling\u2019s office wall is the Vox Libera Award he received from Canadian Journalists for Free Expression in 2008, for his leadership in establishing the ITJ program in 2003. Over lunch, Poling reminisces about Mir Mahdavi, a former intern, who had an impressive ability to get in touch with Afghanistan\u2019s most influential players so effortlessly from his desk. Although restructuring forced the program\u2019s end in March 2009, Poling\u2019s enthusiasm for diversity is undiminished. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of understanding needed to piece together our society,\u201d he says, \u201cand new journalists can bring new insights into the newsroom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One major event to acknowledge the value of foreign-born journalists was the 2004 \u201cBuilding a Writers in Exile Network\u201d event in Ottawa. Hosted by PEN Canada, it gathered over 90 PEN representatives from a variety of countries, plus publishers and delegates from Canadian cultural organizations, universities and colleges. Among the attendees was Joyce Wayne, department head of journalism at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, at the time. Wayne was moved by the speeches delivered by exiled journalists and author John Ralston Saul, husband of then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. Wayne remembers Saul, who co-chaired the event, encouraging the audience to embrace foreign-born writers, reminding them that diverse voices are essential to a vibrant democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cSomething had to be done,\u201d says Wayne. \u201cHere we were in this historic building, and Canada has a long history as a haven for refugees, and I felt moved by that and the need to carry on that tradition.\u201d Less than two years later, Wayne, with the assistance of Philip Adams, who ran PEN Canada\u2019s Readers & Writers program, and David Cozac, then program coordinator for PEN, founded Canadian Journalism for Internationally Trained Writers. The one-year Sheridan College program, renamed Media for Global Professionals in 2009, strives to provide educated foreign-born journalists and academics with the tools to better understand their new environment, cultivate contacts and acquire Canadian experience through a six- to 14-week internship. Since 2007, 73 students from countries as diverse as Pakistan, Eritrea and Colombia have gone through the program, which includes such courses as media law and ethics, Canadian news writing and Canadian cultural studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get the program started, Sheridan received over $110,000 from The Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail<\/em>, CBC and the Toronto Star<\/em> combined, as well as six-digit sums from the provincial and federal governments. In September 2007, the first group of students headed off to CBC or the Star <\/em>or, in the case of Mir Mahdavi, to the Spectator <\/em>for a one-year internship. It was all going so well. But then, according to Wayne, the Globe<\/em>, which had initially expressed willingness to accept interns from the program, didn\u2019t follow through. Then, just one night before four students were due to be interviewed for two paid internship positions at CP, she received a call from Paul Woods, the human resources manager, cancelling the meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cBut you haven\u2019t even met the candidates,\u201d Wayne objected. \u201cHow do you know before meeting them that their English is lousy and they won\u2019t be able to keep up in your newsroom?\u201d (Woods says it was Wayne\u2019s own recent admission that her students \u201cstruggled to write at an acceptable level of English\u201d and had little, if no, audiovisual training, a requirement for the internship, that deterred him from following through.) Either way, the students, who were eager for their first Canadian interview, were devastated, and for the 42 students who have gone through the Sheridan program since, obtaining journalism internships remains difficult. Of last year\u2019s class, four of the 15 students interned in newsrooms, while the rest were sent to work in book publishing or public relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When there are<\/em> open positions, some of the strongest competition Sheridan students and their counterparts face is from people like Danielle Wong, a recent hire at the Spec<\/em>. A first-generation Chinese-Canadian, she\u2019s fluent in three languages, well connected to Toronto\u2019s Asian communities, has interned at the Toronto Star<\/em>,TheWindsor Star<\/em> and National Post<\/em>, and has a Ryerson journalism degree. Each year, the country\u2019s journalism schools graduate similarly qualified students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the foreign-born journalists who are working in the mainstream media, many are not newcomers; they are people like Haroon Siddiqui, who arrived in Canada from his native India in 1967 at 25, with Indian experience and good English. \u201cIf I came today I\u2019d probably fail as well,\u201d he says. Siddiqui also had a break when he moved to Toronto. Clark Davey, then managing editor of the Globe<\/em>, interviewed him, and pitched him to a publisher acquaintance for a position at the Brandon Sun<\/em>, where Siddiqui garnered his Canadian experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luck also touched Merita Ilo, a former Associated Press reporter in her native Albania. \u201cMine is not a typical story because a lot of things worked,\u201d the 40-year-old acknowledges. When she arrived in Toronto with her husband and their nine-year-old daughter in August 2002, Ilo was fortunate to have a contact at AP with whom she had worked during the war in Kosovo in the mid-\u201990s. Her colleague found her a part-time job with AP, but more importantly, her new office was located in the same building as The Canadian Press. A month later, a position at CP\u2019s world desk came up and Ilo was tipped to it. \u201cIf I wasn\u2019t with AP or in that building, there\u2019s no way I would\u2019ve found that job,\u201d she says. She got an interview with the foreign editor, a journalist from Hong Kong who had immigrated to Canada 33 years earlier, and who \u201cunderstood my story in a way a person born here wouldn\u2019t be able to,\u201d she says. Eight years later, Ilo is a national desk editor at CP\u2019s Toronto office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nik Kowsar\u2019s story is more typical than Ilo\u2019s, although he too belongs to the small cohort of \u00e9migr\u00e9s earning a living by practising journalism here. Kowsar, whose work for 20 newspapers in Tehran earned him numerous death threats, says his initial years after arriving here in 2003 were trying. \u201cI went from hero to zero. I had a lot of energy to say something, to do something, to be seen, to publish stuff that was useful. I would have loved to get some experience in a Canadian newsroom and not lose that fire I had in my mind and my heart, but it was difficult.\u201d Kowsar spent his first year and a half here working at two dry cleaners before becoming a midnight online editor for Marketwire. All along he worked as a freelance illustrator and, beginning in 2006, filed reports for Radio Zamaneh in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today he runs a citizen journalism forum at khodnevis.org for Iranians in Iran and abroad, and makes his living from illustrations for roozonline.com and the Washington-based Win TV. Most importantly, he has found a way to express himself and the issues he feels passionately about: \u201cI now get e-mails and questions from Canadians because they want to learn more or help. I feel as if I\u2019m giving something back. I\u2019m educating, and that\u2019s positive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oscar Vigil, a Salvadoran journalist, also believes his contribution to Canadian media has been positive even though he now wields just a shadow of the influence he enjoyed as the owner of two radio stations back home.Vigil, his wife and three children, were forced to flee their country in 2001 after repeated death threats and an attempt on his life. In Toronto, given his weak English, he concluded that his future lay outside the Canadian mainstream. He spent three years writing for Correo Canadiense, <\/em>one of Canada\u2019s most influential Spanish-language papers, and two years operating paginauno.ca, a Toronto-Latino community website, before launching his own site, revistadebate.ca, in 2008. Vigil currently supplements his income by writing forEl Popular, <\/em>a Toronto-based Spanish-language paper,<\/em> and freelancing for publications back home. \u201cWhen I came here I had to ask myself what I was going to do. Was I going to sell insurance? Cars?\u201d he asks. \u201cOr was I going to continue to do what I love? What\u2019s more important: the position I had or the profession?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all foreign-born journalists have the same capacity to adapt to their new environments. Kumsa and Mahdavi, for example, have had difficulty diverting their attention from issues they have invested years fighting for. They are accomplished men nearing middle age, and for Mahdavi, the idea of working for an editor who is younger and unaware of the sacrifices he has made on behalf of his craft is hard to accept. There is also the challenge of writing in English: \u201cThose silly articles. They can\u2019t bring back the power of Farsi,\u201d laments Mahdavi of his attempts to express himself at the Spectator. <\/em>In fact, for Mahdavi, the situation in Canada has become so bleak that he is considering a return to Afghanistan despite the risk of imprisonment or assassination. \u201cWhen your life is meaningless it\u2019s like you\u2019re already at the end,\u201d he says despairingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intikhab Amir, a 40-year-old Pakistani journalist, who arrived in Toronto in 2006, is also considering a return home. Amir is another Sheridan graduate, yet aside from a seven-week CBC internship and eight weeks at Torstar\u2019s Metroland, he hasn\u2019t found media work here. He is applying for a master\u2019s program in communications and culture, but if he isn\u2019t accepted and fails to find a good job, he will return to Pakistan and seek work from his former employers, BBC Urdu and Dawn news, Pakistan\u2019s oldest English TV station. \u201cI do not want my daughters to be identified as girls whose father works as a security guard,\u201d he says. \u201cThey tell their fellow students that their dad is a journalist and I don\u2019t want to shatter their dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, there are still journalists willing to employ whatever means necessary in order to practise journalism in Canada, like Kowsar and Vigil, says Vladimir Kabelik, a Czechoslovakian documentary producer and Sheridan professor. In his 2009 documentary So Far from Home<\/em>, he chronicles the lives of five exiles, including Mahdavi and Kowsar, to highlight the professional and personal challenges facing these individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But today Kabelik still can\u2019t identify the magic ingredient that allowed some of his protagonists to keep their careers alive in Canada, while others, like Mahdavi and Kumsa, have floundered. Kabelik says having sound English and good time management skills are essential for success, in addition to being flexible and having the capacity to handle stress. \u201cThere is filter after filter after filter and only a few reach their goal,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you are prone to be depressed or angry, it will backfire.\u201d Kabelik\u2019s colleague, Joyce Wayne, is also baffled. \u201cIt has something to do with just getting a break at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting a break. It\u2019s an observation shared by many of the foreign-born journalists I interviewed: \u201cIf only I get a shot,\u201d they would say. \u201cWe know our English is not as strong\u2014that it might take more time to copy edit our work\u2014but we also bring so much to the newsroom. We have contacts all over the world and unique perspectives and plenty of experience as well, even if it\u2019s not that damned \u2018Canadian experience.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy can\u2019t the media do more to include us?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n