Media, Media Bias

CBC wins award for--investigative journalism?

by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,

May 14, 2004

On May 9, the Canadian association of Journalists announced its awards at the association’s annual conference in Vancouver.

The Don McGillivray award for Investigative Journalism in the category of Open Television went to the CBC for a documentary entitled "Kaboom" that was shown on the network’s program, Disclosure.

according to reports, Kaboom was about the prevalence of body checking in children’s hockey. Executive Director of the CaJ, John Dickins, was quoted as saying that the award was given to the CBC because the documentary had national importance, made an impact and was of great importance for hockey parents. as true as that might be, is the putting together of Kaboom investigative reporting?

Well, what would a reporter have to do to determine if body checking is in fact prominent in children’s hockey games? Presumably they would have to go to a lot of children’s games, sit in the stands and watch the little guys and girls body check. This is hardly digging out information like Woodward and Bernstein did during Watergate.

The Society of Professional Journalists as well as Investigative Reporters and Editors have adopted the following definition of investigative reporting. It must include the following three elements:

1. The information reported has to be of importance to the public;
2. The information has to be original work, and;
3. The reportage has to uncover something not previously known that someone is trying to keep hidden.

It can be assumed that the information is, as Dickins said, of importance to the pubic. and it is no doubt original. But Kaboom fails to meet the third branch of the investigation in that the attempts were made to keep the information hidden and the reporters dug it out. Children’s hockey games are not held in secret and there is no attempt to hide the checking that goes on during the games.

The CBC reporters may very well have come up with a different angle on body checking in children’s hockey games and drawn conclusions that had not been drawn before. But that does not qualify the documentary as investigative reporting under the standard definition.

If commenting on body checking during hockey games really does constitute investigative journalism, the award should have gone to Don Cherry.