Staying Alive S02E05: Engaging the Public with Shireen Ahmed SPEAKERS Winston Sih, Shireen Ahmed Winston Sih Media apathy. Many argue it's a contributor to complex issues in modern day society. Issues like voter turnout and election fatigue, democratic engagement, polarization in politics. Just look to our neighbors to the south. The constant talk of politics and everything Donald Trump drives division in U.S. media. It's often amplified and reflected in how newsrooms in Canada cover news in our own backyard. Is it the need to drive ratings in a declining world of viewership and advertising? Is it competition? It's likely a combination of many things. Few legacy broadcasters in Canada like the CBC and CTV drive conversation on television. Now layer in social media, talk radio, newspapers, we've got a very similar and divided political spectrum in a time where everyone has a platform and voice. With consumers relying on digital news more than ever before, where do we go from here? How do we help the public care about local news, strengthen healthy discourse in this polarizing time? I'm Winston Sih, we discuss apathy in media this week on Staying Alive. It's no doubt we live in a world that seems to be spinning faster than ever; politics, current affairs, sports entertainment, many topics drive back to ongoing social issues, real issues that affect marginalized populations, be it social, political, economical, discrimination or exclusion. But just because there's a difference in opinion, doesn't mean we can't have a healthy dialogue. If anything, in many cases, this is paramount to a healthy media ecosystem. I can't think of anyone more appropriate to speak to facilitating these kinds of critical conversations than Shireen Ahmed, a senior contributor for the CBC, CBC Sports, a grad of the Master of Arts and Media Production at Toronto Metropolitan University, and teaches sports media at The Creative School. Shireen, welcome. Shireen Ahmed Thank you for having me! Winston Sih I so appreciate you coming on. And it's such an interesting time when it comes to public engagement in the media. Now, you cover a range of social issues in sports media, and you've done so, so eloquently. And also, you do so on a variety of legacy broadcasters. You previously worked with TSN and now you work at the public broadcaster, the CBC. Now sports is a tough space to challenge the quote, "norm", pushing against dated ways of thinking. So I want to start off by asking you what drives your motivation to continue this conversation, and so many important discussions in this space? Shireen Ahmed Well, thank you for that. And noting that, you know, it's not always easy is I think really important here. But the work in journalism never is and storytelling and capturing truths as they come out whether it's stories of athletes, or whether providing context for issues, it was really important to me and I firmly believe that sports has been a catalyst for so many important discussions. And one of the greatest platforms since the murder of George Floyd in 2020 to talk about things, such as racial injustice, to talk about homophobia, and right now transphobia in sport, that's really come to a point where there's a complete persecution of people from that community. And those things are really important to me. And I, truthfully, I get accused of, "why are you ruining sports?" or making it political, but for me, someone who's a racialized hijab-wearing woman, my identity within sports has always been political. So, you know, I think about that from that lens. And everything we do is political, and no one will ever be able to convince me that sports isn't. I think that journalists really need a place to be able to discuss things. And I want my students to think that way as well. Winston Sih How do you take the criticism that you get online? Because no doubt in the work that you do, a lot of it is based in engagement. And you get a lot of comments on Twitter. Shireen Ahmed This is a conversation I have and I'm grateful for the women and non-binary folks in this space, is because we support each other as a community and I manage it very well that way. I've learned from others. I've also learned how I don't want to deal with it. I don't engage. I don't respond, because I'm busy doing the work and if women, racialized folks or those in the margins — queer journalists — spent all their time battling people who are being abusive, we wouldn't have time to do the actual work. Twitter and those places was a place once upon a time where you could talk to others in DMs and offer support or show solidarity via social media for someone. It was a really important journalistic tool in the sports space, because the fastest way to disseminate a score was definitely through Twitter. The faster that you put out something or publish, the faster you can get commentary. I publish a column weekly and then I have an online notebook, which is called Joy Drop, which is supposed to be like, literally just happy things. And you would be shocked, or perhaps not, how quickly people jump in there to be really mean to me. That particular thing is not supposed to be at the height of critical analysis. My columns on Monday are. There's some people that are going to come at you, regardless of what you say. Sort of keep that in mind as I go and then I get support and Winston truthfully, people like you, like my friends, and my community and colleagues from around the world that the woman in sports space is really not a big one. It's a fairly small community, like in England, or Australia, or South Africa, I have friends all over the world, South America, the United States, so we know each other. So, we really lean on each other and provide that support and encouragement. Winston Sih One of the things that we talk about in media quite often is apathy. And, you know, you look at what is happening stateside with the upcoming U.S. elections again. You look at what's happening right here at home. And then you look at spaces like sports, where there is always conversation that is parallel to what is happening in society. There is a growing divide of trust between the media and the public. How does the online media play into this kind of social public discourse? Do you believe that social media drives apathy in media, when we look through the lens of legacy media as it exists today? Shireen Ahmed So the sports space is really interesting. It's one of the places where we face the most resistance and having conversations that make people uncomfortable. But if you're being intentionally anti-oppressive, intentionally anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and combating anti-ndigeneity, or xenophobia, anti-Semitism, whatever, the readers would be like, “no, no, we don't want that.” You know, “we don't want any of that.” And I don't know if I would say it's as much apathy because I've seen quite a bit of compassion from the sports world and from the public who are really engaged in these conversations. And I find that heartening. I like to hear as much as I get comments that are not nice, I have gotten emails from people who are really quite kind and saying, you know, "I didn't think of it like that." One example is when Queen Elizabeth died. And I wrote a piece — I'm the daughter of identifying South Asian heritage and the effect of colonialism, I don't need to explain to anybody, and they know, it's all there. And just the effect on how that played out in sports. I wrote a column and somebody wrote me and said, "I really never thought of it that way, and the impact it would have on future generations, like nobody considered intergenerational trauma." So when you add these pieces into it, I like to be optimistic and say the glass is half full, because also keeping in mind that those telling the stories don't look like me. My vertical in sports journalism and sport media in Canada is probably 93 to 95 per cent, white, able-bodied cis-hets. And that also impacts how those stories are told and how people receive them. Winston Sih So I think of you talking about how you are one of a few in Canada to really push these conversations in sports. You are a woman, you are a racialized woman. Do you look up to anyone as you do this really important work? Who are some of your role models? Shireen Ahmed One person who had given me support from day one was Morgan Campbell, who is now a colleague. Morgan was the first person in this entire industry to look at me, give me a nod and say, "Wow, yeah, you're smart." I think Morgan is incredible and it's no mistake that he's a Black man who helped keep the door open for me when it was heavy and felt like it kept closing. Dave Zirin, who is the editor for The Nation in the United States, is one of the reasons why I think I'm here. I saw his work, critical analysis on race...He didn't dive so much into gender because obviously, being a man, he weighed in on things that were important, but also created space. In fact, one of my interactions with him online was me tweeting him and going, "Are you going to let a woman talk about women's issues, or are you just gonna keep doing it?" And to his credit, he replied and said, "Do you want to come on my show?" Christine Simpson has been in hockey broadcasting for a really long time. Tara Sloane. Kayla Gray. I mean, Kayla younger than me. But you know, of course, we can look up to those younger than us. I look up to my students. It doesn't mean you have to get along and agree with everyone's viewpoint. There's another woman Amrit Gill, who I think is fantastic. She worked Hockey Night in Punjabi. And definitely a shout out to the academics Dr. Courtney Szto, and my co-hosts of the Burn it All Down podcast I co-created. It's a tough space to exist in and that's when I mentioned community, so I'm grateful to everybody who's in that space that I can look to for guidance and look to for helping, you know, fuel the fire. Winston Sih I want to go back to trust and news. You work with the public broadcaster. And according to Pew Research, U.S. adults under 30 now trust information from social media almost as much as from a national news outlet. What is your reaction when you hear statistics like that, because I think it's really interesting that you work both in a legacy media environment, but also publish online and engage with your readers and viewers on social media. Shireen Ahmed One of the things that troubles me about that is I do get a lot of my own information online. It's from specific sites where I know that editorially, there is a responsibility that’s adhered too. I have published online from everything national, international platforms, but have also published at West End Phoenix locally in Toronto and published in Time Magazine. The intentionality behind my practice is the same at both places. You're not more ethical when you report more professionally and precisely for a bigger outlet. It doesn't work like that. You put all of yourself into your work, irrespective of where you are publishing. But my problem is, with the online stuff, sometimes I feel like people don't credit photo journalists or don't put hyperlinks in or aren't able to because of a word count. And that does worry me because those pieces are actually really important. Whether someone's broken a story, you sort of give them a nod or something like that. And there's some sites that have a better reputation journalistically speaking, I'm someone who firmly believes in independent media, grassroots media, because I was independent for so long. You stand by the principles and ethics at the place and the standards of practice. But sometimes journalists get away with a little more than I think should be done. And I know that timing and deadlines are excruciatingly important. But at the same time, there are certain things that will lead to that mistrust. This is something that we need to pay attention to in the journalism industry. And I think we're a little late for, at how tangible people think that formats like Instagram, or Snapchat, or Tik Tok are, and they are legitimate forms of storytelling. I teach them in my class, but you can still be responsible as you do that. You can still tell a whole story responsibly. And I don't see people doing that. And I think short cuts are not a good thing. If you do your best to do that, then you're providing a good story with a good basis and good context and a solid foundation. And that's all you can do. The conversation comes up all the time about a place like 6ixBuzz, where they're getting their photos, where they're getting their information, where is this happening from? And I think that we're in a time that everyone wants to snap their fingers really quickly, and just get information instantaneously. And that worries me a little bit. Winston Sih And there's often a misunderstanding of news. And you know, I think of terms like misinformation or fake news. We know, former President Donald Trump used those words quite often, just because one doesn't agree with a piece of reporting doesn't necessarily make it fake news. But at the same time, just because it's on the news. And we know there are news outlets out there that purport to be news, but are flooded with opinion, doesn't mean that it's true. So do you believe there's a bigger importance of demystifying disinformation nowadays? Shireen Ahmed Yeah, I really think that's such an important topic. And one that I would love to see on like a panel of journalists and discuss like was the harm that was created when he started talking about fake news. If you didn't like a specific viewpoint, then you were discarded and your merit was sort of thrown aside, which was incredibly horrifying and really frustrating for journalists in the margins, who politically didn't like what Donald Trump was saying, but we're still reporting or even in this country, we know that racism doesn't stop and and that certainly occurs in Canada. But we saw that happening here. I get a lot of that on my comments. I am factually explaining what happened and breaking down something and hyperlinking and making sure to be very honest with you, Winston, and you know this, I've talked to you, but I double check everything I do. I triple check it because I can't have room for error. Because as we talked about earlier, the abuse hurled at me if I do make a mistake is pretty intense. So I have to be really careful. You know, my editor was quite vigilant. But at the same time, there's some people out there that whatever I say they're like, “Oh, this is wrong”. It's not fake news that something that said to discredit journalist. I find it so frustrating when I see it because one of the things as journalists that you pride yourself in is that you put work into making sure that it is credited information. It's a distraction mechanism, and it's a tool of white supremacy in my opinion to — for those that are working with any type of anti-oppression lens or even that are just basically reporting. I mean, I knew Friends of the United States that were so scared to do their jobs because of this, and you can't be tentative as a journalist. You gotta go in, you got to go in fully. If you can't do your job the way you're supposed to, then it's terrible. It's not a good thing at all. So when I hear fake news, it really bugs me. Winston Sih You brought up abuse, hate comments, threats, you know, that's something that is a reality for many journalists who are publishing material online. Luckily, you have the resource of editors at the CBC to be able to help you fact check in to make sure that you get it right. But of course, we know many independent voices don't have access to those same voices. Do you think abused hate comments, threats, discourages diverse voices in Canadian media? Shireen Ahmed I'm a believer in independent journalism. But that doesn't mean I do everything from start to finish on my own, whether, you know, I published in Chatelaine or published at The Walrus, they'll have somebody fact checking, they'll have an editor to a copy editor, and then someone else working with me. But I do think it's really important. And I can't stress this enough to people, for journalists, for writers, whether it's audio or video to really pay attention to the minutia. I teach at the school of journalism as well. And I have students that sometimes intern and they've come back and said, “Well, you know, the producer or the editor said that we shouldn't hyperlink because it'll take someone away from our site.” Well, that's no then fight for it. Insist. I've been in positions where I've had no power. And I said, “No, I want that hyperlink in there.” And one particular place I worked for was so like, No, we're not doing that. So when I tweeted out the story, I actually physically tweeted out “source from this, this, this, this.” Because I felt compelled to do so sometimes it drives my editor a little, he's a little he's very patient with me. Let's put it that way. Because sometimes you over hyperlink. And I've actually had people reach out to me and say, “Well, why didn't you hyperlink this, that I said it,” and if they're Black, Indigenous or from a racialized community, I really want to give them that attention and help amplify those whose voices aren't traditionally amplified. And as far as the abuse goes, you sort of deal with that on a day to day and I'm not saying that people are getting used to me, because there are still folks out there that are really angry that the sports department decided to hire a brown hijab-wearing woman to tell them their sports, some people just will never get over it. But that is not a me problem. That's a them problem. And as long as I'm doing what I need to do, and I have the support of my colleagues, and where I work, that means a lot to me. Because I work at the CBC, the comments are always open as a part of a policy because we're the public broadcaster. But I'm not going to say don't scroll the comments I do. So one time I wrote a piece on Bobby Hall, who was canned basically from being the Chicago NHL teams ambassador, because he had allegedly been abusive, and there were stories written about it. I had written a column that I didn't think he was the right person. And it was a good thing that he was dismissed from that role. People got really, really angry, and finally had to kind of say to my editor, who also doesn't monitor the comments, just people that have been like violent, like that are being really hateful. And then he shut the comments down. And if the comments are shut off, people will find me via my email address, or they'll find me via my website. I had one person go as far as to get into my DMs on Instagram and tell me what a terrible person I am. You see the lengths that people go through to be terrible. You get to see a side of people that isn't always pretty. So that's why I really appreciate being able to do Joy Drop. Because it lets me focus on joy as a form of resistance. And that is in sport in particular, that's something that has really resonated with me. Winston Sih Now, when we look at media, we can look at legacy media, we can look at online media, television, radio, there are multiple camps. So there's a camp, that news is news. And then of course, there are people that I would say, like you who offer context through news reporting, and then you look at other outlets, and there's pure opinion, which we know sometimes always isn't based. in fact. Where is the line? How do we change the narrative on journalism's role in society? Is it making it clear what is opinion and what is news? How do we build that trust with the public? Shireen Ahmed A part of what I'm really interested in doing is bridging gaps between academics and journalists, because the research is being done by academics and researchers. But sometimes there's no public access to that information. So I also consider that pool of, you know, sports sociologists, cultural anthropologists, sports historians, and those who are working in the spaces part of my arsenal. But at the same time, I do actually really rely and scaffold off of the work of beat journalists. There's a particular journalist in my office, email dicta are miles sector and I will work off Miles's work. I will use CBC or Canadian Press wire stories in my own columns. I'm very careful to stay informed. I need to be aware of eporting around me around this issue, make sure my research is up to date. Before I get out there and say somethin, in particular because I'm acutely aware of how I posit and what I look like as well. Punditry is not journalism. Punditry is punditry. For somebody to get in there and start making wide generalist comments and generalizations, it's pretty dangerous. Because like I said before, people don't always understand the different roles in media. And a pundit isn't a journalist, they're not trained the same way, they don't have the same purpose. And you know, just as a columnist has a different role than someone who's reporting from the ground. And all of those things can be important, but I think they need to be applied carefully in their own way. Winston Sih Do you believe there's a balanced way to build and sustain trust with audiences, but still foster a healthy space for these kinds of social and political discussions? Shireen Ahmed I believe that journalism was meant to be dynamic. And we've seen particularly since 2020, since the murder of George Floyd, the way that sport has been used to be a vehicle for conversations about race and about justice, and about police brutality and about so many other things. So there is a way that we can shift and do that. But I think some places are more reluctant. And because of the fact that newsrooms are predominantly white and may not have that same understanding, the demographic of people who make decisions is all the same. Having fresh perspectives and people from different lenses is really important. What I think about a lot is who's missing from the room, who's not here, who is not offering perspective. I think about that a lot. In Canada, there's not a single full-time Indigenous sports journalist, and I think about who's kind of pointing the direction of what we're looking and is it the same lens that we're looking through? I really do think that journalists really need to have faith in the readers or listeners, the viewers, and what they're putting out there. You have to know that the public trusts you to tell them the truth or tell them something that is sensible in that way, right? The truth of a Black athlete is not going to necessarily be the same as the white owner. You tell the stories as they come. And that's important. Sometimes I feel like my job is to compare the two and say, “Well, look, there's two different perspectives. And here's the one coming from the Black athlete that might not get the amplification that it serves.” Winston Sih Now we know there's no solution. But there are practices that can support positive discourse in these very complex topics. So I want to end things on a positive note. Where do you see optimism and opportunity in many of these spaces where conversations are challenging these longtime status quos? Shireen Ahmed I think there's the practice … certain practices that are being adopted more widely. One is harm reduction. Our job is not to do harm, right? And that's something that I've really wanted to also impart on my students. Abuse in sport is a huge topic right now. And we've discovered through incredible journalism, that NSOs in this country are really in crisis. And looking at something with anti-oppression lens and seeing that more often and seeing people provide or look for experts that are racialized or from marginalized communities, that gives me a lot of hope too that we're not all looking to the same expert. One of the most optimistic things I've always seen is the growth of women's sport, because in the women's sports space, you're not just a woman covering women's sports or a woman athlete or a non-binary athlete covering their trans athletic covering that we're here advocating for our own existence. At the same time, to see the way with grace that[a] people do it is outstanding to me. And one of the things that brings me the most joy truly is a lot of work, but is teaching and seeing the direction the students are going in and the way that they're thinking, and that I have the privilege to be able to stand there and talk to them about, well, how are you going to go with this story? Which way will you go at this, and I see them and it brings me a lot of hope. We get them when they're not jaded, they're excited about it. And it's a very difficult time also, the pandemic shifted a lot of things in the industry, but sometimes disruptions lead to new pathways I'm excited to see in this country in particular, because Canada is quite stagnant in the way that can have conversations about race or about justice. And I like the direction that was going. Winston Sih I think I liked what you said — disruption really leads to new pathways. I think it's so important to have healthy dialogue. It's one of the best ways to drive public engagement, especially in these archaic systems where the status quo hasn't changed in so long. So it's these conversations that will really push that forward. So thank you so much for your work that you do, Shireen. I know I'm a personal fan of yours. I listen to your podcasts. I know we're personal friends as well. So I really appreciate you taking the time to join us on Staying Alive. Shireen Ahmed Yeah, and thank you so much Winston. The work that you're doing about local newsrooms and their importance and using generals invaluable and I'm so grateful and thank you for having me on the show. Winston Sih Shireen Ahmed is a senior contributor for the CBC, CBC Sports and of course teaches sports media at the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University. Next episode, we discuss representation in Canadian Broadcasting. How do we sustain and support representation in all communities across Canada? And how do we shift the way we tell stories and do so in a meaningful manner? That's next on Staying Alive. I'm Winston Sih. Thanks for listening. [a]?