Transcript: Full Press
An episode of The Hub's media criticism podcast
The big news in Canada this week has been The Globe and Mail editorial board’s admission that the industry and the paper bungled the unmarked graves story from 2021 — that this, in fact, constituted a journalistic failure.
In light of this, I am bringing you an episode of my media criticism podcast with The Hub, Full Press, from last week, which took stock of how we in the Canadian media got this story so wrong. This is an especially important conversation, given that the Senate human rights committee this week voted to criminalize residential school denialism, with a penalty of up to two years in prison. (The Canadian Senate as a whole has now voted to reject the criminalization of residential school denialism, voting 41 to 32 against it.)
This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the episode here.
HL: Welcome to Full Press, a media criticism podcast where listeners and viewers can escape the mainstream media echo chambers for a precious 35 minutes every two weeks. I’m Harrison Lowman, managing editor of The Hub. A serious episode we’re getting into today: Exactly five years since the Kamloops Residential School reckoning around the graves, did journalists do their jobs that day, and in the days after — or did we botch it? Also: Why journalists should be adversarial towards government rather than chummy-chummy. As always, I’m joined by my lovely co-hosts, Peter Menzies and Tara Henley. So, a very sombre anniversary we just passed. If you want to learn more about how the media approached this, I remember being at TVO and making some mistakes myself. But Peter, just off the top, from reading your coverage of the coverage that took place five years ago, it seems that you think journalists did one of the largest disservices ever to the Canadian public, in terms of how they covered that story. Why do you think that’s the case?
