Amy BoughnerI had been impressed with some of the work Jesse Brown was doing on Canadaland so far, but this morning Twitter is full of people talking about Brown’s claim that women from the Globe leaving their jobs because of sexism in the workplace… and the actual women from the Globe who have left for better jobs, not because of sexism, asking why he put them in this story without talking to them.
So I’m forced to wonder how you can critique the job that journalists do if you can’t do good journalism yourself.
Saying that you contacted these women and they didn’t comment when you haven’t done something so simple as tweet at them to get the right email address and then amending the blog post to say that you didn’t actually contact them and they didn’t actually have a chance to comment? Come on.
Indicating that all of this list of women you name left the Globe because they couldn’t take the environment anymore when in fact a majority of them left for different (and better) jobs? That’s just more sexism.
You can’t be a good media critic if you then try to do journalism and cock it up to this degree. You get things wrong and then when the people you were wrong about speak out you then ask them for a real comment and update your story?
That’s not good journalism.
If you want a great stream of consciousness on the topic, go see @Scaachi
It’s frustrating because we do need media critics in this country and there is a problem with sexism in journalism (just like many, many other industries). But when you do the reporting badly that takes away from the story that could actually have been told here.
As cynical as I am, I still believe in the power of good journalism. This was an opportunity wasted.
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