, life just might be better with the added flavour.

Cue Lainey Liu. Perhaps the most journalistic of celebrity bloggers weighing in on the vain frivolities of the trivialatti. I say journalistic if journalism means these three things: research and writing and current events. She is, however, not objective, not without opinion and not shy about editorializing. And loudly at that. Yet, she does consider the interest of her on-line public, certainly values accuracy, and concentrates on the larger societal contexts that permit celebrities to be celebrated. Social commentary is the name of her journalistic game.

She also testifies to her own occasional shameless self-promotion (she often links out to ETalk Canada, where her talents have landed her a regular gig reporting on Canadians in Hollywood), makes it very clear when a post is sponsored by an advertiser (she runs national campaigns for condoms, hair products and wireless networks… oh my) and also kindly thanks her readers every day for their loyalty. She says she reads every email her readers send, but LaineyGossip.com doesn’t allow comments — a detriment to blogging but a strategy that maintains the vision of the site. Nonetheless, I’d like to know what a few of these readers — out of the roughly 800,000 daily page views and 500,000 unique hits per week — have to say.

Her enterprising spirit is admirable and she has broken several celebrity stories (including Angelina Jolie’s first pregnancy). But, frankly, I could care less about most of the content. For me, the sheer pleasure of reading Lainey is the humour, insight and clarity of the writing. I know all about a. bunch. of. topics. I. could. care. less. about. because I am all over the judgmental wit and crude honesty with which she reports. I am seriously stupefied that I will read all about Jessica Simpson’s stage, wardrobe and love lives because of Lainey’s original take on the singer’s personal issues. Go figure. For me, despite the famous subjects, it’s not just superficial. Lainey addresses organized religion, child stardom, nepotism, drug abuse, homophobia, and other deceits.

Like the deceitfulness behind manipulating and marketing a celebrity image.  Part of a greater narrative, Lainey is essential reading for anyone who as ever glanced at a supermarket tabloid, Googled Hilton sex-tape, or believed that Tom Cruise is 5’10”. Today’s celebrity blogging culture is one effort to put the knife through the heart of what Daniel Boorstin coined a “pseudo-event.” And because so much of tabloid culture revolves around a symbiotic relationship between the famous and the press, it’s enlightening to have the wool pulled back from our eyes.

A British postfeminist theorist who has turned her studies to celebrity and gossip cultures has also paid close attention to LaineyGossip.com. She writes:

Blogs encourage a cynical awareness of the production of celebrity culture and encourage us to question the mechanisms through which we are positioned as consumers.

On invasion of privacy, master marketing and why Lainey will always be buying what Jolie and Brad Pitt have to sell:

As I’ve written again and again, this is a family of 8, hunted everywhere, that can disappear when they want to. For as long as they want to. They have the money, they are willing to spend the money, and they do it when they need to. When they don’t want to be photographed. They do it wherever they are. They do it around the world. They do it in Vietnam. They do it with the local authorities, they can afford to have rules bent, to have policies and procedures overridden, they do it because they don’t cut corners. They do not haggle. They are willing to pay for what they want.

And so when they are “found”, it is almost never an accident. They are “found” because they want to be found. They are photographed because they want/need to be photographed. Photographed for the same Brangelunatics [fans of Pitt and Jolie] who are salivating over new images of the Chosen Family all while protesting the so called aggressive actions of the intrusive paparazzi.

Oh really?

Then pick a side. Either never look at “candids” of the Brange, or shut the fuck up and appreciate that they are playing us like Lionel Ritchie, all night long.

Just because I buy doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s being sold.

Covering the lives of the trivialatti is not all fun and games, and in 2004, with the advent of sites like this, the Poynter Institute asked why we cover celebrities anyway:

The news media, imperfect as they are, constitute the central nervous system of our society and communications infrastructure for the culture. We are the essential plumbing — we carry useful information, including information on changing values, priorities, and shared challenges. But we also carry (or maybe spread is the better word here) that which weakens, that which corrodes, that which debases.

The British theorist has little respect for anonymous, lazy, snarky, rumour-mongering and frankly slanderous commentary:

[...] unlike gossip magazines, blogs are beholden to no journalistic standards and rely on unsubstantiated rumors, unsourced stories, unflattering candid photography and acerbic commentary. Gossip bloggers often prefer to remain anonymous and many sites rely on members of the public providing content, which is posted without attribution. Indeed, the outing of bloggers has now become a pastime of the mainstream media.

And hence why I buy what Lainey is selling. I think she is credible, can corroborate her information, her commentary is second to none and — perhaps the true test of celebrity coverage — after all else, she is entertaining.

Image from LickMyLolly.com

This is the network’s second Canadian coming (I’ll get to that) and I like to think it will bode well for news organizations and journalists in our country. I have high hopes for Al-Jazeera English in Canada because the global network, according to their own information, is broadcast to more than 130 households worldwide and airs in more than 100 countries. It’s time Canada was on that list.

Tony Burman of Al Jazeera English. Photo by Aaron Tam.

During a UBC Graduate School of Journalism panel on international reporting, Tony Burman, managing editor with Al-Jazeera English, said a cable carrier will apply to CRTC (the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) for the right to broadcast the network.

He said an announcement is imminent. I say fantastic.

Al-Jazeera was approved for broadcast in Canada in 2004, but no cable carrier touched the Arabic-language network because it would have been responsible “any abusive comment” and would have been required to “alter or delete the programming of Al Jazeera solely for the purpose of ensuring that no abusive comment is distributed.” This content restriction was the first in CRTC history.

For some, this amounted to censorship for our own good. But Al-Jazeera’s history of antisemitism, fear-mongering and hate-speech is well documented. Some believe it exists solely as a tool for Jewish persecution, and for these reasons its arrival in Canada is hotly contentious.

But praise for Al-Jazeera reporters also comes from within Israel. And reporting, I believe, will be the defining strength of Al-Jazeera English.

As Maclean’s blogger, Michael Petrou, asks:

If Al Jazeera is widely available, and watched, in Israel, if a writer at Israel’s most important newspaper [Haaretz] can praise Al Jazeera while Israel is at war with an Arab Islamist movement, why have lobby groups such as the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith sought to prevent its distribution in Canada? And why do Canadians accept that the bureaucrats at the CRTC should decide how much abusive commentary we can handle?

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Burman, who has been with Al-Jazeera English for less than a year, spent nearly four decades with the CBC as a key executive producer and editor-in-chief of news programming. He left the Canadian broadcaster to bring the Qatar-based broadcaster to North America. At UBC this week he said he will miss the CBC.

In some ways I never left. What we are trying to do [at Al-Jazeera English] is a lot like what the CBC did during its great years.

Al-Jazeeera is not a personal soapbox for the Taliban, and Burman said the network does not indiscriminately air content, namely video of hostages. He has taken some ribbing for his late-career change, but winks his way through an infamous Al-Jazeera affiliation.

I have friends who think I dine regularly with Osama bin Laden. But I confess–I have only met him a dozen times.

Al-Jazeera is still in the business of news, it remains a delivery system and it is accountable to its vastly growing, international audience.

The 24-hour news network has four broadcast centres in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington, files from 69 global bureaus, and counts diverse newsrooms with more than 400 journalists from over 60 countries. It has numerous media properties and claims to hold itself to high standards of journalistic integrity. We know media slogans, such as “fair and balanced,” come with a grain of salt the size of a meteor, but this is what Al-Jazeera expects of itself:

Al Jazeera English’s broadcast shifts as the world turns providing the most comprehensive and contextual news coverage. Al Jazeera English’s mission is to provide independent, impartial news for an international audience and to offer a voie to a diversity of perspectives from under-reported regions.

In addition, the channel aims to balance the information flow between the South and the North. The channel of reference for the Middle East and Africa, AJE has unique access to some of the world’s most troubled and controversial locations. AJE’s determination and ability to accurately reflect the truth on the ground in regions torn by conflict and poverty has set our content apart.

And as Burman said:

Most people in Canada have never seen Al-Jazeera.

But we can vet the website, where editorial distinctions are evident but not pervasive. (The War On Gaza, for example, is different than CNN’s Gaza Crisis.)

Access to the live Al-Jazeera news feed will enhance Canadians’ broad picture of the international scene, will broadcast perspectives and news we can’t access now, and will increase our awareness of conflict from places North American and British outlets don’t go. And because the network likes to employ local reporters–or at least reporters well embedded in the community–there is an air of credibility that I trust. For Canadian journalists, I am optimistically (and mabye naively) imagining there will be work available for us to report from within our own borders for Al-Jazeera’s world-wide audience.

The CRTC should allow Al-Jazeera English to air in Canada, uncensored.

Conrad Black takes questions from the press during his 2007 fraud trial in Chicago. Photo: Mediabistro.com

Members of the Lords of the House currently sit for life. Even an act of high treason only merits a suspension while the sentence is served–the most serious punishment for breaking the rules is having to say sorry.

Also known as Baron Black of Crossharbour, or Lordy to some, Black is serving his first year of a nearly seven-year sentence in a Florida prison for fraud and obstruction of justice.

The one-time chief executive and president of Holligner International (now the Sun-Times Media Group), a newspaper group that included the National Post, the Jerusalem Post, The Daily Telegraph and the Chigago Sun-Times. For the honourific, prestige and status implicit in the title of baron, Black renounced his Canadian citizenship.

His comeuppance was sweet fodder for the columnists and editorialists who felt Black’s criminal pursuits was an extension of his greed, pretensions and pompous airs.

But his Lordship may be stripped of that precious capital-L, as the Times Online details:

Peers who avoid tax or have criminal convictions – such as Lord Archer and Lord Black – are to be expelled from the House of Lords in the wake of the lords for hire scandal.

The reforms are being drawn up by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, in an attempt to restore the Lords’ battered reputation after last weekend’s revelations in The Sunday Times. He plans to enact the legislation necessary to expel them before the general election, which has to be held by May next year.

Peers who are “non-domiciled” or “non-resident” for tax purposes – there are thought to be at least seven – will lose their seats, as will those who have been convicted of a serious criminal offence.

If this legislation is passed and indeed brings Black a little closer to earth, he will have intrepid investigative journalism to thank. The man that was welcomed as an officer of the Order of Canada in 1990 as a “distinguished Toronto entrepreneur and publisher,” has many loyal and admiring former employees and brought competition to the country’s national newspaper scene, could be lessened in stature because of good reporting and skilled reporters at the Times.

But, if this image didn’t succeed in humbling the Baron, what can?

They call you back, they ask about your deadline, they don’t make it so apparent they’re avoiding your questions, and they make an attempt to provide information as if it weren’t actually the spin they want you to have. Hype and truth collide in the realm of public relations, and Sheldon Rampton calls this the age of virtual factuality.

Sometimes the pro’s job is to thwart you.

So when I met–we’ll call him Victor–at a presser this week, I blew off his gray silk suit and violet tie. He was tall, balding and peered at the pages of my notebook as I scribbled. But he smiled after asking what publication I was with–the Globe and Mail brings credibility, no doubt. (It was a two-week internship, which I’ve written about earlier and is now over.)

I was at a hotel near Vancouver’s city hall to hear an announcement from a group of private health providers. (You can read my story and an excellent, more nuanced article on the same issues here.) I knew they were filing a lawsuit against the province and wanted B.C.’s courts to weigh in on the 2005 Chaoulli v. Quebec case. I won’t go into the arguments, ideologies or histories here, but needless to say, this legal challenge has enormous implications for Medicare in our province.

In the lobby of the hotel, I asked a woman with a recorder and notebook about the conference. It was upstairs. She had been asked to leave. Turns out, this was Colleen Fuller, a recognized left-leaning health policy analyst. She once worked with a union representing public-sector, hospital professionals.

So, once the press conference had wrapped, I asked Victor if the meeting was considered public.

It’s a press conference.

It’s public?

It’s for the press–media only.

Why did you ask Colleen Fuller to leave?

Who is that?

She is a policy analyst and her forte is health care.

I don’t know who that is.

Why did you asked her to leave?

This meeting is for the media only.

What were you concerned she’d do?

This meeting is for the media only.

Were you worried she would ask questions like the reporters did during the hour-long meeting?

She’s with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, right?

So you do know who she is. All the information today will be made public, including the documents filed in court–why did you ask her to leave?

She’s not media.

Could you tell me your name, please.

This isn’t for attribution.

That’s fine, but could you please tell me your name.

Are you going to attribute this?

No. But I would still like to know who I was speaking with.

Not if it’s for attribution.

I said that’s fine.

No.

Fine. She’s downstairs. I’m going to speak with her.

Who do you work for? Who?

Perfect, Victor. Feel free to complain to my editor. Feel free to call him up, say you’re managing a communications team for private surgery clinics who are suing the government, and tell him I was pushing you to answer my questions. Do it. I’ll thank you for the endorsement.

For two quick weeks, I’m interning at the Bureau and am starting to understand what it takes to get the paper on hundreds of thousands of doorsteps each day. I am a very small cog in a large, sophisticated machine of specialized skill, wit, efficiency and nerves. And personalities.

Reporters are ultimately responsible for their work, but there are editors that help keep copy clean and aim to address any unanswered questions in a story. But these editors are only working with what the reporter has put together and doesn’t have the pile of facts, interviews and research amassed during the day. Their task is knowing what questions to ask.

Yesterday I wrote about BC teachers and I asked the copy editor–who reached me by phone after deadline from the copy desk in Toronto–about the tone of the story. (My dad is a teacher and I have strong opinions on the issues I was writing about.)

She also questioned this phrase at the end of the story: Mr Roberts was unable to return phone calls.

“Why was he unable?”

“He was busy with others, and his assistant said he was in meetings.”

“So it was his choice not to call.”

“I suppose.”

“Then he was able. He was just unwilling.”

The notes I took over drinks yesterday had to do with good editing. Here is some of what Rod Mickleburgh, Wendy Stueck and Matthew Sekeres had to say:

1. The best editors make you better: they make the work better and they make the reporter better, too.

2. The best editors are smart, natch, but they are also focused, clear-thinking and flexible. A reporter can disagree with feedback, and the editor needs to consider what’s being defended and why.

3. The best editors keep their cool. Theirs are the last eyes to see the copy and although the work is ultimately the responsibility of the reporter, editors handle quality control under strict time pressures and need to keep their head on straight.

4. Editors are your friend. The mutual goal is to reach the highest standards and no one should ever forget that. An editor’s interest is in the strength of the journalism.

5. Mickleburgh is God. (At least that’s what someone wrote in my book when I was on the phone with the copy editor.)

Investigative reporting, he says, is suited to a particular kind of mind-set. Curiosity. Determination. Passion. Patience for bureaucracy. Ability to wade through the crap. And perhaps a touch of emotional imbalance.

Also, a deep respect for the daily reporter. (And never call them run-of-the-mill.)

Cribb’s investigations include stories on illegal slaughterhouses, irresponsible doctors, sleazy landlords, airline safety, sex-driven city officials, driving instructors with shameful driving infringements and government corruption. It would be nice if I could write that The Star’s investigation team is a model for more Canadian news organizations. It should be.

Cribb favours compiling a water-tight thesis and nailing down documented evidence before approaching sources with the implicating information. He will then throw down a headline that drops like a nuclear bomb on the front page. This is not the trickling stream of information embodied by the Washington Post investigation of Watergate.

He trolls for information and maintains a document state-of-mind, which he feeds by filing access to information requests. He thrashes federal and provincial agencies for their lack of transparency and inability to adhere to freedom of information and access to information laws. His home province is the worst offender, with B.C. running second, according to an annual report from the Canadian Newspaper Association.

But being denied only spurs Cribb to work harder.

When required by the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner to pay $148,000 for health inspection reports from of Toronto-area restaurants, Cribb felt he was given the middle finger. He returned the gesture by getting to work–he knew the public would benefit from knowing the facts that were being held ransom. In February, 2000, his 4,156-word expose Dirty Dining prompted the city to adopt DineSafe and program that forces restaurants to wear their sanitation on their sleeve, er, post on the front door of their venue. Cribb was asked to pay nearly $150,000 for information that is now posted on-line where all citizens can access it for free.

From Dirty Dining:

A Star investigation into restaurant inspections in Toronto’s old city region reveals an underfunded system that completes fewer than half the inspections required by the province, rarely issues fines to eateries, hasn’t shut any down in the past two years and keeps the public in the dark about about chronic offenders.

The investigation also found serious shortcomings throughout the province. Not a single health board is meeting inspection requirements set out under provincial rules.

Toronto inspection data from the past two years (1998-99), obtained for the first time by The Saturday Star, show more than 750 restaurants in the old city received at least one citation for a “critical” food safety problem – the most serious kind of infraction, which can lead to food poisoning and other food-borne illnesses.

Dozens of these restaurants show histories of food safety problems, but are still permitted to serve food to unwitting diners without penalty or public knowledge.

Unlike food outlets in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago or Atlanta, which are required by law to post inspection reports, Toronto restaurants are off the hook.

The Star obtained 1998 and 1999 inspection reports for 27 restaurants within the boundaries of the old city of Toronto.

They show that restaurants with counter tops stained with rodent droppings, live vermin near raw meat, unwashed hands and improperly cooked meat, almost never face penalties or public scrutiny.

In the past two years, only 11 of the old city’s 6,895 restaurants have been fined for food safety problems, according to city documents. And none has been forcibly closed down.

Not that you should need any convincing now, but you can also watch this interview.

Stephanie Nolen, who says journalism should not be confused with activism, now reports for the Globe and Mail from India.

An excellent writer above all else, Nolen very recently retired her post as the Globe and Mail’s Africa bureau chief and on Saturday filed her first piece as the paper’s New Delhi correspondent. She is a talented reporter, often leading with harrowing anecdotes about the lives of the people she interviewed. She has three National Newspaper Awards for her tremendous work.

I asked her, as a human rights reporter, which was her most powerful tool. I expected her to answer her sources, or an individual’s story. Her answer, which you can read below, surprised me.

When Nolen began at the post five years ago, Globe editor Edward Greenspon praised her to the high heavens–a move Nolen chides as a PR move for the paper. But her work (along with the political and economical awakening of the continent) has led the masthead’s leadership to take another, more lasting look. In the September, 2003, these were Greenspon’s words on A2:

Africa is not high on the list of strategically important places, and my patience is thin for the politically correct reporting that Africa seems to inspire.The Globe operated a bureau in Nairobi for several years in the 1960s and then opened one again — in Harare — in 1983 to cover South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. The bureau closed in 1989 after the South African government refused to issue a work visa to our correspondent.

With Nolen now in India, former Beijing correspondent Geoffrey York now fills her prolific shoes in Johannesburg. Let’s hope it’s a sign the bureau is a lasting one for the paper.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Nolen a year ago during the release of her third book. Centred on 28 lives chosen to represent the 28 million Africans living with AIDS, 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa is a remarkable, humanising achievement that succeeds in putting an individual’s face on the pandemic. Throughout, of course, the writing shines.

Between Montreal at 4 a.m. and J’burg in the middle of the day, our Skype line was a little sketchy and Nolen was juggling office responsabilities, guests and a very secure front door. As Greenspon wrote half a decade ago: “Life’s always an adventure with Stephanie; and she can handle herself under fire.”

Q&A with Stephanie Nolen — December, 2007

Is there a typical day for you as the Globe and Mail’s Africa correspondent?

SN: No. (laughs) It’s a  never-ending series of huge problems, basically.

When you say problems, are you talking HR headaches or not being able to reach the President of Liberia on her personal line?

SN: In order to have HR problems, I’d have to have staff. I am by myself for 53 countries and so this morning I have had an argument with the embassy in Mali about them giving me a visa. I have had another argument with my travel agent about where my ticket for Swaziland for tomorrow is. I have had an argument with the African National Congress press people over whether or not I’m accredited for the national conference next week. It’s like that.

If you need some help—I’m available.

SN: The frustrating thing about this, there is a budget for me to have a staff, but the majority of the stuff that needs to be done around here is actually stuff I have to do myself. I’m figuring out how I’m going to get to Timbuktu – literally – in January and I called a travel agent who theoretically specializes in Africa and she has absolutely no idea how I can get there. So I told her I have to go through Bombako and it seems no body flies to Bombako so I say Ethiopian Airlines flies to Bombako and they will take me to Addis Ababa, and she says the flights aren’t on the same days, and I say, I know, they have this thing at the airport where they put you up. And these are all things I  know from four years of doing this, but no body else knows so it’s very difficulty for anyone else to be of very much help to me.
But it you find yourself in J’burg…

What do you make of Edward Grenspon’s glowing praise when you first started working in Africa in 2003?

SN: What that was was PR, basically. Ed was talking about how great it was to have the bureau and that they were sending me. It was obviously very nice and I remain extremely grateful to the Globe for having opened the bureau and for sending me here. It was a sort of unusual thing for them to do, it was sort of counter the prevailing newspaper wisdom at the time and they took a chance and did something really unusual and I’m grateful that I was the person who got to come here. I think that they would also agree that it worked out very well for them and so it was nice of Ed to say nice things about me in the paper—obviously that’s always nice—but I’m also aware that Eddy’s Saturday letter is to blow the globe’s horn.

Well, let’s talk about blowing your horn then. Numbers are paralysing, but can you talk about the number 28. Why this structure to represent the crisis?

SN. I had been thinking for a long time about writing an AIDS book and thinking that there was no sort of readable, acceptable book on the African pandemic for the soccer mom, as it were, for the average person in the developed world who had kind of an idea that something bad was happening in Africa but didn’t really know anything about it.  I was talking with my agent one day—because I’d been kicking this idea around for a while—and she said, “You know, I just imagine myself walking into Chapter’s and seeing your book there on the table on the front and then walking right by. I can’t imagine picking it up, this book on AIDS in Africa.” And this is a woman who makes her living based on how many books I sell, so that was a fairly frank spin of the situation. She said, “You’ve just got to give me a reason to care.” And I’m so irritated of hearing that and I said, “For Christ’s sake, you’ve got 28 million reasons to care.” And she said, “I need to know these reasons, these people.”  I sort of thought, okay, I’ll tell you about 28 people and I’ll use each of those people to tell you some of that medical, political and social information that you need. But it will be a little bit like when you’re a kid and your mom puts the Aspirin in the apple sauce so you don’t know that it’s there, but hopefully it will be less painful to take it all in while you’re getting to know these people.

You talked about my friends being in the book—the decision to include them came out of a conversation with my partner. I had come back from this trip to report on HIV in Swaziland, which is always extremely distressing, but I was still in quite a good mood, and he said, “You know, you’re in a good mood because you’ve been spending time friends and you got to make sure that those people are in the book because they are what keep you going and they will be what keeps your reader going, too.”

Are you starting to see that AIDS doesn’t have the same social stigma and shame it one did?

SN: Yes, that has definitely changed. As treatment has become more available, as AID has become less of an automatic death sentence, the stigma has lessened. The efforts by those living with the disease to get both their governments and their communities to have a really honest conversation is paying off. I think on a larger social level there is less stigma, but I think many people still feel like in their most personal, most intimate relationships, a lot of that fear and shame hasn’t changed. I guess that’s the last place—when you have to come home and tell your partner or your mother or your sister—that’s where the change happens last.

If you were HIV positive or if you had AIDS, would you make it public?

SN: You know, I have absolutely no idea. I would like to think yes—I am so inspired by the people I know who have been courageous enough to do that—and I like to think that I would follow that example. If I was HIV positive in my current life, I would because I live a pretty privileged life and I would have very little to lose. I work in a country where they can’t fire me because I have HIV, which is not the case in all the countries here. I’m in a relationship with a partner whose feelings I don’t think would change significantly. It’s hard to imagine any other life other than the one that I’m in.

I know that people like my friend Ida [Mukuka, who is featured in 28], one of the most courageous AIDS activists I know, even when she found out she was positive she told some of us who worked with her in the field of AIDS but she found it profoundly difficult to tell her family, to tell her colleagues–and this is somebody who had been one of the most powerful advocates for people with HIV/AIDS in Zambia for years. And so I found that extremely telling. If Ida battles, then no wonder so many other people battle.

And so I don’t know—would I be any different than Ida? I’m not sure.

Are activists more effective if they’re infected?

SN: You know, I think sometimes when people are doing one-on-one education prevention work and they can stand up and say, “Look at me, I can say it happened to me therefore it can happen to you, too,” I think that can be quite compelling, but I also think that in the societies, in the countries that have the highest rates of infection, you don’t have to have HIV to have AIDS, in a way. If you don’t have it, your spouse has it, or your children have it, or your neighbours have it, or you’re raising your grandchildren or you’re growing food for the people down the road and so the idea of being individually affected is very different. It’s just not relevant in the same way.

There’s no body it doesn’t touch.

SN: Exactly.

As a human rights reporter what’s your most powerful weapon?

SN: I don’t think of myself as a human rights reporter. I think of myself as a reporter and I find this whole blurring of the lines between human rights and journalism very bizarre. I find the idea of an organization called Journalists for Human Rights bizarre. Journalists have an obligation to report on situations accurately and honestly, but I’m not a human rights activist! Those are people who have very different agendas than mine. I do see myself as having a responsibility to give a voice to people who don’t have one but — (phone rings) Oh shit. Can you hang on one second, Megan?  — Hello. I will be there in two seconds. Sorry. I will just get someone to open the security gates. You don’t have a key to the door? No. Okay. (Laughs) Sorry, Megan. Oh, for crying out loud…

I do view what I do as trying to tell stories that don’t otherwise get told and to give voice to people who don’t have access to Western media. I think that when you want to tell a story like the AIDS pandemic—like what you were saying earlier about the statistics being paralysing—with anything like this you have to make it a story about individual people and that’s the most powerful thing you can do.

You got into journalism because you wanted to change the world. Maybe that’s the idealism of a 21-year-old reporter, but can journalism be a form of activism?

SN: I think you need to be really careful. If you think of yourself as an activist with an activist’s agenda, does it become acceptable to quote one side of the story more than another? Of course I make decisions all the time about the kind of stories I’m going to tell but it became apparent to me as a journalist that there was a huge story in Africa that wasn’t being covered. It was a big story and no mainstream media here from the developed world was looking at it. So as a journalist I wanted to come and look at it. I think you take the same responsibility of a journalist, which is to tell a story as accurately and honestly as you can. You bring that with you and you try and tell it as well as you can. If the effect of that is to change how people are responding to a particular crisis or a certain issue, then that’s great. I still hope that the world can be changed because I still feel change is necessary. I still believe that if you tell people something like this is happening, something like the HIV pandemic, and if you present it to them in a way that makes it real and something they can engage with and maybe have an impact on, then that will motivate people to want to be involved and potentially change things.

Is it a risky move or a smart career choice to report from a dangerour part of the world–as you did when you moved to Israel in your early 20s?

SN: It was a bit of miracle I didn’t get killed 50 million different ways. I knew absolutely nothing. When I went to cover my firist war in Beirut, I look back on it and just shudder. I was so clueless and it’s an absolute miracle I survived. But unless there’s a class that shows you how to cover a war zone, there is just no other way to really learn it besides doing it. Lots of things I did were extremely risky and extremely stupid in hindsight, but that’s how you learn, I guess.

Right. No other way to perfect the trade.

SN: So just go! Just go do it!

For people who want to do foreign news, you gotta get out of Canada. You’ll die working on the night police desk for the Toronto Star.

Cool. Thanks, Stephanie.

I’m busy and I could use some staff, so if you’re ever in the neighbourhood let me know!