 Good evening everyone. Welcome to the 25th annual Dick, Ruth and Judy Bell lecture. I'm Andre Ploed, Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs here at Carleton University. It is wonderful to see all of you here for a talk that will no doubt be very timely. As we begin, allow me to take a moment to acknowledge that the Carleton campus sits on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin and the Schnabe people. The Dick, Ruth and Judy Bell lecture was established in 1992 by Ruth Bell in honour of her husband Dick and her stepdaughter Judy. It was created to honour the contributions of individuals to the political and public life of Canada. The speaker that first year in 1992 was the right honourable Robert Stanfield who served as Premier of Nova Scotia and leader of the Federal Progressive Conservative Party. His talk was entitled, The Way Ahead, Let's Face It. The developments of the last month suggest that that might be an appropriate title for today. This important event reflects our mission here at the Faculty of Public Affairs to contribute to informed citizenship, better democracy and better societies. It is also part of FPA Research Month which is finishing up this week. We are grateful for the support of the Office of the Vice President Research and International and the Office of the Provost and Vice President Academic who are instrumental in making Research Month a success. I will now invite Barry Wright, Associate Dean and Director of Arthur Kruger College to come forward to introduce tonight's speaker. Barry. Thank you Dean Flord. It is my great pleasure to introduce Rosemary Barton, our guest speaker for the 2017 Bell Lecture. As Dean Flord noted, the Bell Lecture Series honours the contributions of distinguished Canadians active in public affairs and provides them the opportunity to speak on matters of politics or public policy. Rosemary Barton joins an illustrious list of annual Bell Lecturers, a number of whom have been journalists including Pamela Wallen, Edward Greenspawn, Roy McGregor, Chantale Bale, Steve Paken and Richard Gwynne. We also recently welcomed Lee's Ducet as a guest for the Sister Annual Faculty Series, a current lecture held in September. The internet and social media present real challenges as well as opportunities in the field of journalism. These technologies have transformed political campaigns and political practices. The informed independent public journalist has never been more important for ensuring accountability, demanding truth, and there is something called truth, and fostering an engaged and informed citizenry. Rosie as a highly regarded political journalist and host of power in politics is at the centre of these matters in Canada. I know many of you here tonight are regular viewers of power in politics on CBC News Network and you're familiar with her reporting as a parliamentary bureau correspondent for CBC News. We're very proud of the fact that Rosemary is a Carleton graduate. She's one of the faculty of public affairs distinguished alumni celebrated in our 75 for 75. She was drawn to journalism and the medium of television after completing a degree in French literature and while working as a researcher for the French News Network RDI. She completed her Masters of Journalism here with the intention of pursuing a career in television and what an impressive career it's been. She became National Assembly of Quebec correspondent for Global News before rejoining in CBC in 2004 as provincial political correspondent there and she covered a number of provincial elections and leadership campaigns. She moved to Ottawa and joined the CBC Parliamentary Bureau in 2007 and her reporting covered the 2008 and 2011 federal elections, federal leadership campaigns, the fraud trials of Conrad Black and Mike Duffy and many other issues of national interest. She began appearing on power in politics as a guest host in 2011 and became host in 2015 replacing Evan Solomon. Her famous exchange with then Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexandra during the 2015 election campaign I'm sure a number of you remember and that confirmed her as the ideal host, incisive, confident, versatile and courageous. Rosie is fair and balanced, brings humor when appropriate, but she doesn't hesitate to ask hard questions. She was a deserving award winner of Best Host or Interviewer in a news or information program or series at the 2016 Canadian Screen Awards. Please join me in welcoming Rosemary Barton to the stage for a lecture on why journalism matters now more than ever. Now more than ever. Oh, I see friendly faces. That's always good. Hello. Thanks for having me. Thanks. That was good because I have a terrible memory, a tolerable long-term memory. So I actually forget when I graduated from Carleton, how long I spent in Quebec City when I came here. So that always is helpful when people remind me what my career was. I know it's not a good quality in a journalist. And the other reason I wanted to thank you for having me is because I very rarely have time to think about what I do. My job, in case you don't know, is a little bit crazy. So to have time to reflect on what I do and why it matters is actually a great thing and probably something I should do more often. That being said, I did have to write the title and the synopsis for this speech months and months and months ago. And I didn't really know what I was going to say, so it's possible that you were, there was some false advertising involved. We'll see. And because I'm very much deadline-oriented, I finished this this afternoon. When I wrote the synopsis and the title for the speech, though, I had just read this very depressing column by Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post about the future of journalism and the future of journalists covering the new president in the United States. And at the time, Sullivan said it would be a, quote, hellish future. She said that journalists were in the fight for their lives and they would have to do better than ever just to do their jobs. So I wasn't like in the best headspace when I said, this is what I'm going to talk about. But let's see if we can get past that. So as I had to look up, I arrived in Ottawa in 2007 to cover federal politics. And as Barry mentioned, I started covering politics at the National Assembly in Quebec. There I was one of a handful of English reporters, really a handful of women too. And it was a, what I think is the best training ground for covering politics in Quebec. At least it was then. The stakes were very high at the time. Sovereignty was still very much a hot button issue. And the interest in politics in that province, in case you don't know it, is really next level. And one of my biggest challenges as a young Anglophone reporter covering a French place was just to get any politician to give me any kind of usable English clip. Then I came here, which let's be honest, if you like politics is really the only place to be. But when I got here in 2007, remember, it was an Ottawa that was still very much trying to figure out how to deal with a new government. It had been at that time, one year since there was wholesale change in this town across the country, really. It had been 13 years of a liberal government and everything was suddenly different. Stephen Harper had been elected with a minority government. And at the time I remember I arrived and all the reporters were still very excited about it. They weren't excited because they were conservatives. It wasn't a partisan motivation. Journalists get excited when there are new stories, new people to talk to, new things happening. Unfortunately, there was also a really bad relationship. And I'm sure you remember it a little bit between the press and the new government. It was acrimonious, really, from the get-go. So when I arrived in the Bureau, I was one of many reporters and I was really at the bottom of the heap because that's how journalism works. There was a Bureau full of seasoned journalists, people like Paul Hunter, Susan Bonner, Keith Bogue, Don Newman, who was the host of a version of the show that I host now. And at that point, the battle lines between the press and the Prime Minister's office had been drawn. There were, you may remember at that point, lists being taken for questions to get on the list. There were reporters who were certainly preferred over others. There were no press conferences happening in the National Press Theater. There was no notice of cabinet meetings, no access to cabinet ministers. I didn't notice, though, because I had just got there and I didn't know anything. And I'd never seen the liberals. So it wasn't a big deal. I mean, I saw all those journalists struggling with trying to figure out how to cover this new government. And should we put our names on the list? Shouldn't we? I saw the tension in the relationship, but I didn't know what it was like to scrum Jean-Cretien or Paul Martin. I didn't know that people would leak things to you. That wasn't in my realm. So the lack of people talking to me, I was a nobody. I was trying to figure things out. That, to me, was very much business as usual. It was fine. That doesn't sound good, does it? Like a sort of sorry state of existence. And maybe now, I've been here for 10 years, I can say it is a little passing strange that the first time I asked the previous Prime Minister a question, first time, was at the next election campaign. That the first time that I realized that he did, in fact, know who I was, was when I traveled to Africa with him in 2014. I joked, I waved, we got along. But that was the first moment where I said, oh, he knows who I am and what I do. It wasn't until the election in 2015 when I sat down with Stephen Harper for the first time and interviewed him. He thought the interview went really well. Six hours later, they didn't. That's a totally different story you could ask me about later. These are not complaints about my job or even about the previous government. These are just statements of fact. This is the way it went down. And part of the reason was because of who I was. I was a new reporter. As I said, I was working my way up the ladder. I was trying to build trust and gain credibility. I was trying to be known so people didn't come to me. They didn't care what I thought. They didn't want to tell me things. Part of it was because this was the conservative's communication strategy. And it was, at the beginning, at any rate, founded in the belief that most liberals were, most reporters, good slip of the tongue, were liberals. And fundamentally, that reporters were wired to oppose the government. That's what reporters thought they were supposed to do. So why did journalism matter then? Because in Ottawa, like in Washington, like in other political capitals in the world, it is based primarily on access. That's the way it works. There is a terrible word that if you're in Ottawa, I'm sure you've heard, it's called transactional. A transactional relationship between the press and the government. It essentially means you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. It's a very cynical way of viewing things. It's not exactly how it works, but it gives you an idea. And the more access you have, the better the journalism is, right? Not quite. You can't talk to the government about how it's doing its job. How do you do your job as a journalist? And as you can well imagine, there are lots of reporters south of the border struggling with this question right now. The answer is to find other ways. And here I'll quote my friend, and I'm sure many of you know her, Jennifer Ditchburn. She recently wrote an article for the Poerner Institute. It was sort of like a pep talk for our American colleagues. And she pointed out that if you give journalists time and no access, they will find something else to do. And the politicians won't like it. And she points to the Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright affair. Because there were no communication strategy that was going to stop that story from unraveling. And it wasn't just a story between two guys who made a deal to keep something quiet. It became a story about accountability and the way people were spending taxpayers' money and changes that need to happen. And they happened. And they happened because of journalists. They happened because of people like Glenn McGregor and Bob Fife and others. That's why that happened. And I didn't crack that case at all. I had nothing to do with it. I sat in that courtroom for like 20 years of my life it felt like. Listening to Mike Duffy's life and all the restaurants he ate at. And he got off. But over time, during my time here and during that time, I did find people who were willing to talk to me. Because ultimately journalism is about that. And politicians are people and they just want to be heard. Here's an example. Over time, some of the people who were with the conservative government didn't really buy into the strategy anymore, weren't as disciplined as they had been at the beginning. Maybe were even sometimes a little upset with the way their boss dealt with things. So after the October 23rd shooting, which we can talk about more after if you want, there were a number of people upset. They had been in that caucus room altogether. When the terrorists stormed down the hall, when the bullets were fired, they were all fearful for their life. And at that time, the RCMP officers had to take the Prime Minister and put him in a closet. And it was a safety precaution. They had to protect him. That was their job. But it turns out there were some people upset by it in the caucus room. There were some people that felt abandoned, worried, didn't quite understand it. His own government members. And the Prime Minister had to apologize the next week in caucus. He had to explain why it had happened and how he felt that he had disappointed them by not being there. It's not a big, important story, but it tells you a little bit about the mindset of that room on that terrible day for all of those people and about the guilt that the Prime Minister felt about how he had to be treated differently. Anyway, someone told me that story. And it became a story. And the person who told me that story told me that and they didn't really realize that it was anything that anybody would care about, but it was. And the point of that is that you can have very disciplined caucus, a meticulous communication strategy. It can all be planned, but people want to tell you things. And journalists prevail. In smaller numbers, but they prevail all the same. So the recent report by the public policy forums Edward Greenspawn notes that since 2010, there have been 27 daily newspapers that have closed or merged. Jobs in journalism have been cut by a third in the same time period. If you want to be a journalist, probably don't read that report. It's mega depressing. But if you stick with me, I think I can give you a little bit of hope. And I'm not actually a very hopeful person. So it'll mean more, I promise. So journalism, it's getting smaller. It's getting more demanding. When I got to Ottawa, I was, oh, no, it's over. When I got to Ottawa, I was a TV reporter. I was just a TV reporter. That's all I did. That's all I had to do, just file TV stories. That job literally does not exist anymore. If you work at CBC, if you work anywhere, but particularly at CBC, you are what we call inter-platform. You do anything. You do it all the time. You do as much as possible. When you do it well, I would suggest that you have greater impact because you've done it everywhere. And when you're under extreme stress, I would even suggest that you flourish. At least that's my theory. Stick with me. So south of the border, Politico called Inauguration Day, Liberation Day. There was a reason why. They are down there trying to figure out how to adapt, continue to do things that the best amongst us have always found ways to do. I'll give you a few people that I look to right now. David Ferenthold at The Washington Post, an amazing young journalist who took to Twitter to try and trace where Donald Trump's charity money had gone and found that it didn't always end up in the places where it was supposed to. Jake Tapper at CNN. He has been emboldened by a president who lies and is not fearful of calling a lie a lie. The New York Times coverage of the president's still yet undisclosed tax returns. It's hugely important. So yes, there's a president who pedals in fake news, uses quote, unquote, alternative facts. There's a president who, remember, called the American media the quote enemy of the people. That's what he said. Well, he tweeted. He doesn't say much. But listen to this quote. It's a bit long. Bear with me. Every American has the right to disagree with the president and to express publicly that disagreement. But the president of the United States has a right to communicate directly with the people who elected him. And the people of this country have the right to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a presidential address without having the president's words and thoughts characterized throughout the prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be suggested. That sounds like a really good reason for a president to direct his messages through Twitter to the American people, except it's a quote from Vice President Spiro Agnew in November, 1969. Nixon had just given this 32-minute address days before about the Vietnam War. He was trying to rally the Americans behind his idea. And he was in that speech appealing to what he called the silent majority, the people he thought supported the war but weren't getting the attention needed to speak up publicly. The speech was eviscerated by the media, the few media that there were. So 10 days later, Vice President Agnew was sent out to attack the media, saying amongst what I just quoted there, that they had a narrow and distorted picture and that that emerged from network news. Agnew also called the media, and this is a great line, like, worth getting tattooed somewhere. He called us them, nattering nebobs of negativism. He was good with words. I recently interviewed John Dean. He was Nixon's former White House counsel. And he played a really key role in exposing Watergate but also testifying against his boss. And he has in recent weeks been very vocal about the similarities he sees between the two presidents, between Nixon and Trump. And he says, these are his words, that he sees echoes of Watergate already. What is clear, whether you believe that or not, is that both administrations had trouble with the media. What is clear is that both administrations would not have been exposed without the media. Household names like Woodward and Bernstein, Watergate would never have been came public. They would never have brought down Nixon. Without the media right now, the world would never know of these convoluted or not so convoluted ties between people around Trump and the Russian government. It is currently under investigation by multiple departments. We don't know how it will end, but if it weren't for journalists, we wouldn't know about it at all. So the difference, of course, between now and 1969, other than the fact that I wasn't born, one of them anyway, is that it was more focused, right? There was just a few places you could watch news. Now there are so many places where you can get your news and you can get them in very interest-based ways. You can read the news that you want to read. You can stay in your lane. You can never widen your worldview. You can stick to your ideological beliefs. And there are, as you know, particularly in the United States, some media outlets that exist for that very reason. An analysis that was done by Chartby, that's the web analytics company. We've got one in the newsroom to see how we're doing. It was done for the New York Times. It shows that, and this was very interesting to me, that broadly all media outlets cover all the same stories, all of them. But it's the reader demand that is different. So, for instance, they found that conservative-minded readers or viewers, they were presented with the story about the size of the audience at the inauguration, but they didn't read it. They just went past it. They blew past it. It didn't matter to them. They didn't want to know, so they chose not to see it. So the conclusion seems to be that people prefer to read news that is already consistent with what they think and what they believe. So that's troubling, right? If journalism, though, is doing its job, it should try to break down those walls somehow and explain why it matters to read those views that may not align with yours. And some of that, this is where I start to get hopeful, some of it might be starting to happen. This came up at dinner. The New York Times, after the election, added 276,000 digital-only subscribers. That was in the last three months of 2016. I was one of them. I kept using my 10 articles in three days, so I had to pay for it. That's the best that that paper has done since putting a paywall in place in 2011. The best, because the journalism was worth paying for. The LA Times saw a 60% increase in digital subscriptions, same timeframe after the American election. Major news organizations, The Times, The Post, BuzzFeed, I consider that major, CNN, they all hired more investigative reporters after the election. The Washington Post alone will hire 60 investigative reporters this year. The Post says, no, no, we're planning to do that anyway. This is the way we roll. This had nothing to do with Trump, maybe. But it's another reason to invest in accountability and investigative journalism. This is hardly a sign that journalism is failing. And it may actually be a sign that journalism matters. So put aside that spectacle of what's happening down south, if you can. I don't know that you can. I can't. But here's some more evidence that Canadians appreciate news and they appreciate context. And here's the part where I brag a little bit about where I work. It's good for you too because you pay for it. More Canadians say that cbcnews.ca is their main source of digital news than any other media outlet in the country. The public broadcaster has the biggest social media footprint of any news organization in the country. And between CBC and Radio Canada, it has the most visited websites a month, at 16 million visitors a month. That's huge. So journalism that you pay for, that you want, clearly matters to all of you. And this isn't a really long speech because I want you to ask me a bunch of questions. But here's why journalism matters to me. And this is the part that actually got a little bit hard. It's the part why it matters to me, but I think it's also the part why it increasingly matters to all of you, I hope. Because journalism's job is not just to listen. It's also to really make sure that people are heard. And its job is to work hard to make sure that all those people who don't think they have a voice or don't know how to find people like me to give them voice are heard. Journalism's job is to ask questions so that people get the answers that they deserve. They get lots of answers, but I'm talking about the answers they deserve. Journalism's job right now, more than ever before, is to not be afraid to say when something is not true. So you can choose to see lots of discouraging signs for journalism. They're everywhere. Or you could do what I'm doing. Briefly, may not last tomorrow, but it's here for now. You can believe that journalism is becoming more relevant, more resilient, and ultimately more welcome for people who are looking for answers in an increasingly complicated world. And that's why journalism matters to me. Thank you. Thank you, Rosemary Barton. We now have some time, about a half an hour, for questions and comments. As a courtesy to our guests and the others, could I ask you to please follow a couple of requests? First, please speak as clearly as possible. And if possible, use one of the microphones. There's one there and one there. If you could very briefly identify yourself and confine your question or comment to a minute, please. And finally, I'd ask you to refrain from follow-up questions or comments so others also have an opportunity to participate. Thanks. No one's going to want to ask a question now. Someone has a question. Come on. Here we go. Here we go. Hi. Hello. How are you? Very good. My name is Elia Cho. I'm a student here at Calton University. I'm a first-year MA in political science. And I sort of work, do I, part of the journalism, too. I work as a columnist or blogger at Huffington Post, Canada, too. So the question I have for you is that, well, the way I see it right now is that we are really lacking a training or an opportunity for the young investigative journalist or the columnist on myself to have more real-world job experience. So is CBC taking any, making any, because it's really hard to see any kind of opportunities offered by the CBC. Don't get me wrong. I love CBC, but I mean, it's really hard to see any kind of job posting that's from the CBC on indy.com or any of the job websites. So if you can maybe make a comment on that, I'd be very appreciative. Or give you a job. Well, no, I mean, it's more like a comment than a question. But do you know that the CBC is actually making any serious effort to get more opportunities for the young journalist or the columnist? So yes, we actually have job postings right now. So I would encourage you to look. Here's what I would also encourage you. And I know that Peter Mansbridge said very similar thing last week. I think it is very important for journalists wanting to start out to go wherever the job is. And I mean anywhere. Yellowknife, Saskatoon, my hometown of Winnipeg, smaller places, Prince George, Fort McMurray, anywhere. If you think you are going to work in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, you won't get a job. When I first came to Ottawa 10 years ago, my professor, Ellie Alblum, who I still have lunch with, I had lunch with him. And I said, no one will talk to me. I don't understand. And he said, Rosemary, no one gives you the keys to the city on your first day. And they won't give you the keys to your city either. It is one of those jobs, unfortunately, where you do have to build up your career over time. But it makes sense. You don't want to make mistakes in Toronto. You want to make them in Regina. Like no offense to Regina. I grew out my hair on TV in Quebec City. I would never do that again. I would like take a leave of absence to grow my hair. Okay? So you want to make mistakes and learn things where people are not watching. So that's the first thing. If you want to be a columnist like Andrew Coyne, good luck. Move to Yellowknife and start. Well, I find it a little discouraging, because I'm actually from Saskatchewan. I was there doing my BA for the last 10 years. Did you get a job? No. That's the reason why I'm here. Thank you. Go smaller. Go smaller. Go smaller. Yes. Okay. Hi, Rosie. Thank you for coming. My name is Nathaniel Dove. I'm an MJ student here. You mentioned sort of that you need to sort of break down barriers to reach more people. I like to push you harder on that. So how does CBC get into sort of a wider audience? And how do you collect more people to challenge preexisting assumptions? So it is a challenge. It's one that we, I think I can reassure you, talk about consciously and actively pursue. We do it in a couple of different ways. First of all, my program is the only program on CBC that has the second screen. So we actively put your tweets on TV. That's the first thing. So we validate other people's opinions in that way. I interact a lot with people on social media, including people that disagree with me or have problems with the things I say. I actively seek out media from other places. It's actually something I did during the American election. I realized that my lens was a little too small. So I will sometimes read Breitbart or The Rebel or other things, just so I'm aware of what people are talking about. And the other thing that we push ourselves to do, particularly on my show, but I know the CBC does it all over, is to make sure that we better reflect the country. So that means we don't always go to the same people to talk to them about the same issues. We try and find diverse voices. We try and get more women on the show. We try and talk to people from communities, where as I said, they may not be heard. We don't always succeed, for sure. But it is absolutely something that we talk about every day. I would rather start off a show with a bunch of people nobody have ever heard of. I mean, I want a couple of cabinet ministers or whatever. But after that, I would rather have a bunch of people that we have never heard of than all the same people we've heard of. So I can reassure you we think about it, if not always succeed. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Thank you so much for being here today. I really enjoyed your speech. My name is Anika Buske, and I'm a grade 11 student at Lisgar here in Ottawa. And I'm currently running to be my school student senator, which is basically the liaison between the school board and the student body. But you have to be elected. You do. That's good. This kind of senator does need to be elected. And my question for you is what do you think is the best way to engage youth in politics and what's happening in the world, and how do you think that we can get youth voices heard? That's a good question. Prime Minister seems to say lots of things about that. Just repeat that. I mean, there's a bunch of social media, obviously, right? I mean, that's a good place to be. I try and be there as much as I can. I think it's a place where people are listening. I think we need to talk more about the things that young people care about, jobs, education, how do you get a job, those kinds of things that matter, and get people in places, like get young people on TV, listen to young people, put them in places. And the other thing, and this is just a little tiny thing, is podcasts. I don't know why, but my show in particular, we just put it on a podcast, and young people don't always watch it on TV, but they listen to it all the time. I think young people's perspective and their engagement is not as bad as we think it is. I actually think it's pretty good. I think we just don't give them enough attention or props for doing it. And I am actually not very worried about where things are headed on that front. I think people care. I think sometimes it just takes a little more time to get engaged, so, but you're doing it, so that's good. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Thank you for speaking with us today. My name is Otis Moore. My first question is, what's the first thing you read during the day, and what's your favorite thing you regularly read during the day? Daily Mail? No. The first thing I read is Twitter. I use Twitter sort of as a news aggregate, because I follow a lot of smart people. Twitter gives me access to a bunch of academics, politicians. I can see through what everybody's talking about. I signed up for a bunch of newsletters, so New York Times, Washington Post, those kinds of things. Then the next thing I look at, and other than the CBC, is something called National News Watch. It's also an aggregator, and it's one that's very popular in the Ottawa political bubble. The big political stories have to hit that aggregator for them to be picked up. So that's where I start. And I end my day pretty much the same way. I sleep with my phone. Hi. My name is Nadine Youssef. I'm a fourth year journalism student here at Carleton. My question to you has to do with diversity in newsrooms, and mainly Canadian newsrooms, because I know a lot of people talk about how there's a lack of different demographics to which journalists belong to, and how that can kind of lend to a lack of different voices being heard. I was just wondering if you could kind of speak more about that, and why do you think that problem exists, and what steps has the CBC done in particular to kind of ensure that there's more a bigger variety of journalists that work for them? So it is a problem. I agree with you. It's a problem, even in our bureau, that we are trying to deal with. I think part of the problem with our bureau is you have to be at a certain point in your career to be there. And I think maybe universities and journalism haven't always reflected the country as well as they probably do now. So it's something CBC actively is trying to correct, I would say. There's different programs, mentoring programs that they have put in place to try and make sure that people who are from different communities get the support they need to be places. One of the most important things, I think, is for the CBC to put those people in public positions, not always behind the camera producing shows, but also in front of cameras. So if you're a little girl from a community, an immigrant community, and you see someone's anchoring the news, who looks like you, you might want to do it. I mean, it's a fairly simple thing. It's harder in practice, of course, but I think we are getting better at it. And I think that that's happening everywhere. Like the House of Commons has never been more diverse than it is now. It has never been more female, more multicolored. So it's a slow pull on all of society, and certainly the media needs to do its job too. Hi. Hi there. My name is Patrick Butler. I'm a fourth year Bachelor of Journalism student. My question's about, I mean, you're one of the leading CBC faces, I would say. Okay. Well, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if that's the best way to put it, but you're definitely a recognizable person on the CBC. Okay. I want to ask you about what you think of the role of the CBC, particularly in an environment, a news environment, where the CBC benefits from a more generous, I guess, public subsidy, has more money to work with than a lot of, let's say, big legacy newspapers that we rely on to do a lot of investigative work. A newspaper like The Washington Post can rely on Jeff Bezos to pay for all of these new journalists and these new innovative techniques, but a newspaper chain like Postmedia, which doesn't have very much money to work with for a litany of reasons. Mostly their own reasons. Mostly their own reasons. I'm sure there's not a lot of Paul Gottfried fans in the room. But I'll just say, CBC has come under criticism for things like starting opinions and taking and having analysis now, which has traditionally been sort of what newspapers have done and driven people to buy newspaper and subscriptions, et cetera, et cetera. What do you see as the role for the CBC and is the CBC going to become this sort of monolith of news in Canada? And is there a danger in that? I don't know if my question is very succinct, but hopefully you have some type of comment on it. I do. I don't think the CBC is in, I don't think we're going to become a monolith of news. I think other media organizations are doing good work and people want to pay for good work. The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, iPolitics, people will pay for good work. But it has to be good. And their bosses have to pay for it too. Certainly CBC is in a privileged position. We get taxpayers' money. We have large subsidies. But we also have to do different things. We have an Indigenous unit that talks about all the difficult things happening in Indigenous communities across this country and all the wonderful things happening. Nobody else is doing that work. We have enough people that we can cover the missing and murdered Indigenous inquiry. People may cover that work by other outlets, but we have a duty to cover that work and to tell that story. We have a duty to reach out to local regions, go to small towns. We are supposed to reflect the entire country and we're supposed to do it in two languages. And we're supposed to tell the stories of Canadians. I don't know that that's what everybody else is supposed to do. And sometimes on my show we talk about things that we know are not going to bring in ratings because that's our job to talk about it. So I think that there's a place for all of those things. And I'm not worried that, and I don't think other media organizations should be worried that we're taking up their space. There's lots of room for good journalism. It just has to be good. Yeah. Hi, my name is Dan. I'm just wondering in the context of the increasingly polarized content on political platforms, especially with anti-immigrant conversations, climate change denying and that kind of thing. And how as a journalist and as a network is it best to engage with views that are so offensive, so wrong? I know in the U.S. election, by engaging with it, they gave a platform to these people who their ideas are wrong and it allowed them to grow. So in what way the media can engage with these ideas that are so off base in a constructive and healthy manner? I got this question actually last week when I was doing this national town hall thing in Charlottetown. Someone asked me this question too. The first thing I don't think Canada is as polarized as the United States. So I don't think that we have to be as worried for now. Aware, certainly, but I don't think we are and I don't think it's just the way this country works politically. But the second thing is I think it is wrong to ignore those views. It is very wrong for me to judge a view and say that view is not representative of someone and so I'm not putting it on TV or I'm not going to talk to that person. That doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to say someone's a racist. I am. It doesn't mean I'm not allowed to say climate change exists. I am. But I think it is wrong to ignore the voices because I think, this is just my analysis, what happened in the United States with some of that stuff was ignored for too long and then it became this big pot that bubbled over. So I actually think and that goes back to the thing about me reading things that I wouldn't normally be drawn to. I think it's important to know that those voices are out there because the more you can call them on what is true and what is not, inform them, question them, hold them to account on ideas that are bananas, that's my job too. Even if you think the idea is crazy or I think the idea is crazy, it's not my job to judge the idea. It's my job to try and understand it or get them to justify it. Hi, my name is Olivia Carey and I'm a fourth year journalism student. I was recently interviewing a Carlton prof and he wasn't in the Department of Journalism but he, I think he was a poli sci prof but he was just telling me that he thinks that journalists are becoming less and less knowledgeable and that just because like you were mentioning the crazy demands that are put on journalists and that it's because of that it's kind of putting journalism itself at stake. So what was his name? I won't mention names. So you want to know if that's true, if we're dumb. I just wanted to get your take on it. Listen, yeah, I mean I have to do more. I have to get up earlier. Yes, I have bosses that want me to do more but journalists I know that are working in the places I work are some of the best informed, best read, well-rounded people that I know. Journalists will always find a way to get informed and to do their jobs. They are very good at that. I'm not saying I can do more. I don't know that I can do more but I think journalists are very smart people. They are able to take in a lot of information, spit it out in a concise way and analyze it like nobody else I know and I'm not talking about journalists on TV. I'm talking about everybody that works with me, behind me, producers, assignment editors, all those people. I think that political science professor should probably get out of his office more. But I wish him well. Hello. Hi, well first thanks for being here. My name is Hailey Ritchie and I graduated here two years ago and I've been working in Ottawa as a journalist. Since then what you talked about when you talked about the beginning of your career really resonated with me and I had a question about when you're starting out and you're trying to get access and you're trying to get people to notice you and talk to you how do you balance that building up of relationships and getting to know people and getting to trust you with also reporting the news like when you talked about the story about the closet and someone had mentioned it to you offhand not realizing it was a story. Sometimes I find this personal discomfort of people realizing you're a journalist and you you are going to tell those stories. Do you have any advice for a beginner who's who's building those relationships and also wants to break news? Well don't burn the people from the get go. Don't have someone tell you something you go out report it and then that's the end of it. Those relationships take time. I think I would say it took me 18 months before anyone trusted me to tell me anything. That's a long time right and even still some of them don't want to talk to me. My best piece of advice is to find people that you like. That's my best and you have a connection with. The first thing I did when I got here is I started introducing myself to people from Winnipeg. Let's start there and some of those relationships still work and we have lots in common and that's how it works but I wouldn't waste time with people you don't personally like. Life's too short and I wouldn't waste time with anybody that burns you. People that lie to you will lie to you again. Don't bother. Thanks so much. Hi my name is Jamie Broman. I'm a political science Carlton alumni and it's come back to catch me because I've been working in my own business now for 30 years. I'm directly accountable and responsible to the people that I serve so that I can make a living and so I want to hold my government to account and there's no way despite the fact I look at the average Canadian pays 42% of their income to taxes and yet when it comes to being accountable to me they're not. They may be accountable to you as a journalist because you're sort of covering but there's no way for me as an individual to hold them to account and so I'm interested in democratic reform so that communities start having public form something akin to what a small community association is but bring the people in. I think we have the tools to do it now living in this neighborhood right around here there are so many educated people we're smart we're not you know totally wrapped up in what's good for us as opposed to what's good for like the individual versus we want what's good for us and I think journalists and and the local community could do a lot to work together to hold government to account and I just thought I wanted to get your comment on what public forms would mean if we had local public forms that could hold elected officials to account using the information that you provide but also government could be providing so much information to us and we could be educated on how to use forms etc so just to get your comment I don't think this government's really down with the whole democratic reform thing anymore but maybe that I mean maybe that would work I think my job is to hear people like you and hold people to account I'm not asking questions because they are things that I am personally invested in I'm asking questions because it's my job to get answers for you I represent you I remember that every single day there's not a day where I don't think about someone who wants an answer on something it's not because I you know have all these personal self-interest but you do have a way to hold politicians to account it's an election I know it doesn't come very often but if you don't like what they're doing you get rid of the bums that's that's your that's your one political act and you can write to them and you can write to me and you can give me ideas and I will take some of them but that is your you you can fire them that's that's what you're allowed to do right yeah well okay technically okay thank you you can you can you can't fire them you can get everybody together and load them out hi my name's Noah I'm a third year journalism student here at Carleton and I just wanted to ask you a little bit about sort of the corporatization of the media in Canada you did talk a little bit a little bit about in your speech about people who want to be journalists like myself to go to small places in Canada and I think that's fantastic advice but I'm from the Maritimes and there's basically three games in town there's the CBC and then Transcontinental and then Brunswick News and many of our Carleton grads have gone on to New Brunswick to get a job with Brunswick News which is owned by an oil company so how do journalists do their job when they work for a company that ultimately tries to control the message yeah I've never really done that so I'm probably the worst person to ask I have been very blessed in that I've only worked for a private company briefly it was a good experience nowhere to ever dictated what I had to do certainly their eye was more on the bottom line than it is where I am I think you have to make some personal decisions about what is acceptable for you you want to remain independent you don't want somebody telling you what you should and should be doing should not be doing the questions you should and should not be asking some people are more comfortable with that let's be honest so I actually think that's a personal choice that's not a great answer but I think you have to decide for you what is the line in the sand and what you're willing to accept or just work at the cbc hi I'm Hannah Singer you spoke a lot about the Trump 2016 and Trump being elected but you didn't speak a lot about that campaign leading up to that and how a lot of people criticize the media in portraying Trump and portraying Hillary and putting his speeches on for the full length and portraying Hillary in a negative light so what have you learned and the cbc learned about um put like having leadership campaigns and how are you guys going to change how you approach leadership campaigns and general elections well again um while there are similarities and lessons to be learned we are not the united states um we we did not do that uh we did you know because we didn't need to it wasn't our election we didn't do it we could have done it um Trump got big ratings big ratings he was a ratings getter that's why they put him on all the time because he was saying crazy stuff he would go on for hours people would get angry that was it was a ratings motivated thing um but I I don't think you can blame just the media for everything that happened in that election I think that would be misreading the way the election unfolded what democrats did and did not do right who the candidates were all sorts of different things the lesson for me I can only really just speak for me is to again make sure that I am listening to people that I don't know are out there and I do think that that applies to Canada I do think sometimes when you're living in Ottawa or Toronto you forget about people in pei where I just was on the weekend or you forget about people in Alberta or you're not listening to small towns and I'm I'm not really sure I've perfected how to make sure I hear those people yet Twitter's part of it reading broadly as part of it but I think that's the little piece that I can do is to make sure that people don't feel they are being marginalized or disenfranchised because the media is approaching the story from one way I don't know if that's the best answer but there you go hi hi there my name is Juliana Corey and I'm a second year humanity student here and my question is about social media like you I check Twitter first thing in the morning because I think it's a great way to get the major highlights like right away but I know that there's also been a lot of discussion in past days about how with social media everyone thinks there's a journalist their journalist and everything gets watered down to 140 characters or 30 second sound bites so I was wondering if you could comment on the impact of social media on your job and whether or not ultimately it's a major asset or a challenge I I continue to believe it's a major asset I agree with you sometimes people read Twitter and think they understand the whole story that's a problem but I think it allows me to connect with people that's important for me I think it allows people to connect with me it gives me a broad range of opinions it gives me access to people I don't have access to and I also actually do think that people want context and analysis and perspective they maybe don't want it at 730 when they're in bed reading Twitter but I think eventually as the day goes on they want to decide what stories they want to understand better so Twitter is a jumping off point CBC website is another TV show is another I actually do think that people want the discussion to be deeper hi so my kind of falls off that one a little bit there but I just wanted to ask what you thought about how satire and comedy is replaced in some ways journalism and is kind of one of the few respites left maybe more in American news media for critical ideas and critical thinking I think I have some critical thinking skills like I can't crack jokes for two hours that's not my job that's Mark Critch's and Rick Mercer's job I mean I think that's a welcome respite for people I think you're right particularly in the United States I think people are very very weary of things right now we were weary after the longest election campaign in modern history but not as tired as they are because they're always in campaigns I don't have any problem with it I was that panel I did on Friday Mark Critch was on the panel it was about the future of news it's interesting because he can go around and say really crazy stuff about Kevin O'Leary and Kelly Leach and everybody in that leadership campaign right now and I can't because I have to interview them actually interview them and get answers do I think it's important for him to do that and do I think Canadians want that perspective yeah I don't think it takes anything away nobody thinks Mark Critch is doing the same job as me so I don't think it I don't think it hurts but to follow up with that like someone like Stephen Colbert for instance or for a long time John Stewart yeah in the United States a lot of people especially when you look at it they formulate a lot of their political opinions based upon that struggle of satire and comedy so I'm kind of curious how you think like that has changed the perspective in a lot of ways and allowed for alternative facts and outright sort of I don't yeah flourishing a way that I think I don't know if that's what's created alternative facts those guys are pretty smart true and have a pretty good analysis I you know I think if you're only watching satire news programs yeah your worldview is probably going to be incomplete but but I don't think that satire takes away from my job at all cool thanks thanks hi hi my name is Julia and I'm finishing up my political science degree here Carlton this year but for the first three years of my degree I was at a different school out east and I worked for the student newspaper there I did a lot of investigative stuff with that and I did a lot of freelancing and stuff and essentially nobody was really ever very happy with what I had to say and it was kind of you know digging what they didn't want to hear and so social media became very difficult and I had actually seriously considered moving into journalism which I have since thought against moved to another path but the social media was just so much all the time it was often the Twitter eggs and the anonymous apps and whatnot so my question to you is how do you stay focused on doing what you're doing and justifying knowing that yes I'm doing the right thing but the crap I get on social media is worth it every day because that was really difficult for me well you you do develop a thick skin that that does happen I have been upset by things before but over time you you do get tough you just do because you don't have a choice so it doesn't really faze me very much anymore I mute and I block if someone is being personally abusive like coming after me about what I'm wearing or something but someone who's just going after me about they think you know this is not the right point or why didn't I ask this I you know that that's fine that's what politics is about but yes it can be a lot and it can be quite abusive if you're a woman particularly a woman on TV so I some days are better than others some days I don't care some days I'm like oh god I'll have a big glass of wine at home it'll be fine I you know it's it but it comes with the job it's the same way politicians have to deal with it I do too I'm a I'm a public figure and that's that's the price I pay for all the other really cool stuff I get to do yeah thank you hi hi my name is Megan Castellano I'm a second year journalism student here so you mentioned how valuable young people and their voices can be I'm just wondering how do you differentiate yourself in a job that's so competitive especially being so young like what skills would you say are good to focus on in developing a career I don't think the skills have to be like I don't think there's things particular characteristics that make you stand out I think you have to be willing to work very hard particularly at the beginning and even now um I think you have to be very curious um all the time wanting to learn different things more and more and I think you have to be fairly fearless uh put yourself out there ask hard questions call people that you don't expect to call you back um I we call them unicorns at my office ask for the unicorns maybe the unicorn will give you an interview um and then you'll make news you you need to you need to do the scary things every day do one scary thing and I like you could apply that to any profession but journalism you have to really put yourself out there in a public way that I don't think people always understand even if you're a print reporter or a producer or a researcher you have to call people you have to interact with people so just do it just be fearless and if they hang up on you they don't have time for you you know move on thank you okay hi hi my name is Yings I'm a fourth year student in economics and political science from the University of Ottawa uh do be fair I was accepted at a master of journalism here for next year okay good yay we're teamed or so um I just had a question for career advice I was wondering with journalists knowing so much about for example I guess political journalists um is there a point at somewhere in their career that they want to move into the politics or work as a public servant since they know so much about a topic or something that very passionate about or on the other hand um since there's the argument that journalists should know some about a topic very in depth so is there a lot of public servant that go into journalism at some point with your career I don't know about the last part um there are and in recent months a number of journalists that this government has scooped up um and are now working for the government I get why journalists are and I think I've said it have great analytical minds are usually very good writers they're excellent communicators they know how to sell stuff they know how to explain stuff um I don't want to do that and I'm not judging anybody that does I I I there are lots of journalists who have politicians and politicians who have become you know that they move pretty freely if you think about it um but I am more interested in um trying to understand a truth and understand why people are doing things they're doing and how they're trying to improve people's lives generally um so I wouldn't go into journalism if the intent is to become a politician because that's not really where your head should be at your head should be at trying to get answers for everybody else but politicians are great you know if you want to be a politician that's super they hard work really hard hi hi I think my question is a bit related to what was said so uh I'm Carlisle and close I come from Europe I'm Justin Coulter for a few weeks I'm a visiting researcher in political science I have never watched your show I don't I don't know who you are I'm sorry about that I really apologize it's huge but I don't have I don't have TV here where I'm staying so I'll probably go on the post podcast stuff to it's online it's online I didn't host today like tomorrow you could watch it um but um during your speech you said that your role as a journalist was to um check if the facts were true and trying to find the true and then you said also that your interest was to try that every voice is heard but at some point you also said that you wanted to show people that they were wrong or that they had not the true information yes so I'm wondering if you can see the role of journalists as um like a news reporter or as an opinion maker or opinion leader because I think probably what the way that the media was criticized in the U.S. was not only that they didn't um pay attention to some opinions in the society but also they were trying to convince people that they were wrong and they were wrong to think that immigrants should not be allowed in the U.S. it's a try so I think even in your speech I think there's a tension between two different roles that like reporting true facts and then maybe trying to build public opinions so do you think as a journalist you should try to like build a public opinion no and I don't think that's what I said um in fact I said that I think people should be heard regardless of their opinion and that it's not for me to judge their opinion but I am allowed to say what's true and what's not there are facts that are undisputable someone can be racist right I mean that that is the reality there are there are things that have happened that you cannot mess with and that's not a personal filter or personal prejudice those are facts and I think that if journalists are scared to say what those facts are then we are in a post-truth society right I'm not trying to build public opinion around anything um you can have lots of questions about the immigration system in Canada how many refugees should be let in you can have tests that you want to apply and questions you want to ask all of those are valid questions but you better be able to answer the questions and explain why it's needed and what's not working now and if you can't then what what what value is your opinion thank you hi Rosemary hi I'm Sean I'm a first year public affairs and policy management student here at Carlton that sounds good and uh yeah that's from Barry Oliver oh good Barry um my question has to concern with the uh recent digitalization of media um as media outlets come more digitalized they now have not only have to compete with getting a voice out uh with other media outlets but search engines have come so um kind of designed to be based on their preferences so for instance if I search up Russia on google and Joe blow over there searches up Russia on google our results will be very very different yeah so my question is how is journalism coping with this new reality and how can journalism address this kind of willful ignorance we're seeing within society with this reality in place that's hard uh I don't know that I know the answer to that you're right I mean your facebook feed gives you particular news stories it gives me different news stories and we actually know that more Canadians get their news from facebook than anywhere else however as I also said cbc has the biggest social news imprint of anywhere else in the country so we're showing up on facebook so I think all I can do in in my job is to present a balanced view of things and to reach out as much as I can I like I don't know how to code things so that you see everything you don't want to see I don't know that I'm sure somebody at cbc does and they're working on it but it's not me uh but yeah it is a it is a struggle and it is something that we are talking about at cbc it's why we try a lot of different things to reach out to people through youtube through facebook live put the national and facebook live now every night but as I said in the speech if you only want to see one perspective in the world you can do that now you can do that and there's not much I can do about it you may never watch my show that might actually happen thank you very much hi hi my name is Lisa Armstrong rules I'm new to Canada I'm only here a year so I'm interested in I'm a journalist for over 19 years in broadcast journalism across the UK and the Middle East and now here what I'm interested in is what you have found over the years have been the biggest challenges coming up for journalism and I have my own opinions on what that is and I look and but what would you singularly say will be your three top points of as challenges to be in a journalist totally a journalist that's a really hard question to digital stuff how do I be present everywhere I need to be present you know how many more things can I do in a day instagram tweet snapchat you know facebook live like how many more things do I have to do to make sure you all know that I'm doing things what what else can I do that's a challenge and it's I'm certainly not alone in it the pace is is very intense there's a reason I sleep with my phone because when I wake up the president has said 15 things and I need to know them so the pace is has not slowed it is incredibly intense I don't there's nobody in my office that sleeps particularly well or much but I actually don't think that there's that much that has changed my cell phone is smaller and it does a whole bunch of stuff now but I'm still doing the same job I did 15 years ago I am still listening I am still telling stories I'm still asking questions I'm still trying to figure things out and make sure everybody else figures them out and I think if you get bogged down and all the other stuff that makes the job complicated you probably lose sight of what the job is thank you hi last one yeah no pressure uh so my name is Andres fourth year of political science uh I do watch your show yeah man so my question two parts uh first part how do you get ready for your show I've seen most of for example interview you did yesterday I think with Kevin uh you did that today actually today sorry uh you called him out on some of the the facts that he was he was using how do you how do you prepare and kind of know exactly all all the data points that if some politicians push out to you and how do you decide when to call call them out on and push back on that and my second part of that question is how do you pick which panelists are going to analyze certain um you know interviews rob silvers and standing in front in front of me so you used to talk a lot about more baseball facts and stuff but how do you make sure that I hate baseball though yeah how do you make sure that all ideological point of views are covered in your panels and how do you kind of balance that it's like I could do an hour on this question uh the first answer I'm actually a robot so it's really easy to know everything no uh the first answer is I have a group of people that work for me um work with me um in case you didn't know there's about 12 of them uh everyone from associate producers to producers to writers to senior producers to an executive producer and all those people uh work really hard to make me look a lot smarter than I am all day long um so that's the first part and I have conversations about how I want to approach interviews and I have facts that I gather and facts that producers gather so that I know what I'm talking about most of the time most of the time um in that instance I I don't know that I called him out on facts it was very confusing to me what was happening there was lots of yelling and um I just kept asking but what does that mean and you know whatever sometimes I don't get them to say anything and sometimes that says everything um second point was panelists uh I don't have Rob on uh because I don't like baseball and for some other reasons um we have uh we we choose uh a person that represents every party or has party ties a liberal conservative an NDP and then we choose a journalist um we ask them the the partisan people to not be uber partisan we ask them to represent a viewpoint from the left from the progressive left from the center the right wherever they are but we ask them not to be a party representative that's why we have MPs so uh Tim Powers is a small c conservative he gives us a small c conservative perspective Amanda Alvaro although she's close with a liberal party is sometimes critical of them so they all know that that's what they are there to do they're not there to be representative of a party point and we actually take a lot of pride in those people um they are a huge part of the program um that's the most popular part of the program we value their um opinions and their ability to really defend um positions in a way that I don't I don't know that politicians do very well all the time so that's sort of it can I ask a follow-up yeah what are some skills that you wish that 10 years when you came to uh to Ottawa you would have kind of focused on more that you have now that you know young young journalists aren't focusing on I don't know because that was 10 years ago right um and everything things changed so much um I I really I really I really don't think there's anything different that I would do um but I will just go back to that point I made to the other person earlier about finding people to talk to I I really think um that this this business is is very hard and there's a lot of people working very hard in the business and I really do think you can be selective about who you want to talk to um there are people who want to tell you things and there are people that want to be heard and I think that um in a political reporter relationship trust is a really important thing and um if someone burns you um if someone doesn't respect your job because so many people do respect what I do I I don't think you have to keep that person around anymore and that has happened to me and life goes on thanks thank you Rosie I think that is the best Q&A session I've ever been involved with that the the questions were excellent and the answers were uh succinct thoughtful um wonderful thanks very much um I'd like to invite uh Dr Peter Ricketts our provost and vice president academic to the stage to thank our guest on behalf of Carleton University thank you very much Barry good evening everyone and uh just uh wonderful to see so many people you must be popular I guess you know a lot of people I have a TV show yes so um so the uh the bell lecture is uh always one of the highlights of the uh Carleton academic year it's a highlight for the university as it is for the faculty public affairs and uh Carleton is deeply indebted to uh Dick and Ruth Bell for their generosity during their lives and we are very honored and proud as a university to be able to continue their legacy uh with this wonderful series of lectures I think each year we come to the bell lecture wanting to be um inspired informed entertained sometimes offended um but always uh challenged to think about things in a new way and to hear the insights of people who are exceptional examples of the professional work that is done as a result of the application of the kinds of studies that we look at here at Carleton and the kinds of professions that our students and our graduates go on to um to practice when they go out into the real world and it's particularly enjoyable and gratifying when that lecture is delivered by an alumna of Carleton University who uh who really exemplifies um what Carleton University is all about and we really appreciate that you did all those things tonight Rosemary you inspired us you made us laugh I don't think you offended too many people unless you're from Regina that's right you can do that yeah yes that's right and maybe uh maybe your biggest offense was when you reminded those of us with graying hair that you weren't born in 1969 that was particularly cruel I have to say but nevertheless you gave us a wonderful talk and you gave us great insight into why you are such a consummate professional and why you are so successful and it's not just because you can sit in front of a camera and uh and perform um it is I think you gave us a you gave us a real sense of you know what you're like as a person and that comes out uh extraordinarily well I think that's why you do such a wonderful job and why you have so many people who wanted to come out and listen to you and you did not disappoint uh this evening and so um it is my pleasure if this thing doesn't collapse um it is it is my pleasure to uh to thank you on behalf of Carleton University um this particular bell lecture is a special one it's as you heard it is the 25th bell lecture and it's the 25th anniversary of the bell lecture on the 75th anniversary of Carleton University and so this uh this lecture is very special and it culminates uh the FPA research week which was very much geared to uh celebrating the 75th anniversary of Carleton University journalism was the first one of the first programs to be taught at by Carleton College when it was first established in 1942 and that was a time when journalism was not something that was taught at university so Carleton was a trailblazer on that and you are a tremendous ambassador of what this university has achieved because really our achievements are what are demonstrated by people like you who've come through this university graduated and then not only do well in your work but then come back and give back to the students here tonight and they will all have benefited so I'm very pleased to be able to offer you this small but rather heavy token of our appreciation and just to let you know that this particular gift is something that is heart of the press and very emblematic of the 75th anniversary of Carleton University so thank you very very much