Four years later, the failure to ask the most basic journalism questions about residential school graves haunts the nation
Not only was an exhausting narrative delivered through oversight, news organizations insist on letting inaccurate original stories stand
This week marks the fourth anniversary of the day Canada’s media broke faith with the public that funds it.
May 27, 2021, was when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced the “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” discovered at the former Kamloops Residential School site. Most, if not all, media reported this statement, which was based on anomalies shown on ground penetrating radar, without challenging its veracity.
Not long after, the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan announced that ground penetrating radar had located 751 unmarked graves in a community cemetery adjacent to the former location of a residential school.
Talk of “mass graves” ricocheted across the country and the world. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Saskatchewan in a flash on bended knee with teddy bears. It didn’t matter that the markers in the cemetery had been removed decades ago by a rogue priest; Anderson Cooper and a 60 Minutes crew were already flying in to Regina. The impression left by the coverage was that children had been murdered en masse. Statues were toppled or put in storage and close to 200 churches were burned - many to the ground - or vandalized in the months and years that followed. Pope Francis visited Canada in 2022 to atone once again for the Roman Catholic church’s role in operating many of the schools.
All because no one had the courage to ask: “This is a very serious allegation - how can you be certain?” and then, in the immortal words of the City News Bureau of Chicago, check it out.
The coverage at the time showed little evidence journalists looked for proof beyond the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc allegation or gave sufficient play to Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme’s efforts to establish context.
Since then, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc have revised their confirmation of bodies so that they now maintain the radar showed anomalies that possibly could be graves. No bodies have been found or, for that matter, searched for. The band has received millions of dollars to assist it with its investigation and the school is now a national historic site.
The original stories remain online and, in many cases, uncorrected, leaving the public’s understanding of the matter unchanged. Here’s one example from CTV/Canadian Press. The headline - “Remains of 215 children found buried at former B.C. residential school” - is still there. CBC has made an effort to update its stories, but its original headlines remain and recent incidents suggest staff still believe the initial version.
As Marco Navarro-Genie of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy recently wrote, media may even have been enlisted as allies to ensure the allegations went unchallenged:
“According to The Knowing by Tanya Talaga, “select journalists” were given embargoed details to ensure “sensitive and impactful” coverage. CBC journalist Angela Sterritt admitted she was in contact with the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc the day before the announcement and was one of only a few journalists granted access to the June 4, 2021, video conference, where live-streaming was prohibited. This raises serious questions about whether the CBC acted as a passive reporter or an active participant in promoting an unverified claim.”
Shamed domestically and internationally, the nation’s flags went to half mast for months before being raised only in deference to Remembrance Day. A new holiday was declared for federal employees and the Prime Minister took advantage of the first one to go surfing.
There is no question that children died at residential schools. I have stood by and honoured the once unmarked graves - including those belonging to children of the school’s principal - at the reclaimed site of the Indian Industrial School outside Regina. Nor is there doubt that many students suffered from cultural dislocation, shaming and abuse. But that is no excuse for media not reporting the original Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc claim and the Cowessess news professionally and instead wildly and widely misinforming the public, raising the spectre of mass murders and traumatizing many. It’s one thing to make a mistake, quite another to leave it uncorrected because you prefer the impression it made.
As was the case in Regina, unmarked graves in abandoned cemeteries will surely be uncovered. But unchallenged suggestions that seeking factual reporting is equivalent to “denialism” and “white supremacy” as outlined in this City News report indicate many in the news industry are dug in. Then again, perhaps they explain why so many reporters chose not to ask the very simple question: “Are you sure?”
The fact that, within Canada’s government-certified press, it took a year for the story The year of the graves: How the world’s media got it wrong on residential school graves to be properly told by Terry Glavin is a clear indication that many newsrooms not only fear the truth, they are incapable of either telling it in a full and compassionate fashion or accepting responsibility when they fail. Glavin still bears the scars. Coming up, The Rewrite will post Peter Stockland’s interview with him.
This incident speaks to the increasingly passive nature of media in Canada - a timidity expressed by its lack of curiosity regarding what are best described as the assumed verities of our times.
For example, when Prime Minister Mark Carney recently met with US President Donald Trump, the latter made a point of expressing his dislike of former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
When, a week later, Freeland was appointed as Transportation Minister, was it not worth asking if this was done in deference to Trump?
Nor did anyone pick up on the fact that even while Carney was campaigning about how he would use crushing force to bring Trump to heel, he was already adopting a more conciliatory strategy. I’m not saying there isn’t a good answer but how could the Liberals not be asked about a platform that predicted $20 billion in revenue from tariffs while changing its mind on the implementation of those tariffs?
There were attempts by China to interfere in our election and some very close results. But even while recounts continued last week, media appear to have tepidly accepted all this as de rigeur.
They have, overall, been unwilling to report on developments in the treatment of children suffering from gender dysphoria, demographic trends and the evolution of our culture and languages. Nor has anyone figured out how one $6.8 billion pipeline - Trans Mountain - cost $34 billion once the federal government took it over while another $6.2 billion undertaking - Coastal GasLink - was able to come in at $14.5 billion. But what’s $20 billion these days?
(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)
In a broader context, it has been suggested that media outlets and their reporters have abandoned facts in exchange for narratives.
The “mass graves” story is a flagship piece for narrative development and control. A clever PR team found pliable reporters that were offered an embargoed “scoop” but also placed restrictions on how the story was released. Few questions asked and the narrative drives the story.
Mr. Menzies brings up the word “denialism”, the antithesis to a free society that has every right to seek the facts and ask questions that may make people squirm. A good place to start is that despite all the storytelling about apple orchards and digging graves in the middle of the night, why aren’t reporters allowed to speak to people who have seen or participated in such events?
A true leader would have listened and demanded proof knowing full well that to leave it unsubstantiated would be explosive. Instead there was no attempt by the Liberal government to get the actual facts. Was that lack of action deliberate? It sure looks like it was and remains so. It certainly looks like the goal was to further erase Canada's history by vilifying how a great nation came to be. If so, then this error has been a huge success.