Thread:
The @TorontoStar’s guiding Atkinson Principles:
- A strong, united and independent Canada
- Social justice
- Individual and civil liberties
- Community and civic engagement
- The rights of working people
- The necessary role of government
Which would you cross off? 1/x
The @TorontoStar’s guiding Atkinson Principles:
- A strong, united and independent Canada
- Social justice
- Individual and civil liberties
- Community and civic engagement
- The rights of working people
- The necessary role of government
Which would you cross off? 1/x
Prospective new owners of @TorontoStar , affiliate newspapers & parent company are corporate financiers. They say they’ll “promote” the Atkinson Principles. Can they be trusted? 2/x
Conservatives ridicule the Atkinson Principles. They were said to be a drag on parent company Torstar’s share price. Supposedly they “compromised” the Star’s journalism. 3/x 
In fact, nothing in the Atkinson Principles is incompatible with best practices in contemporary journalism. Every mainstream news organization in Canada applies them, with one exception. 4/x
The commitment to a united Canada is a bedrock English-language media principle. Le Devoir’s support for the Parti Québécois in the 1976 provincial election was a departure for the French-language media and remains an anomaly there. 5/x
The other Atkinson Principles have informed mainstream journalism for two centuries. Social justice is ridiculed these days by the hard right, but what else would you call journalism’s concern for the underdog? 6/x
Individual and civil liberties? This Atkinson Principle appears every day on @globeandmail’s editorial page: “The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.” (Quote from the 18th-century English writer Junius.) 7/x
Community and civic engagement? Isn’t the building of communities and engagement with audiences the touchstone of digital journalism, regardless of partisan orientation? 8/x
Joseph Atkinson’s commitment to “the rights of working people” didn’t always extend to his own staff. But isn’t this Atkinson Principle behind the news media’s concern for front-line health-care workers and those who toil in packing plants? 9/x
The sixth Atkinson Principle is “the necessary role of government.” We wouldn’t have government if it weren’t needed. But what’s it needed for? Defence and security - we all say that. Some say to provide a structure within which we care for ourselves and our surroundings. 10/x
Some also say that to flourish equitably and responsibly, without discrimination, human society needs robust government. “It is people getting together to do what they believe they must.” - Jeff Madrick, The Case For Big Government, 2010, p. xiii. 11/x
In the midst of the #COVID19Canada pandemic, all news media are laser-focused on government, not on its necessary role - that’s taken for granted - but on its organization of our response and on its performance. The Atkinson Principles permeate every clip, every page. 12/x
The idea that the @TorontoStar is a journalism outlier because of the Atkinson Principles is so much humbug. They are part of journalism’s DNA. They can be interpreted in many ways, according to different ideologies. But they encompass issues we all grapple with daily. 13/x
How will the Atkinson Principles be interpreted under @nordstarcap, prospective new owners of @TorontoStar, @TheSpec, @WR_Record, @StCatStandard and other ON news titles? More important, will newsrooms have the talent and resources they need to keep covering communities? 14/x
Private capital can be a good steward of news media or a pathogenic presence. I want @nordstarcap to be the former. I hope they’ll give journalism a long leash. I’ll be keeping track. But my scorecard won’t have the Atkinson Principles on it. In journalism, they’re a given. 15/15
@threadreaderapp pls unroll tks
