[URBAN NOTE] "Community Group Challenges Toronto’s Star‘s Reporting About “Somali Drug Dealers”"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Desmond Cole highlights a concern with the coverage of the drug dealers who, it is alleged, filmed Rob Ford smoking crack: were they unfairly highlighted as being of Somali background?

Members of the Canadian Somali Congress have condemned the Toronto Star for repeated references to “Somali drug dealers” in its initial story about mayor Rob Ford’s alleged drug use. The Star‘s first article on the subject originally used the description “Somali” 10 separate times to refer to the men who apparently were involved with Ford in this case. There seems to have been second thoughts among Star editors about this: even before CSC president Ahmed Hussen contacted the publication they edited the article, which now contains five uses of the word.

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Star reporter Robyn Doolittle, who co-authored the article with investigative journalist Kevin Donovan, stands by her descriptions. “I think it’s material to the story,” Doolittle told us during an interview at City Hall. “If you accuse the mayor of smoking crack, you have to provide as much detail as possible.” Doolittle declined to directly address the relevance or frequency of the “Somali” identifier, and referred us to the Star‘s public editor Kathy English. (We had received no reply from English at press time.)

Susan Eng, a former Toronto Police Services Board chair and longtime activist regarding media equity, says the references to ethnicity are irrelevant, because even the Star is protecting the identity of the men in question—in contrast to something like a police search, the goal isn’t to provide a physical description so the public can help locate the individuals. Star reporters “are not suggesting that anyone should go and find these people, and unless that’s your motivation as a reporter, you have no reason to use this language,” Eng told us by phone. She added that journalists often become defensive when they are told their descriptions might stereotype specific communities. “You don’t have to be a racist to make this kind of mistake,” she points out.