The core tenets of journalism include fairness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, and representation. These guiding principles ensure journalists maintain ethical standards as they and the organizations they work for serve the public interest. Too often the profession falls short of these standards, especially in adequately reflecting the wide variety of diversity in the public, in the people it covers, and the reporters telling those stories. This has been an age-old criticism of Canadian media. 

In his new book Under the White Gaze, journalist Christopher Cheung puts Canadian journalism – reporters and newsrooms – under the microscope in a candid and personal examination of the state of race in Canadian media. 

Full disclosure: I was asked by the publisher to read an earlier manuscript, and I provided feedback.

Granted, Cheung does not tell the reader anything new about the sometimes-sad state of diversity in the Canadian media, but he offers fresh eyes on an age-old problem.

This book should be required reading for journalism students and hardened veterans who may have become a tad cynical about their profession or mistakenly believe the journalism they are offering to the public is reflective of multicultural Canada.  But people who consume news – readers and viewers – should also read this book to gain insight into how they may not always be getting the “whole story”.

As Cheung writes: “If you are white, the news is giving you a redacted portrait of who you share your community with. If you are a person of colour like me, this mismatch between what you experience as reality and what you see on the news feels extra personal when the people you‘re familiar with, the places you frequent, the cultures you belong to, and the issues you care about are represented inaccurately. That is, if they‘re in the news at all.”

You can find Christopher Cheung’s book here: https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/under-the-
white-gaze-solving-the-problem-of-race-and-representation-in-canadian-
journalism/9780774881111.html