Pacinthe Mattar

4 weeks ago | thewalrus.ca | Pacinthe Mattar

Iremember the first time I heard about the case for diversity. It was 2008, and someone in my journalism class had raised the point that, in media and other industries, hiring a diverse team wasn’t just “the right thing to do” but it was also “good for business.” It’s a point that is never far off in a conversation about the “value” of diversity in the workplace. I remember wondering, Well, what happens when it stops being good for business?

Nov 19, 2024 | j-source.ca | Pacinthe Mattar

Pacinthe Mattar delivered her speech “Objectivity, Press Freedom and the Palestine Exception” at Carleton University on Sept. 30. A version of that speech follows. I joined the CBC as an intern in 2009. For the first two years of my time at CBC, it was very on and off again work. I would check my email compulsively to see if the schedulers needed me. I never said no to a shift. 6 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 a.m. I said yes to it all. Then came January 2011. Egypt was going through a revolution.

Nov 13, 2024 | thewalrus.ca | Pacinthe Mattar

A t some point in my ten years of being a radio and television producer—calling politicians, wildfire experts, or survivors of the most harrowing experiences, asking them pressing questions about the world and their lives, then translating it all into a story that would air the next day—I grew tired of phone calls. Then came the pandemic. I live alone and could communicate with people safely only by phone or video call, and I began to hate the immediacy.

Nov 2, 2024 | thestar.com | Pacinthe Mattar

This essay is going to break one of the most pervasive rules in Canadian journalism: I’m going to talk about how we talk about Palestine, and about our collective, consistent journalistic failure to do so accurately, with humanity, context and courage. Specifically, I want to talk about how, in my experience, our own highly-regarded editorial processes seem to fly out the window when Palestine is in the news. It’s something I experienced first-hand during my decade working at the CBC.

Oct 9, 2024 | thewalrus.ca | Pacinthe Mattar

I’m a journalist. I use words to convey things that have been verified as true, observable, and rooted in reality. A requirement of journalism is that language be stripped of emotion, of opinions, of “bias.” There should be no flowery language or poetry. Just the facts.