2005 Harmony Award Recipient

Diversity is the mainstream: A profile of Citytv

By Sharon Ho

“The press really was stuffy back then,” June Callwood remembers of the 1970s. “I don’t recall that we had a great cross-section of the country on television”.

The only person of colour Callwood remembers being on television in the early seventies was Hong Kong-born Adrienne Clarkson. Black people and other visible minorities, if they worked at television stations, were hired for off-camera jobs. So, up until 1972, Torontonians could be assured that they would only see white, middle-aged men on their nightly news. The city’s media had failed to reflect the increasingly diverse universe of Toronto.

David Crombie was the mayor of the Toronto in 1972 and remembers the ethnic diversity of the city changing in the forties and fifties with an influx of people from around the world. Crombie became a catalyst behind this change as he teamed up with people like urban planning critic Jane Jacobs to stop the construction of the Spadina Expressway, an extension of the Allen Road into downtown Toronto that would have cut through the heart of Chinatown.

“The notion there was increasing diversity was apparent to anyone of that generation.” According to Crombie, diversity became more widely accepted in the seventies. There were several reasons behind this. One was the federal government’s support for multiculturalism. Another was the creation of Toronto’s Metro Caravan, an attempt to introduce people to different cultures by creating a festival with different pavilions, each corresponding to a different county.

But September 28, 1972 marked the day that Toronto’s – and by extension, Canada’s – media was forever changed. It was the day Citytv was launched.

A year earlier four people – Ed Cowan, Gerald Grafstein, Phyllis Switzer, and Moses Znaimer – filed an application with the CRTC to create a television channel based on the principles of diversity.

“The application included the promise that Citytv would serve all cultures, not just the dominant one,” said Sarah Crawford, Vice-President, Public Affairs at CHUM Limited, which bought Citytv in the 1978.

“The founders of Citytv decided that they would be fully inclusive. They hired people from minority cultures, they put people on television that weren’t represented, including people of colour, and people with names that were hard to pronounce. At that time, it was a jarring change for the people of Toronto.”

Crombie remembers the reaction to Citytv as only being marvellous. He believes Citytv revolutionized news reporting in Toronto by aiming to reflect the city’s diversity. “They were the first ones who purposely went out and said we’re going to reflect the people of the city and they did. They not only did it, but they set the bar for all the others who had to follow.”

To understand the motivation behind Citytv‘s commitment to be inclusive requires an understanding of Znaimer, the Russian Jew and man credited with being the visionary behind Citytv.

“He really felt like an outsider and identified with not being part of the establishment nor being part of the status quo,” Crawford explained. Znaimer believed in diversity because he realized people like himself weren’t represented on television. He also realized promoting diversity on television made good business sense as the number of visible minorities in Toronto grew.

Crawford’s own passion for diversity and social justice issues grew when she started working at Citytv as an assistant to the station manager twenty-two years ago, and diversity has always been an integral part of her work.

So, what’s a white woman doing promoting diversity? Crawford feels a responsibility as a woman to create positive social change, given how women have been and, in some cases, are still marginalized in society. More importantly, Crawford understands the creative importance of having a diverse television station.

“When you get the same, old homogenous people together in a room, you’ll get the same old homogenous ideas that are not interesting or creative,” she said with slight smile.

Citytv’s commitment to inclusivity was evident in 1977 when it hired Jojo Chintoh as a full-time news reporter whose face would grace its nightly news. Citytv hired the then 33-year-old black man at a time when he had a great deal of difficulty finding work as a journalist.

“It was so hard,” Chintoh recalls. “It’s never easy because people have prejudices against us even though they may not say it. The prejudice doesn’t stop after you get into the newsroom. The assignments I got were based on how people perceived me.”

What kinds of stories did Chintoh get when he started out? A lot of immigrant stories! Chintoh always had the perception that these stories weren’t good enough for white reporters, but this feeling didn’t diminish his commitment to his work. “I felt proud to be representing people that were marginalized.”

In 1979, people like Cheuk Kwan and Joseph Wong were spearheading a nation-wide protest against a story on CTV’s W5. The newsmagazine segment, “Campus Giveaway”, alleged that foreign students were taking away places from Canadians in universities when, in fact, these “foreigners” were all Chinese Canadians.

Kwan, who was twenty-eight and a new immigrant in 1979, became media-savvy during the “anti-W5” campaign. He always felt a natural rapport with Chintoh because of their experience with marginalization and believes Chintoh’s background gives the reporter greater empathy with other visible minorities. Kwan recalled how a white reporter from the Toronto Sun had treated him as a foreigner during an interview.

“It takes someone like yourself to understand you,” Kwan said. “It’s always important to let communities tell their own stories and Jojo epitomizes that.”

Chintoh’s presence on television later inspired Citytv news anchor and crime reporter, Dwight Drummond. The 38-year-old immigrated from Jamaica in 1976 and was hired full-time at Citytv in 1992.

“It was good for me to see people who looked like me on air doing that job,” recalled Drummond. “It gave me the realization maybe I could do it too because before that it was a white male-dominated medium.”

Drummond always thought he had a chance of better getting work at Citytv. “I’d go to certain places and when they heard about my background, it’d be a turnoff; I came from Jane and Finch. Whereas here I don’t think they would hold it against you.”

Citytv’s diversity also made Merella Fernandez feel welcome at Citytv eight years ago. The 32-year-old news anchor and reporter along with her co-anchor, Francis D’Souza, makesfor an interesting pair — they are Goans. It may seem strange for two South Asians to have Portuguese surnames, but Goa was a Portuguese colony from 1510 until 1961. Today, there are 20,000 Goans in Ontario and a majority of them live in Toronto, adding another feather to the city’s trans-national, trans-cultural cap.

“Every time I go somewhere near the Goan community, they’d come up to me and say they are so proud to see someone from their community on air,” said Fernandez. “They sort of claim you as their own. It’s nice for them to have their daughter on air.” Fernandez started her journalism career in 1995, a time when the media started widely embracing diversity. But she feels Citytv is a dynamic station because of its commitment to diversity and community news.

“The diversity gives you a better understanding of cultures and what’s going on. You have unique perspectives because you have people from different backgrounds who see things a little differently and can bring that to the table in editorial discussions.”

David Onley had difficulty finding work before he was hired at Citytv in 1984 – people with physical disabilities just weren’t getting jobs. Period.

“There’s no question many interviews really ended before they began, once the prospective employer realized I had a physical disability,” Onley wrote in an email.

“Citytv didn’t care about his disability though and hired him because he was the best person for the job,” said Crawford. These days Onley is the only full-time on-air personality in Canada with a physical disability. In turn he has inspired others like him.

Thirty-three years of promoting diversity doesn’t mean Citytv is resting on its laurels these days. Diversity continues to be significant part of its work. “Ensuring that we’re meeting our diversity commitment is a daily job,” said Crawford. “There’s no decision made where we’re not checking ourselves to make sure we’re diverse and inclusive.”