Moncton resident Lise Auffray says she has become a bit of an activist since retiring from her job as a school teacher. She's often present at demonstrations organized by the anti-poverty group NB ACORN, climate justice protests, or pro-Palestinian events calling for peace and justice in the Middle East.
David Gordon Koch – Local Journalism Initiative
This experience has given her an appreciation for the NB Media Co-op's reporting. "I have to say that I am really impressed with the excellent reporting you do, with any and all of these events," Auffray said in a letter to the NB Media Co-op's LJI reporter, David Gordon Koch. "The effort, dedication, detail, integrity and overall commitment you bring to the task is admirable."
Social justice activists often state that journalists from mainstream or legacy media fail to accurately convey the issues that matter to them.
For example, when climate justice activists held a demonstration in Moncton earlier this year, a major Canadian broadcaster sent a reporter to cover the event. After seeing their coverage, local activist Leslie Chandler sent a letter of complaint to the news outlet, saying the report omitted key information. "Watch the NB Media Co-op coverage — you might learn how it is really done," Chandler wrote.
Auffray echoed those sentiments in her letter to the NB Media Co-op.
"Given the biased and shady reporting of much of N.B.'s general media coverage, we are lucky to have an independent such as NB Media Co-op," she said, adding that our LJI-funded reporter is a "huge asset" to the Co-op.
Peter Jongeneelen, co-chair of NB ACORN, noted that our videos posted on YouTube are a valuable resource because they can be shared on platforms such as Facebook, "something groups like ours appreciate because it helps convey our message to a wider public through social media platforms."
This kind of feedback shows that even with our modest resources, the NB Media Co-op is able to help members of the community who find that, with the mainstream legacy media, their messages fall on deaf ears.
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About LJI
LJI Impact is the section of commediaportal.ca where the journalists and their organizations participating in CACTUS' Local Journalism Initiative can share their greatest successes.
Through the written stories, photos and videos you see in the LJI Impact section, you'll be able to read first hand accounts about how the presence of a community journalist is making a difference in communities across Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative and the Community Media Portal.
The Community Media Portal is a gateway to the audio-visual media created by community media centres across Canada. These include traditional community TV and radio stations, as well as online and new media production centres.
Community media are not-for-profit production hubs owned and operated by the communities they serve, established both to provide local content and reflection for their communities, as well as media training and access for ordinary citizens to the latest tools of media production, whether traditional TV and radio, social and online media, virtual reality, augmented reality or video games.
The Community Media Portal has been funded by the Local Journalism Initiative (the LJI) of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) in association with the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération). Under the LJI, over 100 journalists have been placed in underserved communities and asked to produce civic content that underpins Canadian democratic life.
