Ethnic Diversity In Canada

Introduction

There is never a single viewpoint to an issue. Different people can contribute different points of view based on different experiences, ideologies, and upbringings. In western countries such as Canada, this is a defining feature of our culture. Canada’s accepting outlook on immigration has resulted in a mixing of worldviews amongst its people. As such, cultural diversity in the media has also become key for preserving and maintaining democracy through participation. When newspapers fail to give ethnic writers sufficient space for their works, their volume of writing in the newspaper decreases. This underrepresentation gives an unfair view of the actual representation of ethnic groups, causing them to believe that they are not democratically-important.

Underrepresentation in Writing

Newspaper journalists are predominantly Caucasian. This is an issue which creates symbolic annihilation to those not represented in written media. Symbolic annihilation refers to the idea that an audience may interpret the behaviour of various groups presented in media as an absolute truth (Coleman & Yochim, 2008). Pauwke Berkers, Susanne Janssen, and Marc Verboord’s article, Globalization and Ethnic Diversity in Western Newspaper Coverage of Literacy Authors, say that the percentage of the population of ethnicities in the United States surpasses the percentage of ethnicities who are journalists (Berkers, Janssen, Verboord, 2011, 632) .In 2005, visible ethnicities made up 33% of the United States, but only 11% of literacy authors in newspapers (Berkers, Janssen, Verboord, 2011, 632). Nora Happel says that in 2014, ethnic people in newspaper journalism made up 13.34%, where ethnic people made up 37.4% of the nation (Happel, 2015). The Toronto Star newspaper has a total of 50 journalists who are mentioned by name of which 7 are visibly ethnic. The Toronto Star newspaper (14%) is a close parallel to the percentage of ethnic

Although there are many different images of ethnic groups in the newspaper such as Mercutio Southhall Jr: a “black lives matter” activist, Harjit Sajjan: the defense minister of Halifax Stanfield International Airport, and Consuelo Klingenber Perez: a woman struggling with Alzheimer’s. The articles about these individuals are written by Caucasian journalists. Ethnic journalists such as Baba Ahmed, Albert Aji and Bassem Mroue have their articles three pages from the front headline (A3), followed by seven articles written by Caucasian individuals. Baba Ahmed’s article, “Separatists say Mali hotel attack targeted peace talks”, consists of three out of five columns, located on the bottom quarter of the page. Albert Aji and Bassem Mroue’s article, “Assad touts advances made by Syrian army against rebels”, consists of the remaining two quarterly columns next to Ahmed’s article. Out of the seven ethnic journalists in the newspaper, six have articles a quarter or less of the page. The remaining one ethnic journalist has a one column article. This means that out of the 24 pages dedicated to articles, less than one and a half pages have articles written by ethnic journalists. This contrasts the Caucasian journalists that had their articles placed before Ahmad, Aji and Mroue. Caucasian journalists, such as Rosie DiManno, take up half a page with their article. This is seen