Welcome to The Buzz where we try to look at some of the stories of the week that, among other things, help us understand the news behind the news.
What are you looking for in good journalism, aside from the truth? Is it telling you something important about your world? Is it uncovering something you didn’t know? Is it making life better for those who have been left behind? There are lots of possibilities, but it takes really good, hard-working and determined journalists to deliver on those requests.
Connie Walker stands tall on all those accounts. I remember when she joined the team at The National in the early two-thousands. She was focused and prepared to put all her energy behind the stories she worked on. She was part of a growing group of Indigenous reporters who added serious weight to the quality of CBC journalism overall- people like Wab Kinew in Winnipeg and Duncan McCue in Vancouver to name just two. Connie Walker’s determination centred around the often-ignored story of missing women and children, and she pursued it with a vigour that could not be ignored. Her and her team’s documentaries, articles and podcasts have raised the profile of the issue and helped force it onto the national agenda. CBC could have kept the Walker brand by ensuring they kept giving her the appropriate platform for her journalism, but they fumbled the opportunity and to its great loss Walker moved on from the CBC to a bigger stage, taking some of her team with her.
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