How to make a difference

Journalism can change the world

News organizations regularly take credit for changing laws and forcing reform.

Often, the credit is deserved. From time to time, it is not.

Sometimes we simply don’t know if our journalism has effected change and spurred government or other organizations to action.

But at the very least, we thought it a welcome coincidence this week when the Ontario government proposed a law that would prevent colleges and universities from asking students about their sexual pasts.

“Our government has zero tolerance for sexual assault and we have made that clear,” said Jill Dunlop, associate minister of children and women’s issues, on Wednesday. “And with these new proposed regulations, we are also making clear that we have zero tolerance for blaming the victim.”

The news comes amid an important and ongoing Spectator investigation, Whisper Network, into the way McMaster University has dealt with sexual violence.

In a series of articles in December, Spectator reporter Katrina Clarke talked to survivors, advocates and experts who said the university should review its sexual violence policies and the province should make laws stronger.

As it is, policies at post-secondary institutions are uneven and do not support survivors, Clarke’s stories revealed. McMaster University, critics said, is failing survivors of sexual violence by silencing them, protecting perpetrators and conducting investigations in ways that further traumatize complainants.

Those criticisms came following a months-long review by McMaster after police charged a professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour with sexual assault.

Now the government is aiming to reduce “fear and stigma” for survivors, but some say the proposed legislation does not go far enough.

So, once again, we are well on our way to a more just society, the result of work by a variety of organizations, including government, advocacy groups, students, survivors, journalists and the institutions themselves.

Does this kind of reform happen without the work journalists do to shine a light on it? Sometimes it does, but sometimes it does not.

Humanity tolerates all kinds of inequities and injustices, often for decades or even centuries, before someone somewhere says enough is enough, and we all wonder why something wasn’t done sooner, why we tolerated it for so long.

Social change is often sluggish, but it can and does happen quickly in some instances — the events of the last year are proof of that.

But usually needed change requires a nudge from the top or the bottom or somewhere in the middle — that’s often where journalism comes in.