"...she does not belong in talk radio as practiced in North America"

December 3, 2020 9:07 AM

A host on a morning talk-radio news show quits after racist threats. Supriya Dwivedi, host on Toronto AM talk-radio station 640 CFMJ, resigned after enduring increasingly aggressive threats from listeners. Her resignation follows months of online harassment which she contends in a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission was feebly-addressed by her employer Global and its parent company Chorus Entertainment.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon (25 comments total)

jfc it's like no one ever heard of alan berg.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:17 AM on December 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

Meet her (now former) co-host, Mike Stafford.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 9:20 AM on December 3, 2020

The pull quote only gets at part of the horror:

"If your client wishes to leave her role because she finds views dramatically different than her own to be antithetical to her continued employment, or cannot tolerate the trolls of social media, then she does not belong in talk radio as practiced in North America."

I'm not gonna quote exactly what said trolls of social media were saying to Dwivedi, but it was not "tolerable".

It's not at all surprising that Global and Corus refused to protect her, and not at all surprising that they are now hiding behind perfunctory diversity training for their employees. This is Canadian media: an old-boys club stuck circa 1987 with zero respect for anyone outside the white-dude bubble except to the precise extent that they bring in eyeballs and dollars.
posted by saturday_morning at 9:26 AM on December 3, 2020 [11 favorites]

Covered on today's Canadaland episode.
posted by GuyZero at 9:26 AM on December 3, 2020

Yeah, that quote is beyond gross.
posted by GuyZero at 9:26 AM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

I know it’s really unfair that I, as an American, want Canada to be better than the US in every way. Which is impossible because of capitalism, racism and the patriarchy. But dammit, this stings. Also, what a fucked up company. Thanks for the post, OP.
posted by Bella Donna at 9:41 AM on December 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

I hope she gets a lawyer and takes Global/Corus to account in front of a judge.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:39 AM on December 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

The human rights complaint will be interesting. There's a fairly straightforward (in principle) hostile workplace argument but there's also an argument that the content of what Global was broadcasting created that hostile workplace. I'd be surprised if the CHRC touches that line of reasoning.
posted by sfred at 10:55 AM on December 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

We're a strictly CBC household - well, ever since I got my mother weaned off of CFRB (and that was before Michael Coren had his come-to-Jesus-means-actually-loving-people moment) - so I'm not familiar with Dwivedi.

But I know it's not easy for anyone to make it in journalism or broadcasting. It's a competitive, high status profession with far more applicants than slots. The fact that we're seeing more people of colour in prominent positions in the media means that they have worked their butts off, and had to be better than most of their white predecessors - and to have to deal with this kind of harassment on top feels like just pissing on a shit sandwich.

Sorry, that's the longwinded version of: this sucks. I am pissed off at my fellow (presumably white) Canadians. We aren't better than this, but we should be.
posted by jb at 11:07 AM on December 3, 2020 [4 favorites]

The station's on-air talent includes one John Oakley, a longtime staffer who routinely gives lightly-moderated airtime to such far-right zealots and bigots as Mark Steyn, Charles McVeity, Conrad Black, Sue Ann Levy and John Bolton.

His 'star pupil' in media exposure, however was Rob Ford, who had a weekly pulpit on the station for years before his ascendency to Mayor of Toronto.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 11:09 AM on December 3, 2020 [8 favorites]

What are the current demographics of talk radio listeners (and especially participants)? It feels like a relic of the pre-internet era, so having a conservative audience seems expected.
posted by meowzilla at 11:33 AM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

There are racists in my neighborhood, literally living houses away from me and my parents and other Chinese (and Japanese and Indian) Canadian neighbors. They are middle/upper middle class retired white Canadians and probably watch Global and read National Post or whatever, and won't change their attitudes any time soon i.e. their overt and covert racism.
posted by polymodus at 11:36 AM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

What are the current demographics of talk radio listeners (and especially participants)? It feels like a relic of the pre-internet era, so having a conservative audience seems expected.

As I understand it, the problem is that's not what's at issue here (even if it's what Corus' lawyers are arguing). This is a case of an employee being subject to racist and misogynist harassment, threats of sexual assault, and death threats. The latter two are explicitly crimes per the Criminal Code. As for the harassment, since the employer is federally regulated as a telecommunications business, the Canada Labour Code applies (in other industries, this would be the Ontario Employment Standards Act). It explicitly obligates employers to have policies and take action on instances of workplace harassment, regardless of whether that harassment originates inside or outside the organization.

Per the links in the post, she approached her employer about all of this, and they shrugged and said, in effect, "Well, what did you expect?"

That is deeply and incredibly fucked up.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:24 PM on December 3, 2020 [27 favorites]

I want to ask a very straight question: What should companies do to help their employees deal with social media trolls and other public abusers? Clearly in this case they did things to make it worse, but I am interested in what people think are the best practices here.

I am legitimately interested in what kinds of strategies might actually be effective at trying to defuse online hate, because many of the obvious ones don't seem to work and many companies seem lost. My personal thoughts mostly involve having someone of high social status make it clear that this kind of behavior is not socially acceptable within the community, but that can backfire if done poorly. So I am very interested in opinions.
posted by JZig at 2:34 PM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

Per the links in the post, she approached her employer about all of this, and they shrugged and said, in effect, "Well, what did you expect?"

Well, yes. They're racist. Their listeners are racist. Their business model is serving racism to their racist listeners.

What did she expect? She says she 'leans to the right' in her own politics. Did she not know who they are?

It's absolutely fucked up. But while I'm sympathetic to the plight of a woman of colour being unlawfully hounded out of a job by virulent racists, this has a strong air of 'I never thought the leopards would eat my face".
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:44 PM on December 3, 2020 [4 favorites]

What should companies do to help their employees deal with social media trolls and other public abusers?

In this case it's fairly obvious - stop fostering hate, bigotry and misinformtion. This station (and the owner media org) is a steward of the public discourse and should act accordingly.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 2:47 PM on December 3, 2020

I want to ask a very straight question: What should companies do to help their employees deal with social media trolls and other public abusers? Clearly in this case they did things to make it worse, but I am interested in what people think are the best practices here.

Not allow their hosts to spread racist misinformation and whip up racists to abuse POC.
Actively tell their listeners that racist abuse is not acceptable.
Prevent listeners form contacting her directly? They listed her email address on their website until she retained a lawyer.
At a pinch, provide staff to screen incoming comms to her.
Work with police to prosecute those making violent threats to her and her fucking infant child for fucks sake.

They did not care about her wellbeing at all, and they were not shy in saying so directly.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:52 PM on December 3, 2020 [14 favorites]

As someone in an broadcast forum noted,

"Supriya: I'm getting rape and death threats against my family.

Corus lawyer: You knew you were working at a station with a conservative audience."
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 2:59 PM on December 3, 2020 [13 favorites]

I am definitely not defending the station, in this case where there is no real "opponent" side then the company does have a lot of control over the community norms. But that isn't as true when the abusers mostly come from other communities.

The comms screening idea makes sense, I wonder if companies provide that for specific people in other situations. Or maybe that's just rolled into the "personal assistant" job that rich people have access to, and their assistants just filter it (which can't be enjoyable either).

I wonder if Canada has better laws/processes for pursuing legal action against online threats, it seems to be very difficult to do that in the US for a variety of reasons. No one I know who has had death threat abuse has successfully gotten police/prosecutors to care about it but I wonder if companies might have more leverage than individuals.
posted by JZig at 3:19 PM on December 3, 2020

Wow, that company is spectacularly awful.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:27 PM on December 3, 2020

What should companies do to help their employees deal with social media trolls and other public abusers?

As His thoughts were red thoughts said,
* Not provide her contact info publicly
* Have other staff screen non-white listed incoming messages, and maintain records to document harassment
* Take proactive action against people harassing her as required by law

And also, off the top of my head:
* Moderate comments on their social media
* Proactively ensure that relevant staff (eg. anyone in the chain of management above her) have training in preventing and responding to workplace harassment, including online harassment
* Consult with her and take any additional steps necessary to ensure her safety after direct threats have been made (could include making sure all staff know not to give out any contact or personal info about her to any callers, providing a safe/secure entrance to the workplace for her, stuff like that)
* Provide mental health supports
* Refrain from making comments implying that the harassment was in any way her fault
* Ensuring that the fact of the harassment, or the extra work she had to take on I dealing with it that would have taken some time/energy away from her performance of other job duties, didn't negatively impact any of her performance reviews
* Provide not-her, paid staff hours to document harassment against her in relation to her job but occuring on online platforms that the employer does not control (eg. Twitter, Facebook)
posted by eviemath at 5:31 PM on December 3, 2020 [10 favorites]

Provide private security to her to counter the risks to her safety that they caused by monetising racism.
Stop monetising racism.
Stop blaming her in public for being 'too weak' to deal with the consequences of monetising racism.
Stop monetising racism.
Settle with her for the failure to provide a safe working environment because they monetise racism.
Stop monetising racism.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:36 PM on December 3, 2020 [12 favorites]

An important note that doesn't seem to have been addressed earlier: in a position like this one's social media presence is part of their job. By implicitly (or explicitly) requiring a performative social media presence an employer makes said cesspool part of their (unsafe, hazardous, potentially legally actionable) workplace.

As ... ugh "ugly" ... as any of the details here are and regardless of "what she should have known given their audience" I think a better framing (by analogy) would be:

Imagine being a a 'golden age' actor under contract with a studio. Said contract requires you participate in publicity tours in order to be paid for the work you already did as on screen talent. Said tours included death threats, libel & other intolerable abuse. Studio says you should toughen up until you quit."

"Pretty galling in this century or last. No I'm not surprised, this is my disappointed face." --mce, from Canada where not owning people is widely considered enough to excuse xenophobia & genocide.

posted by mce at 5:41 PM on December 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

Her interview (with another former Corus employee that left the company in dubious circumstances, Ryan Jespersen) was fantastic.
posted by Kurichina at 9:53 AM on December 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

From Vice, "Global News Says It's 'Taking Action' Following Radio Host's Resignation":

Smith said Global News already has the “highest editorial standards in the industry,” but can do more. He said the company will be rolling out a “new plan regarding social media that we hope will fundamentally re-set how we interact with platforms we don’t control.”

Smith did not give any specifics about that plan or how the company plans to improve its editorial standards.

Howard Levitt, a lawyer for Corus Entertainment, Global News’ parent company, previously told Dwivedi’s lawyer the outlet “did everything possible to protect her and others from racism and misogyny.” Levitt said if Dwivedi cannot tolerate trolls, “she does not belong in talk radio as practiced in North America.”

Corus declined to answer if it stands behind those comments, which have been widely condemned, and whether Levitt will continue to represent the company.

Corus also did not answer how Smith’s claims about having high editorial standards square with misinformation that has been spread on Global News’ talk radio shows, including claims that detained migrant children in the U.S. are actors; the photo of Alan Kurdi, a dead Syrian child, was staged; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a globalist; and systemic racism doesn't exist in Canada.

A Corus spokesperson told VICE World News, “We are finding it increasingly challenging to contribute in a meaningful way to your requests. We are steadfast in our commitment to support our people and create long-term sustainable change within our organization. We care deeply about our people and the work that we do.”

Big lol at "We are finding it increasingly challenging to contribute in a meaningful way to your requests." Read this as "quit pointing out our obvious lies. don't you know how any of this works?"
posted by mhum at 12:28 PM on December 4, 2020 [2 favorites]