Carleton promises to address journalism students' systemic racism complaints

Canada's oldest journalism school has responded to a call to action from current and former students with a promise to address systemic racism within its walls.

In its response to the document, signed by numerous students and alumni of colour, Carleton University's School of Journalism says it will make immediate changes to its curriculum and have staff participate in training meant to address their implicit biases.

The school says it is also reworking its first-year courses to include a new focus on diversity and will immediately begin recruiting its Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies.

It will also make mandatory a course on Indigenous history.

But some of the calls, such as a demand to deconstruct and examine the concept of objectivity, were not addressed in the school's statement.

The call to action notes that the "current understanding" of objectivity — treated as a tenet of news journalism — was created by those already in power, namely straight, white, cisgendered male journalists "whose human rights were never at risk by keeping silent in the name of their craft."