| When: | Monday, September 30th, 2024 |
| Time: | 7:00 pm — 9:00 pm |
| Location: | Richcraft Hall, 2228 |
| Audience: | Anyone |
Carleton University Journalism presents
Objectivity, Press Freedom, and the Palestine Exception
Presented by Pacinthe Mattar
Monday, September 30th, 2024
7:00 PM-9:00 PM
Richcraft Hall 2228 and virtually via YouTube livestream
About the Lecture
When Pacinthe Mattar was a producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, only one story of hers did not make it to air out of the thousands she produced daily over her ten-year tenure. It was about Palestine, and it changed the trajectory of her journalism career.
The so-called racial reckoning of 2020 forced the journalism industry to–however briefly–listen to its Black, Indigenous and racialized peers as they detailed their experiences with systemic racism in media institutions. Mattar wrote the National Magazine Award-winning article, “Objectivity Is A Privilege Afforded To White Journalists,” now a mainstay in syllabi at journalism schools across North America. But while the journalism industry has learned to name and begin to address anti-Black and anti-Indigenous and other forms of racism, it can barely even name anti-Palestinian racism. Meanwhile in Gaza and the West Bank, over 110 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in the last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, making it the deadliest period for journalists in recorded history.
In this talk, journalist Pacinthe Mattar will open her reporter’s notebook and share her experiences covering and talking about Palestine – and explain why it’s one of the most urgent and critical press freedom issues of our time.
About the Speaker
Pacinthe Mattar is an Egyptian-Canadian journalist, writer, producer, host and journalism instructor based in Toronto. She spent ten years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producing for national TV and radio programmes. Her work focuses on race and racism, Middle East politics and more, and has appeared in publications including The Walrus, Al Jazeera, Chatelaine, Toronto Life, Three Magazine and The New Quarterly. In 2021, she received a National Magazine Award and Canadian Online Publishing Award for her feature essay “Objectivity Is a Privilege Afforded to White Journalists.”
She was selected as a 2022 Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. In 2023, she was the Asper Fellow in Media at Western University. She is the host of the monthly Don Talks series at the Don Arts Academy in Toronto. She has taught journalism and writing at Western University, Boston University and Harvard University. She earned her undergraduate degree at The University of Toronto at Mississauga in 2008, and completed a master’s degree in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University in 2010.
To learn more about Pacinthe, visit her website.
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