November 11, 2024 – for immediate release

The National NewsMedia Council (NNC) has dismissed a complaint about accuracy and a lack of context in a September 7, 2024, article, “Russian-Canadian director responds to TIFF documentary backlash, says journalists ‘follow the story where it goes,’” published by the Globe and Mail.

The article featured an interview with a Russian-Canadian filmmaker, Anastasia Trofimova, about her film, which follows Russian soldiers during the invasion of Ukraine.

Orest Zakydalsky filed a complaint with the NNC raising concerns about the accuracy and context of statements in the piece. In particular, the complainant objected to the fact that the interview did not include additional context about the filmmaker’s prior statements, and pointed to an article published by a Russian-language news organization that indicated she coordinated access with a Russian military commander. The complainant argued this contradicted her statements in the piece in question where she said she did not receive official permission from the Russian government to embed with soldiers.

The complainant, moreover, raised concerns about the filmmaker’s past work with RT, a Russian state-controlled television news network, and noted that the article should have included context about the broadcaster’s “lies and mendacity about Ukraine, and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

The complainant indicated that they wished to see a follow up story about the filmmaker’s access and communications with Russian officials. They argued that simply publishing the filmmaker’s claims was an exercise in transcription, rather than journalism. 

The news organization responded to the complainant’s concerns by noting that the purpose and scope of the piece was to inform readers about the films they could view at the Toronto International Film Festival, and that the article had a limited word count based on the space allotted. The news organization noted that an individual article cannot comprehensively cover, nor is it meant to cover, all of the issues raised in the complaint.

The news organization included links to other articles as examples of its coverage of the film, including opinion content that presented arguments from individuals who offered different, sometimes critical, perspectives on the filmmaker’s work.

In reviewing the matter, the NNC considered journalistic standards surrounding the scope and context of information presented to readers. Standard practice allows journalists to select the scope and focus of a given piece. Articles are expected to include relevant information and attribute statements appropriately so that readers understand the information presented in context.

The NNC would note that question-and-answer-style pieces are distinct from news reporting, which is expected to include information from multiple sources and provide informative  coverage on developing issues. In this case, the interviewer posed a number of questions  about the thinking behind and reaction to the filmmaker’s work, including, for example, “Before the CBC, you worked for the Russian state-controlled media company RT, which is banned in Canada. Naturally, this has cast a propagandistic shadow over your new film.”

The NNC also observed that the article featured an update to readers at the top of the piece, after the initial publication of the article, to indicate that Ontario’s public broadcaster, TVO, which helped fund the documentary, would not support or air the film, and that the festival had cancelled its screenings, citing security concerns. The update included links to articles that covered the controversy surrounding the film and related developments.

The NNC noted that the article is categorized under “film” in the arts section. An ordinary reading of the article in question provides readers an opportunity to understand the controversy of the film as well as the filmmaker’s perspective as she responds to the reaction to her work in the context of arts coverage. Given the nature of such pieces, it is the view of the NNC that the article in question was not intended to be the sole or definitive piece of reportage on the subject.

The NNC agrees with the news organization that a single article does not necessarily capture all aspects or issues related to a specific story. In this case, the news organization’s related coverage in other sections, including news and opinion pieces, provided further context and perspectives for readers to understand the matter as it developed.

The NNC observed, for example, that an opinion piece by a Ukrainian film director was critical of the film and argued, “the issue is with providing active-duty soldiers with a platform to freely repeat the propaganda that poisoned them in the first place while war and death continue.”

For the reasons outlined above, the NNC found no grounds to support a complaint about a breach of journalistic standards.