Abstract

This thesis examines how Radio-Canada Montreal addresses the representation of visible minorities both on-air and in its news and information staffing practices. By deploying an ethnographic approach, which combines newsroom observations with semi-structured and open- ended interviews with journalists and managers, the thesis investigates the impact of federal and provincial policies aimed at the integration of new arrivals into Quebec society. Radio-Canada’s flagship newscast, Le Téléjournal 18h, lies at the core of the study and provides a means to measure the number of news stories involving visible minority communities. This baseline, grounded in content, is then examined through the lens of the news workers who craft the program for public consumption. The thesis finds that there is growing institutional awareness on matters pertaining to representation but obstacles remain to a full and genuine embrace of visible minority issues and concerns both inside the newsroom and in the Montreal community. The thesis posits that there are two distinct movements within the newsroom’s day-to-day culture. The first is a kind of “insular unfamiliarity” among traditional Québécois news workers that persists in enabling the labeling of “others” as somehow foreign. The second – predominantly comprising news workers of colour – is dedicated to pushing back when matters of prejudice, perceived and real, longstanding and recent, are expressed in the dominant culture norms of professional interaction.