Independently Yours
Paul Jay has a plan to make TV what it was meant to be. But is bias so easily banished?
BY Diane Peters
Photography by Molly Crealock
Paul Jay talks TV news from a black leather chair in his overstuffed downtown Toronto loft. With his black wire-rimmed glasses, cropped salt-and-pepper hair and loose grey sweatshirt, he looks every bit the left-wing intellectual. But Jay waxes as comfortably about business plans as South American coups. His ability to mix idealism with dollar signs is just one indicator his ambitious Independent World Television (IWT) just might work.
The idea for IWT came to Jay in the late ’90s. Then the executive producer of CBC’s CounterSpin and a documentary filmmaker (Return to Kandahar, Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows), news-junkie Jay began to crave independent, in-depth journalism on television. In 2002 he started writing a screenplay set in the year 2020. The future world he foresaw included environmental disasters, escalating terrorism, more oppressive regimes and troubled international relations, thanks mainly to increasingly draconian US foreign policy. But when he imagined a world with a television news network that kept the world informed and empowered, things looked rosier. Jay realized there was writing, and there was doing. When, on February 15, 2003, upwards of 30 million people marched around the globe to protest the Iraq war, he became even more convinced that there was a demand for such a network. “If we could harness even a small, small percentage of those people, we had an audience.”
In quick order, Jay got seed funding from organizations such as the Canadian Auto Workers and the MacArthur Foundation and set up an advisory panel of stellar names, including Harper’s editor Lewis H. Lapham and AIDS advocate Stephen Lewis. Jay hired consultants and a small staff and began flying around the world, hawking his idea in India, London, South Africa and the US.
He found the sell easy. Journalists, media groups and even satellite providers loved the idea of an alternative to CNN. Under Jay’s original plan, IWT would air six hours of daily “independent, uncompromising journalism.” It would cover world events using staff reporters and producers who could tap into contacts at major print publications such as the Hindu and the Guardian for local, insider knowledge. And while institutions and wealthy donors would be needed for start-up capital, operating costs would be covered by members paying $5 a month.
It sounds fantastic, and doable too. Jay has done opinion polls (17 percent of Americans and 22 percent of Indians are “very likely” to pay into such a service), developed a comprehensive website (which launched last June) and made the right contacts in all four corners of the globe. He plans on starting a fundraising campaign for small donors and members early this year, but already, without even being asked, people are giving on the web. “I’m sure I’d be happy to pay for it if it vaguely resembles what I’ve been reading they intend to do,” says Rod Macdonell, executive director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
Jay is promising a great deal—a dream network that could satiate the hunger for a new voice in world news—but can he deliver? To do that, he’ll have to do more than keep the money rolling; he’ll have to fulfill some pretty lofty promises. First of all, Jay is calling IWT “public broadcaster to the world,” a claim that implies a huge range of people from a huge range of places will find themselves reflected in the network’s images. And while some viewers would surely adore seeing Jay’s own anti-Bush take on world news, just playing the left-wing version of Fox is a risky tack. It could alienate would-be subscribers if it got labelled knee-jerk, radical and biased. That kind of criticism could erode viewers’ trust in Jay’s product. “With an operation that sells itself on delivering information, that has to be trustworthy information,” says Paul Knox, former foreign editor at The Globe and Mail and current chair of the Ryerson School of Journalism.
And telling trustworthy stories around the world is not easy. “When you’re reporting on a society that you didn’t grow up in, you have to be extra careful to not make assumptions and to not be led astray by people who want to lead you astray,” adds Knox.
But to his credit, Jay has set preventative measures in place to keep his network’s stories as close to the truth as possible. “I don’t think you ever control bias,” he admits. “You just make sure the bias doesn’t get in the way of journalistic methodology.” All content will be screened by IWT’s editorial committee, as well as put past the guidelines set out by the Project for Excellence in Journalism out of Washington, DC. Plus, Jay insists his network will be as transparent as possible in its acknowledgement of journalistic bias. (He cites the recent controversy at the New York Times and reporter Judith Miller’s work on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.) He plans on picking up raw video from the wire services, but never wire copy. “ The real monopoly on information right now is the wire services.” On some stories where opinions vary widely, Jay says he’ll even air two conflicting stories.
Besides keeping bias at bay, Jay will also have to remember he wants the whole world to watch. And all America all the time won’t cut it for viewers on the other continents the network claims it will be serving. “It’s going to be a constant battle to find the balance,” Jay admits. That means devoting some time to national-interest stories from places like South Africa. But national stories from the US are bound to get much more air time. “When you live in the Roman Empire, you’d better know what’s happening in Rome,” quips Jay. Knox also warns that, like the BBC World Service, CNN and Reuters, IWT will need to keep tabs on slang, cultural references and certain assumptions to make sure a wide range of viewers understand and get something out of the news.
Where else besides Canada could all of these factors come together and actually work? Macdonell thinks IWT’s Toronto home base is an ideal ingredient. He recalls Peter Jennings saying that the reason US networks like to hire Canadian journalists is they have an ability to be a little bit more objective about American news. “Canadians don’t have a dog in most fights,” Macdonell says.
However, Macdonell says he’d prefer IWT never launch if it’s doomed to fail. “If that happens, it just gets dismissed as ‘an idea that didn’t work.’” So far, the only similar precedent is Air America, launched in March 2004. The 70-station radio network and syndication service was intended as a left-learning alternative to all-pervasive talk radio and the voice of Rush Limbaugh. However, ratings have been on a downward slide since the network’s launch (it even fared poorly during the US election). Last fall, one Washington Post writer wrote that ratings on a local station “went from bad to nonexistent.”
One of Air America’s problems is money. But Jay is one of the most fiscally aware media types around. In fact, a recent reality check about funds has triggered Jay to revamp. He’s now launching a one-hour nightly news show, starting in 2007, that will require $13.8 million to get started. He’s putting off his entire $30 million network until 2009 unless funds present themselves sooner. For that softer launch just a year from now, Jay is already securing funding from big donors as well as members. Numerous satellite deals are in the works, cable deals already in place and Jay has made worldwide contacts to get his content together. When the show airs, viewers around the world will pick it up from a hodge-podge of places: web, satellite in the US and, in some parts of Canada, through cable on-demand or possibly its own cable channel.
But don’t let Jay’s precise plans and right-brain talk fool you. He’s still an idealist with a big idea: one that includes changing the face of the world by the next decade. “It’s more than a network, it’s a movement,” says Jay.
