Broadcast journalist, host, Emmy winner, prolific warfare correspondent and iconic face of Canadian information protection for many years Ann Medina was inducted into CBC’s News Hall of Fame on Monday.
In a ceremony that included her household and was hosted by CBC journalists Nahlah Ayed and Adrienne Arsenault, Medina turned the ninth member of the Hall of Fame since its creation in 2014. She was chosen for being “a girl of affect who broke the ceiling many instances over,” a plaque honouring her contributions learn.
“For those that dared to observe, Ann Medina cleared the best way,” it concluded.
Medina, who was current on the ceremony, grew up in New York City and initially studied philosophy earlier than starting her profession in journalism in Chicago within the Sixties as a reporter. Soon after she turned a community producer for NBC News, after which a correspondent and producer for ABC News.
After a profitable two Emmys whereas within the United States, she moved to Canada to marry journalist and radio operator Jack McGaw. The two met in 1974 when, as a correspondent for ABC, Medina was despatched to Ottawa to cowl a non-confidence vote for then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s authorities, with McGaw as her producer.
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They married the next yr, simply earlier than Medina was employed by CBC to work on News Magazine. The two amicably separated eight years later, with “the one level of rivalry [being] Max, our parrot,” she advised the Globe and Mail for McGaw’s 2012 obituary. Medina, who has had a lifelong love for birds, saved the animal.
She quickly made a reputation for herself as journalist who humanized topics from all walks of life, on all components of the planet — reporting from locations as numerous as Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Mali, China, Nicaragua and extra throughout her lengthy profession at CBC.
She moved to successor present affairs and documentary program The Journal after News Magazine‘s cancellation, and extensively coated the civil warfare in Lebanon — below and round mortar shells and bullet rounds.
Her experiences from out of the warfare zone helped to tell a era of Canadians concerning the battle, with a raft of tales that usually went deeper than any contemporaries within the area.
“Ann Medina turned a nationwide famous person, proving two issues we should always take a means from this: one, again your journalists. Two, should you construct it, they’ll come,” Canadian journalist Mark Starowicz, former govt producer of The Journal, stated on the ceremony.
“Ann Medina thrived as a result of of the basic journalism — her ability — and her sympathy for the human situation.”
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“Your gutsiness, your realness, was for somebody like me a permission slip, to let me imagine I may attempt to it is perhaps OK,” Arsenault added, referring to Medina as “the baddest of badasses to ever grace this place.”
“You kicked down the doorways for us,” she continued. “And I promise you, we’ll stand in these doorways, and we’ll maintain these hinges tight, and we’ll maintain them tight. Not only for them, however for you.”
‘I used to be fired and now this. It’s simply nuts!’
The Journal — which debuted with two girls as hosts and no male co-host, a primary in Canada — ended in 1992 after the loss of life of host Barbara Frum and was merged with this system The National. Medina had already partially transitioned to a different program, Saturday Report, as a bunch in 1986 — although her three-year contract was ended each prematurely and controversially, solely six months after she started.
“I can solely say I’m completely overwhelmed by all of this,” Medina stated on the Monday ceremony when accepting her induction. “And you simply heard — I used to be fired and now this. It’s simply nuts!”
Medina went on to thank CBC and the choice committee for the honour, earlier than talking on the significance of journalistic integrity, and belief constructed between broadcasters and their audiences.
As a journalist herself, she stated, she at all times strived to share what she had seen and what she knew — by no means what she felt. She stated there is a rising danger of viewers alienation resulting from political selections, from each the left and proper sides of the spectrum, leaking into information.
She stated these selections can discover, and have discovered, their means into information by each biased reporting, and selections made behind the scenes. And when audiences really feel influenced by these selections, she stated, it breaks belief between them and the world of journalism.
“CTV betrayed that belief when it fired Lisa LaFlamme,” Medina stated, referring to the longtime information anchor’s contract termination earlier this yr. “And I imagine CBC betrayed that belief when it fired The Journal.”
“These days we’re seeing how valuable that belief may be to the very material of democracy,” she continued.
In giving recommendation to future journalists, Medina stated they want just a few issues: stamina, a smile that may join with “the one who is behind, what I name, their costumes,” and a forged iron abdomen — which, she stated, made her one of the few overseas correspondents at The Journal to by no means get sick (“I’ll at all times thank my mom for letting me eat grime,” she added).
Finally, she stated, you want “an enabler” — a supportive dwelling to supply sources, and safety for a curious thoughts to collect and share tales.
“I’m right here as a result of CBC allowed me to be a reporter,” she stated. “CBC gave me the liberty to be a reporter.”