Volume 4 Issue 1, Research note
Tome 4 numéro 1, note de recherche

Brooks DeCillia and Brad Clark

Abstract

Building on previous research mapping the terrain of the post hoc fact-checking practice in Canadian journalism, this research note evaluates the best methodology for verifying the accuracy of political and other claims and texts. Reviewing fact-checking projects—The Canadian Press Fact Checks, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Full Fact, Snopes, and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker—offers several best-checking practices. These include additional research, how fact-checkers should choose the topics they scrutinize (facts, not opinions, often surrounding political campaigns, government, public policy, and health information), and the public interest and balance tests used to select suspicious claims usually made in parliamentary debates, media interviews, campaign speeches, and official records.

Keywords: journalism, fact-checking, post hoc fact-checking, truth, verification, misinformation, disinformation, democracy, Canada

Résumé

S’appuyant sur des recherches antérieures qui cartographient le terrain de la pratique de vérification des faits post hoc dans le journalisme canadien, cette note de recherche évalue le meilleur processus ou la meilleure méthodologie pour vérifier l’exactitude des affirmations et des textes politiques et autres. L’examen de projets de vérification des faits tels que The Canadian Press Fact Checks, PolitiFact, FactCheck. org, Full Fact, Snopes et le Fact Checker du Washington Post révèle plusieurs pratiques exemplaires. Celles-ci incluent des recherches supplémentaires, la manière dont les vérificateurs de faits doivent choisir les sujets qu’ils examinent (des faits, et non des opinions, souvent liés aux campagnes politiques, au gouvernement, aux politiques publiques et aux informations sur la santé), ainsi que les tests d’intérêt public et d’équilibre utilisés pour sélectionner les affirmations suspectes, généralement émises dans les débats parlementaires, les interviews médiatiques, les discours de campagne ou les documents officiels.

Mots-clés : journalisme, vérification des faits, vérification des faits a posteriori, vérité, vérification, désinformation, démocratie, Canada

Getting it right, eh? Best practices for post hoc fact-checking in Canadian news

Brooks DeCillia and Brad Clark

 

INTRODUCTION

“If your mother says she loves you,” holds the old journalism axiom, “check it out!” However, origin stories about this iconic call to verify everything—supposedly uttered by a hard-bitten Chicago news editor—often get the exact phrase and its attribution wrong, requiring some post hoc fact-checking here. The actual dictum was even saltier when first barked out by its author, an even crustier Chicago Daily News veteran, Edward H. Eulenberg, who directed journalists: “If your mother tells you she loves you, kick her smartly in the shins and make her prove it” (Schultz, 2018). The backstory of this oft-repeated aphorism highlights the importance of verification¹Verification involves the journalism practice of establishing the truth, accuracy, or validity of information. and fact-checking in journalism. Familiar sayings used frequently by journalists and journalism educators can be misquoted and misattributed even by reporters whose professional ethos focuses on accuracy.

While it has always been a part of newsgathering practice (Graves, 2016), fact-checking emerged in recent decades as a distinct genre, with organizations such as FactCheck.org, Snopes, PolitiFact, Full Fact, The Canadian Press, and Chequeado challenging inaccuracies in our public discourse. Growing concerns about political spin, misinformation, and disinformation²This research note defines misinformation as inaccurate or false information—rumours, pranks—that “contradicts or distorts common understandings of verifiable facts” (Guess & Lyons, 2020, p. 11). Disinformation is false information deliberately or maliciously spread by bad actors and includes conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and propaganda. in our “post-truth era” (Pérez-Escolar et al., 2023, p. 77) triggered newsrooms worldwide to step up their systematic post hoc fact-checking, whereby reporters scrutinize the truthfulness of statements and claims made by sources or organizations after those assertions have been disseminated publicly (Amazeen et al., 2018; Dobbs, 2012; Graves, 2016). Graves and Amazeen (2019) helpfully define post hoc or external fact-checking as an “evidence-based analysis of the accuracy of a political claim, news report, or other public text.” This type of journalism combats or confronts misinformation and disinformation by attempting to correct misconceptions (Graves & Amazeen, 2019). Moreover, this type of work is published by both news organizations and public interest organizations (universities and civil society) to help “people become better informed” in a “fact-based public discourse” (Graves & Amazeen, 2019). Ante hoc/internal or editorial fact-checking, in contrast, attempts to independently verify “every factual statement included in the story and flags any necessary corrections” before publication (Baker & Fairbank, 2022). For example, a 2024 Canadian Press fact-checking story sets the record straight about several “misleading or inaccurate claims” made by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson about medically assisted dying, Canada’s immigration policy, and the country’s opioid crisis during speeches he made in Alberta (Dubey, 2024). Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the White House in the United States in 2017 triggered an explosion in fact-checking in U.S. political journalism.³It is also notable that there is a scholarly research deficit examining fact-checking in Canadian journalism. See DeCillia (2018) for an example of fact-checking surrounding Canada’s military operation in Afghanistan. The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale (2019) gained a national profile by documenting more than 5,000 false statements by the U.S. president only two years into Trump’s term. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified concerns among journalists and others about the spread of misinformation and disinformation, culminating with the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring an “infodemic”—“the rapid spread of misleading or fabricated news” (World Health Organization, 2020, p. 1). Undoubtedly, from the pandemic and divisive elections around the world to the volatile conflict in Gaza and Israel, false information remains a persistent worldwide problem (Cunliffe-Jones & Graves, 2024).

Our exploratory study about fact-checking in Canadian journalism as it related to the COVID-19 pandemic, published in this journal, mapped a preliminary understanding of how and why Canadian journalists deploy fact-checking to combat misinformation and disinformation (DeCillia & Clark, 2023). Moreover, the initial research explored the essential work of Canadian journalists in combating misinformation and disinformation. Our work offered tentative findings, including: (1) a strong desire from Canadian newsroom leaders that journalism graduates possess solid fact-checking and verification skills; and (2) the need for a more rigorous understanding of the process or methodology for both post hoc and ante hoc fact-checking. Our research also highlighted a desire amongst working journalists and newsroom leaders for journalism students to possess “a robust understanding of the process or methodology for post hoc fact-checking used by organizations such as PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes, and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker” (DeCillia & Clark, 2023, p. 99). This research note rejoins the needs identified by that preliminary study, which we hope offers a rigorous methodology or process for fact-checking in the Canadian context.

A BRIEF CONTEXTUAL, THEORETICAL, AND METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

While early newspapers tended to favour opinions and polemics over facts, the invention of wire services put a premium on ‘just the facts’ because reporters could no longer “afford to expend wasted verbiage on opinion or local idiom” (Dickey, 2019, para. 4). For clarity, editorial, internal, or ante hoc fact-checking (usually done by in-house fact-checking departments in magazines) involves fact-checkers verifying facts in stories before publication (Baker & Fairbank, 2022). Fact-checking is also the basic and instrumental practice of verification that reporters do in the field or from the newsroom to authenticate, confirm, and double-check details, such as the official number of people killed in a plane crash, to produce an accurate report. Post hoc or external fact-checking—the more recent and emerging practice—investigates dubious or troubling claims in the public sphere to establish their truthfulness. This emerging genre is primarily “dedicated to debunking falsehoods circulating online or repeated by politicians and other public figures” (Graves & Amazeen, 2019). Post hoc fact-checking can also happen in the moment, during interviews or live broadcasts, when reporters or hosts challenge curious or dubious claims made by sources. Building on a preliminary study published earlier in this journal, this research note offers several recommendations for best practices for post hoc fact-checking in Canadian journalism.⁴This research note also focuses on post hoc fact-checking because the Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide offers a detailed methodology for editorial or ante hoc fact-checking (Baker & Fairbank, 2022).

In Canada, fact-checking operations—The Canadian Press Fact Checks and Radio-Canada’s Décrypteurs, for instance—work to counter mis- and disinformation, similarly to U.S.-based organizations such as FactCheck.org. Fact-checking in Canadian journalism does not have the deep roots or support that exist in the United States, where the work often enjoys solid institutional and financial backing, as evidenced by the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact and the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org. Nevertheless, our previous research identified a desire to embed and institutionalize fact-checking in Canadian journalism (DeCillia and Clark, 2023).

In the early 2000s, FactCheck.org, a non-partisan and nonprofit website, began to challenge political spin to cut “the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics” (2024, para. 1). Kickstarted in the United States in the early 2000s, “an explosion of international fact-checkers” emerged over the coming decade (Mantzarlis, 2016). A pessimistic 2023 account in The New York Times reported that, after growing from a mere eight organizations in 2008, “the momentum behind organizations that aim to combat online falsehoods has started to taper off,” noting that the momentum or addition of fact-checking sites has been “idling” in recent years (Hsu & Thompson, 2023). Yet, as Cunliffe-Jones and Graves (2024) warn, the picture is more complex, highlighting the growth of fact-checking in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) to combat false claims, and Google’s The ClaimReview Project that publishers use to flag fact-checked stories as evidence of the prominence of fact-checking.

Our previous research (DeCillia & Clark, 2023) suggests that Canadian journalists and journalism educators question the efficacy of post hoc fact-checking to correct misinformation. Yet, both reporters and teachers remain committed to the practice for normative and democratic reasons. Promising new research, however, suggests Canadian journalists should persist with their fact-checking efforts. While fact-checks will not change long-held worldviews, fact-checking has a “significantly positive overall influence” on factual understanding (Walter et al., 2019, p. 350) and can even “reduce belief in misinformation” (Porter & Wood, 2021). Additionally, recent research highlights the efficacy of attaching “warning labels” to content to reduce the spread of misinformation (Martel & Rand, 2023, p. 3).

Post hoc fact-checking attempts to establish the truthfulness of statements, claims, rumours, and conspiracy theories. The process often involves checking the accuracy of statements and claims of politicians, celebrities, influencers, and other people with a public profile whose words are timely, relevant, and intersect with the welfare or well-being of the public. This after-the-fact fact-checking process can come with visualizations—“Pinocchios” from The Washington Post or PolitiFact’s TRUTH-O-METER—that measure the truthfulness of the claims. PolitiFact’s TRUTH-O-METER, for example, uses a nuanced six-scale rating system: true; mostly true; half true; mostly false; false; and pants on fire—to visualize decreasing truthfulness (Drobnic Holan, 2024). The measurements are represented visually with the image of a meter, an arrow, or needle against a dial, as well as a green light if a claim is true, and red if it is false. True statements under this rating system are accurate, whereas a “pants on fire” label means a statement is not accurate and “makes a ridiculous claim” (Drobnic Holan, 2024).

Several fact-checking sites, including Snopes, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, Full Fact (in the United Kingdom), The Canadian Press Fact Checks, and Radio-Canada’s Décrypteurs, regularly work to expose the truth and correct false or dubious statements present in the public domain. Post hoc fact-checking focuses on topics in the public interest, underpinned by the idea that citizens in democracies need factual information to make informed decisions. The co-founder of FactCheck.org wanted the fact-checking site to be “a resource for those citizens who honestly are bewildered and confused and looking for help in sorting out fact from fiction” (Graves, 2013, p. 137).

For theoretical clarity, we adhere to the definition of post hoc fact-checking as “a watchdog endeavour that checks information after it has already [been] published” (Borel et al., 2018, p. 4). As part of the accountability phenomenon in journalism (Pittner, 2014), Uscinski and Butler (2013) describe fact-checking as the process of “comparing” the statements of elites “to ‘the facts’ to determine whether a statement about these topics is a lie” (p. 163). In keeping with our previous study’s methodology, we used a thematic analysis to identify patterns and themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Guest et al., 2012; Rubin & Rubin, 2005) in the fact-checking process/methodology of six major fact-checking organizations: The Canadian Press Fact Checks, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Full Fact, Snopes, and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker. These fact-checkers were chosen for several reasons. In addition to their high profile and large audiences, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker established the new genre of journalism as a legitimate practice in recent decades. Also, considerable scholarship (see, for example, Lee et al., 2023; Graves, 2016; 2018) focuses on these prominent fact-checking organizations. Snopes, previously known as Urban Legends Reference Pages, attracts millions of visitors to its site each month (White et al., 2024). As well as checking the veracity of claims made by U.K. politicians, public institutions, journalists, and online content, Full Fact (2024a) also “campaign[s] for change that will make bad information rarer and less harmful.” The Canadian Press Fact Checks has an extensive reach as part of the news organization’s wire service.

Our analysis identified several themes (or nodes) that inform our recommendations about best practices for Canadian fact-checking. These themes or nodes include:

1. Topics or information fact checkers select to scrutinize
2. Sources to fact-check
3. Research
4. Ratings
5. Editing
6. Corrections

We confined our analysis to fact-checking organizations based in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., given their similar North Atlantic or liberal journalism models, as described by Hallin and Mancini (2004). The following section will first outline the process used by these organizations before synthesizing our recommendations for Canadian journalists.

POST HOC FACT-CHECKING

Proponents of journalistic fact-checking liken their efforts to science’s rigorous methods and procedures, “constantly inventing, discarding, and refining theories to explain the confusion of the contemporary world” (Dobbs, 2012, p. 3). Consistent with best practices in journalism, most prominent fact-checking organizations follow dependable and logical practices in scrutinizing questionable claims. FactCheck.org notably stresses its commitment to the “best practices of both journalism and scholarship” (FactCheck.org, 2024). The section below unpacks what these practices entail and the practical ways Canadian journalists can adopt these methods in their fact-checking.

The topics or information journalists select to fact-check

This study’s thematic analysis identified that all fact-checking organizations examined in this re- search focus on verifiable facts, not opinions.⁵Mettler and Mondak (2024) helpfully distinguish between the two, emphasizing that “facts can be proved or disproved with objective evidence, whereas statements of opinion depend on personal values and preferences.” Simply put, facts are objective, while opinions are subjective. The Canadian Press Fact Checks (2024) stresses it only investigates claims “presented as fact, not opinon, and should have significance to the welfare or well-being of the communities we serve.” Political communication complicates fact-checking. For its part, PolitiFact concedes there is a nuance, noting that within “political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole” (Drobnic Holan, 2024). Helpful for Canadian journalists, PolitiFact offers a checklist of questions when determining what curious or questionable statements to check:

1. “Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole? ”
2. “Does the statement seem misleading or sound wrong?”
3. “Is the statement significant? We avoid minor ‘gotchas’ on claims that are obviously a slip of the tongue.”
4. “Is the statement likely to be passed on and repeated by others?”
5. “Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?” (Drobnic Holan, 2024)

Full Fact (2024b) stresses it evaluates “claims in public debate which are of public interest” prioritizing “claims that have the most potential to cause harm to people’s lives.” Fact-checking organizations scrutinize politicians and celebrities, noting little utility in evaluating ludicrous statements made by a person with no public platform. Snopes (2024), for its part, stresses it selects topics “without any partisan considerations,” selecting “items readers are asking about, or searching for, as well as vital rumours that could lead to misunderstandings and purported trivia facts.”

As a paradigm that Canadian journalists can follow, this study’s thematic analysis identified a public interest test used by all fact checkers when selecting what to scrutinize. The topic and the person being fact-checked need to have the potential to influence public health, security, governance, or livelihoods. As a touchstone for all Canadian journalists, The Canadian Press Fact Checks (2024) helpfully applies this test by considering three factors:

1. “The editorial value”: “Is the claim timely,” newsworthy and “relevant to the general public?” If The Canadian Press pursues a dated claim, it considers the motives for sharing the questionable information again.
2. “The potential harm”: Does the inaccurate claim actually present a “real-world harm” to the public?
3. “Reach”: How far has the claim spread on digital platforms? Has the claim triggered interest amongst other platform users?

Sources to fact-check

With the public interest in mind, fact-checking organizations scrutinize people—politicians, officials, celebrities, and influencers—in the public eye. Our thematic analysis found that fact-checkers look for claims to check by watching and examining the news, public affairs shows, political ads, campaign material, politicians’ remarks and speeches, transcripts of interviews, social media, and cable news shows. The Canadian Press “actively monitors social media for misinformation” to scrutinize. Fact Checker at The Washington Post uses the words of politicians as a springboard of sorts to begin its investigations, stressing it does not want to “elevate false claims that have received relatively little attention on social media” (Kessler, 2017). In the spring of 2024, The Canadian Press, for instance, labelled a social media post by Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe that stated removing the carbon charge from home heating bills would lower the cost of living in the province as misleading (Saba, 2024). FactCheck.org and PolitiFact attempt to dedicate equal time to checking claims made by Republicans and Democrats.

Similarly, The Washington Post highlights its effort to “be dispassionate and non-partisan, drawing attention to inaccurate statements on both left and right” (Kessler, 2017). With caveats discussed below, Canadian journalists would be prudent to adopt this non-partisan and balanced approach to inure themselves against allegations of bias. Yet, media critic Dan Froomkin (2022) warns that fact-checking organizations “go to extreme lengths to apportion their negative verdicts to both sides” in their political reporting. Expanding his argument, Froomkin (2024) criticizes the “hair-splitting” fact-checking in U.S. political coverage for hiding the “vast gulf in truth-telling between” the Republicans and Democrats. Fact-checkers in the United States, he argues, “want to mete out their dings if not equally, at least comparably. And that’s impossible to do, ethically, given that one party [Republicans] is constantly lying and the other [Democrats] is not.”

Research

Fact-checking is grounded in good journalism. As noted above, reporters fact-check, verify, confirm, and double-check details daily to produce accurate stories. Post hoc fact-checking goes beyond verification to confrontation. It aims to combat misinformation and disinformation to correct misconceptions. To do this effectively, fact-checking “publicly endorses or challenges the truthfulness of another individual or organization” (Graves & Amazeen, 2019). PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker predicate their fact-checking in common sense or logic, applying a “reasonable person standard” (Kessler, 2017) for determining the truth of claims. To be sure, fact-checking demands rigorous research methods, including poring over transcripts of statements that can be truth-checked. The journalists doing this work rely on primary, authoritative sources of information—non-partisan government reports; original data, including peer-reviewed scholarship; official documents and statistics—to check the truth of claims (see, for example, FactCheck.org, 2024).

Fact-checking also requires independent corroboration and transparency about the sources of information used to check the accuracy of information. FactCheck.org, for example, always discloses biographical information of its expert sources, including previous government or campaign work (2024). To highlight its rigorous and transparent research methodology, Snopes (2024) highlights its efforts to interview experts and to “search for printed information (news articles, scientific and medical journal articles, books, interview transcripts, statistical sources)” that can help determine the accuracy of the claim or statement under scrutiny. Full Fact (2024b) notes that its fact-checking draws from “a wide range of sources of evidence relating to a claim.” The Canadian Press Fact Checks include a list of sources used in its fact-checking stories, along with a link to its methodology. The wire service’s process offers some useful guidance that Canadian journalists would be wise to deploy regarding research and presentation:

1. Provide links to original, primary and archived sources as hyperlinks.
2. Include archived links if supporting documentation might be altered or taken down.
3. Back up facts with evidence, including information that supports the claim being scrutinized.
4. Use experts to add context to fact-checking.
5. Contact claimants to seek further information, evidence or clarification.

Additionally, while not explicitly outlined in the methodology of fact-checking organizations, there is solid empirical evidence that Canadian journalists should include data visualization (graphs, charts, tables, photos, video) in their storytelling, as it provides straightforward utility in decreasing misperceptions and correcting misunderstandings in the minds of news consumers (Hardy & Hall Jamieson, 2017; Mena, 2023).

Ratings

Fact-checks frequently use ratings systems to illustrate truthfulness. This may include graphics that visually represent the truthfulness of the claims, for example the Pinocchios from The Washington Post or PolitiFact’s TRUTH-O-METER. FactCheck. org, for its part, often labels claims misleading or false. PolitiFact’s TRUTH-O-METER ranges from “truth” to “pants on fire” to pass judgment on the accuracy of statements. The Canadian Press Fact Checks wisely, we contend, does not use ratings similar to the TRUTH-O-METER. Fact-checking ratings are controversial, imperfect (Adair, 2018), and non-scientific instruments (Graves, 2016). Froomkin (2022) argues that current ratings, such as PolitiFact’s TRUTH-O-METER, do not work because they don’t hold serial liars accountable. Froomkin (2022; 2024) suggests fact-checking organizations adopt a regularly updated “credibility meter” for politicians. If serial lying becomes a persistent problem in Canada, journalists might consider adopting a similar approach.

Editing

Before any fact-checking gets published, editors scrutinize or fact-check it. A misleading or inaccurate fact-check is, well, pretty embarrassing. The Canadian Press Fact Checks is overseen by the news wire service’s editor-in-chief. Snopes, for instance, passes its final product through at least one editor for vetting. FactCheck.org rigorously copy edits and fact-checks its stories “line by line, word by word, to make sure that every fact is correct and every statement . . . is accurate and based on the evidence” (FactCheck.org, 2024). The director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center also reads every story before FactCheck.org publishes it. We urge Canadian journalists to incorporate such editorial oversight into their process.

Corrections

Mistakes happen occasionally. This study’s thematic analysis determined that all fact-checking organizations stress the need to correct erroneous reporting quickly. Canadian journalists pursuing fact-checking work should mirror these organizations’ correction policies. All the fact-checking services encourage readers to submit potential corrections for review, emphasizing the need to be transparent and keep their revisions public-facing. For significant errors, PolitiFact updates its reporting with new information and an archived copy of the previous story. On top of that, the new text is marked as updated: corrected fact checks receive a “Corrections and Updates” tag. The Canadian Press similarly adds notes to the bottom of its fact-checking stories when corrections—minor errors, typos or grammatical mistakes—occur. If The Canadian Press kills a fact-check for legal or other reasons, it removes the article and explains its decision publicly.

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

Drawing from our thematic analysis of major fact-checking organizations, we summarize in Table 1 some recommendations for Canadian journalists as they approach the topic/selection, sources, research, ratings, editing and corrections associated with fact-checking.

Table 1

A Suggested Methodology/Process for Fact-Checking in Canadian News

 

Topics or things journalists select for fact-checking	Only fact-check statements of fact, not opinions. Only check statements or information in the public interest. Focus mostly on timely, suspicious claims. Carefully pursue dated claims if the questionable information meets the public interest test. Prioritize claims that can cause harm.
Sources to fact-check	Monitor news, current affairs, political ads, social media, campaign material, politicians’ remarks, speeches and transcripts. Politicians. Government officials. Celebrities, influencers. Remember to remain balanced and non-partisan. Try to provide equal treatment of political parties.
Research	Apply rigorous, logical—in other words, journalistically sound—methods. Use mostly primary authoritative sources, not secondary sources. Use non-partisan government reports, original data, including peer-reviewed scholarship, official documents and statistics. Be transparent about sources.
Ratings / Presentation	Include visualizations (graphs, charts, tables, photos, videos) in fact-checking, given their persuasiveness in correcting misunderstandings (Mena, 2023). Use rating visualizations cautiously to represent the truthfulness of claims or statements.
Editing	Ensure that fact-checking reporting gets “fact-checked” or edited rigorously before publication.
Corrections	Be transparent about corrections. Make corrections quickly. Encourage public feedback about fact-checking.

 

CONCLUSION

Fact-checking requires a thorough and systematic common-sense approach. Building on our preliminary research mapping fact-checking in Canadian journalism, we respond to the needs identified by that study. That work found a clear desire amongst working journalists and newsroom leaders for journalism students to possess post hoc fact-checking skills (DeCillia & Clark, 2023). This research note offers a suggested methodology for Canadian journalists. Moreover, it highlights several suggestions about what methods and processes Canadian journalists should adopt from other fact-checking organizations to combat misinformation and disinformation. We hope these recommendations provide a foundation for building a robust fact-checking culture in Canadian journalism.

 

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Brooks DeCillia spent 20 years reporting and producing news at CBC, and is currently an assistant professor at Mount Royal University’s School of Communications Studies. Email: bdecillia@mtroyal.ca

Brad Clark is an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies at Mount Royal University, where he has taught since 2006 after working as a journalist for 20 years, mostly at CBC.

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