Jesse Brown sees the light!
Finally, a media critic admits error.
Jesse Brown’s White Saviors podcasts were part of a string of “investigative” pieces Canadaland published on WE Charity and the Kielburger family. Today, Brown apologized for defaming Theresa Kielburger, the mother of WE founders Craig and Marc Kielburger, and paid $775,000 to Mrs. Kielburger, a widow in her 80s.
I have had my own issues with Jesse Brown, including a recent bizarre Canadaland episode about me that is now being assessed by the Canadian NewsMedia Council. This aside, I am glad to see Brown has finally seen his errors in aspects of his anti-WE campaign, a takedown of a charity that did a lot of good in the world.
The apology was obviously sincere. Brown read it out in open court in Toronto today in a firm, strong radio voice that did not show any signs of equivocation.
This is what he said:
“On August 20, 2021, Canadaland published The Children’s Crusade, the first episode in a podcast series entitled The White Saviors. In that episode we stated that Theresa Kielburger had placed hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations to a children’s charity in a family bank account. This was unfounded. We were wrong to have published it.
“Canadaland wholly retracts its statement about Mrs. Kielburger. We apologize unreservedly to her for the harm caused by our publication of it.
“Canadaland has agreed to pay substantial damages to Mrs. Kielburger.”
Brown was represented by a superb lawyer, Brendan Hughes, who I have dealt with in the course of my own legal work. All of us who are part of the bar must play the hands we are dealt, and I believe – and the judge at today’s hearing said – that counsel on both sides did a superb job bringing this case to a just resolution. It has certainly been expensive for Canadaland: $110,000 in costs for a failed anti-SLAPP motion, their legal bills for that motion and the procedure that resulted in this settlement, plus the $775,000 that Mrs. Kielburger will receive. As Will McDowell, counsel for Mrs. Kielburger noted, the apology is much more important than the money. A ruined reputation can never be fully restored, but a heartfelt apology like this goes a long way toward showing fair-minded people that the Kielburgers were treated shabbily and unfairly.
There were no reporters at the session, other than an author working on a magazine piece that might become a book. WE Charity was, according to the National Newspaper Awards, the biggest story of 2020. Journalists should ask themselves why they simply ignore anything that shows their feeding frenzies were unwarranted.
I hope other journalists have Jesse Brown’s road to Damascus moment, realize their mistakes and show Brown’s courage to stand up, put their mistakes on the record, and apologize.
It’s time for journalism to become a real profession: professional education, enforceable standards, professional consequences for malpractice and corruption. That’s the thesis of my next book. The WE Charity story is Canada’s greatest modern case of journalistic failure, and I will tell the story as well as I can.
Finally, a judgement against Jessie Brown, a destroyer of good people and WE Charity. All for what, his personal enrichment? It's way past time that MSM started asking tough, researched questions, not fluff stuff! It's not about clicks; it's about truth, integrity, honesty and accountability.
Thanks for the update. The statements made about Mrs. Kielburger and the WE Charity were outrageous, particularly as Canadaland was recently touted in another Substack account as being one of the good guys in Canadian journalism—a source to be trusted. At the time, the stories coming out about WE did not pass my sniff test—and I’m only an ordinary person. Shocking that professional journalists could not smell it too. I suppose we should be thrilled that Jesse Brown apologized in open court and is paying Mrs. Kielburger a significant sum. But is that enough for ruining a person’s reputation and destroying a charity that I, too, thought did a lot of good?