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The Current Transcript for November 28, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

We've taken the students to Mars. We've taken them almost into a synth wave world of colour and imaginations.

MATT GALLOWAY: Virtual reality has been touted as the future for all sorts of things, from surgery and video games. But what about education? At a school in Toronto, educators are using VR as a tool to help recent immigrants learn English as a second language. In 30 minutes, the high tech promise of a virtual classroom. Also this morning, for decades, Margaret Sullivan has helped shape and critique the way that news is covered. She says the media and ultimately democracy are in big trouble.

SOUNDCLIP

A lot of people are tuned out. They're disgusted with politics. They're disgusted with the news media. They've decided to look the other way.

MG: In an hour, the former public editor and media critic at The New York Times and Washington Post on objectivity, Twitter and how journalism can regain the public's trust. We begin, though, with the long arms of Iran and China and the harassment of dissidents here in Canada. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

People in Canada report threats and intimidation from Iran, China

Guests: Shaparak Shajarizadeh, Akshay Singh, Michael Singh

SOUNDCLIP

I'm the mother of a young boy and an ordinary woman thrown into an extraordinary situation. I'm not a professional activist. I never began any movement. But when I was imprisoned and told that I would never see my son again, all of that changed for me. I'm now a former political prisoner, but in many ways I'm still a prisoner of the Iranian government.

MG: That was Shaparak Shajarizadeh, addressing Ottawa's Subcommittee on International Human Rights in 2019. She had escaped Iran and arrived in Canada a year before. And now, with protests against Iran taking place across this country, Shaparak and others are speaking out about being threatened by the Iranian regime here in Canada and Canada. Spy agency CSIS is investigating what it calls lethal threats to Canadians emanating from Iran. Shaparak Shajarizadeh is in Toronto and joins us now. Shaparak, hello.

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: Hello. Good morning.

MG: You said in what we just heard that little clip there that you believe you're still a prisoner of the Iranian government. Why did you say that?

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: First of all, seize the moment that you decide to continue advocating for human rights in a free land, that give you the opportunity to have a voice as a human being. The threat is start threatening your family members inside Iran, which is so frightening. And also, they try to contact you in your social media accounts or even my email. I had emails from the beginning, from the first month. I'm here, I'm enjoying freedom. But at the same time, my heart is still with my people, my my brothers and sisters in Iran.

MG: What are the threats that you're getting here? I mean, you mentioned email and social media. What are those threats look like and sound like, if you don't mind me asking?

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: In that time, it was like, you think you're safe there, but you're not. Be careful. We know where you live. Even they went to my parents house. And when my mom was alone, she was 80 at that time. They interrogated my mom alone in the house and asked her about my wherebeing what I'm doing here. Where did I leave? And also in that time, my husband was in Iran and they summoned him to go to court and ask some question. But after a while, the threat changed because in the past few years, they kidnapped a political activist who was living in France, but they kidnapped him from Iraq. After a few months, they executed him. So the threat changed to, you know, you know what happened to them, be careful.

MG: Those are threats that are being emailed to you directly, are being sent via, you know, a Twitter or Instagram direct message.

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: Some of them there was email and some of them in my Instagram accounts, Twitter accounts, and like all the mailbox we have and social media. And also a few months ago, I found out that they they hacked my mobile phone. So I had to change my phone. Like I had some connections and they told me that your they told my relatives that Shaparak phone has been hacked by the government.

MG: Do you feel safe here in Canada? I mean, you left Iran in part because you didn't feel safe there. But do you feel safe here when those threats keep coming in?

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: When it comes to threatening my son, my husband and I feel worried. And sometimes he's like, stop doing that. Because if something happens to to to our son, it's your fault. But at the same time, I'm telling him I don't let them control my life fear. They try to control my life as a woman in Iran for 40 years. I'm not leaving them to do that. But when it's like about me, I'm I'm not afraid. But when it comes to my son, yes.

MG: Or your family back home.

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: And my family back home. Yeah. We are so concerned about them because the threats against them never stop.

MG: When you spoke with the Human Rights Committee, you said that you were now an ordinary woman, put into an extraordinary situation, that you weren't a professional activist. What was the cost of that activism, do you think?

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: The cost of the main thing is I'm not gonna- I haven't seen my my parents for four years and I don't know when I'm gonna... I'm gonna... They're pretty old. I, I don't know if I can see them again or not. And I have a life there. I built a life there. I, I was educated there. I had I had home, I had job. And all of a sudden I lost everything. But at the same time, I was waiting to do something for myself, to have a voice. And finally, I. I found my voice. And I never regret what I did. This is what I should do. And now I see that thousands and thousands, thousands of other women are doing the same in my country. And I'm very proud of my sisters and brothers back home.

MG: Because the protests that you were involved in those years ago is was the same as what we're seeing right now. Women taking off their hijabs and protesting.

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: Yeah, because you know what the hijab is? That is one of the pillar of the Islamic regime. And if you protest against it, it means your protect your protest against the sexist regime that the regime has discriminated women for years. So we we knew what we were doing. And now other women are doing that. And they're so brave and fearless.

MG: What do you want the Canadian government to do about the threats that you're receiving here in Canada?

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: You know, everybody everybody knows that there are lots of people affiliated with the Iranian government, with the regime. And like in Iran, many people say Canada, it's the safe haven for for the regime's agents and the like, children of the regime's officials. And that's why we we don't feel safe. So they think that Canada decided to do right now is great. Just investigate and like found them and like send it back to to Iran.

MG: Shaparak. We're going to talk more about what the government could do in the meantime. I'm glad to speak with you. Thank you very much.

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

MG: Thank you. Take care of yourself. Bye bye.

SHAPARAK SHAJARIZADEH: You too. Take care. Have a great day.

MG: Shaparak Shajarizadeh is a human rights activist from Iran living in Toronto. Iran is not the only country said to be threatening Canadians. Chinese Canadians are also reporting being tracked and intimidated. Last week, the RCMP confirmed that it is investigating three offices in Toronto, allegedly run by police from the People's Republic of China. Akshay Singh is a research associate with the University of Ottawa Centre for International Policy Studies. Akshay, good morning to you.

AKSHAY SINGH: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

MG: Thanks for being here. Just briefly, what are these offices? They're known as as police service stations. But what happens in them?

AKSHAY SINGH: You know, so the report that actually describes and says that there are about 54 such stations in 30 countries is actually you can imagine them as points of contact or like many police officers that are based abroad. I'm not sure you can expect them to be the kind of station where you'll see like a front desk person standing there and actually welcoming the UN. Most likely they're going to be small offices, sometimes one or two people, depending on where they are. Essentially to be a point of contact for the Ministry of Public Security or the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in China to be able to conduct their activities abroad.

MG: Chinese government has said that in some ways you go to these stations to renew a driver's licence. What do you think is is actually happening in the stations?

AKSHAY SINGH: You know, it's possible that that might be one of the services that they offer. But I think realistically, the stations abroad are more likely to be a place through which the government of China can monitor populations abroad, perhaps serve as a point of contact to bring people into those stations so that they can deal with them on any kind of legal issues in a way that is not necessarily appropriate for a foreign government to operate in a country like Canada or the United States, where there's also a character distinction. So I think actually, if these stations are actually existing in Canada, most likely they have a like a built in function to monitor the diaspora community.

MG: What's at stake for the people who are being tracked or perhaps intimidated? Again, we heard from shopper talking about what it's like as an Iranian activist for Chinese Canadians. What's what's at play here?

AKSHAY SINGH: Well, a couple of things. I mean, there are a lot of Chinese Canadians who leave the country and come to Canada to have a better life and to escape either the Communist Party regime or just, you know, a different facet of the government that they don't want to deal with. If you have a police station operating in Canada that's able to use either community members or maybe even police officers themselves from China to monitor that community. These people don't feel safe anymore about the fact that, you know, to have a free and open life in a place like Canada, I think that's one more one very important thing. The second thing is, I think it also gives people pause in their activist duties to say, listen, can we freely conduct these activities in Canada, given that we could be monitored. And if we have family back in China or even family in Canada, if their lives or their livelihood could be threatened.

MG: Well, that was the other thing. What is this sort of tracking, monitoring, intimidation meant to achieve?

AKSHAY SINGH: I think it's just that it's essentially meant to intimidate people. So the government of China has been conducting overseas operations for quite some time since at least 2013. It's engaged in what's been called publicly, as Fox Hunt sometimes is referred to as Skynet. It's an attempt to try and repatriate individuals to China who, according to the party, have broken the law. And there are people who have probably have broken the law, have been corrupt, and the government of China is trying to bring them back so they can face charges. But, you know, there is also a possibility some of the people they're targeting for repatriation are political dissidents and they're living abroad. And the Chinese government would like them to come back to China so they can either be silenced or they can be, you know, perhaps put away and not allowed to speak publicly about those issues. So it's really about protecting the image of the government of China abroad and preventing dissidents and people who can speak freely in Canada from going out there and potentially, you know, criticising the government and talking poorly about things like China's human rights violations.

MG: What sort of gap is there that makes it possible for China and Iran and other countries to have these sorts of long tentacles here to be able to contact, monitor, intimidate and harass people who are here in this country who might be doing activist work.

AKSHAY SINGH: That's an excellent question. I think, first of all, we don't have a foreign agents registry in Canada like the United States does and like Australia does. What that means is that if you are a representative of a foreign government operating in Canada. So for example, if I am working for the government of a foreign government, I don't have to go to the Canadian government and say, Hey, I'm working on behalf of X, Y, Z government, here's my registration. I'm going to conduct my activities openly. And because I don't have to do that, that means I can carry on activities in this country that perhaps I wouldn't be able to do so in a place like Australia, United States, without declaring it. And that might involve, for example, tracking individual individuals in Canada. And the FBI has released lots of information about how the government of China uses local contacts, including potentially private investigators, to track individuals in the United States illegally because they do have legislation. Now, in Canada, we do have legislation about things like harassment, you know, things like electoral financing. However, we don't have a legal mechanism, for example, to prevent people acting essentially off base when it comes to representing foreign government activity. And that creates a gap for people to do that in Canada. So community members are afraid, some of them, that their neighbours, people in their community are perhaps working for a foreign government and there's no way to tell because there's no way to check. And that's a huge gap that I can see that we've discussed for some time in Canada, perhaps needs to be plugged up.

MG: Good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

AKSHAY SINGH: Thank you for your time.

MG: Akshay Singh, a research associate with Ottawa University's Centre for International Policy Studies. Michael Chong is the Conservative MP for Wellington Halton Hills in Ontario. He's been listening in. Michael, good morning to you.

MICHAEL CHONG: Good morning.

MG: What have you heard about how these Chinese officers, the so-called police service stations, are operating?

MICHAEL CHONG: Well, Beijing's been pretty brazenly public about it all. In fact, a list of these stations was published in the state controlled and state controlled media by Beijing. And, you know, they published lists of the stations around the world. They're pretty insidious, though, because if you drive by them, they look pretty nondescript. One's at a residence, the others in a strip mall, and the other is in some sort of nondescript, third, nondescript building in the GTA. And so they're pretty insidious because they give Beijing plausible deniability that they're not a big deal. But we've heard from many members of the community that feel intimidated by them. They don't feel safe because they exist. And I might add, they're illegal. They're illegal under domestic law. They're illegal under international law. And it's outrageous that Beijing would have established them here in the GTA.

MG: Just be clear on that. Illegal how?

MICHAEL CHONG: Well, they're illegal under international law. Foreign governments cannot set up offices here without getting the approval of the government of Canada. Beijing has approved offices here. There's the embassy in Ottawa and consulates across the country and cities like Toronto on St George Street, Calgary, Vancouver. And so those offices are proved to be open. They're staffed with accredited diplomats who have been approved by the Department of Foreign Affairs. And so those office offices are legal offices. These illegal police stations are not. And, you know, they're they need to be shut down immediately.

MG: Well, I'm going to get to that in a moment. But I mean, what's what is the recourse for individuals if you are Chinese, Canadian or as we heard from Sharp Rock, an Iranian Canadian, and you're facing monitoring, but also threats, foreign interference. What is the recourse that those individuals would have?

MICHAEL CHONG: Well, the first recourse is to call their local police of jurisdiction. And that, in fact, is part of the problem in Canada because of our separation of powers in our Constitution. Provincial police, local police forces are municipal or provincial, and they're often not equipped to deal with these cases of intimidation or coercion by foreign agents, whether they're from Beijing or from Tehran. And so if people do feel intimidated, they should call their local police jurisdiction, you know, whether it's the Toronto Police Service, Peel Region, Halton region, Durham Regional Police, and report the incident. The Federal Government does coordinate with local police the jurisdiction, but often these local police forces don't have the intelligence resources, don't have the national security resources to pursue these cases. And that's why I think part of the solution here is for the federal government to do a better job of coordinating and clearing cases of intimidation.

MG: Part of this is the idea, and I mentioned this of a foreign agents registry. Australia is one of the nations that has that. Is it likely, though, that people who are sending threatening messages to individuals like Sharp Rock are really going to register as a foreign agent in this country?

MICHAEL CHONG: We think it's a gap in the law that needs to be closed. And if that gap in law is closed with a foreign agents registry, it's another deterrence for agents acting to coerce or intimidate people here in Canada.

MG: Which you've already said that they're breaking the law. So I just wonder whether, you know, your name is on a piece of paper saying that you're a foreign agent. Whether that's going to at all dissuade you from from doing that activity?

MICHAEL CHONG: Well, they there are laws that are being broken in respect of these illegal police stations that have been opened up by Beijing. When people are in when people are when foreign agents are doing things like intimidating or coercing individuals, but it's it's it's there's also areas where it becomes a grey area where it's not clear where the line of coercion and intimidation begins and becomes difficult to prove difficult to prove in a criminal case beyond the burden of proof in a court of law. So what that means is that this foreign agents registry would have a deterrence effect on individuals thinking about foreign agents, thinking about acting here on behalf of Beijing or Tehran here. So we have proof of that. Several weeks ago, a U.S. indictment was unsealed in US court about a similar operation taking place on U.S. soil. And what was interesting about that unsealed indictment where a number of foreign agents, Beijing's foreign agents, were charged by the US Department of Justice. The district attorney is. It revealed that they were not doing as intense interrogation and coercion operations. The United States. What they were doing is they were encouraging encouraging individuals to come to Canada, to Toronto, specifically for more intensive interrogation, which leads one to the conclusion that Beijing sees Canada as a safer place to do these more intensive coercion, intimidation operations.

MG: We just have a few seconds left. One of the things that you said is, is to throw them out. And this is something that Chopra has said as well. Is that the answer here, that that those in the police station, such as they are, should be closed down. And the individuals, if we could figure out as a nation who they are behind them, should be removed from the country.

MICHAEL CHONG: Absolutely. We need better enforcement. They are violating existing laws on Canadian books. The Department of Foreign Affairs should review all of the accredited diplomats at Beijing's embassy in Ottawa, at its consulates in Toronto and across the country. And if any of those individuals are found to be have have found are found to be of have been involved with the establishment or operation of these illegal police stations, they should have their credentials stripped and they should be removed from the country.

MG: Michael Chong. And we'll have to we'll have to leave it there. But we will, I'm sure, follow this up in days and weeks ahead. It's good to talk to you this morning. Thank you very much.

MICHAEL CHONG: Good to be here.

MG: Michael Chong, conservative MP for Wellington, Halton Hills and Ontario. We did reach out to Marco Mendicino, the Federal Minister for Public Safety. We haven't heard back. We also asked for comment from the Embassy of the People's Republic of China and the Iran Permanent Mission to the United Nations. We did not hear back from either of them either. Your CBC News is up next. And then.

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When you're walking around in the shop, look at what you're seeing. What products are you seeing? Talk about it with your classmates. We're going to be asking, what do you think of this? I recommend this. Use some of these adjectives we looked at on the board to help guide the conversation.

MG: A new type of classroom, how virtual reality is helping people learn English and more. That's coming up in 6 minutes. My name is Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. Stay with us.

Using virtual reality to learn English as a second language

Guests: Niza Nondo, Karin Marley

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: theme]

MG: Still to come, the journalist Mark Sullivan reflects on a 45 year career of critiquing the media at a time when democracy and trust in the media itself are under threat. But first, the power of learning through virtual reality.

[Music: theme]

MG: See anything while being anywhere. The possibilities with that premise are endless. That is the feeling that virtual reality, or VR, as it's known, can evoke. For some, it's about gaming and an immersive 4D experience. For industry and tech experts, though, it is about innovation. And now researchers with the Syrian Canadian Foundation and the University of Toronto are looking at VR as a tool to teach English. The Current producer, Niza Nondo, visited the classroom where that research is being done. NESA Hello.

NIZA NONDO: Hi, Matt.

MG: Let's start with this site of the research. You went to figure out what the research looks like and where it's being done. Tell us about that.

NIZA NONDO: Sure. I went to the University of Toronto. I went to their Mississauga campus to check it out. Let's go through this.

MG: Slide really quickly.

NIZA NONDO: Because you can hear the researchers there in a team huddle just prepping for the day's lesson.

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ANTHONY: Mohammed, how are you today?

NIZA NONDO: This is Anthony Faulkner. He's one of two English instructors here. He's a young guy, really energetic. He did his undergrad in teaching, currently working on his master's. And he is a big VR nerd.

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ANTHONY: Now, everybody has their headsets and their handles with them now. Right. What we're going to be doing is we are going to be taking a little trip shopping.

NIZA NONDO: But this passion for virtual reality all goes back to his childhood.

SOUNDCLIP

Biggest stars duke it out in Super Smash Brothers, mainly for the Nintendo game.

NIZA NONDO: So picture this. It's the early 2000. The video game industry is booming. I'm talking big drops here, Max. You have games like Super Smash Bros, Mele, Halo. Oh, and this is when the PSP first came out. So the early 2000 was really a wild time to be a gamer. And as you can imagine, with most young guys now, now back then they were super excited and so is Anthony. And he just hopped on to that trend. Fingers on your trigger and we all go home in one piece.

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ANTHONY: Gaming was always about new worlds. I was I was obsessed with them. It was the only way to my mom to calm down her brothers from fighting. Give us a game and let us play with each other. I never, ever grew out of that video game biz. So when I started going into my undergrad and I got into teaching, I realised that I had so much fun learning combos and strategies. And game plans and these video games I was playing, and it was also something that I was meeting people with. So if we can take that concept, we can help people learn in ways that are much more effective and much more fun. In virtual reality gives us the foundation for looking at this and investigating this.

MG: So he wanted to take that whole idea further.

NIZA NONDO: Yeah, and he's not the only one. You know, virtual reality is being used in so many places in industries like arts and even medicine.

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NEWSCASTER: Now to a truly remarkable story from Brazil, where doctors have carried out groundbreaking surgery on conjoined twins.

NIZA NONDO: You have stories like this one here where a few months ago conjoined twins in Brazil were separated successfully, partly with the help of VR.

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NEWSCASTER: Brain scans created a digital map of the boy's shared cranium, which allowed surgeons to perform a trans-Atlantic virtual reality surgery executed in both Brazil and in the U.K..

MG: So that's an amazing story. But how is this technology being used to teach English as a second language?

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ANTHONY: Testing. Testing. Can everybody hear me? Hello? Hi.

NIZA NONDO: Right. Back in the classroom in Mississauga, Anthony introduces the theme of the week.

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ANTHONY: So nice to see all of you. This week we're talking about banking and finances.

NIZA NONDO: Students have a regular style class, you know, taking notes. They've got a board answering questions.

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ANTHONY: So this is going to be a speed round. Okay. What is deposit money mean if you're depositing money? What are you doing?

STUDENT: Maybe someone's to transfer money for their family, for their friend, for their car. Like this?

ANTHONY: Exactly. You're putting it into one of your bank accounts.

NIZA NONDO: This pretty much goes on for roughly an hour. And then.

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ANTHONY: Now we are going to start getting the headsets out.

NIZA NONDO: VR time.

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ANTHONY: And we are going to be going for our first VR activity of the day. We are going to a very fancy bank office.

NIZA NONDO: And this is where the research phase begins.

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ANTHONY: What we're going to do is once we are in there, we're going to be walking around the office and looking at the different questions on the board. What do you want to buy? What do you want to save for? What do you need to buy? What do you need to save for? All right. And everybody, make sure you just have space, too, before you put it on so that you have room to move your hands to look around. And I will grab my headset as well. So I'm putting on these VR headsets. So I'm in a quote unquote bank setting. It's not really your traditional bank where you walk in and go to the counter and ask for a loan or something like that. It's more of like an office. There's this long brown tables and chairs over here. Maybe this is where they're making their pitch. I want money for the house on a mortgage is employed here. The question is, what do you need to save for?

STUDENT: For me, it's something it's like necessary for me because I need, like, you know, the wagon, because I live in an apartment, so I condominium and I and I like a high, high level. So sometimes we can get my grocery shopping and some from the car. I need a wagon, so.

STUDENT 1: I want to buy. Yeah, I buy my company for the whole newcomers toward. And also, I want to buy a house at the future.

ANTHONY: I see some great options that I'm reading here. I'm seeing a lot of similar options.

MG: Okay. So they're pretending to be in a bank and they're listing what they want to save money for. What what is the point of all of this?

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ANTHONY: I like the the one I saw wanting to save for winter coats.

NIZA NONDO: So this study is targeted at new immigrants. Everything they learn here is context specific to the immediate skills and vocabulary they need to adjust to life in Canada. So that's things like opening a bank accounts, making doctor appointments and job interview skills.

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RAYAN: So based on the curriculum we created, we.

NIZA NONDO: So this is Rayan Bakloony. She's the programme manager of the study and she's with the Syrian Canadian Foundation.

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RAYAN: So when the topic is about the supermarket and items in the supermarket, students in the class go into a supermarket and have activity and discussion of the items at the supermarket where they actually are seeing the items and are touching the items or holding it and discussing about it.

NIZA NONDO: It all goes back to the cliche practise makes perfect. The VR parts is the practise elements. It's supposed to ingrain what students learn on paper into their minds.

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ANTHONY: When you're walking around in the shop, look at what you're seeing. What products are you seeing? Talk about it with your classmates. We're going to be asking. What do you think of this? I recommend this. Use some of these adjectives we looked at on the board to help guide the conversation.

MG: It sounds like a really interesting idea, but how are they actually going to know whether this is working or not?

NIZA NONDO: So this is going on. There's another class just down the hall learning the exact same thing at the exact same time. But without VR and soon. I should also add, researchers will be throwing in artificial intelligence into the mix. That's basically students learning from a computer. So this is all a control group type setup, seeing which method does the best job.

MG: Tell me about the students who are taking part.

NIZA NONDO: Yeah, a lot of the students I spoke to left their countries because of war or some type of conflict. Now they're here safe and sound, but they're finding it difficult to rebuild their lives, partly because of that language barrier. So this study is an opportunity or a stepping stone to maybe, just maybe having a brighter future.

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HALIMA: I know another country language like Turkish was between Farsi and Arabic. Another language, I know.

NIZA NONDO: I know this is Halima Karimi, one of the students in the class. She's an Afghan journalist and women's rights activist. Halima, like many people from Afghanistan over the last year, had no choice but to leave when the Taliban took over.

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HALIMA: Taliban is really dangerous towards people all the time, Taliban. Every Afghanistan people, all men and women and journalists, every activist, they lose their house. They tend to they're here for Afghanistan outside of here or Taliban inside Army of America that everyone is fighting on the whole the peoples. This time, a lot of people lose their children. A lot of people lost all documentation of activity, education like this a lot...

NIZA NONDO: So she makes it to the perimeter of the airport. Could not actually make it to a plane. Just way too many people trying to get in. Meanwhile, you had the Taliban trying to stop them.

HALIMA: This is a bad dream for me to last in my country. My everything, my friends, my achieves, everything is finished now.

NIZA NONDO: But then she quickly looks around and thinks, look, I've already lost my dad to the Taliban, my younger brother, friends, other family. Chances of them next are high. And so,

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HALIMA: I come to the Mazar. Mazar is another big city I've been assigned and I went to Uzbekistan country and Uzbekistan country, woman activist organisations help to me. I came to the Albania. Then I came to Canada.

MG: And so she's starting over.

NIZA NONDO: Yeah, she's starting all over. Here you have a woman who, like many Afghans who've had to flee, has spent decades sharpening her craft to be what she is today. National reporter back in a country a well known women's rights activist to literally starting her life from scratch pretty much on a blank sheet of paper.

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HALIMA: I came here for the first time. My problem was the lack of a good, some counsellor like some social worker to how I can find like, you know, help to me. And also now I have one big challenge finding house. First I find house, a lot of house, the ownert of house, they don't want to give that person under the support of government because they don't have a credit score, insurance. A co-signer like they asked. For this a long time, my time is like lost in hotel.

MG: Are. So those are really complicated things for her to make her way through and navigate.

NIZA NONDO: They are indeed, you know. And for Halima, learning English is like this key to unlocking all these doors that are preventing her from progressing any further here in Canada and maybe retrieving what she lost and becoming self reliant again.

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HALIMA: At the future, I will get good money. I want to sponsor my another family in Afghanistan and also I can try find a way to support my some colleague in Afghanistan. They are human activist journalist in Afghanistan. They need to every time they have contact with me. Halima, can you help me can you can, my son to government have Canada. Now I cannot, you know, because I don't have credit score. I don't have job. I do not have [unintelliglbe]. Now I, I, I need the support of others to support me I find job. I need the support of others they can support me to I joined to free university.

NIZA NONDO: And it's not just Halima. Everyone in this group has their own unique reason for being here.

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They send my son and my daughter to complete a study here since war started in Syria.

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ABDU: This is Abdu Manaan. He's an elderly man from Syria. He recently moved here to reunite with his kids.

ABDU: I think I have some- my knowledge in English, my my skills in English is not bad, but I want to enhance it since and because I face the- when I go to the clinic or to shopping or into bus or talking to the people here and there, I hardly understand this accent, Canadian accent, actually, this is the most important for me to get to understand this accent easily, not to ask the people, Please repeat again. I didn't get you. I get it. Understand what you said. What do you mean by that? Most of the time I am facing this problem.

MG: So it's one thing, I guess, for these newcomers to learn this stuff on paper. It's another thing to be in that bank trying to understand what the teller might be saying. We have met a few of the students who are involved in this. How big is this study with virtual reality?

NIZA NONDO: They are about 48 students taking part in the specific cohort, so that's 24 students in the VR half and 24 in the standard class. In total, the goal is to examine about 135 students and roughly speaking, every month and a half a new group comes in. And so this is two and a half years, this entire study. And I should mention as well, this is all being funded by immigration, refugees and Citizenship Canada.

MG: And what do they know so far about how effective this approach might actually be?

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RAYAN: It's definitely early to determine from the data we have, but I can discuss a few of them.

NIZA NONDO: This is Rayan again from the Syrian Canadian Foundation. Here's what she had to say about that question based on observations they made from their pilot class.

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RAYAN: We were actually very positively surprised that it took a few sessions and students became much more comfortable using VR. And another interesting observation was, like any classroom, there are students that are shy, there are students that are talkative, there are students that are confident. We have all sorts of students. It was very interesting to see students that are shy and the regular class to see them talk much more in the whenever they're utilising the VR headset. So they don't participate a lot in class. But when they have the VR headset on, they talk a lot more.

NIZA NONDO: So again, it's all about helping immigrants who can barely speak English, learn the language much faster and in a fun and innovative way. And this would be this if success for that is this would be a game changer for a country like Canada that receives hundreds of thousands of new immigrants yearly.

MG: This is a very specific study. What do we know about the bigger picture here, about how it works and the efficacy of using VR, using this technology in education more broadly?

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JEREMY: My name is Jeremy Bailenson. I am a professor at Stanford University in the Department of Communication.

NIZA NONDO: I spoke to Jeremy Beilinson. Jeremy is a guru in this field. He's done several studies on this very topic and runs an entire VR programme at Stanford.

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When we think about the state of the art of VR and learning and the efficacy of VR as a learning medium, it's a complicated picture. What we know is that for spatial tasks, VR outperforms other media. What we know is for procedural tasks, for example, training surgeons. VR outperforms other media. When we think about people going into scenes and understanding what it's like to enter a new building or to understand the space of an architecture again, if it's a spatial task were being in the place matters, then VR tends to outperform control conditions. Where the research gets complicated is when you think about abstract STEM learning, science and maths type of learning. When the concepts are abstract and you're simply reading or listening or doing formulas. VR doesn't really help in those situations. And in fact, there is a lot of research that shows that the cognitive load of being in VR, if you're just doing abstract learning, interferes with learning because it's so overwhelming and presence is so high that you're actually it's hard to attend and focus your energy on the learning content. So State of the Art of the Summer in VR research says, is that for tasks that are spatial, procedural or really anchor to a place, VR helps when it's simply just putting other learning lessons that would have been fine on a computer into VR. VR tends to interfere. Everybody is a banking professional. Yeah. If you want to raise how much a bank trusts you, your credit with the bank, it goes up and it's called your credit score.

NIZA NONDO: So in theory, what the folks at UFT are doing should work, but at the same time it's all about picking your battles. Virtual reality can equally be as counter-productive as it can be effective. It's just a matter of what's being taught.

MG: Niza, thank you very much.

ANTHONY: Thanks, Matt.

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JEREMY: And I hope that you all learnt a little bit more and feel more confident with the language about banking, about financing. That's that's it for today's lesson. I think that it was wonderful. And thank you so much, everybody. All righty. Feel free to start packing your stuff head on out. And I hope you had a lot of fun today.

MG: Niza Nonda is a producer here on The Current.

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MG: You're listening to The Current. My name is Matt Galloway. Last week on this programme, we brought you a troubling story from Jack Holland Elementary School in Whitehorse. The RCMP in that city is investigating reports that children were routinely put in isolation and restrained. The practise hasn't stopped, but parents who say this happened to their children are now part of a proposed class action lawsuit.

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VOICE 1: He was inconsolable, wouldn't come to the phone. So I went to the school.

VOICE 2: I'd walk into the school, walk down the hallway.

VOICE 1: And I could hear that he was he was screaming.

VOICE 2: There was one day there was nobody in the study hall, and there was somebody in the office saying, oh, we can see him on the camera. I guess that made them feel better about not having anybody in there with them.

VOICE 3: He describes using his fork and scratching the walls with his fork.

MG: We had a big response to the story and our senior producer, Karin Marley, is here with some of your mail. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. We'll start with a parent sharing this story. My own child was restrained every day for two weeks until the staff refused to participate anymore. The principal doing the restraining did not follow protocol about paperwork and debriefing the staff or myself. Any paperwork was shredded at the end of the year. No records. I tried to make a formal complaint to the Ontario Teachers College, and I was told that without paperwork it would be a waste of energy.

MG: Another listener sent this note: My son is an education assistant this year. He has been assigned to a 12 year old student who can only be in school for 45 minutes a day. That student is violent, angry and unable to stay focussed for long. He has threatened to kill other students. He often uses extremely abusive language. When my son tries to advocate for this child or suggest changes to his independent education plan, he's been told by school counsellors and the principal to mind his own business that this is not his job. It is an extremely difficult situation for all involved, but mostly for the child. I often wonder if trying to force these children into a system that does not work for them is the best solution.

KARIN MARLEY: Joseph Morin writes I was a teacher in a facility for children with emotional disturbances. It was a residential setting. Restraint was used often, and I would add, usually felt to be necessary. However, it was always our last choice. We would restrain a child if we felt the child or the child's classmates were in danger. Sometimes the teacher would be in danger as well. However, restraint was always involved with procedures to protect the child from being harmed by the holds used. And the most important point is that the release of the restraint was always accompanied by a procedure of reintegration back to the setting where the behaviour first occurred. This was a skilful and humane process whereby the child's dignity was front and centre.

MG: This email comes from a child and youth care worker. Michael Mallette also writes about his experience in a group home where restraint was a last resort. I recall a five year old girl who frequently had emotional outbursts and many staff would restrain her. I would calmly talk to her and all she really needed was a hug. I do, however, think that it is naive to think education is a one method fits all system. I had one child who was expelled after he held a classroom hostage with a pair of scissors. It required all the skills of a behavioural teacher and a smaller class size to let this child come into his own. Teachers are stretched to their max and dedicating all their energy and resources to a child who is disrupting the learning environment can impact the other students education. Teachers should never have to suffer the abuse. Some do on a daily basis that no other workplace would tolerate. Just some of your mail on this story. Karin, thank you very much.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, a senior producer here on The Current. Thanks to everybody who wrote in. If there's anything you hear in this programme that you'd like to comment on, you can get in touch. As I say, we read all of your mail. Some of it ends up here on the radio. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Well, coming up after your regional update. A new U.S. election is looming in 2024 with a familiar face. The former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan will be here to talk about lessons the media needs to remember this time around and how to regain the public's trust. Advice from a media critic. Coming up in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan on the future of journalism — and democracy

Guest: Margaret Sullivan

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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In order to make America great, glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.

MG: He's back. And Margaret Sullivan is someone who's not entirely pleased at the prospect of another Donald Trump presidency. Margaret Sullivan knows American politics and journalism well. She was chief editor of the Buffalo News, then public editor of The New York Times. In August, she left her latest position as media columnist at The Washington Post to join Duke University. Her new book is Newsroom Confidential Lessons and Worries from an Ink Stained Life. Margaret Sullivan, good morning.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good morning.

MG: Thanks for being here. You get some sort of flashbacks watching Donald Trump declare that he was running?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Oh, absolutely. In fact, one of the reasons that I that I did wrap things up at The Washington Post was like I didn't think I could really take another Trump campaign and potentially Trump administration. It was pretty stressful and a lot to cover at the first time.

MG: What did what went wrong with the coverage of the 2016 campaign? You you said that this was an epic fail by the media.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Right. Well, I think that the news media, you know, tends to foolishly make predictions or think they can see the future. And one of the things that happened was a lot of people, I think Trump himself, in fact, thought that Hillary Clinton would be the president. And so therefore, however they covered the campaign, didn't really matter. They could make far too big a deal out of Hillary Clinton's email supposed scandal. They could, you know, act as if the the, you know, sort of economic populism, if that's what you want to call it, that he was tapping into was not a big deal. You know, it was just Hillary was going to be president. And so take it from there. And I think that was the mindset.

MG: What was it like being part of that? Because, I mean, you admitted that you got caught up in this as well in terms of what was happening, the obsession with Trump, what that led to in terms of how people saw, you know, interaction on social media and what have you for you. What was that like being part of it?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: I think that I was proud of the work I did, but I also recognise that anything that had Trump in the headlines was probably going to get more attention than, let's say I was writing about the travails of the local news business.

MG: And so when you say, you know, in some ways you don't know if you could take it another run. I mean, what are you most concerned about this time around?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: The coverage of Trump is so flawed. He lies all the time. He taps into some of the worst tendencies of American society and culture, and yet the press seems to normalise him almost pathologically. You know, they recognise and I think they recognise much more now than they used to, that he's a very abnormal candidate and that he is even antidemocratic. But they don't seem to be able to truly call that out or get it across fully. And so and then, you know, Trump himself is so- he calls himself or has called himself a ratings machine. And that is true. That's one of the few times, I guess that I would say he's a truth teller. And then, of course, there's all the abusive harassment that comes at anyone who criticises him. And I really experience that.

MG: You open the book and in some ways you close the book by saying, we're in deep trouble, we being journalists, but also what journalism represents. So how should. Trump 2.0 be covered, do you think?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, I think that the press should re-orient itself entirely as.Public spirited, not how can we get the most clicks, not how can we best foster the most successful business model, but how can we best serve the public, and how can we serve our constitutionally protected role in American democracy. And I think if we reset that way, which would have to come from the top of news organisations and be very, very intentional and deliberate. But I think if we re reoriented that way, it would change the coverage in many ways.

MG: Part of that is around, you say, orienting itself towards being pro-democracy. And you write that to many journalists. And this is back when he declared and when he ran and was president, too many journalists couldn't seem to grasp their crucial role in American democracy. What, from your perspective, was the role of journalism in American democracy?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, there are crucial role is to inform the public so that members of the public can self-govern, you know, can go to the goal and make good choices, can be engaged, citizens, can be informed and actually function as members of a democracy. And I'd say also along with that, to do the kind of reporting that holds powerful people and institutions accountable. So, you know, those are the to inform and to hold accountable are the most important things, not, again, to play to clickbait, to try to get the most engagement, to try to, you know, keep ourselves financially viable by getting the most traffic. And in all of that, that that has that has become too important to too many news organisations, in my view.

MG: I want to play you something from earlier this month. This is a little bit of the former candidate for governor in Arizona, Kari Lake, saying something to the press. Have a listen.

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Speaker 3: I am going to not only be the governor of Arizona for four years, I'm going to do two terms. I'm going to be your worst freaking nightmare for eight years. And we will reform the media as well. We're going to make you guys into journalists again. So get ready. It's going to be a fun eight years. I can't wait.

MG: What does it say when so many Americans seem to be open to that message?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, I mean, you know, there's always been an anti for many years there's been an anti-press feeling in the United States. The amount of trust in the news media has been on a sharp decline for decades. So it plays into that. And I think that former President Trump, both as a candidate and as president, played into that and encouraged it and unleashed it to a large extent by setting up the media as a foil. You know, this was, as he said, so clearly the press is the media is the enemy of the people. I mean, those are pretty extreme words and and very much untrue. I mean, we have a very important public service role and for the most part, we play it. So, you know, Kari Lake is using the Trump playbook there unsuccessfully, I might add.

MG: Do you think Americans believe that? Americans believe that there is that public service role for the media now?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: You know, the the times I've seen public opinion polls on that subject, it's interesting. There's a real there's a real paradox at the heart of it. There's a feeling that the press isn't entirely doing the work that I citizen would like the press to do. But there also is a strong feeling that the press is important, that it serves an accountability role. And when you ask the public or when pollsters ask the public about the watchdog role of the press, you get a very positive response. And the public wants that and recognises that we need that in the press. So it's more that people feel like, I wish they were better. I wish they were speaking to my interests more. And something I hear a lot of when I talk to people about their news habits is I wish that journalists would stop putting their opinion in news stories and just give me the facts.

MG: And what is your response to that?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, I mean I recognise what they mean and I, I give it due credence and at the same time I'm well aware that what gets the most interest is actually not just the facts. Wire service style reporting, it is opinion writing, it is analytical writing. It is, you know, all of the stuff that they say they don't want, in fact, gets the most interest and gets the most engagement. So I think we have to pay attention to what people want, and I think we have to be guided by some higher principles as well.

MG: And those principles would be?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well to do our jobs and to do it with honesty and to seek the truth. To not take unequal things down the middle. To not treat anti-democratic candidates just exactly the same as those who actually believe in the bastions of democracy that that, you know, we need to have continue. And so, you know, to do our jobs as if we as if it really matters. Because it really does.

MG: Part of this is around the conversation. This has been a long conversation in journalism, but it's certainly been sharpened over the last couple of years around the issue of objectivity and what that word actually means. And in the book, you quote. Marty Baron, former editor in chief of The Washington Post, who talks about objectivity not being about false equivalency. It's about approaching every subject with an open mind, rigorously reporting without bias, and then telling the truth as gleaned. Does that definition still stand in 2022?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, you know, Marty is very persuasive on that point. And if that's what objectivity means, which it does to him and to some other people, then that is obviously what we should be doing. I mean, no one can argue with truth seeking impartiality, you know, fairness, accuracy, evidence based reporting, approaching things with an open mind. We all want to do that. The problem is that for many people - and it's understandable why - they feel that there's a kind of a mindset that the word objectivity is wrapped up in. That has to do with an old style of journalism that doesn't include younger people, doesn't include minority members of minority groups, doesn't include women, doesn't include people of colour. It's like, well, that's your- there feeling is well, that's your objectivity. And that is the white male objectivity of the 1970s. And that's not what they want to be doing. And so it's really kind of a semantic argument about words. And so what I like to do is stop arguing about the word objectivity, although it's sort of interesting and use words like impartiality, fairness, truth seeking, evidence based, open mindedness.

MG: What does fairness mean to you, in this context?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: You know, if you're talking about approaching a story fairly, it means you go into it without preconceived notions and you report it out and you make an effort to do something that we call reporting against your own biases. So whatever it is that you think is the case or you already have this idea that it might be the case, you do the reporting that will challenge that so that you're actually you are forcing yourself to be open minded and to change your mind and to report the things that might be surprising to you and not fall into the trap of kind of confirmation bias like, oh, well, I already think this, so let me do the reporting that actually backs that up.

MG: Is that practical in times where we are told, at the very least and people a lot of people believe it, that we are incredibly polarised.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: I think it's completely practical. I mean, it's a way of approaching every story. And I think actually it can address polarisation because if if everyone starts to get the feeling that the press is actually doing a good job here and I need to be open to it because, you know, they seem to have changed a little bit or they're doing things a little differently. I'm going to listen. I think that can treat poller. They can make an impact on on polarisation.

MG: You used the phrase reality based press. I mean, in many ways, it picks up on a lot of what we've been talking about. Now, how do you why do you use that phrase when you're speaking about a certain type of media.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Yeah, it's because I think there is a media out there. There are members of the media and there are media organisations out there that aren't particularly reality based. They're functioning in a sort of a dream world. You know, I talk in my book about or I write in my book a lot about Fox News and how they get on these campaigns about things, whether it's about crime or whether it's about, you know, immigration that are really exaggerated and not tethered to the facts. So I think the press should be tethered to the facts, and that's why I call it reality based.

MG: In the book, you talk about a road trip that you took to the so-called red states. Can you tell me about that trip and what you learnt on that in those areas?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Yeah. Soon after Trump was elected in 2016, I got a lot of invitations to go talk places and exotic places, you know, Istanbul and Paris and Moscow. But I didn't go there. I wanted to go to some of the places that had some of the counties, particularly who had voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump in 2016. And I wanted to sort of tap into, you know, what people were thinking, what they had changed and what was going on. And so I just talked to a lot of people about their news habits, their news consumption, what they believe, what their complaints are about the news media. And I learnt a lot. I learnt a lot. A lot of it wasn't very, you know, encouraging, but it was good to know.

MG: What did you learn?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, for example, that a lot of people are tuned out. They're disgusted with politics. They're disgusted with the news media. They've decided to look the other way. I learnt that because local newspapers have become so withered, because their business model has been so decimated by the end of, the death of or the dissolution of print advertising, that many that that local newspapers, which used to provide a basis of common basis of truth and reality for whole communities, that that has gone away to some extent. And that was tough to hear. And so I think the people are less, you know, able to they're very influenced by social media. They're very much in their own echo chambers. And so, you know, it was depressing to as a journalist to realise that, oh, okay, well, we're putting this stuff out there and we know that it is sometimes flawed, but basically true. And people aren't necessarily open to it, listening to it, absorbing it or any of that.

MG: What does that do then to the mission that you've been articulating that there's not that shared basis of reality, the shared basis of facts that perhaps you need to have a common conversation to listen to each other.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: I mean, I really think we can't have a functioning democracy without a common basis of facts. It's it is just, you know, an absolute necessity and foundation for what we need to to have as a as a nation or any democracy needs to have. So that's you know, it's a real problem.

MG: How different is that then than. The world you grew up in. You're surrounded by news. And in some ways there's a line in the book where you say that the news seemed personal and close to home when you were growing up.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, I mean, you know, I don't say that this was a perfect situation, but my family, I grew up in the Buffalo area. My family got two newspapers, the morning paper, the afternoon paper. We watched the evening news on television. We got news magazines and. We were well informed. We you know, my dad was a lawyer. My mom was a schoolteacher. I had two older brothers. And we had dinner table conversations in which we talked about what was happening in the world and what the problems were and what, you know, what could be done. I mean, I think I'm not saying that no one does that anymore. I just don't think that that kind of immersion in the news as just a normal I mean, it was very, very normal for middle class people in Lackawanna, New York, which was a blue collar town. I mean, everybody got the papers, everybody watched the news. We all knew what was going on. And I think that that to some extent has been lost.

MG: In this book, you talk about working in your hometown for the hometown newspaper for The Buffalo News. You became the executive editor of that paper. And you talk about instances in the past that you had to cover, one of which was the killing of four people in Buffalo outside of a restaurant called the City Grill. How did the Buffalo News cover that tragedy?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, in general, I think we covered it fine. But there was an instance in which we unfortunately and wrongly wrote about, you know, there was this sort of no one knew at first who the shooter was, what had happened. We didn't know. So we were trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Who was at this gathering who? You know, we didn't know anything about the people there. And so what we did know something about were the victims. And we published a story about the the criminal backgrounds of the of the various victims. And it had news value. But what it did was engage in victim blaming. And it these everyone at the party and the victims and everyone there was a member where were African-American people, many part of the Buffalo black community. And the community was very mad at us and they were right. And, you know, I went out to a meeting. At a at a Baptist church to try to address it. And I found a lot of anger there, and we ended up really addressing it in our coverage and in our practises afterwards. So, you know, we did something pretty bad and I blamed myself for that. And we did try to make amends as best we could.

MG: He said something interesting and that there was news value to talking about the criminal backgrounds of the people who were shot outside that restaurant. What was the news value of that?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, the news value, again, was in the context of trying to solve the mystery of what had happened at this party.

MG: Only that earlier this year, as you know, a white supremacist murdered ten black people with an assault rifle in Buffalo at a shopping centre, a grocery store. When when you watched that unfold, what went through your mind as somebody who is from that community, but also given what you've just written, speaking about.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: I mean, it was a terrible, terrible tragedy. I actually was in the Buffalo area at that time. I was living nearby for a few months. And, you know, I know the community very well. I know I knew exactly where it was. I had been there. I, I knew members of the community well and. You know, it was it was a racist, ugly, racist, hateful crime. And I felt. A lot of empathy and I felt a lot of anger and and sadness.

MG: How much has changed in newsrooms, do you think, between that tragedy and the one that you helped cover for the Buffalo News? When it comes to the issue of race and how race in particular and the issues of race are managed within a newsroom.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: I think it's better than it was. And and the reason it's better is that there are. One of the big reasons is that there are more journalists of colour in newsrooms now and more journalists of colour who are in decision making roles and also active in unions. And they are outspoken. And dedicated and passionate, and they are helping to change the culture.

MG: It's easy just finally to to look at the landscape and listen to what we've been talking about and be very pessimistic, not just about the bigger picture of democracy, but of the role of journalism in that democratic exercise. What is it at this stage in your career that is giving you optimism?

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Well, I was really happy to see during the during the recent mid-term elections in the United States that the I think without exception. All of the candidates for secretary's secretary of State who were election denialists and might have wanted to institute practises that would be anti-democratic. They were all defeated. So, you know, to me that says pretty loudly that people do understand and do care about the continuation of democracy, and they do recognise that the extreme elements out there should not be given such powerful positions. I mean, I also see a lot of extremely talented and dedicated journalists, including young journalists whom I've taught and mentored. And I'm I'm very optimistic about the work that they are capable of doing and are doing. So there's a lot to be optimistic and hopeful about.

MG: Margaret Sullivan, it's a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

MARGARET SULLIVAN: Thanks for having me.

MG: Margaret Sullivan is the author of NEWSROOM Confidential Lessons and Worries from an Ink Stained Life. That's The Current for this Monday. q'sup next on CBC Radio One. Before we go, we wanted to remember the voice of a generation in many ways, the actor and singer Irene Cara. If you are of a certain vintage. She was in many ways the soundtrack to the early 1980s starred in the movie Fame, sang the title track as well. Also, of course, huge hit with Flashdance. What a feeling. Both of those songs took home the Oscar for Best Original Song. She was on The Electric Company, and she was the inspiration to a huge number of Latin entertainers in North America. John Leguizamo, the actor, tweeted that she fuelled my community. Irene Cara died at the age of 63. And so she gets our last word this morning. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. You have permission to sing along.

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Monday November 28, 2022 Full Transcript

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