Ceremony of the Michener Award

The Michener Award, sponsored by the Michener Awards Foundation, was launched in 1970, under the auspices of the late Right Honourable Roland Michener, Governor General of Canada from 1967 to 1974. The award is for outstanding and unbiased public service in journalism and is presented to news organizations rather than to individuals: newspapers, broadcasting stations and networks, news agencies, periodicals, magazines and online journalism productions.

The Governor General hosted the presentation ceremony of the Michener Award for outstanding public service in journalism, and the Michener-Deacon Fellowships. The event took place on June 12, 2018. During the evening, Her Excellency delivered a speech: "The role of the press and its independence remains fundamental in the building of our society and the protection of our democracy."

The evening was emceed by Ms. Kim Kierans, Vice-President of the Michener Foundation, and Mr. Pierre-Paul Noreau, Editor-in-Chief of Le Droit.

Ms. Annie Burns-Pieper was the recipient of the Michener-Deacon Fellowship for Investigative Journalism Award. This award was created to encourage excellence in investigative print, broadcast and online journalism. The winning fellow is expected to undertake a project that aspires to the criteria of the Michener Award, with emphasis on identifiable benefits for the public good, improvements in public policy, ethical standards, corporate governance or the lives of Canadians.

Ms. Tamara Baluja received the Michener-Deacon Fellowship for Journalism Education. Dedicated to the advancement of the education of Canadian journalists, the fellowship supports a mature journalist-in-residence at a recognized Canadian school of journalism for one semester. The purpose of the fellowship is to enhance the education of both the applicant and the students enrolled in the journalism program.

The 2017 Michener Award was presented to Robyn Doolittle, from the Globe and Mail, for the series "Unfounded". In a massive investigation involving more than 250 Freedom of Information requests, Ms. Doolittle tracked dismissed, or “unfounded,” sexual assault cases handled by Canadian police. The result was this 2017 series—accompanied by the voices of experts and sexual assault complainants—which showed police were dismissing one in five such complaints. It also showed unfounded rates varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, raising questions about equity of access to justice. A follow up survey revealed thousands of these cases had been misclassified and that one in three legitimate sexual assault reports had been wrongfully dismissed. The series spurred the federal government to pledge better police oversight, training and policies, along with $100 million to combat gender-based violence. Statistics Canada promised to resume collecting and publishing unfounded rates. In all, some 37,000 sexual assault cases were reviewed and more than 400 unfounded cases were reopened.