Journalism in Canada: interview with Katerine Belley-Murray

“Local newspapers mirror the yearnings of their populations. And people’s wishes are different from one community to another”, she says. Photo: courtesy

Katerine Belley-Murray teaches journalism at École supérieure en Art et Technologie des Médias. She currently lives in Saguenay, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, in the Canadian province of Quebec. She has worked as a journalist for Le Quotidien and Le Progrès.

She has a Master degree from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC), which was obtained after completing a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science at the same institution. Katerine also studied at San Diego State University, in California. Her research focuses on regional journalism and she has recently started researching topics on fake news.

In 2013, she received the Leisure Journalism Award in the local and regional press category. The following year, she won the Economy and Finance category of the Grands Prix des Hebdos. From 2013 to 2016, she was a board member of the Quebec Press Council. Learn more about her in the interview below.

Enio Moraes Júnior — A recent research shows that “nearly 75% of Canadian newsrooms are made up of white journalists, and 80% of newsrooms have no black or indigenous journalists on staff”. How would you analyze this? Does this influence media coverage in the country?

Katerine Belley-Murray — It certainly impacts media coverage. The 2016 Census data shows that 4.9% of the…