RTDNA Canada’s judges come from a wide variety of background and affiliations – ranging from people working at small private stations to large networks to faculty of journalism programs. And just as many Canadian journalists work for a handful of large employers, many of our judges come from large organizations in this country’s very concentrated media landscape.
We have taken certain measures to minimize conflict of interest. For example, individuals are assigned to judge entries which originate in other regions of the country. Similarly, journalists who work at the network level are asked to judge regional entries and vice versa.
From time to time, a judge will flag us about a potential conflict of interest and we will rule whether to assign them elsewhere or leave them as assigned. We trust in the professionalism of judges to vote for excellence even if an entry was submitted by the “competition.” Looking at our former judges and their track record, we would say that our trust is well placed.
We have also created a buffer in that all judging is done independently so that judges are not aware of other members of their panel – neither their identities nor how they have voted – aside from rare occurrences when a tie needs to be broken. For this reason, we do not release the names of our judges.
If you have any questions or concerns, or would like to flag a potential conflict of interest, please contact us at info@rtdnacanada.com.
We are also sensitive to Canada’s employment climate and that some of the country’s premier journalists have found that their job status has changed – sometimes of their own choice, sometimes not. Consequently, some of our judges are self-employed and others have taken a break from their retirement to judge for us. Their employment status has not diminished their ability to judge journalistic excellence.
We are beholden to all our judges – regional, network, faculty, freelance and retired – for the time and expertise that they donate to us annually.
There would be no RTDNA Canada Awards without you.