Blake Sifton, a McGill graduate, along with nine other University of British Columbia journalism students, became the first group of students ever to win an Emmy Award last week.
The group produced the documentary: Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground as part of an international reporting class at UBC’s Graduate School of Journalism. The film picked up two nominations at this year’s news and documentary Emmys, and won the award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.
Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground aired on PBS’ Frontline/World, where it was described as “A global investigation into the dirty secret of the digital age—the dumping and dangerous recycling of hundreds of millions of pounds of electronic waste across the developing world.” It documents poor workers–often children–burning the European and American computers that recyclers ship to developing countries, and sifting through the toxic residue to salvage and sell tiny pieces of precious metals.
The film also documents another problem: functioning hard drives that contain Westerners’ personal documents and sensitive information. In a particularly memorable scene, one of the teams purchased a hard drive containing sensitive details about U.S. government contracts with one of the country’s largest military contractors, Northrop Grumman. Ghana is adjacent to Nigeria, which Sifton describes as “the epicentre of cyber-crime.”
But the real story is “that we’re poisoning the Third World, not that some African is going to steal your family photos,” said Sifton.
Socially conscious journalism is nothing new for Sifton, who first “got into journalism from activism” during his years at McGill.
Sifton, who graduated from McGill in 2007 with a joint honours degree in political science and international development studies, was involved with a group called Students Taking Action in Chiapas during his time at university, which “raised awareness of and money for the plight of indigenous population in southern Mexico.” He travelled with the group to Chiapas in 2004 and 2006 with donations and to volunteer in communities there.
On his second trip, Mexico was caught in the middle of an election crisis, and Sifton eventually turned the trip into a feature for the McGill Daily. He managed to take a picture of one of the electoral candidates in the midst of an enormous throng of people, which the BBC later published on their website.
“[That] was this really incredible experience that taught me that I could do that, that I wanted to watch history unfold like that and be a foreign correspondent,” Sifton said.
He later used the feature in his UBC application.
This may be the first student-driven documentary to win anything as prestigious as an Emmy, but for project leader and multiple-Emmy-winner Professor Peter Klein, student involvement can add an important dimension to this kind of project.
Students, Klein said, bring a lot of fresh ideas and smart questions to such projects.
“Working journalists kind of get into certain patterns and certain ways of doing things, and you kind of just accept those norms,” he said. “Students question things in ways that experienced journalists don’t. And in that respect I think it actually improves the project. It improves the ethical approaches and the quality of the reporting.”
Klein helps his students by bringing expertise and connections to the media world. For the students, many of whom are employed at major news organizations, winning an Emmy at such a young age is a promising career start. In a few weeks, Sifton will be joining Al-Jazeera as a deputy news editor in Doha, Qatar.
As for Ghana and other e-waste recipients, Klein said the situation has not changed significantly since the program aired last year. Regarding what students can do, Sifton advises researching the recyclers you use to dispose of your computer products to ensure they are being as responsible as they claim so that they don’t “destroy your hard drive.”
