Agents of social change is a phrase once widely used by Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 student newspapers to describe a doctrine of activist civic journalism

Civic Journalism

The civic journalism movement is, according to professor David K. Perry of the University of Alabama, an attempt to abandon the notion that journalists and their audiences are spectators in political and social processes. In its place, the civic journalism movement seeks to treat readers and...

.

Origin: 1965-68

The phrase was first used in 1965 at the annual conference of Canadian University Press

Canadian University Press

Canadian University Press is a non-profit co-operative and newswire service owned by almost 90 student newspapers at post-secondary schools in Canada. Founded in 1938, CUP is the oldest student newswire service in the world and the oldest national student organization in North America. Many...

 in Calgary, when a delegation led by the McGill Daily proposed and passed an amendment to CUP's statement of principles that said "one of the major roles of the student press is to act as an agent of social change." The motion's authors argued that university students, including student journalists, had a special role to play in the social and civil-rights revolutions of the time, and objective reporting could not achieve this. Instead, student journalists had to take sides on social issues, and guide campus opinion accordingly.

CUP's leadership soon realized that being "agents of social change" meant that distanced, objective reporting was impossible. In 1967 CUP removed all prohibitions against "unbiased" reporting from its charter, replacing the word "unbiased" with "fair."

In 1968, CUP fleshed out the 1965 "agents of social change" clause into a longer list of resolutions, reading as follows:

• that the major role of the student press is to act as an agent of social change, striving to emphasize the rights and responsibilities of the student citizen;
• that the student press must in fulfilling this role perform both an educative and an active function as agents of social change;
• that the student press must present local, national and international news fairly, and interpret ideas and events to the best of its ability;
• that the student press must use its freedom from commercial and other controls to ensure that all it does is consistent with its major role and to examine what other media avoid.

Criticism and decline: 1968-1991

"Agents of social change" and the struggle to interpret it led to frequent clashes between the radical and moderate CUP member papers. To the moderates, the phrase not only excused but encouraged biased reporting, as long as the bias was in favour of so-called progressive causes — causes that sometimes supported violence or illegal activity.

For instance, during the 1970 October Crisis

October Crisis

The October Crisis was a series of events triggered by two kidnappings of government officials by members of the Front de libération du Québec during October 1970 in the province of Quebec, mainly in the Montreal metropolitan area.The circumstances ultimately culminated in the only peacetime use...

, the CUP national bureau encouraged member papers to publish the FLQ manifesto and write pro-French, anti-War Measures Act

War Measures Act

The War Measures Act was a Canadian statute that allowed the government to assume sweeping emergency powers in the event of "war, invasion or insurrection, real or apprehended"...

 articles, because they felt these perspectives were being lost in the mainstream press. In 1985, CUP wrote a list of "liberation organizations" that its national bureau was authorized to support, including the IRA

Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...

 and the PLO. Although member papers were not obligated to print these stories, the move alarmed and disillusioned the moderate papers, some of whom would leave CUP in the years that followed.

After several inconclusive debates on the subject, CUP voted to delete the "agents of social change" clause in 1991, prompting the temporary resignation of the McGill Daily and the Simon Fraser University Peak.

Even though it is no longer official CUP policy, "agents of social change" survives in the constitutions of some CUP member papers, including the Martlet

The Martlet

The Martlet is a weekly student newspaper at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. There are over a dozen employees on the payroll, but significant work is done by student volunteers . The Martlet is funded partially by student fees, and partially by advertisements...

at the University of Victoria

University of Victoria

The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...

, and continues to be debated at CUP conferences.

Sources

• Evan Annett, You Charlatans (Charlatan Publications Inc., 2005)
• Käthe Anne Lemon, Agents of Social Change: A History of Canadian University Press (MA Thesis, Ryerson and York universities, 2004)
• Jacques Poitras, Knowledge and Power: Fifty Years of Ideology in Canadian University Press (Honours research project, Carleton University, 1991)