Former colleague and columnist Nathalie Petrowski received an honorary doctorate from Concordia University this week for “her contribution to the cultural landscape in Quebec”.
Posted yesterday at 4:26 p.m.
In a very heartfelt speech given (in French) at the graduation ceremony for graduates in the humanities, arts and communications of her former alma mater, Ms.me Petrowski has made a profession of faith in the media, and journalism in particular. She described the reporters as “surveyors and scouts of reality”.
“With the meteoric rise of social networks, some like to predict the death of journalism. I believe, on the contrary, that journalism has a great future. It is more necessary and essential than ever to combat propaganda, disinformation and fake news,” she declared to more than 2,000 students, professors and dignitaries gathered in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts.
Joined Thursday, Mme Petrowski explained to us that she wanted to show these young people, who will be taking their first steps in their professional life, the importance of having “salaried and unionized” jobs in a newsroom. “They are two investigative journalists from the New York Times who are the basis of the #metoo movement in the United States. This is an article by a journalist from The Gazettein March 2020, which made it possible to launch the alert on the tragedy experienced by patients in CHSLDs in Montreal”, illustrates the former columnist at the To have to and to The Press.
Facts first
Nathalie Petrowski left The Press and daily journalism in 2019. But she’s just as passionate about the news as ever. She remembers her studies at Concordia in the mid-1970s. She did the last year of her bachelor’s degree in communications at the same time as she began her career at Montreal Journal.
“At the time, the only technology we had was phones that looked like toads! Today, the medium is omnipresent and immeasurably rich.” Hence the importance of properly validating and always verifying the facts, she believes. “ Always let the facts get in the way of a good story “, she launched on the floor, in her only flight in English. Concordia Chancellor Jonathan Wener warmly greeted “Doctor Petrowski” at the end of the ceremony.
“I am proud to receive this honor from my former university, she says, because it is an English-speaking institution adapted to the Montreal reality (my courses were in English, but I submitted all my work in French). It is an urban, multicultural, not elitist university. And open to all communities. »
A university that looks like Nathalie Petrowski, after all.