Jaren Kerr and the Curse of Canadaland

When I went to Toronto to watch lawyers for Theresa Kielburger, Canadaland and Isabel Vincent argue the anti-SLAPP motion filed by Canadaland in the lawsuit between Mrs. Kielburger and Jesse Brown’s podcast shop, I wondered if I’d see any of the many defendants from the “Canadaland” collective. Maybe even the big fella himself.

Canadaland’s publisher, Jessie Brown, along with several other current and past Canadaland employees/contributors, namely: Olusola Adeogun, Mark Slutsky, Jonathan Goldsbie, Kieran Oudshoorn and Jaren Kerr, are the hapless people on what looks to me to be the bad side of this lawsuit. These are not happy times for people who hitched their cart to Jesse Brown.

During the years that Canadaland was attacking WE Charity Canada before the charity was forced to close in what I believe was the low point of Canadian media and politics so far in this century, I wrote several pieces about Jaren Kerr’s questionable and flawed reporting on WE and the Kielburger family under Brown’s tutelage and supervision.  

The poor, one-sided and often cruel reporting by Canadaland is symbolic of the declining standards of journalism in Canada. It was hard to see a limit on the lengths Jesse Brown would go to, exploiting others – including his staff and freelancers like the unfortunate Mr. Adeogun, who gave an African voice to the appalling White Saviors podcast, was sued and never heard from again –to serve his own strange agenda of destroying this charity. And he did it even though he admitted in a podcast that the charity was legit.

Only one of the defendants, Jonathan Goldsbie, showed up at the SLAPP motion hearing, and he wasn’t too chatty. Brown and Kerr and the rest of the defendants didn’t go to the courtroom to hear the arguments.

Canadaland’s lawyers argued Kerr and two other Canadaland employees had nothing to do with the content that Mrs. Kielburger sued over and wanted them dropped from the case, but the judge looked at the over-all campaign and kept Kerr and the other staffers in the lawsuit. It’s hard to know who did what in the making of this mess. Maybe it will come out in a trial. But I also don’t believe the horrendous treatment of Theresa Kielburger was a one-off, that it is substantially different from the rest of the Canadaland reporting.

The evidence against Canadaland put forward by Mrs. Kielburger’s lawyers was damning, and it resulted in a brutal assessment of Canadaland’s case by the presiding judge, Justice E.M. Morgan of the Superior Court of Justice.

As I wrote in May, Justice Morgan ruled the case must go to trial, finding “…there is substantial merit in the claim against Brown and Canadaland...” and “…there is no reason to believe that Brown and Canadaland have any valid defence.”

It was a scathing rebuke from the judge, who added  “The Plaintiff’s (Mrs. Kielburger) testimony in this respect was credible and impactful. It was especially poignant in comparison with the callous disregard of reputation and personal damage expressed by Brown toward the Plaintiff.”

Justice Morgan also ordered Canadaland to pay 80% of Mrs. Kielburger’s the legal bills for the hearing, which worked out to $110,000.. This is very unusual: the anti-SLAPP law discourages judges from awarding costs to successful plaintiffs. They only do so when the motion seems to them to be an abuse of process.

Justice Morgan called out Brown’s cruelty towards the elderly Mrs. Kielburger during his testimony, writing: “…[F]rom Brown’s point of view the Plaintiff’s feelings are worth nothing; he was only concerned to cover himself and his company … The fact that he was speaking about the Plaintiff, and imposing personal pain on the Plaintiff by repeating an allegation about her that he was aware had been seriously contested, if not established as entirely false, was seen by him as irrelevant.”

While in Toronto, I recalled that I had not heard anything about Kerr since he left Canadaland. A Google search reveals he is on the “Breaking News” desk at the Financial Times out of New York.

While that may sound like an interesting title, those who’ve worked in journalism know this likely entails nothing more than re-writing wire stories on the news of the day – a job that will soon be replaced by AI. It’s too bad, because Kerr seems to me to be a decent guy and was once a promising young reporter trying to make it in a very tough job market.

Back in 2018, Brown and Canadaland plucked Kerr after his short internship at the city desk at the Toronto Star, and thrust him into what must have seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. Brown had been looking for someone to join his vendetta against WE and the Kielburger family, but so far had no takers.

As Kerr later disclosed at a media conference I attended in May 2019, he reached out to Jesse Brown when his contract was coming up at the Star to ask if he had anything for him:

“And he did. He had a story in mind,” Kerr said at the time. “He sold me on the story that ‘you’ll have time, you’ll have resources, you’ll have legal insurance. Give it a shot.’”

“At 23 years old, who else is going to give me four months to really dig into this,” Kerr told the audience. “I saw this as an opportunity, when my contract was ending at the Star, to try to make a splash before I had to consider other options. There were no jobs waiting for me so I thought…” (the moderator cut him off before he finished the thought).

While he worked at Canadaland, Kerr wrote several stories about the Kielburgers and WE Charity, and was interviewed by Brown during multiple Canadaland podcast episodes. Ever after Kerr left Canadaland for Yahoo! Finance, and later the Globe and Mail, he continued writing stories for the site and contributed to Canadaland’s sometimes-bizarre reporting.

In October 2018, Canadaland published Kerr’s piece, “Craig Kielburger Founded WE to Fight Child Labour. Now the WE Brand Promotes Products Made By Children”, which accused WE Charity of being “connected to no fewer than three companies known to use child and slave labour in their supply chain”.

The article relied heavily on information attributed to anonymous former employees and included digitally altered financial documents which created false assumptions, as well as a digital image of a mocked-up image of a Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats cereal box that was co-branded with a ME to WE logo.

Canadaland spread this image all over social media. It was supposedly the “smoking gun” proving a secret and sleazy relationship between Kellogg’s, which Canadaland says has child labour products in its supply chain, and ME to WE.

Readers of this website may recall I offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove the cereal box depicted an actual product. Spoiler – I have yet to pay out because it was an image of something that did not exist. The mock-up was made by an ad company trying to pitch its services to the charity. Kerr never asked the charity for comment before publication of this image and the false allegation that the partnership exists. (As for Kellogg’s, try to find anything that says the company uses child labour, or willingly buys child labour-made ingredients for its products.)

On November 6, 2018, WE Charity served Jaren Kerr and Canadaland with a libel notice listing dozens of instances of shoddy reporting, invented documents and unsubstantiated claims  in the reporting. The charity served a second notice of libel for an article and podcast about WE Charity and its relationship with the media, which was similarly anchored in amateur-level, faux journalism.

I think WE Charity would have easily won in both instances had they elected to file statements of claim. But they did not proceed, likely because of the cost and time involved. The anti-SLAPP regime is also hit and miss. Some cases are knocked out even though they’ve been treated grossly unfair by the media or attacked by paid smear merchants.

That’s why it is so notable that Justice Morgan went out of his way to state that Mrs. Kielburger’s case against Brown, Kerr et al has “substantial merit”. That does not bode well for Kerr’s future career in journalism.

Brown has enough money to continue publishing. He’s a multi-millionaire. His staff is not a happy camp: they’d already formed a union and some had trashed him online for being cheap. Recently, many of his own employees have largely turned against him over his stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Brown’s behaviour has been so controversial that Canadaland’s own Editor in Chief issued a statement to distance herself and employees from Brown.

It is not a good look for journalists when they must tell potential employers that they’re being sued for defamatory and irresponsible reporting, and that so far, things aren’t going well.

Maybe New York media will ignore what a Canadian court has to say. If so, Kerr will have a chance of building a career in media. No matter what happens, and whether he can explain it all away, I hope the whole process has taught him that sloppy, irresponsible and misleading journalism, whether done by the reporter on his own, or because his boss wants it, has consequences. Bad reporting does not just hurt the people it attacks, it sticks to, and can eventually ruin, journalists who engage in it.

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