Desiree DeCoste
Beaver Staff
Napanee native Kenneth Jackson, a journalist for Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), was awarded the 2020 Michener Award for his story Death By Neglect.
Death by Neglect is a story about Sacha Raven Bob, a child that was in the Weechi-it-te-win Family Services system and how it failed her time and time again with the end result being her taking her own life.
The Michener Awards honour, celebrate, and promote excellence in Canadian public service journalism. Established in 1970 by Roland Michener, Governor General of Canada, the Michener Awards are Canada’s premier journalism award.
Jackson, who lives and works out of Ottawa, was overwhelmed in a sense when he found out he won the Michener Award.
“There was a lot of work that went into this story,” Jackson expressed. “It was a year long thing, so it’s overwhelming in a sense that because I don’t do this work for the awards, I care about stories, I care about journalism and pursuing the truth but getting recognized for that, now everyone knows Sacha Raven Bob. Everyone did a story on us winning and her name is in those stories so that’s important to me, Sacha Raven Bob was somebody forgotten and now she’s not.”
In high school he played football where he got recruited by St. Mary’s University in Halifax. Unfortunately that didn’t pan out for Jackson and he pulled out his back up plan, become a reporter.
“I lived in Napanee for a bit when I was younger and grew up in Deseronto and then for most of my adolescent life I lived in Forest Mills just North of Napanee,” stated Jackson. “Played football at high school in Napanee, played all the sports but I was really into football and I knew I was going to do that after school and got recruited and went out to St. Mary’s University in Halifax and it didn’t pan out but my back up plan was always journalism, I was gonna try football and see where it would go but I always knew I was going to be a reporter, I don’t know why, I just did. Some people would call it a calling but it is what it is I just knew. So when it didn’t work out at St. Mary’s, it was about 20 years ago today I signed up to go to Loyalist for print journalism and school is what you make of it and I just devoured it and I wanted to learn everything as fast as I could and I wanted to work as hard as I could and its been 20 years of hard work to reach where I am now, but I became a journalist because I just knew I was suppose to be one.”
Jackson has been working on getting information out about the child welfare system for four years but has plans to figure out other ways to draw attention to the system other than misery.
“The child welfare stuff I’ve done it for four years, I’ve done other stories too but I’m not just going to keep writing about all the misery, I need to figure out other ways to draw attention to what’s going on in the system, so I’m more focused on right now on going after systemic issues that I can address and stories I can pursue that truth and try and get substantial change, returning kids to their families, launching investigations its all great, I’m very thankful for all that and I’m proud of that work but it’s not enough, it’s not going to do what I think needs to be done and what knows needs to be done and that is turning the thing upside down and just shaking it so I’m working on stories right now that I hope achieve that, that go really to the heart of the problem of the child welfare system in Ontario, because I only work in Ontario, even though I work for a national broadcaster I only work in Ontario on this. So my goal right now is pursuing stories I think will have greater change and more substantial change and hopefully lasting change.”
Jackson got his start in the business by doing a placement for the Beaver’s sister paper, The Picton Gazette in 2003 during his last semester at Loyalist. Following his placement he was hired at the Gazette.
“I will never forget the stories from the county,” he said. “The Gazette is something I’ll never forget.”
To read Jackson’s story on Sacha Raven Bob visit https://www.aptnnews.ca/featured/death-by-neglect-sacha-raven-bob-died-alone-and-weechi-failed-to-save-her/