Michelle Shephard | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1972 (age 52–53) |
| Occupation(s) | Author, journalist, filmmaker |
| Spouse | Jim Rankin |
| Awards | Michener Award, National Newspaper Awards |
Michelle Shephard (born 1972) is an independentinvestigative reporter (previously with theToronto Star newspaper), author and filmmaker.[1] She has been awarded theMichener Award for public service journalism and won Canada's top newspaper prize, the National Newspaper Award, three times.[2] In 2011, she was an associate producer on a documentary calledUnder Fire: Journalists in Combat.[3] She produced the National Film Board documentary,Prisoners of the Absurd, which premiered at Amsterdam's film festival in 2014.[4] Shephard also co-directed a film based on her book aboutOmar Khadr,Guantanamo's Child, which premiered at theToronto International Film Festival in September 2015.[5]
Shephard was the 2015 recipient of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy.[6][7]
Michelle grew up inThornhill, Ontario and attendedThornhill Secondary School.[citation needed] She began working at theStar in 1995 as a summer student, when she met her future husband Jim Rankin.[8] Shephard left the Toronto Star in July 2018 when the paper closed its foreign news department.[9] She is the author ofGuantanamo's Child, a book that revolves about the ordeal ofOmar Khadr in theGuantanamo Bay detention camps.[10] She was also thanked in the foreword of the 2006 bookBetrayed: The Assassination ofDigna Ochoa by fellowStar reporter Linda Diebel, as well asMarina Nemat's 2008 bookPrisoner of Tehran.[11][12]
Her second book,Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone, was published in September 2011.[13] The book was nominated for one of Canada's most prestigious literary awards, the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.[14][15]
In 1999, she came into possession of copies of convicted murdererKarla Homolka's application to transfer to theMaison Thérèse-Casgrain, run by theElizabeth Fry Society, and published the story noting thehalfway house's proximity to local schools, hours before the Canadian courts issued apublication ban on the information.[16]
On September 11, 2001, the dayal-Qaedaattacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Shephard described going to the airport to fly toNew York City, only to find all flights in North America had been ordered to land and no new flights were being allowed to take off.[17] So she and two otherToronto Star reporters drove to New York City, arriving at the Ontario/New York State border shortly before it too was shut down. Covering 9/11 began her career as a national security reporter.
In 2006, she attended a hostile environment training course in Virginia, in preparation for her overseas reporting.[18] Her foreign reporting from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia has includedSomalia,Yemen,Pakistan,Djibouti,Kenya,Syria andDubai.[19]
In 2010, she was banned from Guantanamo along withMiami Herald reporterCarol Rosenberg, Globe and Mail's Paul Koring and CanWest reporter Steven Edwards for identifying an interrogator who had been convicted for his role in the death of an Afghan detainee in U.S. detention in Bagram. The Pentagon lifted the ban following an outcry by various news outlets, including theNew York Times, and an appeal by the Pentagon Press Association.[20] TheWashington Post condemned the Pentagon for trying to exclude four "veteran" reporters with "a depth of knowledge."[21]
In 2019, Shephard hostedUncover: Sharmini, the fifth season of CBC's crime podcastUncover.[22]
In 2004, she co-hosted a Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement panel following up on theStar's series on racial bias in the police force, subtitled "Stagnation, Progress or a Turn in the Wrong Direction?" along with her husband and Scott Simmie.[23]She co-hosted a 2006round table event with the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies with other Canadian journalists including Stewart Bell and Colin Freeze entitled "The Media and the Secret World".[24]
In April 2008, she co-hosted a lecture entitled "The Big Idea: TheICC, American Empire and the Search for the Rule of Law" withErna Paris.[25]
In April 2013, she delivered the Atkinson Lecture on her years as a national security correspondent.[26]
In June 2015, Shephard was awarded the prestigious year-long Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy.[6][7] The fellowship lasts a year and awards the fellow a grant of $75,000, and up to an additional $25,000 for research, to pursue a public policy issue of their choice.[27][28]
For her thoughts on all of this, we were joined by Michelle Shephard. She's a reporter with the Toronto Star and the author of Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr and she was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
This has been an excellent past few days for women at the Toronto Star. One of my colleagues, Michelle Shephard, has a film credit as associate producer for the documentary, Under Fire: Journalists in Combat, which is on the short list for an Oscar nomination.
The Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy provides a seasoned Canadian journalist with $100,000 and an opportunity to pursue a year-long investigation into a current policy issue. It is sponsored by the Atkinson Foundation, the Toronto Star and the Honderich family. This year's recipient is Michelle Shephard, national security reporter for the Toronto Star, author and filmmaker. For her fellowship, she plans to produce character-driven pieces on the effectiveness of Canada's public policies related to national security.
After joining the Star permanently, Shephard occasionally collaborated with her husband at work. Known for solid investigative reporting, the duo shared bylines on stories from Walkerton's tainted water to Paul Bernardo's trial.
Daniel Fried was on board with his deputy, Tony Ricci, a retired U.S. Army colonel with previous posts in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Many media outlets send their staff to "hostile environment training" courses to help prepare for this reality, among others. In 2006, I spent a memorable week in a Virginia field getting roughed up by ex-British marines, who seemed to relish the opportunity to yank me out of the car by my hair and throw a burlap sack on my head in a fake hostage-taking.
The decision comes a week after a coalition of major news organizations, including McClatchy, protested as unconstitutional the rules that were used in May to ban Rosenberg and three Canadian reporters from the commissions.
Toronto Star national security reporter Michelle Shephard is giving this year's Atkinson lecture at Ryerson University, discussing her experiences reporting on security both in Canada and internationally.
The Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy provides a seasoned Canadian journalist with the financial means to pursue a year-long investigation into a current policy issue. This award is a collaborative project of the Atkinson Foundation, the Honderich Family and Toronto Star.
Meanwhile, Michelle Shephard, the Star's national security reporter, was bestowed with the 27th annual Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, giving her a stipend for a year's worth of reporting on the threat of violence posed by young people joining the Islamic State.
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