Behind the scenes on The Social: When the media gets it right

**Kristi Lee** (0:00)
Hi there, I hope you're well. I wanted to tell you about something really cool that happened this past Monday, so this is just a little kind of update.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:10)
Today on The Social, inside the trial of former Hedley frontman Jacob Hoggard with Canadian True Crime host Kristi Lee, and advocate and survivor, Jessica Baker.

**Kristi Lee** (0:23)
The Social airs on CTV from about 2 p.m. on weekdays. It's a very popular daytime talk show that's been described as Canada's version of The View. And just before Jessica left to return home to Ottawa, we sat down for a very quick debrief about how it all went.
Hi Jess. Hello. We've been here for two nights. I just wanted to jump in the morning after to have a very quick debrief of our time at The Social because it's my second time now. And I have to say how amazing it all was and Jess, how did you find it?

**Jessica Baker** (1:02)
Every single person there was so, so kind and so empathetic. You could tell that they really took care of the sensitive subject matter that we were talking about.
I had the best experience and normally I am not a fan of being on TV or on camera or anything like that, but I would do it again for sure.

**Kristi Lee** (1:25)
It's important to understand that since the CBC documentary, Breaking Idol, directed by Tiffany Hsiung, was released back in November of 2025, Jessica has been contacted by multiple media outlets asking for interviews and TV appearances. She turned them all down for a few reasons. One is that she didn't want to do them by herself.
Jessica, after the documentary, did you know that you were feeling like, it was the first time being on TV, but also the time when your identity as the survivor or a survivor from the Jacob Hoggard case was first made known. It was a very brave decision and understandably, you kind of retreated a little bit after that. Yeah, yeah.

**Jessica Baker** (2:10)
I also like, I don't want people to think that I am trying to just like get on TV or, I don't know, be famous or be known or something like that. So I just pick my opportunities very, I'm very picky.

**Kristi Lee** (2:25)
Yeah, I am as well. Like I'm quite a bit reclusive. So I want to give you a bit of a backstory about all of this, because it all feeds into the extremely positive experience we had on The Social. My first time on Canadian TV was in January of 2020 I was invited to be a panelist on a Saturday night pop culture TV show, and there was a segment on True Crime. I'm not a natural speaker and I'm really best if I can be prepared. So beforehand, I tried to get some idea of the topics we might be discussing or the questions I might be asked. The producer was extremely vague, which I think was intentional. There's a school of thought in journalism that you get the most natural answers by catching people slightly off guard. The problem is that approach does not work well on everyone. For some, i.e. me, it can be a total disaster. So not only was I feeling deeply unprepared, but it was during the peak of my imposter syndrome era, where a couple of journalists had told me they were essentially salty about me occupying this space, and they felt that this style of podcast was the equivalent of stealing their work.
So imagine how I felt as I arrived at the studio on the day of filming, and was introduced to one of my fellow panelists, Kevin Donovan, the Toronto Star's lead investigative reporter, most well known for the Barry and Honey Sherman case.
I introduced myself to him as the resident hack, and I physically cringe when I think about that. But in my mind, I was kind of trying to disarm him before he had a reason to judge me, that I wasn't claiming to be a journalist, and I posed absolutely no threat to him or his work. Of course, this was all happening entirely inside my own head. Kevin Donovan didn't know who I was. Neither did our other panelist, who was a criminologist. These days, I know that those journalists who reached out to me do not represent all the journalists out there. And I also know that the work that I do is legitimate. There is an actual term for it, explanatory journalism, taking complex subjects, connecting the dots and adding contexts that can't always fit into a standard news article and then making it accessible to a different audience.