Thaw In Libel Chill?

Canadian journalists haven't had much to celebrate in the last 15 years or so, what with all the downsizing, cross-ownership and erosion of financial stability due to the proliferation of free information sources on the Internet (many of them cribbed from legit news outlets). Nutbars that we are, we think there's immense value in what we do. Plenty of other people would presumably agree. There is a segment of society, however, for whom an understaffed and overworked press is heaven-sent. This summer I interviewed former CBC radio and TV broadcaster Mary-Lou Finlay (pictured) prior to her appearance at the Festival of Words in Moose Jaw. In response to a question about whether it served the purpose of political and economic elites in Canada to have a weakened CBC, she replied "I've talked to people in every political party [that's held power in Ottawa] and without exception, they say their leaders hated the CBC because of the accountability it imposed on them. But if they're honest, they have to recognize that the whole system works better if you have a healthy broadcasting environment."

Greater resources for media outlets are definitely one part of that equation. Another, in Canada anyway, is the freedom to do solid investigative journalism. Under existing libel laws, journalists could be sued for anything they wrote/published/broadcast that damaged another person's reputation. If sued, the onus was on the journalist to prove the truth of their statement. In legal circles, that's what's known as a reverse onus provision. In a typical court case, it's up to the plaintiff to prove their claim. Not so with libel law, where journalists were generally required to prove their innocence.

Recognizing the importance of a vigorous and vigilant press, other countries like the U.S. and Australia provided journalists with a defence to libel if they genuinely believed, based on the research they'd done and interviews they'd conducted, that the story they did was true. In Canada, that defence was not possible -- until today, that is, when the Supreme Court of Canada, in separate libel cases against the Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Star, ruled that the defence of "responsible communication" should be available to journalists to defend themselves against libel actions.

That doesn't mean that journalists now have carte blanche to shred anyone they want. But under the old law, media outlets often shied away from controversial stories involving powerful individuals and organizations out of fear that if they ran them they would be sued for libel and possibly bankrupted by a lucrative judgment against them. "Libel chill" is the term used to describe that situation. And in its judgement today, the Supreme Court said that impacted negatively on the public interest by unduly infringing on freedom of expression.

Good for them. Here's the CBC report here.

News Flash

Speaking of magazines with compromised editorial content, I know who's going to be on the cover of the next issue of Fine Lifestyles Regina (CBC). Just kidding, it's actually this guy. (Nexus Blog)

Prairie Dog Does Not Trade Articles For Advertiser Dollars

"Prairie dog's editorial content is independent and is not for sale under any circumstances. We write what we like, and our readers like it that way."

—From prairie dog's masthead

The organizer of an upcoming event contacted recently to lobby for an article on it. The event—I’m not going to say what it is — sounded sort of interesting and I was fairly keen to cover it, depending on available print space and having an interested writer. Then I got an e-mail from this individual telling me they were buying an ad in our paper — but it was conditional on us writing about their event.

Here's an excerpt: "In exchange for the article, [our organization] would like to purchase a 1/4 page ad. Please have the writer contact me ASAP so that I can meet with him or her [for an interview]."

I sent the organization an e-mail explaining that we don’t trade editorial coverage for advertising. But in a subsequent e-mail to our publisher, this person repeated their demand: "We will be pleased to submit an ad for the issue if there is going to be an article about [our organization].” In other words, this person won’t advertise in prairie dog unless we write about his/her event. Which one might be inclined to call “extortion.”

Long story short, I’m not commissioning an article because we don’t publish a “you grease my back, I’ll rub yours” magazine and I resent the suggestion that we do.

And I assume there won’t be an ad either. But hey, maybe I’ll be surprised.

Advertising is one thing. Stealth advertorials are another. Stealth advertorials are bad business because readers can tell the difference between advertising and editorial content and if they feel you’re trying to fool them with an ad disguised as an article, well, you’ve probably lost a reader.

Hey businesses, want an advertorial? No problem! Buy a decent-size ad from a friendly p-dog sales rep and put a bunch of words in it about your product/event. It will have to be labeled "advertisement" so our readers don’t confuse it with actual content, and it’ll have to use a different design template than our articles — but aside from that, pretty much anything goes.

Editorial and advertising need to remain separate. If you’re mixing them you’re not publishing a newspaper, you’re publishing a catalogue.

Dying for a good news story

If you're a journalist and are thinking you're having a rough day, I suggest you conteplate trading places with this guy (Mother Jones). Thanks to the U.S. war on drugs, Mexico has ceased to be a democracy -- if it ever was -- and is now on the verge of becoming a 'failed state.'

Go. Read.

Roger Ebert's Opinion of Bill O'Reilly

This is a bit of old news but it's still some interesting reading. Amidst all the hoopla surrounding that murdering nutcase who may have influenced by Bill O'Reilly's opinions. Roger Ebert weighed in with his own opinion of Bill's attempts at journalism and compares him to a schoolyard bully.

"O'Reilly insists he is dealing only with the truth. When his guests disagree with him, he shouts at them, calls them liars, talks over them, and behaves like a schoolyard bully."

More on the great selloff

While Whitworth can work himself into a pig-biting mad frenzy regarding the Cons’ mulling of selling the CBC, I have to take that with a grain of salt. Given that Jim Flaherty’s handling of Finance has been so beyond-the-pale lunatic that Harper would have been better off turning over the whole department over to Bubbles from the Trailer Park Boys and his economic stimulus plans (YouTube -- NSFW), it’s not surprising that the Tories would be willing to sell the silverware in order to pay the bills. They already did. (prairie dog).

The problem with turning over the government to people who don’t really believe that government should work is that they run the show in a way that confirms their hypothesis, like a little kid that won’t eat his supper because “I HATE IT!” even though he has never eaten a mouthful in his life. Mr. Flaherty’s $57 billion deficit – which the TD Bank economists are saying will expand to $157 billion in five years (National Post) without, you know, cuts in federal spending (how about closing some tax loopholes or raising taxes on people who don’t pay them?)

The deal is, however, that right wing governments actually like deficits. It gives them the excuse to cut programs they don’t like but are politically popular – daycare programs, medicare, the CBC – under the guise of a ‘financial emergency,’ even though their own spending habits did more to create the deficit than circumstance. Ever notice getting out of Afghanistan – where we’ve spent more than $15 billion on the past six years (not to mention the lives of more than 100 soldiers) and got sweet effin’ all out of it – is never on the agenda? Nobody calls sending our army to fight – and lose – a war they can’t win financially unworkable.

But we won’t have to worry for two reasons. It’s more than likely that we’re going to have a federal election (my bet is by Thanksgiving) as the Liberals under Iggy re-amass their financial warchest and watch the Cons self destruct. These Grits will sweep Atlantic Canada, get about 25 seats in Québec, and win a bunch of three-way races in southern Ontario to win the next election with about 175 seats. So, Harper won’t have time to sell off the CBC even if he wanted to.

Secondly, the CBC has already emasculated itself. As Mitch the Alphabet Boy (University of Regina) has told me, politicians appoint their friends to power. And a broadcasting corporation whose first role isn’t to make money is no friend to those who are rich and powerful. That’s why the CBC board, over the years, has installed a management system that has reduced the CBC to little more than a taxpayer-funded support system for Hockey Night in Canada. The 2005 Canadian Media Guild lockout was done during the summer, in an attempt to starve union members back to the bargaining table by the time the season began in October – and the CBC management wrote off coverage of Regina’s Canada Summer Games and Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s centenary celebrations in its cynicism.

Similarly, the CBC crowed about its great ratings this spring, when they were listed in metropolitan areas. At the same time, they sought to cut services in Northern Saskatchewan., northern Manitoba, and northern Ontario. Why? Simple. Around the same time, the Cons’ culture minister – now there’s a contradiction in terms – suggested the possibility of selling advertising on CBC Radio broadcasts.

Then again, it would be stupid for the CBC to get into the advertising sales business – or for the Cons to sell off the CBC in a media market where CTV is begging the CRTC for the right to have cable subscribers pay an extra $15 a month for local television stations, and Canwest Global is so broke that even its creditors don’t want to foreclose because they can’t see any future for the company either. (Planet S) Then again, what do ostensibly pro-business governments know about the business world? From experience, I would say they don’t know the first thing about running a business. That’s their excuse for getting out of broadcasting – I would suggest just as equally a valid case – if not more valid—could be made that these political parties should get out of the business of government.

EDIT: for some reason, blogger didn't record my url links. I've reinserted them.