POINT OF VIEW

BY JOEL RUIMY

Fired

A day after news that CanWest Global Communications Corp. had sacked Ottawa Citizen Publisher Russell Mills, a former managing editor of mine observed wryly that he never thought he'd see the day a "band of reporters would stick up for the publisher."

That's one of the minor — but telling — ways journalism has changed in Canada since the start of the current controversy surrounding CanWest Global and its newspapers.The publisher was once the proprietor's point man, and lightning rod for the anger and the insecurity of the lower editorial orders.That's one tradition out the window.Now, in the case of Mills anyway, it's publisher as heroic torchbearer for the truth.

And what an unlikely torchbearer. In his 31 years at the Citizen, Mills built a reputation as a solid and careful company man, never rocking the boat, always turning a profit, connecting his newspaper to the community.

Now,his dismissal is being portrayed by CanWest as a labour-relations issue not relevant to anyone but the employer, the employee and their lawyers.Mills was fired because he failed to submit in advance to CanWest headquarters in Winnipeg a long story and an editorial on the scandals enveloping the Prime Minister.

Think whether there could be a more ludicrous contention than that of saying the publisher of a newspaper in the nation's capital, where federal politics is the city's main industry, can't on his own order a series on national politics? Does a publisher in Vancouver have to ask permission before tackling salmon or timber? Does Montreal have to clear stories on Quebec discredit and ridicule on our industry.

To the uninitiated, this may well be seen as the way all media companies operate. How can you trust something that is being held up by its owners to ridicule and contempt?

All of this has begun to fray at the ties of trust binding a newspaper to its readers — and not just at Southam. The perception that you can't trust your newspaper has now gone mainstream.

Consumers ask, justifiably,how they can be certain they're getting a balanced diet of fact and opinion from seasoned professionals rather than from owners pushing their own agenda? Witness the 3,000 subscription cancellations at the Citizen (at the time this article was written) and the thousands more at other newspapers in the chain. Ironically, a boycott may well make things worse by weakening these newspapers.

Angry readers may feel a cancelled subscription is a concrete way to signal their displeasure. But it may end up hurting the principle they most care about — that of a strong media. The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) recommends letters and emails to CanWest instead. If CanWest executives won't listen to their colleagues, their former managers,other journalists, senators,PEN, or the International Press Institute, maybe they'll listen to their readers.

And if you don't work for Southam,you should still be worried. The Aspers have turned the inner workings of our business into a circus with their ham-fisted handling of dissent within their own newsrooms. The whole thing has been a terrible embarassment for Canadian journalism, throwing nationalism through head office?

The entire episode has changed many things, including the way journalists do their job, the way readers regard their daily newspapers, and the perception about the integrity and reliability of media in Canada today.

Let's start with the strong chill this sends out through journalistic ranks, both at CanWest and elsewhere. If a publisher, especially this publisher, is not safe from head-office wrath, then who is? Some Southam journalists admit quietly that they think twice about writing anything that might bring owner anger on their heads. In addition to the Mills firing, there have been other dismissals and suspensions of columnists whose writings apparently offended CanWest sensibilities.

Stories have been rewritten or spiked, with management deriding the offending copy as inaccurate or biased.Self-censorship — journalists limiting themselves in what they say — is an issue in much of the developing world,where your copy can sometimes get you sacked,or worse.There is a real threat now that self-censorship has come to Canada.