First Word
By David McKie

Who muzzled the watchdogs?

Journalists at the Montreal Gazette say CanWest will neither silence nor intimidated them

Shortly before this latest edition of Media magazine went to press, the employees received a memo imploring them to proceed with caution, lest they be subjected to unthinkable consequences.

Now that we don't have Conrad Black to kick around anymore, it seems as though the Aspers and CanWest might just fill the void — at least for some people. Their move to force their newspapers to carry national editorials espousing certain points of view have created quite a fuss across the country. However, it has been the journalists at the Montreal Gazette who have been the most open in their opposition to what they consider to be the ugly face of censorship. Never before has the edict come on from on high ordering Southam papers to publish must-run editorials. So, is this censorship?

Not if you listen to Murdoch Davis, editor-in-chief of Southam News. In a television interview about the controversy, he reasoned: "It's really just to augment the content of the paper and try to serve the readers with something different, a little more interesting, from a national perspective." So if that's the case, asked Mary Lou Finlay of CBC Radio's As It Happens (Have a listen in RealAudio), during a separate interview, if the editorial board of, say, the Montreal Gazette or the Edmonton Journal (Davis's former paper) took a position on Israel or Shawinigan that was contrary to his national editorial, would that be allowed. Davis' response? No, it is clearly the intent that the newspapers will speak with one voice on certain issues of overarching national or international importance. And that would be the case whether it was done through this initiative or through other means."

So, again, is this censorship, or an owner exercising his right to espouse a certain point of view? (Get an idea of the reaction at www.fpjq.org/canwest)

Shortly before this latest edition of Media magazine went to press, the employees received a memo imploring them to proceed with caution, lest they be subjected to unthinkable consequences. The memo blew a chill through the newsroom, as the very reporters who had spoken out before, in part by signing their names to an open letter about the affair, were now mum, afraid for their jobs with Quebec's only English-language daily. Amid the silence, though, there is still defiance, which is evident in the un-bylined response that appears in this edition. Calls to Peter Stockland, the paper's editor-in-chief, were unanswered, which leaves us with but one impression of his memo: an attempt to muzzle watchdogs.

While there is unhappiness in Montreal, there is also unease in Halifax. Stephen Kimber had been a columnist with the Daily News for 16 years. The author of four books, who is also the director of the School of Journalism at the University of King's College, decided to force the newspaper's hand by publishing a column that accused the Aspers of threatening the right that journalists cherish: freedom of the press. He submitted the column, well ahead of deadline, to give the editors a chance to read it. The next day an editor called and said they'd get back to him. The piece was eventually sent to the chain's editor in chief, Murdoch Davis, who reportedly said no, the column should not run. (He told The Globe and Mail that the decision not to run the column was based on the CanWest policy that management decisions are not be to debated in its newspapers.) Kimber says he never received an explanation why the column was spiked. However, he was asked if he'd continue to write other columns in the future. Kimber declined. Another private controversy was about to become a very public.

"It was a great opportunity to have that kind of column," says Kimber, "but what comes with that is the recognition that you have to be free to express opinions that sometimes are uncomfortable and that one obviously was.

"It's surprising to me just how much interest there has been in this across the country. I've had over 100 e-mails from people I've never heard of before, almost all supportive. A lot of people took up the suggestion that I made in the column, writing to (Heritage Minister) Sheila Copps. Other people have cancelled their subscription to the newspaper. Among the public who read and care about newspapers, there has been a sense that this kind of thing (censorship within newspapers) has been going on for a while and got some inkling of it from what happened at the Gazette. But what my coming forward did was open the floodgates to people who were concerned but didn't have a focus for that. I don't know if anything will come of it. But hopefully it might stir some interest."

Indeed, Kimber did receive publicity for a jest he admits he knew in advance would end his 16-year stint at a columnist. The Daily News' competitor, the Herald featured the controversy on its front page. And the National Post's competitor, The Globe and Mail, ran an edited version of Kimber's column. We at Media magazine will do our part to keep this issue alive.

For those of you who missed the column, we will provide you with an opportunity to read Kimber's deliberately provocative words. Check out The Last Word.

Controversy of another kind was brewing at the other end of the country. Reporters in Alberta who cover its popular premier found themselves having to explain why they didn't write about Ralph Klein's drinking problem before he was shamed into coming clean. Were they negligent in failing to mention a habit (he doesn't use the word alcoholic) the Alberta Premier now admits has affected his performance? Should journalists covering Klein, as one eastern columnist implored, "blown the whistle?" The answer is a complicated, yes and no. Mark Lisac first wrote about Klein's love for the bottle several years ago in his book entitled the Klein Revolution. He observed in a column last year that the premier was "losing his grip." But, as Lisac points out, the story fell into "a well of silence." Could this have been because the man known by many citizens and reporters alike as simply Ralph, was the beneficiary of uncritical coverage? Lisac explores this question.

The question of what to do about Afghanistan, now the bombs have stopped falling is one that media outlets, still reeling from the expense of covering the story to date, must explore. The blanket coverage has subsided, the trivial and superficial have crept back into the regular news cycle. Still, for many reporters who covered the conflict in Pakistan and Afghanistan, normalcy will be a difficult state to achieve. The images and near-death experiences and the lunar-like landscape where people miraculously eke out a living will remain etched in the collective psyche for some time to come. Just ask the Ottawa Citizen's Mike Blanchfield. In his letter from Kabul, he recalls all the journalists he hugged out of a sense of comradery, the friend he thought he lost, and the acquaintances who died at the hands of Afghan bandits.

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You can contact me by email at davidmckie@rogers.com or david_mckie@cbc.ca