CANADA
By Stewart Muir, Business Editor, The Vancouver Sun
24 February 2003

The Press in Canada, 2002

The nation's largest newspaper publisher, CanWest Global, created prolonged controversy over weekly head-office editorials introduced for mandatory inclusion on the leader pages of its major papers. The owners defended the practice as a way to encourage national debate and argued the issue was stirred up in part by competitors in the fierce Toronto market (home of four dailies including CanWest's National Post). Many journalists claimed their independence and the diversity of media opinion were under attack. Russell Mills, publisher of the Ottawa Citizen and a longtime figure on the nation's newspaper scene, was fired over the issue. A group of former newspaper executives backed him by publicly criticizing CanWest. Subsequently, thousands of subscribers in the nation's capital and other cities cancelled their CanWest home delivery. The policy was quietly dropped.

The freedom to attend judicial proceedings was tested when a judge barred reporters from preliminary hearings in the case of accused serial killer Robert Pickton. A publication ban would have been routine enough, but journalists were not even allowed into the public court. Evidence that up to 15 or even many more women were murdered by Pickton in southwestern British Columbia had resulted in wide international media coverage and clearly the intent behind the ban was to prevent tainting of potential jurors. The judge sought both to prevent domestic news sources from publishing and, more controversially, to stop dissemenation of news on foreign websites accessible to Canadians. Foreign and Canadian media, as well as the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, joined in efforts to restore the right of journalists to observe court proceedings.

(Stewart Muir, Vancouver)