mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:56 pm Post subject: Human rights commission calls for media watchdog |
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The Ontario Human Rights Commission is calling for Parliament to force all Canadian magazines, newspapers and "media services" Web sites to join a national press council with the power to adjudicate breaches of professional standards and complaints of discrimination.
The council would have the power to order the publication of its decisions and "would help bring about more consistency across all jurisdictions in Canada," reads an OHRC report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
The media's freedom of expression comes with a duty to "address issues of hate expression, and [media] should do so either voluntarily through provincial press councils, or through statutory creation of a national press council with compulsory membership," the report reads.
"At the same time, the OHRC recognizes the media have full freedom and control over what they publish. Ensuring mechanisms are in place to provide opportunity for public scrutiny and the receipt of complaints, particularly from vulnerable groups is important, but it must not cross the line into censorship."
Barbara Hall, OHRC chief commissioner, said in an interview that the rise of the Internet has strengthened the case for a national media watchdog. In her vision, a national press council would be "a vehicle for full discussion about what's written in the media" that is less strict and more accessible than the courts.
It would be designed with the input of media, and would allow readers to bring complaints against media anywhere in Canada, no matter where they live. "It allows the affected groups to explain how they've been harmed, or the impact on them," Ms. Hall said.
The recommendation is part of the OHRC's submission to its federal counterpart, which is preparing a report to Parliament on its own hate speech mandate, in response to the controversy over human rights law and freedom of expression.
A national press council would replace the current array of provincial press councils, which are voluntary, and in some cases moribund. Some national publications belong to provincial councils, with exceptions including the National Post and Maclean's magazine. Few magazines or news Web sites belong to anything resembling a professional regulatory body.
The idea of a mandatory press council was floated last year by Richard Moon, a law professor and consultant to the CHRC, as an alternative venue for discrimination complaints if Parliament were to accept his main recommendation and scrap the CHRC's online hate speech mandate.
Soon after, the idea was endorsed by Mohamed Elmasry, former head of the Canadian Islamic Congress and the driving force behind three high-profile hate speech complaints against Maclean's magazine over alleged Islamophobia in opinion writing. He said the council would be modelled on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, and it would provide a forum for complaints, while advocating for what he called "fairness, professionalism, ethnic diversity, all the good stuff."
Ms. Hall's endorsement is the most prominent so far, and it marks a significant moment in the debate over the role of human rights commissions in regulating the media. Ms. Hall was widely criticized for voicing her sympathies with the Maclean's complaint, even while formally rejecting it. A national press council could alleviate this confusion, by providing a forum for complainants who turn to human rights commissions, perhaps wrongly, as a last resort.
"As we saw in the Maclean's case, we had different responses from each province, and that's really confusing for people," Ms. Hall said.
Mary Agnes Welch, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, said provincial press councils "are largely toothless and ineffective, and I think that's fundamentally a bad thing. They represent the only real place that readers can go to complain about stories short of the courts."
At the same time, she said a mandatory national press council is probably a practical impossibility.
"The provincial ones don't even work so how could we have a national one?" she said. "And I know a lot of journalists who would take umbrage at essentially being in a federally regulated profession.... If on the crazy off-chance that there is some momentum behind this idea of a national press council, it won't be coming from journalists."
"We need to get this out of the hands of human rights commissions, this idea of adjudicating issues of free expression in the media," said Dean Jobb, who teaches journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax. "When media are involved in debating issues, they shouldn't end up before a body like a human rights commission, which is not only adjudicative, but can mete out punishment."
He recalled that the Atlantic Press Council was established in response to similar rumblings from the Trudeau government in the early 1980s. He said recourse is important for media audiences, but that the Maclean's cases showed that aggrieved readers can already get attention for their complaints.
"In a way, there is already a mechanism to air these things. I think we should be wary of creating some kind of new complex bureaucracy that's going to start nosing around saying, �Hmm, we're not quite sure if that was the proper way to say that.' That doesn't seem to be consistent with freedom of the press," he said. |
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1275068
I wonder how large an umbrella "media services" internet sites will be. Well, if the Mohamed Elmasry is for it, what could possibly go wrong?
Is this the proper role of government? |
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