Manitoba Press Council

Newspaper editors are featured in the World Editors Forum on the subject of integrated newsrooms. Here are some excerpts from their comments.
 
Editor-in-Chief, Globe & Mail, Canada.
“Most journalists in our newsroom consider themselves hybrids; they are story tellers who use different media and the inherent strengths of each to convey their stories.”
 
Executive-Editor, Fort Myers News Press, U.S.A.
“Information is our product, the platforms we distribute the information are less important. We must understand the audiences and must get our needed information to them on the platform they want it.”
 
Editor-in-Chief, Verens Gang Multimedia, Norway
“Newspaper and internet are by nature so diverse that they demand completely different working methods and organizations in order to succeed.”
 
Director of Media Strategies, PPF Financial Group, Eastern Europe
“The danger of joining print and online journalists is that you can destroy your original brand. To be able to succeed in different media fields you have to change the way you reach readers. Here I sense a hidden risk. For example, if you write for the internet and your goal is speed, you may quickly lose your sense of accuracy. Step by step, this habit can reach your newspaper.”
 
General Products Director, RBS Group, Brazil
“For our newspapers, the discussion about integration is outdated. By now we are trying to fuse 100%, the digital and print operations inside the newsroom.”
 
Executive Director, Punch, Nigeria
“The question of integration is not optional - it’s functional. Most importantly, as we aggregate platforms hard-nosed journalistic skills, including of course, a stubborn passion for truth, will remain valuable professional qualities.”
 

The Ontario Human Rights Commission has called for Parliament to form a national Press Council. The chief commissioner, Barbara Hall, is quoted as saying it “would help bring about more consistency across all jurisdictions in Canada”. Also, she admitted that, “As we saw in the Maclean’s case, we had different responses from each province, and that’s really confusing for people.”

The problem here is not with Press Councils, it is with the provincial and national Human Rights Commissions. They have the inconsistency and confusion.

Press Councils have been operating in Canada for 36 years and do so with expertise that includes knowledge of the ethics of the press, an understanding of freedom of expression, and an ability to provide the public with a fair-minded forum for hearing complaints.

They have also operated along the lines of what a CHRC commissioned study recommended. The author of the report, constitutional law expert, Richard Moon, suggested “there are many arguments for protecting freedom of expression but all seem to focus on one, or a combination of, three values: truth, democracy, and individual autonomy. He also said, “the proper scope and limits of the freedom should not be debated exclusively in legal or constitutional terms.” He argues that, “Groups within the community should have a real opportunity to expression that is not so extreme that it violates criminal or human rights laws but may nevertheless affect their position in the larger community.”

His report suggests that “To advance this end, all major print publications should belong to a provincial or regional press council that has the authority to receive a complaint that the publication has depicted an identifiable group in an unfair or discriminatory manner.”

It has been suggested recently that some Press Councils have become moribund. If that’s true, perhaps the main reason is that there is little acknowledgement by newspapers that the service exists. A former Supreme Court Judge, and former B.C. Press Council Chair, publicly criticized newspapers for not publicizing the council or telling readers how to lodge complaints. If newspapers would do this and more were members of councils, then the word “moribund” would probably no longer apply.

The President of the CAJ, Mary Agnes Welch, was quoted as saying, “a lot of journalists would take umbrage at essentially being in a federally regulated profession”. It is natural to not like one’s work being closely reviewed by outsiders but it has become normal for lawyers, doctors and police, so why not them. Welch does admit that provincial press councils “represent the only real place that readers can go to complain about stories short of the courts.”

Also quoted was a journalism teacher from Halifax, Dean Jobb. He pointed out that recourse is important for media audiences and suggested, “we should be wary of creating some kind of new complex bureaucracy.”