Tag Archives: Marcus Gee

The press isn’t entirely free in Canada – Michael Enright’s essay

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The Sunday Edition

The press isn’t entirely free in Canada – Michael’s essay

Michael Enright ·

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered on the October 2 2018. The reporter had been an outspoken critic of Saudi Arabia. (Virginia Mayo/The Associated Press)
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Late last month, the Supreme Court of Canada put some legal muscle, sort of, behind the right of a Canadian journalist to protect a confidential source.

At the same time, though, it said that reporters could be ordered to reveal a source if that source knowingly provided false information.

The decision came as the first test of a federal law called the Journalistic Sources Protection Act.

Why, you might very well ask, do journalists need such a law?

Well, without sources there is no journalism, and without guaranteed protections, there are no sources.

If we really believed in a truly free press, we wouldn’t throw publishers in jail for the words they publish

 – Michael Enright

But before we reporters crack open another Jeroboam of bubbly in celebration, let’s remember that the press isn’t entirely free in this country.

In late August, a Toronto judge sentenced the editor of a small newspaper to a year in jail.

….

The odd thing about the fact that a man was sentenced to lose his liberty for a year for printing nasty things, was that it caused barely a ripple in the halls of Toronto journalism.

The only reporter I could find with the grit to denounce the court’s action was Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee.

He wrote: “None of the usual guardians of free speech seemed to find it even a little troubling.”

James Sears, 55, was found guilty in January of two counts — promoting hatred against women and Jews — for the contents of 22 issues of Your Ward News. (Colin Perkel/Canadian Press)

Judging from the “thunderous silence,” he said, they must consider it perfectly acceptable to send the editor to jail and put the publisher under house arrest for a year.

The judge’s decision comes at a particularly parlous time for journalists and the idea of a free press.

Inside our courtrooms, judges have been leaning more and more to publication bans denying the public the right, and it is a right, to know what is going on inside them.

If we really believed in a truly free press, we wouldn’t throw publishers in jail for the words they publish.

To many, this seems rather puny when positioned alongside what is happening to reporters, and the functioning of free journalism, in other parts of the world.

Around the world, reporters and editors are being arrested, tortured, silenced — even murdered.

Hatice Cengiz (centre), the fiancee of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and CEO of Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos (left) stand by a memorial stone during an event marking the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Khashoggi. (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)

The 2019 World Press Freedom index this year found that hatred of journalists has degenerated into violence. The number of countries considered safe for journalists has continued to decline.

Last October, we heard of the gruesome murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.

This past spring, Irish journalist Lyra McKee was murdered in Derry by a dissident IRA cell.

The numbers suggest that a free press is gradually scaling down to a few countries in the West.

But even in the US, where local newspapers are dying, the country’s leader calls reporters “enemies of the people” and says they traffic in fake news. The result is that Trump rallies have turned into beat-the-press meetings which could easily boil over into violence.

Journalist Lyra McKee is shown in a 2017 file photo at an event in Italy. She was killed in Derry, Northern Ireland after gunfire erupted before the Easter Rising commemorative parades. (Francesco Cuoccio/EPA-EFE)

Violence such as the murder of five employees of the Capital Gazette last year in Annapolis.

The cops called it a targeted shooting. Jailing a hatemonger in Toronto does nothing to reduce hate in this country.

But it does reduce, albeit slightly, the idea that a free press is something more than a slogan.

That in some parts of the world, it is life and death. All the more reason to make sure we protect it here.

 JAILING PEOPLE FOR HATE SPEECH IS WRONG

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-jailing-people-for-hate-speech-is-wrong/

                         JAILING PEOPLE FOR HATE SPEECH IS WRONG

by Marcus Gee

This month a Toronto judge ordered two men to be deprived of their freedom
over words and pictures they published in a paper – and no one said boo.
Not the press, which mostly confined itself to reporting the bare facts of
the case. Certainly not any of the political parties, even though their
existence depends on the right to speak freely and sharply.

 

James Sears and LeRoy St. Germaine were found guilty earlier this year of
promoting hatred. The judge said their local publication, Your Ward News,
“consistently dehumanized Jews and women.” So, when it came time for
sentencing, he threw the book at them. Mr. Sears, the editor, is to serve
a year in jail, though he is free now while he appeals. Mr. St. Germaine,
the publisher, gets 12 months of house arrest. He says he will appeal,
too.

None of the usual guardians of free speech seemed to find this even a
little troubling. Judging from the thunderous silence that greeted the
sentences, they consider it perfectly acceptable that this dubious pair
should lose their liberty for what they put in their nasty little paper.
After all, who could feel sorry for people who published such vile things?

But you don’t have to sympathize with Mr. Sears and Mr. St. Germaine to be
worried about sending them away. Free speech is under attack all over,
from both the right and the left. The notion that fringe voices should be
silenced rather than countered or simply ignored is gaining force. To see
a Canadian court embrace that view is alarming. Except in the case of
direct incitement to violence, democracies shouldn’t jail people for
things they write or say. That is a move from an autocrat’s playbook.

It is only too easy for governments to argue that those who oppose or
criticize them are fomenting unrest or spreading hate. Right now in China,
authorities are labelling Hong Kong’s protesters as dangerous radicals who
despise the motherland. When North America was in the grip of a Red Scare,
those with left-wing views were considered subversive. If they said the
capitalism system was corrupt and must be overthrown, they were
encouraging the populace to stage a violent insurrection. We look back at
the suppression of the left then as a gross overreaction, even hysteria.

In fraught times, the tendency to crack down on radicals, crackpots and
dissenters grows. With a bilious ranter in the White House and poisonous
populism on the rise around the world, these are fraught times indeed. The
prosecutor in the Your Ward News case said that the Crown intends to
enforce the laws against promoting hate with renewed vigilance because “in
today’s current climate … it’s become of greater concern.”

But using the criminal law to crack down on troublesome and even obnoxious
views is the wrong response. It hands governments a cudgel they can easily
misuse. It gives cranks and trolls the spotlight they crave. Mr. Sears and
Mr. St. Germaine seem delighted by all the attention. Mr. St. Germaine
said his partner emerged from court with “fresh handcuff marks still on
his wrists in the same spots where Jesus was wounded when he was nailed to
the cross.”

Worst of all, it threatens the free and unrestrained exchange of ideas
that helps societies progress. The great advantage that democracies have
over other forms of governments is that they can work through conflicts by
discussion and argument instead of violence. A system where views are
aired and tested is simply better at sorting out problems. That system is
truly safe only when all views, even the most odious ones, are allowed to
circulate.

That doesn’t mean we are helpless in the face of hate. One way to fight
the haters is to argue back, denouncing their slurs and combatting their
falsehoods. Another is to turn away. If you find Your Ward News
despicable, consign it to the trash. Deny the trolls their martyrdom. Just
don’t chuck them in jail. Do that and we are all in trouble.

Outrage over group’s use of Toronto library threatens freedom of speech

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Outrage over group’s use of Toronto library threatens freedom of speech

MARCUS GEE

The Globe and Mail

Published 

Last updated 

Free speech is the cardinal right – the right that underpins all others. Yet how casually we brush it aside.

This week in Toronto, a small group held a memorial service at a public library branch for a lawyer who had defended Holocaust deniers and other figures on Canada’s far-right fringe. Spokesmen for Jewish groups said they were outraged that the Toronto Public Library would provide a platform for such a gathering. Mayor John Tory was “deeply concerned.” Members of city council said they were shocked. “Those tied to hate and bigotry have no place in our libraries,” Councillor James Pasternak said.

They seemed entirely oblivious to the threat to freedom of expression. If the library takes it upon itself to decide who has the right to speak, where does it end? If it denies space to a far-right group, what happens when a far-left group comes along? What would it say to the many Canadians who suffered under communism if someone who denies the crimes of Stalin or Mao wanted to hold an event and was denied? What would it say to Toronto’s large Tamil community if extreme Sinhalese nationalists were not permitted to hold a study meeting at the library about the crushing of the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka?

Opinion: We need to protect free speech on campus

It is precisely to avoid making these judgments that the library takes a neutral approach to those who book its spaces. It doesn’t demand to vet their opinions in advance. As long as they follow basic rules of conduct, they get the space. So it is absurd to suggest that the library is somehow endorsing or countenancing the views of those who held this week’s memorial.

Critics of the event seem especially upset that it took place in a “public space,” under the roof of a publicly funded institution. It is not hard to see where that dangerous argument could lead. If people whose opinions are deemed beyond the pale are to be kept out of the public libraries, why not the public parks, the public squares, the public streets? Who gives them the right, some might say, to wave their nasty placards where all can see, or publish their rank opinions where all can read? Surely public spaces are where free speech, however outrageous or obnoxious, should be allowed to flourish. That is the principle behind the famous Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, where people of every opinion and background get the chance to sound off in public. No one says that because the authorities allow it they are giving their stamp of approval to what is said.

Libraries, in particular, should be havens for free expression. They are the places citizens go to learn about the world in all its complexity. Librarians are always facing pressure from one group or another to ban books that they say might corrupt morals or spread hate. They are right to fend off such attempts. Librarians are guides to the world of knowledge, not arbiters of it. They should be equally impartial about who meets in library spaces.

Banning objectionable speech short of direct incitement to violence is always a mistake. Those who object to this week’s event and gatherings like it have other ways to respond. One is to protest. If a hate group holds a rally, hold a rally condemning hate and praising tolerance. Another is to correct. When deniers spout nonsense about how many died or didn’t die in the Holocaust, fight back with the undeniable facts.

The last option – perhaps the best when it comes to the tiny, miserable group of cranks who are Canada’s white nationalists and Holocaust deniers – is simply to turn away. They feed on publicity like this week’s fuss. Instead of fulminating against them or attacking the library for giving them space, ignore them. They don’t deserve even a minute of our time, much less all the air time and headline space they got this week.

No matter how we choose to respond to offensive opinions, it is important to remember the danger of suppressing them. Even in a blessed place such as Canada – a strong, stable democracy with a respected Charter of Rights and Freedoms – freedom of speech can be a fragile thing. We saw that just recently, when three editors left their jobs after an angry pile-on over the complicated issue of cultural appropriation.

In a 1945 essay on free speech and the profusion of it in Hyde Park, George Orwell wrote: “The relative freedom which we enjoy depends on public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper of the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”

On the evidence of the library affair and other events lately, public opinion in the Canada of 2017 is sluggish indeed.

Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail Gives A Ringing Endorsement of Free Speech for YOUR WARD NEWS

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Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail Gives A Ringing Endorsement of Free Speech for YOUR WARD NEWS

 
 
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MARCUS GEE

Postal censorship is a cure worse than the disease

MARCUS GEE

The Globe and Mail

Last updated 

Canadians who value free speech – and let’s hope that is all of us – should be deeply troubled by Ottawa’s decision to tell Canada Post to stop carrying a fringe Toronto newspaper. Public Services Minister Judy Foote ordered the postal service to cease delivering Your Ward News, which has been accused of being anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi. Her “interim prohibitory order” gives its editor 10 days to appeal.

Those who have campaigned against the free paper are “ecstatic.” But consider the awful precedent this act of postal censorship sets.

If people who are offended by something that appears in their mailbox can complain and get it banned from the post, where does it stop? Can a pro-choice feminist block the graphic pro-life pamphlet that comes in the mail? Can a fierce pro-lifer ban a flier from an abortion clinic? Or consider the feelings of the victim of East European communism who gets a Marxist tract in the mail? Why should an agency of the government that her taxes support be allowed to introduce that propaganda into her home?

This is the trouble with just about all limits on free speech. Who says what is beyond the pale? Deciding to block child pornography or open incitement to violence is easy enough, because of the direct physical harm they can be shown to cause. After that, it gets tricky.

Someone must have the power to determine what is dangerous or odious speech and what is merely passionate expression. It is always a matter of opinion. The line is impossible to draw, the scope for abuse endless.

Even in democratic countries, authorities have often succumbed to the impulse to black out what they don’t like. Communist propaganda was blocked on the grounds that it threatened national security, erotica on the grounds that it undermined public morals. The postal system was once one of the main agents of censorship. A century ago, postal censors blocked mailed instalments of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Your Ward News is not Ulysses. Its editor, James Sears, who has been known to style himself as Dimitri the Lover, told City News that Hitler is his second-biggest idol, after Jesus. He ends his e-mails “Expel the Parasite!” – all in capital letters, of course. The group that has been fighting him calls his publication a “neo-Nazi-rag” that “has been permitted to disseminate racism, homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitism to as many as 300,000 homes in Toronto.”

If so, there are a couple of ways to fight back short of censorship. One is simply to toss Your Ward News where it belongs: in the recycling bin. Nobody is forced to read it when it comes in the mail. People like Mr. Sears thrive on the oxygen of attention. Ignoring him is the best revenge.

Another is to argue back. If his opponents feel his maunderings are too despicable to pass over, they can always denounce or refute him. It is always better to fight speech with speech than to gag the speaker.

It is a good time to remember these old lessons about how to handle troublesome speech. Free expression is always under attack to some degree, and the danger seems especially acute today. The little tussle over Your Ward News is part of a wider struggle.

Overseas, authoritarian governments from Moscow to Beijing to Cairo are cracking down on the right to speak openly without fear. Canadians got a small glimpse of their attitude when China’s foreign minister dressed down a reporter in Ottawa for daring to ask a question about human rights. At home, on university campuses and beyond, the tendency to take offence is stifling healthy debate and silencing dissenting voices.

Sometimes those voices can be obnoxious, but it won’t do to try to snuff them out. Ottawa has no business telling the postal service to censor the mail just because some people don’t like what comes through the slot.