Raymond Viger, in his 2007 look back, decides to evaluate local media based on decisions rendered against them by the Quebec Press Council. An interesting quantitative measure if there ever was one. Quebecor’s various properties, led by the Journal de Montréal (unsurprisingly), get top “honours.”
I think it’s also worth looking at who’s not on that list:
- The Gazette, a common target for complaints, won both cases brought against it this year:
- La Presse also gets off scot-free on five complaints:
- a complaint against André Pratte for quoting Jeff Fillion
- another accusing it of bias in its choice of letters to publish
- one accusing it of sensationalism for publishing a photo of a soldier burned alive
- one accusing the paper of making fun of little people
- a complaint of “incomplete information” in a column
- Le Devoir survived a single complaint accusing a columnist of using bad statistics about the situation in Rwanda
- CTV, CBC, Radio-Canada as well as most radio stations (who don’t produce journalism anyway) didn’t see any complaints against them this year