I understand this photo was one of the rare good ones taken on the day Conrad Black began to serve his sentence. But does this photo really need two watermarks? Is someone selling it on the black market or something?
Tag Archives: National-Post
Journalism died today
OK, maybe I’m being a bit over-dramatic. But if you’re considering leaking a document anonymously to the media, confident that you’ve been promised your name will be kept secret by the journalist, think again.
Today, the National Post lost an appeal which pitted confidentiality of sources against the interests of law enforcement. And the court has ordered the Post to reveal the identity of an anonymous source.
The case stems from the Shawinigate controversy (I’m not a fan of “-gate” terms, but this one just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?), in which then-prime minister Jean Chrétien had apparently helped to secure a generous loan for a hotel in his home riding, next to a golf course he technically still had a financial interest in.
Specifically, the case concerns a document received by Post reporter Andrew McIntosh, which appeared to be a loan application from the hotel. McIntosh gave his source a guarantee of anonymity in exchange for the document. But when he attempted to verify it with the bank, the bank declared it to be a forgery and began an investigation.
That investigation led to a court order for the Post to produce the document and the envelope it came in. The Crown wanted to determine the identity of the alleged forger and potentially file charges.
But (according to McIntosh) the source of the document claims he received it anonymously through the mail (hence McIntosh’s need to authenticate it), so if this is true the source would not have been the forger.
The ruling by the Ontario court of appeal argues that the interest of law enforcement to investigate a forgery intended to bring down a sitting prime minister outweighs the Post’s need to protect its sources.
In it, the court agrees with the Crown that the documents themselves are important evidence, and that the leak itself is the crime they’re investigating. Insert reference to the Valerie Plame scandal here, which also wasn’t very friendly to the media’s anonymous sources.
A key phrase comes in para. 75:
(Section 2(b) of the Charter, which guarantees freedom of the press) does not guarantee that journalists have an automatic right to protect the confidentiality of their sources.
Similarly, in para. 79:
The journalist-confidential source relationship is not protected by a class privilege. However […] the confidentiality of the relationship between a journalist and the journalist’s source may be protected on a case-by-case basis.
In para. 94:
Journalists can never guarantee confidentiality. There will be some cases – and this is one of them – where the privilege cannot be recognized. Refusing to recognize the privilege in appropriate cases will not, in our view, cause media sources to “dry-up”.
Nice to see the court is so confident. But to me, this ruling seems to say that a journalist can be forced to give me up if there’s a reasonable belief (whether it’s true or not) that knowing my identity may be important to the police investigating a crime.
Considering how many confidential leaks involve some issues of legality, I could certainly see more people clamming up about important issues of public interest in the belief that they could be prosecuted, fired or otherwise be punished for bringing it to light.
Confidential sources are confidential, except when the government decides it wants to know.
The judgment also includes a dig at new media* includes an argument from the Crown which suggests that new media journalists aren’t journalists, in para. 98:
[The Crown submits that …] Today, many persons, especially by using the internet, may be called “journalists” or “the press” because they disseminate information to the public, yet may not merit the journalist-confidential source privilege.
We reject the Crown’s first contention. The case-by-case approach to privilege does not require us to establish the boundaries of legitimate journalism.
So feel free to ignore what I’m saying here. Because according to the Ontario court of appeal, I’m probably not a journalist.*
*I totally misread the judgment originally and read a summary of the Crown’s argument as the judgment of the court. My apologies.
UPDATE:
National Post reruns sports scores
Via Regret the Error, the National Post has one of the most unhelpful corrections in the history of newspapers:
Due to a production error, incorrect information appeared on the sports results page in some editions of yesterday’s paper.
The Post regrets the error.
So what was the “incorrect information”? The page, which appeared on Nov. 8, was in fact the scores page from Oct. 23, a full two weeks earlier. It had all the scores from Oct. 22 games, as well as things like the over/under for the Red Sox/Rockies matchup in Game 1 of the World Series.
It wasn’t all bad. It was nice seeing “Canadiens 6 Bruins 1” again.
But you’d think the Post could just admit someone screwed up and put an old page in, instead of obfuscating the mistake with correctionese.
National Post redesign: That’s it?
Well, today is the big day. The New Toronto National Post hit doorsteps across the GTA nation today, with an Amazing New Redesign That Changes Everything. They’ve been advertising it in their paper and others for days now, so I was really excited to see what Canada’s Most Pretentious Newspaper did with itself:
It put its flag down the side. That’s about it.
Calling it a “bold, new design“, the new Post keeps the same headline fonts, same body text font, same flag design (though rotated 90 degrees) and the same elements.
Of course, why should they fix something that isn’t broken? The National Post “earned 38 international design awards from the Society of Newspaper Design (sic), approximately twice the number of any other English-language Canadian newspaper.” — Translation: We beat the Globe and Star, but lost to La Presse.
The only other noticeable design changes are a slight increase in font size, a very noticeable (I might even say excessive) increase in leading (Torontoist has comparison pictures), and a few other so-hard-to-see-that-I-can’t-see-them changes.
The “redesign” also comes with editorial changes, most of which are vaguely described:
- A new section on Mondays dealing with small businesses. (Kind of shocking that they don’t have this already.)
- More “Investing” and “Marketing” coverage in the Financial Post.
- Three new columnists: American atheist and Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Hitchens, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, and This American Life’s ex-Montrealer Jonathan Goldstein. (It’s unclear which of these will write original columns and which are syndicated, but you can take an educated guess.)
- Page Two of each section will be devoted to printing stuff they blogged about the day before. You can see an example in the Arts & Life section with posts from Ampersand.
As part of its Big Launch, the Post even managed to get one of Canada’s TV news networks to do a two-minute package glorifying it. Go ahead, guess which one. If you answered “the one they own”, you’re right.
The Post is seeking comments on its blog. Perhaps I can use the comment feature to get them to stop making crappy videos of talking reporter heads awkwardly reading the articles they just wrote that morning.
Want to run NationalPost.com?
The National Post is looking for someone to manage its online property and come up with ideas on how to make it suck less.
Applicants need to have an understanding of search engine optimization and “experience working with Google”. (I assume they mean using the search engine as opposed to working for the company.)
Any takers?