(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release: Seizure by the police of media equipment from 14 media organizations Reporters Sans Frontières asks the Court to sentence such a practice Next 23 and 24 October, the High Court of Justice will have to pronounce judgement on Toronto police’s seizure of news film and videotape […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release:
Seizure by the police of media equipment from 14 media organizations
Reporters Sans Frontières asks the Court to sentence such a practice
Next 23 and 24 October, the High Court of Justice will have to pronounce judgement on Toronto police’s seizure of news film and videotape shot by fourteen Canadian media organizations during a protest on 15 June 2000. Eight of these 14 media are challenging the search warrants as unlawful, and demanding that all media equipment be immediately returned. Toronto police justified this decision as part of their efforts to identify participants in the 15 June protest. Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF – Reporters Without Borders), the Paris-based press freedom watchdog, recalls that the seizure and the use of media equipment by police deeply challenges press neutrality, the real pillar of press freedom. The organization asks the Canadian Court to condemn the police’s actions. “It is the third time this year that such a seizure has been made,” noted Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary-general who denounced “journalists risk being seen as voluntary or involuntary collaborators of police forces.”
According to the information collected by RSF, Toronto police arrived at the fourteen media organizations’ offices with a search warrant to seize film and photos from the 15 June anti-poverty protest at Queen’s Park (the Ontario legislature), denouncing the provincial government’s attitude towards the homeless. Police stated that they required media photographs and videotape to help identify participants in the riot, stressing that “the media were able to get closer to the demonstrators than the police.” Eight of these media are currently challenging the search warrants as unlawful in the Ontario High Court of Justice. Canadian media organizations from which equipment was seized include The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The National Post and The Toronto Sun dailies, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), CTV, Global, City-TV, Ontv and CFMT television channels, Sing Tao, World Journal Daily News, Corriere Canadese, an Italian language paper, and Ming Pao, a Chinese daily.
On 5 April 2000, during a search in the offices of television stations Radio Canada and TVA, the police demanded the recordings of a 15 March protest at which violence had broken out. The police explained that the policeman in charge of taking photos could not go near the demonstrators “for obvious security reasons.” Three weeks earlier, the equipment of journalists from French-language television TVA were also seized.