(PEN Canada/IFEX) – The following is a 21 June 2002 PEN Canada press release: Toronto (June 21, 2002) – PEN Canada is calling on Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, as well as the federal bureau of competition policy, to take immediate steps to address the increasingly worrisome concentration of media ownership in Canada, the symptoms of […]
(PEN Canada/IFEX) – The following is a 21 June 2002 PEN Canada press release:
Toronto (June 21, 2002) – PEN Canada is calling on Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, as well as the federal bureau of competition policy, to take immediate steps to address the increasingly worrisome concentration of media ownership in Canada, the symptoms of which are clearly in evidence following this week’s decision by CanWest Global to fire The Ottawa Citizen’s highly-regarded publisher Russell Mills.
“It is the fundamental obligation of a free press to be able to criticize the government and the politicians who command power in a democratic society,” says PEN Canada president Reza Baraheni. “In our view, the highly concentrated ownership structure of Canada’s newspaper industry has created a situation in which journalists now fear for their jobs simply for doing what they’re supposed to do. This is a profoundly unhealthy turns of events.”
PEN Canada remains committed to the principle that newspaper proprietors have the right to make their own staff decisions and editorial judgments. But we also feel there is a higher principle at stake, which is that journalists must ultimately be free to report and analyze the events of the day without fear of intimidation or retribution, either from their employers, or as a result of personal connections between owners and influential politicians. PEN Canada strongly feels this crucial pre-condition to responsible journalism has been violated by the firing of Mr. Mills. So although PEN Canada’s national affairs mandate is limited to issues of state censorship and freedom of expression, we feel this incident is of sufficient concern as to warrant our calling on the Asper family to immediately re-instate Mr. Mills as a means of demonstrating CanWest’s commitment to the principle of an independent press.
More importantly, we urge, in the strongest possible terms, the federal government to commence an inquiry into the causes and symptoms of media concentration, particularly its impact on unfettered democratic debate. Just as democracy suffers in a state without an effective opposition, freedom of expression is eroded when media concentration results in the silencing of critical voices and alternative viewpoints. In any genuinely open society, the public has a fundamental right to know.
As expressed in PEN’s Charter, PEN Canada stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world wherever possible.
