The morning show host on Ottawa’s most popular news talk station will headline a political fundraiser for the Ontario PC Party next month, in what appears to be a clear conflict of interest.
Bill Carroll, host of CFRA’s Morning Rush, will be the headliner at an early-December fundraiser for Goldie Ghamari and the Carleton PC riding association. The fundraiser is billed as “Dinner in the Dark” an event using “minimal hydro.” For $100, guests get dinner and will hear Carroll speak. For $150, donors get attend a “meet and greet with Bill.”
Tired of over-paying for #hydro? Join @billcarrolltalk, @carleton_pc & me on Dec 7 for #DinnerintheDark! #Ottawa #ottcity #onpoli #PCPO pic.twitter.com/dUcmnu0gZq
— Goldie Ghamari, MPP | گلسا قمری (@gghamari) November 19, 2016
The director of Bell Media’s news and local stations division, Matthew Garrow, said there was no problem with Carroll appearing at the fundraiser. “It is important to note that Bill’s talk show is not a news program, but instead an opinion show that, by definition, reflects his personal views and opinions.”
“Bill is not a reporter, but instead his role is like that of a columnist — one who is clearly opinionated but entirely open minded to the facts of the issues he raises during his show,” Garrow said.
At other news organizations, columnists are treated no differently than reporters. They don’t typically offer themselves to politicians looking to fundraise. In many cases it is explicitly prohibited.
Garrow said Carroll was not being paid for his appearance. But Garrow did not reply to follow up questions. He was asked whether Carroll’s appearance would be considered a donation of his services, as laid out in the Ontario’s election finance laws. He also did not respond when asked where the line is drawn for staff at Bell news organizations for political participation. If we receive an answer, we’ll update our story.
CFRA screenshot
Carroll has said on Twitter he does not consider himself a journalist, despite being an on-air host at a station billed as “news talk radio.” He’s a frequent and vocal critic of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government, but said he would appear at a Liberal event if he were ever asked.
and I would speak at a Liberal event too if they asked.
— Bill Carroll (@billcarrolltalk) November 18, 2016
Questions to CTV Ottawa’s news director Peter Angione, who oversees CFRA’s news operation, were forwarded along to Garrow. Questions sent to Carroll received no response.
Ghamari is the provincial Tory candidate* in the Ottawa-area riding of Carleton.
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editor@canadalandshow.com
*CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Ghamari was a candidate for the PC nomination in her riding. That was incorrect, she’s already won the nomination. We regret the error.
The online Ottawa news outlet Blacklock’s Reporter failed to convince a judge the sharing of two of its articles among six government staffers required a $17,209.10 subscription for the whole finance department.
Federal Court Justice Robert Barnes threw out the case Thursday, saying in a written judgement the Finance Department staffers that shared the article didn’t infringe on Blacklock’s copyright and their sharing of the article was covered under fair dealing.
“What occurred here was no more than the simple act of reading by persons with an immediate interest in the material,” Justice Robert Barnes wrote. “The act of reading, by itself, is an exercise that will almost always constitute fair dealing even when it is carried out solely for personal enlightenment or entertainment.”
The stories in question were about a “sugar tax” that was considered by the finance department. It was written by Blacklock’s managing editor Tom Korski.
Sandra Marsden, the president of the Canadian Sugar Institute was quoted at some length in the article and she was sent a teaser email when the story was published. She thought the teaser cast her comments in a negative light, according to the written judgement, so she bought a personal subscription to Blacklock’s Reporter to view the whole article.
When she read it, she passed it along to a staffer at the finance department, worried it would sour her relationship with the government. She copied the full text of the article into an email and sent it off to Patrick Halley in the international trade division. Halley then sent it along to five more people including a press secretary who had sent comments to Korski for the article. The same thing basically happened when a second article was published the next day.
Blacklock’s found all this out by sending in an access to information request. When they saw their articles had been shared within a department that didn’t have a corporate subscription, they sued for copyright infringement.
But Barnes found the reading and sharing of the stories was all covered by fair use. All of the people sent the story had some interest in its contents, and no one was looking to profit of the sharing. “I am satisfied that the department’s acknowledged use of the two Blacklock’s articles constituted fair dealing. There is no question that the circulation of this news copy within the department was done for a proper research purpose,” Barnes wrote. “There is also no question that the admitted scope of use was, in the circumstances, fair.”
The government had argued Blacklock’s was a copyright troll, sending out teasers to pique the interest of people quoted in an article, then filing access to information requests and catching them reading and sharing an article without a department-wide subscription. But the judge didn’t find it necessary to assess those claims. “Although there are certainly some troubling aspects to Blacklock’s business practices it is unnecessary to resolve the Attorney General’s allegation that this litigation constitutes a form of copyright abuse by a copyright troll,” he wrote, as the case was decided on other merits.
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editor@canadalandshow.com
CBC is pressuring a podcast app developer to remove its programming, because the app has ads. The Mother Corp. has sent legal threats to at least one third-party podcast app developer for serving ads without a prior agreement with the broadcaster.
A spokesman for CBC wouldn’t say which app was served notice, but users of the Android app Podcast Republic found this week they couldn’t download CBC shows anymore. Turns out, that was by design. The developer blocked all the programming, at the request of CBC.
It's not a bug. All CBC programs have been blocked by this app per request from CBC.
— Podcast Republic (@castrepublic) November 7, 2016
The broadcaster has begun warning third-parties running ads they are in violation of CBC’s terms of service. A copy of the email was posted to reddit, with the name of podcast app that received it removed:
I am contacting you regarding the unauthorized use of CBC’s podcasts that are being used in your [app name] app.
By using CBC’s digital services you have agreed to our our Terms of Use located at cbc.ca/aboutcbc/discover/termsofuse.html.
Under section 2(b) of these Terms of Use, you are prohibited from using our podcasts for commercial purposes without a proper licence from CBC.
I would ask to cease immediately the use of our unlicensed podcasts.
If you interested in CBC content and podcast, we can discuss a license fee model.
I would be happy to have a call to discuss further our content and services.
The section of CBC’s terms of use they point developers to reads:
Do these terms of use apply to news feeds (RSS)?
Yes. These terms also apply to the use of CBC/Radio-Canada news feeds. Any use other than for private purposes must be subject to an agreement specifying the conditions for use with due regard for the integrity of the content. You agree not to frame the news feed or its content, nor to use similar means to generate unauthorized benefits.
“Unauthorized benefits” in this case seem to include money from advertising. CBC spokesman Chuck Thompson said the public broadcaster doesn’t allow any third-party to use their programming and offer ads, without an explicit agreement in place with CBC.
Apps use news feeds provided by different podcasters to update their content. A podcast RSS feed is essentially a database that shows an app what episodes of a show are available, and where to download them. CBC’s feeds are all publicly available.
But, Podcast Republic is far from the only podcast player that has in-app adds. Android app PodcastAddict displays banner adds, so does Overcast for iOS devices. Stitcher, another popular service, has display and audio ads. Podcast Republic, like many others, also offers users the option to pay a fee to use the app ad-free.
Thompson would only say that one developer had been sent the notice, but would not divulge which one.
When a cop shoots a citizen, and it’s caught on video, the news value of that tape is clear: an officer of the law, sworn to protect the public, has killed a member of that public. TV stations have no trouble running that, gruesome and terrible as the footage might end up being.
But what happens if the person who has died is a teen, and the alleged killer is not a police officer, but another civilian?
This was the question Jill Krop, Global BC’s news director, faced last week when a 13 year old was stabbed to death in an apparently random stabbing at her school. Krop decided to run the footage, and now, some of the public wants Krop to resign.
Global BC ran footage — on their evening newscast, and online — of a stabbing in an Abbotsford, B.C. school that left Letisha Reimer dead. People are not happy the network published footage of a teenager’s violent death, and now they’re looking to oust Krop.
They’ve turned to an online petition calling for Krop to step down from her job, as first reported by the Georgia Straight. Nearly 1,400 people — at last count — had signed on to the petition.
In it, the petitioners ask Krop to resign for putting the video online and on the evening newscast. “There is absolutely no way to justify the publication of that video, and by choosing to air the video Jill Krop and the rest of the staff at Global BC are re-victimizing those directly affected by Tuesday’s incident,” the petition reads.
Krop declined to comment when reached by email, passing all questions to Global’s corporate PR team. CANADALAND will update this story when they reply. But, the news director did appear on local talk-radio station CKNW — owned by Corus, the same parent company as Global — to explain the rationale for running the footage.
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editor@canadalandshow.com
Here's a partial transcript of what @JillKrop did say to @drex and @steeletalks980 about posting the video: https://t.co/u58BeiJq8U pic.twitter.com/nLFyjfIU2l
— Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) November 3, 2016
“We looked at the video, and immediately decided not to air it right away. And I literally said to my colleagues, ‘This is in all likelihood the last minutes of someone’s life, we do not need to put it on TV two hours after it’s happened,’ ” Krop said, in the interview. “We decided that by 11 o’clock, a very different audience, an older audience, no children in the room, we could air that video blurred. It’s still a difficult decision to make.”
The video appears to have since been removed from Global’s main story on the stabbing.
Gabriel Klein has been charged with second-degree murder over the teen’s death.
Police in the province of Quebéc are increasingly using the legal system to intimidate and spy on journalists.
So it goes for Patrick Lagacé of La Presse who’s had his phone monitored by Montréal police for months, as SPVM officers looked to hunt down his sources—who they suspected were themselves police officers.
Lagacé was tailed and police regularly used GPS to locate the reporter and his phone. The numbers dialled for all Lagacé’s incoming and outgoing calls, and who he sent and received text messages from were all collected by Montréal police. This was all authorized by a Quebéc judge.
The columnist told the French-language CBC the spying was an intimidation tactic by the police.
“What shocks me is that a judge decided this is perfectly normal in a democracy,” he said in an interview with Radio-Canada. “When we start spying on journalists…there are questions to be asked about who the judges are [who] are authorizing these warrants.”
Montréal’s police chief defended his department’s spying on the columnist as something done within the law, with the proper approval of a judge. “We respected every law to obtain the warrant we got. We followed the rules, and the judge authorized the warrant,” Philippe Pichet told reporters.
“This operation targeted one of our officers and not Mr. Lagacé,” Pichet said. “The SPVM, and myself, we are very conscientious about the importance of respecting the freedom of the press. However, the SPVM also has the responsibility to carry out investigations on criminal acts — even against police officers.”
The surveillance is part of a wider pattern in a province where journalists are increasingly under threat from police forces looking to maintain a squeaky-clean public image.
At Le Journal de Montréal, reporter Michaël Nguyen has his laptop seized by police after reporting on a story about the bad behaviour of a judge after a Christmas party. The computer was taken so Nguyen’s sources could be identified.
But, all of the documents Nguyen quoted from were available online for anyone to find, the rival La Presse later found. Using information contained in the warrant used by police to seize the laptop, a La Presse reporter was able to retrace Nguyen’s steps and access all of the documents from an unsecured Judicial Council of Quebéc website.
Newspapers aren’t the only outlets under assault. Radio-Canada is being sued by a 40 provincial police officers in Val d’Or, Que. The officers say their reputations have been damaged, and their interactions with the community poisoned after Radio-Canada ran reports of alleged sexual abuse by members force in the indigenous community. That lawsuit is being funded by the Provincial Police Association of Quebéc.
Legal threats like this can have a chilling effect on journalists in Canada. A journalist’s right to protect sources is not absolute. In a 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada said journalists are able to protect the identity of their sources, but that right is applicable on a case-by-case basis.
In an age where media companies are struggling to make money, the possibility of a long legal battle can have a chilling effect on news outlets. The threat isn’t only in losing a court case, but in having one grind on for ages.
It’s also impossible to account for the effect this has on the willingness of sources to approach journalists, if they’re worried their identity can be made public in a courtroom.
With that in mind, La Presse lawyers were in court Monday morning looking to keep Lagacé’s phone records from being used in open court, in order to keep the sources off the public record.
Lagacé was under surveillance as part of an investigation into officers accused of fabricating drug evidence, the newspaper said. This, in turn, led to police trying to figure out if one of the officers under investigation was leaking information to the press. The spying was discovered when another journalist found repeated references to Lagacé in court documents, according to a CBC report. The officer was never charged in the leak investigation, the Toronto Star said.
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@robert_hiltz
The author of a short story which was censored for its profanity wants her story pulled from The Walrus.
Eden Robinson’s story, Nanas I Have Loved, had the majority of the swearing removed in editing. It is set for publication in an upcoming issue of the magazine.
Denise Bukowski, Robinson’s agent, wrote in an email Sunday, “I am writing to inform you that Eden Robinson does not wish to publish her story in your magazine. Please remove it immediately. Since you have not yet sent her a copy-edited draft, or paid her, there is plenty of time to do so.”
Bukowski’s email was sent to The Walrus publisher Shelley Ambrose and two other staffers at the magazine. It and Ambrose’s reply were copied to CANADALAND.
“Your staff member’s anonymous comments to Canadaland make Walrus a magazine she does not wish to support,” Bukowski said.
CANADALAND previously reported much of the swearing in Nanas had been removed at the request of senior editors, after the magazine received complaints about a now-infamous owl-fucking story. Fiction editor Nick Mount said he quit the magazine over the edits to the story.
“Eden graciously undertook two rounds of ‘editing’ to meet your vague standards of what constituted offensive language. Then your fiction editor was asked for a third round, so he quit,” Bukowski said. “In response, your editors publicly denied that any censorship occurred. Then they claimed to be merely editing ‘juvenile’ writing — writing that had been selected and edited by your fiction editor, from a beloved, award-winning writer whose most famous book, MONKEY BEACH, is in its 25th printing in paperback and is used in school and universities across the country.”
Walrus publisher Shelley Ambrose replied saying she would look into the situation.
“As far as I can tell, no one from The Walrus is quoted in that story and it certainly does not reflect our stance on fiction or anything else,” Ambrose said in a reply. “Not remotely.”
A source at The Walrus previously spoke to CANADALAND anonymously, on the condition they not be quoted directly. Their comments were paraphrased for publication, but the word “juvenile” was used to describe the amount of profanity in the first draft.
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@robert_hiltz
When the fiction editor at The Walrus resigned last month, he was protesting what he saw as the limiting of icky swears in the magazine. But Nick Mount’s protest was in vain, as the story he quit over will be running in the winter issue with much of its profanity stripped out.
Mount’s frustration stemmed not from obscenities being censored, but the lack of a clear line. “A big part of the problem that led to my resignation [was] the lack of clear limits from the magazine’s publisher or EIC on what language was permissible and what wasn’t,” he said.
What started the discussion of how much profanity was okay in the magazine’s pages, was a now-infamous story by friend-of-CANADALAND Stephen Marche where an owl is fucked to death.
“After the Marche story, the publisher, Shelley Ambrose, said we’d had complaints and asked me to find stories with less ‘dark, violent, abusive, icky, fucky themes,’ ” Mount said.
Ambrose did not reply to several requests for comment.
Following that conversation, Mount was asked to tone down the language in a story by Eden Robinson. “It’s called ‘Nanas I Have Loved,’ and is adapted from the opening chapter of Eden’s new novel Son of a Trickster,” he said. In the story, “the boy’s mother swears a lot, which the story itself criticizes, though the boy’s father.”
After twice going through the story to remove much of the swearing, Mount had had enough and resigned, he said.
But to one source at the magazine familiar with the situation, the whole thing has taken on a tinge of farce in the office. Editors found the swearing in the original draft to be heavy enough that it bordered on juvenile. The edits were made not with an eye on censoring the language, but to tone it down, the source said. There’s no “family-friendly” diktat at the magazine.
Despite that, Mount is no longer the fiction editor and ‘Nanas’ has had its cursing dramatically scaled back, as shown in a draft obtained by CANADALAND. “Shit” appears twice, and “fuck” not at all. Numerous “cunt”s were also dropped from an earlier draft of the story. “Frig” is entirely absent.
The author, Robinson, could not be reached for comment. Mount said the story will appear, uncensored, as the first chapter of her book Son of a Trickster, to be published this winter.
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@robert_hiltz
A reporter staked out at the centre of the protest of a massive hydro-electric dam project in Labrador has been marked for arrest, in an order issued by a court Tuesday.
Justin Brake, a reporter for the provincial news site The Independent, has been covering protests at the construction site of the Muskrat Falls dam project. Peaceful occupiers have been at the site since the weekend. Brake’s name was listed alongside that of almost two-dozen protestors in a Labrador court order, according to a report in The Telegram.
UPDATE: Tuesday afternoon, Brake left the encampment so he could continue reporting on the story, The Independent tweeted. Brake said having to chose between telling a story and risking arrest is not a situation a journalist should be put in, according to The Independent, and it wasn’t an easy decision.
Indy journalist leaving #MuskratFalls camp in order to continue covering story #nlpoli #cdnpoli #journalism
— The Independent (@IndependentNL) October 25, 2016
No journalist should ever be forced to make this choice – Indy editor Justin Brake #nlpoli #cdnpoli #MuskratFalls
— The Independent (@IndependentNL) October 25, 2016
"I had to go where the important story was, and esp. the story no one else was telling" – Indy editor Brake #MuskratFalls #nlpoli #cdnpoli
— The Independent (@IndependentNL) October 25, 2016
The injunction gives the RCMP the authority to arrest those on the list and anyone else unauthorized on the site if they don’t leave. News reports have estimated there are about 50 people are on the site.
The protestors, who self-identify as “land protectors,” have been camped out in the worker’s barracks on the site in an effort to halt the building of the dam since the weekend, news reports have said. They’re concerned flooding the reservoir will raise levels of methyl mercury, a toxic heavy metal, to unsafe levels. This could poison the salmon and seal much of the Indigenous community relies on.
https://twitter.com/TelegramJames/status/790922251138916352
The province has said it would monitor levels of the substance upon completing the dam, but planned to go ahead with the project all the same.
The protestor’s concerns are backed up by a Harvard University study of the watershed. The dam is being built by Nalcor, a provincial Crown Corporation, and its construction has lead to a massive upheaval in Newfoundland and Labrador politics. Tuesday afternoon, the Premier Dwight Ball was meeting with Indigenous leaders in St. John’s.
Muskrat Falls is on the Lower Churchill river, some 25 kilometres west of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
Sympathetic protests have sounded in a number of cities across the country this weekend, including one in Ottawa where four hunger-striking protestors from Labrador hoped to draw the attention of the federal government.
CANADALAND has reached out to Brake, and we’ll update our story if we hear back.
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@robert_hiltz
