“If you are a Radio One listener who doesn’t want ads on the Radio One of the near-future, now is a very good time to say so.”
Reporter posts Instagram pic of gift from affiliated jewellery shop
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
A Facebook privacy case that could change the way Canadian law looks at how we provide consent online, and whether internet companies based elsewhere can be sued in Canada made its way to the Supreme Court last week.
The key issue is whether a class-action lawsuit against Facebook can be heard in B.C., where the case was filed. The terms of use people agree to when they use Facebook say any lawsuit against the company must be filed where it’s headquartered, in California.
“Anytime you make a contract with another province or another country, the contract will normally be drafted so as to say that the laws of this place or that place applies, and that’s because you need to make a choice as to whose laws apply, otherwise there’s chaos,” said Andrew Roman, a class action legal expert in Ontario. “A company like Facebook, because it’s on the internet, has no specific geographic location and would want all the cases against it in its own state, so that it doesn’t have to hire lawyers all over the world.”
Forum selection clauses in contracts, like the one in Facebook’s terms of use, have in the past been encouraged by courts, as they’re more convenient in our globalized world. Whether that remains the same in the digital world is part of what’s at stake.
The case dates back to 2011, when Facebook launched its “Sponsored Stories” advertising service. Advertisers would pay to feature a user’s name and photo next to their product or service. Those Sponsored Stories would be sent to the users’ friends, completely unknown to the person whose photo appears in the ad. That way, it would appear to the person’s contacts they liked a product, as though it were an endorsement. Facebook dropped the Sponsored Stories program in early 2014.
Deborah Douez, a Vancouver videographer, launched the lawsuit on behalf of other British Columbians who she claimed had their privacy violated by this practice. In 2014, the B.C. Supreme Court decided that Douez should be able to sue in B.C. as opposed to California, lest it weaken the province’s Privacy Act, and certified the case to proceed. The B.C. Court of Appeal overturned that decision the following year.
“The case obviously deals with online jurisdiction but also online consumer protection and privacy,” said Karen Eltis, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in privacy and internet law. “It goes to the heart of something that’s been gnawing at us for years, which is the meaning of consent in the digital age.”
Roman, meanwhile, suspects that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in order to support the Court of Appeal decision, and provide guidance to other courts across Canada that the forum selection clauses in terms of use like Facebook’s should be upheld.
Eltis is not so sure that’s the case.
“Very often online, we increasingly notice that true consent has lost its meaning to a significant degree,” Eltis said. “If we want to avail ourselves of these free services, for all intents and purposes, that have come to shape our daily existence, then we really have no other choice to but consent.”
To Eltis, that defies the traditional meaning of consent, and the case gives the Supreme Court the opportunity to review take-it-or-leave-it forum selection clauses. Eltis says that one of the key reasons of why the notion is changing is because of privacy is given a different legal weight in Canada and the U.S.
“In the United States more generally, you need a financial aspect to privacy harm in order to recover [damages],” said Eltis. “It’s a much more stringent understanding. In Canada we’re hybrid with regard to privacy — we stand somewhere between the United States and Europe. And in many cases, the Supreme Court has recognized that privacy harm in the digital age does not have to be of a financial nature. That is a significant departure.”
The conflict in forum selection clauses becomes apparent if a case must be heard in a jurisdiction where a different value on privacy is held. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, intervening in the case, argued there needs to be a new test on the enforcement of forum selection clauses for the protection of constitutional and quasi-constitutional rights such as privacy. The CCLA said the previous test predates the creation of Facebook or social media in general.
“This case provides an opportunity to provide guidance to lower courts and the business community,” argued CCLA lawyer Cynthia Kuehl.
Douez’s lawyer, Christopher Rhone, stated that if the case were applied under California law that it wouldn’t succeed.
The Court reserved judgment, meaning a verdict could be months away.
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.
It’s been a frantic week in Québec’s media community. The City of Montreal Police Service (SPVM) acknowledged Monday it had tracked La Presse reporter Patrick Lagacé’s phone calls during an investigation into one of its own officers. It later emerged that at least six other reporters had their calls tracked by the SPVM or Québec’s provincial police force, the Sûreté du Québec. None of the reporters were suspected of any crime; the surveillance appeared to be part of an internal crackdown on what SPVM chief Philippe Pichet has called “leak culture.”
Pichet has defended his department’s actions, saying officers acted within the rules. Officers appear to have followed the letter of the law, and according to a growing chorus of lawyers and elected officials, that’s precisely the problem.
In the Lagacé case, officers received 24 separate warrants which allowed them to track the reporter’s incoming and outgoing calls, as well as his phone’s location, for seven months. “In principle, the police need to show evidence when applying for a warrant,” explains Pierre Trudel, a professor at the Université de Montréal law school, who specializes in media law. “They need to convince a judge that the information they’re looking for will allow them to prove whether a crime was committed. They also need to prove there’s no other way to get the information they need. In this case, it seems like the judge was exceptionally easily convinced.”
“It was clear that the police did get the required permission, and incorrectly applying the law isn’t the same as breaking it,” said human rights lawyer Julius Grey, who along with 13 other lawyers signed an open letter denouncing the surveillance.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, a lawyer and the justice critic for the Coalition Avenir Québec, a centre-right opposition party in Québec’s National Assembly, is among those calling for new laws to protect journalists from surveillance. He compares the Lagacé case to the seizure of the computer of Journal de Montréal reporter Michaël Nguyen earlier this year by SQ officers investigating a judge’s behaviour. A rival newspaper later found that all the information Nguyen had obtained was accessible via Google. “The evidence backing up the [Nguyen] search was very thin,” Jolin-Barrette said. “Information obtained via that sort of exceptional warrant should not be part of a fishing expedition and not be used to protect an organization from itself.”
“These standards have been established by a series of Supreme Court cases, and in theory, they should have the force of law in every province,” Jolin-Barrette said. “We’re looking into modifying the existing provincial law around search warrants to codify this, although we want to start with a transparent public inquiry and hear from journalists and legal experts.”
Stéphane Beaulac, constitutional law professor at the Université de Montréal, questioned the constitutionality of the ease to which police were able to monitor journalists, in a New York Times report. “It is extremely unlikely that they warranted such a broad scope,” he told the Times about warrants. “This seems to blatantly be a misapplication of the system.”
The official opposition Parti Québécois want the law to clearly define these boundaries, with justice critic Véronique Hivon calling for immediate legislation. “It’s high time we had a law that clearly affirmed the protection of journalists’ sources and the criteria that need to be respected before making the rare decision to bypass that principle,” Hivon said.
Québec’s governing Liberal Party has shied away from calling for new legislation but announced in a press release that an “independent expert committee” presided by a retired judge and including experts with backgrounds in journalism and law enforcement, would investigate police surveillance of journalists. Couillard also issued a directive stating that further requests for warrants involving phone tracking would have to be approved by the province’s director of criminal and penal prosecution.
If Québec passes legislation specifically protecting journalists and their sources, it would go further than existing federal law. “Journalists have no specific privileges under Canadian law,” said Anna Keller, professor of media law at Carleton University. “In one sense that works in journalists’ favour, because you don’t need a licence to practice journalism. But it also means that unfortunately the journalist-source relationship doesn’t have special protections. Our system relies a lot on trusting officials to follow internal rules.”
In the Lagacé case, Grey said, “the police have shown they cannot be trusted.”
“I’m hoping a law will be passed, because what the police have done has been nearly universally condemned. I’m also worried about the police using technology to hack into phones without a warrant. They couldn’t use that evidence in court, but they could use it as background information to pursue other evidence. We need a new law, but we also need a new culture where spying on journalists is considered so reprehensible that it won’t be done.”
At the federal level, Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin is calling on MPs to resurrect a 2007 bill calling for increased whistleblower protections. “We want to amend the Evidence Act, which is part of the Criminal Code, to specify that when a law enforcement body wants to access a journalist’s communications, they need to show that the information is in the public interest, not being used to settle an internal dispute, and that every effort has been made to find the information some other way. They should also have to take into account the consequences for the source,” Fortin said.
“Both the provincial and federal governments need to do their jobs,” sums up Trudel, the Université de Montréal professor. “We need to specify the very rare situations when the police could spy on journalists. If we leave the door wide open, the profession of investigative journalism is in danger, because whistleblowers will no longer speak to journalists.”
‘A Radical Attack’
Since the extent of the SPVM’s surveillance of Patrick Lagacé came to light last week, the story has made headlines around the world. “Are you a journalist? Do you think that police spying on you to identify your sources is a hypothetical? This is today,” tweeted whistleblower and press freedom advocate Edward Snowden. In a live videoconference at McGill University on Wednesday night, planned months beforehand, Snowden called the surveillance “a radical attack on freedom of the press.”
Are you a journalist? The police spying on you specifically to ID your sources isn't a hypothetical. This is today. https://t.co/6JtOIb7Q4n pic.twitter.com/p4pURXH4nU
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 31, 2016
“The local police can go to a justice of the peace and they will happily say, okay, unlock the GPS on the guy’s phone, find out anyone he met with and who he called,” Snowden said. “Can we at least debate in a reasoned way the idea that law is beginning to fade as a guarantor of our rights? We the public know almost nothing about how [law enforcement] operate, and that inverts the dynamic of private citizens and public officials into a brave new world of private officials and public citizens.”
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@mllemarguerite
PHOTO: Thien/Flickr
A Vancouver-based feminist journalist is accusing Rabble.ca of censorship after the left-wing news and opinion website published her blog post about a Planned Parenthood Twitter campaign that referred to women as “menstruators,” only to remove it several hours later for containing “transphobic language.”
Meghan Murphy, founder of Feminist Current, was an unpaid blogger and podcast contributor to Rabble for several years, occasionally writing paid pieces before being hired on as a part-time West Coast evening editor in December 2013. Though the position came to an end earlier this year, she would cross-post most of the content she produced for her own site to Rabble, until last month.
In an Oct. 21 Facebook post, Murphy announced her split with the site:
About a month ago, I informed rabble.ca I would no longer be contributing to or working with the site. This has been a long time coming for a number of reasons, but I chose to stay on in the past because I knew that if I left, never again would we see an abolitionist or radical feminist voice or analysis there, and I felt it important to ensure a feminist analysis existed in a space that claims to be a progressive and leftist one.
In a phone interview with CANADALAND, Murphy said she was dismayed when the article was removed without informing her.
“Nobody contacted me to let me know that they took it down,” she said. “If you’re not going publish somebody’s article or if you’re going to go so far as to take somebody’s article down, you’re obviously supposed to contact them.”
The original post went up Sept. 7, and was removed several hours later. The piece concludes with Murphy stating:
You see, the reason patriarchy exists is because men decided they wanted control over women’s sexual and reproductive capacities. Not people’s sexual and reproductive capacities — women’s. Sexual subordination is a gendered phenomenon, no matter how you identify, and for an organization that exists to advocate on behalf of women — due to their female biology (you know, the thing that placed them, whether or not they chose it or like it, within an oppressed class of people) — to erase that is unconscionable.
A woman is an adult female human — it really is as simple as that. And understanding how that reality is at the root of our ongoing oppression under patriarchy is one thing that is not up for debate.
When she noticed the article had been removed, Murphy contacted Rabble’s blogs and opinions editor Michael Stewart.
In an email exchange provided to CANADALAND, Stewart told Murphy that the “article was removed because it contained transphobic language and violated our journalistic policy,” adding that Rabble publisher Kim Elliott would be in touch soon after.
In an email to Murphy on Sept. 13, Elliott laid out Rabble’s case for removing the post:
Your last piece was disappointing to me after the many conversations you’ve had with our editors about our journalism policy, and the issues concerning transphobic commentary. It is unfortunate that you do not see the problems around the erasure of trans male identity in the piece. In our analysis, the piece denies the gendered identity of trans men who menstruate by implying that if a person has ovaries and a uterus, they are by virtue of those biological markers, a woman.…The blog pits women’s rights against trans rights and trans identity is dehumanized, dismissed and erased in the process. This is tantamount to the expression of transphobic ideas, which violates our journalistic policy. This is why the piece was unpublished.
Murphy heard again from Elliott in mid Oct., where the publisher apologized for the long delay in providing an explanation, and hoped the writer would blog for Rabble again in the future.
Murphy is no stranger to controversy. In May 2015, an online petition called for her ouster from Rabble over her abolitionist views about the decriminalization of sex work, a point of view she says put her at odds with the pro-decriminalization stance of most Rabble staffers. A counter petition sprung up in support of Murphy.
“At that point I started to feel like Rabble was trying to push me out, to be honest,” Murphy told CANADALAND. “A lot of the staff just stopped talking to me after that petition.”
While her stance on sex work — she is steadfast abolitionist — put her at odds with Rabble staffers, her views on “transactivism” leaves her, an avowed socialist, in strange company criticizing public policies such as Bill C-16, which had support among NDP and federal Liberal MPs.
“The only people who voted against it or spoke out against it were Conservatives, and that’s really frustrating,” she said. “The feminist movement and ideology comes into conflict with transactivism because of our understanding of gender and gender roles and why gender exists and how it works to support the subordination of women and to support men’s power….That’s not what the right is worried about at all. The right is worried about maintaining gender roles.”
In an email to CANADALAND, managing editor Michelle Gregus defended Rabble’s decision to pull the post:
After Meghan cross-posted a blog on rabble from her own site, Feminist Current, the post in question was flagged by an editor who felt it contained transphobic language. On reviewing it, I agreed with the assessment and because the use of transphobic language violates rabble’s journalistic policy, decided to not publish it … Meghan responded to this decision by deciding to leave Rabble.
In a follow-up email, Gregus said Rabble blogs aren’t commissioned by editors, and it’s up to the writer to make sure they follow the site’s guidelines before publishing. “If a blog is found to be in violation of our journalistic policy, the writer is contacted, and when possible, corrections are requested,” she said.
“I believe that they’re censoring feminist speech, and that that’s not okay,” Murphy said. “Whether or not we disagree about gender identity or transactivism or any of the ideas, I’m not opposed to disagreement existing or to the conversations happening or to the debate happening. But what’s happening is that the debate and the conversation is being shut down and not even allowed to happen, so opposing voices and dissent are not allowed to exist, or if they do exist, they’re just labeled with this blanket transphobia and the actual ideas aren’t being engaged with.”
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PHOTO: scATX/Flickr
UPDATE: A previous version of this story referred to sex work as “prostitution.”
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
