Canada: Free Press: Supreme Court welcomes bloggers under protection of free speech

Globe & Mail's justice reporter Kirk Makin reports a very important decision of Canada's Supreme Court regarding journalism and the media, a judgment that eases the burdens of defense against overbearing libel accusations aimed at a reporter, or a team of reporters "on assignment."

Top court transforms press freedom with new libel defence

Updated law extends defence to new media

The Supreme Court of Canada transformed the country's libel laws yesterday with a pair of decisions that proponents say will expand the boundaries of free speech. The court ruled that libel lawsuits will rarely succeed against journalists who act responsibly in reporting their stories when those stories are in the public interest.

It also updated the laws for the Internet age, extending the same defence to bloggers and other new-media practitioners.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin [God bless her! and her colleagues who voted 9-0 for this protection of bloggers when they function as reporters!] said that Canada needs to keep in step with several other Western democracies that have provided greater protection to the media.

The point around which future libel-accusers are liable to gravitate are the words "when those stories are in the public interest" (this may not be the actual wording in the Court's ruling, as the reporter has the task of selecting quotes and summarizing the text -- possibly dense with legalese). In any case, in future judges of libel cases are alerted to be fair to both accuser and the reporter/s accused.

Dean Jobb, a journalism professor at University of King's College in Halifax, said that a revamping of the libel laws was long overdue.

"The court has recognized that the definition of 'journalist' is expanding in our online world," Prof. Jobb said. "Bloggers and anyone else publishing information on matters of public interest can claim the defence, provided the way they gather and present the news conforms with the ethical standards of journalists.

The vocation of journalist is definitely enhanced (what is termed "updated"), enabled to function more effectively in today's advanced-technical world with Internet, widespread blogging, and the use of other media. This reality is part of the washback problem of info-saturation that some experience in pursuing the tasks of blogging and reporting.

At the moment in the USA, an exposé-film maker, who outed the "community organizer" nationwide group, ACORN: the movie producer secretly filmed and hit a wall of govt indifference when they presented their evidence, then after being stonewalled govt, they released to national television the recorded evidence they had of the Obama-orbit org's officials counselling prostitution (this was only at one of the ACORN locations they infiltrated for the purposes of their sting opertation. The govt has the film documentation, but instead of going after ACORN's B-porn propensity and other legally-dubious actions, the bureaucrats at the FBI or some attorney general in some state capital or wherever -- instead have announced they will prosecute the whistle-blowing movie folks. Mum's the guvt's word about the sordid Obamites of ACORN. Of course, the President himself had nothing to do with the patterns of criminality that seem to plague ACORN across the country. It's a case of supporters having their own agenda, and dragging their "hero" into the mud of their own mischief.

Too bad something like Canada's recent decision hasn't already squelched the ploy of the criminal practices of ACORN in the USA, that the whistle-blowers uncovered for the whole nation to see. Many observers seem to feel that ACORN is just too big to be taken down by any functionary of the Obama administration, or even state attorneys general in that camp.

-- Lawt