Media coverage

Why has the story of my interrogation by a government "human rights officer" received such wide coverage in the blogosphere, but not in the mainstream media? Is it not newsworthy that a publisher was summoned for a 90-minute government interrogation about his political beliefs?

Part of the reason for this paucity of reportage is that this story "broke" on a Friday afternoon, in the Mountain Time zone -- when most of the national media corps in Ottawa and Toronto had already filed their stories and were heading home for the weekend. And the dramatic facts of the story -- the video clips -- weren't uploaded to the Internet until that night, and they were uploaded to the Internet, not sent to TV stations. So, for logistical reasons it's not surprising that the blogosphere got a jump on the story, at least until Monday. And, by nature, the blogosphere values freedom of speech quite highly.

But what happened on Monday, when the mainstream media went back to work?

By then, these videos had gone viral -- on Sunday, they were the fifth most watched channel on all of YouTube, and the blogosphere had pre-digested many of the issues for the mainstream press. So where were they?

Talk radio was very interested; I did seven interviews on Monday alone, from Calgary to New Brunswick. They ran big with the story, even though they could not show their audience any of the video footage. So why have TV stations (with the notable exceptions of Michael Coren's show on CTS, and a forthcoming interview on TVO -- both boutique programs) ignored the story? 

And in terms of newspapers, only the National Post has reported on the story. Many opinion columnists have weighed in on the subject -- uniformly supportive, by the way -- but there has been almost no reportage.

The Washington Times ran a half-page news story on the matter today, placing it on page A2. Here's the impressive screen shot: 

Four years ago, when the RCMP raided Juliet O'Neill's house to seize privileged evidence that had been leaked to her, the media went on the warpath for weeks, reporting on the subject and toasting O'Neill as a free speech hero. So said the group Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

I agree that an actual raid on O'Neill's house to seize documents is indeed a big news story, and it does touch upon issues of the free press. But is not a two-year-long government investigation of the political thoughts of a Canadian publisher newsworthy as well?

The small sliver of opinion on the blogosphere that has spoken out against me on this matter has focused, in the main, on my own personality or political stripe -- I can count on two fingers the blog posts that actually support human rights commissions. The bulk of the opposition to me is personal. Is that the same thing in the mainstream media -- for personal or political reasons, or competitive reasons, they're declining to cover a story of government censorship? My interrogation is not as dramatic as a raid on O'Neill's home for documents, but it is just as troubling. More, even -- O'Neill's "crime" was receiving leaked documents. My crime was having illegal thoughts about poltiical and religious subjects.

Perhaps another reason is that the bulk of the media is rather shy about this entire subject, given that the vast majority of them hid under their desks during the initial cartoon kerfuffle. The Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression sure did. When we were taken to the human rights commission, they thought it more important to issue a press release about freedom in Uganda. At least they were better than Amnesty International, which condemned the publication of the cartoons. Like "free speech" advocates who went on vacation, editors and producers who were AWOL -- or worse, enforced the cartoon ban in their own media organizations -- might not want to remind themselves or their audience of that now.

Another reason might be ongoing fear of human rights complaints against them -- the "chill" factor. Best to avoid difficult issues, and focus on happy human interest stories everyone can agree on, including radical Muslim imams.

But the story isn't about me. It isn't even about the cartoons or about Islam. It's about whether or not the government can summon anyone, including a publisher, to an interrogation to answer for their political thoughts.

If I'm fair game today, anyone is fair game tomorrow.