Three amazing media items

Let me remark on three amazing media milestones. And let us reflect on how impossible these would have seemed six short months ago.

The first was a lengthy story by the New York Times on Mark Steyn's show trial in Vancouver, and an accompanying podcast of a discussion on the same subject. Some free speech bloggers have lamented that the item was not as full-throated of its denunciation of Canada's thought crime laws as might have been expected from a newspaper that itself enjoys the First Amendment. But that is not the point. The point is that the New York Times, liberal though it is, is still the standard of what is regarded as "all the news that's fit to print", my affections for the New York Post notwithstanding. In other words, when the NYT covers it, it's real news and it's big news, and it's OK for every other journalist to cover it -- in the U.S., let alone in Canada.

The second is Neil MacDonald's impressive online commentary on the CBC's website. This surprised a number of conservative bloggers who are only familiar with McDonald's reports on world affairs -- where he takes a skeptical, if not adversarial, approach to the U.S., the war on terror, and Israel. But I know another side of MacDonald. Back in 1993, when I was just a young pup starting out at the University of Alberta Law School, I ran afoul of the school's internal human rights commission, called the "Committee for Equality and Respect" (I'm not making that up.) I had written an article for the student paper criticizing the faculty's quota system for admissions -- that is, a lower standard for certain special minorities. In other words, if you were the "right" race, you could get in with lower marks.

I was hauled before the assistant dean, and given all sorts of threats -- that I'd be sued in defamation (a premonition of things to come!), and charged under the school's "non-academic misconduct" provisions. Instead of buckling, as I'm sure I was expected to do, I made a bit of a fuss. That fuss took the form of MacDonald, a cameraman, a sound man and a director/producer flying in to Edmonton and camping out in our law school for three days. The resulting mini-documentary kicking the living daylights out of the school's absurd political correctness. I've never seen a more devastating piece, though credit must go to the assistant dean for providing the unbelievable quotes that MacDonald gleefully aired. Needless to say, the U of A backed off -- at least until I graduated. The school's fundraiser told me it had measurable effects on their efforts.

I saw MacDonald a couple of years ago, and we shared a laugh about that doc. He claims it kick-started my political career. I won't disabuse him of that, because I love the idea that the CBC "created" me as a politically incorrect demolisher of human rights commissions small and large!

I suppose, therefore, that I was less surprised that others to see MacDonald's obvious disdain for censorship and political correctness. That doesn't mean I am any less delighted to see it.

Finally, I refer again to today's lead editorial in the Toronto Star, by far Canada's biggest-circulation newspaper. Here it is in full; let me excerpt parts of it, and bold some of the best passages:

...All this gives Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government an incentive to have Parliament take a fresh look at Section 13 of the federal rights act. The section deems it a "discriminatory practice" to communicate "any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt" via the Internet. Ottawa and B.C. should repeal such sections and stop trying to regulate the media.

Conservative MP Rick Dykstra has asked the Commons justice and human rights committee to review Section 13. And Liberal MP Keith Martin has introduced a private member's motion to have the Commons call for the section's deletion. However these initiatives play out, they reflect growing unease that an unwarranted chill is being cast on free speech, when sufficient safeguards exist elsewhere. Parliament and the provincial legislatures should take note.

Canada's Criminal Code already provides for a two-year jail term for inciting or promoting hatred against identifiable groups. Libel laws can be invoked. And provincial press councils field complaints.

Does society need to cast more of a chill on press freedom in order to combat discrimination? Polemicists such as Steyn are better countered in the marketplace of ideas. Readers who feel ill-served are free to go elsewhere.

Parliament and the legislatures should rethink laws that have the effect of targeting opinions rather than actions.

As Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has argued on these pages, human rights commissions should concern themselves with discriminatory behaviour, not discriminatory opinion. "Generally, the answer to bad speech is good speech," he wrote. Wise words, from a respected rights advocate.

That's amazing stuff. And remember, the Toronto Star is officially left-wing -- it's built right into the company's charter, in what are called the "Atkinson Principles". But, then again, freedom of speech has always been the chief tool of society's marginalized and downtrodden; it was what granted women suffrage, and brought equality for racial minorities, and then gays.

A large story in the New York Times; a strongly supportive item by the CBC's Neil MacDonald; and a full-blast lead editorial in the Toronto Star, all in the same week.

I'd say we've just about accomplished step one in the two-step plan for reform: Canada's human rights commissions are being denormalized.

Time to ramp up step two: cajoling, poking and prodding our slow-poke politicians to now make the changes that the public demands.