Preface

Like clean air, press freedom is vital to the good life and is so often taken for granted.

Most of the surveys and focus groups that COMPAS undertakes are for a paying client. But this one is not. On February 16-18, we conducted a two party survey of journalists. Released a week ago, the first part explored their assessments of the Danish Cartoon controversy.

This second part elicits journalists’ assessments of the threats to press freedom posed by owners, governments, audiences, and journalists themselves, among other factors.

This two-part survey is the first in a series of un-sponsored studies of press freedom, undertaken at our initiative and cost. The purpose is to provide journalists with a platform for conveying their own professionally based concerns about challenges to journalistic freedom.

In this survey, we invited journalists to provide suggestions for future themes.
They graciously obliged. Respondents gave us many ideas and themes.
We welcome further suggestions as well as any and all feedback about any aspect of this inquiry.

We are grateful to the journalists who participated in the survey.

Conrad Winn

Toronto
February 19, 2006

Introduction and Overview

Journalists see press freedom as thriving in Canada. They give press freedom an extraordinary 81 score on a 100 point freedom scale. Furthermore, press freedom is not perceived as declining. The level of freedom is the same as 10 years ago, those polled say. Journalists do nonetheless see threats to their own freedom.

In their assessments of these threats, journalists tend to take an ideologically centrist view. Journalists as a whole tend to reject the normally leftwing concern about owners and the normally rightwing concern about government. Some journalists volunteer a concern about owners and concentrated ownership as a threat but their perspective is a minority one. Journalists as a whole also reject the rightwing portrait of government as a major threat arising from its regulatory influence over the profitability of converged media organizations with broadcasting properties. When journalists volunteer a concern about government, it is usually about government secrecy rather than the power to use regulatory or taxing power to intimidate owners.

Concern about owners and governments is dwarfed by journalists’ concerns about the performance limitations of their own profession and the apathy of their audiences. Media ignorance and audience indifference, they say, are the greatest threats, followed by interference by advertisers.
When respondents comment on the performance limitations of their profession, they offer a diversity of thoughts. Several journalists attributed the limitations of their profession to declining resources in the newsroom. “There is a distinct shortage of investigative journalism in Canada,” said one respondent. “I attribute this to the large number of editors and managers who don't actually know what investigative journalism is for, and why it adds value to news organizations.”

Some respondents commented on the isolation of journalists. Journalists are portrayed as cut-off from younger Canadians and certain social segments of society. One respondent offered the following observation:

• In a recent speech in the US to a bunch of journalists, the group was asked how many knew homosexuals and how many knew evangelist Christians. Many more knew more of the former than the latter. The point made was the mainstream media are out of touch with the realities of the demographics of their country. I would be interested to know how aligned the values and perceptions of journalists in Canada are with the broader population, and thus how our preconceived notions and opinions shape the news compared to how our readers/listeners/watchers see things.
  

When journalists comment on audience threats to press freedom, they tend to think in terms of two themes—apathy and lack of interest on the one hand, or intimidation by a small audience segment on the other. One respondent said that the press freedom benefits from too little support among the public, which does not understand “how vital it is in a democracy.” The media need to do a better job of “explaining what it is and…defending its importance.”

Few journalists see government as constraining press freedom by intimidating media owners, as evidenced by the low score given this threat in table 1. One journalist who does see government as a threat believes that the problem of government has been worsened by media consolidation:

• Cross ownership [is a problem]. For example, the Globe and Mail was increasingly cozy to the federal Liberal government. Its parent company, of course, has something at stake from federal regulators (BCE, CTV, etc.).
  

Most concerns about government were concerns about secrecy. One respondent bemoaned the “automatic clampdown and denial of access to information from less-than-knowledgeable media-phobes or so-called spokesmen and women.” Another respondent singled out government constraints on reporting crime:

• I have problems with some publication bans as well as with the Youth Criminal Justice Act. They both restrict the information we're allowed to give to the public. I can understand a publication ban being put in place before a jury is chosen, in order to eliminate or reduce the possibility of bias, however once that jury has been picked, But everything said in the courtroom should be free to report…Some of these young people have been charged with serious, heinous crimes, and the public has a right to know.
  

Following inadequate journalistic performance and audience apathy as threats to press freedom is interference by advertisers. Advertisers are seen as a special threat by the 9% of journalists who fear being fired or have a colleague with such a fear. Some comments:

• The power of advertisers is under-explored. Say, for example, that Giant MegaCorp is investing in a building project that's suffering from legal issues like underpayment of contractors, or allegations of sub-standard material use. More than a few times, if Giant MegaCorp is an advertiser, the sales department holds the sway over stories. If the ad department thinks it will lose dollars, the story won't run. This is repeated far-too often.
  
  Explore how much pressure spoken or implied pressure exists within the media outlets about what stories could mean to the advertising revenues.
  
  [Advertising is] a huge factor in what does and does not get covered because of fears over losing an advertiser or a manager's affiliation to one.
  
  Potential loss of advertising over a story - it's a huge issue for papers.
  

Respondents’ perceptions of threats to press freedom were measured in their volunteered comments and in their scoring of the strength of a series of potential threats. With rare exceptions, all respondents provided scores for all the potential threats in the series but one—the magnitude of the threat to press freedom as a result of “the possibility of attacks from special interests, community, or religious groups.” A majority of respondents recorded don’t know in response to this question. It is not clear whether they averted this question because it combined too many different special interests under a single theme, respondents were of two minds on the issue, they wanted to wait for the Danish Cartoon controversy to die down before reaching a conclusion, or for another reason. But a 60% don’t know rate is unusual.