In 2022, events have highlighted the fragility of the bodies that assess media practices. In an issue dedicated to the contemporary issues of press councils published in the journal Communication research, Professor Marie-Ève Carignan and doctoral student Alexandra Joseph, from the University of Sherbrooke, wonder about the uncertain future of media self-regulation in Quebec. Observers have also wondered whether the Quebec Press Council (CPQ) should not be redesigned. Similarly, the work of the ombudsman responsible for interpreting Radio-Canada’s journalistic policies has been set aside.
The Press Council
In September, the Superior Court heard Quebecor’s lawsuit accusing the CPQ of damaging its reputation. Quebecor has ceased to be a member of the CPQ and believes that the latter is prejudicial to it by publishing judgments on the way in which its media deal with or comment on current events. Annabelle Caillou reported the words of Quebecor’s lawyer who declared that “every time the CPQ takes up a complaint, it imposes its process, its guide and the subjective and arbitrary interpretation that it makes of it, it imposes its values and its opinion of what constitutes good journalism. […] “.
The CPQ has the status of a non-profit organization. It is not a court. The media are free to join or not. Unlike a court, the law does not grant him immunity when he publishes a decision criticizing the work of a media outlet. This is why a company can ask a judge to determine whether, within the meaning of the law, the CPQ’s behavior is faulty when it expresses its opinion in a decision on a company media. The existence of such a remedy is a reminder that the laws that protect a company’s reputation can be invoked to demand that the CPQ cease to cast a critical eye on the ways of doing things in its media.
Radio Canada
At Radio-Canada, media ethics have also been abused. Pursuant to the directives of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Radio-Canada has set up an independent ombudsman with the mandate to determine whether its journalists have acted in accordance with its standards.
In October 2020, seized of a complaint from a citizen claiming that the title of a book containing a word he considered offensive should not be pronounced, the ombudsman analyzed journalistic behavior in order to determine whether he departed from journalistic standards to conclude that they had not been transgressed.
In June 2022, the CRTC reprimanded Radio-Canada and ordered it to apologize for airing the title of a book. In reacting to the CRTC’s decision, the management of the Société Radio-Canada did not deem it necessary to defend the carefully reasoned decision of its ombudsman or to recall that its journalistic policies are among the most demanding.
This time, it is not the right to reputation that has been mobilized to attack the body responsible for applying the rules of good conduct. Rather, it was the CRTC that set aside the journalistic standards put in place at its own request and after a long process. He substituted an a priori according to which the words, once they are prohibited in English, are also prohibited in French, regardless of the context or the analysis that an independent expert ombudsman can make of them. The rigorous approach would have been to respect the ombudsman’s decision rendered according to current standards and, if the CRTC deems that these should be reviewed, to request that a review process be undertaken.
The law allows the CRTC to require broadcasters to adhere to principles of journalistic rigor. When it deems it necessary to review the rules, the CRTC’s practice until recently was to hold a public hearing during which everyone could make their views known. Hearing of the views of affected companies and groups, he issued a revised policy, directing broadcasters to modify their journalistic standards accordingly. But by endorsing the claims of a single individual complaint to kick the rules of ethics, the CRTC has discredited the process of applying journalistic standards at Radio-Canada. And Radio-Canada management did not even bother to point out that the ombudsman had carefully analyzed the context of the event that gave rise to the complaint. What credit should we now give to the decisions of the ombudsman when we see the ease with which they are thrown overboard?
These are two situations that testify to the ease of mobilizing the laws in order to undermine the credibility of the bodies responsible for applying ethical standards. More than ever, it is important for the media to set up bodies to promote rigorous ethics. But these processes must be protected from an overly strict interpretation of the right to reputation, which weakens an organization like the CPQ. They must also be protected from the temptations of the CRTC to give in to the demands of those who require journalists to talk about books without pronouncing their titles.