The Quebec Press Council rejected a complaint and partially rejected a second in connection with two articles by Press, we say in a recent series of decisions published this week.
The first decision concerns the column “It’s going to do”, published on July 10, 2020. Marie-Claude Lortie, then columnist at Press, criticizes the Quebec government’s intention to make bar owners responsible for a register of customers who frequent the establishment to facilitate the identification of contacts by Public Health in the event of COVID-19 contamination. In a submitted complaint, he was accused of lack of rigor in reasoning.
According to the Press Council, which rejected this grievance, the former columnist does not make an abusive link. “Rather, it exposes the facts on which it bases its opinion in addition to making use of the wide latitude granted to opinion journalists,” one said in a press release.
The article “New videos of the fatal arrest in Atlanta” posted on the website of Press was also the subject of a complaint submitted in June 2020. Note that this is a dispatch written in English by two journalists from the Associated Press, translated by The Canadian Press.
The complainant disputes the use of the term “murder” as a translation of “killing”. The Board dismissed the complaints of bias and sensationalism, but upheld the grievance of inaccurate information. “Indeed, the term ‘murder’ implies the notion of willfully killing which cannot be attributed to the police officer at the time the article was written. ”
In total, the Press Council issued eight new decisions in relation to complaints submitted to it. It accepted four complaints in whole or in part and dismissed four.