The trial between Quebecor media and the Quebec Press Council (CPQ) began at the Montreal courthouse on Monday. the JoeMontreal urnal and TVA Group want the Media Honor Tribunal to stop making decisions about them and are seeking compensation of nearly $428,000 for damage to their reputation.
The Quebecor media accuse the CPQ, among other things, of having botched the investigations that led to two decisions rendered in 2018, and in which the Montreal Journal was severely blamed.
Although they have not been members of the CPQ since 2010, they deplore the fact that they are still the object of blame from the private non-profit organization, whose mandate is to deal with complaints from the public Quebec news media.
After refusing to participate in the complaints process for several years, the Quebecor media decided to turn to the courts in 2018 to prevent the CPQ once and for all from investigating and rendering decisions concerning them. They also argue in their lawsuit that by continuing to act in this way, the court of honor violates their fundamental right to be free “not to associate”, as provided for in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. .
According to them, the decisions at the heart of the dispute “are defamatory and damage the reputation of the Montreal Journal in that they reveal unfounded reproaches which, in the case of the Sabbagh “decision”, are formulated under the terms of a necessarily incomplete, sloppy and fundamentally flawed investigation process on the part of the CPQ”.
The Sabbagh decision
This decision was precisely at the heart of the testimonies and cross-examinations of this first day of trial, Monday.
Let us recall the facts: in June 2018, the CPQ severely blamed the Montreal Journal for its front page of May 4, 2017 and an article in this same edition on the floods in the west of Montreal. The problem ? The daily would have, according to the decision of the CPQ, falsely attributed two citations to a woman evacuated aboard a boat during the events. The first was added at the end of the article without the knowledge of the journalist who signed it, Catherine Montambeault. The second accompanied the photo of a in the form of a balloon illustrating what the lady would have written on her cell phone which she stared at while a neighbor helped her to evacuate.
Note that the complaint filed with the CPQ came from the lady in question, Stephanie Sabbagh, whose photo ended up on the front page without her consent.
The Quebecor media believe that the CPQ did its job poorly and maintain that the quote was not invented, but rather was collected by a photoreporter from the QMI agency (and therefore not by the journalist who signed the article ). As for the first page of the edition, the Log recognizes that this does not correspond to the exact statement of Mr.me Sabbagh, but that it is “a humorous element of caricature — a recognized institution in journalism”.
Photo reporter Maxime Deland — who took a picture of Mme Sabbagh and “heard” his exclamation — testified for his employer on Monday. He also explained that he had never been contacted by the CPQ during the process of handling the lady’s complaint.
It was then the former journalist and general secretary of the CPQ since 2017, Caroline Locher, who was called to testify. She explained the role of the Media Honor Tribunal, its composition and the procedure for handling a complaint. Mme Locher also gave his version of the facts concerning the specific case of the handling of Ms.me Sabbagh, coming back to the decision that resulted from it.
The trial, scheduled to last eight days, is due to continue Tuesday morning with the cross-examination of Mr.me Locher.