Thursday, February 19, 2009
No to national censorship council, by Francis Chartrand
As if Barbara Hall's own crude, broadsword agency were not destructive enough of free speech rights, now the Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) wants a national press council to further chill free expression in the media. And she is not looking just to curtail newspapers, talk radio and television news. Ms. Hall wants any new press council to have jurisdiction over Internet sites and blogs, too.
Of course, using the typically topsy-turvy logic of most modern rights crusaders, Ms. Hall has convinced herself that this thinly veiled censorship board would actually be the ultimate free speech defender. She seems to think the best way to preserve free speech is to limit it.
In a report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ms. Hall's OHRC recommends a national media watchdog to which all publishers, webmasters and radio and television producers would be forced to belong.
The OHRC insists such a body need not "cross the line into censorship," but it is hard to see how it could avoid it. As conceived by Ms. Hall and her activist cocommissioners, a national press council would have the power to accept complaints of discrimination -- "particularly from vulnerable groups" --against any member paper, station or Web site. And while the council, at least initially, would have no power to prevent media outlets from printing, posting or broadcasting what they wished, it could force them to carry the council's decisions, including counterarguments made by complainants.
It's hard not to view these recommendations as a direct response to the OHRC's frustration with its own inability to persecute Maclean's magazine and columnist Mark Steyn for what the commission viewed as the pair's "Islamophobic" views. Last April, the OHRC was forced to drop its investigation of columns and news stories carried by Maclean's because the legislation governing the commission did not give it authority to investigate published work.
Nonetheless, Ms. Hall left no doubt that she sided with the Canadian Islamic Congress and a group of Muslim university students who felt Maclean's discriminated against their faith. Despite having held no hearing, nor hearing any testimony from the magazine or Mr. Steyn, Ms. Hall and the OHRC nonetheless felt justified in concluding that both parties engaged in journalism that was "inconsistent with the spirit" of the Ontario Human Rights Code and which did "serious harm" to Canadian society by "promoting societal intolerance" and disseminating "destructive, xenophobic opinions."
Ominously, at the time, Ms. Hall also stated that all journalists should put their writings through a "human rights filter" before publication. Because she was not able to force such a filter on Maclean's, her current proposal for a national press council is almost certainly an attempt to make such a filter mandatory, in law.
"Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism," Ms. Hall has said previously. But because no one has god-like powers to discern accurately what is "fair" and "unbiased," then no one -- not even the chief commissioner -- is qualified to sit in judgment of which articles and opinions meet those criteria and which do not. Most people's interpretation of fair and unbiased reporting corresponds very closely with their own opinions on the subject at issue, and Barbara Hall is no different. She has been granted no special powers not given to other mortals to divine the truth; therefore, neither she nor any other pompous purveyor of social concern has the ability to judge which speech should be free and which not.
"Free societies should not be in the business of criminalizing opinion," Mr. Steyn, told members of Ontario's standing committee on government agencies this week. "When you go down that road, all you do is lead to the situation that you have in, say, Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, you can't start a newspaper and print what you think, so if you object to the House of Saud, the only thing you can do is blow stuff up."
Similarly, making all writers, bloggers and broadcasters hostage to a national press council is merely the first step toward letting the Barbara Halls of the world decide what you get to hear, see and read. To that, we say: "No, thanks." And so should every newspaper reader, Web surfer and television viewer in the land.
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Labels: Francis Chartrand, Freedom of expression
# posted by Francis Chartrand @ 7:57 PM 
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