Bizarre ideas on display at police spying inquiry
If a female reporter gets a scoop, she must be sleeping with her source.
If a male cop talks to a female journalist, he must be trying to have sex with her.
If one reporter calls another, he must be feeding him or her an exclusive — even if they’re competitors.
This is apparently the enlightened thinking of some of Quebec’s finest, according to affidavits and testimony from police before the Chamberland Commission on the protection of journalistic sources.
Officers from the Sûreté du Québec, the Montreal force and the Laval police have recently described for the inquiry how their suspicions, assumptions and prejudices have figured into their investigations, mainly internal probes on leaks from within their respective forces.
These offensive and strange ideas are alarming in themselves, betraying a Neanderthal mentality toward women and a major lack of comprehension about the workings of the media. But just as grave is the admission that idle and lascivious gossip has been used as the basis for criminal investigations that led to snooping in journalists’ phone records and undermined the role of the free press in a democratic society.
As Radio-Canada investigative reporter Marie-Maude Denis put it, appearing Thursday before the Chamberland Commission, five years of her phone records were scrutinized by the SQ based on little more than grist for the office rumour mill. So much for the Supreme Court of Canada’s rigorous test for determining when it is appropriate to override protections for journalists’ confidential sources.
Laval police used similar unfounded arguments to target 98.5 FM crime and courts reporter Monic Néron to find out how she got a scoop on a big drug bust.
Both Denis and Néron are excellent journalists who do important work informing us all about matters in which the public has a tremendous interest. But according to the SQ, if an officer was in contact with Denis, they must have been having a liaison. If Néron got details on a major operation, it was because the officer who revealed the information “was thinking with his penis” and wanted to “bang her.” (Those are the actual words a Laval investigator used in a sworn affidavit).
That these kinds of attitudes exist among some of those sworn to serve and protect bodes ill for all women they come into contact with, from fellow officers to victims of crime.
While sexist logic isn’t being applied to their male colleagues, reporters of both sexes have nevertheless been subject to other bizarre assumptions by police.
An SQ inspector testified to his belief that journalists feed each other exclusives, even if they work for competing media. That curious rationale was employed by Montreal police to obtain 24 warrants to monitor months of columnist Patrick Lagacé’s phone records, even though he didn’t publish a single article using the information at the origin of the internal probe.
As any journalist will tell you, reporters from different media may be friends, but they jealously guard their hard-won scoops.
Police have brought enormous resources to bear and cast a very wide net under the pretext of flimsy and feeble proof. That should be alarming, not only to journalists, but for society. It has had real consequences on investigative reporting, both Lagacé and Denis said, noting a chill effect on whistleblowers. But it also has grave implications for the fundamental rights of all Quebecers.
“This doesn’t so much worry me as a journalist, this frightens me as a citizen,” said Lagacé.