Proposal to limit foreign journalists in U.S. threatens media freedoms
Tuesday’s U.S. election could mean another term for U.S. President Donald Trump, or a first term as president for Joe Biden. There could be shifts in the political make-up of the U.S. Congress. With all that, change is certain for the Canada-U.S. relationship.
Watching on the front line of it all for Star readers is Washington bureau chief Ed Keenan.
“It has been fascinating and frustrating and exhausting, probably in equal measures,” he told me.
“What is happening in the United States in this election in this year is among the biggest stories in the world. The outcome will determine the course of the United States in the near future, but will have echo effects all around the world,” he said.
Keenan says the pace has been “exhausting.” Understandably so. The election will be one more event in a year of transformative events. There’s no end in sight for the pandemic which has upended life. The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer spurred the Black Lives Matter movement and overdue action on race and racism across the globe.
Occasionally, readers will complain that the Star’s coverage of Trump and the coming election is just too much. No doubt, Trump is a polarizing figure and according to polls, not much admired by Canadians.
But the Star writes about the president, U.S. politics and news across America because it matters a great deal to Canada.
Trump’s words and actions have sweeping impacts, from his tiff with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the 2018 G7 summit in Quebec, his positions throughout the free trade negotiations, to the onagain, off-again tariffs on imports of Canadian steel and aluminum. Such actions ripple across the Canada-U.S. relationship and their interwoven economies.
With the border closed to all but essential traffic, Canada has a huge stake in how the U.S. deals with COVID-19, from the race to find a vaccine to the struggle to contain the virus.
As an ally in NATO and NORAD, U.S. policies on global security and defence issues on regions like North Korea, the Middle East and Afghanistan — the site of Canada’s longest military engagement — all carry ramifications for Canada.
Energy, the environment and climate change. It all matters. It’s why the Star and other Canadian media outlets base their own journalists in Washington to report events through a Canadian lens, rather than rely solely on U.S. news outlets.
“It’s never going to be a priority for American reporters to report on that stuff,” Keenan said, a reality he says was driven home when he arrived in Washington in September 2019.
“It becomes vivid to you how much of this Canadian stuff is an afterthought or not even a thought,” he said.
That’s why a U.S. proposal to sharply limit how long foreign journalists, including Canadians, can work in the country is so troubling.
Given that Trump himself declared journalists to be the “enemy of the people,” it’s not surprising that “national security” is one trumped up rationale for the move.
Those journalists, including Keenan, work in the U.S. on an “I visa” which is valid for up to five years. The proposal would limit that to 240 days with a possible 240-day extension. In the eyes of the Department of Homeland Security, a “period of time necessary to complete the planned activities.”
It would completely undermine the “bureau” model of having journalists living and working in Washington.
“This idea that you have a permanent desk in places that you consider to be important and a staff there of people who understand your own home culture and the priorities, but who immerse themselves in the local government to report on it for the home audience,” Keenan said.
The Toronto Star has joined two dozen other outlets urging the U.S. government to drop the proposal, saying it “threatens to seriously jeopardize the exercise of journalistic freedom.”
“Messing with the accreditation of foreign media correspondents has a long, ignominious history, at least in authoritarian or authoritarian-leaning regimes,” Toronto Star Editor Irene Gentle said in her own column.
The federal government will only say it has “taken note” of the concern that “some Canadian citizens” have around the proposed rule and says it is trying to better understand how it will be implemented. That’s hardly a vigorous defence of media freedoms.
Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced this week that Canada will co-host a global forum next month “to help address the challenges to media freedom and promote the health of the global information.”
Here’s a chance for Champagne to back up that language with action, by making clear to Washington that its attack on media freedoms is ill-considered and should be shelved.