MUHC criticized for restricting access to superhospital
Journalists complain after being removed from Glen site
Quebec’s professional federation of journalists is denouncing the McGill University Health Centre for expelling two Montreal Gazette journalists from the public lobby on its first full day of operations.
The FPJQ says it “deplores the attempt to control information by the (MUHC) during the opening of its new establishment on April 27.”
When a Montreal Gazette reporter entered the lobby to ask employees and patients about their impressions of the new facilities, Richard Fahey, the MUHC’s director of public affairs, asked the chief of security to expel him from the lobby. In a separate incident earlier Monday, Fahey expelled a Gazette photojournalist from a public area of the hospital in the presence of security guards. The photographer had been warned not to take any pictures, and had not done so.
Two journalists with other news organizations complained outside about what they considered to be arbitrary and heavy-handed tactics by the MUHC in restricting access during Sunday’s move from the Royal Victoria Hospital as well as the opening of the new complex in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. At one point on Monday, reporters were not allowed to interview people outside the public hospital who were still on MUHC grounds.
In a statement, Caroline Locher, director of the Fédération professionelle des journalistes du Québec, criticized the hospital’s refusal to allow the media to interview patients in the main entrance of the hospital and outside the premises, both public spaces.
“The FPJQ reminds the MUHC that patients, like all citizens, have the right to freedom of expression. If they would like to speak to a journalist about their experience at the hospital, what right does the institution have to prevent them? It is not up to the hospital to decide whether patients have the right to speak to journalists or not, but the patients themselves.”
In an emailed response, Fahey defended his decision to expel the journalists, saying: “All media know and abide (by) the said (MUHC) guidelines which have been enforced in order to ensure patient confidentiality and security.”
Under MUHC policy, the public affairs department must screen patients before they can speak to journalists on hospital premises, and PR officials must be present. MUHC policy also prohibits any employee or volunteer from speaking to journalists without the prior approval of public affairs, but employees routinely flout the rule, arguing that they are acting in the public’s best interests when they call a reporter.
Mark Bantey, a media lawyer representing the Montreal Gazette and other news organizations, said the MUHC “cannot ban members of the media from public spaces of the hospital on the sole ground that as owner, it can ban access to the building. Nor can it require that members of the media be accompanied by a representative of the MUHC when those members are in public spaces of the hospital.
“Similarly, permission from the MUHC is not required to interview patients or family members in the public spaces of the hospital.”
Last May, the FPJQ denounced the MUHC for an “intolerable” lack of transparency (“climat de noirceur”) in its handling of requests by journalists under Quebec’s access-to-information law on a wide range of issues.
In a report last year, Quebec’s Ombudsman found that MUHC officials gave the news media “incomplete or inexact” information about a patient from Kuwait who underwent surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital in 2011.
Ombudsman Raymonde Saint-Germain said that during her investigation, she was given “erroneous” information by the MUHC.
And last July, Health Minister Gaétan Barrette ordered the MUHC to cancel the remainder of a $600,000 contract to a Montreal PR firm, saying it was a waste of money given that the MUHC already has a 12-person PR department.