National Post (National Edition)
Journalism’s self-righteous myth-makers
The Canadian Association of Journalists purports to be a “non-profit advocacy and professional development organization representing active journalists from all media.” But in practice, the CAJ is obscure to most in the profession, except for the small corps of participating members (largely freelancers) who use it as a sounding board for gossip and industry complaints.
I spoke to the CAJ once, many years ago in Ottawa, and they turned out in some hundreds, listened politely, and asked a lot of questions, most of them skeptical and adversarial, but all legitimate and politely formulated. The subsequently published versions of the meeting, however, were unrecognizably bowdlerized. Questioners were identified with fawning idolatry and I was portrayed as evasive and menacing. (I was the principal publisher of newspapers in Canada at the time.)
So the CAJ was not an organization of which I entertained expectations of fairness, balance or professionalism. But even with this background of limited expectations, I was yet startled by my encounter with the CAJ this past week.
The organization maintains an online group-posting system called CAJ-lists, by which members may bring something to the attention of the whole membership via email. A distant friend, who happens to be on the circulation list, forwarded the following startling reference to me: “Conrad Black’s bankrupt company Hollinger Canadian Publishing holdings owes me $166,000 in pension and benefits. I will not see the money, because in 2012 Hollinger transferred its pension and benefit funds to a U.S. affiliate, to pay Black’s debt to the US Internal Revenue Service. 2,300 Canadians are affected by this problem. Conrad Black MUST be removed from the Order of Canada.” The message came from one David Pinto.
In fact, the company referred to, and its parent, were driven into bankruptcy, as was their chief asset, Hollinger International Inc. in Chicago, precisely by those who claimed to fly to the rescue of the stakeholders. No one lost as much personally in that financial hecatomb as I did, and no one lost as much accumulated pension as I did. Mr. Pinto’s anger is entirely justified, but completely misdirected. He would have enjoyed every cent of his pension, as I would have been able to enjoy mine, if my codefendants and I had not been falsely accused, and if our accusers had not been so gullibly indulged by the courts.
Of course there was no such transfer as Pinto claims, and of course not one cent was removed from any public company to pay any tax liability of mine. (Money was removed by my accusers to pay their libel settlement rather than face a defamation trial on the original claims that started all the civil and criminal actions. I would rather they had paid me the settlement with their own funds, and Pinto’s colleagues’ counsel did, with our agreement, retrieve part of their pensions.) His allegations against me are as I described them in a reply to the CAJ-List for posting as a reply: “Every word and every letter of every word of the allegations in the assertions are false.” (I was quoting Maurice Duplessis, but could as easily and accurately have quoted Mary McCarthy’s famous reply to a criticism of her by Lillian Hellman: “Every word of it is false including ‘the’ and ‘a.’ ”)
A few hours later, I received an advisory from CA J-lists, with the actual sender’s name anonymous: “Your mail to CAJlists … is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.”
I replied eight hours later, when I saw this reply: “Who is the moderator? What are the moderator’s terms of reference, and why did the moderator allow the defamatory libel to which I replied on the list?”
As of this writing, I had received no answer. The CAJ-list, having posted Pinto’s monstrous falsehoods, has gone dark and silent. The moderator is no doubt feverishly considering the right of a defamed person to challenge the defamation on the very site where it appeared.
I did some research. The CAJ’s website informs us that it has an Ethics Advisory Committee, chaired by Professor Ivor Shapiro of Ryerson, and that the committee “was formed to consider and provide advice on ethical issues faced by journalists.” It solemnly advises that “Journalists have the duty and privilege to seek and report the truth, encourage civic debate to build our communities, and serve the public interest. We vigorously defend freedom of expression and freedom of the press … We return society’s trust by practising our craft responsibly and respecting our fellow-citizens’ rights.” Shapiro and his committee-members may wish to remind the moderator and Pinto of their high calling.
The CA J proclaims at the top of its website that the CAJ “alone is looking out for journalists’ rights in Canada and for more than 30 years has offered world class professional development.” And here is the root of the problem: Beneath the gelatinous sanctimony of this somewhat officious grouping of journalists, there is protected the “right” of anyone in the CAJ to defame any non-member of the CAJ to the journalistic community, and the “right” to be protected by the glazed pall of prevarication by the anonymous moderator on the question of whether a non-member has any right of reply before the same audience, even merely a simple denial.
Exactly this pattern was followed in the Airbus affair, in which CAJ lioness Stevie Cameron was defended to the last person and shrill cyber-voice against the charge of being a police informer (despite the efforts at fairness of the thenCAJ president, Paul Schneidereit of the Halifax Chronicle
Herald). The organization as a whole locked arms in support of her, even though her own counsel (Peter Jacobsen) has indicated in writing that she was a police informant; and it is a matter of indisputable public record that there was no evidence whatever that, as she claimed, former prime minister Brian Mulroney had taken a bribe in the Airbus affair. Moreover, no illegality was suggested against Brian Mulroney by the commission of inquiry into the (unrelated) Schreiber affair, which the former prime minister’s critics tried to use to rehabilitate Cameron’s professional reputation.
My experience, and the recent conduct of this organization, are redolent of the most frequently invoked failings of the working press: Its selfappointed leaders, in the CAJ and otherwise, are morally bankrupt myth-makers, full of self-righteousness, endlessly attending workshops and conferences in which they ululate from the podium about rights, duties, and the perfectly informed society. This hypocrisy and claptrap dishonours the majority of working journalists who are, in fact, despite a frequent lack of thoroughness, relatively fair-minded men and women trying to do their jobs and report it as it is.
The CA J should make a plausible effort to uphold the principles it claims to espouse, or else dissolve itself. As for Mr. Pinto, I can put his febrile mind at ease: The day of reckoning for the real authors of the economic rape of his and my and many other pensions is nigh, and the house of mirth they have built with the largesse taken from us will collapse. I rarely presume to quote the Bible, but it is my pleasure to assure him and them that “great will be the fall of it.”