Is it privacy or secrecy?

We don’t know the answer, so we keep asking questions

A story in The Spectator this week by Katrina Clarke illustrates again the troubling battle for information from public organizations by the media.

This example started last October, when Hamilton public health officials opted not to name a basketball club where a COVID-19 outbreak had occurred, despite naming various other organizations and businesses with outbreaks.

We wanted to know why this one was different, and when we couldn’t get an answer, Clarke filed a freedom of information request for the name and any correspondence regarding the outbreak. In March, both requests were granted, but Hamilton public officials later contacted The Spectator and insisted the material was confidential, and asked us not to publish it.

Again, we asked why the information is confidential, but no satisfactory answer was forthcoming.

The Spectator does not want to identify people inappropriately or unnecessarily, but we couldn’t understand the privacy breach here, and we still don’t understand it.

So we published the article. We named the organization, and printed some of the emails. Here’s one from staff at Hamilton public health: “We do not want to post something that will spark the media to ask a lot of questions.”

That, of course, is the role of the media in a functioning democracy: to ask questions.

And it is human nature and professional experience, I suppose, that makes public officials leery about releasing information.

But I don’t think this kind of exercise is useful.

Taxpayers are now going to pay, apparently, for an outside consultant to get to the bottom of how the FOI request was granted to The Spectator. Perhaps we will finally learn why the name being kept secret is so important. Or perhaps not.

We know from subscribers that this is the kind of work readers expect of us: to ask questions that others cannot; to hold public officials to account.

It is not clear, though, if the public at large really cares.

Unfortunately, polls continue to show a declining trust in the media. Many believe a journalist’s job should be restricted simply to the collection of facts.

Many do not appreciate us asking difficult questions of public officials — but predictably, it depends on which public officials we are asking, and how readers lean politically.

In other words, mistrust of the media is closely linked to the increasing polarization of politics, not just in the United States, where it is particularly acute, but also in Canada and beyond.

Fortunately, journalism is not just about enlightening and educating readers and viewers and listeners, although it is mainly that. Journalism is a pillar of democracy, and journalists take that seriously. We cannot stop asking questions — and responsibly sharing the answers we acquire.