A freer press

One needn’t look far to see the immense benefits investigative reporting affords a free society. We know about Brian Mulroney’s meetings with Karlheinz Schreiber, Jean Chretien’s real estate dealings in Shawinigan, the Sponsorship Scandal and — most recently — extremely dodgylooking contracting practices at Montreal City Hall, in whole or in part because Canadian journalists are free to snoop around. And the freer the better. So we applaud the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark ruling enshrining “responsible communication in the public interest” as a defence against libel.

Until now, reporters and their employers have been effectively held to a standard of absolute truth, which, should they be sued, it has been their burden to prove. While arguably defensible, this came at a cost to society. Should a corrupt public official be able to effectively quash damning allegations against him with a simple “no comment”? Should he able to sue because someone prints correct information he refuses to corroborate?

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