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freedom of the press
Around the world, journalists are being targeted by harassment and intimidation
The U.S. president also accused Google of "really taking advantage of people."
Trudeau is on a five-day official visit.
A free press is one of the bulwarks of a modern, democratic society. Thomas Jefferson himself famously preferred newspapers without a government to government without newspapers. Yet there is an underappreciated link between freedom of the press, on the one hand, and economic freedom, on the other.
Canada drops 10 spots on press freedom index.
I understand the nature of cultural and religious sensitivity. I believe in debate and free speech. What happened this past week put the two ideas -- free speech and religious sensitivity -- at polar opposites. I had realized that after we printed the clarification that the staff at The Eyeopener probably didn't fully understand the implications of our statement. We were accused of ignorance.
In Canada, protection of a free press is so ingrained that we almost take it for granted. In Tanzania, unfortunately, one op-ed really can mean the difference between earning a living and the death of an entire paper.
So there I am in my last column agonizing over whether Canada should ban that obscene and hateful Internet video called Innocence of Muslims, when it occurs to me that it might be a really good idea to come up with an example of freedom of speech in action. Something easily understandable. Something vivid. Something gutsy.
The Conservative government, and the new CBC/Radio-Canada code of ethics violate the principles of independence, and impartiality that are so closely associated with the profession of journalism, and are a serious threat to the preservation of Canadian democracy, where freedom of the press is a fundamental value enshrined in our Constitution.
