Journalists are pushing back against restrictions on wildfire coverage
After the warmest winter and most destructive wildfire season ever recorded in Canada, the 2024 wildfire season started early and caused significant damage. Meanwhile, journalists have struggled to get access to report from the frontlines.
As fires tore through Jasper, Alta. in late July, journalists were kept kilometres away, behind police barricades. It wasn’t until days after the fire that a limited number were allowed to accompany Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on a tour which offered what the Globe and Mail described as a “constrained and controlled view of the damage.”
The Globe’s editorial board called the denial of access in Jasper a “smokescreen,” writing that Parks Canada, which manages the national park around Jasper, “has failed to understand that it needs to strike a balance between reasonable safety concerns and reasonable access for journalists.”
The media exclusion continued well after the fire was under control: as residents returned in mid-August, journalists were blocked at a police checkpoint outside town. A spokesperson for Parks Canada said in an email that the ban was intended to give Jasper residents “time and privacy to begin their healing process.”
Denied access is nothing new for journalists covering wildfires, according to several who spoke with J-Source. They described slow, frustrating negotiations with authorities controlling access, with requests often denied at the last minute and for unclear reasons.
In British Columbia, authorities say concerns about the safety of journalists in wildfire areas have been one of the main reasons for limiting access. Change may be coming: they say they aim to expand media access for accredited journalists with safety training and equipment, drawing on the experience of jurisdictions in the United States and Australia.
But they caution that expanding access will take time — and in the meantime, journalists say they’re being shut out.
Journalists who spoke with J-Source agree that wildfire authorities have legitimate safety and practical concerns, but they point out that media workers regularly report from dangerous areas, and say wildfire zones should be no exception. They argue that independent, on-the-ground reporting is critical for people in Canada to understand the reality of a now-regular feature of life in a climate crisis, and to prevent the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
Access “allows the Canadian public – and really the global public, especially when it comes to somewhere as iconic as Jasper – to have a real sense of what’s happening on the ground,” said Gavin John, a photojournalist for the Globe and Mail who was among those blocked outside Jasper in July.
“There’s risk involved, just like covering war. But there are ways that media organizations can mitigate that risk,” said John, who has embedded three times with the Canadian military in combat and covered conflict in Iraq.
“At the stage of the climate emergency that we’re in, this is going to be something that we’re going to be fighting for the rest of our lives – for the rest of our lives, we’re going to have a fire season,” said John. “We should be covering that.”
Media ban in Jasper
A spokesperson for Parks Canada said in an email that journalists were shut out of Jasper during the fire for safety reasons. After the fire was under control, the spokesperson said the agency continued the media ban because some residents had asked for privacy.
“Parks Canada and Municipality of Jasper remain steadfast in their commitment to respecting the privacy of Jasper residents as they re-enter their community … This is a time of profound loss, devastation, and grieving,” Charlotte Chambers wrote.
“The focus over the past weekend was to allow residents the space to process and come to terms with the tragedy that struck their town less than a month ago. The loss of homes and cherished memories is an unimaginable burden, and it is essential that they had the time and privacy to begin their healing process. We thank the media for respecting these measures and the wishes of the Jasper community,” added Chambers.
In a follow-up email, Parks Canada spokesperson Janelle Verbruggen said that Parks Canada and Jasper jointly made the decision to ban media. National park regulations allow authorities to close a park in response to a “seasonal or temporary danger,” which they did in July, Verbruggen explained. Federal authorities then revised the boundaries of the order on Aug. 16 to exclude the town of Jasper, where a separate provincial state of local emergency allowed local authorities to deny access as they saw fit.
She added that Parks Canada allowed journalists to tour the site on July 28 – two days after the premier’s photographed visit – and again on Aug. 12, and provided drone footage of the site. In the Globe’s editorial on Jasper, the paper described images provided by government agencies as the “visual equivalent of a press release,” tinged by “inherent bias.”
“The decision to only allow residents and business owners to visit the townsite during the initial period of re-entry came from a place of compassion and empathy,” Verbuggen wrote. “Our unified goal was to minimize the re-traumatization of residents during the re-entry process.”
In May, the mayor of Fort Nelson criticized people who had shared videos of fire-damaged homes in the community. “Could you imagine, for the first time, seeing that structures on your property have been damaged because you saw it on social media? It’s just, it’s tragic,” Mayor Rob Fraser told CBC.
But cutting off media access can also allow authorities to try to shape how a story is covered. “What we’re talking about is giving politicians the ability to massage the news, and protect themselves and their reputation,” said B.C.-based photojournalist Jesse Winter. “Any time a community is impacted, people are going to be angry, they’re going to be upset, they’re going to be traumatized. There’s no good way to learn that your house has burned to the ground.”
Fighting for access
Banning media exclusively for privacy reasons is unusual. But journalists covering wildfires are often blocked by evacuation orders or states of emergency imposed by provincial wildfire authorities or municipal and regional governments.
Winter said he started asking B.C. wildfire authorities in March about getting frontline access to cover wildfires alongside firefighters. As of mid-August, he still hadn’t had a single day of access approved. “It’s deeply, deeply frustrating,” he said.
When he started photographing wildfires in B.C., Winter recalled, authorities said he didn’t have the right safety gear or training, and that the chaos and unpredictability of wildfires would make it difficult to co-ordinate access after a fire had started. So, he got the same flame-resistant safety gear used by wildfire fighters, completed the same level of training the provincial government requires for contractors, and started making access requests as far in advance as possible.
“I basically spent five years being a pain in the butt and just constantly asking for access,” Winter explained. A breakthrough came in 2023, after Winter and Globe and Mail journalist Andrea Woo travelled to Australia to report on volunteer wildfire fighters. Australian authorities allow accredited journalists to report from inside wildfire zones after completing safety training.
Back in B.C., Winter heard from officials at the B.C. Wildfire Service who were interested in expanding media access. They agreed to pre-approve Winter’s access to wildfires managed by a specific incident command team for the 2023 fire season, as a sort of pilot project.
The access had limitations, but it resulted in pictures showing the grueling, dangerous work of fighting wildfires. Winter also produced a deeply reported, critical look at how wildfire officials made a controversial emergency decision to set a fire in the hopes of limiting the damage of another.
Hoping to expand on last year’s work, he asked in February 2024 to follow a single wildfire team for the entire season. “I don’t think the public has a very clear understanding of what those folks actually go through – what it’s like sleeping on the ground for 14 days straight, when you’re working 12-, 14-hour days for 14 days straight, in really rough conditions,” he said.
But that request was never approved, he said. “Last season felt like a very encouraging step forward in the fire service’s willingness to engage with photojournalists,” he said. “This season feels like, at the very least, two steps back.”
In February, a coalition of media organizations including advocacy group United Photojournalists of Canada and regional, national and international publications wrote to three B.C. government ministries involved in managing wildfires – Public Safety, Forests and Emergency Management and Climate Readiness.
Their letter laid out concerns about the lack of access, proposed solutions and asked for a meeting with ministerial staff. They heard nothing until June, when the Ministry of Forests sent back a letter which described the already-public rules for media access, and didn’t acknowledge the request for a meeting.
“It felt like a ministerial brush-off, which is frustrating, because we’ve identified this as a problem; there are people within the fire service themselves who’ve identified this as a problem,” he said.
The Ministry of Forests acknowledged an email from J-Source but declined to comment because of limitations on government communications ahead of the B.C. election.
The organizations are suggesting authorities in B.C. look at the Australian model, and similar recent legislation in Oregon which expanded media access for accredited journalists with safety training.
“What we’re proposing is a model that would allow us to do our jobs, to address misinformation, to ultimately help build more public trust and public engagement in an informed way on these issues, and it was very disappointing for that not to be acknowledged,” Winter said.
Better access for media can help the public
In the U.S. and Australia, many jurisdictions with frequent wildfires have far more permissive regulations. In California, access is so open that journalists can almost “drive into the flames,” explained Jen Osborne, a Canadian photojournalist who has covered wildfires in Canada, the U.S., Australia and Chile.
“When there’s a fire, for the most part, you’re free to do whatever you want, to get as close as you want. Firefighters might yell at you and say, ‘Hey, that’s too dangerous. Don’t do that’ – but no one’s really going to bar you from the fire,” Osborne said.
California law guarantees journalists the right to cross into evacuation zones, which has allowed Osborne to create vivid, up-close photographs showing the catastrophic reality of wildfires.
She described one “mesmerizing” experience photographing a California fire in 2022, where flames reached up to 100 metres high. After, whenever she closed her eyes, she saw fire. “I think my brain was trying to process what I had seen that day, because I had never seen anything like that before,” she said.
“I think it’s important for the Canadian public to see what these fires look like, and what they do,” she said. She noted the almost $600 million donated to people affected by Australia’s 2020 wildfire season, which she believes was encouraged by widely circulated images of devastated communities.
But she has found it far more difficult to get access to photograph fires in Canada than anywhere else she works, she said.
On assignment in Alberta for the New York Times in 2023, all of her access requests to photograph wildfires were denied; she ended up spending hours driving, constantly being turned back at roadblocks. She recalled being told to leave several times by wildfire fighters – including once when she was on private property with a homeowner who had given her permission to stay.
Osborne said she has sometimes been able to find back roads to bypass roadblocks. She has also been waved through roadblocks by people who appeared to think she’s a firefighter – once in Alberta, where she took a series of photos which were shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards – and also near Shuswap, B.C. That time, she was able to photograph briefly before being kicked out by police, who threatened to impound her car and followed her out of the area to make sure she left.
In California, where open access has been the law since 1957, authorities argue that media coverage encourages people to take wildfires seriously. “During a natural disaster and during a wildfire, people are making decisions about their family and their own safety, and in many cases, people are going to follow our request for evacuations if they’re actually able to see how destructive the disaster is,” Daniel Berlant, an assistant deputy director with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told AP in 2020.
The lack of access for journalists also leaves room for online misinformation, Osborne added. “If people can’t see these fires, they also don’t think it’s real,” she argued.
Conspiracy theories have flooded social media during recent wildfire seasons, including claims that the government or “ecoterrorists” are setting fires. Others blame arsonists for the increase in wildfires. Of the 10 most-shared links on social media during the 2023 wildfire season, four were news stories about arson, according to a study on misinformation from the Re.Climate research institution at Carleton University. The same year, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith emphasized arson as a cause of wildfires, downplaying the role of climate change.
Similar conspiracy theories resurfaced after the Jasper fire. Videos and posts with tens of thousands of views and shares – some with hundreds of thousands – weave together complex theories featuring a secret energy weapon allegedly responsible for the fires, the “15-minute-city” urban planning theory, the World Economic Forum and the soft drink Mountain Dew, among other topics.
Many comments noted the media exclusion zone around Jasper, suggesting that witnesses are being kept out as part of a cover-up: “Everyone has a cellphone that takes videos and/or pictures. I wonder why they won’t allow those pictures and videos taken from Jasper and other areas, the personnel in these areas, of where these so called fires are? What exactly IS GOING ON? QUESTION EVERYTHING!!” one Facebook commenter wrote.
Conspiracy theories also spread in 2023 when fires grew rapidly out of control in Shuswap, B.C. – including allegations that firefighters had abandoned the community. Angry residents demanded to be allowed into the evacuation zone to fight the fire themselves.
The B.C. government said some people took firefighting equipment for their own use, which slowed the response; a spokesperson for BCWS also reported that some people had thrown trash at firefighters.
“If ever there was a perfect example of misinformation coming full circle and having real, on-the-ground consequences, it’s people throwing garbage at the firefighters who are risking their lives to save those homes,” said Winter, who couldn’t get access to cover the response in Shuswap. “Had I been there, I could have documented that, and I could have proved that the firefighters were still there and they were still doing what they could,” he said.
This kind of backlash isn’t uncommon, he added. “In communities that get impacted, where homes are lost, where people are under evacuation orders for weeks on end – in those moments, everybody wants to go looking for a bad guy, they want somebody to blame,” he said. “It’s just really easy to blame the fire service and say, ‘Well, you screwed up or you ran away or you should have done this; you should have done that.’”
That narrative can drive a sense among firefighters that the public doesn’t understand their work, he said. The fire service needs to be “more transparent and more accountable for what they’re doing. But my experience with the firefighters themselves was that they often feel unseen, unheard, unappreciated.”
In general, his experience has shown that most firefighters are glad to have their story told accurately – even when it comes to critical coverage.
“Every single day on the fire line was worth months in a classroom,” he said. “You have to let us have access so that we can actually learn what we’re writing about and do our jobs better.”
Wildfire service open to changes
At the B.C. Wildfire Service, communications officer Jean Strong says there is “broad support” on the communications team for expanding media access.
Strong pointed to the 2023 agreement with Winter as a successful proof-of-concept, which she hopes can be expanded. To do that, the service aims to work with journalists and media organizations to develop safety guidelines and a formal accreditation process.
That hasn’t happened in the 2024 season, but changes are on the way, she said. Currently, the media access file is being managed by several people on the comms team; the next step will be to assign a dedicated person to coordinate with BCWS and media organizations to work out the details, she explained. Expanding access will take “baby steps and walking before we can run,” she said.
“It’s been a matter of working within the limits of the organization, and also working on the culture of trust within the staff of the organization, broadly, to get us to that place in a way that’s safe, first and foremost, both for journalists and for our staff, and also is sustainable,” she said.
The service’s main concerns are about safety: “Wildfires are really dynamic. They change quickly. They move quickly. They’re not always predictable,” Strong said.
“There’s also, on our end as the communications team, a task ahead of us – a huge cultural shift within a lot of facets of the organization,” she said. Some wildfire fighters have said they’re concerned that extra bodies will get in the way during intense physical work in tough environments, she said. Others are apprehensive about bringing in people without firefighting experience, who they worry won’t understand or be able to accurately represent the work they’re doing.
The comms team is working on addressing those internal concerns – including by holding basic wildfire info sessions for journalists, which BCWS expects to start again before the 2025 wildfire season. But she said building trust inside the service will also come down to one-on-one conversations to hear from individual BCWS workers.
She emphasized that these are problems to be solved, not excuses to block access: “We live in a democracy, and journalists and the media play a hugely important role in democracy … Ethically, I think it’s the right thing to do, as much as we can.”
The service also needs to be ready for critical coverage, Strong added. “Access doesn’t guarantee any control over the coverage or that it is just a positive/happy story,” she wrote in a follow-up email. “While we hope that increasing access and showing the hard work done on the ground supports our communications goals, we also need to keep in mind that as a government agency press will (and should) ask questions but that shouldn’t result in denial of opportunities.”
Winter said he’s heard some of those concerns from firefighters, including about journalists showing up unexpectedly and not taking time to introduce themselves, or being unprepared for tough conditions. He recalled one fire crew describing a TV crew in shorts and running shoes who arrived and immediately started flying a drone – a dangerous move in an area full of helicopters and other low-altitude aircraft.
“A lot of crew leaders, crew supervisors, incident commanders – their primary concern is keeping their firefighters safe. And literally anything that changes that dynamic or increases the risk even a little bit, they’re very quick to be like ‘No, absolutely not,’” Winter said. That’s fair, he added – but it’s a problem that could be solved with training and reasonable regulations for journalists, not by blocking access.
Winter argues that the current system does the opposite, encouraging risk-taking and finding back routes around barricades. “If you can get in and get dramatic footage, you can sell it. You can make a name for yourself, regardless of how responsible that access is, or how responsible the content you produce is,” he said.
“What I worry is that – unless there’s a system put in place to facilitate this safely and responsibly, where people who are allowed access are accredited, have an understanding of how fire works and how fires are fought – eventually, something really bad is going to happen,” he said. “If you don’t allow professional, responsible press in, you create a vacuum that incentivizes that kind of cowboy behavior,” he said.
“We, as an industry, need to recognize that and do a better job of policing ourselves on it, because that is also becoming a very convenient tool to justify the exclusion of journalists from these spaces,” he added.
Some progress
Despite years of advocacy by media organizations, Oregon seemed unlikely to change its relatively restrictive laws until 2021, when the devastating Bootleg Fire revealed communications problems at the state wildfire service and convinced officials to open up.
It was one of the state’s largest wildfires in a century – but authorities were overwhelmed with access requests, and few journalists could get in. “There was very little good media coverage of it, of what the fire departments were doing and the damage it was doing,” explained Nathan Howard, a photojournalist who worked with the Oregon chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists to reform the law.
“It was kind of this perfect storm that led to the state legislature conceding that, yes, something needs to change here,” Howard said. In 2022, the state passed a new law guaranteeing media access to report on natural disasters.
A committee of journalists – including Howard – and officials from the state wildfire, wildlife and forestry departments was tasked with writing regulations for the new law, balancing the media’s need for access with the state’s concerns about safety.
Media representatives offered to add rules and regulations for journalists, including a requirement for fire safety training and safety gear. Journalists also have to sign a form releasing the government from liability if they get hurt or killed. SPJ Oregon manages the credential system, which provides media workers with a physical card linked to an online database.
The 2024 wildfire season has been relatively quiet, so it’s hard to gauge the law’s effectiveness. But in one incident, a Reuters journalist who had been prevented from crossing into an evacuation zone was given access after SPJ contacted the wildfire agency.
The push in Oregon went ahead because every major newspaper in the state got involved, Howard said if a similar reform is going to work in Canada, journalists will have to work together. “There is power in numbers.”
Pushing back
The lack of access is a symptom of a bigger problem, Winter argued. “We’re being strategically messaged to death, whether that’s access through police lines [during protests against old-growth logging] in Fairy Creek or any number of other places that the press are being elbowed out of – spaces that we have a right to be in,” he said. “The culture of Canadian bureaucracy is one of existing in a defensive crouch all the time.”
In its editorial about the denial of press access in Jasper, the Globe made a similar point: “It’s an unfortunately common situation in Canada, where reflexively secretive bureaucracies hoard information that should be freely available,” the editorial board wrote.
In Jasper, the first widely published images and video from the town came from a media tour accompanying the premier. A video published by the premier’s office shortly after the tour shows the worst of the damage, highlighting the premier surveying the wreckage and talking with local officials, set to mournful piano music.
“I think the Jasper situation is a good example of how when there is no structure and process, it leaves it ripe and open for politicization,” said John, the photographer who covered Jasper for the Globe.
But with Canadian newsrooms short-staffed and with shrinking budgets, it has become even more difficult to find the time and resources to push back – which is just entrenching the problem, Winter argued.
“It’s been so long since there was a robust press demanding access and insisting on our right of access that they’ve gotten used to, and comfortable, saying no – and there have been several generations of bureaucrats who’ve done that. So, for you to be the bureaucrat or the information officer who says ‘Yes,’ you’re doing something different than what your predecessors did. And that probably means that you’re sticking your neck out in a way that your predecessors didn’t,” he said.
“We need to push back against that, and I think we need to push back collectively,” he argued. “Canadian journalism needs to get better at telling its own story, and at being willing to stand up and defend our rights and our responsibility to be in these spaces to do our jobs properly – because every time that we don’t, every time that we acquiesce to the police ordering us to leave or the municipality saying ‘No, you can’t come in,’ every time that we just accept it, it builds precedent that that is OK.”
Riley Sparks is the Canada Press Freedom Project researcher/reporter.