Canada’s leading newspapers and media law experts have condemned a sweeping publication ban imposed April 30 on a hearing in the Tori Stafford murder case. Justice Dougald McDermid of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice prohibited the media from reporting what happened when Terri-Lynne McClintic, one of two people accused of the eight-year-old’s 2009 abduction and…
NEWS – In what may be the first case of its kind involving comments posted to a Canadian media website, the Halifax weekly The Coast has been ordered to identify seven people who made allegedly defamatory statements tagged to a story about racism in the city’s fire department. As well, Google was ordered to identify…
CommentaryThe Supreme Court of Canada’s refusal to protect the National Post’s confidential source and grant constitutional protection to all journalists’ sources is “disappointing,” writes Toronto media lawyer Brian MacLeod Rogers. But the door is open to future privilege claims and the court has clearly recognized the importance of confidential sources to investigative journalism and the…
Commentary Don’t let the negative headlines get you down – there’s good news for journalists in the the Supreme Court of Canada’s May 7 ruling in the case of the National Post, its former reporter Andrew McIntosh, and the possibly forged document at the heart of a nine-year legal battle to protect a source. Law…
NewsThe new responsible journalism defence has helped an Ontario news website defeat a libel action launched by a man named in a police fraud alert. In one of the first applications of the defence (created by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2009), a jury ruled SooToday.com acted responsibly when it published the alert, even…
The Squamish Reporter, a local news website, says it was threatened with a lawsuit and asked to reveal the source of a leaked Fire Underwriters Survey after publishing a news story about the survey.
On September 3, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), the CBC and RTNDA Canada, the Association of Electronic Journalists, launched a Charter of Rights and Freedoms application to stop the practice of police impersonating journalists.
News A sweeping publication ban will continue to be imposed on bail hearings, even when suspects won’t face a jury trial. The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a Criminal Code provision that requires judges to ban publication at the suspect’s request. While the ban is designed to prevent jurors from hearing information about the suspect…
CommentaryThe Supreme Court of Canada’s decision to uphold a sweeping ban on bail hearings is a loss for the public as well as for journalists, J-Source Law Editor Dean Jobb argues in a commentary in the Toronto Star. By shutting down informed debate over judges’ decisions to grant or deny bail to criminal suspects, the…
CBC journalist Harvey Cashore called December 22 “the most important day in the history of media law” at a Toronto event debating the Supreme Court decision that created a new libel defence. Ted Fairhurst reports.