The complainant, Matt Whitman, is a Halifax city councillor. He did a phone interview in which he said he was never told he was being recorded, nor that the interview was on the record. The reporter said that she had informed Mr. Whitman that she had turned on her recorder. Since the tape was deleted,…
The complainant, Henry Heller, objected to a radio documentary recounting the experience of a Venezuelan doctor who fled the country. He said it represented a particular political view of a particular class and lacked wider context. It was the personal experience of a particular person whose background is mentioned against the backdrop of the current…
The complainant, Norman Swan, objected to an Opinion column critical of people having large families. He found it “disrespectful of family planning choices,” and he rejected the writer’s arguments for advocating for small families. It was a clearly-marked opinion piece on a contentious issue. Balance was provided by another article presenting a different point of…
In the wake of accusations of sexual impropriety involving teenage girls against Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore, CBC News provided a feature story about the phenomenon in some Christian fundamentalist communities that encourages marriage between older men and teenage girls. One of the interviewees was Canadian and described as a member of the Mennonite Brethren…
The complainant, Nimra Amjad, asked that articles about her be de-indexed. She thought that this would protect her from harassment that she said arose from them, but still maintain the record. Ms. Amjad was a candidate for school board trustee in Calgary. She is still in the public eye related to that campaign. The material…
The complainant, Marjaleena Repo, thought that important information about an interviewee was absent. An Iranian exile who has been supporting a movement of women protesting mandatory wearing of hijab is also an employee of VOA – Voice of America. That information should have been included, she said, as well as the fact that it is…
The reality of the permanence of online news stories leads to requests for removal of articles. The right to control over one’s information and the right of free expression can sometimes clash. The norm in most news organizations is to resist requests to remove stories. “Unpublishing is rare.” Masse Sahar asked that a story about…
The complainant, Steve Zradicka, objected to the use of the f-word in an interview with two of the women who accused Albert Schultz of sexual misconduct. He pointed out his two children were in the car with him and it was unacceptable to use foul language, and that the warning ahead of time was not…
CBC Ottawa ran a story about a programme to match homeless people to rental housing. It documented a case where it went wrong, leaving the landlord with a trashed apartment. The story showed the damage, but focused on the gap between the promises and the delivery of the sponsoring agency. The complainant, Lorraine Cohen, questioned…
The complainant, Diane Bederman, objected to a report by Derek Stoffel who was at a protest in Ramallah on the one-hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. She thought that by reporting the Palestinian position, he was implying Israel did not have a right to exist. He attributed the statement to the views of the Palestinians.…