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CBC TV reporter Terry Milewski jabbed Southam Press for their coverage of an APEC controversy involving him, and warned an audience of 300 people that freedom of expression in Canada can never be taken for granted. He was speaking to 300 people at the annual convention of the Canadian Association of Journalists in Vancouver on April 16.
Milewski was the focus of a media ethics storm last year after the Prime Minister's Office complained that he had though email provided legal advice to anti-APEC protestor Craig Jones and called the federal government "the Forces of Darkness." He was removed from the APEC story after a CBC internal review, but a report last month by CBC Ombudsman Marcel Pepin cleared him of wrongdoing. (Then the complaint was dropped.) He has since returned to reporting for CBC TV on BC politics, but not on APEC. He said he was "stunned" by the attitude of CBC management - and that he did not get back his suspended salary after the Pepin report - but the support was "terrific"in CBC rank-and file.
"Pepin found it odd that [the Prime Minister's communications chief] Peter Donolo didn't quote emails directly, only the Southam stories. But the mask slipped when Donolo referred to other emails, which he was at pains to convince us he did not have."
"The Province led its story, which had no byline, with the statement that Milewski has been 'advising' one of the protestors. But I had discussed the questions and the lack of answers on the air long before the emails were sent. You may be horrified to learn that journalists sometimes consult with sources. Certainly the Sun and Province would never do such a thing. They didn't sully themselves by calling me first."
"Who the sources for the notion that there was something unsavoury about this? The Province didn't quote anyone. The RCMP's role in the email release was not mentioned - possibly to protect them as a source. I asked Province writer, did you write this? He turned his back to me and said, 'I sent in some files, they wrote it in Toronto.'"
"The Sun's editorial board criticized 'a worrying traffic in confidential documents' between Craig Jones and myself. But five weeks earlier, the Sun had led its newspaper with precisely the same documents which it had gotten from me. This traffic was not so worry as to prevent the Sun from cashing in on it. I'm not making this up. You wouldn't believe it. "
Milewski said Canadians of Eastern European origin had called him with support, and one had said "It reminds me of growing up in Hungary during the Communist time. When the kids went to school the teachers would ask 'So, your parents, do they make jokes about Comrade Rakounski at home?' The man thought it was creepy, using the invasion of your private remarks to denounce you."
Milewski also recited his list of the "Top Ten Reasons not to call the government the Forces of Darkness." Number one was "your wife will send you out on Halloween wearing one of these." Then he put on the black helmet of Darth Vader from the film Star Wars, to the audience's thunderous laughter.
As Milewski related it, on September 25, 1998, counsel for RCMP officers, George MacIntosh obtained an order for Craig Jones to hand over any documents related to APEC. Craig complied, with hundreds of emails. (The advice from the RCMP's internal branch to charge some RCMP officer was kept out of public record.) "The RCMP went through 780 emails and selected those they thought would help their clients - but didn't tell other parties which ones."
On October 9, that small selection was tabled at the Inquiry by McIntosh before other parties had a look at it. "These included my emails, and they flagged my name on cover of the package. If he had notified others before tabling it, he would have encountered objections. But it was too late. When Jones objected to this release, McIntosh offered no resistance. The Commission agreed with Jones' position, and my emails were stricken from the public record as not being relevant (without McIntosh objecting), but not before they had already been made public."
Milewski said he had jokingly called the government the Forces of Darkness to squelch a false allegation about RCMP Staff Sergeant Hugh Stewart: "It shows my fanatical bias towards getting a story right."
Milewski quoted from the Pepin report: "'On this point, the Province's mistake commits a serious sin against the journalistic principle of accuracy.... to anyone who in good faith consulted the correspondence between Terry Milewski and Craig Jones, it, would have appeared obvious that Mr. Milewski's objective was not to provide material for Mr. Jones legal strategy. What he wanted and no more was to obtain some answers to his questions.'"
"Pepin said that nobody in good faith could read my correspondence with Craig Jones and conclude that I was giving him advice."
"All the columnists who lectured me on my ethics never bothered to call me to get their facts straight. They took the facts from PMO press release or Province. Equally baffling was an editorial in National Post saying 'Terry Milewski is exhibit A for leftist political bias in the CBC.' Some protestors think I'm fanatically right wing for not embracing their anti-globalization agenda."
On recent reports of the shredding of civic APEC documents, he said "It sure sounds familiar. Right from the start there has been a dedicated effort not to say anything, and that's the problem. You know the story: it's not the crime, it's the coverup."
"With Craig Jones and me, it's not as though we're dealing in drugs or kiddie porn. What we wrote had already been broadcast. But there was a chill. My emails dried up after this. People didn't want to talk to me on the phone - they asked me 'what's that click?'" The audience roared with laughter.
He said the Ombudsman's report demolished the whole idea that reporters are not supposed to trade information and ideas with sources. "Pepin noted that some of me questions were raised on CBC TV three weeks before the emails - and there is nothing in the CBC policy book to prohibit this."
"There was a successful attempt to divert attention from the issues by manufacturing a controversy about the journalist's motives. The government just wants journalists to be taperecorders in cheap ties. It's an old, old story: shoot the messenger."
Asked for the lessons learned from the case, he replied, "We can't give in to this kind of invasion. We should just go on saying whatever the hell we like on email. Free speech, use it or lose it."
But he added he doesn't think the complaint is part of any grand government plot to crush or privatize the CBC: "There were just some mistakes made. I think it backfired, and made the PMO look scared or despotical. I don't think it will happen the same way again. It's more often the right wing that pleads for the rights of individual against coercion by the state. There are lots of people out there who think we should just be taperecorders in cheap ties, that we should just report what we are told, we should not be cultivating sources, we should not share information, we should not make jokes about the government, we should police our private remarks, as though the Stasi is listening in and might use them to denounce you. It shows we had better not take our freedom of speech for granted. Lots of people want to take it away."
Asked for the impact on his family, he replied, "I've got kids and a mortgage. My wife supported me all the way, she said we can put the kids at the in-laws, sell the house, but fight it all the way, no matter what. I would never have gone this far if she hadn't said that."
"I don't know any precedent for emails being seized and ransacked by government in this way. I am simply not willing to censor my private remarks, and I will not give up email."
For others facing the same conditions, he suggested, "Pretend this never happened. Carry on, stand firm. Don't buckle, don't compromise, don't blame yourself."
He ended his speech by saying, "Craig Jones quoted to me from Bertrand Russell: 'We all have our rights in society until we need them.' I admit this constituted 'advice' from Craig, but it was good advice."
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