RSJ prof Karyn Pugliese on her time as CAJ president

It was early September, the sky was twilight and the stars were out, so it must have been  around 9:30 or 10 pm. A half dozen men and women pulled lawn chairs into a semi-circle around a campfire. I could tell it was a cool night because the men wore long sleeves and jeans. One woman wrapped herself in a loose knit sweater. The serenity of the scene was eerily false. 

They talked about a flare that had been shot onto their property. Armed men had surrounded their homes for about 50 days. A girl, perhaps four years old, with curly brown hair and long eyelashes cuddled on her mother’s lap and broke into the conversation.

“What’s that thing?” She asks about the flare.

“It’s a kind of bomb.” Her mom answers.

“What happens if you touch it?”

“It’s poison, I guess.”

“What’s poison?”

“Makes us sick.”

The child falls quiet. Her mother begins singing softly and rocks her child to sleep.

It's been more than ten years since I watched that scene from Alanis Obomsawin’s film Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, but I can recall it precisely. The film continues and we hear governments describe the Haudenosaunee as “people who do not believe in democracy,” law-breakers, and violent. We hear reports from authorities alleging there are stockpiles of weapons, but they never materialize. At the height of the crisis, Minnie Garrow, a spokesperson for the community reminds the press: “We are not trying to take your land…We were here to protect our burial grounds and the pines from a nine-hole golf course. You must keep that in mind. Have you forgotten?”

The events at Kanehsatake in 1990 shook through every Indigenous community so hard that none of us has ever recovered psychologically. Historians speak of a ten year post-Oka period that changed our world view, most demonstrably in our art and literature. 

Obomsawin’s documentary was released in 1993.  It was the first time my generation had ever seen Indigenous truth spoken to power. She had nudged history forward, even if just slightly. That was my first year in J-school. It  wasn’t the reason I enrolled, but that film convinced me to  stay. 

When I was elected to the CAJ presidency two years ago, past president Nick Taylor-Vaisey joked that I had met the “cool kids of journalism.'' Each of the directors has his/her own compelling reason why they commit many volunteer hours after long work days. For years the CAJ has been known for its awards celebrating the best of journalism, but over the last two years we shifted into a stronger advocacy role. 

It’s been a harsh two years. The ad revenue stream was already drying up. Just as the news industry was on its knees the pandemic hit it like a sucker punch. In a world where everything is cancelled there is nothing left to advertise. The government’s plans to fund jobs in the industry was hotly debated on principle and even more hotly debated for unaddressed transparency and accountability flaws built into the design of the program. It will save some jobs, mostly at legacy outlets, but dozens of local news outlets shut down just when people needed them most. A number of promising startups and small independents got squeezed out of any government aid.

It’s been an era of partisan politics where disinformation has flourished and legitimate media has been under attack by politicians who play fast and loose with facts, and not just in the U.S.. Ontario Minister Lisa MacLeod’s adoption of the epithet “fake news” earned her infamy in the Washington Post, around the time that her government launched its taxpayer-funded propaganda site, Ontario News Now. But that was nothing compared to Alberta, where spin doctors at Premier Jason Kenney’s  war room, the Canadian Energy Centre, were caught pretending to be journalists when soliciting interviews for their propaganda site. 

During this time there were also attempts by police and crown lawyers to restrict media access.  In 2016 civil and criminal charges were laid against Independent reporter Justin Brake because he followed a group of Indigenous people who opposed construction of a hydro-electric dam in Labrador onto the company’s property, despite an injunction. In other words - he did what Alanis Obomsawin had done and perhaps even more than that. The company, Nalcor, tweeted that it feared for the safety of its workers at the site. Police shut down highways in the name of public safety. Tensions were building and there were signs that a strong police action was imminent. Then Brake streamed a video showing the demonstration was peaceful, in fact workers were passing out food and blankets. That video stream may have prevented an overreaction by  police. 

More arrests followed. In 2017, a Hamilton police officer arrested TV camera operator Jeremy Cohn (who was working at the time for Global TV) and independent freelancer Dave Ritchie when they arrived at the scene of a local traffic accident. Captured on video it was clear the journalists had done nothing to warrant the arrest. In 2018, John Hueston, publisher of the Aylmer Express and his reporter-son Brett were similarly arrested for trying to photograph the scene of an accident. Both cases were thrown out of court, and the Hamilton police officer who arrested Cohn was found guilty of four charges under the police act.

The RCMP introduced a new tactic called an exclusion zone which seemed designed for no other purpose than to keep journalists from reporting on matters of public interest. In January 2019, they used an exclusion zone at the Unist'ot'en Camp on unceded Wet'suwet'en territory in BC to keep journalists from witnessing police actions as they enforced an injunction. In April, an exclusion zone set up in Nova Scotia at a demonstration against Alton Gas, prevented journalists from witnessing the arrest of three elders. The RCMP claimed they’d done so for the safety of reporters.

In March 2019, Brake won his civil court case, with the courts affirming the media's constitutional right to be present at events of public interest.  

When new tensions arose at Wet'suwet'en in early 2020, the RCMP allowed reporters into the exclusion zone, but time and again tried to control what they reported by detaining them or threatening them with arrest. In the end documentary film-maker Melissa Cox was pushed to the ground, zip-tied, and arrested by police.

Journalists never like to be the story, but the CAJ started to push them into the spotlight, because threats to the media are also an important matter of public interest.  I stepped down as president earlier this month but I stayed on the CAJ Advocacy Committee because I know the critical role media plays in protecting human rights. That’s worth fighting for.