After many months of delay and an attempt to charge almost $1,000 to release an updated budget and timeline for the Site C dam, the B.C. government has finally agreed to provide new information about the most expensive publicly funded project in B.C.’s history.

But the public will not be privy to the information until May 30, three weeks after the provincial election, B.C. Energy Minister Bill Bennett’s office has informed DeSmog Canada following a Freedom of Information request.

Sean Holman, a journalism professor and freedom of information advocate, said withholding such important knowledge on the eve of an election is an unfortunate example of continued efforts by provincial governments across the country to “fortify secrecy rather than to facilitate openness.”

“We see this time and time again,” Holman said.

Last summer, DeSmog Canada made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Bennett’s ministry.

The FOI asked for all e-mails, attachments and documents exchanged between the ministry and B.C. Hydro regarding Site C and project planning, including Site C’s most recent budget and timeline. It also asked for all e-mails and documents exchanged between the ministry and B.C. Hydro regarding Site C’s job creation figures.

Seven months, many e-mails and three appeals later, we finally got a final answer.

We can have the information free of charge — but not until May 30.

B.C. Government Delays Release of Site C Budget Docs Until After Election https://t.co/RzOwobX1TE #SiteC #BCelxn2017

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 9, 2017

The government’s protracted response to our FOI does not surprise Holman, who said there is a “culture of secrecy” right across Canada, with governments routinely withholding information that is in the public interest.

“We’ve essentially created a bureaucracy whose job is to censor information before it is released to the public,” said Holman, who teaches at Calgary’s Mount Royal University and was the founding editor of the investigative political news service Public Eye.

The reason the B.C. government gave for extending a legislated due date for responding to DeSmog’s FOI is that the request involves “a large volume and/or search for records.”

How large? The bill we received last September, after narrowing our request, said it would take 13 hours to locate the information, another 13 hours to produce a record and five hours to prepare the record: 31 hours in total.

Earlier, the government had said it would cost DeSmog Canada $990 to obtain the information. After we shaved six months off the date range of our request, which originally dated to July 2015 when preliminary construction began on Site C, the government said it would reduce the fee for obtaining the records, now narrowed to an eight-and-a-half month timeframe. The revised cost was $840.

We then put forward a case for a fee waiver because we believed information about Site C should be made public, since B.C. Hydro customers will pay for the $8.8 billion project that Premier Christy Clark has vowed to push “past the point of no return.”

Under B.C.’s freedom of information law, fees for FOI requests can be waived or reduced if the request has been “the subject of recent public debate” or if they show how a public body is allocating financial or other resources.

And then the bureaucratic wheels of government spun around a few more times and tossed out an answer at the beginning of October. We could now have the same information for a bargain price: $420.

That fee still seemed far too steep, so we took our case to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, arguing that it was in the public interest to have access to information exchanges regarding Site C’s most recent budget, timeline and job creation figures. “These records will assist a public understanding of how public money is being spent and managed,” we wrote.

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner agreed, and the Energy Ministry eventually wrote back to let us know that the whole kit and kaboodle of a FOI will finally be delivered with no fees on May 30, more than nine months after we filed our request.

Holman said it is unfortunate that British Columbians did not have access to the new information about Site C prior to the election.

“This is obviously an election issue and, in an election, information about the government and what the government has been doing becomes more valuable because it helps voters have more information when they go to the ballot box.”

Taxpayers should have ready access to information about projects like Site C in order to allow them to access “the value they are getting from this work…on their dime,” Holman pointed out.

But even though the government has agreed to release the information free of charge, don’t uncork the bubbly on May 30 to toast a small victory for access to information and transparency in B.C.

The FOI request only covers the timeframe from January 1, 2016 until the date we filed the request: August 16, 2016.

Any guesses on how many months it will take if we file another FOI asking for the same information, only this time covering the nine-month period from August 17 to mid-May 2017?

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Documents obtained by DeSmog Canada reveal that Canada’s Ministry of Environment vetoed an interview request on toxins in fur-bearing animals in the oilsands, even though the federal scientist was “media trained and interested in doing the interview.”

The Environment Canada scientist in question, Philippe Thomas, had asked members of the Alberta Trappers Association to send him samples of fur-bearing animals caught across Alberta in 2012. Thomas needed a broad range of samples to gain deeper insight into the contaminant load in animals living near the oilsands.

In late 2012, DeSmog Canada submitted a request to interview Thomas, and provided several written questions to Environment Canada to review.

Documents obtained via Access to Information legislation show that pre-scripted responses were prepared for Thomas should the interview be approved at the upper levels. The request was approved at the deputy general level, but denied in the office of former Environment Minister Peter Kent.

The request was also sent to the Privy Council Office for review, but was denied by the minister before requiring a decision by the prime minister’s top-level advisors.

Media requests involving controversial subjects such as the Alberta oilsands, climate change or species at risk are often subject to upper level political review and are routinely approved or denied at the ministerial level or in the Privy Council Office.

Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is currently investigating the 'muzzling of scientists' after a formal request was made by the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria and citizen advocacy group Democracy Watch. The groups asked the commissioner to investigate “the systematic efforts by the Government of Canada to obstruct the right of the media — and through them, the Canadian public — to timely access to government scientists.” That investigation is ongoing. 

Sean Holman, founder of Public Eye and professor of journalism at Mount Royal University in Calgary, said denied requests of this kind remind Canadians just how frustrated and undemocratic our access to information process really is.

“We have a Father Knows Best approach to government in Canada,” Holman told DeSmog Canada.

“Our elected and unelected officials have vast powers to withhold information from the citizenry — whether it’s because they feel that’s in the public interest or their partisan interest.”

“That’s undemocratic,” he said, adding, “but that’s why they feel they have the right to violate our right to know – frustrating access to information we have paid for.”

The internal documents from Environment Canada also show personnel were asked to keep DeSmog Canada’s previous reporting on oilsands’ science “in mind when preparing” responses to questions.

According to Holman, “it’s understandable communications staff would want to know who is asking for information from the government…from a public relations standpoint.”

“But,” he added, “from a democratic standpoint, do we want communications staff to be providing different or better access to that information depending on the requester?”

In doing so, what Environment Canada staff appear to be saying, Holman said, “is that not everyone has the same right to hold government to account since knowledge is a necessary precursor to that process.”

The research, carried out as part of the Joint Canada-Alberta Plan for Oil Sands Monitoring, is the first of its kind, and brings to light the lack of data to date regarding contaminants in fur-bearing animals — some of which are a source of food for communities and First Nations — in the oilsands area.

Environment Canada told DeSmog Canada the request to speak with Thomas “could not be accommodated.”

When pressed for a reason why, Environment Canada staff responded, “due to the nature of your request, a written response was more appropriate.”

The written responses provided to DeSmog Canada were not attributed to Thomas, however. In response to questions regarding the authorship of the answers, Environment Canada said “a number of Environment Canada staff contributed.”

Environment Canada confirmed beavers, fishers, martens, lynx and river otters have been tested for naphthenic acid, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and a suite of approximately 28 metals and inorganic compounds, pollutants that “have been identified as contaminants produced as a result of industrial activity in the Oil Sands region.”

Data collected in the samples will be “compared to existing guidelines for human consumption.”

DeSmog Canada is partnering with the Politics of Evidence Working Group to promote Write2Know Week from March 23-27. If you would like to write a letter to Environment Canada regarding the monitoring of contaminants in the oilsands area, and to let scientists know you value their work, visit Write2Know for an easy guide. 

Image Credit: Brandon T. Brown Nature Photography

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“Forget press releases. Forget press agents, publicists. Forget advertorials and sponsored content and native content. Forget all of it.

If what you want for your company, your government bureau, is total control of a news story, why bother with the pesky journalists who are going to check the facts and get the other side of the story?

No. Here’s what you do: write your own news story.”

That’s the sardonic strategy Jesse Brown, reporter and host of Canadaland, recently outlined on a show dedicated to News Canada, a federally-funded public relations body and news wire service which was recently awarded $1.25 million to distribute hand-out news content meant to “inform and educate Canadians on public issues.”

The story of News Canada receiving a 25 per cent increase in government funding from Public Works Canada was first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter Tom Korski.

News Canada Ltd. president Shelly Middlebrook told Korski the service provides content to media editors and that “journalists either pick it up or they don’t.”

Middlebrook added the republished content must be labeled “News Canada” (or sometimes simply “NC”) to give credit to the service, “just like the Canadian Press,” she said.

“This is educational, informational, lifestyle news,” she said. “It’s not breaking news.”

Middlebrook said a significant portion of Canada's dailies, community newspapers, cable news broadcasters and radio stations across the country publish News Canada content.

Is it propaganda?    

Some question the role the news service plays in the Canadian media where ever-constrained newsrooms are desperate for content – something News Canada provides to outlets completely free of charge.

But there still may be a cost – it’s perhaps just offset onto the public and its need for balanced information.

As Korski details, some of the ‘stories’ produced by News Canada are decidedly pro-government. As in the case of these features about Canada’s Space Agency and the federal government's “win-win solutions" for First Nations.

Korski writes:

Samples of pro-government TV handouts including one item lauding the Canadian Space Agency, including “interviews” with two officials; and another celebrating cabinet’s record on Aboriginal land claim settlements. The script reads: “How do you right a past wrong? Well, the Government of Canada has been working towards finding solutions to do just that.” The report continues, “Canada has made a commitment to reconciling relationships with First Nations people”; “The future looks bright. More win-win solutions are in the works to bring closure and justice for all.”

Other stories are used to promote Public Works Canada, the body that funds News Canada. In addition to providing the $1.25 million to News Canada, Public Works also said it will edit story scripts and provide officials in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal for “in-person interviews or testimonials.”

When asked if the content was propaganda, Middlebrook said simply, “I don’t think so.”

“If it is, editors won’t pick it up. It has to be balanced. If it was too propaganda-based, editors wouldn’t use it.”

But Sean Holman, founder of Public Eye and a journalism professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, sees things differently.

When it comes to government publicity, “this is no different in a lot of ways from what has come before,” Holman said.

“The only difference is that a) there may be more receptivity to publishing this material because of a desperate need for content by media organizations, and b) it is being packaged in a way that resembles news, that resembles journalism and reporting,” he said. “Those are the only two principled differences.”

“But it’s certainly not journalism and it’s certainly not reporting,” he added.

“So is it propaganda? Sure, it’s propaganda in the same way that everything the governments puts out there, from their public relations arm, their communications arm, is propaganda. It is trying to convince people of a certain position. It is omitting certain information that would not benefit the client, etc.,” Holman said.

Public Works coordinator of Harper Government PR

Public Works Canada is the body that oversees and coordinates Canada’s advertising.

In recent years the Harper government has come under fire for expensive advertising campaigns meant to influence public opinion on contentious political subjects such as the Alberta oilsands.

The Harper government has also been criticized for too-strictly controlling federal communications, most especially in regards to the restrictions placed on federal scientists often prevented from speaking with the media, the general public and at academic conferences.

As Public Works states in its last annual report, its work is meant to “ensure that advertising activities align with government priorities.”

Government of Canada advertising process from the Public Works 2012-2013 annual report.

According to the most recent annual Public Works ad report, released in 2014, Canada spent more than $14 million on advertising Canada’s Economic Action Plan (which was called "propaganda" by survey respondents) and an additional $8.2 million on its Responsible Resource Development campaign (which was, in part, responsible for Canada's severely weakened environmental legislation). Both advertising campaigns placed heavy emphasis on the Alberta oilsands as central to Canada’s economic future.

These two campaigns were Canada’s most expensive advertising projects for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, dwarfing the amount of money spent on any other advertising effort.

The $1.25 million supplied to News Canada for publicity work falls outside the disclosed advertising funds mentioned in Public Works annual report, meaning this is additional money devoted to government communications above and beyond its advertising efforts.

DeSmog Canada reached out to Public Works for additional information and comment but no response was given at the time of publication.

Not clear to audiences News Canada is a publicist

According to Korski, it is important News Canada is seen as a publicity outlet that works on behalf of clients, in this case the Government of Canada.

Yet News Canada might not be doing enough to distinguish itself as a PR firm, as opposed to an independent press outlet like the Canadian Press.

News Canada content is “identified with a credit slug to News Canada,” Korski told Canadaland.

“Now whether that’s an Orwellian term or not I guess is a subjective matter of opinion. Whether a viewer, a reader, or a listener would understand that News Canada is a publicist, or whether they would confuse that with an actual news organization that covers Canada, is a point of discussion.”

Screenshot of News Canada webpage.

Korski said that a further layer of obfuscation is added by the fact that News Canada does not disclose on whose behalf the content is produced.

“News Canada would not identify to readers, viewers or clients the source of the material, in this case the department of Public Works,” he told Canadaland.

“I think it’s designed that way.”

Listen to Tom Korski’s full interview with Jesse Brown on Canadaland. You can read Korski’s original story on Blacklock’s Reporter.

Image Credit: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Photo Gallery.

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“All media requests are not equal.”

Journalists from small, alternative and independent media outlets have long believed that’s why they get no response or a delayed response when they contact the government for information. That can make it more difficult for them to break stories, frustrating the public’s right to know.

But it’s also an adage you’d never, ever expect to see the government write down — until spin doctors at the federal department of citizenship and immigration did exactly that in a document I obtained via a recent access to information request.

Was it a pique of honesty that led them to put those words in black and white, an error or just plain indiscretion?

Well, according to a department representative, the document — a 16-page draft guide prepared for citizenship and immigration’s spokespeople — was never approved and doesn’t reflect how media requests are actually handled.

But, even with that caveat in mind, the guide may give us a glimpse inside the mind of a government spin doctor.

It states, “Inquiries received from major media outlets must receive greater attention and effort…than calls received from minor media sources or student journalists.”

Similarly, “calls from major international media outlets (i.e. Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times) as well as calls on sensitive issues,” demand even more attention.

In other words, according to the guide, the department should give more help to foreign reporters — and their audiences — than some Canadian reporters.

But, in an e-mail, citizenship and immigrations media relations advisor Nancy Caron used capital letters to stress the “DRAFT” nature of that document.

The first page of the document stresses the same thing, adding “procedures are constantly evolving to meet changing circumstance.”

It then goes on to state that the guide is simply meant to provide “a snapshot of where we are today. It reflects how the DG of communications, the Director of Ministerial Events and Media Relations and the Minister’s Office wish us to process media calls.”

Nevertheless, according to Caron, the document was “never presented to, nor approved by CIC’s management.”

Indeed, she stated her department “provides all media outlets with the same service level and attention. Media requests are triaged and addressed based on deadlines for publication…In fact, in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, 90.7% of journalists’ deadlines were met, regardless of their outlet.”

But journalists I spoke with say the “all media requests are not equal” approach matches their own dealings with the federal government.

Jeremy Nuttall, national reporter for the online magazine The Tyee, has said that, “Forget about the back burner, it feels like you’re not even on the stove.”

An example: back in 2012, when Nuttall was reelancing for The Tyee and covering the government’s controversial decision to approve the use of temporary foreign workers by HD Mining International Ltd. in British Columbia.

He said the citizenship and immigration “answered at first…then darkness” when the story “heated up.”

“I’ve worked for larger places and there is more of an effort [by government] to get your replies,” said Nuttall, who has also reported for the Canadian Press, CBC News and the Globe and Mail.

Parliament Hill freelancer Justin Ling said he’s had similar experiences. “I’ve been doing a lot of stories for Vice News recently and I can tell you the departments don’t care about Vice News,” he said. “It’s not their demographic, they just don’t give a shit.”

“The departments definitely have targeted approaches based on who you are calling from and who you are,” continued Ling, who has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post and Maclean’s.

“The consequence is that it reinforces the consortium of news outlets that people go to for news. It’s unfortunate.”

It is — especially at a time when those outlets are on the decline, with journalists outside the “consortium” trying to investigate stories the mainstream no longer can.

By treating those journalists as second-class reporters — either in policy or in practice — the government is once again frustrating the public’s right to know.

Because if members of the fourth estate can’t get the information they need from the government, neither can Canadians — keeping voters in the dark and their elected officials unaccountable.

This post originally appeared on Sean Holman's Unknowable Country.

The Media Call Process at Citizenship and Immigration

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Partisans may not believe it, but Canada’s “culture of secrecy” existed long before Stephen Harper moved into the prime minister’s office. And it’ll be around long after he moves out, unless Canadians do more than just cast their ballots in the next election.

That’s why four groups concerned about freedom of information, one of which I’m part of, are launching a campaign encouraging Canadians to take a small but vital step on social media that would raise more awareness of just how much is being hidden from us: spotlighting examples of government secrecy with the hashtag #cdnfoi.

Such secrecy has its roots in our political system, which has a tradition of strict party discipline. Because of that discipline, decisions made by the government behind closed doors – in cabinet meetings, for example – are rarely defeated in the House of Commons, making secret forums the principle arbiters of public policy.

To be sure, the Harper administration has done more than its share to cultivate a backroom state, frustrating access to government records and officials, as well as failing to fix our broken freedom of information system. But Canadian society is an especially fertile ground for the growth of policies that violate our right to know.

In part, that’s because our country doesn’t have any groups that exclusively and routinely advocate for greater freedom of information at a national level. Probably the closest we have to that is the small BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

But, as its name implies, the association’s two staff members toil on information and privacy issues in British Columbia and the rest of Canada from a tiny office above a beauty salon and spa in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, other organizations that care about our right to know have even more multiplicitous mandates. For example, Ottawa’s DemocracyWatch stands on guard for democratic reform and corporate responsibility, as well as freedom of information. Meanwhile, Halifax’s Centre for Law and Democracy also deals with other human rights issues abroad.

By comparison, the United States has three umbrella organizations that exclusively safeguard Americans’ right to know.

They include: OpenTheGovernment.org, representing 94 groups; the National Freedom of Information Coalition, representing 30 dues-paying groups; and the Sunshine in Government Initiative, representing nine groups.

Such umbrella organizations have always been few and far between in Canada.

In the seventies, a coalition called ACCESS: a Canadian Committee for the Right to Public Information was established to lobby for greater freedom of information.

Reports from the Globe and Mail back then described the committee as having the backing of groups such as the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Canadian Daily Newspapers Association.

But long-time right to know researcher Ken Rubin stated in an email that ACCESS, which played a key role in the creation of Canada’s current freedom of information law, was actually “primarily a group of diverse individuals” that included academics, activists and lawyers and had some “paper” affiliations with other organizations.

Despite that key role, by the eighties the committee had folded. According to Rubin, during the same decade, a “loose coalition” came together under the auspices of the Canadian Federation of Civil Liberties and Human Rights Associations to “monitor and improve” freedom of information. That coalition also “went by the wayside” once the federation “faded away.”

Then, in January 2000, investigative reporter Robert Cribb announced the formation of Open Government Canada – a “national forum for FOI networking, education and advocacy pushing for legislative changes that grant greater access to public information.“

More than 25 groups were represented at its founding conference in March of that year. However, in an email, Cribb stated the coalition “died a regretful death.”

The reason: “It proved to be impossible to lure financial support for such an endeavour – part of the perplexing lack of concern, engagement or righteous indignation in Canada around issues such as freedom of information and the public's right to know.”

Those concerns aside, in 2011, DemocracyWatch launched the Open Government Coalition. So far, the coalition is made up of three groups – not counting DemocracyWatch and an affiliated charity. Although founder Duff Conacher stated in an email he plans to expand it this fall.

In the meantime, the New Democrats and the Liberals have proposed laws and policies that would open up government. They should be applauded for doing so. And, if the past is a predictor of the future, they may even act on some of those proposals if they win power – just as the Conservatives did.

But eventually the expediency of secrecy seems to seduce every government, regardless of its political stripe. Which means a New Democrat or Liberal administration will likely become just as tight with information as the Conservatives – albeit, perhaps, with more of a velvet glove covering that clenched, iron fist.

Don’t believe me? Well, look no further than the United States where Democrat president Barack Obama swept into office promising an “unprecedented level of openness in Government.”

Five years later, an Associated Press analysis found that in 2013 his administration “more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.”

More recently, the agency also listed “eight ways the Obama administration is blocking information.”

Meanwhile, for his part New York Times reporter James Risen has called Obama “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.”

Just as neither the right nor the left has a monopoly on the truth, neither has a monopoly on secrecy.

As a result, it’s vital for Canadians to start paying better attention to our information rights so we can better safeguard them.

That’s why the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists, DeSmog Canada and IntegrityBC, are now encouraging Canadians to tweet about threats to their right to know using the hashtag #cdnfoi.

Those threats include everything from backroom government meetings and frustrated freedom of information requests to inaccessible officials and nonexistent public records, whether they are at the federal, provincial or local level.

At present, the use of that hashtag isn’t widespread, making it more difficult for Canadians to know about such threats.

So, by just tagging stories about government secrecy with #cdnfoi, you can help your fellow citizens know about what they aren’t being allowed to know.

And you can encourage others to take up the fight by sharing these graphics promoting #cdnfoi – helping change Canada’s culture of secrecy in the process.

Image Credit: Will Brown

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Paid advertisements for the oil industry have run unlabelled as editorial content on the websites of the Vancouver Sun and Regina Leader-Post — yet Canada’s ad regulator has decided not to rule against Postmedia, the company that owns the papers.

DeSmog Canada filed a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada on March 4, regarding a story published on the Vancouver Sun’s website on Dec. 4, 2013, with the headline “Born to the Challenge: Janet Holder’s B.C. roots make her the perfect lead on Northern Gateway.”

The article told the tale of how Holder came to be Enbridge’s VP of Western Access, responsible for pushing the Northern Gateway oil tanker and pipeline project. Holder recited the economic claim that Canada is losing $50-million a day due to limited export markets

Economist Robyn Allan read the article and took issue with that economic claim. When she submitted an opinion piece in response, she was informed it couldn’t be run because the article she was responding to was actually a paid advertisement.

“It was clear that the page was set up to look like arms length reporting — even more so on the web than in the printed version of the paper,” Allan told DeSmog Canada. “I had prepared my opinion piece from the web ‘article’ and when I saw the printed version, I became confused—was it reporting or paid-for propaganda? The Sun editorial staff confirmed the page was paid content.”

DeSmog Canada’s complaint with the ad standards agency cited Clause 2 “Disguised Advertising Techniques,” which states: “No advertisement shall be presented in a format or style that conceals its commercial intent.”

After two months, Advertising Standards Canada sent a written reply to DeSmog Canada indicating that it had decided not to issue a ruling against Postmedia.

Since the complaint was filed, the article has been removed from the Vancouver Sun’s website.

A screen grab of the paid article on the Vancouver Sun website, before it was removed.

However, on March 7, the same thing happened again, this time with a paid advertisement from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).

When the ad ran online in the National Post, it was clearly labelled with this disclaimer: “This content was developed by Postmedia’s advertising department in collaboration with a client. Though it does not mention the client’s products or services, the client was involved in the creative direction of the content and reviewed it before publication.”

On that same day, that CAPP advertorial ran in the Regina Leader-Post with no disclaimer. (UPDATE: On June 25th, the story — shown in the screen grab below — was removed from the Regina Leader-Post website.)

The unmarked, paid story begins: “Major Canadian oil sands companies have come together in an unprecedented move to collaborate and advance technologies to accelerate the pace of environmental performance improvement.”

Postmedia owns nearly every broadsheet daily in the country, including the Vancouver Sun, The Province, the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, the Regina Leader-Post, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette and the National Post.

Consequences for news industry

Sean Holman, founder of Public Eye and a journalism professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, says media organizations undermine their own value by undertaking such ventures without ensuring content is clearly labeled.

“What I do find tragic is, as we go down this route that we seem to headed down, it is eroding the societal and political value of the content that media institutions are supposed to be producing,” Holman told DeSmog Canada. “I’m not sure the media has thought through the ramifications of that.”

Postmedia, like most newspaper publishers, is in serious financial trouble — laying off staff, shutting down presses and losing tens of millions of dollars.

“Media organizations are trying to do the best job they can to figure out how to make money in this new environment. But I think some of these ventures go down the wrong path,” Holman said. “We enjoy the access that we do because we are supposed to be serving not an advertising purpose, but a political purpose, not a business purpose, but a societal purpose.”

At the same time, Holman asks how news organizations are supposed to make money in a society that does not value journalism in the way it once did.

“Journalists bear some of the blame, media organizations bear some of the blame, but we as citizens bear some of the blame, too,” he said.

Postmedia to work with CAPP to amplify “energy mandate”

Earlier this year, the Vancouver Observer reported on a Postmedia presentation that outlined a content strategy that includes several Financial Post “Special Report” sections, with topics to be arranged by Postmedia and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

The partnership also includes 12 single-page “joint venture” features in newspapers across the country. Those are different from “special reports” in that CAPP fully directs the topics and Postmedia writers just pen them.

If the features were properly marked as paid content, that would be one thing — but at least two paid articles appear to have slipped between the cracks.

Add to that the tone of the leaked Postmedia presentation, which is graphically designed to follow the route of a cartoon pipeline (snazzy!) and includes this note from Douglas Kelly, the publisher of the National Post:

“From its inception, the National Post has been one of the country’s leading voices on the importance of energy to Canada’s business competitiveness internationally and our economic well being in general. We will work with CAPP to amplify our energy mandate and to be part of the solution to keep Canada competitive in the global marketplace. The National Post will undertake to leverage all means editorially, technically and creatively to further this critical conversation.”

Huh. You almost get the impression that Postmedia sees itself as being on the same team as CAPP — which is rather disconcerting.

Let’s say a Postmedia reporter ran across a contrary piece of information, like the fact the oilsands industry only actually accounts for about two per cent of Canada’s GDP, a quarter of the contribution of the charitable and non-profit sector? How would that fit into Postmedia’s “energy mandate” to keep “Canada competitive in the global marketplace?”

To be fair, the presentation to CAPP was meant to cajole an advertiser to spend big bucks, not for public eyes. Even the unlabelled articles online could very well have been left unlabelled by error.

But the fact is, it doesn’t look good. Readers expect news organizations to maintain their first loyalty to citizens. As outlined in the Pew Reseach Centre’s nine core principles of journalism:

While news organizations answer to many constituencies, including advertisers and shareholders, the journalists in those organizations must maintain allegiance to citizens and the larger public interest above any other if they are to provide the news without fear or favor. This commitment to citizens first is the basis of a news organization’s credibility, the implied covenant that tells the audience the coverage is not slanted for friends or advertisers.

When media companies appear to lose track of that commitment to the public interest, they lose the trust of their readers — which undermines their own business. But more than that, it casts a pall over the good work of their journalists who continue to serve the public interest even as the traditional media industry crumbles around them — and that’s likely the biggest tragedy of all.

 —With files from Emma Gilchrist.

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