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Reliably far-left Globe and Mail commentator Rick Salutin engages human rights in today’s column and—surprise, surprise—gets it all wrong. It’s behind the G&M subscriber wall, but you can read the whole thing for free at (where else?) rabble. (Or you can do as I did and buy a dead-tree edition.)
Case 1: The Ontario Human Rights Commission has declined to rule on a complaint brought by Arab and Muslim groups against Maclean’s and writer Mark Steyn. The OHRC said its mandate doesn’t cover such things but added, like a consolation prize: “Freedom of expression should be exercised through responsible reporting.” This is clearly wrong. Freedom of expression is exercised through irresponsible reporting—or what some people see that way. That’s when the need to protect it arises.
Yes, the OHRC is “clearly wrong”, but so is Mr Salutin. Freedom of expression is exercised whenever someone freely expresses an opinion—responsible, irresponsible, or otherwise.
The interesting part of the case is that the complainers asked not for an apology or correction—but for the right to reply, unedited, in Maclean’s. Maclean’s refused. I think this clarifies the stakes on both sides. For Maclean’s owner Ted Rogers, what counts is not his right to free expression but his right to distribute massively what he chooses (through those he hires) to express.
As far as freedom of the press is concerned, that is a distinction without a difference. Newspapers and other mass media commonly publish material not written by owners. This has been an accepted practice for centuries and is not a big deal. Indeed, it would be unworthy of mention but that Salutin is grinding his anti-capitalist ax again. Here it comes.
It’s the reverse of the freedom to sleep under a bridge, which is available to rich and poor alike. The other guys are free to publish magazines, too. But the complainers demanded the right to express themselves with the same reach that Ted Rogers provides to Mark Steyn. Call it the right to equal amplification of free expression. That doesn’t sound unreasonable, but it turns the legal issue into an economic one. How you respond to that in a society where money controls media, I don’t know.
Demanding a newly-minted “right to equal amplification of free expression” “doesn’t sound unreasonable”? To the contrary, it sounds completely bonkers and betrays fundamental misunderstandings of both law and economics (now that he brings that up). How exactly did Maclean’s gain its vaunted “reach” that complainants seek to commandeer at no personal cost? Here’s a clue: It wasn’t bestowed by government edict. Maclean’s started with next to nothing and earned its pre-eminent position among Canadian news magazines by prolonged, consistent use of journalistic and entrepreneurial skills.
Ted Rogers put his money (and that of willing investors) on the line when he purchased Maclean’s, so it is now his task to maintain its reputation. If he does not, the magazine will suffer, along with his financial position. That's why he has the right to freedom of expression through Maclean’s, and the complainants do not.
Moreover, the claim that money controls media is a tired and aged canard of the left, and an increasingly risible one in the age of internet and the blogosphere.
In Canada in 2008, it seems that anyone can prevail upon a human rights commission to force a private enterprise to bend to one’s will. The complainants, God forbid, may well succeed in being awarded an undeserved free ride on the journalistic reputation and credibility that Maclean’s has spent decades building up. But they should not fool themselves into believing that they will thereby share in that reputation and credibility. For that, they would have do as Maclean’s and, for that matter, the Globe and Mail, have done: They would have to earn it.
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