The fight for reporting rights is losing ground as news organizations cut their law budgets and pass on lengthy legal battles.
It can cost a cash-strapped newsroom $5,000 to $10,000 to hire a media lawyer for a day, and taking a case to the Supreme Court costs about $500,000. This means news organizations only have the resources to fight what they can afford to challenge.
And as this article from the King’s Journalism Review states, the consequences of this are devastating. If media organizations don’t have the money to challenge legal rulings such as publication bans, nobody else will. Uncontested, these bans, which sometimes infringe on the media’s right to report, prevent journalists from reporting the news and therefore limit the public’s right to know.
Here’s what several media lawyers in the story had to say —
Daniel Burnett, head of Ad Idem, the Canadian Media Lawyers Association, on the publication ban on the divorce proceedings of Francesco Aquilini, the owner of the Vancouver Canucks:
“Ordinarily, that would be the kind of publication ban that three or four media outlets would all be up in arms about and would want to oppose,” says Burnett. “And yet there was really no media outlet in B.C. who considered that they had the budget room to fight that one.”
Fred Kozak, Edmonton media lawyer:
“We act on behalf of a large number of different media organizations, and every day we get electronic notices of publication bans and other reporting restrictions,” says Kozak. “We forward all of those notices to our clients, and I see less of an appetite to challenge restrictions.”
Stuart Robertson, Toronto media lawyer:
“You try to get reporters to stand up and object,” says Robertson. “And often that’s very effective. Often people will back off their application for an order if they realize there’s going to be some argument to it.”
For the whole story, click here.