Protecting Writers' Rights
Ontario Press Council upholds part of complaint against The Globe and Mail
On October 17, 2007, Senator Pat Carney appeared before the Ontario Press Council after lodging a complaint against the Canadian
newspaper, The Globe and Mail. In her complaint, Senator Carney stated that The Globe and Mail had plagiarized a key quotation
from an opinion article that she had submitted to The Globe and then withdrawn before publication.
The opinion piece followed from a meeting Senator Carney attended in Beijing in November 2006, during which the Chinese assistant foreign minister admitted to China’s reluctance to invest in Canada due to uncertainty over the relationship between the two countries.
Senator Carney’s opinion piece ran in the Vancouver Sun after it was withdrawn from The Globe and Mail. However, it also became the subject matter of a piece written by a Globe and Mail staff reporter, who published the article under his own byline without permission, including an unauthorized quote from Senator Carney.
In her submission to the Ontario Press Council, Senator Carney wrote:
“In addition I am bringing this complaint before the Press Council because this issue affects Canadian journalists generally according to testimony presented to the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications and published in the Final Report on the Canadian News Media in June 2006.
“Witnesses before the Senate committee testified that corporations receive unfettered use of writers’ work and that newspapers are accessing stories without a writer’s knowledge or approval. Other witnesses testified that the treatment of writers by the media has worsened over the past few years.”
Click here to read the Final Report on the Canadian News Media, released in June 2006 by the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications.
The Ontario Press Council ruled that there was a breakdown in communication between the newspaper and Senator Carney. It also upheld part of Senator Carney’s complaint, suggesting that The Globe and Mail was guilty of questionable journalistic behaviour for inserting a significant quotation from an unpublished opinion article into a news story without proper attribution.