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voice for the voiceless, being independent of faction and being a forum for the community to talk to itself. Ultimately, he added, journalists' first allegiance is not to an employer or to shareholders, but to the com-mimity they serve.
Hackett outlined the paths of recourse available to the public in cases where they feel the media has been imbalanced. These include the press coimdl and the Competition Act, both of which he deemed ineffective, libel laws, which are applicable only in individual cases, and the Internet, which he said is losing its ability to play a revolutionary role because it is slowly becoming dominated by the same corporate powers that control traditional media, such as Time-Warner,
Weintraub took the media to task for stereotyping minority groups, characterizing Hon-durans as drug dealers and Tamils as terrorists, without successfully illimMnating the diversity and contributions of these commvmities. He also claimed that accused war criminals are often depicted in the media as confused and harmless old Canadians victimized by an aggressive prosecutor.
Parts of the forum were enlivened by disputes between the panelists and oonfix)ntations with audience members.
While the academics on the panel maintained that censorship is rampant in Canadian journalism, the only working joumdist on the panel, Yaffe, a colimanist and former long-time reporter, said she had never experienced censorship from her editors or publishers in her decades of journalism.
She has never met Conrad Black, she said, and she has never had anyone but readers and her mother take her to task for tilings she has written.
Hackett replied that Yaffe's lack of experience with censorship comes fixim the fact that she shares fundamental beliefs with the owner of her newspaper, an assertion Yaffe abruptly characterized as "^.S."
In a moment of levity, Rosen-stiel observed that, judging by the evening's events, what was "B.S." was the stereotype of the polite Canadian.
Things heated up again in the question and answer session when Vancouver Courier colvun-nist Greg Felton said he had been muzzled by higher-ups in Black's publishing empire, which owns his newspaper.
In November 1998, the editor and the publisher of ^e Courier confirmed with the Bulletin that Felton had been barred from expressing his opinions on Middle
East politics.
"His empire has put a muzzle on me," Felton told the forum, referring to Black. "My job has been threatened on two occasions because the Jewish lobby in this country is very powerful."
Felton asked Simces how she could argue that views in opposition to CJC policy should be censored.
Simces replied that her oi^gani-zation has the right to contest views she called hurtful. She added that she didn't want to turn the forum into a debate.
has li^dn threatened
ons because the lobfiyirithlscounhv Is veit powerful."
Another joiunalist contended that the CJC had put undue pressiut! on a local radio station to prevent a guest from participating in a talk show, rather than accept an invitation for a CJC representative to participate in the program, Weintraub said the journalist could produce no evidence that CJC had exerted pressure to prevent the episode from airing.
Approximately 150 people attended the event, including journalists, activists and representatives of various multicultural organizations.
The forum succeeded in raising a host of issues that could easily have expanded to fit a much kmger format than the two-hour event iJ-lowed. The questions raised by the audience could also have been more deeply explored in a longer forum, though their answers may have been no less elusive.
Many in the audience confirmed Rosenstiers initial supposition that there is great (ynidsm about journalistic practices. Yaffe's suggestion that some stories are not covered because they are difficult to translate to lay readers led to calls of derision and accusations that she was insulting the intelligence of readers. Her argument that letters to the editor are a proper way to respond to disagreeable ideas was ridiculed by audience members who contended that papers would not publish views that contradicted their own.
One of the thorniest issues -the matter of censorship - was only addressed in passing.
Near the end of the forum, Hackett said that some European jurisdictions have legislated equal time for alternative viewpoints.
"We haven't talked about this as an alternative to censorship," he said. □
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