Columnist gone from Herald staff

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Ric Dolphin is no longer an employee of the Calgary Herald, confirmed the paper's editor-in-chief Peter Menzies.

Dolphin was censured by the Alberta Press Council (APC) on Feb. 4 for two columns about Native society published in the Herald that were found to lack balance, credibility and crossed the boundaries of fair comment.

Menzies would not comment on whether Dolphin was fired or left of his own volition, but did report that the columnist was gone within days of the APC decision.

Dolphin could not be reached for comment.

The APC also censured the Herald for publishing the columns, saying the paper had displayed poor judgement.

Menzies bristled at allegations from Mitzi Brown, who filed the complaint that led to the censure, that the Herald must have agreed with the columns in order to publish them.

"Many internal discussions did take place regarding the wording and editing of the two columns in question. Suffice to say I was not comfortable with them long before either Brown or Keedwell read them," Menzies told Windspeaker.

"To make any suggestion . . . that we or any of our employees are racist in thought or deed on the basis of two of 25,000 pieces of original work created and published by the Calgary Herald in the past year is not only defamatory, it is completely over the top. We do not-and this was clearly the issue with the columns in question-increase understanding by making sweeping generalizations or assumptions of motive. This newspaper has twice been honored it the past year from minority communities for its tolerance and understanding of their issues and I personally sit in on the board of Diversity Calgary."

The Calgary paper ran a column by former Assembly of First Nations communications director Maurice Switzer in rebuttal to the Dolphin columns. Menzies said he also offered that opportunity to Brown and Keedwell and they did not take advantage of the offer.

"According to the [Canadian Press] story, Ms. Brown represents a group of activists/journalists who watch the media for references they find troubling," he said. "I did not know that until I read the CP story, but now I regret that we were not able to meet a representative of that group from the southern Alberta area. Had we been able to be introduced, we might not only have found a good source for the rebuttal piece, we might have met a new regular contributor to our pages. We used Maurice, but it would be nice to have someone local contributing."

Many Native people believe the Dolphin columns reflected views held widely in mainstream Canada. They wonder if the Herald published those views to reflect their community or to influence it. Windspeaker asked Menzies what his paper's policy was in that regard. The editor-in-chief said a good paper does both.

"Bad ones have an activist agenda that assumes they are wiser than their communities and that the latter are at fault for not seeing the strength of their wisdom," he added.

Menzies was asked about his personal thoughts on the subject of a newspaper's role in a community.

"Newspapers, particularly in Canada, must be truthful and balanced through a variety of perspectives. They must also be brave and approach those ambitions without succumbing to outside pressure groups, whether they be commercial or political. This is particularly difficult in the current era, when there are no end of political lobby groups and organizations dedicated to ensuring views that they find offensive are not just shouted down in the marketplace of pubic opinion and rebutted, but eradicated from the polity through third party interventions," said Peter Menzies.

"Many groups seek to place a chill over writers and editors through unsubstantiated and unfounded but nevertheless intimidating accusations of racism and dissemination of hatred. At their best, these groups can be helpful advisers to editors to understand how some topics are read by some readers. At their worst, they are defamatory and prooundly anti-democratic and anti-free speech."

Why shouldn't people see the fact that they published the columns to be a sign that the Herald agreed with their content, he was asked.

"Well, we ran Dolphin and then we ran Switzer. We ran letters to the editor and we were always open to other, additional rebuttals. Why would people assume we agreed with any one of these opinions, if any at all, in preference to the other?" he responded.

Maurice Switzer, a former journalist with the Winnipeg Free Press who now edits the Union of Ontario Indians' Anishinabek News, said Brown was very fortunate to have her complaint to the APC upheld, based on what he has seen of the way press councils operate in Canada.

To defend Dolphin's columns on a technicality-the complaints came from out-of-province is almost as insulting as the original articles, he added.

"Either the press are concerned about being seen as fair or they aren't," he said.

"What is needed is a media-monitoring mechanism that addresses and adjudicates complaints against the print and broadcast media in a timely and non-partisan fashion."

Having the newspapers fund the press councils directly takes away from their independence, he said.

"Why can't media organizations make their financial contributions to genuine arm's-length bodies who are not seen to have any direct links to the publishers or media managers, as they do now?" Switzer added.

He also believes press councils should not wait to respond to complaints but should actively work to force a high level of performance by the press.

"Rather than being strictly reactive, these media monitors could also be pro-active-analyze media coverage of women and minorities and publish their findings to help create awareness inside and outside of the mass media industry," he said.

"The media are always talking about everyone else in society being held accountable. To whom are they accountable and who has the power to demand that accountability?"