Dolphin, Herald rebuked by press council

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The Calgary Herald erred in publishing two Ric Dolphin columns containing negative comments about Native people, the Alberta Press Council (APC) ruled on Feb. 7.

Dolphin wrote that reserves were "nests of hopelessness . . . the road to hell . . . and a society in shambles." There were many other statements in the columns that the complainants found offensive.

Complaints to the 16-member APC were filed by Mitzi Brown of Toronto and Sue Keedwell of Kitchener, Ont.

In its decision, the APC stated "Dolphin's assertions in the columns relied heavily upon nameless sources, including a cab driver, a waitress and a medic who were credited with profound insights and observations about the entire Native community. The columns in question lacked balance, credibility and crossed the boundaries of fair comment."

The decision also stated "The Calgary Herald displayed poor judgement in publishing columns containing racial comments that are primarily substantiated by unverified nameless sources."

The vote to censure the CanWest-owned daily newspaper and the columnist was 10 to two. As a member of the APC, the Herald is required to publish the decision in its pages within a reasonable time.

Eight of the 13 press council members who were present for the decision, including the chairman, are current or former journalists.

They first dealt with motions dealing with out-of-province complaints. The motion before the council was that complaints filed from outside Alberta would be considered at the discretion of the council's executive committee.

Paul Cashman, the representative on council for the Edmonton Journal, another CanWest paper, welcomed the suggestion.

"We want to be responsive to our readers," he said, "but we are worried about fringe groups that really have no connection to our community."

Doyle MacKinnon, an editor with the Lethbridge Herald and a new arrival to Alberta, disagreed.

"We've chosen to expand our audience-we don't have to have our Internet sites-and we have to be responsible for that," he said.

The motion carried 12 to one with MacKinnon the lone dissenter.

Two-and-a-half hours of discussion then led to a decision to allow the complaint filed by Brown and to disallow the complaint filed by Keedwell.

When it was time to deal with the complaints, the Calgary Herald representative was excused from the meeting. A three-person sub-committee that first examined the complaints presented two draft press releases for discussion. The committee wrote the drafts as if both complaints had been upheld as it had recommended.

The Brown complaint was dealt with first. After some discussion, the words "hate driven and racist" were replaced by the word "discriminatory" in the final version of the council's summary of the decision on Brown's complaint. The sub-committee had also included a paragraph in its draft that said the columns "reflected racial discrimination, Native stereotyping and sweeping generalizations about all Native people."

That section was removed from the final version.

When Keedwell's draft decision was presented, after the vote on Brown's complaint had already been completed, the council found the wording to be wholly unacceptable. It was sent back for a re-write over the lunch break, but the second draft was not any more popular.

Several members noted that Keedwell had used the word "reported" in her complaint. They pointed out that Dolphin was a columnist and not a reporter.

Two members stated that they believed Sue Keedwell didn't appreciate the difference between a news report and a column, where the writer's opinions are expressed. With that as the main argument against it, the motion to hear the complaint was voted down nine to two with one abstention.

Reached by telephone a few days after the decision, Mitzi Brown said she was surprised when she received an e-mail from the press council saying her complaint had been upheld.

"Very surprised. When I first got the e-mail, I thought 'O yeah.' You know? I didn't really realize what it meant. But then I called a friend who understands the newspaper business. And I said, 'What does that mean?' And he said, 'It means you won.' So it was really sweet because generally Native people don't get heard," she said. "So I think it is a victory and it sends a clear message that we're not going to put up with hate. I mean, every other group there is won't put up with it. Why should we?"

She hadn't expected the complaint to receive serious consideration because, when she filed her complaint, the Alberta Press Council only wanted to talk to the fact that she was not an Alberta resident, she said.

"I think it was a smokescreen. It think it was a distraction away from the actual article and the quotes in the article. The issue was made into, 'Oh, she doesn't live in Alberta.' And they said that some of the language was loose," she said. "That was their response to the complaint of the hate, that it was loose writing and bad judgement. I think it's worse than that. I think it's overt racism. If you replace all the references to Native in that article, if you put 'white' or 'Jewish,' then it becomes clearer how awful it is. It would be called hate, but because it's against Aboriginal people it's not seen that way."

She said the fact the columns survived the editing process is a sign that others at the paper may hold the same views.

"It wasn't seen as a deviant view, as 'out there.' It was seen as the norm. And that's very troubling to me as an Aboriginal woman and journalist," she said.

The 33-year-old Labrador Inuit runs Native Career Magazine online. She's also a member of Native Media Watch, a group of Native journalists who monitor the mainstream press for inaccurate or racist portrayals of Native people.

The group has recently filed another complaint against the Vancouver Province, another CanWest paper.

Brown noted that few mainstream papers carried the Canadian Press wire service report about the decsion.

"I'm curious about why this wasn't picked up by the mainstream networks. They sure were quick to jump on David Ahenakew. That frustrates me," she said.

Don Weisbeck, the mayor of Brooks, Alta., and Windspeaker were the only spectators at the APC meeting. Weisbeck and his council had taken on Ric Dolphin over an earlier column about their town and Keedwell had asked him to attend the meeting on her behalf.

Weisbeck had stated after an Oct. 4 meeting of the APC that he believed the out-of-province issue was being used as an excuse to not deal with the complaint.

"To be fair, I was pleasantly surprised last week that they did address it. They didn't use that motion as an excuse to not address it," he said. "So I was pleased with how they did it and I was pleased with the outcome because obviously there is a limit to how far someone can go and Mr. Dolphin has gone beyond any sort of social mores in terms of behavior and fairness.

"You can't hide behind an opinion piece to literally discriminate against a particular race or group and to, in effect in my view, try to incite those kind of feelings towards a particular racial group. So I have to give the press council some credit. I mean it was 10 to two. It wasn't unanimous, but it was solid."

Dolphin could not be reached for comment.