The watchdog of the public’s watchdogs:  The Quebec Press Council

By Colin McGregor  

Did you know that if you find an article in The Social Eyes or Reflet de Société false, misleading or biased, there is a place where you can go and complain? The same is true for reports on TV, radio, internet or in the written media in Quebec.

Have you been unjustly treated by a media? Or do you think that a media outlet acted without accuracy and impartiality in one of their reports?

The Quebec Press Council (Le Conseil de presse du Québec) is an independent organization that receives the public’s complaints and uses first mediation, then moral persusion, to resolve them.

The first step consists of someone not being satisfied with the fairness or the accuracy of an article or a report, and deposing a public complaint about it. You can make out your complaint in English, French, or if it’s a media in another language like Italian or Greek, the language of that media. This, according to the Council’s president, Pierre-Paul Noreau, himself a former editor of Ottawa’s French-language newspaper Le Droit. . How to file a complaint is outlined on the Council’s website at conseildepresse.qc.ca/en/complaint/procedure/.

The Council needs a complaint to be filed in order to act. But you can’t file one if you’re also suing for libel. That has to go through the courts, says Noreau. You have one month from the date that a report is filed or aired to complain.

The Council holds no judicial power. It is purely out to hold a mirror up to journalistic standards and practices. Journalists in society have the role of “the public’s guard dogs,” in Noreau’s words. But journalists have standards and professional ethics they must follow like any profession, such as police or lawyers or doctors. The word for this is “deontology,” from the Greek word “deontos,” which means duty.

Two Mortal Sins

On their website, the Council offers their Ethics Guide for journalists. A lot of it is just common sense: don’t exaggerate, don’t plagiarize, don’t practice discrimination; be fair and respectful…  Journalists are supposed to produce work embodying these qualities: accuracy, impartiality, balance, and completeness.

Beyond that, an opinion should never be presented as a fact. And any report should be in the public interest.

Noreau says that the two mortal sins of regional media are that they sometimes mix their reporting content with ads; and that they bend over backwards to please the people of their community. But “smaller local media and larger media have the same responsibilities,” according to Noreau.

Quite often, local media don’t have trained journalists on their staff; they are run by volunteers. So it’s the responsibility of the outlet’s management to ensure that standards are being maintained.   

Reflet de Société, and by extension The Social Eyes, are members ofthe Quebec Press Council.  Most Quebec media outlets are members, with one glaring exception: Québecor’s media outlets, from the Journal de Montréal and the Journal de Québec to the TVA television network, aren’t. But you can still complain about their stories to the Council. Québecor has gone before the courts to contest the right of the Council to offer opinions on their reports, as some complaint have rankled them. But the courts are clear that the Council has a right to furnish an opinion on any Quebec media, even those that are not members of the Council.   

Better Now?

Are media reports better than they were 20 years ago?

According to Noreau: “The rise of social media and the easy sharing of information we’ve seen over the last 20 years stimulates the manipulation of information. And we’ve seen the arrival on the scene of media that would rather actively support a cause or an idea than provide quality journalism. And in this sense, I think there’s been deterioration in the quality of information offered to the public.”

He adds: “The attacks on traditional media and the hatred it’s fostered among a portion of the public has elicited a positive reaction. In a large majority of the newsrooms of media interested in serving the public interest, there’s been a doubling down on providing quality work respectful of professional ethics. So in that way there’s been an improvement of journalistic practices over the last few years.”

Delays

On the international scene, new quality control certifications like the Journalism Trust Initiative and the Trust Project help more than 3 billion people to evaluate the integrity of news provided. They establish standards for world media, especially those on line.  Noreau calls these services “the reflection of our concern for respecting professional ethics even more closely in order to win back the public’s confidence.”

In 2022, the Council received 470 complaints. Of those, 230 files were opened for study. Each one of these files contained one or more complaint against the same journalistic product.

The delay in ruling on these 2022 files averaged 14 months. That’s a long time to wait for a result! Happily, the Council says it is working hard to reduce wait times in 2023. Decisions are posted on the Council’s website for all to see.

Here, then, is an example of a Council decision:

On September 29^th, 2021, Julie Guillemette filed a complaint about a photograph illustrating the article “Collision grave en Beauce : un motocycliste est décédé de ses blessures” (Serious Crash in Beauce: a Motorcyclist Succumbs to his Injuries). It was published on the Journal de Québec’s website on September 19^th, 2021.Julie Guillemette is the mother of the 16-year-old motorcyclist who perished.

She complained about the publication of a photo at the beginning of the article. The photo showed the motorcycle upended on the edge of a road surrounded by debris from the vehicle and a backpack. We can see a little puddle of blood on the ground, partly obscured by the knapsack, at the base of the damaged motorcycle.  

The bereaved mother asked: “Do you think it was necessary to show parents and frriends to what extent my son shed his blood at the accident site? The photographer took pains to zoom into the puddle of blood.”

The Council points out that shocking photos in the public interest are often published and disseminated. For example, in 2015 that famous photo of the body of young Alan Kurdi on a Turkish beach as his family attempted to flee from Syria showed the risks that migrants were ready to take. But did the Journal de Québec uselessly offend the public’s sensibilities?

The Council rendered its decision in February 2023:

“The photo did not bring to the table any supplemental or essential information that would help someone understand the events described in the article or in other accompanying photos. That’s why, in this specific instance, it was neither necessary nor useful to publish the photo that included a puddle of blood, because the other photos well illustrated the accident and this photo did not provide additional information.”

“Consequently, this photo unnecessarily offends the relatives of the young victim and any other person it may have shocked.” The Council ruled in favor of the complainant.  

A Rejected Complaint

One example of a complaint that was rejected is the following: On November 12^th, 2021, Geneviève Denis filed a complaint over the article “Nouveau procès parce qu’il est anglo” (New Trial Because He’s and Anglo) published in the Journal de Montréal on November 11^th, 2021. The complainant hated the inaccurate and sensationalist title. The journalist wasn’t targeted by the complaint because the headline is the responsibility of the media outlet, not the reporter. A copy editor usually writes headlines based on the space that has to be filled above the article.

According to the Council’s decision, the subject of the article was this: “An Anglophone drug trafficker sentenced to 15 years in jail after having been caught with the largest amount of crystal meth ever seized in Montreal has a right to a new trial, because his linguistic rights weren’t respected by the court.”  As an Anglophone, the defendant had a right to a trial in the language of his choice, but “French was quickly installed in the courtroom… A new trial, in English this time” was ordered by Judge Robert M. Mainville.    

The complainant worried about the way the headline, which she considered sensationalist, could be interpreted. She believed it could “feed the anger of certain Francophones towards Anglophones.”

But the Council pointed out that the headline didn’t distort reality nor did it abusively exaggerate the facts described in the article. It mentioned the linguistic status of the accused, an Anglophone, which was not respected during the initial trial, and the new trial ordered by the Court of Appeal.  

The decisions of the Quebec Press Council are posted on their website along with the names of the members of the complaints committee that dealt with each complaint. The committee has six members: two representatives of the general public; two journalists; and two representatives of press and media companies.

And this is how the watcdogs of the watchdogs of the public interest fulfil their mission.