egarrard
01-22-2004, 11:38 PM
No offense, but this (http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CANADA_REPORTER?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME) was pretty surprising to me. I thought privacy was tightly protected up there. At least, that was the impression I've been getting from the discussions in here. What's the real story?
Canada's prime minister spoke out Thursday on a police search of a reporter's home and office, saying press freedom must be protected but it was also important to track the source of a leak of government information.
Canadian police on Wednesday searched through the personal effects of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill who wrote about a Syrian-born Canadian suspected of links to al-Qaida.
The search drew harsh criticism from Gordon Fisher, president of news and information for CanWest Global Communications Corp., which owns the newspaper. He said the official action "smacks of a police-state mentality."
But Paul Martin, speaking in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum, said that finding the source of the leak was more important that who information was given to.
"What is of interest, should be of interest to everybody, is who leaked that information, not the journalist that received it."
Canada's prime minister spoke out Thursday on a police search of a reporter's home and office, saying press freedom must be protected but it was also important to track the source of a leak of government information.
Canadian police on Wednesday searched through the personal effects of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill who wrote about a Syrian-born Canadian suspected of links to al-Qaida.
The search drew harsh criticism from Gordon Fisher, president of news and information for CanWest Global Communications Corp., which owns the newspaper. He said the official action "smacks of a police-state mentality."
But Paul Martin, speaking in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum, said that finding the source of the leak was more important that who information was given to.
"What is of interest, should be of interest to everybody, is who leaked that information, not the journalist that received it."