Public access to government information in Canada is defined by the laws at a federal, provincial and municipal level that assert public rights to disclosure. There are many exceptions to these rights and, more than three decades into the laws, there are few legal precedents to clarify the degree of rights.
For journalists, these laws fuel conduct in the field. They guide the degree to which journalists can claim records should be publicly disclosed. Canada's laws are largely considered outmoded in an era of greater pressure for institutional electronic release of records.
This week the
Supreme Court of Canada declined to pronounce freedom of information as a constitutional right. Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin and Justice Rosalie Abella wrote in their decision that there is no "general right" to access to information.
The ruling
does leave open the possibility to strengthen rights, though. It said future appeals might be able to argue that certain suppression of information constitutes an abrogation of free speech rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
When I suggested earlier that newspaper Web sites are entering a period of competing for market share, colleague Bill Dunphy in Hamilton thundered in that, well, duh, we've been doing that for decades.
I think I was echoing the State of the Media report from the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism that indicated the audience for online news might be peaking.
But Bill raises another significant point: "Information, news, is becoming, or perhaps already has become, a commodity - and the implications that has for our ability to carry out the kind of journalism we love, and our communities need, are frightening."
I think many news managers share that view, that information has long since become highly commoditized and that the rewards will only come in the years ahead to those striving for original or contextual content.
I'm interested in what people might have thought about the Montreal Gazette's venture this week into an edition of contextual and analytical content --- a simplistic description might be a newspaper without a typical frame of news. Certainly the European papers are becoming "viewspapers."
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