Tag: media

Graeme Hamilton: Quebec seeks special status for select journalists Quebec’s Culture Minister, Christine St-Pierre, announced this week that she is pushing forward with a plan to create "a new model of regulation of Quebec media." Public consultations on the project will be held across Quebec this fall. Key to the plan would be legislation establishing the "status of professional journalist" in order to distinguish those committed to "serving the public interest" from "amateur bloggers." It is proposed that state-recognized professional journalists would enjoy unspecified "advantages or privileges" not available to the great unwashed. La Presse reported that one of the privileges Ms. St-Pierre has in mind is "better access to government sources." If St-Pierre would like to examine ways in which government might help to improve the practice of journalism, I would suggest she consider ways to avoid the kind of concentration of media ownership we have in Canada. Mitigating the negative effects of monopoly or oligopoly is definitely a legitimate concern of government. But there’s no way politicians should be anywhere near the responsibility for determining what does or doesn’t constitute journalism, how the craft should be practiced or who its elite practitioners are. If we’re to have any…