Last Monday, I posted on this blog a piece about Sun Media’s war against CBC, evidence of which is increasingly showing up in the pages of Quebecor-owned newspapers outside Quebec. Since most readers of the post would not have grown up in an environment in which the Corporation is a flaming ratings success (to say the least), I’m still kicking myself for not having pointed out that, in Quebec, Radio-Canada is a serious competitor against the Peladeau-owned TVA network for audience share. Hobbling the competition, including by examining Radio-Canada expense accounts – a staple of the glitzy entertainment industries though not of government – is therefore very much in the corporate interests of Quebecor.
Over the weekend, the matter came up at a conference of the Quebec Professional Journalists Federation.
Here’s a translation of Le Devoir’s report of that meeting:
David Patry was new to the cultural section of Le Journal de Montreal (JdeM) in early 2007, when his immediate supervisor dictated an article to him about an incident involving Pierre Karl Péladeau, the boss of the paper and of the Quebecor empire. Sylvain Lafrance, VP of the French service of CBC, had just reproached Mr. Péladeau for acting like a “punk.” The incident is now before the courts.
The editor of the cultural pages Michelle Coudé-Lord, he alleges, dictated the text to him in his office and simply imposed it on him word for word. “You can read Michelle Coudé-Lord’s style in it,” he said during an emotional intervention at the meeting. “And, at the conclusion of the discussion she said it would be out of the question for me not to have my byline on the article. I agreed to that.”
A few days later, he says, a column by La Presse’s Louise Cousineau dealing with the fight between the media giants led to another demand, in an e-mail from editor-in-chief Dany Doucet. The e-mail, riddled with insults, was read out at the meeting by Mr. Patry, demanded that he interview Ms. Cousineau about the portrayal of her in Radio-Canada’s satirical program, Et Dieu créa Laflaque. This time, the young reporter refused the order, explaining that he was a “journalist and not a Quebecor soldier.”
At that point, his JdeM colleagues advised him to “choose his fights carefully and to make pretend.” And he did just that by pretending to phone the protagonists, and later to tell his editors that he’d come up with nothing….
“I’ve cited some examples that are still current,” Patry said, “I could have added many more. And I only worked there for three years…. There’s also lots of stuff written by journalists without being asked by the boss. They know what’s expected of them.”
In my blog post last week, I did point out that most Quebeckers understand that Quebecor-owned media properties overtly seek to advance corporate interests. Audiences outside Quebec would be well-advised to keep their eyes and ears open to this sort of development.
