Journalists shouldn’t fear jail time for doing their job

Chances are small — vanishingly small, really — that one day when you’re at your workplace a team of Mounties will arrive to arrest you, hustle you away and summarily toss you into jail for two or three days. All just for doing your job.

That is what happened to two journalists who have been covering the ongoing protest over a proposed natural gas pipeline on Indigenous land near Prince George, B.C. Amber Bracken, an award-winning photojournalist from Edmonton, and Michael Toledano, a documentary producer from Toronto, were arrested at their workplace — the site of a “resistance camp” set up by members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.

Bracken, on assignment for the news website The Narwhal, and Toledano were covering the long-running and complicated battle over Coastal GasLink’s plan to build a pipeline through Wet’suwet’en First Nation land.

Both were arrested after the RCMP moved to enforce a court injunction to remove protesters. Both claim they told the police that they were journalists.

Their incarceration touched a nerve. The Canadian Association of Journalists issued an open letter to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino condemning the RCMP. More than 40 organizations — from big mainstream outfits to new media outlets — signed it.

“The arrests of Bracken and Toledano are just the latest instances of Canadian police detaining journalists who are simply trying to do their job,” it said. The letter also cited the role news organizations have in reconciliation with Indigenous people, saying journalists “have a unique and express duty to bear witness.”

After his release Toledano told CBC News “Canadians should know that journalists in this country can be arrested and incarcerated if they’re telling a story the RCMP don’t like.”

There is certainly precedent for that view. Take what happened to Justin Brake, a reporter for an online news site who was arrested by RCMP while covering a protest in 2016 at the Muskrat Falls hydro project in Newfoundland. Brake faced a one-two legal punch: a civil case and a criminal case. The civil case fizzled when the Newfoundland Supreme Court threw it out, saying independent reporting on Indigenous issues was crucial to reconciliation. The criminal case was dropped more than a year later.

The RCMP’s media strategy was on display this summer at the Fairy Creek blockade on Vancouver Island, arresting protesters who blocked logging in an old growth forest. A coalition of media outlets along with the Canadian Association of Journalists demanded reporters have access to the protests. Again, the court agreed with the journalists.

The arrests of Bracken and Toledano put the spotlight on the national police force, but it is not alone in its heavy handed approach to journalists. This summer Toronto police were under scrutiny for how they handled — or mishandled — journalists when they dismantled the Trinity Bellwoods Park encampment for homeless people. Reporters and photographers complained about being kept away from where the camp was being torn down, unable to record what was happening. One photojournalist was handcuffed and arrested.

The relationship between police and journalists is always fragile, sometimes fraught and increasingly frayed. Police argue they are just doing their job when they try to corral reporters and photographers.

Journalists can argue they are doing the same when they venture into protests and blockades. They should be able to do that without fearing that they are going to end up in jail cell for simply doing their job.