Home / BCCLA call on RCMP to get out of the editorial and media policy business

BCCLA call on RCMP to get out of the editorial and media policy business

The BC Civil Liberties Association is calling on the RCMP in Northern BC to get out of the editorial and media policy business. The BCCLA has received allegations that the Terrace RCMP are using RCMP letterhead to advance the business interests of a preferred local television news station, while cutting off their competition, a local news website, from press release distribution.

“The RCMP has a job to police impartially and to share public safety information with media outlets impartially, even if those outlets may be critical of some aspects of their work,” said Lindsay Lyster, President of the BCCLA. “Media are a check and balance on police, and their role is constitutionally protected from police interference. Interference can include police advancing the private business interests of one outlet while revoking privileges from the other.”

The editor of the news website Terrace Daily Online, a widely read online local news source in Terrace alleges that RCMP in Terrace advised him that an article which lampooned the local mayor and RCMP Inspector had offended the force. The editor also alleged that the RCMP in Terrace told him that TerraceDaily.ca would not receive news releases until they changed their editorial policies to give satirical stories that criticized the RCMP and local politicians lower prominence.

On August 16, 2012, media reported that the Inspector for the RCMP in Terrace had written a letter on RCMP letterhead in support of Astral Media merging with Bell Canada, stating that the RCMP “ask the Commission [CRTC] to approve the transfer of control of Astral [media] to BCE [Bell Canada].”

“The RCMP may well prefer the coverage of one media outlet to the other,” says Lyster, “but retaliation for negative coverage by withholding public information is not acceptable, nor is using an impartial public platform to advocate for the private interests of media outlets that provide favourable coverage. We are calling on the RCMP to review this situation, reinstate the Terrace Daily’s status as a media outlet that receives RCMP press releases, and to correct the record around the force’s apparent support of a private media merger.”

Click here to read more information about TerraceDaily.ca >>
Click here to read the Terrace RCMP letter in support of Astral media >>

CIVIL LIBERTIES CAN’T PROTECT THEMSELVES