BPC Bulletins

The attempted murder of Salman Rushdie, the internationally acclaimed author and defender of free expression, in Chautauqua, New York, on August 12, 2022, prompted writers around the world to comment.

In Canada, female journalists, especially female journalists who belong to minorities, regularly find hateful abuse directed at them on social media and elsewhere. The abuse has provoked concern and alarm in the Canadian news media and Parliament. “This is an organized campaign to threaten and intimidate journalists into silence and undermine the freedom of the press in Canada,” said Brent Jolly, the president of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ).

In Ottawa, the federal Liberal government’s group of 12 experts who considered ways and means of limiting harms on the internet finished their meetings and released their findings this summer. The Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety concluded their 10 meetings on June 10, 2022, and released their findings on July 8, 2022. The federal Liberal government is expected to use the group’s findings when it drafts a new bill to limit online harms.

In Vancouver, students at Eric Hamber Secondary School have prepared a bill to protect the interests of student journalists in British Columbia. Spencer Izen and Jessica Kim, who produce the school’s newspaper, The Griffin’s Nest, sent the Student Press Freedom Act to David Eby, B.C.’s attorney general. They hope the legislature will enact the bill into law. REPORTAGE In The Tyee, Katie Hyslop reports:

In Ontario, the Upper Canada District School Board has ordered its teachers to stop assigning Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None to students. The school board regards a few references in the mystery novel as anti-Semitic. REPORTAGE In the National Post, Jessica Mundie reports:

In Ottawa, the federal Liberal government is acting to curb anti-Semitic expression by amending the Criminal Code. The government wants to ban the “communication of statements, other than in private conversation, that wilfully promote anti-Semitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust.” The government plans to amend Section 319 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits the incitement of hatred “against an identifiable group.”