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If you are a reporter in Ottawa and ask questions about Irving shipbuilding, the government will turn your name and question over to Irving who have then threatened reporters with lawsuits nationalnewswatch.com/2019/05/30/fed…
I wonder if Canadians feel that handing over journalists names and questions to a private company are a great use of taxpayer's money. Or why the federal government would ever have signed a contract with this kind of stipulation
Why is the federal govt answering to a private company on questions asked by an independent media? This government has publicly stated they support journalists doing their jobs, yet they are reporting them to a company that then uses that information to try to influence the story
Or in other cases to kill it all together. I'm all for making sure information is accurate, but it is not the government's job to alert or warn private companies when journalists ask hard questions.
I haven't had an issue with dealing with Irving for a long time, but I remember their response to me very well when I broke the story the Conservative cabinet was going to award the resupply ship rebuild to Davie.
Here is the public part of that response where they basically said my story was wrong. It wasn't. jdirving.com/BlogPage.aspx?…
Irving has just released a statement, thanks to the tweep who DMed it to me. jdirving.com/Statement-from…
There is nothing in the statement about whether they plan to no longer ask for those questions from the government btw
Irving statement: "We fully respect all journalists’ responsibility to ask questions... We also believe that all responsible reporters have an obligation to provide us with a fair opportunity to respond to stories involving our company before they are published."
I don't think any journo, for the record, has questioned whether journalists need to get the company's response. There is no obligation for the government to help a company in having an opportunity to respond at all, much less pre-publication
"We advised the reporters that we would pursue legal action only as a last resort. This is the exception, not the norm."
