Press freedom advocates slam media restrictions in Vancouver tent removal – BC | 24CA News
Press freedom advocates are condemning the restrictions imposed on journalists protecting the eviction of unhoused individuals from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on Wednesday.
The Vancouver Police Department, tasked with overseeing the protection of the tent elimination course of, tweeted at first of the operation that “limited public access” could be in impact, together with the corralling of journalists into an exclusion zone at Columbia and East Hastings road.
A single digital camera could be allowed to maneuver freely, police stated, filming on behalf of all media retailers and sharing the footage — a “pool camera,” because it’s known as within the trade.
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Press freedom advocates stated Wednesday police don’t have any proper to limit journalists to a single pool digital camera or decide which media outlet will get to movie, nor have they got the appropriate to limit journalist motion in a public place, significantly with out an injunction order.
“They’re just simply telling journalists they can’t come through and that should concern us,” stated El Jones, senior fellow with the Centre for Free Expression and an assistant professor within the Department of Political and Canadian Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax.
“What are they doing that they don’t want journalists to see?”
Courts have dominated that police shouldn’t arrange ‘exclusion zones’ that forestall journalist entry, as journalists ought to determine what’s newsworthy, in keeping with a authorized information on the rights of journalists in Canada revealed by the Committee To Protect Journalists and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“(Journalists) should not be prevented from pursuing stories by police, so long as they are not interfering with police duties,” it states.
Jones expressed grave concern concerning the security of weak teams, together with Indigenous and unhoused individuals, who don’t have a press cross to guard them — and for a short interval on Wednesday morning — an unfettered cohort of journalists there to movie and fulfill their function as watchdogs.
Without unrestricted entry, Jones stated a journalist’s capability to inform either side of the story is restricted, and in lots of circumstances, has resulted in overreliance on the police narrative of occasions.
Asked concerning the restrictions at Wednesday press convention, Vancouver Police Chief Const. Adam Palmer didn’t supply a proof.
“There’s lots of people down there with smartphones taking video, and all kinds of coverage right now with mainstream media and also social media,” he stated.
“So it’s just not opened up as a free for all where 50 people can come in with television cameras, but there is a pool camera set up there and you can monitor what’s going on.”
The police division’s spokesperson, Sgt. Steve Addison, later stated the exclusion zone between Columbia and East Hastings was in impact for lower than an hour in whole, and it was crucial for “everybody’s safety and privacy,” as the world was filled with shifting police automobiles and vans.
“Large trucks moving around, deploying, heavy machinery, police cars, lots of vehicles moving around blocking off the street — we simply weren’t going to create a situation we couldn’t control,” he informed Global News.
Addison stated all journalists had been permitted to roam and movie freely, “once we had control of the area,” together with the Global News crew that had early entry because the designated pool digital camera. Early entry was additionally granted to different retailers, together with The Canadian Press and a CBC reporter, he added.
“If you’re suggesting that there was an effort to restrict visibility or restrict transparency, it’s absolutely not the case … we wanted to get people in so they could see.”
Addison didn’t cite any particular authorized provision that allowed police to dictate when journalists should use a pool digital camera in a public place, however stated the VPD’s “responsibility was to create a safe space.”
Asked what authorized justification existed for barring journalists from filming on the sidewalk — a secure distance from shifting autos –even very briefly within the morning, he stated:
“I think I’ve answered that question.”
Police restriction of journalist motion through the elimination of tent encampments has taken place earlier than.
In July 2021, Toronto Police blocked a number of journalists from accessing Trinity Bellwoods Park because it was cleared of momentary buildings. They additionally arrested The Canadian Press photographer Chris Young for trespassing whereas he coated the story, and later launched him with out costs.
In August, police additionally threatened Halifax journalists with arrest if they didn’t transfer from an elevated platform the place they had been filming the dissembling of tents and buildings.
Given that Vancouver reporters had been allowed free motion and entry inside in an hour, Canadian Association of Journalists president Brent Jolly stated the Vancouver police’s temporary exclusion zone created “additional chaos” when it was “completely unwarranted and unneeded in the first place.”
“I think what we’re seeing here is almost a normalizing of restrictions of public access in a public place,” he stated in a Wednesday interview.
“They used the typical words, ‘safety’ and ‘privacy’ to limit public access, but those, nowadays, are such meaningless words that’s it’s sort of a euphemism for ‘no journalists allowed.’”
Jolly stated many journalists are skilled in protecting giant protests and conflicts, and will be trusted to deal with themselves responsibly, safely and ethically in a dynamic scenario like an encampment elimination.
Jones additional added that demanding a pool digital camera as a situation of early protection places journalists in a compromising place the place they’ve to decide on between entry to a crucial public curiosity story and their ethics.
“All press has the right to access these spaces and to document, so that is a worrying tactic,” she stated.
Whether one agrees with the elimination of tents on East Hastings Street or not, she stated individuals should help the liberty of the press to cowl that occasion with out limitation “as a bedrock democratic principle.”
