The author of an unsigned federal directive asking that journalists submit stories for fact-checking has been identified as a spokeswoman for the Department of Health, Maryse Durette. Durrette, a former CBC employee, whose identity was uncovered by Blacklock’s Reporter through Access to Information, emailed an unsigned Department of Health directive to five journalists regarding a Blacklock’s story published January 19 concerning drug decriminalization. The January 24 directive complained journalists were “talking about Health Canada and never contacted us,” and that all news stories concerning the health department should first be submitted to staff to ensure publishers were not “purposefully reproducing inaccuracies and misleading your readership.”“Readers deserve accurate reporting,” the directive stated. “A respectable reporter goes to the source for reporting.”“Standards, I am sure, rely on more sound principles than quoting inaccuracies from fringe media, like going to the source of what you are talking about,” it said. Journalists must ensure “your coverage comes from real journalism work.”Durette is one of ten communications staff working at the department’s Ottawa office. Since 2018, Health Canada has issued 269 “correction” notices to media according to a 2023 Inquiry Of Ministry tabled in the Commons. The health department claimed factual errors at the Globe & Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, Hamilton Spectator, Winnipeg Free Press, Whitehorse Daily Star, Medicine Hat News, and others.Compulsory government “fact-checking” is unconstitutional under a Depression-era Supreme Court of Canada ruling, Blacklock’s noted. In 1938, the court struck an Alberta law that mandated all newspapers publish official “corrections” and provide a right of rebuttal to critical articles under threat of $20,000 fines.In May, Sen. Paula Simons, who is a former Edmonton Journal columnist, told the Senate Transport and Communications Committee that government had no business “fact-checking” newsrooms. “I come from Alberta,” said Simons. “In the 1930s the government of the day passed what it called the Accurate News And Information Act which gave the government the power of rebuttal and the power to basically fact-check and correct anything the government believed was inaccurate. The courts properly struck that down as unconstitutional.”“I am always concerned about what happens if someone you don’t like or whose opinions you don’t share suddenly has the power to regulate, even at arm’s length, what is said in the press,” said Simons. “Having been a journalist, lots of people think there are factual errors in the newspaper that are just things they don’t like.”
