Who Can I Trust?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am an enthusiastic supporter of The Toronto Star. The paper's investigative reports, like no others, have had real impact, influencing decisions at the highest levels of power locally, provincially and federally; its dogged pursuit of the truth has always impressed me deeply. The Star has consistetly demonstrated and embodied the role good journalism plays in a healthy democracy.

And yet now there are disturbing allegations by journalist Paul Watson, allegations so serious that the veteran reporter has resigned from the paper. While many of the details are far from clear, The Star, which denies all of his assertions, certainly appears to have acted very oddly.

An extensive interview conducted by Jesse Brown at Canadaland reveals that Watson, who had been on the lead exploration ship, CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier, last September and wrote a series of articles on the expedition that found the Franklin flagship the HMS Erebus, was stymied by his editors when he was investigating the exaggerated role accorded to the Royal Canadian Geographic Society and its CEO, John Geiger:

So there was a [media] blackout [after the discovery] of roughly two days, could’ve been three. Remember, I was on the lead vessel in this successful search last September, the Coast Guard icebreaker. I was living with and working beside the experts who were searching for these ships. And because of that blackout, a person who’s the CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) - a former Globe and Mail Editorial Board Chief - a journalist - was able to step into that power vacuum and answer journalists' questions in a way that I immediately saw people [involved with the effort] react to in a way that made them deeply angry because they believed that he was distorting facts, stating untruths and ruining the historical record that they were working so hard to create. And that was just a moment way back in September.

A variety of distortion and untruths emerged, so much so that Jim Basillie attempted to intervene, as reported in The Globe:

In late April, philanthropist Jim Balsillie, whose Arctic Research Foundation was instrumental in the search, sent a letter to Leona Aglukkaq, the Minister of the Environment, saying he was “troubled that Canadian history is not being presented accurately” in a documentary that aired on CBC’s The Nature of Things that month. He was upset that the program “creates new and exaggerated narratives for the exclusive benefit of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society.”

Mr. Balsillie said he was dispirited that the Prime Minister and public agencies seemed to take a back seat. “Government partners, in particular the Government of Nunavut, Canadian Hydrographic Service and the Canadian Coast Guard are shown as supporting players to RCGS and [the Russian vessel] Akademik Sergey Vavilov when the opposite is true.”

Apparently, for reasons that are not yet clear, the Harper government ignored the letter and made no effort to correct the historical record.

The trouble for Watson started when he attempted to question Geiger, who was awarded a Polar Medal for what Governor-General David Johnston’s office called his “essential role in the success of the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition” and who, according to Watson,

has access to the Prime Minister’s office .... [has] been photographed in close situations around campfires in the Arctic with Stephen Harper ... [and] has political connections.

Within three hours of sending an email to Geiger, Watson was contacted late at night by a Star editor who wanted to know hat he was working on. Fearing Geiger might be tipped off as to the kinds of questions he wanted to ask him, Watson revealed little to the editor, a decision that ultimately led to a 'six-week reporting ban.'

There is much more to the story that is discussed in the Canadaland interview. But for me, what makes it so significant are its implications, implications so severe that Watson resigned his position. Here are his own words to explain what is at stake:

The people who’ve been looking for these ships, they’re really hardworking federal civil servants, archeologists and others who know the truth of how those ships were found and had every right to tell that truth themselves. But because of the country we live in, and because of the government we live under, that message could only come from Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself.

There is an open fear in our federal civil service and I’m sure it applies to other capitals across the country as this phenomenon grows and our democracy weakens. There is a fear among these civil servants that if they stand up and tell the truth, that they will lose their jobs because the politically connected have more power than the truth.

This is a symptom of a broader disease that is eating away at the core of our democracy. Experts on climate, on medicine, on things that are central to our society are being silenced by a government that does favours for the politically connected. And that is just very dangerous for our future.

That, more than anything else, should make this a story worth following.