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The police in Edmonton have been doing this to the press since the 90s when they wiretapped newspaper and TV reporters working on a story of police corruption with ties to organized crime. But that was just the old fashioned wire taps, and there have been many corruption scandals since. There is no press freedom in Edmonton and all communication should be considered compromised by the police there unless there is a cryptographically secure way with a Certificate Authority not controlled within Canadian or US borders.

It's not internet access that's being censored, but speech. Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right, at least according to the UN.

"Freedom of Speech" standards vary wildly from country to country, with most countries having laws that would be considered terribly restrictive in the United States. The US and UK have quite different standards for what speech is considered "acceptable", and libel lawsuits are often filed in the UK for speech that is perfectly fine in the US. Sweden bans "offensive" speech (a Swedish pastor was recently jailed for "hate speech" for calling homosexuality "abnormal"), while Canada routinely bans the publishing of material, even if the material is on the public record.

Most of you who aren't Canadian aren't aware of the severe restrictions on free speech in Canada. For one, "hate" speech is restricted, i.e. you cannot disparage a particular identifiable group. This is why Ernst Zundel was just deported to Germany for spreading "hate" and Jim Keegstra was convicted of spreading hate. The reality is that, while they should have lost their jobs, they shouldn't have been arrested and convicted for saying what they did.

Even more significant is the freedom of the press, where journalists had their personal files seized unilaterally by police who were trying to investigate a "leak" in their department due to corruption. At least those reporters in the US who refused to identify their sources probably still have what they have.

The reality, however, is that the only cure for the negative aspects of free speech is more free speech. As long as someone is not specifically attempting to incite violence or other acts of crime against an individual, or is commiting libel, they should be able to say whatever they want. A great article on the erosion of free speech rights in Canada is available here.

One thing is certain - even though the US may not be to many /.ers the most welcoming place for free speech lately, there are other places that are far worse.

We already have people to decide who is and is not a journalist - for example, the Canadian Association of Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, and so on. This is how real journalists get press passes, by the way - they join the associations, which check their credentials, and issue passes.

The Canadian Assn. of Journalists (CAJ): the only requirement for membership is filling out a form and paying a fee. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) membership is through national organizations which are members of the IFJ Looking at the member organizations listed as members of the IFJ, all are labor unions. The primary purpose of unions is to protect the union members from competition and poor working conditions. None of the IFJ members from the US have codes of ethics or conduct readily available for public inspection. Contrast that to engineering societies, they have their codes of ethics/conduct easily discoverable. Here at the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET) one can find a list of member engineering societies. Checking a few of them reveals that membership is only possible for Baccalaureate of Science: Engineering (B.S.E.) degree holders or students in B.S.E. programs. One will also discover that codes of conduct and ethics are readily available to the public. Here are some more journalist orgs but these have codes of ethics/conduct for members Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has a code but membership is open to those being paid as journalists, those retired from being paid as journalists, those who agree with the goals of the SPJ, those who live with SPJ professional members, and under-/post graduate students. International Journalists' Network (IJNet) membership is through national organizations but they do have a very prominent link to access the Codes of Ethics of member organizations.

I doubt this 'blogger' is a member of any professional journalism organizations. I doubt they have any formal training, or indeed any training whatsoever. I'm curious as to how 'journalism' can be confused with some guy writing something and distributing it to the masses. If I print flyers and distribute them on the street corner, am I a journalist? No. If I tape posters to streetlamps and hydro poles, am I a journalist? No.

Yes, you are. Are you a paid journalist? No. Are you a professional journalist? No. Does being a "professional" journalist guarantee that you will have training, formal or otherwise? No. Unlike medicine, engineering, law, and architecture to name just a few professions, journalism has no licensing requirement and no standards for becoming a journalist other than to be paid to be a journalist.

Journalism is a profession that requires both skill and responsibility. To call bloggers 'journalists' is akin to calling an MCSE an 'engineer'. The word is far from the truth, and if being called a journalist requires nothing more than a voice, then the single most important career possible in an open and democratic society suddenly means nothing. When a loud voice and a sense of self-righteousness can be considered equal to understanding of ethics, unbiased reporting, and facility with the language, then 'journalism' is suddenly just a word, and all the respect it once deserved is lost forever.

Ideally, journalism is a profession that requires skill, responsibility, ethical behavior and impartiality. Journalists, however, have no licensing process. Engineers do. AFAICT, in order to qualify as a journalist, one need only be hired to perform such duties. There are no formal requirements of edu

We already have people to decide who is and is not a journalist - for example, the Canadian Association of Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, and so on. This is how real journalists get press passes, by the way - they join the associations, which check their credentials, and issue passes.

The Canadian Assn. of Journalists (CAJ): the only requirement for membership is filling out a form and paying a fee. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) membership is through national organizations which are members of the IFJ Looking at the member organizations listed as members of the IFJ, all are labor unions. The primary purpose of unions is to protect the union members from competition and poor working conditions. None of the IFJ members from the US have codes of ethics or conduct readily available for public inspection. Contrast that to engineering societies, they have their codes of ethics/conduct easily discoverable. Here at the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET) one can find a list of member engineering societies. Checking a few of them reveals that membership is only possible for Baccalaureate of Science: Engineering (B.S.E.) degree holders or students in B.S.E. programs. One will also discover that codes of conduct and ethics are readily available to the public. Here are some more journalist orgs but these have codes of ethics/conduct for members Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has a code but membership is open to those being paid as journalists, those retired from being paid as journalists, those who agree with the goals of the SPJ, those who live with SPJ professional members, and under-/post graduate students. International Journalists' Network (IJNet) membership is through national organizations but they do have a very prominent link to access the Codes of Ethics of member organizations.

I doubt this 'blogger' is a member of any professional journalism organizations. I doubt they have any formal training, or indeed any training whatsoever. I'm curious as to how 'journalism' can be confused with some guy writing something and distributing it to the masses. If I print flyers and distribute them on the street corner, am I a journalist? No. If I tape posters to streetlamps and hydro poles, am I a journalist? No.

Yes, you are. Are you a paid journalist? No. Are you a professional journalist? No. Does being a "professional" journalist guarantee that you will have training, formal or otherwise? No. Unlike medicine, engineering, law, and architecture to name just a few professions, journalism has no licensing requirement and no standards for becoming a journalist other than to be paid to be a journalist.

Journalism is a profession that requires both skill and responsibility. To call bloggers 'journalists' is akin to calling an MCSE an 'engineer'. The word is far from the truth, and if being called a journalist requires nothing more than a voice, then the single most important career possible in an open and democratic society suddenly means nothing. When a loud voice and a sense of self-righteousness can be considered equal to understanding of ethics, unbiased reporting, and facility with the language, then 'journalism' is suddenly just a word, and all the respect it once deserved is lost forever.

Ideally, journalism is a profession that requires skill, responsibility, ethical behavior and impartiality. Journalists, however, have no licensing process. Engineers do. AFAICT, in order to qualify as a journalist, one need only be hired to perform such duties. There are no formal requirements of edu

This is about deliberately soliciting proprietary information without concerning for the ethics/standards of journalism.

The ethics/standards of journalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalistic_standard s
http://www.spj.org/ethics_code.asp
Canadian Journalism Standards:
http://www.caj.ca/principles/principles-statement- 2002.htm
European standards:
http://www.uta.fi/ethicnet/

Did he perform proper fact checking/checking his sources? No. Did he look at balancing right to privacy versus the public interest? Was it really in the public interest? No.

Journalists routinely make decisions not to publish information which involve national security or Police stings.

Do you see serious journalist publishing trade secrets? No.

The CBC, on the other hand, is far more balanced between right wing and left wing than you are making them out to be. For example, when the Current interviews someone on the left or the right, they ask hard ball questions, not softball lofters like they do on the National Post. It is for this reason that I myself have gone in the reverse direction from you, I've switched to the CBC to get some actual balance in my news coverage.

Read the truth about Bowling for Columbine. As much as folks would like to deify Michael Moore, he's a flat-out manipulator and liar (yes, just like the "evil" right wingers he attacks, there's nobody innocent in partisan political arenas).

I'm also not too proud of Canada when I see stuff like this.

Here's the proof... Here's more proof... Here's even more proof... Seriously, don't delude yourself. Canada is not by any stretch of the imagination the utopia you imagine it to be. Not when the government continually grabs its cash, surveils its media, and assaults citizens protesting peacefully with no reasonable warning to leave.

We ran an article about blogs, participatory journalism and emerging technology from a panel discussion at this year's annual Canadian Association of Journalists (inter)national conference.

The panelists agreed that blogging and other forms of particpatory journalism don't automatically qualify as journalism, but they did say that it CAN be journalism if journalistic standards and principles are applied.

One of the more interesting comments was from technology journalist David Akin, who said that experiments that enlist blogging citizens with camera phones to send their photos to news sites may be cool and fun and interesting, but it's not news by longshot, mainly because they lack the professional journalistic skills to identify what qualifies as news.

While the panelists agreed that blogging and moblogging doesn't automatically qualify as journalism, they did say that it CAN be journalism if journalistic principles are applied.

One of the more interesting comments was from technology journalist David Akin, who said that experiments that enlist moblogging citizens with camera phones to send their photos to news sites may be cool and fun and interesting, but it's not news by longshot, mainly because they lack the professional journalistic skills to identify what qualifies as news.