Toronto Star journalist Paul Watson goes out with a bang
A photojournalist has resigned in protest from Canada's largest daily-circulation newspaper.
Paul Watson claimed on his blog that he quit working for the Toronto Star "following the newspaper's refusal to publish a story of significant public interest".
"My reporting is an attempt to give voice to federal civil servants and others involved in the grueling, High Arctic search for British Royal Navy explorer Sir John Franklin's lost ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Several are experts in their fields," Watson stated on July 7.
"For months, these individuals have been angry at what they consider distorted and inaccurate accounts of last fall’s historic discovery of Erebus in the frigid waters of eastern Queen Maud Gulf," he added. "They identify a peripheral member of the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition, who has access to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office as well as editors at The Star, as the source of these accounts."
Today, Watson followed up with a second blog post, noting that there were many times when he was almost killed while working as a combat reporter and photographer in such hot spots as Rwanda, Afghanistan, Syria, the former Yugoslavia, and Somalia.
"Yesterday I decided to sacrifice my livelihood for the truth," he wrote on his blog. "That's much harder, actually, because it affects my family's future—and I'll still be around to watch them suffer the consequences."
Watson was featured in Martyn Burke's 2011 documentary, Under Fire: Journalists in Combat.
Comments
7 Comments
Alexander Jablanczy
Jul 8, 2015 at 1:37pm
Cowardly nonsensical pusillanimous dreck.
As a journalist you learned to say nothing.
Go work for the govt or a tobacco co or a bank or a pr firm as that s where you belong.
You name no names state no facts give O info.
I don't believe you.
Had you anything to say you would have said it.
Obviously you don't.
You are in collusion with the suppressors of information.
Sane people know that politicians lawyers judges banksters military religious
financiers academe and yes the media and journalists lie lie lie.
Especially those who claim otherwise.
It was a waste of time reading about your teapot fart.
Martin Dunphy
Jul 8, 2015 at 2:23pm
Alexander:
Isn't there some baby carriage nearby that needs tipping over?
@Alexander
Jul 8, 2015 at 3:49pm
you mad bro? No one cares about your rant..
out at night
Jul 8, 2015 at 4:46pm
Toronto Star eh? Pretty good paper, you might even say braver than most, but you're only as good as your last truth blast and maybe it's been too long since that Rob Ford scoop (3 years actually). So today's Star gets cold feet and chickens out. Same paper that bailed last minute on the John Furlong story too.
Big Corporate Media
Jul 8, 2015 at 9:47pm
Typical big Corporate media routinely muzzle real stories especially about the government and it's deplorable treatment of Canadian democracy and institutions.
wetcoastace
Jul 8, 2015 at 11:35pm
Too early to be definitive but Watson must be writing that really shakes some trees at the Star. For a newspaper to demand a priori censorship from an experienced reporter (not a commentator or pundit or journalist but a reporter) in the Internet age is to risk reputational suicide.
WestCoastG'ma
Jul 9, 2015 at 5:57pm
Totally Agree, WestCoastAce !
But if you sniff out some trails and links and get a handle on who these "editor-in-chief' Toronto Star folks are, the decisions they've made and the friends they keep and the reputations they have shown in Vancouver editor offices... you might get a handle on what this is all about.
Kudos to Paul Watson. I do want to hear his story. Hope the Straight would consider publishing it.
I did watch David Suzuki's Nature of Things documentary, today - The Lost Franklin Expedition-podcast on CBC aired April 9,2014 to see who the archeologists were who did the "heavy lifting' and those mentioned in Paul's interview with CanadaLand blogger to see who did not do as much work but had some connections with the PMO??? AND just now I saw one of the conservative gov't "celebratory" adverts/commercials about the northern Arctic and Franklin's sunken ship HMS Erebus and as the camera takes out to the wider vista...there's an oil rig platform, I believe right there in the middle of ice floes in the Arctic Sea...
Ohhhhhh Canada, is that what this is all about ? Maybe some of the puzzle pieces are missing here or maybe not !
Definitely, Paul Watson this is a story that needs to be told and there is also a story about those who wish it NOT to be told.
I always wondered about the Harper imperative to glamorize the War of 1812 and also the British sovereignty designs on the Arctic by the British navy in 1845 by Franklin's attempt to find the passageway.