When journalists are found to have unfairly attacked some public figure, they don't usually bother to apologize, retract any statements or to acknowledge that they might have hastily rushed to judgment. For one example of which there are many, after BC journalists savagely brutalized then-NDP premier Glen Clark, none found reason to apologize or retract anything after Clark was found by a court to have done nothing wrong.

In Clark's case, the court completely exonerated him of all wrongdoing in the famous house deck affair, but not until after he was forced to resign from office and his party was decimated in an election in which the media's wrong and unfair portrayal of him played a major, perhaps even decisive, role in the outcome.

By contrast, when it is a journalist who might be unfairly maligned, fellow journalists cry for apologies and retractions, feigning levels of indignity as though their own mothers had been kicked. The example of Stevie Cameron, a journalist and the subject of a negative and not necessarily incorrect or unfair Globe and Mail report a year ago, is a telling one.

William Kaplan, a prominent journalist in his own right, wrote a series of sensational articles in the Globe and Mail in which he asserted that Cameron had been an RCMP informant at the time she was putting together her book, On the Take , a damning portrayal of corruption in the Brian Mulroney government.

One of Kaplan's main sources for his assertion about Cameron is a confidential letter penned by Cameron's lawyer during a related legal proceeding that refers to Cameron as an informant. That letter, by lawyer Peter Jacobsen to the Attorney General of Ontario, says, in part, “At the time the confidential informant agreement was made, our client [Stevie Cameron] understood . . . ,” and later, “My client would not have entered into or co-operated with the RCMP further . . . ,' and still later, “. . . the document enclosed . . . relates to information that was provided after the confidential informant relationship was formed.”

Labeling a journalist as a police informant, especially an investigative journalist and one with a large reputation and muckraking track record, is probably the most damaging charge to make in journalism second only perhaps to plagiarism. If Kaplan's charge were true, it would not only certainly end Cameron's career, it would throw into grave doubt everything she wrote in that career, including most saliently what she said in her most famous book, the one that damned Mulroney.

Cameron remains an active investigative journalist and is currently working on a book that promises to reveal much about the case of Robert Pickton, the Coquitlam man at the center of the case of the missing downtown eastside women and who has been arrested on charges of murdering at least 16 of them.

The story Cameron tells here will likely have much to say about the police since there is a widespread public belief that the police, both the RCMP and local Vancouver branches, are partly to blame for not recognizing that women were going missing in large numbers, and not taking the information seriously when they did know, since the women were mostly prostitutes. There are charges leveled in the public realm suggesting more women died directly because of this police inaction.

Consequently, Cameron's current project, detailing the set of crimes that for British Columbians and Canadians sums up all that has gone wrong in this famously troubled neighbourhood, will naturally have much to say about the police. An assertion printed in the Globe and Mail that nails Cameron as a police informant during her previous great work of investigative journalism could sink her current project. Needless to say, the assertion by Kaplan carries implications not only for Cameron and Kaplan and their own careers, but for the police, for the press, and for journalism itself.

Cameron and Kaplan are both members of the Canadian Association of Journalists and this association operates a listserve—a semi-public email bulletin board where members and non-members alike can share news about, and discuss issues relating to, the practice of journalism. Not surprisingly, it was a bombshell on the listserve when news of Kaplan's assertions about Cameron arrived. The elected board of directors of the CAJ thereupon issued a statement on the list, as well as a press release, condemning the actions of Cameron and regretting the damage the board feels those actions did to the reputation of journalism.

That now-infamous statement and press release now threatens to be the catalyst in a process that could well end the CAJ. Many long-term members objected to what they saw as the organization condemning one of its own members. Of even greater issue lately, many well-known journalists and members of CAJ are threatening to withhold their membership renewal fees because the CAJ board has failed to retract its statement about Cameron during the ensuing year, or to apologize to the reporter for what they feel was a hasty rush to judgment. A CAJ general meeting in March may be a flashpoint for a range of emotions.

What seems to have set off this firestorm is how it appears as though a journalist has been unfairly maligned by journalists in public and has been offered no retraction or apology for it. It's like a police officer doubly alarmed at how nobody takes his complaints of police brutality seriously. And it proves that irony is far from dead.

What is interesting to note in the volumes of posts to the listserve by professional journalists about the Cameron case is the degree of indignity these journalists share when it is finally one of their own who has been stung by the scorpion's tail of journalism. “I would like to be convinced the CAJ had solid ‘evidence' that Cameron indeed was in this position, before issuing the news release,” one journalist posted, despite the fact that it was a journalist who wrote about Cameron's position in the Globe and Mail , Canada's paper of record. Apparently, journalists' own product carried in the country's leading press is far from convincing for journalists themselves—at least on so sensitive an issue as the behavior of a fellow journalist.

Another journalist and former national board member wrote, “I've bitten my tongue about the controversies and debate surrounding fellow caj-l list member Stevie Cameron, waiting—no, hoping—for clarity and enough information to personally make up my mind. But I have to say I'm appalled at today's official CAJ press release . . . denouncing her.” Still another wrote that “She [Stevie Cameron] should have been given the benefit of the doubt, in my view.” It's a wish every victim of pack-journalism has had: journalists who look for more information before making up their minds. Alas, it is a standard upheld only in journalism schools.

Another comment from a journalist on the site inadvertently condemned all of journalism: “Her integrity [has been] unfairly disparaged [and] I'm not the least bit inclined to join an organization that has no qualms about hastily denouncing one of its own before all the facts are on the table. Denunciation and condemnation of anyone, let alone a colleague, without evidence or proof . . . is professionally, legally and ethically irresponsible and negligent.”

Some say that journalists have no heart when they line up a public figure in their sites, but that's only because they haven't seen them when a fellow journalist is the one caught in the crosshairs. “No doubt this has been terribly unpleasant for Stevie,” one offered sympathetically. “I felt very badly for Stevie Cameron when the controversy surfaced,” cringed another. A couple revealed they are close friends of Cameron and in that capacity denounced the CAJ board for its judgment against her. To defend her reputation, Cameron has incurred many legal costs; journalists used the CAJ site to solicit donations to help defray Cameron's expenses—expenses, it must be noted, made necessary when journalism stung her.

“Remember, we are talking about a person here and her reputation. We want to know as much as we can before doing and writing things that might be wrong and have consequences,” another journalist added—as though this were some sort of usual practice for journalism generally.

“The CAJ,” another journalist added recently, “must simply try and remedy a serious error and illegitimate action that harmed a journalist's reputation and shredded the integrity of the CAJ.” True, perhaps, but no less true than the errors of journalism that have harmed anyone's reputation, and possibly more so, since the harmed journalist in this case, as a good and reputable writer, has enjoyed access to the public to clear her damaged reputation in a way not available to so many others damaged by the excesses of over-zealous journalism that targets public figures.

“I want an apology to Stevie Cameron,” a journalist wrote to the list last week. “Enough of this Star Chamber cr-p.” To which he might have added, charitably, demands for apologies to all those brought before the Star Chamber of the press, whether fellow journalists or otherwise. But he didn't, and none of them ever do.

One of the contributors to the list, however, had it right, but unfortunately, his points were overlooked and received no commentary. “In our business,” he wrote, “we routinely make comments, write opinion pieces, columns and editorials about people without any ‘due process.' We have little or no compunction about weighing in on issues and behaviors long before all the facts are in. For example, journalists had all kinds of things to say about Svend Robinson before all the facts were in.”

The problem is not that journalists do this. It's that they never correct, retract or apologize when they learn they have done so unfairly. And as the huge reaction among journalists to the Stevie Cameron case makes clear, it's not because journalists don't know how to remedy errors or never think they should. It's just that, by and large, if this listserve is any indication, journalists believe that only one of their own deserves that courtesy.

Imagine if journalists got this upset every time a public figure, and not just a fellow journalist, was judged too hastily or unfairly by journalists.

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