Accurate News and Information Act
Accurate News and Information Act | |
---|---|
Legislative Assembly of Alberta | |
Long title
| |
Considered by | Legislative Assembly of Alberta |
Legislative history | |
Introduced by | Solon Earl Low |
First reading | October 1, 1937 |
Third reading | October 4, 1937 |
Status: Struck down |
The Accurate News and Information Act (complete title: An Act to Ensure the Publication of Accurate News and Information) was a statute passed by the
The act was a result of the stormy relationship between Aberhart and the press, dating to before the 1935 election, in which the Social Credit League was elected to government. Virtually all of Alberta's newspapers—especially the Calgary Herald—were critical of Social Credit, as were a number of publications from elsewhere in Canada. Even the American media had greeted Aberhart's election with derision.
Though the act won easy passage through the Social Credit-dominated legislature,
Aberhart and the press
Before the 1935 election
Aberhart initially laid out his economic agenda in only vague terms, and by early 1935 his opponents, including Premier Richard Gavin Reid of the United Farmers of Alberta, were trying to force him to commit to a specific plan. The Calgary Herald took up this call, going so far as to offer Aberhart a full page to lay out his approach in detail. Aberhart refused, on the grounds that he considered the Herald's coverage of him to be unfair.[2] He frequently attacked the newspaper in speeches around the province,[3] and on April 28 suggested that his followers boycott it and other unfriendly newspapers. The boycott was successful to the extent that it drove at least one newspaper out of business.[4] The Herald responded to the boycott by asking "Is everyone opposed to the political opinions and plans of Mr. Aberhart to be boycotted? He has invoked a most dangerous precedent and has given the people of this province a foretaste of the Hitlerism which will prevail if he ever secures control of the provincial administration."[4]
Shortly before the election, the Herald began to run cartoons by Stewart Cameron, a virulently anti-Aberhart cartoonist. The day before the election, it ran one featuring a car, labelled "the people", travelling along "Aberhart Highway No. 1" and arriving at a railway crossing. A train, labelled "common sense", was approaching from around the bend, along tracks labelled "fundamental facts". Aberhart leans out the "S.C. Signal Tower" advising the car "All's clear. Don't stop, look or listen."[5]
Though the Herald was the most strident in its opposition to Aberhart and Social Credit, the Bulletin, the
So frustrated were the Social Crediters with the newspapers' hostility that in 1934 they founded their own, the Alberta Social Credit Chronicle, to spread their views.[8] The Chronicle, in addition to acting as Aberhart's mouthpiece, carried guest editorials by such figures as British fascist leader Oswald Mosley and antisemitic priest Charles Coughlin.[9]
Post-election
Media reaction to Social Credit's 1935 victory, in which it won 56 of 63 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, was almost uniformly negative. The Herald opined that "the people of Alberta have made a most unfortunate decision and may soon see the folly of it."[10] Even the Albertan expressed its wish that social credit be first tried in "Scotland, or Ethiopia or anywhere but Alberta."[11] Reaction across Canada was also negative; the St. Catharines Standard called the results "a nightmare that passeth all understanding" and the Montreal Star accused Albertans of voting for "an untried man and a policy whose workings he ostentatiously refused to explain before polling day."[12] American newspapers were less restrained: the Chicago Tribune asked "Greetings to the Canadians. Who's loony now?" and the Boston Herald's headline screamed "Alberta goes crazy".[12]
The relationship did not improve once Aberhart took office. In January 1935, H. Napier Moore wrote two articles for
The major newspapers of the province opposed virtually everything the government did. Virtually every reform instituted was made to sound more draconian than it actually was. The conservative views of the owners and editors often interfered with the objective presentation of news reports, although perhaps not to the extent that the government claimed. In many cases, the papers simply concentrated on the very real chaos and confusion in government ranks and required few embellishments to make the government look bad.[14]
The Herald lured Stewart Cameron away from working on Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to make him its first ever staff cartoonist; Cameron devoted himself full-time to the ridicule of Aberhart.[15] Though Social Credit staffer turned journalistic historian John Barr argues that the media's unswerving hostility to Aberhart may have benefited him politically by allowing him to "depict the press as a mere tool of Eastern financial and commercial interests", by January 1936 Aberhart was telling the listeners of his weekly gospel radio show that he was "glad there will be no newspapers in heaven."[16]
To help combat the negative press, Aberhart resolved to gain control of the Albertan, the one paper of note to show him any support. He formed a company that acquired an option to purchase it, and used his radio program to promote the purchase of shares by Social Credit supporters. The other newspapers criticized him for using what was nominally a gospel program to promote stock sales.[17] The plan came to naught, as most Social Credit supporters were too poor to buy newspaper stock, and the only interested buyers were beneficiaries of government patronage, chiefly liquor interests.[18] Even so, the Albertan became the official organ of Social Credit, an editorial decision that doubled its circulation.[14]
Aberhart reacted bitterly to the media's hostility. In a September 20, 1937, radio broadcast, he said of the press "these creatures with mental hydrophobia will be taken in hand and their biting and barking will cease."
Statute
The
The act empowered the chair of the Social Credit Board to require a newspaper to reveal the names and addresses of its sources, as well as the names and addresses of any writers, including of unsigned pieces. Non-compliance would result in fines of up to $1,000 per day, and prohibitions on the publishing of the offending newspaper, of stories by offending writers, or of information emanating from offending sources. The act also required newspapers to print, at the instruction of the chair of the Social Credit Board, any statement "which has for its object the correction or amplification of any statement relating to any policy or activity of the Government of the Province."[24]
The act was attacked by opposition politicians as evidence of the government's supposed fascism, and alienated even the Albertan.[25] The international press was also cutting: one British paper referred to Aberhart as "a little Hitler".[26] Later commentators have been no more favourable: Finkel calls the act evidence of the "increasingly authoritarian nature of the Aberhart regime",[14] and even Barr, generally sympathetic to Social Credit, calls it "a harsh blow to free speech".[26]
Aftermath
Bowen put a stop to the Accurate News and Information Act, at least temporarily, but Aberhart's fight against the press continued: on March 25, 1938, a resolution of the Social Credit-dominated legislature ordered that Don Brown, a reporter for the Edmonton Journal, be jailed "during the pleasure of the assembly" for allegedly misquoting Social Credit backbencher
Around the same time, the Supreme Court ruled on the
For its leadership in the fight against the act, the Pulitzer Prize committee awarded the Edmonton Journal a bronze plaque, the first time it honoured a non-American newspaper.[32] Ninety-five other newspapers, including the Calgary Albertan, Edmonton Bulletin, Calgary Herald, Lethbridge Herald, and Medicine Hat News, were presented with engraved certificates.[33]
Notes
- ^ Barr 33
- ^ Elliott 172
- ^ Elliott 174
- ^ a b Elliott 182
- ^ Elliott 197
- ^ Finkel 36
- ^ Byrne 101
- ^ Elliott 147–148
- ^ Brennan 23
- ^ Brennan 24–25
- ^ Elliott 203
- ^ a b Elliott 202
- ^ Elliott 230–231
- ^ a b c Finkel 62
- ^ Elliott 240
- ^ Elliott 230
- ^ Elliott 232
- ^ Elliott 247
- ^ Barr 108
- ^ Barr 108–109
- ^ "'We Never Thought This Could Happen'". Calgary Herald. Lethbridge. October 1, 1937. p. 1. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
- ^ Kennedy, Fred (October 5, 1937). "Fifth Session of Legislature Closing Today". Calgary Herald. p. 1. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
- ^ Elliott 272–273
- ^ Elliott 272
- ^ a b Elliott 273
- ^ a b Barr 109
- ^ Elliott 278
- ^ Brennan 54
- ^ Barr 112–113
- ^ Barr 112
- ^ Morton 481–482
- ^ Byrne 125
- ^ "The Premier vs. the Constitution—Significance". Alberta Online Encyclopedia. Heritage Community Foundation. Archived from the original on 2008-04-08. Retrieved 2009-10-14.
References
- Barr, John J. (1974). The Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of Social Credit in Alberta. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited. ISBN 0-7710-1015-X.
- ISBN 978-1-897252-16-1.
- ISBN 1-55059-024-3.
- Elliott, David R.; Miller, Iris (1987). Bible Bill: A Biography of William Aberhart. Edmonton: Reidmore Books. ISBN 0-919091-44-X.
- Finkel, Alvin (1989). The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta. Toronto: ISBN 0-8020-6731-X.
- ISBN 1-55238-046-7.
External links
- Works related to Accurate News and Information Act at Wikisource
- "The Premier vs. the Constitution". Archived from the original on August 23, 2006. Retrieved October 15, 2009.
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