Op-Ed: Journalists Defend Freedom of Information

We’re in the middle of a war. Not a war for advertising dollars. Not a war for circulation numbers. We’re in the middle of a war between fact and fiction. Whether on the world stage or here in Ontario, there are some in Washington, Ottawa, Queen’s Park, and even our local town councils, who insist on calling journalism “fake news.” 

Even worse, they choose to legislate away journalists’ constitutional rights to freedom of information.

In times like these I often turn to a critical moment in the history of journalism. Many of you know that I write military history. I’ve had the good fortune to have 22 books published, most of them sharing the stories of Canadians in times of war.

Remember the Gulf War in 1991 when U.S. General Stormin’ Norman Schwartzkopf embedded journalists among his troops as they pushed Iraqi invaders from Kuwait? He allowed US reporters to witness first-hand how American forces engaged the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait. But there was a hitch. In return, Schwartzkopf restricted what the American correspondents saw, heard and reported. “Embedding” equalled “control,” i.e. fake news.

What you should know is that Schwartzkopf did not invent embedding. In fact, 82 years ago this spring – on June 6, 1944 – Canadian  journalists, such as Matthew Halton (of CBC Radio), Lionell Shapiro (Maclean’s magazine) and Ross Munro and Bill Stewart (both writing for The Canadian Press), were embedded with Canadian troops landing in Normandy on D-Day. While they depended on the Canadian forces to get them close to the front lines of the invasion’s sharp end, Halton, Shapiro, Munro and Stewart steadfastly wrote the facts as they saw them – unvetted by the Canadian Army.

In other words, unlike the U.S. press in the Gulf War, who became cheerleaders, morale boosters and homers for the U.S. Army, the Canadian press kept their distance, remained unfettered reporters and were not mouthpieces for official army policy. 

Here’s an example of what I mean. The Canadian Press’s Bill Stewart was embedded with Canadian troops from the moment they left England on the night of June 5, 1944. He crossed the Channel aboard a troopship with them, rose with them D-Day morning, and landed with them on Juno Beach. There he dug a trench for protection in the sand, placed his typewriter on one side of the trench, sat on the other and wrote what he heard and saw.

“Imagine,” he wrote, “they are assault infantry, just young men, all volunteers. They learn where they’re going when they get out on the English Channel. They’re told they’re going to attack Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. They’re 20 years old. They’re put in landing craft and landed on the beach…” 

He went on to write about “the bearing of Canadian soldiers, from the way they marched, not rigid, but very military… heads upright, a reflection of pride. They had a job to do and they were going to do it as well as they could.” His first dispatch of the D-Day invasion was as close as Stewart came to cheerleading when he concluded, “I have undying admiration for those Canadian soldiers.”

All this to say, in this war between fact and fiction 82 years later – a war between control of information and freedom of information – I believe that journalists and journalism must never buckle. We are embroiled in a war for the truth, ultimately for democracy. And we who gather, research and write news, now more than ever before, must challenge, question and persist on principle. 

Because facts matter.

Ted Barris, The Uxbridge Cosmos 

Letter: World Press Freedom Day

World Press Freedom Day was Sunday, May 3rd.

The focus of that day is protecting journalists, the importance of free expression, and the essential purpose of an independent news media. It’s a big deal and it’s a commemorative day, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly back in 1993.

At the time, I was honoured to play a small role in this endeavour in my capacity as Managing Director of TVOntario and co-founder of Public Broadcasters International.

According to Reporters Without Borders, 2025 marked the most dangerous year for global press freedom in recorded history. A shocking 129 journalists and media workers were killed in 2025, the vast majority in the Middle East, Sudan, Ukraine, Mexico, and the Philippines.

According to the Committee To Protect Journalists, these killings go mostly unpunished with only 1 in 10 murders even investigated.

At the same time, technology “titans” in California are everywhere tightening their grip on the news and information that reaches us, emboldened by a White House that likes their black boxes, their addictive algorithms, and their siloing of public discourse.

New technology is also a threat: generative AI (largely owned by those “titans”) threatens what we can rely on as true and factual — and threatens to put those who write it out of business.

Canada, and Prince Edward County, are not immune to these worrisome and polarizing trends. Between 2008 and 2025, over 600 local news outlets closed in almost 400 Canadian municipalities, creating literal news deserts.

The County’s 3 independent media voices are essential to our local democracy, which depends on a thriving, free, and independent press.

In a world where powerful forces look to restrain, abolish or compromise press freedom, let’s protect our County-made, locally-owned, community-supported model of resistance… and keep our lively local media flourishing.

Bill Roberts, Sophiasburg