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The first and only time Jerome Turner had a gun pointed at him, it was the middle of winter in northern British Columbia. He had “PRESS” plastered all over himself, on his toque, on his chest and the arms of his coat. 

Turner was covering the Wet’suwet’en protests opposing the Coastal Gas Link pipeline for Ricochet Media. He found himself within a large exclusion zone,  a no-entry area designated by police to block public access and media.

The use of exclusion zones has been criticized for curtailing press freedom and causing violent enforcement of injunctions in both Wet’suwet’en and Fairy Creek by the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group. 

As Turner walked through a field with some protestors, a helicopter landed with a canine unit and dozens of assault rifle-wielding officers, Turner said. The next thing he knew, he was being arrested.

“If I had a little bit more experience, I would have pushed back right away,” he said, reflecting on his rights as a member of the media to instead walk out of the exclusion zone. “I was just so blown away by the show of force for what amounted to four individuals, one camera and a drum.”

Turner’s editor at Ricochet, Ethan Cox, filed a complaint to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, which oversees the RCMP. The commission forced the RCMP to formally apologize to Turner and Cox late last week in a blistering report against the force’s heavy-handed tactics against the media.

The report is the fourth on the Community-Industry Response Group since 2020 pertaining to either Wet’suwet’en or Fairy Creek. Multiple court cases over the years have reinforced the rights of journalists to report on protests, even when injunctions are present. And the Mounties have been called out by judges several times for being overly forceful  in dealing with the media. 

One case grabbed more attention than usual in 2021, when photojournalist Amber Bracken was arrested, also in Wet’suwet’en, while on assignment for environmental media organization The Narwhal. The outlet has an active lawsuit against the RCMP over the arrest. 

Last week, RCMP officers also apologized to demonstrators for using racial slurs against demonstrators during those arrests. While Turner says he appreciates that the national police force has apologized, the event made him question his future in journalism. It is still fresh in his memory. He says an apology “literally means nothing if there are no repercussions for the officers that arrested journalists in Canada.”

“It wasn't just me, this isn't just me; this could happen to any journalist anywhere in Canada,” he said.

Media accreditation

In its report, the Civilian Reviews and Complaints Commission also asked the RCMP to explore the feasibility of creating a system for accrediting journalists, who would then be allowed to report on protests with more freedom. 

However, both Turner and Cox reject the idea outright. Turner thinks the RCMP should have “zero say” on who is and isn’t a journalist. As an Indigenous journalist, he has been accused by police of biased reporting. He doesn’t want a police force that considers him biased in charge of accreditation.

Cox also worries accreditation could create a context that gives the RCMP more options to disallow citizen journalism. Cox points to the bystander who recorded the killing of George Floyd. The video contributed to an essential piece of journalism that won an honourary Pulitzer Prize, for newsgathering done by people without accreditation, training or affiliation with a media outlet.

Jeffrey Monaghan, a scholar who studies policing and surveillance of social movements, is critical of the RCMP’s approach in his book Policing Indigenous Movements. 

The purpose of policing like the Community-Industry Response Group is to “get ahead of these protests in order to manage them, and to help industry … move these projects along,” Monaghan said.

Cox hopes last week’s report withering tone carries over to action. He says that it “feels like the beginning of the end” when it comes to the Community-Industry Response Group's history and record on press freedom. 

“That’s the one thing that we can't lose sight of in all of this, that when the police prevent the media from having oversight, from observing what they're doing on behalf of the public, they're not depriving the journalists, they're depriving the public of information,” he said. 

— This article was originally published by Canada's National Observer

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