Editor’s note: The original podcast on which this transcript is based may be found at this link.
Welcome to this instalment of “Witness to Yesterday,” the podcast of the Champlain Society. My name is Nicole O’Byrne and I am a legal historian at the Faculty of Law, University of New Brunswick, which is located on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Wolastoqiyik. Today I will be interviewing Julian Walker about his book Wires Crossed – Memoir of a Citizen & Reporter in the Irving Press.
For 15 years, Julian Walker was an Assistant Professor in the Journalism and Communications Program at Saint Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. His favorite course was “Free Speech and the Free Press.” He retired four years ago to devote himself to writing and publishing the Wires Crossed book. Julian holds degrees in politics from Trent University and the London School of Economics and Political Science and a journalism degree from Carleton University. He has extensive experience as a journalist and newspaper editor. Julian has also worked in government serving as a Deputy Minister for 10 years in the departments of the Environment, Municipalities, Culture and Housing, and Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs. He remains dedicated to restoring a freer press in New Brunswick and Canada.
Julian, thank you so much for joining us on Witness to Yesterday.
Q: You’ve had a fascinating career as a journalist and civil servant. However, this book is much more ambitious in scope than personal reflection. What compelled you to write, as suggested in your subtitle, a “Memoir of a Citizen & Reporter in the Irving Press”?
A: Having worked as a reporter and columnist in the Irving press and as well, had a taste of independent journalism with the Saint Croix Courier, I concluded it was very unhealthy for the Irvings to own almost all the newspapers in New Brunswick at the same time as they owned most of the very large industry in the province as well.
That was my angle, my main argument. This was where I thought, by highlighting the media monopoly, I could help bring about the most positive change in our province.
Q: You examine the history of press ownership in New Brunswick. Can you briefly outline the media context in the province in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the Irving family started investing in print media?
A: In those early days, New Brunswick had numerous and very diverse newspapers. In fact, in the juicy railway scandal of the early 20th century the 40 weeklies in the province succeeded in forcing Premier Kidd Flemming to resign for “compelling” a railway contractor to contribute to the Conservative Party, in exchange for government business.
In those days, newspaper editors weren’t afraid to call a spade and spade. Yet, the political scene was very unstable, and over one period of about 30 years there were eight NB Premiers. There was no strict dividing line between politics and journalism. In fact, many journalists went on to enter politics. Overall, you could say it was the Wild East!
Q: When and why did K.C. Irving decide to start buying newspapers? What role has the Irving family played in the New Brunswick media landscape.
A: KC Irving bought his first daily newspaper, the Telegraph-Journal, in 1946. He quickly added three other New Brunswick dailies to his collection.
KC treated the final English daily in the province, the Fredericton Daily Gleaner as a special case apparently because he knew the completion of his newspaper monopoly was going to be much more controversial. Although he took controlling ownership of the Gleaner in 1957, this was kept secret until 1969. In recent years the rise of social media has taken a heavy toll on newspaper revenues. But in 1969, newspapers were still seen as a rewarding investment. KC told the Davey Commission, the first national inquiry into the Canadian media: “I deal in all good commodities, and I put the newspaper business in the same category.” Another feature of KC’s business approach was he liked to “control” the landscape and see his investments pay off over the long term.
Q: One of the most interesting chapters in the book is about Premier Louis Robichaud’s ambitious Program of Equal Opportunity and the resistance his government met from the Irving-controlled newspapers during the 1960s. Can you explain this controversy and the roles played by Michael Wardell and William Werthman?
A: Premier Robichaud’s Equal Opportunity Program (EO) had a Robin Hood approach, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. For instance, it brought about a more equitable distribution of funds in education between the wealthier English counties in the south and the poorer French counties in the North. KC Irving said he accepted the equity aspect, but he took very strong exception to the threatened removal of special tax concessions for his large Irving industries.
The Fredericton Gleaner, under perceived owner Michael Wardell, led the charge against EO, before it was publicly revealed that Irving was, in fact, the owner of the paper. At one point, Wardell, called for citizens to “fight to the death” over EO in an anticipated provincial election. The newspaper’s cartoonist, William Werthmann, drew very strong cartoons, such as one depicting Premier Robichaud in a French Revolution-style guillotine, about to pull the string to cut off his own head.
The EO fight came to a head, so to speak, over the Premier’s determination to open more mining and pulp and paper development in the Northern part of the province, thwarting control by KC.
The Premier stuck his foot in the door and called the 1963 “Who Runs New Brunswick?” election. This pitted an elected government against the powerful industrialist (represented by the Conservatives). The governing Liberals won re-election, by only a slightly increased margin, showing the continuing importance of KC Irving for many New Brunswickers.
KC soon appeared personally before a Legislature committee, arguing that “no sane person” is going to agree with the Robichaud government’s method of achieving greater equity. Nonetheless, over the objections of KC and the Gleaner, the government stuck to its guns and completed implementation of EO by [1967.]
Shortly before, the feisty Premier had stated: “We had the guts to face the new challenges, we had the worst press in Canada, but you know why.”
Q: There have been a number of studies that have examined the issue of media concentration in New Brunswick. Can you tell us about the findings of Royal Commission on Newspapers chaired by Tom Kent and the Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications chaired by Lise Bacon? In your opinion, have these concerns been adequately addressed?
A: The Kent Commission concluded that Irvings should divest themselves of one paper in each of the cities where the owned two dailies. Soon after the Kent report was published the Irvings beat Kent to the punch by shutting down the Evening Times Globe in Saint John and the Transcript in Moncton. This aspect of the Commission’s general concern about concentration of ownership in the New Brunswick media had little consequence. As for the Bacon Commission, it said it couldn’t find anywhere else in the developed world a situation comparable to New Brunswick where the Irvings had monopoly ownership of the media at the same time as major industrial holdings. This statement caused a stir but did not bring about significant corrective action. Sadly, little changed because of these two studies. The one notable exception came following the first major national media study, the Davey Commission. This resulted in the CRTC obliging the Irvings to sell their Saint John CHSJ broadcast media, clearing the way for increased CBC television and radio service in the province. This had an enormous positive impact.
Q: You worked as a reporter for the Irving press. What were some of the challenges you faced?
A: While I was a Telegraph-Journal legislature reporter in Fredericton I was appalled that this flagship paper of the Irving press sat quietly and did not break news stories about the biggest political scandal of the 1970s. Small media with shoestring budgets managed to break news as people were coming out of the woodwork to tell their stories about kickbacks being paid to the governing Conservatives. The TJ, and regretfully, I include myself in this, simply reported the furor in the legislature, but did nothing more. Later, when I was editor of the Saint Croix Courier I testified before the Kent Commission, that I and other Irving reporters were embarrassed about the lack of tough journalism coming from the Irving press, with what I described as a “recording secretary” approach to its job.
In 1977, I covered the aftermath of one of the worst disasters in the history of Saint John, the 1977 City Jail Fire, where 21 men died. I then reported on the trial of the inmate who was soon found guilty of manslaughter in the deaths, and the subsequent tame inquest. There were many unanswered questions about this fire which began in the lockup’s padded cell:
How was the man who was convicted able to start the fire after being searched several times for matches?
Why was there not a second set of keys, when the keys were lost in the smoke?
Why was there was no second exit from the facility? And,
Why was flammable foam used in the padded cell?
I agitated within the newspaper for a strong response on this awful event. The article I wrote was trimmed back to being an “In my opinion” piece, rather than a strong message from the paper itself. I was disappointed with the newspaper’s cautious approach.
Shortly after this, I decided to leave the Telegraph-Journal and landed a job with the Ottawa Journal in a competitive daily newspaper environment.
Q: You were the editor of one of New Brunswick’s only independently owned newspapers – the Saint Croix Courier. Can you give us an example of why it’s important to have an independent press?
A: In the early 1980s my deputy editor, Ann Breault and I wrote a series of investigative stories about the Point Lepreau nuclear plant, which was then under construction. The first of these was that there were cracks in the reactor building, enclosing the heart of a nuclear generating station. The building was not sound and could leak radiation.
As a result of our reporting the Atomic Energy Control Board regulators ruled that an epoxy sealant had to be applied to the entire inside of the massive reactor building to keep the public safe. As reporters for this small paper, we saw our stories as like the famous movie, starring Peter Sellers, entitled “The Mouse that Roared.” (The gist of it being that a small entity that pushes can change the world.)
Q: In the conclusion, you quote the American journalist and author Robert Caro: “There is no one truth. No objective truth. No single truth… but there are facts. Hard facts. Objective facts. Verifiable facts. And the more facts you come up with, the closer you come to whatever truth there is.” And then you claim that the wires crossed relationship between a media monopoly and a strong industrial sector has left the press in New Brunswick in a mess. Could you explain the significance of this quote and expand on your claim that wires have been crossed in the New Brunswick media landscape?
A: I believe what Caro is saying is that truth in journalism is vital, but it is not as simple as saying something like “the Earth isn’t flat.” Good journalists have to work their way toward the truth, by gathering fact after fact, even though they may never reach perfect truth. But mixing media ownership with industrial ownership gets in the way of truth seeking, and results in a mess. As one thoughtful observer described it, the Irvings in owning both, were “reporting on themselves.”
Q: At the end of the book, you offer some solutions to the problems faced by the media in New Brunswick and elsewhere. Why is the story of media concentration in New Brunswick relevant to current dilemmas facing print media throughout the world? And what are some of the approaches that may address some of the problems raised in the book?
A: We have to keep in mind that shortly after my book came out, the Irvings sold off all their newspapers to another media conglomerate, Postmedia. I know my book didn’t cause this to happen, but I hope that Wires Crossed contributed in some way to the cause of free speech and the free press. I believe that concentrated ownership remains a major problem for all media, not just print media. Look at very rich people like Elon Musk, trying to control free speech for a huge part of the globe. Or, Fox News, part of a giant world media empire, that has little if any dedication to the truth. As for the New Brunswick media scene, concentrated ownership still applies with the Postmedia ownership of almost all the newspapers. The battle isn’t over, we still have to fight for quality journalism at all levels. Independence, diversity, bravery and truth-seeking in journalism remain as important as ever.
This interview was recorded on May 2, 2023. It was produced by Jessica Schmidt and supported by the University of Toronto Press Journal team.
Nicole O’Byrne is a law professor at UNB and interviewer for Witness to Yesterday, podcast of the Champlain Society.
Correction: An earlier version of this interview incorrectly stated the year when the Equal Opportunity Program was implemented. The article was updated with the correct information at 5:40 p.m. on June 10, 2023.