THE RIGHT TO DEFINE OR CONTROL THE PRESS

   Rex Murphy: Outside of news organizations and reporters, I’d guess that most people do not know that the Canadian government has established what it likes to call an “independent advisory board” to decide on the question of what is or what is not a “qualified Canadian journalism organization” (QCJO).
   Before getting into what being designated a QCJO means, for news outlets and subscribers to them, I’d like to pause on the phrase itself, and the power to apply or deny it. My interest in doing so arises from the recent decision from the Independent Advisory Board on the Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures on the status of Rebel News, which gave out a curiously precise evaluation of that doughty organization:
   “A review found that less than one per cent of the content meets the criteria for original news content as required by the act.”
  So the first thing to ask is obvious: is it not strange that in a democratic political system, authority has been granted to a government department to define what it will treat as journalism?