26 Oct In defense of Harris
Philip Lee responds to Contrarian’s effort to get the New York Times to correct its obituary of Donald Marshall:
While I appreciate your efforts to have the record corrected at the New York Times, I am disappointed by your wink-wink, nudge-nudge attack on journalist and author Michael Harris.
First, you’ve misrepresented his position. Michael Harris recently spoke about the Marshall case in a lecture theatre filled with students and professors at St. Thomas University in Fredericton where he is a visiting chair this fall. Among other things, he outlined at length the significance of the robbery story and how this was used by the justice system to blame Marshall for what happened. Michael explained how this was shameful and wrong. Moreover, he argued that there should be a statue of Marshall erected in front of the Supreme Court of Canada. His remarks were honest, filled with admiration and sympathy for Marshall, and they were the furthest thing possible from self serving.
He spoke of his role in the story because he actually has one. We should be clear that Michael Harris wrote a book about the Marshall case (Justice Denied) before the Royal Commission held its hearings. In essence, as a young reporter he conducted his own commission of inquiry, which is more than can be said about the many reporters who recycled his work in various ways over the years.
So to suggest he was not familiar with the story, or dedicated to the story, because he didn’t attend the hearings is ridiculous. It doesn’t take much initiative or reporting skill to have a story handed to you in a public hearing room.
Full disclosure: I have known Michael for more than two decades, and when I was a young reporter I worked closely with him in Newfoundland on other big stories, such as Mount Cashel. I just returned from St. John’s where Memorial University presented Michael with an honorary degree for his work at The Sunday Express in the late 1980s. It is a rare thing when journalists are recognized in this way for their commitment to truth and justice. Michael Harris is a courageous and careful reporter, and to suggest he would deliberately manipulate the facts of a story for his own self interest is absurd.
Shame on you for using Donald Marshall’s funeral and obituary to take a cheap shop at someone who you obviously don’t know at all.
I didn’t think there was any nudge-nudge, wink-wink quality to my comments on Michael’s recent behaviour in connection with Donald Marshall. They were pretty direct. I did not hear Michael’s speech to the St. Thomas faculty, but I did hear his CBC interview on the morning of Donald’s funeral, and I characterized it fairly.
To be clear, I think Michael wrote a terrific book, and while it overstates matters to say he conducted his own Royal Commission, it was a first rate piece of reporting at a time when authorities were stonewalling. It was very helpful to Marshall.
As Lee points out, Justice Denied was an early account, and some of the material it contained was understandably superseded by the Marshall Commission, with its vastly greater resources. The robbery theory falls into this category. That’s why it’s dismaying, and unbecoming, for Michael to be promoting the robbery theory two decades later. Michael’s non-attendance at the inquiry hearings is relevant, not because it shows any lack of dedication, but because it bears on his knowledge of evidence about the robbery theory that emerged after he wrote Justice Denied.
Contrary to Lee’s implication that others merely recycled Harris’s work, several other reporters contributed important, original reporting on the Marshall case. To paraphrase a lawyerly maxim, there is no property in a story.