The Judges and the Media

Most reporters would undoubtedly have ignored a 1999 Supreme Court of Canada case involving the right to fish for eels had Donald Marshall not been the defendant. Marshall—Canada’s first celebrated victim of a wrongful murder conviction—was appealing his conviction for catching a doryload of eels out of season using a 250-year-old treaty between the Mi’kmaq band and the British.

Intrigued by the Marshall name, a number of reporters hiked over to the Supreme Court building in Ottawa for a copy of the ruling. Too bad, as it turned out. The news stories they filed that day and in the weeks that followed ranged from being mildly off-base to blatantly inaccurate, conveying a message that the Supreme Court was declaring open season for First Nations on natural resources. Not surprisingly, a furor erupted in the New Brunswick fishery between white and Native fishers.

What many reporters failed to point out—or, perhaps more charitably, did not understand—was that...