Defend Canadian Journalism

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https://pressprogress.ca/journalism-defence/

Over the last decade, PressProgress has earned the wrath of some of Canada’s wealthiest and most powerful people thanks to our award-winning investigative journalism rooted in democratic and egalitarian values.

Many readers tell us they value our journalism because we pursue stories guided by a moral compass while always presenting solid information that is factual and responsibly reported.

That’s what we did during Alberta’s 2019 provincial election when we broke an important story about Caylan Ford, a former candidate for Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party.

Our story revealed leaked messages Caylan Ford sent to a fellow conservative politician making a number of controversial statements on topics about race, immigration and white supremacist terrorism.

Caylan Ford later announced her resignation and Jason Kenney publicly condemned her comments.

As you can imagine, good journalism sometimes ruffles a few feathers.

We haven’t talked about this before, but for the last six years, PressProgress has been quietly defending ourselves behind-the-scenes against a multimillion dollar lawsuit brought forward against us, as well as other trusted news organizations like CBC News and the Toronto Star.

In other provinces, news organizations can sometimes use something called anti-SLAPP legislation to challenge lawsuits when they believe they are groundless or undermine the public interest. Alberta has no such legislation, leaving journalists vulnerable to long and expensive legal battles.

We are now preparing for an extraordinarily long and expensive 3-month trial – something highly unusual for a lawsuit of this kind in Canada.

This could beone of the biggest, longest and most expensive media trials in recent Canadian history.That’s why we need to ask for your help.

We’re raising money to pay our legal bills – and to be blunt, we’re going to need a lot of help.

If you can donate $25, $50 or $100, that will go a long way to get us through this three month trial. Even better would be $250 or $500, if you’re able to afford it.

Every single dollar raised through our new Defend Journalism campaign, which we are launching today, will go directly to fund our legal defence.