October 18 2017 – for immediate release

The National NewsMedia Council has mediated a complaint about accuracy in a September 9, 2017, article in the Montreal Gazette.

Aaron Dove complained that the article, “Health and safety of Indigenous women still not taken seriously”, made a statement in reference to an RCMP report that was not supported by the report itself.

The complainant said the article’s statement that Indigenous women had gone missing “without police bothering to investigate thoroughly” was a “blatant misrepresentation” of facts in the report. To support his complaint he cited the report’s statistics that 956 of 1181 cases were solved.

In response to the NNC’s involvement, the news media organization investigated and found that the complainant’s concerns were “completely warranted” and that the sentence in question was incorrect.

The paper acknowledged the columnist’s intended meaning was not what she said, and issued a correction in print and online. The complaint was resolved due to corrective action taken by the newspaper.