As a self-regulatory organization, the National NewsMedia Council (NNC) receives and evaluates complaints about possible breaches of journalistic standards from members of the public against member news organizations.

In this latest update from our complaints desk, you’ll find several summaries of recent reader complaints that the NNC has received and which have been addressed through corrective action by the news organization or through reader education about journalism standards and practices.

Targeted coverage?

An individual filed a complaint with the NNC expressing concern that they had been repeatedly named in news articles about decisions and oversight of a local district school board’s finances. The individual also said they felt “targeted” by the journalist covering the story. 

The complainant argued the news articles were inaccurate and misleading because they had retired from their involvement with the school board several months prior to the publication of the article. They argued, moreover, that they were not the board’s treasurer and that financial oversight was the responsibility of the elected trustees. 

As part of the NNC’s dispute resolution process, the news organization agreed to have a conversation with the complainant to better understand their concerns about what they felt was a pattern of harmful reporting. The NNC reaffirmed to the complainant that its mandate is to review matters of journalistic standards in individual pieces of published reporting, and that it does not conduct investigations into individual journalists.

Following that conversation, the complainant noted that they felt subsequent reporting had better reflected the situation at hand  and were therefore satisfied with the outcome of the discussion with the news organization. As a result, the NNC considered the matter resolved (CASE ID: 2025-32).

Charges withdrawn and readers updated

An individual filed a complaint with the NNC that contested the accuracy of an article reporting that drug charges were laid against them, as part of a number of arrests related to an alleged drug trafficking operation, when in fact the charges had been withdrawn. 

They said that the continued and widely available nature of the article caused significant personal and professional harm and asked that the piece be amended. The complainant provided recent court documents and correspondence from legal counsel to show that all charges had been withdrawn.

The NNC referred the matter to the news organization. The news organization reviewed the matter and updated the article with information about charges against two people being withdrawn. The news organization also removed the names of these individuals. An editor’s note was appended to the top of the article that explained to readers the outcome of the charges and noted the removal of the names of the accused.

While it is standard practice to report on law enforcement activity and court proceedings, news organizations consider how to balance personal privacy and public interest. Standard journalistic practice is to inform readers about the outcome of charges if, and when, they become available, and to communicate any changes or updates to readers in a clear and consistent manner. In this case, the NNC considered the matter resolved due to corrective action (CASE ID: 2025-50).

Figures of speech: Column uses hyperbole to make points about political rhetoric abundantly clear

An individual submitted a complaint to the NNC stating their concern that an opinion article that they felt included inaccurate statements unfairly characterized people in Quebec. The complainant took issue with a columnist’s use of language as well as a “statistic” to suggest that politicians in the province were almost always referring to a particular religion when they sought to pass laws against displays of “religion” in public spaces. The complainant also questioned the accuracy of a statement referring to the banning of prayer in private spaces.

In reviewing the matter, the NNC found that the columnist had used strong language to make their argument. In this case, the use of an extremely high figure of nearly one hundred “percent”  was not sourced because it was clearly a hyperbolic exaggeration to convey their argument, rather than a statistic sourced from research. With respect to other language concerns, the NNC found that the column was levelling its criticism at the provincial government and not Quebeckers as a group of people. The NNC would emphasize that political commentary is a common and important part of opinion writing.

With respect to the accuracy of the statement made about banning prayer in private, the NNC observed that the statement listed examples of where private prayer may be prohibited in some public institutions, and noted that the piece did not, for example, state that prayer in private residences was prohibited.

For these reasons, the NNC did not find grounds to support a complaint about a breach of journalistic standards in an opinion piece and declined to take further action on the matter (CASE ID: 2025-74).