Reporter named in Muskrat Falls court order says it sets dangerous precedent

GOOSE BAY, N.L. — A journalist who has been ordered to appear in court over his presence at the Muskrat Falls protests says he was reporting, not protesting — and his case could set a dangerous precedent for reporters covering similar events across the country.

Justin Brake of the online publication The Independent followed protesters when they broke through a gate at the site of the multibillion-dollar hydroelectric project in Labrador last weekend.

The action violated a court injunction against the protesters and Brake, along with several of the protesters, was named in a court order and ordered to appear in Supreme Court in Goose Bay, N.L., on Tuesday.

Brake, who has been on the ground covering the concerns of local residents and indigenous groups since mid-September, said reporters shouldn’t have to worry about facing legal action for doing their jobs.

“It’s not the impact on me specifically as an individual that I’m most worried about. It’s more about the precedent it could set in Canada. It could really hurt our freedoms in this country if journalists are afraid to do their jobs,” said Brake in a phone interview on Friday, adding that he’s been covering the Muskrat Falls story since 2012.

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“(Nalcor Energy) knows exactly who I am, but they lumped me in with the land protectors and basically infringed on my constitutional right to practice freedom of the press.”

Brake said the document names 22 people and orders their arrest and removal from the Muskrat Falls site.

The project is upstream from 2,000 Inuit and other residents in the Lake Melville region, and critics are worried about methylmercury contamination if too many trees are left to rot at the bottom of the reservoir when the 41-square-kilometre area is flooded.

Brake said he followed roughly 60 protesters when they cut the lock on the gate at the end of a 20-kilometre dirt road leading to the construction site.

“I followed them in and documented that. It wasn’t part of their plan, they said, but they ended up occupying the worker’s camp for four days,” said Brake, who said he could be clearly identified as a journalist while on site and wore a press badge on his vest.

“I live-streamed and showed the people outside in Labrador and the rest of the province and across Canada, I showed them who these people were, what their concerns were, what the nature the protest was and how peaceful they were.”

Brake said he was shocked after finding out that he was named in the court order, and ultimately he decided to leave the site.

“Basically I was forced to stop practising journalism,” he said. “I either had to stay and face arrest with everybody else, in which case then I would not be able to continue reporting if I ended up in a prison cell. So I had to make the unfortunate decision of leaving the camp so that I could at least continue reporting from the outside.”

Brake’s live-stream videos from the protest sites have garnered tens of thousands of views, with some videos being viewed more than 60,000 times.

“I was doing my job as a journalist and the effect of that on the outside really rallied a lot of support behind the land protectors,” said Brake.

“It’s a $12 billion project and growing and they have legal and contractual obligations to the companies that are contracted to work on that site. The money is too big, so I think they were willing to take the extreme measure of… threatening me with arrest if I continued to do journalism on the ground in there… and the backlash is probably something that they’re willing to live with in light of the enormous cost.”

Deanne Fisher, a spokeswoman for the Crown corporation Nalcor Energy, said Brake was one of about 40 people who entered and occupied the worker’s camp at the Muskrat Falls site.

“Mr. Brake was treated in the same manner as all individuals who chose to enter the site and take up occupation at the camp,” said Fisher in an email statement.

In an article on its website, the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression said it condemns the court order and says it is a “clear violation of freedom of the press and an unacceptable assault on the public’s right to know.”

“Threatening journalists with arrest for covering these types of stories inevitably means that more of them will not be covered in the future,” the group’s Duncan Pike writes. “It is essential that journalists be able to safely and freely cover events in the public interest, such as the occupation of Muskrat Falls, without fear of legal reprisals.”

The case bears similarities to one in North Dakota in which Democracy Now! reporter Amy Goodman was charged with engaging in a riot over her coverage of a protest against the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

Goodman was reporting on a clash between protesters and pipeline security at a construction site Sept. 3 when she was arrested.

Last week, Judge John Grinsteiner refused to sign off on the charge against Goodman, finding there was no cause for it.

— By Aly Thomson in Halifax.

The Canadian Press