Kirk Makin of The Globe and Mail wrote about the Stevie Cameron dust-up on CAJ-L today.

On the surface, he appeared to have just scraped the list postings and didn't put much more into it, other than an interview with CAJ president Paul Schneidereit.

Here's an excerpt:

After consuming much of the 1,300-member (Note: It's actually 1,415) association's energy since last March, a settlement in the dispute appears imminent. One way or another, CAJ president Paul Schneidereit said yesterday, the traumatic affair should be over.

"We certainly are viewing this as an opportunity to put it all behind us," he said in an interview. "There have been disagreements and strong opinions on all sides, and we really have tried to learn and build on it."

With heated exchanges between CAJ members, Ms. Cameron and her nemesis — author William Kaplan — growing more vitriolic by the day, it is a catfight the association would desperately like to end.

Actually, the catfight is pretty much over-- for now. People are waiting to see what the board does.

My contribution to the debate on CAJ-L wasa posting about the complete lack of due process and the fact that the board was dumb enough to issue a news release that was defamatory.

Oddly enough, here is what Kaplan said about it on Feb. 14 on CAJ-L:

Wearing my lawyer's hat, I found the process employed by the CAJ to issue the censure dubious at best. I said so in A Secret Trial and I said so on this list. There was an absence of natural justice and procedural fairness. Ms. Cameron was entitled to both and didn't get it. That is an issue that concerns us all, and I hope the CAJ will address this issue.

That wasn't mentioned in the Globe article.

Anyway, here's another excerpt:

Mr. Kaplan, a lawyer who wrote a three-part series in The Globe and Mail about the case and a book about the Cameron affair, recently weighed in on the CAJ Web forum (note: It's not Web-based; it's an e-mail discussion group). He said that he could no longer stomach Ms. Cameron's supporters putting loyalty ahead of the facts.

Mr. Kaplan noted that his adversary gave documents and sources to the RCMP at a time when their investigation was at a dead end.

RCMP documents also prove that she insisted on anonymity out of fear that exposure would severely harm her career, he said.

Ms. Cameron's supporters counterattacked in the most unflattering terms. In a posting this week, Hamilton Spectator columnist Bill Dunphy praised Ms. Cameron for aiding the RCMP, although he conceded that it was unwise for her to have initially denied her informant status.

"This was a mistake; one born of human frailty, a forgivable failure of courage that is understandable in the light of subsequent events," Mr. Dunphy wrote. "She feared being crucified by her peers, and she was right.

For context, Dunphy, who's actively involved in efforts to aid Cameron, said this:

Stevie Cameron did not ask to be a confidential informant. Back in 1995 she met with police and in the course of, she says, six to eight meetings, provided them with her notes, news clipppings, and copies of financial documents and public record corporate filings (provided her by European and Canadian journalists, mostly from public sources). I suspect - but do not know - that some of the documents were obtained from a informant of her own, Karlheinz Schrieber's accountant who, I believe had provided the same information to European journalists and later provided information himself directly to police. Ms. Cameron's collection has since been described under oath as not central to the RCMP case against Eurocopter.

In the midst of an investigation of serious, credible allegations of corruption that reached into the very highest offices of this country, Ms. Cameron AND SEVERAL OTHER JOURNALISTS assisted a woefully slow-off-the-mark police force by pointing them in the right direction.

(This is a separate issue, but to my mind, this deserves praise, not condemnation, no matter what say the puritancial prisses who proclaim that investigative journalists must never have congress with the cops. P'shaw. To get information you go to people who have it, or can get it for you. And you do what you can to get it. You stand - and fall- ethically, on the basis of how you conduct yourself in that search, in what you tell them or give them, and what you get in return. Did you lie? Did you enrich yourself at the expense of your informants or the story itself? Were your motives malicious? Did your actions serve the public good?

Did you arrive at the truth?)

Years later - YEARS LATER - the RCMP, without her knowledge or consent, began a process that attributed to her information more weight than it deserved - but permitted them to use her to obtain search warrants. When a new officer arrived on the case - Matthews - he saw how she was being used and, alarmed at the team's slack approach to protocol, insisted that she be coded as a confidential informant - again, without her knowledge or permission. That triggered RCMP staff to approach her and "get her permission" by threatening her with exposure. Foolishly she caved and then foolishly later denied it.

This was a mistake, one borne of human fraility, a forgiveable failure of courage that is understandable in the light of subsequent events - she feared being crucified by her peers and she was right. No sooner did he contact with police come out than the Kaplans and the Greenspon's began measuring the timbers and hunting for nails.

The Globe story also fails to mention (although it reported the matter previously) that Cameron has launched a complaint against the RCMP seeking $120,000 in legal costs and an apology for designating her a confidential informant.

For Cameron's side of things, visit her website.

I don't know the facts well enough  on the Cameron case to pass judgment at this time, so I can't say whose interpretation of Cameron's relationship with the police is correct.

But I don't think Makin quoted Dunphy fully in context.

It's worth noting for the record that I know and like Stevie and that I'm a CTV employee, which makes the Globe a corporate cousin.

I would say that I agree with Dunphy; when you're doing investigative reporting of the type that Stevie's done, you're going to have to deal with the cops. At some point, that may involve sharing as well as obtaining information.

But similarly, some investigative reporting could require a person going undercover. Normally, disguising one's identity would be an ethical breach. But what if it's the only way to get the information on a matter that seriously affects the public?

Here's more on the CAJ's statement of principles and guidelines on investigative reporting.

The same principle applies in dealing with the police. Interestingly, the CAJ doesn't address police-journalist interactions in its statement of investigative guidelines (ADDENDUM: I must have skipped over it; it's under the section Independence).

Here's what it says in its general guidelines:

Police and lawyers try to involve us in the judicial process by asking for tapes, notes and photographs and by calling reporters or photographers as witnesses in criminal and civil cases. In effect, we become a shortcut for outside persons trying to prove a case.

This poses difficulties for two reasons. If we are seen to be a part of the judicial process, it damages our credibility as critics of the system and may limit our access to sources. If we promise confidentiality to a source and we are then summoned as a witness, we may be asked to break that promise upon the penalty of a fine or jail sentence. Accordingly, we will be wary of approaches from the police or lawyers for assistance on a case.  ...

Here is exactly what the CAJ said about Ms. Cameron in its March 10, 2004 news release:

"The issue is not whether Ms. Cameron, like many journalists, merely chatted with police officers about a certain case," said CAJ president Paul Schneidereit. "The fact is that she fed information, whether she regarded it as worthless or not, to the RCMP in their investigation of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, the very man she severely criticized in her 1994 book, On The Take."

"Besides the obvious appearance of a conflict of interest that arises here specifically, all journalists must always carefully guard against any perception that they are working for the police," said Schneidereit. "To not do so weakens the credibility of all journalists."

 The CAJ has repeatedly condemned the actions of police forces across Canada when they have tried to co-opt journalists for police work, by seizing notes and tapes or attempting to force them to divulge the identity of confidential sources.

"The reason is clear: Journalists must not be seen as proxy agents of the state, for that undermines the public's trust in our profession, as well as | our very ability to gather information," said Schneidereit.

Journalists across the country have been transfixed and deeply troubled by the question of how deeply Ms. Cameron was involved with the RCMP. After  initially denying last fall that she was an informant, Ms. Cameron later admitted passing on small scraps of what she termed worthless information to the Mounties. She has denied knowing police regarded her as a confidential informant. Evidence released in court in Toronto last week showed that Ms. Cameron's coded name appears in RCMP records hundreds of times in connection with their investigation into Mulroney and the Airbus controversy.

RCMP officials testified they kept Ms. Cameron's name secret at least partly because disclosure would be ruinous to her reputation. "Clearly, much more information has to come out before any final conclusions can be drawn," said Schneidereit.  "But just as clearly, we believe the relationship between Ms. Cameron and the police was fundamentally inappropriate."

"Even if her intentions were honourable, Ms. Cameron should realize that by being seen to be                         helping the police with their case, her behaviour has potentially damaged the reputations  and |effectiveness -- of her colleagues everywhere in Canada."

Again, what the release or investigative guidelines don't say is what you should do if there's a trail of evidence suggesting there may well be corruption at the highest levels in this country -- but to get to it, you have to deal with the police at some point.

The whole situation has left Cameron feeling singed. Here is what she was quoted as saying at a journalism symposium in Halifax in March 2004:

"Never talk to the police," Stevie Cameron told a symposium on democracy and journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax yesterday.

"My encounter with the RCMP has been a disaster for me and I will never talk to the police again." ...

Cameron said the controversy surrounding her relationship with the RCMP has changed investigative work in Canada forever.

"Reporters are now telling me that stories they did where they traded any information with the police, those stories will probably never appear now."