ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how digital disruption and resultant “information disorder” pose powerful challenges to freedom of the press. Well beyond the mere absence of censorship, news media have won a range of instrumentally justified legal privileges or exemptions. Examples of these so-called positive rights include protection of confidential sources’ identities, preferred access to spaces and documents, limits to the inhibitory force of privacy and defamation laws, and—increasingly in recent years—various kinds of financial relief. As recent Canadian examples demonstrate, news media disruption has made it difficult to distinguish journalists from other potential claimants to press privileges without limiting the public’s right to choose amongst plural and diverse sources of fact and opinion—another vital indicator of press freedom. The competing claimants include smaller or more peripheral providers of news, campaigners for causes of various kinds, and the purveyors of disinformation. As well, the harm done by online disinformation and hate has bolstered moves toward enforced moderation of online content.
