Video (at 12:12): Photojournalist Amber Bracken was arrested by RCMP C-IRG officers on November 19, 2021. Bracken says: “For the record, I’m a member of the media. You’ve been notified that I’m here. I’m an observer.”
This week, CBC News reported: “The high-profile case of an award winning photojournalist who was arrested by the RCMP while covering Indigenous resistance to construction of the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline in northern B.C. goes to trial starting Monday [January 12]. Amber Bracken and news outlet The Narwhal are suing for breach of Charter rights, wrongful arrest and wrongful detention.”
The explains: “Despite identifying herself as a journalist and carrying credentials, the lawsuit alleges Bracken was arrested and held in custody for four days in November 2021. The arrest happened after members of the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) unit raided a small structure known as a ‘tiny house’ erected in defiance of a court-ordered injunction obtained by Coastal GasLink.”
Canada’s National Observer also reports: “To kick off Bracken’s testimony, The Narwhal’s lawyer, Sean Hern, played a video captured by CBC documentarian Michael Toledano showing the moments during and leading up to the arrest of Bracken, Toledano and four protesters on Nov. 19, 2021, in northern British Columbia.”
That article adds: “[Hern argued] that if journalists like Bracken were not present at protest sites, and if those arrests were hidden from view behind an RCMP checkpoint, ‘there would have been a total absence of reliable, impartial and timely information available to the public.’ While first-hand accounts from protesters would eventually trickle out as people were released, in the short-term, only the perspective of the police themselves would have been communicated, he told the court.”
Implications for press coverage of sites of protest
Narwhal editor-in-chief Carol Linnitt tells The Tyee: “All Canadians have the right to a free press and deserve high-quality reporting, especially from sites of protest and conflict. And journalists not only have the right to report from injunction zones but, I would argue, a duty to the public to do so.”
Linnitt adds: “If we didn’t bring this case forward, it would amount to a tacit acceptance of the RCMP’s practice of detaining and arresting journalists, including Amber. What we are hoping to establish in this case is meaningful consequences for police when they interfere with the rights of journalists covering events in injunction zones.
“This journalist-police relationship has become untenable”
The Canadian Association of Journalists has commented: “While Bracken’s case is the one on the docket for Monday morning, she isn’t alone in experiencing this kind of censorship or interference at the hands of police. Over the past several years, the CAJ has documented multiple examples of how law enforcement across Canada too often arrest or detain journalists on trumped-up charges. The logical conclusion is that those actions are meant to stifle coverage and evade public scrutiny, in which case it is a strategy that criminalizes the act of bearing witness. The status quo in this journalist-police relationship has become untenable.”
The Tyee further comments: “[The trial] could help clarify the rights of Canadians to protest, the ability of the media to cover those events, and the consequences for police when they violate reporters’ constitutional rights. …The judge’s ruling could set a precedent that clarifies both basic rules surrounding the right to protest and the ability of the media to cover it.”
The trial is scheduled to take place over the next five weeks (which would mean about Friday February 13) at the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver.
We continue to follow this.
Additional reading: Stop Blocking Media from Reporting on Police Activity, Leaked Recommendations Say (Indigenous Watchdog, January 14, 2026).
