CHRETIEN CRITIC FIRED FROM OTTAWA CITIZEN

OTTAWA, June 18, 2002 (LSN.ca) – Ottawa Citizen publisher Russell Mills has been fired by the newspaper’s owners, the Izzy Asper clan, a family well-known for its federal Liberal Party connections and particularly for their friendship with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. The firing came in the wake of a Citizen feature that exposed the huge financial scandal surrounding the prime minister, known as “Shawinigate,” and calling for Chrétien to resign.  Mills told the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s few papers not now owned by the Aspers, that the owners accused him of failing to submit an editorial this month, which blamed Chrétien for the government’s conflict-of-interest scandal, for approval by company headquarters.  The firing is part of what critics see as the continuing slow-transformation of Southam newspapers back toward the centre-left, Liberal-loyal tone from which Conrad Black briefly rescued them in the mid-1990s. A columnist who was critical of Chrétien, Lawrence Martin, was fired by the Aspers last year.  For Globe and Mail coverage see: https://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.html&cf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&encoded_keywords=Shawinigate&option=&start_row=1&current_row=1&start_row_offset1=&num_rows=1&search_results_start=1   To read a column by Lawrence Martin, a leading expert on the Chrétien scandals, see: https://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.html&cf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&encoded_keywords=Shawinigate&option=&start_row=2&current_row=2&start_row_offset1=&num_rows=1&search_results_start=1