Pulitzer winner claims he was unable to tell of anger about Arctic discovery

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

An award-winning Canadian photojournalist has resigned from his newspaper because of its “refusal to publish a story of significant public interest.”

Paul Watson, winner of Canada’s only Pulitzer, announced on his blog on Tuesday (7 July) that he had quit the Toronto Star. He wrote:

“Resigning is the only way I can resume that reporting, complete the work and fulfill my responsibilities as a journalist”.

According to Watson, the Star would not publish his story on the search for the lost ships of a British expedition to the Arctic in 1847.* The search was supported by Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper.

Watson claims that when one of the ship, HMS Erebus, was found there were “distorted and inaccurate accounts” of the discovery, which allegedly originated with a person close to the prime minister’s office and with influence within the Star.

He says he wanted to give a voice to federal civil servants and others involved in the search who were angry about the accounts.

In his blog entry, he says his efforts to report on that person’s influence were stymied, and that editors placed him under “a six-week reporting ban”.



In a later blog entry, On War And The Good Fight, he wrote that “a quarrel over the search for two ships that sank in the middle of the 19th century probably doesn’t strike people as the best reason to turn your back on a six-figure salary and walk the plank”. He continued:

“To understand why, you only need to know this: I’ve lost track of the times I was nearly killed because I knew I had to give a bigger voice to frightened, intimidated people who couldn’t stand up to power on their own... I decided to sacrifice my livelihood for the truth”.

He wrote that silence breeds fear and it was time to “stand up for the people being silenced and give them voice”.

Watson won a breaking news photography Pulitzer in 1994 for a grisly photo of a dead U.S. soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu during the civil war in Somalia. He has also won four Canadian national newspaper awards and a Canadian Association of Journalists award.



He joined the Star in 1985 and covered foreign conflicts, including those in Somalia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. After leaving in 1998, he rejoined the Star from the Los Angeles Times in 2009.

*British naval explorer Sir John Franklin and his 128 crew on two ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were lost while trying to navigate the Northwest Passage.

A spokesman for the Star said the paper “does not comment on confidential personnel matters.” He said: “We regret that Mr Watson has chosen to resign. He made many valuable contributions to the Star over his years with the newspaper”.

He added: “The Toronto Star has a long, award-winning history of publishing solid, investigative stories of major public interest.

“That tradition continues to this day. Suppressing such stories is something the Star has never done and is not doing now”.

And the Star later published a piece in which its publisher, John Cruickshank, is quoted as saying there is “no truth whatever” to Watson’s suggestion that the Star was constrained in its reporting.

Sources: National Post/Toronto Star/Wikipedia/Watson’s blog (1) and (2)/Watson’s Facebook page

