George V. Ferguson was the editor of the Montreal Star and a radio commentator on international affairs. During the First World War, he served in France. He was a Rhodes scholar from the University of Alberta, and his newspaper experience included the Manitoba Free Press, and Winnipeg Free Press, where he eventually became the executive editor. He was a prominent Canadian nationalist who sought to understand the roots of Canadian unity. From 1946, he worked with the international service of the CBC before becoming editor of the Montreal Star. As editor, his editorials on French-English relations were important reading during a tumultuous time in Canadian history. He also served on the United Nations Commission on Freedom of the Press. He died in 1977.
In his lecture, George Ferguson outlined the problems facing the freedom of the press and evaluated its strength in Canada. He claimed that freedom of information is absolutely necessary to a democratic system, and so the history of freedom of the press has been rooted in an ongoing struggle to avoid state interference and commercial impositions. The major issues he saw with the freedom of the press included the influence of advertisers, political bias, the decreasing number of newspaper, and the growing monopolies of newspaper owners and their extension to radio and television broadcasting. While he agreed that the threat of a few owners controlling the nations press was serious, he argued that with radio and television in direct competition, the risk of monopoly and undue influence by a single owner were mitigated. Ferguson identified the two great limitations placed on newspapers as the need to entertain (to appeal and satisfy a mass public) and speed (to publish quickly, which often meant publishing distorted accounts. However, he saw most newspapers fulfilling their role to both make money while not endangering the public interest well within those limitations. Two editorial responses to his lecture in the Queen’s Journal took issue with his rosy characterization of newspaper’s role in Canadian democracy in the 1950s. They advocated for government oversight of newspapers to enforce the responsibility of papers to protect the freedom of their readers and the democratic system.
Ferguson spent a week at the university in mid-November. This year was also the first time that the Dunning Trust lectures were given by multiple people, instead of three lectures by one individual. The change was intended to make the program more varied. This year all lecturers were Canadian, which was also a first.