A brief bio
Daniel J. Henry is a media and entertainment lawyer, and has taught, written and spoken publicly on media law issues.
Since August, 2012, he has maintained an independent law practice, providing pre-publication advice to documentary, reality and comedy producers, news organizations, authors and journalists, including pre-clearance advice to secure errors and omissions insurance. He also provides corporate and commercial advice to those producing information and entertainment content in Canada.
From 1978 to 2012, he was an in-house counsel at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, rising to the level of Senior Legal Counsel. While there, he assisted officers and employees at all levels (from the studio to the President), in all services (radio, television, and digital media), and in all departments (News, Arts and Entertainment, Factual entertainment, Sports, Sales and Marketing (incl. Ad Standards), Communications, Business affairs, Engineering, and IT).
He worked with many of CBC’s programs (e.g. World Report, As It Happens, the Current, Q, Ideas, the National, the fifth estate, Marketplace, Air Farce, George Stroumboulopoulos, and Dragon’s Den).
Programs he advised on have won national and international awards (an Oscar, International Emmys, a Michener, and Geminis).
He was involved in acquiring sports broadcast rights (Olympics, Commonwealth Games, NHL, MLB and CFL), protected the title Hockey Night in Canada, and shares credit for a national contest that led to HNIC's current theme.
He was responsible for supervision of litigation in civil and criminal matters, and participated in litigating many cases of significance in media law, up to and including the Supreme Court of Canada. One, the Dagenais case, significantly redefined the law of publication bans in light of the Charter, and had a profound impact on court reporting in Canada.
He’s known for advocating television camera access to courts.
He's participated in law reform, appearing before committees of provincial legislatures, House of Commons and Senate.
He has taught a Law and Ethics course in McMaster University's Master of Communications program, Sheridan College's Public Relations graduate program, and the University of Toronto's Faculty of Arts, Culture and Media. He has also taught media law in law schools and journalism schools across Canada as a guest lecturer.
He was a co-founder of Ad IDEM (the Canadian Media Lawyers Association), was on its Board until 2018, and was responsible for its website adidem.org until 2020, when it received a new look as canadianmedialawyers.com. For years he was Chair of the Media and Communications Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association.
He wrote the entry for Media and the Law, among others, in the Canadian Encyclopedia.
He has a JD from the University of Toronto Law School (receiving his LLB in 1976), and a B.Comm. from the University of Toronto (1973).
