Recent comments

Lauren,

   My advice: Do not start adding books to your list randomly. It is quite good as is. Especially avoid bowing to Dave Patterson's snide little bit about Chomsky not being on the list.  Once you start adding titles, all you end up with is a long list of books with no particular personality. Who needs that? And nobody is better at insinuating their way onto a list than Chomsky's followers.

   Terry

Wow. As they say. Seems kind of telling that Chomsky/Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent' isn't more or less top and center of a reading list for students being trained to be *real* journalists - which are in precious short supply these days. Or what about Canada's own Marshall McLuhan's 'Understanding Media'? Or maybe a bit of history with one of the original analyses, Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann? Maybe a bit of AV with the film Network? Or what about one of the recent Project Censored books? And many other books along the same lines I could list, questioning or offering somewhat non-mainstream perspectives of the actual role of 'journalism' in our society, rather than the 'we're such good people!!' role as presented (apparently) in journalism schools and, of course, the mainstream media itself? I will, frankly, be somewhat surprised if this comment makes it past the moderators, if this is the kind of site that doesn't want students to at least be thinking about what Chomsky et al have to say about the role of 'journalism' in the modern world. Barking dog, Holmes? What barking dog? Exactly, Watson, exactly....

I would add two more to this list:

Reportr.net
A blog on media, society and technology by UBC journalism professor, Alfred Hermida

Teaching Online Journalism
A blog on teaching new journalism technologies by multimedia journalist and educator Mindy McAdams

No.  Journalists should not require the hospital's permission before interviewing patients.

Journalists must be watchdogs of all public services including hospitals.  

The last thing the public needs are stories vetted by the hospital's public relations or risk management (liability control) department.  It doesn't serve the public to read, listen and watch hospital propaganda.  

If journalists require the permission of hospital executives to interview patients, how will they be able to cover superbug outbreaks or hallway conditions or security breaches? 

Patients and hospitals do not share the same perspective.  Hospitals are most interested in ensuring that their facility is shown in a positive light.  Patients are most concerned that they receive good care.  

Patients with complaints about conditions in hospitals and other health care facilities must have as much of a right to access the press as anybody else.  If patients experience unsafe hospital conditions, and their requests for help inside the hospital are unheeded, they currently only have two immediate options: call a lawyer or call a journalist.  

Some patients and families may not want to risk calling a journalist, if that means alerting the hospital administration while the patient is still in care and before the interview has even taken place.  Imagine a scenario where a patient calls the press with an allegation of abuse and the press asks the hospital for permission to interview the patient.  What if the hospital says no?  What could happen to that patient who dared to speak up once the media witness is denied?

If asking the hospital for permission to interview and shoot is not the answer to protecting patients and their privacy, what is?

1. Patients who are drugged or otherwise unable to consent should not be asked to go on the record, unless a substitute decision-maker grants that consent.  Stories should be held until such time as consent can be verified.  

2. Patients should be offered the opportunity to speak without attribution or to be blurred or silhouetted in video or photos, if what they reveal could compromise their safety or ability to heal.  The impact of the published story on the subsequent care of the patient should also be considered.

3. To lift the burden of the allegation off the shoulders of the individual patient, information about systemic error gleaned from patients should be followed-up with expert interviews to provide context.  As with all good journalism, facts should be verified in order to avoid defamation risk.  Patients should be offered the opportunity to speak without naming their care team if needed.

4. Journalists can protect themselves from retroactive allegations of consent violations by getting release forms, in which the subject of the story is briefly described, signed by patients and their families.

5. If journalists want to shoot hospital conditions outside the patient's room or care area, they should get the consent of the other patients or blur or otherwise de-identify them to protect their privacy.

6. If journalists need visuals from around the hospital, they should ask hospitals to accommodate them without compromising patient safety.  It is important that journalists not risk liability for putting patients at risk by slowing down any medical procedure or movement.

A Press Complaints Commission or other body should consider drafting a guideline for ethical patient interviews and media production inside hospitals and other health care facilities.  

Journalists should have a body at which to complain if hospitals deny them access to shoot a story without a good enough reason.  

Given the shrinkage of mainstream media and the growth of citizen journalism, it is important for hospitals not to deny access to journalists who are not with a larger news outlet.  

Media have a role to play in improving patient safety and quality of care in hospitals by exposing system failures and informing the public about the risks they face in those facilities.  We must do so while respecting patient privacy and ensuring we don't put their care at risk.  

I like the idea in theory, but hope it is viewed as a pilot project for a few years before becoming the law of the land. If anything, journalists need veracity and access to information being broadened will only help that. Being a freelancer and blogger (and j-school graduate) at the moment, I think it would inspire more in my position to behave accordingly and get registered - even if it meant a strict set of requirements be met. 

Right now, journalism needs a 'professionalism injection' and this is just an overreactive response to that. 

Sadly, I am an anglophone and can only hope that no one is discriminated against regarding language in this process. I am a proponent of free language education in this country already, and something like that would turn me into an outright activist. 

The media outlet should inform the hospital prior to any interviews. The hospital has to protect the privacy of the patient. This will not happen if members of the media can approach patients directly. Patients are often under sedation and medicated and cannot give proper consent. Also, the patient's family is often under stress and cannot deal with the media.

Ironically, in New Brunswick, the government has done away with FOI fees, while in Illinois, I believe, its state government has announced frequent FOI filers will see their requests delayed because they file so often.

And it disturbs me, as well, that, other than a handful of journalists who spoke to the CAJ about it asking for support making their case to the government, this has not sparked the interest from our industry that it should be creating -- even if it is to simply debate the government-transparency versus deadline-reality disconnect.

I'm very disappointed to read about this, but I'm even more disappointed that this is the first I've heard of WordStock events for this year.

I was looking forward to attending, as I have done for three of the past four years. It's a real shame that Wordstock is being left behind. It was a great day for Toronto-area journos to come together, learn a bit more about their craft and improve themselves professional.

Hopefully this decision is reconsidered.

It's just ill-tempered sniping -- standard fare from Blatch. (Why should a dedicated politician's swan song ignore his politics?) jeremy klaszus points out what sorts of topics engender another tone from  Blatch. She fits in well at the National Pest.

I would like to know why the editor - publisher of the National Post did not stop and think for a moment as to the appropriateness of the junk spewed by Ms. Blachtford (to quote an earlier comment). This debacle projects on the National Post as much as it does on it's employee. There are better ways to seek publicity although to quote whoever said it first: "Any publicity is good publicity". 

Fully in agreement.

Then we take the next step: Bylines for editorials. To do away with the fantasy that behind the masthead lives an all-wise oracular voice.

Let columnists be columnists, yes. But let readers be readers as well. Many think this was over the line, and in a way, everything here is happening as it should. A columnist wrote a terrible column, the paper published it, and readers are now shitting on the writer for penning something so petty, cynical and condescending.

As an aside, it's just laughable that Blatchford goes after her media colleagues for the supposedly unforgivable sin of fawning, given her gushing, sentimental commentary on the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. In Blatchford's world, fawning is apparently OK, so long as the subject is a soldier, or a white guy caught in the middle of a native land dispute. It's OK to lionize these folks. But a respected statesman of the left? Absolutely not, even when he's dead. It's hypocrisy plain and simple.