By Grant Buckler Media and freedom of expression organizations are protesting after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police charged Justin Brake, a reporter for The Newfoundland and Labrador Independent, with mischief and disobeying a court order for entering the site of a controversial hydroelectric project. A group of Indigenous activists cut a lock at the Muskrat…
By Jasmine Bala for the Ryerson Journalism Research Centre Indigenous people want their leaders held accountable, but journalists should be cautious about perpetuating negative stereotypes, Ryerson School of Journalism Rogers Visiting Journalist Duncan McCue said during a lecture on Indigenous politics. By way of example, McCue said stories such as those of the “crooked” and…
By George Abraham I recently spoke to a great class of graduate students at Carleton on the topic of diversity in journalism. I anticipated the students would be bored out of their wits – seeing my “lecture” as an imposition by a professor, rather than required material for a career in Canadian journalism. What I…
By H.G. Watson, Associate Editor Parliamentary Press Gallery members are still trying to figure out what proposed new security measures will mean for them. On Feb. 24, CBC reported that the House of Commons administrative committee had recommended new screening measures for access to parliamentary buildings, which may apply to any journalist looking to obtain…
This story was funded by the J-Source Patreon campaign By Dylan C. Robertson Data collected late last year suggests Canada’s columns have grown even more unrepresentative since a similar 2014 J-Source columnists survey. Canada’s news and general interest columnists are overwhelmingly male, white, straight and middle aged, according to a J-Source survey of 125 columnists. “The…
By H.G. Watson, Associate Editor Postmedia has announced that they plan to lay off 54 staff at the Vancouver Sun and The Province by early April. A memo posted by Financial Post media reporter Sean Craig on Twitter outlined details of the layoffs, described as the “second stage of our salary deduction initiative.” Phyllise Gelfand,…
By H.G. Watson, Associate Editor Postmedia has made substantial cuts to non-unionized employee benefits, including axing its employment assistance program and eliminating maternity and parental leave top-up payments. A memo released on March 9 details the changes for both full-time and part-time staff. “Across Postmedia we currently have numerous and varied benefit programs, pension plans…
By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail Today and yesterday, the website and the front page of the newspaper have been and are dominated by extensive coverage of the attack on the Quebec City mosque. Much more coverage is and will be done in the coming hours and days and readers still have many…
The following memo was sent to all Postmedia staff on Mar. 9, 2017. Across Postmedia we currently have numerous and varied benefit programs, pension plans and other human resources policies like vacation that apply to various employee groups. In order to both achieve harmony across our operations and to ensure the affordability of these programs…
By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman The Alberta Teachers’ Association released a toolkit for creating curriculum dealing with “sexual and minority genders.” The complainant, Greg Murphy, questioned the balance and fairness of an article about the handbook framed by the objections raised by a critic. He thought it misrepresented the document and distorted its meaning. There…