Category / Read / Commentary

Is the U.S. White House “attacking the messenger” — or refusing to pretend that the Fox News Channel news is performing journalism . . .

“We don’t intend to be one of the corpses lying beside the information highway,” says Israel Asper, chairman of Canwest Global.” The CBC archives captured what family head Izzy Asper said as the Aspers helped themselves to a vast plateful of Canadian journalism just after the takeover, back when media concentration (and American sub-prime mortgages…

Blogged Warren Kinsella: “My sincere hope, naïve as it may be, is that the amazing journalists and editors at Canwest hold onto their jobs, and that they emerge stronger than before. “Someone needs to be thrown under the bus for this mess, but it’s not the working journalists, that’s for damn sure.” Hear, hear.

There are lots of questions about Canwest and the future of its many media operations, after much of the company was granted creditor protection Tuesday. But here’s one question that’s fascinated me as shares of Canwest Global Communications  zipped up and down as though on a bungee cord. Most recently they went up to .235…

“Fifty years ago, The Globe and Mail became the first Western newspaper to open a bureau in what was then known as Red China. Beijing correspondent Mark MacKinnon reflects on what’s changed since then and what hasn’t.” — From the FOCUS section of The Globe and Mail

An interesting post on editorsweblog.org points to discussions in several places about how public journalists can be with personal views. The news hook is a Washington Post guideline for its journalists using social networks. The discussion, predictably, wanders to whether bias is inevitable, always damning, and should be declared. This quote from the editor’s memo,…

The Fraser Institute has gone from being regarded by  journalists and editors “with suspicion and derision” to its current lofty status “as a go-to source for every major media outlet in Canada,” wrote Geoff Turner in the online magazine The Tyee, in an examination of the think tank’s public relations success –as opposed to the…

Foreign affairs columnist Jonathan Manthorpe wrote an eulogy to the Far Eastern Economic Review, or simply “FEER,” which Dow Jones announced it will close, after gutting it several years previously. “Asia is sadly lacking in authoritative, incisive and independent media, and last week it was announced that it will lose the one publication which for…

It’s been almost a month since Ontario’s former Attorney General, Michael Bryant, was charged with dangerous driving, and, criminal negligence causing the death of a cyclist, Darcy Allan Sheppard. The fact that Bryant hired a public relations firm which then launched a social media campaign, mostly on Twitter (@Bryantfacts), launched a debate about his ability…

David Olive’s new model for newspapers: “shrink the newsprint product to a 32-page broadsheet or tabloid featuring only staff-written feature-length content and the best material available from other publications worldwide.” Shunt all generic news to the Web. Harness newspapers to explain the meaning of the news. Simple, right? Nothing’s that simple — as Olive discusses…