By Kathy English for the Toronto Star Reporting on the tabloid tizzy over a British court order blocking British media from publishing details of a celebrity sex scandal has embroiled the Toronto Star in a global controversy about press freedom in our digital age. The Star received a “cease and desist” letter Tuesday from a…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star (ICIJ) came calling for Canadian journalists who could put collaboration above competition to investigate a gigantic global data leak, it is not surprising they reached out to the Toronto Star’s Rob Cribb. The award-winning reporter has spent much of the past three years working on investigative “co-productions” that…
FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting announced The Dalton Camp Award in 2002 to honour the memory of the late Dalton Camp, a distinguished commentator on Canadian public affairs. The Dalton Camp Award goes to the winner or winners of a juried essay competition on the link between democracy and the media in Canada. This year,…
By Esther Enkin for the CBC The complainant, Mark Wright, thought CBC in New Brunswick was providing free advertising to one of its regular columnists. The author of World of Work broadcast on radio, and had a column online. The online column linked directly to his company. There’s nothing wrong with using experts, but the…
By Esther Enkin for the CBC The complainant, John Gilmore, thought that a news story about violence in the West Bank was biased because it did not present the Palestinian perspective. He cited the absence of the word “occupied” to describe the territories as one example, and felt the story did not make clear that…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star It has long been the Toronto Star’s policy not to name the victims of alleged sexual assault. That is in line with provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code, which makes a ban on publication of the identity of a sexual assault complainant mandatory if requested by the Crown or…
By Sylvia Stead, for the Globe and Mail On Friday afternoon, a failed attempt to be clever in a blurb on a Facebook posting sparked the wrath of many readers. It was about an amazing survival story that showed the courage and resourcefulness of two men and a teenager lost in a blizzard on Baffin Island. Nunavut…
By Grant Buckler Last week, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that Vice News reporter Ben Makuch must hand over all communications between him and an IS fighter, Farah Mohamed Shirdon, to the RCMP. It’s a worrying decision, because the news media need to be independent, not to be co-opted to do the work of the police.…
By Canadian Journalists for Free Expression The undersigned organizations have issued a joint letter to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale expressing alarm over the Ontario Superior Court ruling that Vice News reporter Ben Makuch must hand over all communications between him and an ISIS fighter to the RCMP. The coalition urges the RCMP and Public Safety Canada to…
The complainant, Andrew Sprague, said that CBC News wrongly identified the status of an emotional support dog that was banned from an Edmonton base.