CBC Ombudsman: Covering Syria
The complainant thought the Power & Politics treatment of events in Syria was too one-sided. Continue Reading CBC Ombudsman: Covering Syria
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CBC Ombudsman: Fair Edits – What gets published has to reflect what happened
The complainant was present in the House of Commons 35 years ago when a female MP got up to ask a question about violence against women. Continue Reading CBC Ombudsman: Fair Edits – What gets published has to reflect what happened
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CBC Ombudsman: The “f” word — A threshold for its use in news
By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman The complainant, Curtis Hopkins, thought swearing on an online video of an eyewitness recording of a bus billowing smoke was in violation of policy. The video was a powerful account of a breaking news story, although the swearing was not critical to the understanding of the story. Since the crew…
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Globe and Mail Public Editor: Does an idiom have a ‘best before’ date?
By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail Our language doesn’t stay still. It adapts to a changing world, gains new terms, drops old ones and changes course when a term or phrase is widely acknowledged as hurtful and derogatory. One of those phrases appeared in the big headline on the front page of the… -
Globe and Mail Public Editor: Overuse of term ‘populism’ can be misleading
By Sylvia Stead, Globe and Mail Public Editor Here’s a word that has surged in popularity in the last year. It has been used to describe Donald Trump’s ascendancy, the majority vote on Brexit and the second-place showing of Marine Le Pen in this month’s French presidential election. I’ve seen business articles in The Globe… -
Toronto Star Public Editor: Reader trust and responsible reporting with anonymous sources
By Kathy English, Toronto Star Public Editor An important reader question about trust in the Star: “I am curious what steps a journalist might take to verify what they are told by a confidential source. I can understand the need for confidential sources in the media, but, as a reader I generally put a little less faith… -
CBC Ombudsman: Beware of generalizations
By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman The complainant, Mr. Marco Mura, objected to the characterization of the government of Turkey as “fundamentalist.” I agree that the term is too broad to be accurate in this context. Adjectives are seldom a news writer’s friend. COMPLAINT On December 7, 2016, The World at Six ran a feature about… -
Why freedom of the press should apply in Indigenous communities
By Wawmeesh Hamilton Freedom of the press enables citizens to know about the things that public bodies do that impact them. It’s what enabled me to report on civic affairs for a community newspaper for seven years. I reported about city taxes, school board decisions and regional district swearings in of new First Nations members.…
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CBC Ombudsman: What do reporters need to reveal upfront -The case of Marketplace’s Weddings Inc.
By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman The complainant, Catherine Lash, said she would never have let a Marketplace crew into her wedding show if she had known who they were. The crew should have been more intentional in identifying itself. She was concerned that her company is tarnished because shots of the event are in the… -
Toronto Star Public Editor: Public Editor cannot be one-person panacea to reader trust problem
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star Ten years ago this month, I signed on to what would turn out to be the most challenging job of my life in journalism. I knew that serving as the Star’s public editor would not be an easy task. It is widely regarded as the worst job in journalism and…