• J-Source

    Breaking the silence on Pakistan

    In Pakistan, a disaster of epic proportions has unfolded. The Times of India reports it will take years for the country to recover. Yet media coverage has been relatively muted. In a Global Journalist panel discussion, journalists working in the region agree coverage of the flood lacks urgency. To illustrate the situation closer to home,…

  • J-Source

    Getting at the truth in the Mulroney-Schreiber affair

    Harvey Cashore has a new book on the stands about the Airbus Affair. It’s called : The Truth Shows Up: A Reporter’s Fifteen-Year Odyssey Tracking Down the Truth About Mulroney, Schreiber and the Airbus Scandal. I have reviewed it in the July/August issue of the Literary Review of Canada. Here is a portion of that…

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    Interrogation, sensory deprivation and the CIA: A Canadian connection

    When Omar Khadr’s trial resumes, the issue of interrogation methods and torture techniques will once again be canvassed. Not well-known is the role played years ago by a Manitoba professor in the field of sensory deprivation, a technique that figures prominently in various manuals of interrogation.

  • J-Source

    Citizen vs. mainstream journalism

    The credibility of what is called “citizen journalism” took a big hit this week, according to Eric Morse, a former Canadian diplomat who is now vice-chair of the Security Studies Committee at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto. In a column in the Ottawa Citizen Morse criticized those who reported as fact information contained in…

  • J-Source

    Citizen Journalism We Need

    On Sunday three prominent publications published stories based on thousands of pages of classified U.S. military documents on the war in Afghanistan. The material came from WikiLeaks, a three-year-old, volunteer-run website whose mission is to provide a safe way for whistleblowers to make information public that someone in power didn’t want us to see. This…

  • J-Source

    A new kind of journalism

    The release of classified information about the Afghan War by WikiLeaks and three news organizations is being described by some as a new form of “assymetrical” journalism. In a column in The New York Times, David Carr says the collaboration between WikiLeaks, a whistle-blower Web site that specializes in publishing classified or secret documents, and three traditional…

  • J-Source

    WikiLeaks challenges news practices

    As military officials, world leaders and politicians debate the impact of the release of  tens of thousands of raw classified field reports on the Afghan war, journalists and those who study the media are debating the impact of the release on the news business. The records released were included in a classified archive obtained by…

  • J-Source

    Role of social media in news laid bare during G20

    An excellent analysis of the role of social media in news coverage is presented by Antonia Zerbisias in the Toronto Star on July 11. She aptly describes how Twitter became a news sources for untold numbers of people as journalists on the front lines used social media as an instant news wire, sending valuable, pertinent…

  • J-Source

    Old school journalism vs. new school on BBC radio

    BBC radio Scotland airs an interesting program pitting an old hack journalist using traditional tools against a younger new media journalist loaded with technology. The idea is to see which one gets the better, more credible story. The results are aired on the radio. The programme ‘Old Hack, New Tricks’ will air today  at 11:30am…

  • J-Source

    Thailand reporting lacked important context

    “Put in simplest terms, the troubles in Thailand are a classic clash between the rural poor – who live in places like Chiang Mai – and rich urbanites in Bangkok.” So concluded a report carried across Canadian newspapers this Saturday.It’s not that simple, of course. But neither is the Thai landscape so complicated that western…