Esprit de Corps editor Scott Taylor is taken to task for irresponsible behaviour in a new review by J-Source contributor, Jeffrey Dvorkin. Taylor – a former soldier – writes about carrying weapons when he was embedded as a freelancer with a Canadian unit in the Balkans in 1988. He says he fired a pistol towards…
“Read a good newspaper … it will be your path to the world at large,” advises James MacGregor Burns, an American professor emeritus, in a New York Times back-to-college column. The cynic in me wonders if the good professor would have the same advice were he younger, with a youthful perspective on social online media…
A New York Times editor’s off-the-cuff estimate that a recent NYT magazine cover story cost almost $400,000 to report and edit is sparking wonderment and head-scratching in the journalism community. The story, produced in collaboration with ProPublica, dug into allegations of mass euthenasia at a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina. A piece published by the Neiman Journalism Lab called it…
“Some good news from Afghanistan is that American commanders have wisely canceled a contract with a public relations firm accused of profiling correspondents with negative-to-positive ratings to help determine whether they may report in the war zone with troops,” said a New York Times editorial. It cites a military newspaper report that profiles “were used…
A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decided that a section of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which bans Internet hate messages, is unconstitutional because it violates free speech protections.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has pressed his Iranian counterpart, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, to release detained journalist Maziar Bahari, said news reports. A CBC story is here; Agence France-Presse reports here; the background on Bahari’s case is on the web site freemaziarbahari.org.
Peerless photographer Annie Leibovitz may be the latest victim of America’s bad debt crisis and nationwide recession — and also, said an Agence France-Presse story, “of her own relentless artistic ambition.” “How Could This Happen to Annie Leibovitz? The $24 million question,” asked New York Magazine. “Her debts now total a staggering $24 million, consolidated…
(This post updated Aug. 22) It’s nearly a year since Canadian Amanda Lindhout and Australian Nigel Brennan were kidnapped in Somalia. The families of the freelance journalists released a statement asking for continued privacy. Previously this summer, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Canada and Australia should do more to help free them. Reporters Without…
None of the previous incidents of censorship in Afghanistan (here and here, to cite just two of the more egregious examples) come remotely close to this week’s ban on news media coverage of Taliban violence during the presidential elections….
Garrison Keillor’s writing can dazzle. That’s one reason I sometimes read him. Another reason is that his oddball incoherence can free a reader to cherry-pick sentences …