After a decade of watching newspapers and rival wire services shrink, The Associated Press, the 161-year-old news cooperative, is refitting itself to handle the 24-hour news cycle it helped create, reported the New York Times. “The new generation of consumers has completely different habits,” the story quoted Jim Kennedy, The A.P.’s vice president for strategic…
The judge hearing a political corruption case in British Columbia approved a prosecutor’s application for an in-camera session as part of the pre-trial process, reported the Canadian Press: “Justice Elizabeth Bennett of B.C. Supreme Court granted the request by special prosecutor Bill Berardino to close the court to the public and reporters while she hears…
A judge in the Northwest Territories seems to think the courts have the ability to order CBC programming: a court ordered a CBC Radio broadcaster to air a program on family violence, as part of his sentence for spousal assault. Apart from any merit — and the sheer originality — of the sentence, it’s an…
Maclean’s recently published an excerpt from a 2006 book by Mark Steyn entitled, “The future belongs to Islam.” On Dec. 4, the Canadian Islamic Congress will hold a press conference to launch formal human rights complaints in Ontario, British Columbia and the Federal Human Rights Commissions for publishing an “Islamophobic article” that “subjects Canadian Muslims to…
There is no defence at all for “irresponsible journalism,” wrote Toronto Star public editor Kathy English in a weekend column, “What is responsible journalism on matters of public interest?“ A recent Ontario court ruling “puts that question at the forefront of both journalism and the laws that affect Canadian media. And, as both the newsrooms…
Chinese officials are denying reports they’re keeping dossiers on foreign journalists who are planning on covering the Beijing Olympics, reported the Associated Press. The the Beijing Games open in less than nine months. Chinese officials are attempting to back away from widely published comments (Such as Agence France-Presse story) that the communist government is assembling…
Media in the Arab world are “suffering from four major defects”, the director-general of Al Jazeera warned at a Media & Marketing conference in Dubai, reported Arabian Business. Wadah Khanfar said that 24-hour news was “obsessed by breaking news”, suffering from a “severe lack of historical context”, was “betraying” the masses, and should focus on…
Unions are starting to speak up against the latest CanWest newsroom cutbacks, which they argue will erode local news coverage. But where are the people who read/watch the news, and use it to help make decisions? When threats were perceived to California newspapers in recent years, in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, politicians, businesspeople and…
Hello? Hello! Is anybody reading this stuff? Does anybody care? Or are Canadians — and the Canadian journalists who ought to be especially concerned here — really a bunch of sheep? Comment, already. If you won’t/can’t scream, picket or write to your MPs, for Pete’s sake at least comment — just click the mouse and…
Canada’s federal broadcast regulator will consider the issue of a subscriber fee to fund the operations of conventional over-the-air broadcasters, reported CBC. The decision to consider such a fee, to be paid by cable and satellite firms to carry the signals of conventional broadcasters, is a reversal of a position the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications…