By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail In these times of political spin, contradictions, obfuscation and, at times, outright lies, readers expect to see not only the articles, but also the headlines, reflect the truth as best they can. A British Columbia reader wrote to me this week calling on The Globe to pay…
By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman The complainant, William Heavenor, was concerned about the qualifying phrase “even so” in a paragraph about the makeup of the federal firearms advisory committee. Its placement made him suspicious that the writer was implying that the presence of white people on the committee was somehow wrong. In fact, the context…
By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail Words matter, accuracy matters, fairness matters, independence matters. With journalism under attack these days south of the border, journalists need to focus on the basics of the craft and not become defensive to the swirling charges from Donald Trump that they produce “fake news” and are the…
By Megan Fraser for The Signal In the last three years, administrative clerk Jennifer Gibson has answered more than 5,000 phone calls. She sits in a cubicle on the sixth floor of a downtown Halifax office building, facing two computer screens. And she faces a daily challenge – she is hard of hearing. Gibson took…
By Pat Reddick for Media Are Plural Enter panic mode, it’s time to seriously worry about things. Or, better yet, get your thinking cap on and come up with some ideas for how to save an industry. For the past few months, we’ve seen an outpouring of ideas in Canada about how to save the…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star What if all the women who have faced bullying and harassment in online spaces stood together and decided we will not take it any more? What if all the women — and men — who know that this “cyber misogyny” is wrong stood with them in protest and…
By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman William McDowell, legal counsel to J.D. Irving Limited (JDI), wrote to complain about the Twitter activity of the provincial affairs correspondent in New Brunswick, Jacques Poitras. He was concerned that the activity on both the reporter’s CBC Twitter account and the one he uses to promote his books put him…
By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail Globe readers had reason to be confused this week. A few were puzzled by two instances of columnists who were writing either opinion, analysis or politics. So now you are probably confused too. A little background: Campbell Clark is The Globe and Mail’s chief political writer. He…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star Dear readers: What do you want to know about the Toronto Star’s journalism in this digital age? How can we help you better understand the culture of journalism — why and how journalists do what they do, what the Star chooses to cover, who makes those decisions? Can…
By George Abraham I recently spoke to a great class of graduate students at Carleton on the topic of diversity in journalism. I anticipated the students would be bored out of their wits – seeing my “lecture” as an imposition by a professor, rather than required material for a career in Canadian journalism. What I…