By Sylvia Stead, for the Globe and Mail This week in Ottawa, Parliament’s Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage began to study how Canadians “are informed about local and regional experiences” by the media, whether broadcasting, digital or print. It’s a noble mission, fuelled by a concern over protecting Canadian content while local newspapers are…
By Kathy English, for the Toronto Star Just as opinion columnists have wide latitude to express views that some readers may find offensive, so too do editorial cartoonists have considerable freedom to offend. Freedom of expression can be a messy business and that important principle that as someone who believes passionately in freedom of expression,…
By Esther Enkin, for the CBC The complainant, Suzanne Maloney, thought this was an inappropriate turn of phrase to use when referring to the stabbing of a woman on the streets of Montreal. She thought it implied that the victim was to blame. I disagreed, because both in common usage and in the context of…
By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail The Jian Ghomeshi trial on charges of sexual assault and choking has concluded and we won’t know the verdict until March 24 when Justice William B. Horkins rules in front of what no doubt will be a throng of journalists and others ready to tweet, report and…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star Sometimes a typo published in the Star is just that, a regrettable slip of the finger that makes little difference to readers’ understanding of the news at hand. Vigilant Star readers report dozens of typos every day, most of them minor slip-ups — usually resulting in garbled and…
By Robert Liwanag Neutrality in journalism limits the civil liberties of reporters and should be abandoned, said the director of Ryerson University’s Centre for Free Expression during a recent panel discussion. Citing CNN’s two-week suspension of global affairs correspondent Elise Labott over a tweet last November, James Turk said neutrality fails to distinguish an institution’s…
By Patricia Graham, Brunswick News ombudswoman Now that the new year is well underway, I’ll share with you some of my personal journalistic vexations—things I hope not to see, or to see less of, in 2016. Errors in names, dates, phone numbers, venues, etc. I cringe every time I see a correction for the date…
By Christopher Johnson Want to own Canada’s largest newspaper chain? Maybe you can. If over 5,000 former and current Postmedia journalists each invested $7,750, they could own the company’s market capitalization of $41 million on the Toronto Stock Exchange. That’s at a share price of 24 cents, a fraction of its $15 value four years…
By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail The Zika virus and the health fears have grabbed the attention of the public and the media. While the interest is there, there have also been calls to use caution in the coverage of the virus and its link to serious birth defects such as microcephaly (babies…