FeatureThere’s a growing chorus of complaint that access to key court documents — informations setting out criminal charges, exhibits tendered during trials, youth court dockets — has become increasingly restrictive in Canada, despite a string of Charter rulings demanding greater openness. Court officials are using outdated precedents and flawed legal interpretations to deny access, while understaffed…
Newsroom culture discourages journalists who cover traumatic events from seeking help for fear of being stigmatized as weak and unprofessional, writes counselling psychology professor Patrice Keats. Keats found those affected clearly want and need more help from employers and peers.
In recent years, local newspapers and broadcasters were called on to prop up empires that dabbled in everything from baseball teams to movies. At a crucial historical moment that called for excellence – the arrival of the Internet – newsroom resources instead disappeared down a black hole of ill-managed conglomerates, ensuring few would care at…
The Tyee has a round-up of the status of lawsuits Canwest launched in response to a parody of the Vancouver Sun. Not a lot of humour is evident.
Expect the press-rights case of Globe and Mail reporter Daniel Leblanc — who is ordered to appear in Quebec’s Superior Court to testify about a source in the infamous sponsorship scandal — to make news in coming weeks. Noted a report in the Globe, “Groupe Polygone, one of the companies alleged to have over-billed the…
Access to Information is broken in Canada. OK, ok, nothing new about that. But there is a new report, some attempts at explanation, and plenty of blame on the failure by the current government (the Stephen Harper Conservatives campaigned on accountability) to fix the system while at the same time plugging casual information channels.
It’s well known newspapers are losing advertising dollars from print operations faster than revenue is growing at their online operations. It turns out the same thing is happening to readers, according to a study by the the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. If newspapers can’t change this trend, there is little chance they’ll ever build online revenues…
Internet searches using terms like “unemployment benefits”, “bankruptcy” and “foreclosure” have leaped dramatically in frequency during the past year, according to an analysis by comScore Inc. Call it a digital sign of the times.
“Democracy needs dialogue more than it needs bumper stickers,” writes Stephen L. Carter, a novelist and Yale law professor, in a persuasive essay arguing for more context — more thoroughness — in journalism. The piece is American, but applies elsewhere.
[Note: This post has been updated] “The CBC is heading toward a new fiscal year with little clarity about its funding from Ottawa, even as it suffers a projected 2008-2009 shortfall in ad revenue of up to $65-million,” reports the Globe and Mail.