News and CommentaryYouths convicted of serious crimes like murder, manslaughter and violent sexual assaults will no longer automatically lose their anonymity. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in May that the publication ban on an offender’s name can be lifted only if removing the ban is justified. Previously, the Youth Criminal Justice Act required the…
A free paper published by former journalists at the Journal du Québec has survived (thrived?) for 15 months. The paper was started to protest against the tabloid’s plans to integrate and boost the workload of reporters, with multimedia job requirements. Hey, we CAN be independent! The original story by Agence France-Presse, in French, is here.…
Toronto (June 11, 2008) — An Ontario judge has released a videotape of a statement convicted murderer Paul Bernado gave to police in 2007 denying involvement in the murder of Elizabeth Bain — a crime for which Robert Baltovich was wrongly convicted and served nine years in prison. The video was an exhibit at Baltovich’s…
NewsA group of Nova Scotia media outlets has successfully challenged a ruling that allowed a young man convicted of murdering a cab driver to have his identity shielded pending an appeal of his conviction. The ruling means offenders who are under the age of 18 but sentenced as adults are not entitled to a ban…
Only half of Canadians believe news organizations get their facts straight and just a third think news is fair and balanced, according to polling data released by the Canadian Media Research Consortium (pdf). The results of the national survey suggest Canadians are less interested in the news and more dubious about news media credibility than…
From the BBC: A soaring glass and steel cone on top of BBC Broadcasting House in London, England, will shine a beam of light into the sky every night at 10 p.m., as a memorial to journalists and assistants killed on the job. The light sculpture, called Breathing, was created by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa…
“Copy editors are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance.” Nice. Most copy editors never see elegant sentences like this published under their own bylines. Copy editor Lawrence Downes represents his kind well, in an op-ed in the New York Times. Too bad he does…
The Associated Press is trying “to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright,” reports the New York Times. Fair Use of articles, and how much can be quoted, is a hot topic in the blogosphere, and on this…
Journalists in Gaza staged a boycott of news about Israelis in Gaza on June 16. The reason was sound: journalists want to hold Israel to account for its apparent slaughter of Reuters camerman Fadel Shana this spring. But boycotting the reporting of news strikes me as bizarre, at least. Perhaps someone can convince me that…
Writers’ unions are among the few contrary voices in a storm of protest over Canada’s proposed new copyright legislation. “Everyone says it is complicated — but the anti-copyright community hasn’t let that stop it from unleashing a torrent of abuse,” the Creators Copyright Coalition, whose members include PWAC and the Writers Union of Canada, states…