Category / Read / Policy

“The news tornado of September has been a boon to the downtrodden traditional media,” reported Ian Brown in a Globe and Mail piece about web sites of big mainstream media scoring record audiences…. 

What’s the biggest social, political and economic issue in Canada right now? Social conservativism vs liberalism? Tax cuts? Bank regulations? Climate change? Plagiarism? None of the above, not in my opinion. I think the biggest story is a Canada-Europe trade deal…

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Canadian Newspaper Association and the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association issued a joint “Letter to Prime Minister Harper: Honour your access to information election promises.”

Steve Anderson, national coordinator of the Campaign For Democratic Media and the SaveOurNet.ca Coalition, wants Canadians to consider the media during the general election campaign. Anderson writes in British Columbia’s online magazine The Tyee: “With online media taking an increasingly important role in the media ecology, Canada is on the brink of a major restructuring…

It’s Right to Know Week in Canada, but few journalists are celebrating. In the midst of an election, public servants aren’t talking to the public, and the prime minister’s ‘no reporter zone’ is enjoying some added muscle from the RCMP. Here’s a round-up of this week’s news that (in some circles) wasn’t fit to print:…

With the election now in full swing, a survey of community online newspapers across Canada shows some outlets choose to highlight community-based stories with little (and sometimes no) coverage of the federal election while others provide exciting examples of what can be done, even with meager resources.

Is it within the RCMP’s mandate to stop the media from doing its job? That’s the question asked in a Canadian Press feature, with a news hook about Tory candidate Dona Cadman being whisked away from reporters. The story reported that police manhandled one reporter to stop her following Cadman. “Mounties protecting Prime Minister Stephen…

Kory Teneycke, spokesman for Tory leader Stephen Harper, on the non-role of journalists: it is not a candidates’ priority to speak to media — but rather to get elected. Teneycke was quoted in the Globe and Mail in a story about how party officials whisked away B.C. Tory candidate Dona Cadman after a speech, away…

Excerpts from a scathing piece by Andrew Coyne in Maclean’s on the performance of political journalism in Canada: “…in one respect every election is the same: the press coverage. It’s always an embarrassment, and always in exactly the same way. Politicians learn from their mistakes, sometimes. We just go on repeating ours. The media “……