By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail Today and yesterday, the website and the front page of the newspaper have been and are dominated by extensive coverage of the attack on the Quebec City mosque. Much more coverage is and will be done in the coming hours and days and readers still have many…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star What happens if and when there are no news media? That is the critical question at the heart of an essential public conversation that began in earnest this week with the release of an exhaustive report by Canada’s Public Policy Forum entitled The Shattered Mirror: News, Democracy and…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star There is nothing new about critical readers expressing their concerns about what they read in the Star in strong words. My in-box, and those of most other journalists here, is evidence of that. What is new in recent weeks however is the fact some of those critics are…
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 Kathy English for the Toronto Star It would be ideal if every person who has something important – and largely, secret — to reveal to the public through the media about matters of public interest could be fully identified. Clearly, readers would prefer that: numerous credibility studies tell us readers most believe news reports…
By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail Should journalists use made-up words? Sometimes yes. Language changes constantly, and so words such as “post-truth” and “yogalates” come into the vernacular and should be used and explained until they are well understood. (Post-truth: when emotions, beliefs and even lies trump facts as the drivers of public…
By Sylvia Stead for The Globe and Mail In June, I asked readers what issues they felt should go under the media microscope. The Globe and Mail had been honoured for its work on military men and women suffering from post-traumatic stress and from its coverage of indigenous women, but there is always much more to do.…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star Can we talk, please, about that baseball team from Cleveland that dare not speak its name on this particular page of the Toronto Star. It’s not surprising that some readers are vexed and confused by what looks to them to be a gap between what a Star editorial…
By Sylvia Stead for The Globe and Mail I get a lot of passionate e-mails from readers, especially sports fans and political partisans, who have strong feelings about whether a column is fair or a story is accurate. This week, the story that garnered that heat was about the Toronto Blue Jays’ wild card victory…