Announcing the Merv Adey Memorial Fellowship
Merv Adey was a passionate British Columbian and a regular and welcome fixture in social media. Following his passing in 2017, a group of his friends sponsored a fellowship in…
Journalism
Real news reshaped, redefined and side tracked
Independent Voter Network declares: A free press is the watchdog of the people. The media holds the sacred responsibility of alerting the citizenry of actions by governments, elected politicians, corporations…
Shilling for dollars
Updated from June 2016. In an earlier article, I made reference to BC Legislative Press Gallery members producing commissioned articles. These are public relations pieces intended to serve particular needs…
The Role of the Political Journalist
“The journalistic mission remains at its simplest: know your patch and use your knowledge to try to tell readers what’s actually going on.”– Katharine Murphy, Journalism Professor & Guardian Australia’s…
CBC offered “pure propaganda”
After a CBC radio offering that made little effort to provide a complete story, economist Erik Andersen sent a message to CBC Early Edition. Erik keeps a close eye on…
Louis C.K.’s “Victims” Didn’t Put Vancouver Animators Out of Work
We need more from the CBC. And the Canadian Press. “Sexual Misconduct Claims Against Louis C.K. put Vancouver Animators Out of Work” was the initial headline of a Canadian Press…
Abandon hope, all UCP who enter here? Ted Byfield may have opened the gates to Lake of Fire 2.0
PHOTOS: Social conservative publisher and ideologue Ted Byfield (Photo: Screenshot of Youtube Video). Below: United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney, NDP Education Minister David Eggen, and Calgary-West UCP MLA Mike…
Postmedia’s colours
Rafe Mair was a man with long experience in government, journalism and political activism. He warned us of the consequences after Canada’s largest newspaper chain crawled in bed with the…
Too High A Price To Pay
This year, The Star has been running an Atkinson Series entitled The New Newsroom, which looks at both the challenges and the possibilities facing journalism in this age of Internet…
Plug pulled on LNG
Today, China pulled the plug on Aurora LNG, the last large LNG project proposed for British Columbia. This comes 55 months after Christy Clark, leading her first general election campaign,…
R.I.P. Merv Adey
It’s a sad day today. I knew Merv had been seriously ill for some time. Four weeks ago, he was hoping that a series of new treatments would be successful…
Behind the ostensible government
An item previously published, with minor updates: I studied political science at university long, long ago. In those days, I was naive and idealistic and a member of the Liberal…
Overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks…
Hunter S. Thompson: As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks,…
The full-court press is now under way to get Canadians ship their tax dollars to right-wing ‘legacy’ media
PHOTOS: Canada’s newspaper publishers are finally getting a grip on how to deal with this new-fangled technology stuff, like that Internet thing. Just pick up the phone and get the…
Edward Snowden defends jailed NSA contractor Reality Winner
The unveiling prosecution of 25-year-old National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Reality Leigh Winner is “a fundamental threat to the free press,” says Edward Snowden. The post Edward Snowden defends jailed…
Media readers deserve the whole story about the sources reporters quote in public policy stories
PHOTOS: The question isn’t just whether Alberta’s students are getting the information they need, but whether media is giving the rest of us all the facts we require when we…
Desmond Cole, the Toronto Star and Another Existential Crisis for Professional Journalism
DISCLOSURE: I worked as a mainstream news reporter between 2003 and 2012. I see this as a two-fold issue; firstly, actions and secondly, words. I’ll consider both briefly and then…
How the everyday use of militaristic jargon makes us more combative
The language of warfare and violence dominates public discourse in the United States and around the world, even when war isn’t part of the conversation. Nan Levinson, a writer, teacher,…
Stop Fact-Checking Christy Clark
We’ve learned a few things. But we need to pick up the pace of wisdom. As we pivot to a new world that is suffering from deeper entrenched tendencies of…