Media should scrutinize military spending more
You realize tomorrow is the anniversary. For some it is a moment frozen in time: 8:46 a.m., when a jetliner barrelled into the World Trade Center. The Pentagon then had a budget of $291-billion U.S. a year but was powerless to defeat men armed with $2 box cutters. “Since the plotters were flexible and resourceful,” […]
Rights and religion, what an excuse to harangue, eh?
Did you hear the story about the rabbi and the priest? It’s no joke in Ontario, where media have set voters to boiling in an Oct. 10 election over rights and religion. It is poisonous. Journalists have made an issue of one party leader’s faith, and depicted another as a crazed suicide bomber. The impact […]
Right, we’ll win the war by putting ‘Support Our Troops’ ribbons on municipal garbage trucks
Armchair patriots are the pests of every war, the red-faced ranters who specialize in shaming dissent. Media have our share. They are journalists with a Constitutional right to free speech who ridicule others who dare to speak. They aim to win the war by putting “Support Our Troops” ribbons on municipal garbage trucks. God help […]
‘Tis the season for political memoirs, but don’t get too excited
Nothing spoils the amber days of autumn like the annual book launch of political memoirs. As literature they are tiresome and pointless. Most of us would sooner read the TV Guide, yet politicians will not take the hint. Great literature is hard to find. Blunders of the publishing industry are legendary. Nobel laureate William Golding […]
Incompetent internet fact checking is now irresistible and seeping into mainstream media
True or false: Charles Lindbergh was the first man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. In a dubious example of internet research, many websites mistakenly credit Lindbergh as the father of transatlantic flight. The falsehood is now repeated by media. If journalists can’t check their facts on an 80-year aviation footnote, what does it say […]
What’s up with media fascination in Conrad Black?
The country has been waiting for someone to say it, and someone finally did. “I don’t understand the Canadian media’s fascination with Conrad Black,” wrote Dan Brown, a London Free Press editor. “I don’t get why anyone should still care.” The fascination is striking enough that Black remarked on it. “I have made the transition […]
Long live journalism in the corners
Only by reading death notices have I learned the truth about food additives, Motel 6, and the man who invented intermittent wipers. Every day, I read obituaries in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Times of London. It is an interesting hobby. Only the obituary page unites the big and the […]
Canada deserves a full debate about marijuana, but why do media cast prohibition as a failure?
Prohibition has a bad name, though Canadians never run out of things they’d like to prohibit. Ironic, no? Politicians and editorial writers cry for the abolition of trans fats, pit bulls, plastic bags, bank fees, SUVs, telemarketers, leg hold traps, overnight parking, and beer on Sunday. Yet, attempt a serious discussion on prohibition of marijuana […]
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think, no?
The whole country is lounging in the cloudless sunset of our last summer of low interest rates. This is what it must have been like on the beach in Sicily before Mount Vesuvius blew. Only the old-timers are edgy; “It cannot last,” warned Calgary Sun columnist Ted Byfield, a survivor of seven recessions. “Where in […]
How could media forget Laval highway overpass killer story?
How could media forget the killer overpass story? Journalists headlined the 2006 tragedy as dramatic proof of an infrastructure funding crisis in Canada’s cities. The inference was untrue. Yet now as evidence is emerging most newsrooms seem to have lost interest. At 12:37 p.m. last Sept. 30, a highway overpass collapsed in Laval, Que. The […]
