‘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 […]
You can’t rewrite the past for political convenience
Historical revisionism is sloppy journalism. We cannot rewrite the past for political convenience. “You do not put a coin in the slot and have history come out,” as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once put it. Yet it seems some pundits and politicians are waging a passionate campaign to rewrite Canada’s past as justification for the […]
When Bay Street talks, media listen
When Bay Street talks, media listen. This explains our continued fascination with the half-crazed scheme of the investment industry to have Canada adopt the U.S. dollar. The American greenback is weaker now than at any time since the aftermath of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam in 1975. Canadians who find a southern holiday surprisingly affordable […]
Dads don’t fare well in media coverage
So passes another Father’s Day, an observance with all the sentiment of National Safety Boot Week. Recent news coverage affirmed the popular wisdom that fathers are weaker and more useless than originally thought. Groucho Marx joked that of countless songs written in praise of mothers the only tune to even mention dad was a 1905 […]
