It’s enough to make you feel sorry for politicians, almost
It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for politicians. At an instant they are summoned to perform with actor’s skill in a media event that has all the complex ritual of a Japanese tea ceremony. The slightest misstep can be disastrous. Expectations are high; they must seem resolute yet sensitive, distressed yet composed. Most […]
There’s plenty of harm in an ethics code for journalists
Another ethics drive is about to sweep through the nation’s newsrooms. That’s great, just great. Proponents of media ethics are relentless. No matter how often we ignore them, they refuse to be silenced. The Canadian Association of Journalists, a volunteer group, is soliciting nominees for a “permanent” ethics committee. In a statement, the CAJ said […]
Guess what? Talk of controversial bank mergers is back
They never sleep, the bankers. Others frequently nap; I trained myself to doze upright in a newsroom chair. But not bankers. They strut the corridors of Parliament around the clock. Their pursuit of self-interest is tireless. Talk of bank mergers is back–the same mergers sunk in a tide of public anger in 1998. Canadians remain […]
Economy remains great unwritten story on the Hill, in part, because politicians are so reluctant to talk about it
Journalists, like stockbrokers, spend half their time anticipating news before it actually happens. Brokers do it for profit. Journalists attempt it in the belief it will do the public good. Prophesy is never murkier than in the black magic world of economics. For reporters and stock-jobbers, alike, the question of the moment is, when will […]
Journalists who aspire to circulate on the fringes of upper crust created aristocracy, fake gentry
“We have no landed aristocracy in Canada and never will,” wrote Alexander Mackenzie, the grade school dropout who became Liberal Prime Minister in 1873. “Titles do not suit our people,” he said. Nobility is achieved not by name or position, but by character. It’s the Canadian way. Strange, then, that we should have a press-made […]
Media’s tender treatment of Social Development Minister
Not one in 1,000 Canadians could name the Minister of Natural Resources, or the Minister of Industry. For amusement on Parliament Hill, stand outside the summer tour buses and ask, who’s Liza Frulla? Now a second year in office, Cabinet newcomers remain invisible. Even the administration’s media friends are at a loss for words. The […]
Globe pants over Ignatieff’s possible run at politics
Word spread in a flash at the laundromats and cattle auctions and all places Canadians gather. Ignatieff is running, they said. Ignatieff is running! The nation is saved. Tonight we feast! So apparently ran the scenario in the minds of The Globe and Mail editors who published on the front page–so help me, I’m not […]
Best and worst headlines in the last six months
In Malawi it is a felony for journalists to ridicule the president. In Nepal, the king has decreed radio stations must limit programming to folk music, weather forecasts and recipe talk shows. In Russia, all four television networks are under Kremlin control. How lucky we are to live a country where media’s free–even if we […]
Newsrooms will spring into action in pursuit of a big story–or, so I’ve seen in the movies
Newsrooms will spring into action in pursuit of a big story–or, so I’ve seen in the movies. But recent events suggest not even a spy drama is enough to get some media to hoist their feet off the desk. When Chinese defectors reported that Beijing has as many as 1,000 agents and informants conducting surveillance […]
The word ‘labour’ has vanished from newsroom vocabularies
Censors in Romania used to keep a list of forbidden nouns. “Meat,” “queue” and “cold” were blacklisted as disturbing imagery for Romanians forced to queue in the cold for meat. Also banished was “breast,” “Stalinism,” “demolition,” “sex” and “police informer.” Canada has no state censors, yet we’ve seen one noun mysteriously vanish from newsroom vocabularies–“labour.” […]
