The ethics of staging
Lifting the curtain on the rights and wrongs of recreating scenes for TV news.
Last November, Thailand was suffering through its worst flooding in 50 years. While Thai citizens are no strangers to high water levels, the heavy monsoon rains had left more than 800 dead and thousands displaced. As a result, television news crews from around the world were on the ground to put a human face to the […]
Lost in The Grid
Torstar and Laas Turnbull have a bold vision: create a new style of weekly that captures the pulse of Toronto's communities. But eight months in, The Grid is still searching for its own editorial heart and soul
It all started with a lighter. In the dog days of August, one of The Grid’s senior editors sparked an ironic hashtag in the twittersphere: #UnfriendlyToronto. Edward Keenan was on a city beach with his wife and two children when a six-year-old boy came over to borrow a lighter for the candles on his brother’s […]
Scary Monsters
Are crime reporters guilty of fear mongering and, if so, does that derail the development of good public policy?
Len Gold looks nervous as he stares into the black eye of the camera. Wearing a leather jacket over a Vancouver Canucks T-shirt, he recites his question for the leaders of Canada’s four main political parties. Framed by mountains meeting the ocean in Gibsons, British Columbia, Gold says, “My concern is safety for people in […]
Northern Restoration
Zacharias Kunuk brought oral culture into the digital age by creating his own form of journalism, one that tells stories from the inside out. And he's unrepentant about the one-sidedness of his approach
Television first came to the North in the late 1960s at the request of mining companies that wanted to keep their transient workers occupied through long, dark Arctic winters with southern sitcoms and soap operas. No one consulted the local Inuit population. Transmissions were in French and English and came in one direction: in. One […]
Northern Contradiction
To most Canadians in the '50s and '60s, Edith Josie of Old Crow, Yukon, was the quaint insider from above the Arctic Circle. But to her fellow Vuntut Gwich'in, she was a strong voice for a better life
Twice a month, Edith Josie lowered her five-foot frame into a chair at her large, plywood kitchen table with pen in hand. Looking out the window at other cabins, all raised on wooden pilings because of permafrost, she lit up a cigarette and started writing in longhand on foolscap with carbon between the sheets. “It […]
The Question of Rape
Heated rhetoric aside, are journalists out of touch with the risks female reporters face in conflict zones?
On Day 11 of the Egyptian uprising against the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, Globe and Mail correspondent Sonia Verma and her colleague Patrick Martin were walking through what she describes as the “nouveau riche” neighbourhood of Mohandeseen. Verma was filming a pro-Mubarak crowd marching in the streets. At first this all-male crowd seemed friendly, […]
The Schnozz
A fond look back at Larry Zolf, his words, his wit and all his warts. Why it was so nice listening to you, Larry
Larry Zolf is prepared for an ambush. A pair of thick, black-framed glasses sits atop his schnozz, the legendary nose that’s been described as his spare sex organ. A microphone clenched in one hand and a 60-pound Frezzolini news camera in the other, he stands on the stoop of a mansion in Montreal’s prestigious Westmount […]
Atlantic Coasting
For three decades, CTV Atlantic's beloved suppertime combo of Live at 5 and News at Six has dominated Maritime ratings. But for how long?
CORRECTION: The published print version of this story—and the version that originally appeared on this site and was recently unpublished—said that CTV Atlantic was shut out in the major television categories at the 2010 Atlantic Journalism Awards. In fact, CTV Atlantic did not enter the Journalism Atlantic Awards. The Ryerson Review of Journalism regrets the error and […]
A Farce to be Reckoned With
Despite the early laughter and derision, people are actually watching Sun News, unnerving politically correct Canadians everywhere
“I’m not a fat ninja,” declared Ezra Levant. “It’s just me, Ezra, wearing a niqab.” That was the beginning of a segment of his Sun News Network television show, The Source, last July. He was indeed dressed in a style of burqa worn by women throughout the Arab Peninsula and wore it to make a […]
Northern Revival
Wanted: Reporter determined to show the South the new North. Enter Paul Watson, the Toronto Star and the cash to get the job done
Paul Watson wends his rented car along the picturesque Alaska Highway. Past Carcross, he keeps heading south on a road that hugs a towering mountain to the right with blue snow-capped mountains across a grey lake to the left. The rain gently pitter-patters and the windshield wipers do not change their slow, steady pace. Country […]
