Calling Out the Cops
Inside the Toronto Star's 17-year fight to expose carding—the investigations, the legal battle and the power of the press to provoke change
Inside the Toronto Star’s 17-year fight to expose carding—the investigations, the legal battle and the power of the press to provoke change.
The 20%
Immigrants and refugees make up one-fifth of people in Canada. Why are so few reporters telling these stories?
Immigrants and refugees make up one-fifth of people in Canada. Why are so few reporters telling these stories?
PMJT is hot. Get over it.
Politics is about perception (and always has been). Official messages are carefully constructed to paint a specific type of picture. It’s the journalist’s job, theoretically at least, to find the flaws and the hidden distortions in that image. But what if the picture is perfect and makes everyone happy? A hot prime minister meets a […]
No Comment
Digital publications are silencing their readers, but is that a move that benefits many or a tactic to control public image?
Russell Wangersky peeled away the cling wrap encasing the chicken, thinking of it sizzling on a barbecue. When he turned the bird over, he saw “a great honking fistful of still attached skin and fat” tucked in where the ribs should have been. Over six months, he investigated the meat-to-fat ratio of Newfoundland Farm Products […]
The rise of the reader
In the ecosystem of the web, readers and journalists are now co-dependent species—a relationship we're still trying to grapple with
The former hierarchies of the journalism industry have crumbled by the weight of the digital realm, to be replaced by blurry parallel relations between journalists and readers. The result is evident in the record 10,600 readers who participated in the Toronto Star‘s annual “You be the editor” survey. Administered by the Star’s public editor, Kathy English, the “highly unscientific, […]
Who’s telling the truth about #WelcomeRefugees?
Across Canadian news outlets, there is a strange discrepancy in reports about whether or not the Liberal government is excluding single male Syrian refugees
I don’t know who’s telling the truth about the Liberal refugee plan. On the one hand, there’s Paul McLeod, BuzzFeed‘s political editor, who published an article on November 25, 2015, titled “Someone Gave The Media A Bunch Of False Info About Canada’s Syrian Refugee Plan.” McLeod takes issue with a CBC report by Rosemary Barton that, days before the Liberals […]
Editorial endorsement dispute continues as Financial Post editor criticizes John Honderich
The ongoing feud continued today with an article by Post columnist Terrence Corcoran calling for the Toronto Star to “step off its high horse”
It’s been nearly a month since the federal election, and journalists are still feuding over editorial endorsements. To recap, Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey forced all of the chain’s papers to endorse the Conservative Party of Canada. Former National Post editorials and comment editor Andrew Coyne wrote a column endorsing another party and resigned from his position as […]
Beirut vs. Paris: Unbalanced coverage
Journalism is about fair and objective reporting, but in practice coverage is often skewed toward one event more than another
The events of the Paris attacks last night are still unfolding–“still” being the operative word. Much journalistic attention has been given to the situation in Paris, and rightly so. At the time of writing, CBC reports stated that at least 150 people had been killed after six separate attacks in public places like a music venue in central Paris, […]
Headlines on the suicide bombing in Beirut are dehumanizing
The New York Times has since corrected its headline, but some Canadian publications haven't
At least 43 people were killed by a double suicide bombing in a residential area of Beirut yesterday, an attack for which ISIL has since claimed responsibility. The New York Times initially reported the story with this headline, causing an uproar on Twitter. Reuters also ran with a similar headline. ISIS blows up crowd of […]
Farewell, Richard “Badger” Brennan
After 43 years, five premiers and many, many stories, the Toronto Star’s Richard Brennan is retiring today as one of Canada’s longest-serving political reporters
Richard Brennan has never called a premier by anything other than his first name. Keith Leslie, long-time Canadian Press reporter covering Ontario politics and the Statler to Brennan’s Waldorf at Queen’s Park, remembers coming back to Toronto from Ottawa the morning after former Premier Dalton McGuinty won the election in 2003. They got on a bus at the […]
