In May during the season finale of CBC's internet issues show Search Engine, host Jessie Brown made a startling announcement. Search Engine was being cancelled. Sort of.

The explanation given was that the issues the show was launched to cover -- such as copyright reform and online privacy -- were so important that they wanted Jessie to cover them for other shows on the CBC, like The Current.

Search Engine would still continue, but would be online only, and Jessie wouldn't be backed up by any producers while making his podcast. I was one of those worried. Good journalism about technology issues is hard to come by, and is even harder in Canada. Search Engine was really the only show covering Canadian copyright issues for the through December 2007, when the issue was at its hottest.

Yet now, three episodes into the new "season" of Search Engine, I see that the worry was a bit overstated. Jessie is still putting together a very listenable podcast each week, and he's still going after issues that other people aren't.

I just hope he doesn't burn out.

Posted by RRJ at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By John McGrath

The CBC reversed its position on Heather Mallick's offending column, pulling it from the CBC's website. According to publisher John Cruickshank, the CBC "erred in [its] judgment" and will be working to bring in more editorial diversity in its online opinion pieces.

Chantal Braganza's post worried that the CBC was being held to a different standard than private broadcasters, that in her words "most of the offended had a problem with tax dollars funding content they didn't agree with." It seems, based on Cruickshank's mea culpa that he agrees with the complaints in the mail bag: the CBC, as a government-funded entity, needs to be more careful with its opinions.

Posted by RRJ at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Chantal Braganza

It may be close-to-common knowledge among CBCNews.ca readers the controversy surrounding Heather Mallick's Sept. 5 column, "A Mighty Wind Blows Through the Republican Convention". Since the publication of Mallick's scathing, at times graphic, thoughts on Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin it's been a near two-week firestorm of violence and venom -- from both sides of the border.

For attributing to Palin such colourful colloquialisms as "a toned-down version of the porn actress look" and describing Republican men as "sexual inadequates" with questionable habits, Mallick has received equally scathing criticism. And for everything: from indiscretion as a journalist for publishing hateful comments to religious bashing for faiths that she does not even practice. Fox news anchor Greta Van Susteren has called her a "pig". National Post columnist Jonathan Kay described the column as "childish vulgarity" and "hate speech."

Was Mallick in the wrong? As a journalist in a democratic society, is she entitled to her own opinion, even if it isn't entirely based on fact? I'd like to think that anything affecting enough to get people asking themselves these kinds of questions is a good thing.

But rather than Mallick's manners, what disturbs me is the kind of criticism CBC got from readers for why these words were published. In a public review [warning-PDF file] of the nearly three hundred complaints received about the column, CBC ombudsman Vince Carlin noted that "most took exception to her opinions being published on CBCNews.ca, funded by taxpayers." From Carlin's findings, it would seem most of the offended had a problem with tax dollars funding content they didn't agree with. Sounds like a perceived issue of customer service to me -- which, when talking about political journalism, is not a concept I'm entirely comfortable with.

Posted by RRJ at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Heather Li

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada decided it will hear a case involving the confidentiality of journalistic sources. The main gist is in 2001, a brown envelope was anonymously sent to the National Post. It contained a document -- later said to be forged -- that linked then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to a conflict-of-interest scandal. At the time, the RCMP issued a warrant for the envelope for DNA and fingerprint analysis to determine the identity of the forger. The National Post refused, saying the person who sent it didn't know the document was forged.

It's common knowledge in journalism circles a source forfeits confidence if the reporter discovers the source lied. In this case, the source didn't lie since he or she didn't know the document being provided was fake. The question of revealing sources' identities because police investigation into crime trumps journalistic integrity is a slippery slope.

I think the argument should stand that compromising source confidence jeopardizes all future journalist-source relationships, i.e. no one wants to talk to us if we can't keep our promises. As journalists, we rank low on the Respected Professions Meter, but traditional media organizations will always play a critical role in the gathering and distributing of information for a democratic society. It sounds like the Supreme Court will inevitably understand this, and when the ruling occurs, all journalists should be giving one another high-fives.

Posted by RRJ at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Ashley Walters

It started with an email. On Monday, Indypendent reporter and editor, Arun (A.K.) Gupta fired off an email to activists, organizers and media folk in New York City venting about the proposed $700 billion bailout plan for Wall Street financial institutions. In his email, Gupta described the bailout bill as "the biggest robbery in world history", an example of the Bush administration capitalizing on the shock of an economic crisis to pass legislation that would further deregulate financial institutions, provide an assortment of pro-corporate policies, and legalize offshore drilling. "If this passes, forget about any money for environmental protection, to counter global warming, for education, for national healthcare, to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy," Gupta wrote. Essentially, the government would reinforce polices and reward those individuals that contributed to the economic crisis in the first place.

Gupta's email inspired a national call to action in which citizens in over a hundred American cities intend to gather this afternoon to protest the bill. In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Gupta estimates that "hundreds, even possibly thousands" of people will gather near Wall Street this afternoon to create a pile of their own "citizen junk" symbolizing the worthless corporate financial policies that the government is buying from financial institutions, for the bargain price of $700 billion.

Democracy Now! has this video:

Posted by RRJ at 06:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By John McGrath

Warren Kinsella has a not-safe-for-work reacton to the latest poll numbers in the Nanos Research daily tracker. I'm as much of a political junkie as anyone, but exclaiming that the race has turned in to a "scramble for survival" seems a bit much.

Kinsella's a political commentator, so this isn't directed solely at him, but there is really not a lot to be gained at reacting to any one poll or the changes in any daily tracker especially. J-schoolers all have to take basic statistics, and we should know these things have a natural amount of noise in them. Remember two weeks ago when John McCain was leading in the polls? How'd that work out for us?

Now, there's the reasonable point that Liberal poll numbers haven't looked good for some time now, and have certainly seemed to slump in the campaign. That, however, is a conclusion we can draw from multiple polls and multiple weeks of tracking polls, not a one-day blip.

Posted by RRJ at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

by John McGrath

Jeffrey Dvorkin has a piece at J-Source about the different effects bloggers are having on the American and Canadian elections. Read the whole thing, but in particular I wanted to focus on these two points near the end:

While Canadian bloggers don't seem to have the same degree of influence, the official parties are active in posting blogs and videos online and on YouTube. The recent much-ado-about-not-very-much, aka, "Puffingate" was an example. Canadian news organizations still pay closer attention to what the parties do than to what the bloggers say. This may be a missed opportunity.

Another difference in the political blogging cultures may be due to the fact that American mainstream journalism has some fences to mend. After its abysmal performance in covering the Bush Administration and the drive to war after 9/11, U.S. news organizations are defensive about their performance in this election cycle.

If Dvorkin's first point is correct, I wonder why that is. I know a lot of journalists who are curious about what the blogs say, and ask me which ones they should be paying attention to. If news media aren't paying attention to blogs, I don't think that's because of neglect at the ground level. Reporters actually covering these beats know how important -- or unimportant -- blogs are in Canada.

But I don't think you can abstract Canadian blogs from Canadian politics, and it's only kind of a joke that most Canadians probably care more about the election to our south than they do about our own excercise in democracy. Dvorkin is right when he starts his piece with a quote from Rick Mercer:

...the stakes are a little higher in America. Whoever wins the presidential election inherits the launch codes to the nuclear bomb, whereas whoever wins ours inherits the keys to a drafty home on the Ottawa River.

Posted by RRJ at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By John McGrath

TVNewser is reporting the latest in John McCain's deteriorating relationship with the press: in an apparent effort to keep the GOP Vice-Presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin, from facing any questioning from reporters, only camera crews were initially going to be allowed to an appearance at the United Nations where Palin was, ahem, going to demonstrate her firm grasp of foreign affairs.

Faced with the prospect of being used rather nakedly as a vehicle by the McCain campaign without any of the usual quid pro quo (like being able to ask the candidate questions for the privilege of being put on network television) the networks initially rebelled and refused to send any cameras. The latest as of this writing is that the McCain campaign has relented and allowed a pool reporter in to the meeting.

It wasn't that long ago that Sen. McCain was being greeted by reporters with donuts and coffee, but the last few weeks have not been happy ones for McCain and his campaign's relationship with the press. Just yesterday, his staff were calling the New York Times an arm of the Obama campaign.

Relationships with the press can always get rocky during campaigns, but the contrast has been pretty startling in this case: McCain has had a long and friendly relationship with all sorts of media outlets (being the most frequent guest on The Daily Show, for example) and while there's still a month and a bit in the US election campaign, I think it's safe to say that the friendship has soured.

Posted by RRJ at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By John McGrath

Short answer: maybe.

Blog answer: maybe, but don't panic! Plastic Logic, a UK-based company, has announced (but not yet priced or shipped) a thin, portable e-Ink screen that can store and display thousands of pages but weighs much less than even the lightest laptop.

You can get an idea of what it looks like here:

ShinyShiny wonders if this could spell the end of newspapers, but their post makes it clear they're talking about the end of newsprint. Devices like this could, conceivably, do for print news what the iPod did for CDs: make them obsolete. But for journalists who worry the the age of the Internet is putting them out of a job, I would suggest that you take a look at the music industry. After spending the last 10 years trying various methods (legal and technological) of halting the spread of digital downloads, and failing, Universal Music posted its highest profit in years. Universal is doing alright because, even in the Internet age, people still want music. Journalism is only in trouble if, because of the Internet, people decide they want less news.

Who wants to take bets on that?

Posted by RRJ at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)