Award-winning Toronto Star investigative journalist Rob Cribb called on the Canadian public to demand greater government transparency at a lecture at UBC’s Robson Square campus last week. “The public must demand greater openness and transparency …
Feature articles
Communication Breakdown at a University Lockdown
An RCMP Emergency Response Teams swarmed the University of B.C. campus on Wednesday, January 31. With bulletproof vests and dogs, they spent the better part of the afternoon in the biological sciences building. Neither the …
The Halifax Daily News: 1974 – 2008
The end for the little tabloid-that-no-longer-could came suddenly, sadly and unceremoniously. At 10 a.m. on the morning of Monday, February 11, 2008, Halifax Daily News reporters and editors were still filtering into the newsroom with …
How real can a real story be ?
At 9 p.m. Tuesday, about 2 million Quebeckers turned on their TVs and tuned in to Radio-Canada for the last chapter of Les Lavigueur, la vraie histoire — The Lavigueurs, the real story. The miniseries …
Rethinking Balance in Post-Genocide Rwanda
In the spring of 2007, after a five-week visit to Rwanda, I produced two television news pieces for the CBC. Together, the stories challenged the prevailing view about healing and reconciliation in that Central African …
Reporting on religion: When neutrality and faith collide
Religion and journalism might seem incompatible. One lurks in the murkiest mysteries of the spirit; the other’s a no-nonsense broker of fact and action. But Columbia University professor Ari Goldman makes the case that there’s …
CRTC reins in media ownership
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) new regulatory policy to ensure “plurality of editorial voices” and “diversity of programming” in private media is long overdue. Canadians have been waiting for some 38 years. Studies, …
Reporting on Burma’s Child Soldiers
In a Burmese border town cafe, in the midst of a military crackdown against pro-democracy protesters, a recently-fled child-soldier sat with me, talking about cell phones and girls. Thet Ye Htwe spent five years as …
OPINION:From civic to citizen journalism: Has YouTube usurped the media’s role?
Alongside a recent Economist editorial “Is America Turning Left?” ran a political cartoon depicting an absurd rendition of a large elephant, exhausted and beaten, carried about on a stretcher by two medical aids straining with …
Public interest, private grief: The media’s role in the Robert Dziekanski case
When I was sent by the Vancouver Sun to cover the November 17, 2007 memorial service for Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who died last month after being Tasered by RCMP, I steeled myself for …