Mark Twain once said “a lie can spread half way around the world while truth is still putting on its shoes.” That’s even truer today than it was in Twain’s time because social media can spread lies and so-called “fake news” far and wide with lightning speed, and we’ve seen how this can have devastating impacts on our democracy.One of the most chilling proofs of this came out the other day ..read more

In Milton, Ontario, little Jimmy Jones won’t be picking up his Canadian Champions this week to deliver  to his neighbours. It’s one of Canada’s oldest newspapers, tracing its roots back to 1858, but it was put to death by its corporate masters last Friday. In Aurora, the Banner will no longer appear on doorsteps to tell citizens what their elected representatives are up to. In Mississauga, wi ..read more

It was an explosive story: A Canadian Liberal member of Parliament was accused of being a willing pawn of Chinese foreign influence, so much so that he supposedly advocated for the continued detention of two Canadian businessmen held for two years in Beijing. In the wake of the story by Global News, Han Dong resigned from the Liberal caucus and launched a $15 million libel suit for defamat ..read more

Case N21C-03-257 EMD  goes to trial before a jury in Delaware on Monday, and  it’s shaping up as one of the most significant tests of media freedom and responsibility in decades. At its heart lies Donald  Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, in part because voting machines were programmed to switch votes to his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden. Milli ..read more

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is a master of the politician’s black art of not answering questions directly. As she embarks on a crucial month-long provincial election campaign, she seems to be doubling down to limit her government’s accountability. She has announced that news outlets will be able to ask only one question each at her news conferences, and follow-up questions will not be allo ..read more

The jury in the libel trial of the century had already been sworn in: Five Black men, two Black women, three white women, a white man, and a Latino woman. Considering that the defendant was Fox News Network, the powerhouse right-wing cable TV king, it was hardly shaping up to be its sort of audience. Sure enough, just before opening arguments began in Delaware Superior Court this week, Fox ..read more

Someone should tell Pierre Poilievre to take off his tin foil hat: The government does not actually control the news that the CBC broadcasts. As part of his campaign to limit the reach of government, the Conservative leader went public with an April 11 letter he sent to Twitter asking the social media giant to label all CBC news shared on its platform as “government-funded media.” He wrote ..read more

Pierre Poilievre’s debut news conference as official Opposition leader didn’t go smoothly but at least he found his real enemy. That enemy is not inflation or the national debt or young people getting squeezed out of the housing market or the cost of groceries. Those things he can blame on Justin Trudeau because he’s the prime minister and Poilievre isn’t. That’s politics. The bigger enemy ..read more

For a full month, Lisa LaFlamme continued to anchor Canada’s most trusted newscast, even though her bosses told her she was being fired and CTV National News—for which she’d maintained an audience of more than a million viewers a night-- would be turned over to someone else. She was at the top of her game. The most recognized broadcaster in the country after 11 years at the helm, chosen as C ..read more

I started this blog in February 2008 with “The case against Maclean’s,” a challenge to the mainstream media who were supporting the magazine for printing a series of inflammatory attacks on Muslims. One of the articles, by Mark Stein, claimed that Muslims in the West were poised to take over entire societies and “the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be.” Without d ..read more