No? Then you're invited to spend two fun-filled days at an exclusive Muskoka resort. Need we say more? All meals and taxes in, it's yours for just $1,050 per person. But you gotta hurry. Book it after Jan. 16 and the rate shoots up $150.

Just think. Instead of staying home and having to shovel your walk, you can spend it poolside mingling with celebrities and wolfing down shrimp at a world-class Italian restaurant.

Instead of getting stuck in traffic trying to get out of the mall, you can enjoy morning yoga followed by an 80-minute Aroma Stone Facial with Wildflower Footbath at the luxury country spa ($185 extra, by appointment only).

Instead of visiting your nagging in-laws, you can do leisurely laps alone in the year-round pool, then unwind with a loved one sipping martinis and looking out at Lake Rosseau.

And get this: Also happening to stay at the resort that weekend will be some of your favourite TV stars. You know, folks like Ezra Levant, Charles Adler, Brian Lilley, Michael Coren and Krista Erickson. In fact, you'll be spending most of your time with them. They'll even be eating at your table.

Ah, hold on here just a minute.

Really. Hold on.

Don't they all work for that crazy Sun News Network? Well yes, but that's why you're invited. They call it Freedom Weekend and the event website lists the highlights:

•Friday and Saturday night accommodation at the stunning JW Marriott The Rosseau Muskoka Resort & Spa;
•Six gourmet meals, each one with a different Sun News or conservative personality rotated through your table (plus snacks and receptions);
•Six full hours of lively panel discussions featuring Sun News and conservative personalities, where you can participate in a Q&A session; and
•A choice of one of several Saturday afternoon fun activities (e.g. snowshoe trek; yoga; art class, etc.) plus an astronomy event, with a Sun News or conservative personality. Maybe you can challenge Ezra Levant to a snowshoe race!

Or as Ezra says in his Sun Media column, "Seriously, this is going to be fun. My favourite -- I just know it -- will be sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows. I get the feeling that Charles Adler has some great campfire stories, don't you? This idea is really unprecedented in Canada, the chance to spend a whole weekend with your favourite Sun Media personalities in a beautiful and relaxed setting."

Well, when you put it that way .... Let's see, what could I think of that would be more fun? Shoveling my walk? Getting stuck in a traffic jam? Getting stranded for the weekend with nagging in-laws? Gosh, February 24-26, you say? Wasn't that the weekend we were thinking of painting the spare bedroom?

So, six full hours of panel discussions! They should be able to handle that, all those talking heads who stand behind lecterns on television and hector us about eliminating the CBC, abolishing the gun registry, developing the tar sands and getting rid of human rights commisars.....

The discussion topics for Freedom Weekend-by-the-lake have yet to be decided, but Ezra says "we'll talk about how to strengthen our freedoms here at home, and project freedom abroad to the world." Wow, that sounds like a cattle call for any white, barrel sucking immigrant hater who's too stupid to find out the regular room rate at the Muskoka Marriott is only $199.

Makes you wonder when was the last time a group of ideological warriors went north to train in the backwoods and plot to storm Parliament, blow up the CBC, seize the airwaves and spread terror across the land. Oh yeah, the Toronto 18 did that. Didn't police arrest the lot of them and call them the gravest threat to our democracy?

I think a weekend with Ezra and friends could be something just like that.

The only thing that sets them apart from the Muslim extremists is that Sun Media will be charging you admission.

The good news is that the resort has 200 rooms. Lots of space to at least put up all of the network's regular viewers.

As part of the deal with De Beers, Ivison claims, $325 million in contracts have been funnelled through solely owned or joint-owned companies based on Attawapiskat since construction started in 2006 (his figure appears to be an exaggeration; the company puts the value of the contracts at $167 million). "However," Ivison writes, "despite all that business ... the band’s accounts suggest it has made just $99,867 in profits since its inception."

He concludes: "This is not the picture of colonial exploitation that many people have been quick to paint."

That may or may not be true, but it certainly seems to require the national media to look a lot closer at the deal between De Beers and the reserve. The impact-benefit agreement, which ironically earned the company Mining Magazine's “Mine of the Year Award” in 2009, took more than three years to negotiate and covers everything from De Beers' right to override Attawapiskat land claims to what's served at Victor Mine's cafeteria.

The company has pledged around $30 million over the 12-year life of the mine. The money is paid into a trust, to which the band has access. However, The Globe and Mail's excellent report by freelancer Genesee Keevil showed that band members are ignorant of many key provisions of the bulky, legalistic document. Band members even missed a deadline to pick an aboriginal name for the mine.

Many questions need to be answered. Where was Ottawa with expertise to help Attawapiskat negotiate, understand and follow through on benefits associated with the deal? Who certified that the deal was fair? Given the desperate living conditions on the reserve, does the responsibility of De Beers stop with letting its First Nations workforce walk away, or should it make a bigger effort to adequately train and provide support?

David McLaren writes in SunMedia papers: "It’s an old colonizer’s trick. First, hunt out Indigenous peoples’ territories and then, with a dollop of human feeling, offer to take the empty lands off their hands in return for food .... Then, allow reserves to fall into such disrepair and despair that people will flee them for the cities and assimilation."

Sadly, he concludes: " We not only rammed the Aboriginal canoe, but boarded it, plundered it and, in trying to steer it through their own waters, have all but wrecked it."

And the national media quietly moves on to a sexier story.

For shame.


Think about these numbers

The city of Toronto has run a budget deficit for years, just like Attawapiskat. This thought-provoking article by lawyer Lorraine Land asks whether anyone would seriously consider putting Toronto under outside management.

Her numbers show that three levels of government spend $24,000 a year for each Torontonian.

Attawapiskat, on the other hand, is only funded by one level of government — federal. It received $17.6 million this fiscal year, for all of the programs and infrastructure for its 1,550 residents. That works out to about $11,355 per capita in Attawapiskat.

No one could give him a good answer. Freedom of expression is a right we too often take for granted, unless of course you're a right-wing ideologue who is obsessed with the belief that it's under threat from immigrants, Muslims and the politically correct.

I believe Canadians should care about the current bitter dispute between Quebecor Inc. and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Why? Because it has the fingerprints of Stephen Harper's Conservatives all over it, and they seem to be acting to further a political agenda that may have serious implications for freedom of expression.

In case you missed it, Conservative-friendly organizations like Quebecor-owned Sun Media and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation have filed hundreds of requests for details about CBC spending through the Access to Information Act (actually all but a handful were filed by Sun Media). Some of what they received was redacted. The CBC has exemptions under the law that allow it to protect records related to its journalistic, creative and programming activities. Sun Media disagreed and appealed to the federal information commissioner, demanding that she review whether the CBC was within its rights. Nothing wrong with that. 

But then things started getting nasty. Sun Media' chain of newspapers, its QMI news service and its Sun News Network television channel mounted a very public editorial campaign against the secrecy of what they call "Canada's state broadcaster" and attacked the unfairness of taxpayers subsidizing a television network to the tune of more than $1 billion a year.

I don't mean to suggest the CBC is a totally innocent victim. After all, it refused to allow the information commissioner to see the original documents, forcing her to take the case to the Federal Court for a ruling.

Last week the dispute got a lot more serious, and here's where the Tory fingerprints became apparent. Conservative MPs on the House of Commons ethics committee met in closed session and voted to demand all the outstanding financial information from CBC in its uncensored form, even though the issue is still before Federal Court. It doesn't seem to be information vital to the national interest. The documents contain details about employee income and transportation expenses, as well as what the network spent on its recent 75th anniversary celebrations. Amazingly, Heritage Minister James Moore approved of the move, saying: "The truth is the CBC receives a lot of money. Our government has been clear: if it is going to receive that money then it needs to be accountable for it."

That's exactly what Sun Media is arguing. A coincidence? I don't think so.

It's no secret the Tories despise the CBC, which often holds the government to account and has a good record of public-interest investigative reporting. Sun News Network is at the opposite end of the journalistic spectrum, if you can really call what they do journalism at all. Its prime time is filled with jumped-up stunts and bitching about political correctness, the CBC and pinkos in the press.

I believe the public discourse is best served if we have both the CBC and Sun Media, and both of them are kept free of political interference. But the Conservative MPs are giving the CBC until Nov. 14 to hand over the documents, and I believe they are interfering with the network's legal rights, as well as aligning themselves with the yahoos who Sun News insists on putting on air.

New Democrat MP Charlie Angus said as much, accusing the Tory MPs and the minister of waging a concerted campaign against the network aided and abetted by the cheerleading journalists of Sun Media.

Is he right? Just consider the following facts:

Heritage Minister Moore says the CBC will be facing a minimum 5 percent budget cut this year.  “The CBC has to do its part. The idea that the CBC can’t find 5% efficiencies within the CBC to give back to the broader economic framework is silly. Of course the CBC will be part of this overall process.” Friends of Canadian Broadcasting quotes internal CBC memos saying it is bracing for cuts of about $56 million, meaning news and cultural coverage will be affected.

In a letter sent out to Conservative membership, the party asks whether the more than $1-billion Ottawa spends on the CBC is "good value" or "bad value." A "P.S." to the letter notes: "This survey is very, very important to our legislative planning."

Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail reported two Conservative MPs — Rob Anders and Ed Holder — are taking it a step further, asking their constituents in surveys whether the government should keep funding the CBC at all. Anders is even promoting a petition to "defund the Canadian Broadcasting Co."

Sun Media denies its anti-CBC campaign is politically connected, but its actions seem to call that into question. A new poll done exclusively for QMI Agency says more than 80 percent of Canadians do not know the CBC will get $1.1 billion from the federal government this year. When informed of the amount, 60 percent of people polled by Abacus Data said it was too much. David Coletto, who is in charge of Abacus Data's team of strategists and consultants, said "Liberal party supporters are more likely to either believe it is not enough or about right compared to too much, whereas Conservative party supporters overwhelmingly - 79% - believe that it's too much money."

CBC and Sun Media may be acting like two little boys fighting it out over marbles in the schoolyard, but Sun Media is the aggressive, bratty one. Sun Media CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau has a $750,000 defamation suit against CBC executive Sylvain Lafrance in which he alleges being called a punk damaged his reputation.Lafrance made the comment after Quebecor’s cable subsidiary stopped paying into the Canadian Television Fund. Quebecor had objected to the fact that more than a third of the CTF’s funding went to the CBC. Strange logic. If CBC is drawing from the fund, it's because it's developing Canadian content for television, which Quebecor is not. Isn't that in the public interest?

When the CBC struck back, charging that Quebecor secured around $500 million in direct and indirect taxpayer subsidies over the last three years, Quebecor threatened to sue again.

The Tory ties to Quebecor's head office are many, and they raise the possibility that Harper's Conservatives are using friendly media to wage a campaign against the CBC, which would be a direct threat to freedom of expression. The chief executive of the Sun News Network is Kory Teneycke, who used to work in Harper's Prime Minister's Office. Prime time shock jock Ezra Levant is an off-and-on Tory consultant who furthered the Tory agenda by coining the term "ethical oil" to defend exploitation of the Alberta tar sands. Former Tory prime minister Brian Mulroney is on Quebecor's board. Shortly before the last federal election, Sun Media ran two questionable stories making damaging allegations against Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and NDP leader Jack Layton, and one of them was traced directly to Patrick Muttart, once Harper's deputy chief of staff.

The most important thing to remember is that the CBC has a special mandate, one eloquently described by Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle: "It is mandated to be Canadian, and mandated, among other things, to put the Canadian arts, both high and low, on the airwaves. It is Canada's most important cultural institution. We all pay for it in the same that we pay to have clean water and an education system. Canada is located next door to the great behemoth of U.S. broadcasting and the country needs a distinct cultural institution anchored in its public broadcaster."

We should ask ourselves what should be protected more by public opinion -- that mandate of the CBC's, or the mandate of Sun Media, which recently pulled all its newspapers out of the country's two largest press councils on grounds that "the editorial direction of our newspapers, especially our urban tabloids, is incompatible with a politically correct mentality."

And Sun Media has the gall to accuse the CBC of a lack of accountability? This graphic proof of just how much more accountable CBC is than its competitors should put that notion to rest.

Please, if you value freedom of expression and the press, keep a close eye on how the Conservatives and Sun Media are working together to try to cripple the CBC.

The amazing thing is that the Toronto Star printed her column. It was headlined "Occupy newsrooms to rescue words." Good for her for writing it and speaking truth to power so effectively, and good for the paper for having the honesty to run it.

DiManno invokes the rationale that is fueling the Occupy Wall Street protests and applies it to the press. It's a business that's plunging itself deep in debt to chase after elusive new technologies at the same time that readers and advertisers are deserting in droves. As a result, share prices and profits are shrinking, although not disappearing. Its top executives, under pressure to show short-term gains, earn huge bonuses to do the easiest thing in the world -- shed experienced and loyal employees to cut costs.
 
Bemoaning the replacement of gifted reporters by cheaper "techno-geeks," people who know how to dump raw video from news events on the internet instead of crafting stories people want to read, she makes a startling suggestion: "I propose that we -- writers, photographers, editors, corner-office managers who still love papers -- ... occupy newsrooms to rescue them from industry saboteurs, managers overcompensating for a belated grasp of the Digital Age, and the new disciples of technology scrambling to satisfy corporate board masters."

Her column echoed one written earlier by New York Times commentator David Carr, who cited the "disastrous" reign of Craig Dubow as chief executive of Gannett, the U.S. newspaper chain that owns USA Today. Gannett’s stock price declined to about $10 a share from a high of $75 the day after he took over; and he got rid of 20,000 employees at the company's 82 newspapers, crippling their ability to cover the news.

Despite that record, Dubow wasn`t fired; he retired under his own power, walking away with $37 million in retirement, health and disability benefits.

Occupy the newsrooms indeed. There are lots of spare seats.

It`s no coincidence that at DiManno`s own paper, CEO David Holland began 2009 earning a paltry $415,000 and ended it at $700,000, a most healthy little raise. It wasn`t a very good year for the company, however, which showed a loss in its key Star Media Group division, which includes the Star, Metro, Sing Tao, EyeWeekly and digital properties like Workopolis. Yet the very next year, Holland`s total compansation zoomed up to $3,019,942. When he retires, he will enjoy a private pension of more than $500,000 a year.

Runaway executive compensation has been an issue for years at the Star, which is Canada`s largest newpspaper. In 2007, the union representing most of its employees issued an unusual message to shareholders. "The union is angry that Torstar executives ... continue to see their compensation rise to stratospheric heights, while the share price and profits continue to decline, in turn causing layoffs," said the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.

Just look at the case of Star publisher John Cruickshank, centred out for special praise in Torstar`s last annual report for "spearheading a transformational year" by increasing Star Media Group`s operating profit to $30 million, largely by saving $20 million through "restructuring, lower pension costs and lower newsprint costs."

Translation: Fewer employees, fewer readers, fewer expenses, but way more executive compensation. Cruickshank received $1,030,804 in salary, bonus and perqs last year. It`s tempting to say he really earned it, but the bonus and perqs seem to come his way regardless of how the company and its shareholders do financially. The year before, when the division was in the red, Cruickshank earned even more, $1,084,500. That compensation included something that I've never encountered outside the world of pro sports -- a "signing bonus" of more than $70,000.

This culture of entitlement comes from the top, of course. John Honderich pays himself a retainer of more than $270,000 to act as chairman of the Torstar board. Not that he needs it. The Torstar stock he owns is valued at a cool $60 million.

Cruickshank and Honderich may be fine fellows but they are who DiManno was really talking about when she wrote: "Lots of do-re-me in the business, I`m thinking, if too often unfairly distributed among execs whose primary solution for what ails this industry is to slash and burn whilst being rewarded for their singular lack of imagination. Dump half the staff, cannibalize the core product and -- ding-ding-ding! we have a winnah here! -- earn yourself a honking big bonus. How very ingenious."

Newspapers, she said, are being stabbed in the back. "We`re deliberately weaning readers off the tactile experience of newspapers by luring them to instant, sloppy, error-riddled, cursorily edited reportage. Then we wonder why circulation is declining? Like I said, dumb as a bag of hammers, the ruling elite in my business. But they`ll retire to lives of leisure and financial security."

If you love your local newspaper, maybe it is time to occupy it. At the very least, courageous people like Rosie DiManno may need your help to save their jobs.

But most people don't believe them.

There's proof: A new Ipsos Reid poll, done for the Canadian Journalism Foundation, shows that 84 percent of Canadians either believe our journalists are guilty of the worst ethical lapses, or else are unsure whether they are or not. We're talking about phone hacking and paying police for tips -- scandals that erupted in the British gutter press earlier this year. Only 16 percent of Canadians believe these things do not happen here.

Talk about a public relations problem! No wonder readership and viewership of mainstream news continues to fall off the table. People see journalists as pauns of the empires that employ them -- unethical and ruthless cost-cutting corporations hungrier for profit than any kind of public good.

What's interesting are the shackles people want to put on those journalists, who they clearly do not trust.  Fifty-six percent of the 1,014 people polled by Ipsos believe that journalists ought to be accredited by some kind of industry-wide standards body before being allowed to work in the news media. A distinct minority agree with the status quo, which is no accreditation and voluntary, not mandatory, standards.

The poll's findings are important because the government of Quebec is poised to introduce legislation this fall that would, for the first time in Canadian history, designate the status of "professional journalist" to those accredited by such a standards body. It was recommended by a report written by Dominique Payette, a former CBC journalist who is now a professor of communications at Laval University. Members of the Quebec association of journalists voted overwhelmingly to endorse Payette's report. But in English Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists has just as strongly opposed it. The CAJ took particular issue with Payette's contention that the public is confused about the role of journalists and needs to be able to know who to trust.

I have blogged earlier here about my view of Payette's findings (Cone of Silence, April 22, 2011). I think she makes a good case that the economic model journalism is based on is broken and not enough resources are available to cover the news people require to be good citizens. Some of her remedies are extreme, like state subsidies to support starting salaries, but stem from her convincing argument that the state has an interest in preserving coverage of a wide range of issues, even if private corporations do not. By comparison, the CAJ's arguments are knee-jerk, defensive and flawed.

The Ipsos poll seems to confirm that Canadians are indeed confused about the role of journalists. I am a critic of media practices but I know for a fact that phone hacking and paying police for tips would never be countenanced in any professional newsroom in this country, and any journalists doing those things on their own would be summarily fired.

In its recent brief to the Quebec government, the CAJ says its proposal would divide journalists into classes, backed by legislation, and give one group rights and privileges denied the other. It calls this a fundamental interference by government in true freedom of the press, a statement I regard as being overwrought. “Government, no matter how noble its intentions, cannot help journalism under this proposal without subverting it,” said CAJ president Hugo Rodrigues. “We believe this proposal is a mistake and should be withdrawn.”

The CAJ argues that "lawyers have licensing bodies, as do other professional designations such as accountants and physicians. Yet there are highly unprofessional lawyers and accountants, as there are trustworthy ones. A title does not protect the public from unethical or unscrupulous behaviour."

The question is, what would? Membership in the CAJ? I am a member and always have been, along with approximately 800 others. But most Canadian journalists do not belong to their own professional association. Membership on a provincial press council? That is voluntary, not mandatory, and the country's largest publisher, Sun Media, has pulled all its papers out of the two largest councils. Neither the CAJ or press councils are very effective as a result.

Here's a provocative suggestion: If freedom of the press is too sacrosanct to be tainted by the hand of government, then it's time for media owners, top editors and journalists who consider themselves professionals to step up and make membership in the CAJ and press councils mandatory, to make those institutions more proactive and open, to charge them with drawing up a code of professional conduct, and to make a concerted effort to educate Canadians that we enjoy the most accountable media in the world. Furthermore, when a good idea is raised (like Dominique Payette raised in her interesting report), those ideas should be vigorously debated in a national forum.

To understand just how far from that we stand, I attended a conference on the law and ethics of investigative journalism at Osgoode Hall Law School on October 14. Dominique Payette was one of the speakers. She said it was her first invitation to speak outside Quebec in the nine months since she released her report.

Better get your act together, Canadian journalism. Others are stepping in to set the agenda.

It's baffling even his supporters. A generally praiseworthy editorial in the National Post noted that the Prime Minister "flubbed" when he used the term Islamicism and added rather archly: "Presumably, he meant the extremist doctrine of Islamism. The word 'Islamicism' has no fixed meaning, and the word is not in common usage."

Others were not so kind. A letter writer in the Calgary Herald said: "By coining such undefined terms when discussing terrorism threats in Canada, Harper is demonstrating his ignorance of Islam at best and contributing to Islamophobia in Canada at worst." The writer added: "Would Harper define the Norwegian terrorist attack as Christianism? ... Of course not."

Unfortunately, the media in this country seem to be letting him off the hook. No one has yet critically examined Harper's use of the word, asked where he might have found it, or examined what it means. The few editorials written after the Prime Minister's wide-ranging interview with CBC chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge repeat the word and take it at face value, like this one in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, which begins: "Stephen Harper is correct — if not politically correct."

Harper could have said radical Islam, or political Islamism, or anti-West religious terrorism, but he did not. Instead, he chose a term that most people would say refers to anyone who worships the Prophet Mohammed. Read the full CBC interview here.

And in what sense did he inflate the threat to an "ism"? What kind of "ism" are we dealing with? Are we to equate it to an action (like baptism), or a system, principle or ideological movement (like Conservatism), or a quality (like barbarism), a peculiarity in language (like Americanism), a pathological condition (like alcoholism), or is it instead a basis for prejudice or discrimination (like racism)?

If Islamicism is indeed the new nomenclature adopted by Canadian security officials -- and Harper said they are occupied "most regularly" with it -- then perhaps the question of its appropriateness should be directed at the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. After all, Harper promised during the CBC interview that his government would beef up anti-terrorism legislation to allow them more power to hold people without laying charges.

He also said this: "I think it is a case that we will have to be perpetually vigilant and we'll have to have appropriate security apparatus and intelligence apparatus that is trying to identify plots or terror events before they happen. And I just think that's going to be an ongoing reality, and that's, you know, that's just ... that's just life going forward I think in the 21st century, unfortunately."

If the media were doing their job, columnists and editorialists would be demanding that the Prime Minister justify his call for tougher legislation and a "perpetually vigilant" intelligence apparatus directed against Islamicism and homegrown terrorism.

Ask how many actual cases of homegrown terrorism have been actually carried out in this country. Answer: Aside from Air India disaster in 1978, none that have been proven in court.

Ask how many people have been arrested and convicted of terrorist acts in the name of Islam in Canada. Answer: A small handful, almost all rounded up in the so-called Toronto 18 plot. All charges were dropped against seven of the 18, and those convicted lacked the materials to carry out their plots.

Ask what evidence convinced Harper that we need to resurrect two anti-terrorism clauses that were abandoned in 2007 amid heated political debate.

• One allowed police to arrest suspects without a warrant and detain them for three days without charges if police believed a terrorist act may have been committed.
• The other allowed a judge to compel a witness to testify in secret about past associations or perhaps pending acts under penalty of going to jail if the witness didn't comply.

Harper said both measures "are necessary.We think they've been useful. And as you know … they're applied rarely, but there are times where they're needed." In fact, neither clause was used by police or prosecutors in the five years before they expired. Why do we need them now?

I am concerned because this is not the first time Harper has kindled fear of Islam for his own political purposes. It happened during the Toronto 18 arrests. My study of media coverage of that case found that reporters relied overwhelmingly on unnamed security officials for information, and those security officials were carefully briefed by the Privy Council Office on what to say. The government's message  was clear: Canada is tough on terrorism, there's a threat to our way of life, and the terrorists could be your neighbours. The message was never challenged or put to the test. There was little about the case to justify an extreme moral panic approach, but the media repeated it uncritically, and it fueled some of the most extreme commentary, including some that was undoubtedly Islamophobic.

Newspapers then didn't make the government justify its actions. It's time they did their job right today. Whatever Harper thinks the threat is, we have a right to know more.

This added on Sept. 12: One of the few columnists to take on Harper on this issue was Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star. Read it here.

The National Post columnist is under fire for this column she wrote just hours after news of the NDP leader's death flashed across the country, unleashing a wave of unprecedented public emotion. In it, Blatchford mocked the "fawning" reaction and ridiculed Layton's much-quoted letter to Canadians, saying it "shows what a canny, relentless, thoroughly ambitious fellow Mr. Layton was. Even on Saturday, two days before he died, he managed to keep a gimlet eye on all the campaigns to come."

Critics called it mean-spirited, insensitive, untimely and cruel. It was, but those are some of the qualities editors seem to look for in columnists these days. Others said it shouldn't have been published, but that is a short-sighted call for censorship. I'm for free expression. Shouldn't we expect a vigorous debate about a dead politician's political legacy? Blatchford is entitled to her point of view, and it was certainly legitimate to question the unique outpouring of grief and idealism that was touched off by Layton's untimely death.

I think Blatchford's critics miss the point. And my point is, Blatchford's column tells us very little about Jack Layton, but a whole lot about Christie Blatchford.

She is undoubtedly one of Canada's highest-profile newspaper commentators, a reputation she has regularly traded on to move herself from paper to paper at, presumably, higher and higher compensation. As a student of journalism, I greatly admired her pushing the boundaries of court reporting and, in effect, inventing a whole new form of contemporaneous journalism -- the critical day-by-day personal commentary on high courtroom drama. It gave readers a front-row seat on the workings of our justice system.

But she is not a political commentator. She clearly does not know very much about Jack Layton. To call him "vainglorious" is to miss the mark by a considerable degree in describing a politician who plainly, in his actions and deeds, was in it not for himself but for others. To view his letter to Canadians cynically, as "sophistry" and a product of his ego, misses the infectious optimism and faith that he tried to convey. To say the outpouring of grief over his death was not unusual is to miss the legions of young people who filled City Hall Square in Toronto and spread their grafitti of thanks for Layton across the pavement.

So the columnist missed the story: Layton's selfless deathbed challenge to a new generation to concern itself with the future of their country. If he succeeds, and young people actually get involved in the search for solutions, get involved in politics, get involved in advocating for optimistic change, he will pass into history as a seminal figure in Canadian public life, a man who opened the political arena to a generation that opted to vote with its feet in several elections, plunging political involvement to worrisome depths.

The National Post did not lure Christie Blatchford away from her sinecure at the Globe and Mail to miss the story, and so we must consider what her column says about what she and her journalism have become.

Once the hardest working reporter on the block, Blatchford has come to rely too much on lazy stereotypes and ideology. During the past 15 years, that impression has popped surprisingly out of my research. Her columns turned up some of the most blatantly Islamophobic writings during the so-called Toronto 18 arrests, the coverage of which I studied in detail in two published academic papers. I say Islamophobic advisedly, because her words were not only anti-Muslim, they were expressed with hatred. I found similar echoes of intolerance in some of her writings about First Nations issues, including the Ipperwash confrontation and the death of Dudley George, an innocent, unarmed man who was gunned down by police. On both those occasions, a sceptical and inquiring press might have protected society from political spin and lying. Blatchford, given her platform, could have led that charge if she'd directed her considerable journalistic skills toward digging out the truth, instead of taking the easier route of reinforcing prejudice and justifying authority. She chose not to do the hard job of journalism.

While it is easy to dismiss her as a journalistic carpetbagger, eager to sell her talents to the highest bidder, that is not the point, and probably does her a disservice. Rather, we must instead accuse her of something much worse -- abandoning the relentless search for truth that should propel the best who toil, as she does, in the public realm and at the public's pleasure. She abandoned the discipline of verification and opted for the easier surrender to ideology. Perhaps that is what we should read into her return to the National Post, the most intensely ideological newspaper around.

Her job as a prominent columnist was to help us understand the meaning of Layton's life, as well as his death and the enormous and unprecedented public impact it had and continues to have.

Something is happening that has never happened before. And Blatchford failed us when we needed her most.

As a former cartoonist and editor, let me shed some light on where we should draw the ethical line between acceptable and unacceptable these days. At issue is whether the Cape Breton Post should have published an editorial cartoon that some readers call racist.

It showed two bearded men in turbans sitting on a pile of skulls and reading a newspaper headlined "Oslo." They are celebrating last week's massacre of nearly 100 adults and schoolchildren by a Norwegian extremist, Anders Behring Breivik. One man says "Wow ... they're blowing themselves up." The other replies "Perfect ..."

The paper's editor doesn't understand what the problem is, and stands by his decision to publish.

The cartoonist says it's his job to be controversial.

Is it funny? Bad timing? Good point? Decide for yourself. We all know newspapers publish what they like, and I'm all for that. No one is suggesting any limits on free expression here.

But does the newspaper's justification for the cartoon stand up to scrutiny?

The cartoonist, Sean Casey, says he wanted to make a political point -- that extremists are alike, regardless of doctrine.

Fine, but he didn't draw extremists. The two men are smiling, and while both are undoubtedly meant to be Muslim, neither is armed. One is drinking tea. The drawing suggests to me that the cartoonist thinks any Muslim might be happy that so many Norwegians died at the hands of one of their own, saving Muslims the trouble.

So let's examine that logic more closely. Isn't there something racist in suggesting that Muslims see any white European, even innocent schoolchildren, as their enemies? More importantly, why would any Muslim, even a terrorist, rejoice at the Norwegian tragedy? Breivik's stated goal was to sow terror among the political elite in his country who have embraced multiculturalism and equality and who support immigration, including Muslim immigration. The only reason Muslims might rejoice is that the gunman was captured alive and will go on trial for his crimes.

The cartoon is like any stereotype -- it's easy to grasp but sometimes it doesn't fit the situation. This one doesn't.

The cartoonist seems to have a misguided idea about what he claims to be -- a "responsible journalism editorial cartoonist." He says "if there is a venue for an image that might be despicable or insensitive, that's the editorial cartoon. You can't do that in a regular newspaper (Oh, is he saying that the Post isn't a regular newspaper?)"

Lest we equate that with Breivik's justification for his killing -- that what he did was despicable but necessary -- Sean Casey adds: "A cartoonist is supposed to be like a jester in the king's court who gets away with saying things ... when a regular person would have their head cut off by the king."

Well, he's right and he's wrong. A cartoon is an exaggeration for effect. It can use metaphor and caricature and it can be satiric or ironic. Occasionally it can be outrageous, but it always must be grounded in accurate facts. This one was not.

Should the Post have published it? Well, it did. There's nothing much we can do about it, except decide if that is the sort of judgment we want to trust with telling us our news.

Fortunately, some people in Cape Breton get it.

Unfortunately, none of them seems to work at the newspaper.

Not if you're Mark Steyn.

If you're Mark Steyn, you reload and go on the attack.

The paleoconservative polemicist, in this column in the National Review, says he resents "being fitted out for a supporting role" in last week's rampage in Norway carried out by Anders Behring Breivik. Steyn is mentioned approvingly in the gunman's 1,500-page manifesto entitled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence." It refers to the year Breivik (but almost no one else) believes Muslims will become a majority in Europe and a bloody racial war will be necessary to defend traditionally white society.

Hmmm, that sounds remarkably similar to the thesis of Steyn's book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It. He argues that "Eurabia" is on the verge of being overrun by Muslim demographics, and the takeover is likely to be bloody. One reviewer in The Globe and Mail described it as "quite possibly the most crass and vulgar book about the West's relationship with the Islamic world I have ever encountered."

But this isn't a literary criticism. Let's examine what Steyn really thinks about Breivik's dreadful rampage.

Besides mention of him in the manifesto, what evidence does Steyn give for thinking he's been "fitted out" for blame? He links to this Globe and Mail story by Doug Saunders, but it makes no such claim. It merely cites the fact, in the 12th paragraph, that Breivik mentions several people by name: "His manifesto draws approvingly on the ideas of popular anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism writers and figureheads such as Geert Wilders, Bruce Bawer, Melanie Phillips, Theodore Dalrymple, and Canadian Mark Steyn in order to characterize Muslims as being united in an ideological conspiracy to impose a 'Eurabia' through 'demographic warfare' and dominate the population."

Steyn thickens his cover by adding several other names he found in Breivik's writings, like David Pipes, Churchill, Gandhi, Orwell, Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw. Then he makes this bizarre argument: "Any of us who write are obliged to weigh our words, and accept the consequences of them. But, when a Norwegian man is citing Locke and Burke as a prelude to gunning down dozens of Norwegian teenagers, he is lost in his own psychoses."

Wait a minute. Is Steyn saying that if anyone was stupid enough to believe a word he wrote in his book, and acted on it, that person must be psychotic? What a fine sense of responsibility. What a sophisticated weighing of words.

Then he seems to take issue with whether Breivik was even motivated by dislike of Muslims. He singles out the lead of a story he found in USA Today: " Islamophobia has reached a mass murder level in Norway as the confessed killer claims he sought to combat encroachment by Muslims into his country and Europe."

"So," Steyn writes, "if a blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavian kills dozens of other blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavians, that's now an 'Islamophobic' mass murder? As far as we know, not a single Muslim was among the victims."

He calls it Post 9/11 Syndrome: "Muslims are now the preferred victims even in a story in which they are entirely absent."

Absent from Steyn's comments, I must point out here, are any condemnation of Breivik, any sympathy for the victims, any understanding of the stigma Muslims have experienced for the last decade, or any iota of responsibility he feels for what he writes. As his reader, how does this make you feel?

"Free societies can survive the occasional Breivik," Steyn has the insensitivity to write. "If Norway responds to this as the Left appears to wish, by shriveling even further the bounds of public discourse, freedom will have a tougher time."

That is just ignorant. It ignores the steadfast and principled response of the Norwegian government, which has won praise and admiration around the world.

Full disclosure: Steyn and I have had our disagreements. I've told him I'm disappointed that he has chosen to use his considerable writing talent to such distorted and hateful ends, and he has told me to "Fuck off." He justifiably defended himself when I accused him of inventing a quotation from the Ayatollah Khomeini. I was wrong and he was correct. I apologized to him in my blog and I apologize for it again here. But his flimsy attempt to absolve himself of any responsibility for what happened in Norway is astounding.

Steyn often recycles his columns, using great swaths of his own words in different markets. He normally writes a column for Maclean's. I hope they don't have the bad taste next week to use any bit of what he wrote in the National Review.

I'm a retired headline writer. It was the best thing that I did as a newspaperman. I once wrote a headline that sold 145,000 extra newspapers, and I liked it because it consisted of only one word.

One of our hallowed brethren much more famous than me just retired, so I must say a few words about the joy of writing headlines for a living.

First let Vincent A. Musetto say it. He worked 40 years as an editor at the New York Post and wrote one of the most famous headlines of all time: "Headless body in topless bar." The Post is a tabloid, and a Rupert Murdoch one, and I never worked for one of those, thank God. But they sure carried the best headlines.

Musetto, who retired yesterday, once told People magazine the secret of how he practices his art: ""Zap, zip, zonk, nix, these are good verbs. Short. Short and powerful. They've got to contain a sense of urgency. Nouns? Tots, kids, fire, you know -- SIX-ALARM FIRE. Blaze is good, but fire's shorter. Siege. Siege is good. Madman, maniac, fear. My favourite word is 'co-ed.' When you see co-ed, people want to buy the paper. I don't know why. Just some young, innocent girl getting into a lot of trouble. It's the dirty old man in people. It's a very sexy word."

Musetto, in fact, may have written my favourite recent headline. It conveyed the front-page news that the wife of U.S. congressman Anthony Weiner was pregnant. This came after he'd he'd been caught twittering pictures of his, um, weiner to other women. Shortly before he resigned, the Post carried a picture of the expectant parents and this headline: POP GOES THE WEASEL.

A good headline accurately covers the story and rings with authority. A great headline resonates. Reading it can make the corner of your mouth go up as you marvel at the human condition, or appreciate a nifty double meaning. Headlines are icons of pop culture, and we should study them and appreciate them because they are more important than you think.

One statistic: On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headlines, but only two will read the story that goes underneath. So there are a lot of failures. If you don't believe me, just read any on-line news site or blog. How far do you get? The Internet has made headlines even more important. It has also flooded the market with amateurs, and the last thing amateurs are good at is writing headlines. Google "great headlines" and you get countless suggestions for writing great blog headlines, all of it virtually worthless.

Great headlines are nearly a lost art. When I taught headline writing to students at Ryerson, I developed a process called "wordstorming." It was a way of selecting key words from the story and sharpening them up for use in headlines. I used newspaper ads as examples, eliminating only the headlines and inviting students to write new ones, then comparing the two. It made me realize that some of the best headlines appear in ads, because they're quite literally designed to be an effective "sell." They often do that by appealing to some emotion, and I realized that zapping readers with an emotional charge is a good way to pique their interest in reading more. I used that insight to develop a newspaper training module in "wordstorming" for professionals, but only gave it a few times. There was little interest.

Headlines are wonderfully diverse. Original puns, plays on words and cheeky double-entendres are used often in the tabloids Musetto used to work for. When Elton John married David Furnish, the headline read: "Elton takes David up the aisle." In crime stories especially, anything goes. When a mental patient escaped and raped a woman in a landromat, it was: "Nut screws washer and bolts."

The best at it I ever saw in Canada my old colleague Lew Fournier. When he was at the Star, he wrote a great headline on a small story about Virginia Maddox, widow of Georgia's ex-governor Lester, running for office. His headline read: "Yes, Virginia, there is an Atlanta cause." The senior editor at the Star rejected it, but it would have been treasured at the rival tabloid Sun. Fournier moved to the Sun.

I didn't get to play with that fast crowd. My career was at more sober broadsheets, and I learned my craft in the days of hot type, when every headline was assembled laboriously by Ludlow, and one that was written too long close to deadline would make the paper late. Headlines, even then were afterthoughts, and we'd move stories with the designation HTK, meaning "head to come." Then we'd tempt fate by writing them on top of deadline. It taught me to be quick, short and accurate. I once got a hearty laugh out of fellow editors attending a newspaper training session in Reston, Virginia, by suggesting a title for a pornographic novel we could collaborate on, about the sexual misadventures of a copy editor. The title was "Head to Come."

Oh yes. My famous one-word headline that sold 145,000 papers? In my early days as editor of the new Sunday Star, I put together a special section after John Lennon was shot dead. Our paper was trailing the more established Sunday Sun in circulation at the time. Martin Goodman, then the publisher, was furious with me for promoting it in advance. "Why tip off the Sun?" he asked. I said: "I hope they do one too (which they did) -- we're going to blow them out of the water."

The cover we chose was a poster of Lennon looking almost mystic in his wire-rimmed glasses and beard. We kept the typography simple, just saying "John Lennon, 1940-1980." Posters don't need headlines but this cried out for one. It had to be short and it had to be emotional and it had to convey a simple message appropriate for the death of such a cultural icon. Something, perhaps one word, that resonated with meaning for his life and death. I came up with it in the middle of the night. The section appeared with PEACE as the headline over the inscription.

The section was such a hit with readers that we increased our average circulation by 70 percent that Sunday. Within a few weeks, we'd passed the Sunday Sun for keeps.That's the power of a great headline.

The evidence is indisputable that his News of the World operated for years with scant regard for either the law, recognized standards of journalism, or society's innocent victims. The paper's motto could have been "We Afflict the Uncomfortable." Yet the 80-year-old Australian tycoon denies knowing about it and he refuses to take personal responsibility.

The longer Murdoch tries to tough this one out, the more his obstinacy could destroy one of the world's biggest corporations and arguably the one with the most impact on the information we consume every day. News Corp. owns 20th Century Fox, the Fox television network, Harper Collins book publishers, the Dow Jones newswire, and great newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London and the Sunday Times, Barron's business weekly and the Sydney Morning Herald (in fact, he owns most of the major daily newspapers in Australia). His empire is estimated to be worth $7.6 billion, or at least it was before the recent meltdown.

Murdoch has been CEO since 1979 and also serves as chairman. But everyone knows that he cut his teeth on trashy tabloid newspapers, earning the nickname Dirty Digger. His company has been described as "a nasty, vulgar, cynical, dirty-laundry operation that has reduced standards of public taste and decency on at least four continents for decades." That's the opinion of Conrad Black, perhaps no pillar of moral rectitude himself although, as a newspaper proprietor who has had his own run-ins with the law, he sympathizes with the legal challenges Murdoch is facing. Any prosecution of him, Black feels, would be "an attempt on his life."

This has certainly happened to others implicated in the hacking scandal, including two top police officers who took the fall when news broke that their officers took bribes from News of the World reporters. Sir Paul Stephenson, chief of the Metropolitan police, had also accepted thousands of pounds-worth of free accommodation at a luxury health spa. Insisting his integrity was intact, he resigned saying: "I have taken this decision as a consequence of the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met’s links with News International at a senior level." By that token, should Murdoch not now follow suit, lest he compromise his company?

His son James may be even more vulnerable. He's his father's heir apparent as chairman and chief executive of News International's Europe and Asia division, overseeing assets such as its British newspapers. He told British MPs that he had not been aware in 2008 of evidence that phone hacking at The News of the World went beyond a single "rogue reporter," as the company then maintained. A year earlier, a reporter covering the royal family for the paper, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator on contract to the paper were convicted and jailed for hacking into the voice mail accounts of members of the royal household.

But last week two executives — Colin Myler, a former editor of The News of the World, and Tom Crone, the company’s former legal manager — said that James Murdoch’s testimony was "mistaken" and that they had in fact shown him evidence of wider phone hacking.

This is a regrettable move that can only undermine public confidence in the press, and lead to further erosion of the Sun's own standards of covering the news. The parent company, Sun Media, is controlled by Pierre Karl Peladeau, who earlier pulled his newspapers out of the Quebec press council too.

The only good news is that the Ontario Press Council will survive, despite the immediate loss of Sun Media's 27 daily newspapers, which include the tabloid Ottawa and Toronto Suns and community dailies in such cities as London, Kingston and Peterborough. That leaves only 10 dailies as members, although many more community non-daily newspapers still belong.

The Ontario council, which was formed by the newspapers themselves in 1972, receives unresolved public complaints about news and opinion stories. Cases are heard by a committee chosen from 20 members, evenly split between representatives from member papers and the public. Dr. Robert Elgie, a former Ontario cabinet minister, serves as chairman.

The council's only power is to compel a newspaper to publish any adjudications that affect it, using the power of publicity to deliver quasi-independent verdicts to readers about whether their paper acted responsibly. But its real value is that it forces editors and reporters to look over their shoulders before they jump off a cliff and do something to discredit journalism.

(Full disclosure: I was a member of the press council representing the Toronto Star when the Toronto Sun, then an independent tabloid, joined in the early 1980s. I remain a supporter of the council's work, although I think it can be more transparent and proactive.)

Unfortunately, Sun Media's stated reasons for pulling out are as misleading and full of holes as some of its breezy tabloid news stories. I'm told the breaking point came earlier this month when Sun executives showed up bristling with anger at a press council hearing into a complaint from the Canadian Labour Congress about this story written by Brian Lilley, its chief parliamentary correspondent.

The press council has yet to reach a decision about the story, but a letter to the council signed by Glenn Garnett, publisher of the Toronto Sun and Sun Media's vice-president of editorial, said:"It has become painfully evident that the editorial direction of our newspapers, especially our urban tabloids, is incompatible with a politically correct mentality that informs OPC thinking, in the selection of cases it hears, and the rulings it renders.

"We cannot be bound by the interpretations of our competitors on our obligations and objectives as journalists. We no longer believe there is common cause here and have no reasonable expectation this is going to change."

In fact, most of Sun Media's newspapers in Ontario are not "urban tabloids" but long-standing community papers like the London Free Press and Kingston Whig Standard, which were once owned by publishers who cared about accountability and community standards. Secondly, the Ontario Press Council has never received very many complaints from readers about what appears in the Toronto Sun. Part of that is due to the type of readers the paper has. Part of it is due to the cheeky tone of the paper. You expect to take The Globe and Mail seriously, but not always the Sun. Nor is there any record of Sun Media papers losing any more than their fair share of council adjudications. More often, the council dismisses complaints from the public, defending the industry that created it.

Instead, we must conclude that Sun Media has a thin skin, or else something to hide.

What's missing from Sun Media's announcement is any mention of a substitute for the press council complaints process. None of its papers has an ombudsman, meaning any complaints are handled by the editors who made the decisions in the first place, and while anyone can write a letter to the editor pointing out an error, the Toronto Sun has never given its readers the last word. The paper always adds a snarky tag line to published letters.

This makes me listen to the views of Jeffrey Dvorkin, the Toronto-based executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen. He says of Sun Media: "Unfortunately, I see them heading down a path that conveys more shock value — which is clearly something that is marketable — but a more important value of transparency and accountability is lost."

Since taken over by Peladeau, Sun Media has isolated itself from the rest of the Canadian newspaper industry. It pulled out of the chief industry association, the Canadian Newspaper Association, and dropped out of the National Newspaper Awards, which honour the best in print journalism. The chain also stopped contributing to the Canadian Press, a co-operative exchange whereby Canadian newspapers share their stories.

Although there is no reason to suspect the Sun tabloids use any of the illegal tactics recently uncovered at Britain's News of the World, Sun Media is no stranger to public controversy.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a sort of national press council for Canadian broadcasters, last month made a public plea for viewers to stop filing complaints about a Sun News interview conducted by afternoon host Krista Erickson with a well-known Canadian dancer, Margie Gillis. It was deluged with more than 4,000 complaints about the June 1 broadcast, in which Erickson grilled Gillis about living off government cultural grants for years. Normally, the council receives a total of between 1,800 and 2,200 complaints on all subjects a year.

I have written expert witness reports for at least two readers who successfully sued the Toronto Sun for libel, and I can tell you that it's not hard to find egregious examples of the paper's editors and writers shortcutting accepted journalistic standards.

What's even more worrisome is that Sun Media's top executives think they should be accountable to no one. Perhaps, with a majority Conservative government in Ottawa, they think they have nothing to fear in the way of scrutiny from government. Perhaps they think saving the $80,000 they pay for their papers' membership in the OPC can be better spent on journalism (although I doubt it will be spent that way). Perhaps they think that crippling the council, which got by on a yearly budget of only $200,000, is good for Canadian newspaper readers.

Let's hope the ultimate umpires -- readers like you and me -- convince them they're wrong. If you have a complaint about any Sun Media newspaper, send it to me. I'll investigate, for free.

The closure of the 168-year-old Sunday paper is the most spectacular suicide in the history of journalism. It was Britain's largest-circulated national paper, but even Rupert Murdoch knew it had to go when evidence emerged that its journalists routinely invaded people's privacy through phone hacking, corrupted police by making large payments to individual officers, and compromised fair trials by publishing reports that were likely to prejudice juries.

Its demise is no loss. Its editors and former editors, who seemed to stop at nothing to be first to publish sleaze and gossip, undoubtedly face jail terms for breaking the law. But lost amid the spectacular closure is the impact this sorry affair will have on journalism itself, even in Canada where we thankfully do not have such abysmal papers or Murdoch as an owner.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said lawbreakers will be prosecuted to the full extent. But he also promised a second, wider inquiry into the "culture, practices and ethics of the British press." And this should interest us all.

According to The Guardian, Cameron promised this inquiry should be presided over by independent experts "without any motive but to seek the truth and clean up the press ... In particular, they should look at how our newspapers are regulated and make recommendations for the future."

Cameron said press freedom was an "essential component of our democracy and our way of life," but that did not mean "the press should be above the law."

He took particular aim at his country's Press Complaints Commission, a national body set up by the press to enforce ethical standards and regulate the performance of reporters and editors. The News of the World was a member. It was investigated, and cleared, of earlier allegations of phone hacking and bribery. The head of the commission now admits it was lied to.

Cameron said it was "now clear to everyone that the way the press is regulated today is not working. Let's be honest: the Press Complaints Commission has failed. In this case – in the hacking case – it was, frankly, completely absent....There is a strong case for saying it is institutionally conflicted, because competing newspapers judge each other."

Self-regulation, in other words, does not work. It's the same flawed principle that led to the creation, in Canada, of provincial press councils. They exist in every province except Saskatchewan, although anyone who studies their performance quickly concludes that newspapers here are similarly incapable of policing themselves.

Press councils in Canada hear few cases, they are cumbersome to use, most complaints are dismissed, most readers do not know they even exist, their members are mostly friends of the newspapers that pay the bills, and some prominent publications, like the National Post and Maclean's magazine, are not members. The strongest censure a press council can mete out is to require offending publications to publish its adjudications.

What would work better -- and Cameron certainly pointed in this direction -- is a body independent of government and the press that would strike a balance between an individual's right to privacy and what is in the public interest. That sounds on the surface something like a print equivalent to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the arms-length federal body that licenses and regulates Canadian television and radio.

But that raises troubling questions. Do we want our newspapers licensed by the state, even at arm's length? Would that lead to journalists being licensed too? On what terms? Could they be fined, or have their licenses suspended? What standards of responsibility would be demanded of the top editors or news executives who direct the journalists and control their budgets?

I'm waiting for the cries of outrage from top editors, who have traditionally refused to even discuss any of these questions seriously. But now that the press has failed so spectacularly in Britain, the press everywhere is coming under greater scrutiny. 

Public opinion demands it.

Britain has been in a furore since The Guardian newspaper alleged that in 2002, when Brooks was editor, the tabloid News of the World hacked the voicemail of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler (later found to be murdered) to access and delete messages left by her parents.

British Prime Minister David Cameron described the hacking as a "truly dreadful act" and urged police to investigate it vigorously. Opposition leader Ed Meliband went further, saying it "represents one of the darkest days in British journalism" and that Brooks, now chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's News International, should "consider her conscience" and resign.

What Brooks says about it, and also what she does not say, provides a cautionary tale for all editors and CEOs: What's done in the name of your company is done by you, and you stand accountable for it.

Brooks doesn't see it that way, yet. In an email to News International staff the other day, she said: "It is almost too horrific to believe that a professional journalist or even a freelance inquiry agent working on behalf of a member of the News of the World staff could behave in this way. If the allegations are proved to be true then I can promise the strongest possible action will be taken as this company will not tolerate such disgraceful behaviour. I hope that you all realize it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations."

At the time, Brooks was the youngest editor of a national newspaper. She joined the News of the World as a secretary in 1989 and, 11 years later, became its top editor. In 2009, Australian media tycoon Murdoch made her CEO of his British newspaper division.   

Her journalism has always been controversial. While at News of the World, she oversaw its controversial campaign of "naming and shaming" convicted child sex offenders, actions that led to several angry mobs terrorising those suspected of being offenders. There were several cases of mistaken identity, leading a police chief to label it "grossly irresponsible journalism."

In her email to staff defending herself from the latest hacking allegations, Brooks proudly referred to her campaign to "out" pedophiles, saying it "defined my editorships."

Instead, what appears to have defined her editorship is either lax supervision, or outright perfidy. The New York Times has written that if the allegations are true, "it would mean either that Ms. Brooks had no idea how the paper she edited was obtaining information about the Dowler family for its articles, or that she knew about the hacking and allowed it."

Alarm bells should have rung at News International and the newspaper after one of its reporters, Clive Goodman, was jailed along with Glenn Mulcaire, a hired investigator, for illegally intercepting the phone messages of members of the royal family in 2006. A police enquiry revealed that the News of the World had a routine practice of intercepting mobile phone messages of celebrities, politicians and other public figures. Andy Coulson, formerly deputy editor to Brooks and her successor as editor, was forced to resign as the prime minister's communications chief after allegations of journalistic dirty tricks at his former paper mounted earlier this year.

Instead of fully investigating the extent of phone hacking in its newsroom, the News of the World assured a parliamentary committee that it was an isolated case done without the knowledge of top editors. The head of that committee, John Whittingdale, now tells BBC radio that "we expressed considerable doubts as to whether or not that investigation was thorough. I think now we can almost certainly conclude that it wasn't."

Similarly, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission said it was now clear the watchdog had been lied to during its earlier investigation of phone hacking practices at the paper.

Although Brooks seems to still enjoy the confidence of Murdoch, the British press is about to undermine that with its reporting. The Dowler fiasco happened under her editorship. She certainly encouraged the hiring of private investigators to work with her reporters. Paul McMullan, one of her former assistant editors, told The Guardian last year that he personally had authorized several hundred acts that could be regarded as unlawful, but that senior editors were aware of it.

Under Brooks, the paper was rife with questionable journalistic practices. Records published by the Information Commissioner's Office show that 23 journalists from the News of the World hired one private investigator a total of 228 times, including for the purchase of addresses and former phone numbers relating to Milly Dowler's disappearance.

(The animus directed towards Brooks by even her own colleagues was evident when she turned up in the News of the World newsroom to deliver the shocking announcement that the paper would be closed. When she offered to answer questions, the paper's current editor, Colin Myler, quietly told her to leave the floor, and was applauded by his staff.)

As a former newsroom manager myself, I feel it is inconceivable that this could have happened without Brooks' knowledge. If it did, she was incompetent and responsible for it because of her neglect of line authority as editor. I think it is only a matter of time before she is forced to step out of journalism, where perhaps she never actually belonged.

It's about time: Conrad Black finally got hung by his own overinflated rhetoric.

The man who rather unwisely protested his innocence by attacking "the putrification of the U.S. justice system" and by accusing the court of an "outright rape" of the law was, not surprisingly, ordered back to jail by Chicago Judge Amy St. Eve. She didn't seem to believe his last-minute assertion that he had been a model prisoner who was "absolutely submissive" to the court at all times.

As his old newspaper, the National Post, said, summing up the lessons of his legal ordeal, Rule Number 6 is that you "never publicly condemn a system of justice when you face the prospect of being resentenced by your trial judge."

The good judge St. Eve, who plays it straight by the book, ruled Black must serve another 13 months in prison for looting his company, abusing his position of trust, and using "sophisticated means" to conceal it. The sophisticated means were uncovered when Black was stupid enough to get caught, by a security camera that he installed himself, absconding with boxes of evidence.

In a windy address to the court, Black said "I never ask for mercy and seek no one's sympathy." Those words, too, may come back to haunt him if, as the Toronto Star reported, Black is attempting to gain readmittance to Canada. His lawyers apparently got the court's approval to begin the process of applying so that he doesn't have to wait for his release to begin the paperwork.(The Star actually said he was after a Canadian passport, but Black later clarified that he's seeking temporary resident status, which does not entail applying for Canadian citizenship. Apparently Black plans to live most of the time in Britain when he is a free man, but he has a posh home in Toronto that he plans to visit part of the year.)

This is the man, let us not forget, who noisily renounced his Canadian citizenship, denounced his former compatriots as cowards and philistines, and dismissed this country as "a Third World dump run by raving socialists." As a convicted criminal, Black is inadmissible unless Immigration Minister Jason Kenny gives him a helping hand.

Some commentators, including Rabble's David Climenhaga, think it's a slam dunk:"Getting back into Canada will probably a swift and effortless process for Lord Black -- what with his memberships in the Order of Canada and the Queen's Privy Council for Canada still intact and his many friends in the Harperite councils of our neo-con government," he writes.

Let's hope Climenhaga is wrong. Black is no admirer of Canada or the things most Canadians value. His way of doing business has no place here. His naked greed and vituperous tongue are dischordant with the way most Canadians behave and express themselves. And if he was so quick to turn his back on us when times were good, the Conservative government would be wise to make him wait, and let him try to earn back his return now that the law has finally caught up with what he did.

When Black next darkens Canada's door, it will be as an ex-con. Let's treat him as one.

It's unfortunate that the first time a jury got to consider Canada's new "responsible communication" defence for libel, it did not involve a journalist but a former journalist, and one who unwisely decided to act as his own lawyer.

It did not turn out well: Shareholder rights activist Bob Verdun has been ordered to pay $650,000 to a bank director after a jury decided he had defamed him. The amount included $400,000 for aggravated damages, which is believed to be one of the largest such awards in Canadian history.

The verdict ends a five-year legal battle between Verdun and Robert Astley, whose appointment to the Bank of Montreal's board of directors he opposed, as the old saying goes, with extreme prejudice.

It helps to know a little about Bob Verdun. As founder-editor of the Elmira Independent weekly newspaper from 1974 to 1999, he was known for fearless news coverage -- his paper won the prestigious Michener Award in 1990 -- and confrontational editorials. According to an article in Law Times, he transferred that manner to the business world, turning up at annual general meetings for various corporations to demand greater transparency in board affairs.

It's not clear what prompted him to go after Astley, former president and CEO of Clarica Life Insurance Company, and former president of Sun Life Financial Canada. But in 2004, Verdun wrote to David Galloway, the Bank of Montreal’s chairman, opposing Astley’s appointment on grounds that he was "unethical, greedy, and narrowly-focussed." He followed that up by speaking for 35 minutes at the bank's annual meeting, calling Astley a "stain on this board" without integrity or ethics.

These and other moves prompted a stern defence of Astley from the bank and a warning letter from his lawyers asking Verdun to stop. But Verdun took the bank to the Ontario Securities Commission, again repeating that Astley "lacked the integrity" to serve as director.

Astley’s lawsuit, filed in May 2006, sought $1 million in damages. It alleged Verdun had deliberately held Astley up to "public scandal, ridicule, and contempt." Unhappily for Verdun, who should have known better, the case ended up before a civil jury, and he chose to act for himself.

"It’s rare for a defamation action to go to trial and it’s even rarer for them to go to trial in front of a civil jury and for you to get to the end," said Brian Radnoff, one of Astley’s lawyers. Verdun attempted to raise the defences of qualified privilege and fair comment as well as the newly created defence of responsible communication. But the jury rejected all of them and found he had acted with malice.

Because civil jury trials are such a rarity, Radnoff believes this is the first time one has heard the responsible communication defence since the Supreme Court of Canada created it in December 2009.

I have blogged before about the usefulness of this defence to journalists, but Verdun was not acting as a journalist here and no journalist would have waged such a defamatory campaign with such reckless disregard for the stipulations laid down by the Supreme Court.

In its ruling, the court gave writers, broadcasters and bloggers greater legal protection in reporting on matters in the public interest – even if they can't prove the truth of allegations against individuals who believe their reputation has been harmed. But it says the new libel defence cannot allow people to "publish with impunity" and the right to free expression "does not confer a licence to ruin reputation." Thus, the new defence is only available to those who can demonstrate they took specific steps to verify the facts.

The Sun newspapers and TV network yesterday published a dishonest and highly suspect opinion poll that said a majority of Canadians believe there should be some restrictions on abortion. Sun Media did not say who paid for the poll, just that it had been "conducted ahead of Thursday afternoon's annual March for Life on Parliament Hill."

In fact, Sun Media itself paid for the poll. It was done by its network's official pollster, Abacus Data.

Nor did its news story say how the poll was done. In fact, you have to look on the pollster's website to find out that important information. It says it "surveyed 1,007 adult Canadians randomly selected from an online panel of over 400,000." So the poll appears to have been done online, not by telephone, and the participants were selected from some undisclosed online database. Anyone who knows about polling should see that's not kosher, folks.

What are we to make then of the results, which were interpreted as "flying in the face of the political consensus in Canada in which all major party leaders at the federal and provincial levels are committed to the status quo?"

The poll found 59% of Canadians believe there should be some restrictions on abortion as pregnancy proceeds.

More than one quarter of Canadians, 27%, said that human life should be protected from conception onwards, 21% said there should be protection after three months of pregnancy and 11% after six months. Only 22% agreed with the status quo which is no legal protection until a child is born. Furthermore, 63% of women believe in restricting abortion either before or at the sixth month compared to 56% of men.

This means, according to Abacus CEO David Coletto, that most Canadians are ready for a debate.

Oh? This certainly seems to fly in the face of a poll done last year by EKOS, a more established polling firm (Abacus Data was only formed last year). That poll showed 52% of Canadians describe themselves as pro-choice, versus only 27% who are pro-life.

Furthermore, EKOS said: "The lean to pro-choice holds true across virtually all demographic groups, although the margin is less clear with Conservative supporters and seniors ... Interestingly, there is no significant difference on the issue between men and women."

The EKOS poll was based on a random telephone sample of 2,162 Canadians aged 18 and over. It carefully listed all the questions asked, which Abacus did not.

Perhaps there are some clues about where Sun Media is coming from in Coletto's announcement in March that he would be the network's official pollster. "Together," he said, "we are going to peel away the layers of Canadian public opinion and find out what really makes people in this country tick: What inspires them, what frustrates them and sometimes what makes them mad as hell."

The Abacus website admits its analysis of data is "unconventional." It says the firm fills a need in Canadian society, for strategic research that isn't "stuck in the same old way of doing things." (Interestingly, the vice-president of public affairs of the parent company is Jim Armour, who once served as communications director for Preston Manning and Stephen Harper and is now a lobbyist in Ottawa).

Well, that's a perfect fit then. After all, Sun News is the network for journalism that isn't stuck in the same old boring rut of credibility that we usually find in other news outlets. Isn't it?

On the eve of the federal election, Sun editors and producers ran a story that claimed Michael Ignatieff helped plan the Iraq war. They also seriously entertained the idea of publishing a picture showing the Liberal leader in uniform in Kuwait, wearing U.S. camouflage gear, holding an automatic weapon and wearing a goofy Santa Claus hat. The story and photo (which was not of Ignatieff) were "leaked" to the network by, ahem, the Conservative election campaign.

A few days later, they ran another story, quoting an anonymous former policeman who said he found Jack Layton naked in a massage parlour in 1996.

 Something sure stinks big here.

At the very least, the episode shows that the Harper Conservatives spent considerable resources trying to dig up dirt on their election rivals, and managed in Ignatieff's case to feed some rather dubious and unverified information to the one news organization they knew would be politically predisposed to publish it. Here is how they managed to pull it off.

The Sun chain published a story on April 20 with the headline, "Ignatieff linked to Iraq war planning." It reported that in his political career Ignatieff has always said he was on the sidelines of the Iraq war, but "new information reveals he was on the front lines of pre-invasion planning" when he worked at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights. It did not publish the grainy picture leaked to accompany the story simply because some wary editors were still trying to prove that the soldier portrayed was Ignatieff. It wasn't. They decided not to print it. But, as we shall see, they published it anyway.

The story by Brian Lilley, who is a prime-time host on Sun News Network, quotes an American military official who described the work the military did with the Carr Center and who named Ignatieff as one of its employees. The article said Ignatieff's work with the organization and his writings helped push the U.S. government's message that the war was necessary.

Lilley did not bother to get any comment from Ignatieff before the story was published -- an unpardonable journalistic sin, given where the information came from. Ignatieff issued a categorical denial the next day.

We now know, thanks to an extraordinary Sun editorial by Pierre Karl Péladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor Media, that the source who supplied the information was Patrick Muttart, former deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a strategist in the 2006 campaign that brought Harper to power. He currently works for Mercury LLC, a public affairs and political strategy firm based in Chicago and Washington. He was also working for the Conservative campaign in this election.

Péladeau commandeered space in all his papers on April 27 to blow Muttart as the Sun's source for the story and the photo and to accuse the Conservatives of trying to damage the credibility of both Ingatieff and the Sun News Network (as if that wasn't damaged enough by the network's own actions). The boss outlined the steps his editors took to try to verify that the low-rez photo was actually not of Ignatieff. Amazingly, the very picture that his editors refused to publish was used to illustrate Péladeau's come-clean editorial.

The Conservative campaign confirmed that the photo and other information it had "acquired during Internet research" was supplied to Sun Media. Muttart, it promised, would have no further involvement with the election effort.

Péladeau did not apologize for running the bogus story, but provided details of how closely Harper's henchmen work together to plant politically damaging stories in the media.  

He said that Kory Teneycke, vice-president of Sun News and Harper's former communications director, was contacted by Muttart, who said he had a report prepared by a "U.S. source" outlining the activities and whereabouts of Ignatieff during the time leading up to the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003.

Péladeau said Teneycke and the news team were "excited" to receive the information that contradicted Ignatieff's denial that he played any role in the Iraq war. Muttart, he said, "knew that we were planning to go to press with it." 

The photo, taken in 2002, turned out to be of an unidentified soldier, not Ignatieff. Sun Media, Péladeau said, was upset with what he called this "troubling episode." He added: "Bad information is an occupational hazard in this business, and fortunately our in-house protocols prevented the unthinkable. But it is the ultimate source of this material that is profoundly troubling to me, my colleagues and, I think, should be of concern to all Canadians."

Then he added the incredibly self-serving comment: "If any proof is needed to dispel the false yet still prevalent notion that Sun Media and the Sun News Network are the official organs of the Conservative Party of Canada, I offer this unfortunate episode as Exhibit A."

What Péladeau said is pure bullshit. "Our in-house protocols" allowed his newspapers to publish a bogus story without checking, and they refused to apologize for it later. The same protocols allowed his newsrooms to be hoodwinked for days by a ridiculous photograph leaked by a source who had something political to gain by it. Then they published it anyway.

Following Péladeau's attempt to ride his journalistic high horse, the Tory campaign hit back, saying it had "made clear to Sun Media that the identity in the photograph could not be verified and that our own efforts to verify the photograph had been exhausted."

Mercury, the firm where Muttart works, hit back at Peladeau too, saying at no time did Muttart "mislead, or intend to mislead Sun Media."

The firm said that damaging the credibility of Sun Media was the farthest thing from Muttart's mind because he was actually working for them at the time. Mercury was hired by Quebecor to help Sun TV News with its pre-license branding and positioning, and Muttart himself was the "original source" for the network's "hard news" and "straight talk" branding language. The firm noted it continues to provide pro-bono work for the network, giving feedback on graphics and on-air promotional spots.

God, isn't this all a little too hand-in-glove for you? It is for me. I am shocked that Sun executives would be taken in by such a patently obvious put-up job. It makes you think they really are journalistic amateurs, totally unprepared for prime time. I am doubly dismayed that the Sun has such close ties with the Conservatives, and its top people will wet their pants for any leak, no matter how improbable. (No one has fessed up about how they got the Layton story, but that smear certainly takes Canadian political reporting to a new low. I wouldn't be surprised if the Conservatives were behind that one too.)

It turns out that the Conservatives may have known before they leaked it that the man in the photograph was not Ignatieff.

A blogger known as The Blog Quebecois has posted that he found the photo on the internet in 2009 and put a playful caption on it, identifying the soldier as Ignatieff. Read his confession here. A year ago, the blogger said, he was contacted by someone identifying herself as "a biographical researcher" preparing a "narrative" on the Liberal leader. Is the photo authentic, she asked. The blogger said he replied: "No, it was just some random photo that I came across in a Google image search. The guy in the middle looked like Iggy, so I decided to have some fun with it." The blogger now believes the researcher was working for the Conservatives.

What a revealing story, huh? Would you want to vote for a party that would try to mislead voters with such a dirty trick just before voting day? Would you place any credibility in a network and a chain of newspapers that would play so fast and loose with the truth?

You'll love this: When Sun News Network's viewership numbers came in after its first week on air, the Canadian Press reported correctly that "Despite launching in the middle of a federal election, the new Sun News Network has so far had little impact on the Canadian news scene." It said only 4,000 Canadians were watching it in prime time. The Sun newspapers, however, headlined their story: "Sun News viewer stats shine bright." They deliberately chose statistics and ignored others to try to hoodwink us into thinking the network was way more popular than it was. Compare the Canadian Press version to the Sun account and judge for yourself.