Blog by John Miller

How to cover hate

September 29th, 2019
How should the news media identify and report on extremist groups in Canada? Should they report on them at all? Across North America and Europe, there is no doubt that extremism—especially by right-wing groups like white supremacists and anti-Muslims—is on the rise. In Canada, the number of reported hate crimes skyrocketed 47 percent in 2017, according to the latest figures available from ...

It's about race

September 27th, 2019
Why should the outrage over Maxime Bernier being granted an audience with the Toronto Star editorial board remind us of the outrage over Justin Trudeau dressing up in brownface? Because ... it misses the point. The point we should be debating is evident if you read between the lines of Shree Paradkar’s remarkable column in the Star questioning her paper’s judgment. It was headlined “Givin ...

How not to do it

September 15th, 2019
How would you like it if you had to face Harold Munro’s problems when you woke up this morning? The Vancouver Sun and Province, the newspapers he edits, published something he had to apologize for and expunge, after the poorly researched and xenophobic views of a freelance columnist slipped into print and sparked outrage among readers. His own award-winning reporting staff courageously jo ...

When right is wrong

September 10th, 2019
Perhaps we ought to call it the Full Right Rudder problem. When a ship makes a turn like that, the vessel is engineered to execute the radical change in direction safely. Everything is welded together, and the captain has his hands firmly on the tiller. But when such a manoeuvre is attempted at an organization with a lot more independently moving parts—like Canada’s largest newspaper chain ...