Blog by John Miller

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Dingbat academic

April 4th, 2010
Francois Houle, provost of the University of Ottawa, is the new poster boy for academic dingbat of the year. His ill-advised letter to American conservative commentator Ann Coulter, advising her to watch what she was planning to say at a campus speaking engagement, not only embarrassed his university, it should cause all academic administrators to question just how strongly they embrace acad ...
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Time to go local

January 12th, 2010
Let's say your mortgage is more than your house is worth and you've stiffed your banker for seven months because you can't afford to even pay the interest. Is anyone going to listen when you say my luck may change soon and property values could increase and it's not the time to foreclose? Hello there, Leonard Asper! The man who turned his father's $20-a-share legacy into something worth 6 ...
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The public interest

December 23rd, 2009
Fourteen years ago, I stood up to Canada's top editors and media lawyers and single-handedly saved the newspaper industry's Statement of Principles. What's ironic about that is today those same editors and lawyers are rejoicing that the Supreme Court of Canada has reformed the country's libel laws and given them an added defence -- of "responsible communication on matters of public interes ...
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Words of wisdom

October 25th, 2009
Richard Moon is a wise and independent man. The professor of constitutional freedoms at the University of Windsor is a prominent critic of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits repeated communication, by phone or internet, of any messages that are likely to expose identifiable groups to hatred or contempt. This has made him an unlikely hero to the right-wing blogosphere ...
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Not fit to lead

October 13th, 2009
Leonard Asper, who is now being protected from his creditors, once complained to my boss that I was hurting his business. Answering a fund-raising letter sent on behalf of Ryerson's School of Journalism, Leonard wrote back with a question: "Why should I give money to a school that allows one of its professors, John Miller, to criticize my company?" My dean showed me the letter, along with ...
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Not fit to print

September 17th, 2009
The media demonization of Darcy Allan Sheppard knows no bounds. If it has a low point, it was in two columns -- one by George Jonas in the National Post (Sept. 9), the other by Jim Coyle in the Star (Sept. 11). Both implied the bicycle courier was the author of his own death, absolving the man whose car ran him down, former Ontario attorney-general Michael Bryant. Here's what Jonas wrote in ...
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Small dead hypocrites

August 24th, 2009
One of the most stunningly hypocritical comments of recent memory was made by blogger Catherine McMillan in today’s Globe and Mail. Who does she think she is kidding? The topic was anonymous blogging. She said: "I figured if my views were worth sharing, it’s worth attaching my identity to them. It’s also a way to self-police. If you know your writing can be attached to you, you make more t ...
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Check. It. Out.

August 2nd, 2009
You know you’ve taught too long when a former student asks you to comment on a story she’s working on about another former student who was fired for printing a story written by a third former student. That happened to me in the wake of the so-called “Wafergate scandal,” which involved the bogus story about Prime Minister Stephen Harper pocketing a communion wafer at the Roman Catholic funera ...
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Object to this

January 22nd, 2009
Allowing private broadcasters a free hand to police themselves is a bad idea in the best of times. In today's era of media concentration -- in Toronto alone, three daily newspapers have owners that also operate television stations -- it's a recipe for the shrinkage and homogenization of news. That's why journalists should strongly challenge an application by CanWest Global to get the CRTC ...
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Bad stereotyping

December 20th, 2008
What were the editors of the Toronto Star thinking when they ran a restaurant review that potentially alienated 250,000 readers? That's how many people in the GTA identify themselves as Italian heritage. The review, by Corey Mintz (Wining and dining like a mayor, Dec. 16), went out of its way to stereotype Basilico Ristorante, an Italian eatery in Vaughan, as a threatening and misogyn ...
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