Blog by John Miller

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Call 'em outlaws

July 14th, 2011
It's a bad decision, and even worse timing: During a month in which tabloid journalism is under the microscope as never before, the company that owns the Toronto Sun has closed itself off from public scrutiny by pulling out of the Ontario Press Council. 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 o ...
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Stop the presses

July 8th, 2011
It was a newspaper that never met a line it wouldn't step over -- a fitting epitaph for Britain's News of the World. 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 priva ...
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Fast rise, fast fall

July 6th, 2011
No one rose so far, so fast in British journalism as Rebekah Brooks. And now, as a result of journalistic sins so heinous they defy explanation, she stands to lose it all. 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 ...
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Let him wait

June 25th, 2011
    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 tha ...
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Not a good try

May 31st, 2011
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. Th ...
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Poll trickery

May 12th, 2011
Honestly, I hate to pick on Sun Media, but it's such an easy and deserving target. 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 ...
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Sunburned!

April 30th, 2011
There must be an awful lot of red faces at the Sun newspapers and Sun News Network these days. And they should be ashamed of themselves. 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 ...
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Cone of silence

April 22nd, 2011
It's been three months since the Quebec government received a blueprint that would almost certainly shake the practice of journalism to its core. Yet journalists there aren't really engaged in much debate about it, and those in the rest of the country are still acting as if this was all happening on Mars. I'm talking about a report to Quebec's communications minister, Christine St. Pierre, ...
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Yahoo TV

April 19th, 2011
The Sun News Network came out swinging as anticipated yesterday, all wrapped up in the Canadian flag and leading with its right. Adjectives that spring to mind after viewing the launch: Predictable, repetitive, hectoring, thin-skinned, paranoid, politically incorrect (and just plain incorrect), self-indulgent, feisty, shoot-from-the-lip, mordant, alarmist, ill-tempered, sour, combative, su ...
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Cyber stupid

April 14th, 2011
Hey, Paul Godfrey, welcome to the digital age! In a recent intervierw, the CEO of Postmedia Network Canada Corp. gives a perfect illustration of why old-school managers of traditional newspapers are having such trouble embracing new technology. His interview with Reuters news agency came as Postmedia announced that it suffered a net loss of $12.3 million in the three months ending in Februa ...
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