Blog by John Miller

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Sock! Pow! Sun TV!

March 30th, 2011
Sun News Network -- an outfit that promises to give Canadians all the news that fits the right -- is making no pretense that it will honour traditional journalistic values like objectivity, the discipline of verification and the public's right to receive information that can help them become good citizens. Dubbed "Fox News North," the network will launch itself on Monday, relying on persona ...
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Hall of Shame

March 12th, 2011
It's a tragedy, what's happened to the Canadian News Hall of Fame. It should be a place of honour, where journalists and members of the public learn about the contributions of those who have been enshrined there, from Joseph Howe to Gordon Sinclair to Trina McQueen, and perhaps gain a little respect for a noble profession before it gets buried in the miasma of "citizen journalism" (a misno ...
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Convergence wins

March 9th, 2011
One of the longest and most vicious labor disputes in Canadian journalism began two years ago when Quebecor Media Inc. threatened to lay off 75 office workers at its Le Journal de Montreal newspaper. Now the lockout is over, with a humiliating union surrender that, among other things, means the loss of 190 jobs. What happened in Montreal should send shock waves through other Canadian media u ...
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Shame on Maclean's

January 27th, 2011
Was it racist for Maclean's magazine to kick off its annual university rankings with an article headlined "Too Asian?" implying Canadian schools have trouble attracting the best students if they have that reputation? If it wasn't racist, did the story repeat crude and hurtful stereotypes without having any basis for doing so? If it didn't, was it a fine piece of journalism?Maclean's says i ...
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Dead reckoning

January 26th, 2011
If you sue me for calling you a crook when I don't have any proof, and you unfortunately die before the case gets to court, I go scot-free. You cannot libel the dead. That's the law not only in Canada, but also in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. But that may be about to change. In Scotland, the government has published a consultation paper that could open the door for the first t ...
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The winner is ...

January 2nd, 2011
Just in time for the New Year, we have news that Pierre Karl Peladeau, CEO of Quebecor, has been selected as the Canadian considered to be most prominent in the economic sphere in 2010. We know that because of an online public opinion poll conducted by Leger Marketing for the news agency QMI. Hold your applause though ... um, Quebecor owns QMI, meaning that the news agency commissioned a ...
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Ode to guest editor

October 24th, 2010
We write the news of scandals and dramaBut our customers just don't give a damnaWhat would Atkinson say?Maybe Nirvana's the way Our new editor's the Dalai LamaorThe Globe named a celebrity guestTo be editor for a day, no jestGeldoff and Bono got takenSo if we`re not mistakenA religious Tibettan may be best 
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A good ruling

October 24th, 2010
Good for the Supreme Court of Canada for deciding that journalists have the right to protect their sources when the public interest calls for it. And good for The Globe and Mail and its reporter Daniel Leblanc for fighting so hard to establish that right, resisting a series of Quebec court rulings that could have sent the reporter to jail or forced him to betray a source who allowed him to ...
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It's not Globe Lite

October 6th, 2010
I coined the words the CBC used to describe the redesigned Globe and Mail, at least in the eyes of critics. I called it Globe Lite. I said that and I was wrong. The paper has impressed me since it launched its pared-down and classy new format last Friday. Despite a makeover its editor-in-chief describes as the most significant in the paper`s history, the Globe is still the Globe. Its stor ...
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Chicken journalism

October 6th, 2010
What does it say about a publishing company when it defends the editorial integrity of its journalists, but regrets what they do? Welcomed to the strange topsy-turvy world of Rogers Publishing. A week after Maclean's magazine touched off a storm in Quebec with a story that called it "The Most Corrupt Province in Canada," and illustrated it with a cover showing the mascot of the Quebec cit ...
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