The Journalism Doctor

The most important rule in newsrooms is this one: Don't break the law.But one of the most difficult ethical questions news executives face is what should they do when their cameras capture evidence of someone else breaking the law?Does it depend on the crime? If someone assassinates the prime minister, any reputable news organization would come under moral and legal pressure to do the right t ...

At a conference of the Canadian Media Lawyers Association on the weekend, a colleague asked the very good question: "What would it take for Canadians to care about freedom of expression?" 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 fro ...

Rosie DiManno has let her readers in on a secret that I'm sure publishers don't want anyone to know: Newspapers aren't  published for you and me, they're published for the privileged one percent. 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 f ...

Journalists in English Canada are fond of saying they're independent seekers of truth, beholden only to the public and trained to operate ethically and responsibly in the public interest. 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 wo ...

Okay, just what the hell is Islamicism? It's Stephen Harper's word, invoked on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, to describe the biggest security threat Canada faces. But it appears in no dictionary. 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: "Presumab ...

Don't blame Christie Blatchford. She just uses a different value system than Jack Layton. You know ... anger is better than love, fear is better than hope, despair is better than optimism. 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, Bl ...

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 la ...

You'd think that if a mass murderer cited you and your ideas for helping to inspire one of the worst shooting rampages of the 21st century, you'd make every effort to condemn his actions, and try to explain why your ideas are better than that. 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 R ...

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 y ...

Anyone who doubts that newspaper proprietors are different from you and me only has to look at Rupert Murdoch. I rest my case. 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 A ...