The Journalism Doctor

Independence. It’s the most important core value of journalism. An independent media fosters trust that what it reports is accurate and it operates in the public interest, not beholden to something else. News Media Canada is the country’s most influential advocate for a free and independent news industry. It represents more than 700 news organizations, mainly newspapers, across Canada. Yet ...

When I worked for newspapers, publishers would turn purple if anyone suggested they ought to accept money from the government for anything other than a paid ad. And there were certainly plenty of those back in the day. We need to be independent from those we cover, they used to say. We will never compromise our journalistic principles or let anyone tell us what to cover or how to cover it. ...

Plagiarism derives from the Latin word plagiarius, which literally means “kidnapped” and figuratively means “literary thief.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as the theft of another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas or expressions” and presenting them as your own original work. A journalist caught plagiarizing loses his or her reputation and has a good chance of losing their job. ...

Nearly a week after Ontario’s municipal elections, no newspaper or television station in the Greater Toronto Area has reported on the shocking lack of progress in making municipal councils more reflective of the population. For example, 57 percent of Mississauga’s residents identified as visible minorities in the 2016 census. However, not one of them was elected to the city's 11 council seat ...

Bruce Mackinnon and Duncan Macpherson share the distinction of being two of the best editorial cartoonists in Canadian history. MacKinnon, who still draws for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, has won seven National Newspaper Awards, and Macpherson, who died in 1993, won six for his excellent work for the Toronto Star. Although much of their work depicts politicians and others in the public eye ...

Mike Pence didn't write it. If he did, his office said, he'd want a byline.  It wasn’t Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, either. It wasn’t anything Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, did and he has no idea who did. Nor was it  Defence Secretary James Mattis, even though his nickname is Mad Dog. It wasn’t Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of homeland security. Nor Mick Mulvaney, di ...

For many years I was a senior editor of Canada’s largest newspaper, and my direct boss was a legendary newsman named Ray Timson. He drove himself to be the best as a reporter, and he drove the Toronto Star to be the best as its longtime managing editor. He personified Holy Joe Atkinson’s credo for covering the news: "Get it first; sew it up; pursue every detail; and play it big." You can st ...

Besides seeking the truth and verifying it, the most important function of journalism is independence. Journalists must maintain an independence from those they cover. Why? Because freedom of the press, which is guaranteed in the U.S. and Canadian constitutions, exists primarily so that journalists can serve as independent monitors of power. Their scrutiny ensures that our leaders are always ...

Truth is a fragile commodity, especially when our perceptions get clouded by strong emotions. A good example is the fear and anger that most Torontonians felt last Sunday night when we learned that a lone gunman had shot his way along the bustling Danforth, killing two and critically injuring more than a dozen others. Many of us traditionally turn to journalism to sort out the truth of imp ...

When the history of Canadian newspapers (or, more likely, their obituary) is written, this may go down as the week we heard the first death rattles. It started with the largest mass closure of newspapers in Canada’s history. Staff at 11 Ontario community newspapers and two free dailies in Toronto and Vancouver arrived for work Monday morning to find the doors locked. Their jobs were gone jus ...