The Evil Woman trope
In which the Evil Women trope is discussed. Women are over-represented as evil villains, murderers and criminal masterminds …
Journalism
I enjoy to think critically about journalism. I support good journalism and I do think that journalism can be an important contributor to a healthy democracy. But it’s not clear to me that journalism always has been, or is currently. Maybe it is. But how would we know?
No one has a right to not be offended
When critically considering a given piece of journalism, we might ask ourselves, was it informative? was it engaging? was it helpful? So it’s rather sad that others, when faced with criticism, are inclined to ask simply, was it legal?
Cognitive bias and the backwards bicycle test
The backwards bicycle is a hilarious and damning insight into the challenges of understanding and resisting deeply ingrained ways of thinking and doing…
Yes, journalists are* responsible for their headlines
Unfortunately, headlines are, often enough, hyperbolic, clickbaity, misleading, having secondary content, racist, priming, inappropriate or ill-judged. Engaged readers will complain to the author. The author, enraged with righteous indignation, will bark, “I didn’t write the headline…
Understanding privilege through the lens of Bayesian probability
Maybe Bayes theorem can help right wing commentators better understand, and respect, the language of privilege …
Three and a half things I love about The Globe and Mail
In which I expound on reasons why I ache for the central, most important, news publisher in the Canadian media landscape…
Journalism is a species of public relations
Journalism is a species of public relations
Question and answer on journalism and other forms of writing
I was contacted recently by a student of journalism at Wilfrid Laurier University. She asked me the following questions…
News media is a species of public relations
Humans are a species of animal. Journalism is a species of public relations.
The state of hyperlinking in news reports
I’m happy to report that the state of hyperlinking in news in Canada appears to be improving. It’s a tentative claim…
Rex Murphy on human rights
Rex Murphy wasn’t the first pundit to misunderstand rights, and human rights. But he is paradigmatic. He has a thing for human rights and mentions them often.
The best journalism is a kind of advocacy
I’ve been interested in hearing more about a case of a Prince Edward Island writer and journalist who was ejected from the Press Gallery for being an advocate. Wow. I have lots of thoughts about this. Most saliently I believe that journalists are advocates…
The context is climate change
Journalists claim that it’s their duty to give context to important events. The floods in Alberta are important. The context is climate change, but the press is strangely absent…
The absence of hyperlinks in journalism, part two
A further reflection on the absence of hyperlinks in certain mainstream forms of journalism, and what this says about modern editors and journalists …
“Digital journalism” and the absence of hyperlinks
In which I reflect on the behaviour of major news organizations in Canada who stubbornly refuse to link out to relevant websites, data and reports…
Andrew Coyne: instance of racism #3
This is my third exploration of racism in the writings of Andrew Coyne, while writing for Postmedia News. Today’s argument will focus on the discourse of denial…
Andrew Coyne: instance of racism #2
This is my second exploration of racism in the writings of Andrew Coyne with Postmedia News. This argument will refer to three articles written by Coyne in January…
Andrew Coyne: instance of racism #1
This is my first argument toward the conclusion that journalist Andrew Coyne made claims that were racist. The remarks by Coyne that I will focus on for today’s argument were…
Andrew Coyne dismisses multiple allegations of racist writing
A little while ago I posted a review of several journalists’ positions on the Idle No Moremovement. With the exception of Ibbitson, all of the journalists I reviewed positioned themselves as experts and went on to express views in ways that displayed a lack of good judgement…
The social relevance of journalism
There is an old idea that journalism has an important role in democracy. I kind of believe this. But the problem is that the view of journalism subscribed to by the old guard, is shrinking the role of journalism in our democracies…
Dinosaur journalists and Idle No More
I challenge white journalists to tell us how much they think they know about about the history and relationship between settlers and Indigenous people. Judging by their recent strong opinions about First Nations governance, Indigenous land rights, the Idle No More movement, Attawapiskat, and Chief Spence, they are all experts…
Understanding bias
I see bias everywhere. Yes we all struggle with our biases. I wish the reporters, editors and owners at the Globe and Mail would own up to theirs. There’s bias in the conversation our biased reporter has with his biased editor, bias in the call list he develops for his story, bias in his choice…
The veil is “hideous”, “odious”
This is my sixth post in my series on Dan Gardner’s article about the Muslim veil. I want to reflect on the language of hate, and on having successful public disagreement via Twitter…
Toshiba supports the National Post public relations campaign obfuscating climate change
Do a search for the name, “Jim Hansen” on the National Post website and you get two hits from 2012 and 2011. Both hits are about NASA, which is good, since Hansen is the leading climate scientist at NASA. Unfortunately, both articles promote the protestations of 49 former NASA employees…