It was not a vintage year at Sunday Morning. The CBC current affairs program, famous for its in-depth coverage of controversial issues lost seven of its staff in 1998 – and six more in the first weeks of the new year. Among those who left were ACTRA award winning correspondent Chris Brookes and producer Nick… Continue reading Strictly by the Book

John Fraser sits behind his modern desk on the eleventh floor of a medium rise tower in downtown Toronto. By magazine standards, the office of Saturday Night’s much-talked-about editor is both spacious and elegant-there are four matching occasional chairs, a brass floor lamp, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf running along one wall. Seven editorial staff members form… Continue reading Telling Tales on John Fraser

Last November, when The Halifax Chronicle-Herald breathlessly reported on its front page that “lawyers and legal experts involved in the $3.million. plus Donald Marshall Jr. royal commission were wined and dined at taxpayers’ expense at the posh Halifax Sheraton Hotel,” it was the first time in seven years of coverage of the controversial Marshall affair… Continue reading No News Is Good News in Nova Scotia

Bob Verdun proudly admits to being a muckraker. He publishes without fear or favor and systematically subscribes to the old newspaper adage of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Today such sayings are as dated as press cards in fedoras. But as editor and owner of the aptly named Independent in Elmira, Ontario, Verdun… Continue reading The Battler

The clincher was the suicide of a St. Catharines, Ontario man who was arrested for gross indecency in January 1985. A 42-year-old sales manager, he was videotaped engaging in homosexual acts in a public washroom. When his victimless crime was publicly unmasked by the press, the man drove down a country road and doused himself… Continue reading The Long Arm of the Media: A Critical Cause and Effect