Inside a classroom in the Bancroft Building at the University of Toronto, fluorescent lights buzz above Heather Mallick’s head as she sits behind a long desk, poised in a long-sleeved dark blue dress, wide-eyed and nodding at a student in her continuing education course, Town Hall: The Bush Legacy. It’s her first time teaching this… Continue reading Mighty Mouth
Tag: politics
Dances with Journalists
“And everyone laughed. It was so preposterous, as if I said to you that the world is flat. People don’t realize how unanimous and overwhelming the conventional wisdom was.” – Michele Landsberg, recalling an incident in the 1950s as a first-year student at the University of Toronto. She had told a group of students that… Continue reading Dances with Journalists
Is Nothing Sacred?
The last time I was in church was when I was 14 in Singapore. On those Sunday mornings at St. Andrew’s Cathedral I always felt a sense of moral inadequacy as, from the pulpit, Father Thomas feverishly condemned the dishonesty and debauchery he was all around him. The same feeling came back to me after… Continue reading Is Nothing Sacred?
Win, Place, Show: Poll Reporting as Bookmarking
Reporting public opinion polls is a firmly entrenched element of election campaign coverage. But whether polls influence election results is the subject of a continuing debate. Alan Frizell, codirector of the Carleton School of Journalism poll, told The Toronto Star that after the 1980 federal election the school did a poll asking people why they… Continue reading Win, Place, Show: Poll Reporting as Bookmarking