J-school prof Ivor Shapiro's complaint that Canadian sports reporters uncritically promoted a we-was-robbed version of  the Canada-US Women's Olympic soccer final provoked Contrarian readers to provide contrary examples, and a testy chinwag amount tweeting Halifax journos (viz.:  @pdmcleod, @bbhorne). Ruth Davenport, who knows a little about news, thinks he jumped the gun: Shapiro’s beef stuck in my craw for the same reason any unfounded assertion of laziness or incompetence sticks in my craw: it’s unfounded. He was griping about a lack of reporting that was patently in evidence – he just didn’t bother to look.  Even if those particular pieces hadn’t been published...

09 August, 2012
Contrarian reader Kirby McVicar responds to our post on MLAs’ pay and public begrudgery:
The question that springs to my mind is: “Who are you and what have you done with Parker Donham?" [caption id="attachment_4485" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Resigned MLA Richard Hurlburt"]Resigned MLA<BR>Richard Hurlburt[/caption] What I hear you say is, "Well, MLA’s only stole a little bit, and it's the media’s and the public's fault for not providing adequate salary." Are you serious? What does this line of thinking say to all the honest MLA’s who did not steal from the public purse: "You missed out on an opportunity we, the public and the media, set up for you. How stupid of you!" I agree that politicians need an independent body to set remuneration policy that is binding, but this issue should not be confused with theft from the public purse. Where is the CBC Parker, from the "Harry and Parker Show" who would have spent 15 minutes railing against such a rationale? Has the election of an NDP government outed you?
I was out of the country, but wasn't it a Tory MLA who resigned? After the jump, more reader reaction.
17 February, 2010

University of Wisconsin Journalism Professor Stephen J. A. Ward, who was founding chair of the Canadian Association of Journalists' ethics advisory committee, offers sensible guidelines for coverage of emotional stories like the Haitian earthquake [previous discussion here, here, and here]: The best disaster journalism is engaged and objectively tested journalism. Journalism based only on emotion can be incorrect or manipulated. Journalism based only on a studied neutrality is not only an inhuman attitude toward a disaster. It fails to tell the full story. A journalism of disasters is not a journalism of Olympian detachment. It is not a journalism fixated on stimulating...

27 January, 2010