Putting the Nuance in News (We’ve been here before . . .) One of the most frustrating things to hear back as an intrepid reporter from an editor is that, ‘we’ve already done a story on [fill in the blank], so we’re going to pass on this.’ This is a situation that I’m sure very […] More »

You Don’t Know that You Don’t Know, How Canada’s Corporate Elites Make Money, and Private HealthCare Noam Chomsky once wrote in Manufacturing Consent that people don’t know that they don’t know what’s going on; such is the illusory effect, but real power, of institutions such as the mainstream media. Chomsky says that this works on […] More »

One of the things I said I’d do with this column is to help explain why it is that some stories don’t get developed by news organizations. I can do this from my perspective in the news media, mostly as an investigative researcher and journalist and even news manager (i.e. ‘filter’). Like anyone, I tend […] More »

The pace in which laws are being challenged, re-written, scrapped or introduced right now by the conservative government is truly astounding. The government’s use of the omnibus bill, where a number of pieces of related legislation are introduced as one big Bill, is the main way this is being done. But a lot of the […] More »

I suppose I should first set-up the idea behind what will be a reoccurring column for This on stories that should be covered in the media but for a host of reasons aren’t. Sometimes I’ll offer why it is I think a given story hasn’t been taken up, while other times I’ll simply identify a […] More »