CRTC wants to levy fines

The Globe reports that the CRTC is pushing for the power to levy fines, spurred on by a botched 911 call. Up to now, the worst it could do was lift a station’s license, which it has done just once, to a Quebec radio station whose shock jock, in the opinion of CRTC, went too [...]

China continues to renegue on Olympics media coverage

So, now the IOC has agreed to let China block out contentious websites like Amnesty International. Of course, a week before the games, it’s doubtful IOC will actually do anything at this late date, which the Chinese authorities have quite figured out.
CTV, July 30 2008

Has Barack Obama taken media lessons from Steven Harper?

A tongue in cheek blog from the National Post notes some startling similarities between Barack Obama and Steven Harper’s attempts to control media access and coverage to them. While the Post’s Kelly McPartland has some fun with this, scroll through to the original article in The New Republic; I think this is the first negative [...]

Beijing Olympics to be subject of major new media analysis

NBC spent $900 million on broadcast rights for Beijing, but its more than just its MSM television network that will provide coverage. Platforms include multiple television channels, the net, cell phones and cable video-on-demand. An in-depth article in Saturday’s Globe looks at this from the research point of view: for the first time, NBC has [...]

Report recommends widening federal access law

A report prepared for the federal government recommends that the access to information law be extended to all those entities that receive 50 per cent federal funding, which would include groups like Canadian Blood Services and the International Joint Commission. It doesn’t recommend that be expanded to aboriginal groups however. Given the general tension between [...]

Product placement in news programs a disturbing trend

Some US morning talk shows are using product placement on their shows, for example putting cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on the desk in front of the anchors. This is yet another attempt to break the wall between news and advertising (though it’s sometimes hard to call morning news real news, since they generally focus [...]

Defence group slams Canadian media

The Conference of Defence Organizations Institute slammed Canadian news media as superficial and dumbed-down in a recent speech at the graduating class of the Royal Military College. Not sure what this is about; MSM has been very supportive of our troops in Kandahar, and the main criticism has come from legitimate queries into policy, such [...]

Shrinking newsrooms equate decline in newspaper quality

The Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism put out a report today (The Changing Newsroom: Gains and Losses in Today’s Papers) that documents the continuing decline in reporting staff at US newspapers, concommitant with a decline in news quality, particularly foreign news. Papers are smaller with much more competition for news space. Pew suggests more [...]

Injunction over Web libel sets precedent

Defamation is defamation is defamation, regardless of what type of media it appears in. Bloggers have successfully been sued before; this BC case sets out some new parameters by the extent to which the blogger has been prevented from any further comment on the plaintiff.
Globe and Mail, July 19, 2008

CBC officially unfazed by social media

The CBC has argued to the CRTC that social/new media don’t present a threat to it. It may actually be right, for those of you who’ve read Our Lives in Digital Times (2006, downloadable from StatsCan’s website), which demonstrates that “old” media continue to exist quite happily with new media. There is a strong marketing [...]