Days after a man convicted of downloading Internet child pornography was spared a custodial sentence because Britain’s prisons are over-crowded, the assistant editor of the UK’s largest-selling Sunday tabloid was jailed for illegally intercepting celebrity …
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Q&A with Mark Latham
This year at the University of British Columbia, student elections were advertised and covered by the voter-funded media (VFM) initiative, billed as ‘the first of its kind in the world.’ Participants in the contest promoted …
Dilemma in the Desert
I should probably come clean right from the start. I am not an expert. I only recently graduated from UBC’s School of Journalism. And there are certain things for which no j-school, however solid the …
Telling the Truth in the Media: Mathematically Approved
by Mahmoud Eid, Ph.D. As U.S. threats against Iraq mounted in 2003, the majority of media decision-makers docilely accepted the Bush administration’s claims that linked Iraq to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Their …
The Ethics of Children, Death and Photography
Nearly six yeas ago the body of Heather Thomas was found floating in a lake in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. The girl, ten years old, had been missing for 23 days. Hers was the highest …
Fuzzy Logic: The Collapse of the News-Opinion Distinction
by Stephen J. A. Ward After a century of service, the old warhorse of newsroom practice — a strict distinction between news and opinion — is so weakened by scepticism, and so useless in controversial …
Freedom of Information Summit: Learning to keep your “enemies” closer
BC’s reporters and government don’t see eye-to-eye on the public’s “right to know.” Freedom of Information [FOI] has been in decline since the late-90s, reports a local non-profit group, with response-times slowing, citizen requests deteriorating, …
Have Ethics, Will Travel – The Glocalization of Media Ethics from an African Perspective
Can media ethics travel? Can media ethical codes and frameworks developed in North America and Europe, be applicable in other contexts, such as Africa? How, for instance, does the orthodox liberal-democratic role of the media …
INTERVIEW: Protecting freedom of information in B.C.
The first BC Information Summit on September 29, 2006 will bring together academics, legal experts, journalists, elected officials and experienced Freedom of Information requesters to explore the challenges and solutions of creating an open government …
Media Concentration in Atlantic Canada: Media by Monopoly
“The horse has left the barn. You can’t change all that,” quipped Senator David Tkachuk at the June 21, 2006 Ottawa news conference to release of the Final Report on the Canadian News Media “There’s …