News about news

Twitter is good for a lot of things. Today it’s good for the many ways @Steverukavina’s autocorrect is messing up “Jolin-Barrette" pic.twitter.com/C7w9noZNc8

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) June 27, 2019

• There will not be criminal charges filed against Journal de Montréal journalist Michaël Nguyen, whose laptop was seized in 2016 after he broke a story about a judge losing her shit in a parking garage. He was accused of illegally accessing confidential documents when he accessed surveillance video of the incident through a Google search.
• The Hudson’s Bay Company, a publicly traded company, barred journalists from its recent annual shareholders’ meeting, an unusual move that did not sit well with journalists and potentially some minority shareholders.
• A bilingual community newspaper, called Community Digest/Nouvelles Communautaires, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government money through subsidies and advertising, but its editions are filled with articles blatantly plagiarized from other news organizations. A TFO investigation found that even some of the ads that appear in the paper were put in there without authorization, and circulation figures appear sketchy as well.

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News about news

Victory pic.twitter.com/Vftsp6or67

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) June 14, 2019

• The eight groups that have been asked to name experts to a panel to determine eligibility criteria for the federal government’s journalism bailout have selected their representatives:
  • Canadian Association of Journalists: Esther Enkin, former CBC ombudsman
  • News Media Canada: Bob Cox, chairperson of NMC and publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press
  • Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec: Pierre Sormany, journalism professor, formerly of Le Soleil, Radio-Canada and magazines including Québec-science and Vélo Mag.
  • Quebec Community Newspaper Association: Brenda O’Farrell, director of QCNA and editor-in-chief of Rabble.ca
  • National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada: Thomas Saras, CEO
  • Association de presse francophone: Pierre-Paul Noreau, publisher of Le Droit
  • Unifor: Brad Honywill, retired journalist and union representative
  • Fédération nationale des communications: Pascale St-Onge, president
• The New Brunswick Telegraph Journal has won the Michener Award for public service journalism, for an investigation into deficiencies in the province’s ambulance service.
• The Canadian Association of Journalists says it supports the recommendations of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls as they related to journalism.
• The Reuters Institute has released its Digital News Report for 2019. The report shows that very few people are paying for news online, and most of those that are pay only one or two publications. Highlights of findings from Canada show that only 9% said they paid for any form of digital news in the past year.
• Simon Houpt throws some cold water on a report that most Canadians fall for fake news.
• Quebec’s ombudsman has denounced the firing of an agronomist in the agriculture department after he blew the whistle about conflicts of interest related to a report on pesticide use. The report has resulted in the resignation of the deputy minister, but the minister (who said he approved the firing himself, then said he didn’t) is still in his job.
• John Kennedy’s Pop Goes the News website has some accusations of plagiarism against the website FYI Music News.
• The City of Montreal is changing its public notice rules so that it no longer has to publish them in newspapers. That will save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars, but also cost print media (like my employer the Montreal Gazette) lots of money. The FPJQ has condemned the decision because of its effect on newspapers (though, notably, not its effect on its intended purpose, because few people pay attention to those print public notices).
• J-Source explores the implications of CTV News’s move toward videojournalists at its local newsrooms.
• La Presse has started a morning newsletter called La Matinale.
• The Canadian Journalism Foundation has presented its annual awards, as well as its William Southam fellowships.
• The Canadian Press discovered recently that CSIS destroyed a secret file on Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1989, concluding it did not meet the criteria for being kept. Historians are upset at this loss of a potentially historic document.
• Russian journalist Ivan Golunov has been released after a public outcry, including several competing newspapers running identical front pages in support of him. His arrest on drug-dealing charges was seen as trumped up to punish him for reporting that embarrassed the government.
• Police have arrested a man in the death of Northern Irish journalist Lyra McKee.

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News about news

• The Canadian Association of Journalists has agreed to participate in the federal government’s panel to determine eligibility criteria for its media bailout money, after the government agreed not to require members sign confidentiality agreements. The CAJ has appointed former CBC ombudsman Esther Enkin as its representative on the panel. The CAJ says it will continue to push for increased transparency for this program, including full disclosure of recipients.
• A man has pleaded guilty to inciting violence against a journalist from L’Actualité. He suggested people attack her after she fact-checked a claim he made about an incident involving Faith Goldy.
• Quebec’s press gallery has filed a formal complaint against the government for choosing to hold committee hearings into the controversial proposed legislation on religious symbols in a room that has limited resources for media, even though two new rooms have just opened in a new $60-million extension to the parliament buildings. The government appears to be scheduling the hearings here intentionally to make it difficult for the media to report on them.
• Radio-Canada has launched a disinformation desk, with Jeff Yates and Bouchra Ouratik. Their first story looks at the genesis of one of Quebec’s most popular fake news stories, about Dorval’s mayor keeping pork in schools.
• Australian Federal Police raided the Australian Broadcasting Corporation after ABC News reported on leaked documents about unlawful killings and misconduct in Afghanistan by Australian forces. Naturally the raid has been condemned internationally as an attack on freedom of the press.
• A conservative student group at Rutgers University succeeded in convincing enough students to vote against renewing funding for the university’s student newspaper, in retaliation for the paper exposing that the group used language from a white supremacist group in its recruitment material.
• Facebook is giving $2.5 million to 11 organizations as part of its “local news accelerator” program. Or, rather, it will spend $2.5 million bringing in experts to tell those organizations what to do. The participating media outlets are:
  • Brunswick News
  • Daily Hive
  • Winnipeg Free Press
  • Glacier Media
  • Le Soleil
  • London Free Press
  • Northern News Services
  • The Discourse
  • The Tyee
  • Vancouver Observer
  • Village Media
• Canadian Community Newspaper Award winners have been announced.
• Winners of the Digital Publishing Awards and National Magazine Awards have been announced.

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