Supreme Court Sharpens Libel Focus
December 22nd, 2009
Honest journalists and publishers will welcome today’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling on libel, based as it is on our profession’s touchstone principles of responsible journalism.
Conversely, the Court’s sharper focus on the steps taken by journalists to verify the information presented in their stories spells trouble for writers who breach the profession’s basic rules – and their employers’ own standards of policy and practice.
Read More...Alberta’s Red Blanket Leadership Crisis
December 11th, 2009
When a government goes into cardiac arrest, a clever leader applies serious CPR, and fast. But last week, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach responded to the many emergencies afflicting his flat-lining administration by downing a couple of aspirin.
The premier blamed his government’s collapse in performance and public approval on a nagging headache: Albertans just don’t understand him. The prescription was obvious. The premier’s director of communications had to go.
With that one, hapless aide excised, the patient was discharged and the province lurched towards the next crisis.
As ever, Stelmach and his advisors are dodging the hard facts, the realities that speak to a pronounced case of managerial incompetence. Little details, like the loss of Alberta’s competitive edge in a tsunami of red ink and fiscal chaos. Rising unemployment, a health care system headed for bankruptcy — and the refusal, by government, to be accountable for these and other failures.
But there’s a more basic dysfunction driving the Progressive Conservatives’ decline, one that is glaringly obvious to any of us who’ve worked within the machine.
It’s known, rather misleadingly, by a single word: patronage.
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