Here I am talking about my latest biography, Big Men Fear Me. Each nominee for the Ottawa Book Awards was asked for a short talk on their work. Don’t be distracted by the mis-spelling of George McCullagh’s name. And here’s my talk at Montreal’s beautiful little Atwater Library, where I end the show with a 1960s-style Peter Townshend job on my

Jonathan Pie has more self-awareness than many journalists. He knows much of what he reports is bullshit. Pie isn’t even a real person. Yes, there’s a guy in a suit and, if you prick him, he will bleed (and swear), but Pie is really a British comic named Tom Walker who used to not give much of a damn about

I first got hooked on the WE Charity issue when, after Jesse Brown posted his first major attack on the charity in early 2019, a friend posted on Twitter that the piece on Canadaland was a “nothingburger” smothered in Jesse Brown hype sauce. I had been unimpressed with Brown since I met him at an event at the Toronto Reference

Sorry, Charlie, your time in Parliament is almost up. And that’s good news for Canadians. No, I’m not talking about the prospect of the NDP’s Bully in Chief losing his seat in the next election, whenever that may be. I’m referring to the fact that Charlie’s seat is likely to be eliminated altogether thanks to the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission

This is a follow-up to my earlier posts about the Fifth Estate’s dubious coverage of WE Charity, a “kick ‘em when they’re down” exercise that happened after most of Canada’s mainstream media gleefully dismembered Canada’s most successful children’s charity. Journalists from the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and PostMedia made common cause with Charlie Angus, the regrettable soon-to-be-former MP

First, a few things to make clear. I believe in the CBC. I don’t want it defunded. It has an important role to play in Canadian culture and journalism. The CBC is the last real media outlet that has anywhere near the resources needed to do a decent job of covering Canada. It is the only media outlet that gives

A while ago, I picked up a used copy of Jack Granatstein’s 1999 book, Who Killed Canadian History?, a book that was a little money-maker for Jack and a sad tale for those of us who write Canadian history books. When the book came out, a lot of historians and commentators thought Granatstein was a bit of a crank and

An organization called Friends of We has posted YouTube videos taking apart The Fifth Estate’s false claim that WE Charity used latrines — washroom buildings — as part of its count of classrooms built in Kenya. They also show how The Fifth Estate made false claims that WE Charity was blocking them from visiting schools.  These videos and the reproduced

Here’s a primer on basic law for people who work in newsrooms. With chapters on legal research, the court system, civil law and procedure, criminal law, journalist protection, constitutional law and the making of statutes and regulations. Available from Irwin Law. I realized in law school that journalists often get law wrong because of myths that have become “public knowledge”

Retch-inducing update: PostMedia and Toronto Star — which owns the KW Record, Hamilton Spectator and many small-town papers, are in merger talks., and it looks like a done deal. I thought this would happen in a few years. Things are worse than I thought.   n the 1990s, Reader’s Digest was the best selling magazine in Canada. For years, the federal government