Stifling Debate

Canadian Newspapers and Nuclear Power

Michael Clow

This study of nuclear coverage in four dailies in Ontario and New Brunswick finds that it is the promoters, not the opponents, of nuclear energy that overwhelmingly dominate news coverage. (more information)

More Perishable than Lettuce or Tomatoes

Labour Law Reform and Toronto’s Newspapers

Edward T. Silva

This book presents an in-depth analysis of the “unbalanced” treatment by the four largest Toronto dailies of the Ontario NDP’s 1992 proposed labour reform law. (more information)

Outsider Blues

A Voice from the Shadows

Olivia Rovinescu, Clifton Ruggles

”The articles that appear in this book originate in the shadows–those marginal spaces that black people have been forced to inhabit ever since the first slaves reached the shores of North America.” Ruggles tells us that “Black is more than just a racial category, it’s a way of viewing the world.” It is out of this set of eyes that Clifton Ruggles writes a column in the Montreal Gazette. This book is a collection of those columns and of Ruggles’ photographs… (more information)

The Westray Chronicles

A Case Study in Corporate Crime

Edited by Christopher McCormick

In this book authors from backgrounds as diverse as engineering to public relations are brought together to create a holistic picture of what happened at Westray. From an analysis of the geology of the underlying coal seam to an assessment of the difficulties of pinning legal responsibility on the company, the government or any of the managers, this book constitutes one of the few case studies of corporate crime in Canada. The contributors offer the reader challenging new ways to think about workplace… (more information)

Inventing Tax Rage

Misinformation in the National Post

Larry Patriquin

During the National Post’s first year of publication, it claimed that Canada’s supposedly exorbitant taxes were causing great damage to the economy and had produced a form of “tax rage” among the middle class. In contrast, Larry Patriquin suggests that the paper’s writers were engaged in a dubious form of “reasoning” in order to promote an ideology that mostly benefits the wealthy. This involved presenting the Post’s aspiration for tax cuts as the &… (more information)

The Socialist Register 2006

Telling the Truth

Edited by Colin Leys, Leo Panitch

How do people acquire knowledge and understanding of the world they are in? Who has access to the resources and maps facilitating research and debate? How is power mobilised to shape ideas and ideologies? Socialist Register 2006 considers contemporary debate, policy-making, research, education, and scientific practice generally as it relates to the role of the state in intellectual life, the press and the media. It investigates the management of scientific publications, the Internet, the… (more information)

Missing Women, Missing News

Covering Crisis in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

David Hugill

Missing Women, Missing News examines newspaper coverage of the arrest and trial of Robert Pickton, the man charged with murdering 26 street-level sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It demonstrates how news narratives obscured the complex matrix of social and political conditions that made it possible for so many women to simply ‘disappear’ from a densely populated urban neighborhood without provoking an aggressive response by the state. Grounded in a theory of ideology… (more information)

About Canada: Media

Peter Steven

Canada enjoys a long-held reputation for producing high-quality media, from National Film Board documentaries to the CBC to children’s programming. But in recent years, funding cuts, commercial media concentration and a sour political environment have been steadily eroding this reputation. In About Canada: Media, Peter Steven examines developments in film, television, the internet and newspapers and finds that the quality of our news and entertainment media is steadily declining, as well as… (more information)