CANADALAND

The Imposter's "I Pity The Country" sits alongside Radiolab and The Heart on Constant Listener's 8 best podcast episodes of 2017. You can read that list here: http://constantlistener.com/best-podcasts-2017/     So this holiday, we present it to you in full.   It's a story featuring incredible music by Indigenous artists from the 60s, 70s and 80s that was nearly lost. And it asks the question: how...

Over the holidays, we're presenting some of the best episodes from across CANADALAND Media.   "If the police don't want you to see a file, you're never gonna know it exists."   Lorimer Shenher, author of That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away,  talks to COMMONS about his time with the Vancouver police, where he investigated serial killer Rober...

Last week, billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman were found dead in their Toronto home. As we parse through language in the press like "suspicious" and "police sources," what do we know and which interests are at play? Metro columnist and former CANADALAND employee Vicky Mochama called Lindsay Shepherd a  crying white girl on CBC's Sunday politics show, infuriating an army of people who have probab...

PressProgress calls itself "Canada’s most shared source for progressive news and information." They get real scoops , using the traditional tools of journalism, like access to information requests, fact-checking and seeking comment from politicians.   But they're not a traditional news source. They're backed by the Broadbent Institute, a progressive think tank founded by a former leader of the NDP...

A terrible BBC documentary about transgender kids was pulled from CBC scheduling. A journalists' materials were seized from a Niagara Regional Council meeting by staff who were exercising "enthusiastic caution." A mill pressurized a bookstore to suppress a book-signing for a book written about that mill. Questionable CBC workplace policies. Independent crowdfunded journalist Joey Coleman co-hosts....

After working in media, PR and politics, Jeff Ballingall understands the political power of Facebook. His top Facebook page gets more engagement than the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star combined. Spanning vicious attacks in rap form to sentimental content about landmarks, Ontario Proud is in a meme war against Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne. And they're really effective. Ballingall joins us to...

The Globe and Mail recently launched their re-designed newspaper much to the dismay of old people everywhere. Editor-in-Chief David Walmsley claims they're " actually expanding " a print edition that has cut both content and distribution.   Alt-right women are  upset  that alt-right men are treating them badly. They're tired of being harassed and  facing backlash for not being married and having b...

After 34 newspapers were abruptly killed by Postmedia and Torstar last week, Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey made the case that it was just part of an inevitable decline in the industry. Chris Powell vehemently disagrees. After cutting his teeth at a community newspaper, Powell spent a career covering the news business in trade publications like Strategy and Marketing Magazine. He's spoken to the publi...

A lot of Canadians lost their community news this week, after two news giants traded 41 newspapers and shut nearly all of them down. Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey says he didn't know Torstar was planning to kill the newspapers he was giving them. Torstar says pretty much nothing at all. Rogers reportedly  won't pay for VICE's fanciful foray into cable TV any longer. The Financial Post will publish yo...

Gerard Ryle is the director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who are behind the Paradise Papers, the Panama Papers and other similar investigations. Major revelations are continuing to come out of the Paradise Papers in Canada and around the world. One prominent columnist dismissed the whole thing as " another cheap shot at the wealthy ," while other people are asking...

A Master's student was reprimanded for showing her students a public TV clip of psychology professor/YouTuber Jordan Peterson explaining why he refuses to use people's preferred pronouns. Now the whole country's stuck talking about it. Steve Paikin staged a debate about whether Canada is keeping Indigenous people in crisis, with guests who believe things like North American settlers were more adva...

Reporters Anna Merlan and Madeleine Davies were investigating and writing about Louis CK well before the New York Times story came out. And they faced a lot of criticism for it.  They join Jesse to talk about the line between rumour and news, and whether standards have changed around reporting on sexual misconduct in the post-Weinstein world. Madeleine Davies is a senior writer for Jezebel. Anna M...

Bill Morneau tries to turn down the heat through tales of his spicy past, CBC takes a stand for landlord rights and Jagmeet Singh tries out some slam poetry.   COMMONS co-host Hadiya Roderique joins Jesse.   Hadiya's Twitter: @deeroderique Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...

Is local media doomed? We speak to three entrepreneurs who are making a go of it with three very different models.   Dave Bidini publishes the West End Phoenix , a recently-launched, print-only monthly newspaper that covers west Toronto.   Jeff Elgie is the CEO of Village Media , a digital-only company that provides hyper-local news to nine small communities, mostly in Ontario.   Jeremy Klaszus is...

CBC's flagship TV newscast The National  is revamped with a four-host format and released into the world. The Paradise Papers reveal what the Toronto Star calls a "worldwide shadow economy worth trillions of dollars." But the Financial Post's Terence Corcoran thinks the whole thing is just " another cheap shot at the wealthy ." Find extensive reporting on the leak at The Star and the  CBC. A white...

“Objectivity for the sake of objectivity often means make sure that the powerful always get their say. And sometimes Caesar shouldn’t have his say. Sometimes the truth is just true.”   As a foreign war correspondent, Jeremy Scahill revealed secret military campaigns in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia that resulted in congressional investigations. His books  Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Pow...

A series of media scoops have shown that some politicians are actually rich people who want to keep their money. Bernie Sanders comes to Canada to tell us about our healthcare system. The government has been debating the so-called Ghomeshi rules, new legislation that would change how sexual assault cases are dealt with in court. BuzzFeed News Washington correspondent Paul McLeod co-hosts. Paul's T...

Adam Gopnik lived out a certain Canadian fantasy. He left the country and became a prominent New York intellectual. He writes about the move in his new book, At the Stranger's Gate . Gopnik is now a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he writes about Canada — like in  this profile of Michael Ignatieff or the recent piece, " We Could Have Been Canada ." He talks about how New York has changed, wh...

Quebec passes a racist law. A bunch of media outlets ran a story that used video manipulation and questionable translation to make it look like an imam was calling for the slaughter of Jews. After he lost his job, his reputation was ruined and there were hateful protests at his mosque, Toronto Star --who ran the original story-- exposed the dangerous flaws of the early reporting. Student leader Ma...

The Toronto Star's Daniel Dale has become one of the most-watched journalists in Washington in part by simply enumerating Donald Trump's lies (Dale  counted 720 as of last week). He got his start covering pomp and fatuousness by being the Star's reporter in charge of following the Rob Ford administration. This episode was recorded live at the Hot Docs Podcast Festival in Toronto on October 15, 201...

The Conservative Party leader walked away from a scrum when pressed about his campaign manager working in far right media company The Rebel's office during his campaign.    We look at the language around Gord Downie's death.   And there are a lot of unanswered questions in the story of freed hostage Joshua Boyle.   Freelancer and former VICE reporter Justin Ling co-hosts. Justin's Twitter: @justin...

Sarah Polley talks about how she helped Jesse break a major story.  And she discusses domestic abuse, sexual harassment and assault, and the culture that fuels it.  Support us at patreon.com/CANADALAND  and see this year's goals and rewards.  Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informat...

An "unprecedented national collaboration" between The National Observer, Global, The Toronto Star and more exposes the dangers of sour gas in Saskatchewan. But as OurSask.ca points out, they forgot to mention the CBC broke the story  two years ago.    The Globe and Mail pillories the Liberals' tax plan.   CBC journalists find creative ways to criticize the CBC.   The National Post's Jen Gerson co-...

The way we make culture in Canada is finished. The CanCon system was built around radio frequency and cable subscriptions. That's done.  Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly had the thankless task of crafting a new culture plan that was sure to disappoint. She is now being viciously attacked by the press, the same press that did not get their requested newspaper bailout.  In the plan, Joly announced a b...

Co-host Omar Mouallem lives in the Edmonton neighbourhood where the terror attack took place over the weekend. He discusses what he saw in the news versus what he saw in real life. On Jagmeet Singh's first interview with CBC's Power and Politics as the NDP's leader, Terry Milewski takes the opportunity to grill him about the Air India bomber. The takes are in for the Government's #DigiCanCon plan,...