CANADALAND

When we found out the Trudeau Government was selling armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, despite their terrible human rights record, there was little public debate. When a professor launched a bid to stop the deal, the Federal Court rejected it, saying there was no proof that the vehicles were being used against Saudi citizens.    Then this summer, videos surfaced that appeared to show that Ontario...

This American Life ponders the question:Is Gavin McInnes actually racist? We help them find the answer.   The Globe and Mail launches a project to teach kids about media manipulation... through media manipulation.   Freelancer David Berry co-hosts.  Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...

Michael Enright got Jesse his first job in radio. He was also CANADALAND’s first ever guest, drinking bourbon and talking sh*t about the Canadian media. For our 200th show, he’s back to talk about how the media has changed since that day... and how Air Canada ended up publicly denouncing him on Twitter.   Michael hosts a show on CBC Radio called The Sunday Edition . Jesse used to work there. Suppo...

Indigenous writer and activist turned politician Wab Kinew scored a historic victory last weekend by decisively winning the leadership of the Manitoba NDP. Only days before the election, however, allegations of domestic assault surfaced. A former partner of Kinew filed charges in 2003. Those charges were stayed in 2004. How has the media handled this story, and who pushed the court records to the...

For one week every year, the Canadian press transforms into movie industry experts. Our newspapers run glossy red carpet photos of Hollywood stars and stories about which movies penned distribution deals with who. But is any of this actually good for Toronto or Canada's film industry?   Norm Wilner has been covering the Toronto International Film Festival for 30 years. As a film critic at NOW Maga...

Jagmeet Singh gracefully responded to a racist idiot, which proves he can lead a major political party, we guess. Also, racism is totally not a problem anymore, according to the most widely-read columnists in the country. Omar Mouallem co-hosts. Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more infor...

Who thought we'd have a Nazi problem in 2017? Richard Warman did. Years before the current "Should I punch a Nazi" debate took off, he was taking neo-Nazis to court.   As a human rights lawyer, Richard Warman went on mission to take down neo-Nazis using our legal system. He filed more complaints for online hate speech than any other Canadian -- and was hugely successful.   But in the process, he g...

Post columnists pen truly offensive shit ; another media outlet lays off workers ; Donald Trump has us all scrambling .  Another day, another 81¢ (rounded for inflation). The team of our Commons podcast weighs in. Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's clear that sports journalism is facing many of the same issues as other facets of the industry: declining ad revenues, job insecurities, and too much content vying for too few eyeballs. It also has some unique challenges. Joining us to unpack the state of sports media are The Athletic 's James Mirtle , Morgan Campbell of the Toronto Star, and longtime freelance journalist Richard Whittall . S...

Americans are debating the removal of monuments to problematic historical figures, so I guess we are too.  Old folks don't want to hear sad stories about feelings on their CBC. Young folks do, apparently. And the Globe And Mail is slimming for winter . BuzzFeed Social Media Editor Elamin Abdelmahmoud joins us. Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

It's been, to put it mildly, a shit week for Rebel Media's self-styled 'Rebel Commander' Ezra Levant: - Following the tragedy in Charlottesville last weekend, Rebel Media co-founder Brian Lilley, and periodic columnists Barbara Kay and John Robson all severed their ties to the organization; - By Thursday it was learned that Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was moving on.  According to Levant, he'd...

A growing list of contributors and politicians are cutting ties with  far right website The Rebel after their coverage of the white nationalist protest in Charlottesville. Meanwhile, "Rebel commander" Ezra Levant wants to distance himself from the alt-right, claiming he's just learned it's a racist movement.    Chronicle Herald workers are back in the newsroom after a year and a half on strike, wo...

The term ' fake news 'has been popularized, bastardized, and now wholly appropriated. What was previously defined as 'A deliberate untruth published strictly for monetary or political gain,' has now come to mean 'I don't like this story. It makes me look bad.' Immediately following the election of Donald Trump south of the border,  Craig Silverman and the team at Buzzfeed wrote the defining articl...

Joseph Boyden has emerged from his winter burrow like a collared lemming (it's an arctic mammal -- look it up!) to plug his forthcoming book weigh in again on questions of his Indigenous ancestry. Despite his insistence that his connection to -- and friendship with -- Indigenous communities should automatically confer some sort of Indigenous status, he went ahead and got a DNA test anyway. Robert...

This week we present a podcast based on our stage show which was based on our book which was based on this podcast. Talk about coming full circle.   In it: should you fuck your Prime Minister?; Why Canadians secretly love climate change; why we love the RCMP; and a peek at the Canada of the not-too-distant future. Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

The Toronto Star built an entire exposé on female genital mutilation based predominantly around a mid-level civil servant's email from three years ago.  Also, CBC Comedy is so unfunny it's funny. Or is that the other way around? Either way, a former member of Kellie Leitch's team has made it his mission to bring it down . Writer/broadcaster, and producer Naheed Mustafa joins us. Support CANADALAND...

We revisit a couple of stories that we haven't been able to follow up on to the level to which we'd hoped. At least not on the website, where our News Editor Jonathan Goldsbie  makes the ultimate call as to what gets published. In this episode Jonathan and Jesse go head to head and reveal new facts about Andrew Potter's abrupt departure from McGill after his Maclean's diatribe about Quebec, and wh...

The Conservative Party takes their latest wedge issue to the US media, a Quebec town won't let Muslims bury their dead and Trudeau lays out some hot summer jams.   BuzzFeed's Elamin Abdelmahmoud co-hosts. Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When the vitriol started to fly over Omar Khadr's $10.5 million settlement and apology from the government, Michelle Shephard got frustrated with just how much people were getting the basic facts wrong. As national security reporter for the Toronto Star, author of the book Guantanamo's Child and co-director of the documentary of the same name, she's been the top reporter on Khadr's story for the p...

Journalist Evan Balgord  has been covering fringe right groups like the Proud Boys , Soldiers of Odin , and the Three Percenters  for the better part of the past year. He joins the COMMONS team to discuss the ongoing street protests and what’s driving these groups’ discontent.   CANADALAND will be back on Monday. Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for priva...

Ren Bostelaar posted nude pictures of women he knew to 4chan without their consent. He avoided a criminal record by apologizing and taking a peace bond. Was justice served? Is revenge porn legal in Canada? What is the state of the law and social media, years after the Amanda Todd and Rehteah Parsons cases? Privacy lawyer David Fraser launched a successful constitutional challenge against Nova Scot...

With resistance to Canada150, Indigenous women calling out a reporter at a press conference, and the Proud Boys disrupting a Mi'kmaq ceremony in Halifax, the way people talk about our colonial history is changing. While Indigenous people demand respect, journalists like the National Post's John Robson think the insults are just too much.   NDP MP Romeo Saganash plagiarized co-host Erica Violet Lee...

Canada was once home to a small, but mighty collective of gay and lesbian newspapers and magazines that made up a radical alternative media. Over the last few decades now-defunct publications like The Body Politic , Siren and Fab brought LGBTQ+ issues, interests and voices, to the forefront. Daily Xtra , now the country’s only remaining national queer news source, ceased print in 2015 but continue...

The Toronto Star put the final nail in the coffin  of Star Touch, its $20-30-million app for a device that most people don't have or use. And after praising themselves for its bold innovation, quietly laid off 30 journalists. Meanwhile, Canada gears up this weekend for a celebration of epic proportions: Peter Mansbridge is retiring. And confederation, something something. Finally we dig into Jonat...

After the release of the Public Policy Forum's Shattered Media   report this past winter comes the latest beg for cash to prop up the newspaper industry. This one comes in the form of a request for a subsidy totaling hundred of millions of dollars per year from News Media Canada , the umbrella advocacy organization for Canadian newspapers. While it claims to advocate for the maintenance of local j...