Doug Ford government launches ‘Ontario News Now’ while limiting questions from reporters

Premier Doug Ford‘s government has launched a new social media account to promote its agenda.

The Twitter account @ontarionewsnow was created on July 12, and its first content was published on Monday night. A minute-long video, captioned “Premier Ford takes a look back at his first month in office,” features a montage of Ford in various situations including a visit to Woodbine Racetrack, meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and participating in the First Ministers meeting.

Lyndsey Vanstone, a former broadcaster and Ford campaign staffer, is the on-air presenter in the video. In a voice-over, Vanstone said, “Premier Ford attended dozens of events in 30 days and he managed to keep a few campaign promises, too.”
Full Global News story

Jazz.FM workers say the CEO harassed them. Now, they’re accused of plotting a coup

The Star's Donovan Vincent writes about the upheavals at 91.1 JazzFM

White House bans CNN correspondent from news conference

A CNN correspondent was barred from attending an open press event at the White House on Wednesday because of questions she asked President Donald Trump earlier in the day.
Kaitlan Collins and her employer, CNN, say the White House denied Collins access to Trump’s Rose Garden event with the European Commission president because officials found her earlier questions “inappropriate.”
Collins had served as a representative of the television networks during an earlier pool spray in the Oval Office. She and a handful of other reporters peppered the president with questions, including many focused on his former lawyer, Michael Cohen.
The White House Correspondents’ Association also issued a harshly worded statement condemning “the White House’s misguided and inappropriate decision today to bar one of our members from an open press event after she asked questions they did not like.”
And Fox News President Jay Wallace said, “We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press.”
 (AP)

New York Daily News cuts half of its newsroom staff

The New York Daily News has cut half of its newsroom staff, including Jim Rich, the paper’s editor-in-chief.
The paper was sold to tronc Inc, the owner of the Chicago Tribune, last year for $1 along with all liabilities and debt.  
In an email sent to staff on Monday, tronc said the remaining staff – estimated by reports at around 40 journalists – would focus on breaking news involving “crime, civil justice and public responsibility”.
The newspaper has been a key fixture in New York for the last century. It has won 11 Pulitzer prizes, including last year for its work with ProPublica on the abuse of eviction rules in New York City.
There had been reports that the cuts were coming, and an early-morning tweet from Rich hinted at what was to come. (Guardian)
                
             

Military radio host Adrian Cronauer, who inspired "Good Morning, Vietnam," has died

Adrian Cronauer, the man whose military radio antics inspired a character played by Robin Williams in the film Good Morning, Vietnam, has died. He was 79.
During his service as a U.S. air force sergeant in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966, Cronauer opened his Armed Forces Radio show with the phrase, “Goooooood morning, Vietnam!”

Williams made the refrain famous in the 1987 film, loosely based on Cronauer’s time in Saigon.
The film was a departure from other Vietnam War movies that focused on bloody realism, such as the Academy Award-winning Platoon. Instead, it was about irreverent youth in the 1960s fighting the military establishment.

“We were the only game in town and you had to play by our rules,” Cronauer told The Associated Press in 1987. “But I wanted to serve the listeners.”

AP obit in the Toronto Star