Media people and the Order of Canada

TVO's Steve Paikin, National Post columnist George Jonas and fashion media personality Jeanne Bekker all joined the ranks of recipients of the Order of Canada. Many other media personalities, including the CBC's Don Newman and Joe Schlesinger are already sporting one on their lapels. The latter two are retired.
Maybe the question needs to be asked whether journalists should accept this honour while still active. Or, for that matter, whether they should be appointed to the Senate.
Whatever happened to the independent press in this country?
BTW: Mike Duffy never got one.

TIME splitting from Warner; abandoning "church and state" separation of news and ads

Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the United States, with properties like People, Sports Illustrated and Fortune, is preparing for one of the most pivotal periods in its 91-year history.
Within the next six months, its parent, the media conglomerate Time Warner, hopes to spin off Time Inc. into a separate public company. But if the plan succeeds, Time Inc. will become independent at a difficult moment. Not only do the magazine industry’s fortunes continue to sag, but Time Inc. has also shown signs of instability. It has churned through three chief executives in the last three years, and lost a star editor, its former editor in chief Martha Nelson.

To combat these negative forces, Time Inc. will abandon the traditional separation between its newsroom and business sides, a move that has caused angst among its journalists. Now, the newsroom staffs at Time Inc.’s magazines will report to the business executives. Such a structure, once verboten at journalistic institutions, is seen as necessary to create revenue opportunities and stem the tide of declining subscription and advertising sales. 

The whole New York Times story

70 journalists killed in 2013, including 29 in Syria: Report

At least 70 journalists were killed on the job around the world in 2013, including 29 who died covering the civil war in Syria and 10 slain in Iraq, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The dead in Syria included a number of citizen journalists working to document combat in their home cities, broadcasters who worked with media outlets affiliated with either the government or the opposition, and a handful of correspondents for the foreign press, including an Al-Jazeera reporter, Mohamed al-Mesalma, who was shot by a sniper.
More from the Associated Press

Geoff Stirling, broadcast pioneer, dies at 92

Newfoundland and Labrador broadcasting and publishing pioneer Geoff Stirling died last Saturday at the age of 92 in his home in Torbay, Newfoundland. Stirling owned wide-ranging media outlets in Newfoundland, Ontario and Quebec. He founded the weekly newspaper The Sunday Herald in St. John's in 1946. Stirling started CJON, the second commercial radio station in Newfoundland and Labrador, and also launched CJON-TV, the first provincial television station, back in 1955. Stirling was inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2001. .

Senate ethics – what about Press Gallery ethics? --Preston Manning

An excellent column by Preston Manning in today's Globe.
Excerpts:

"A great deal of media attention has been paid these past few months to the ethics, or alleged lack thereof, of senators Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy. Much less attention has been paid to the likelihood that the ethics of both are at least partially rooted in their training and experience as prominent members of the media. . . .

"The Press Gallery’s constitution consists of 50 clauses, only one of which deals with ethics. Its focus, however, is quite relevant to the Duffy case.
Section 10 of that constitution provides for the expulsion of a member by a majority vote of the members for only one reason: '… that such member uses his membership or the facilities of the Gallery to obtain a benefit other than by journalism …'
"Accordingly, if a member were to use his position as a member of the gallery to lobby for a federal appointment – a benefit being sought 'other than by journalism' – he should have been subjected to an investigation by the gallery, a membership meeting to discuss and vote on the allegation, and expulsion on ethical grounds if the allegation had been substantiated.
"It is therefore appropriate to ask whether section 10 of the gallery’s constitution – the only one dealing with ethics – has ever been applied? If so, when and to whom? And if not, why not, especially in the case of Mr. Duffy, who (as is well known) had been lobbying for a federal appointment  . . ."

The whole column (subscription may be required)