Source:globalnews.ca
Editorial staff at the National Post, the flagship publication of Canada’s largest newspaper company, announced Wednesday that they are beginning a union drive with CWA Canada. The paper’s beleaguered parent company Postmedia, which has suffered steep revenue declines affecting the entire print media industry, offered buyouts last week, just months after completing a company-wide salary cost reduction of twenty per cent.
Source: timescolonist.com
Three Times Colonist reporters are finalists for two Jack Webster Awards, which recognize excellence in B.C. journalism.
Katie DeRosa is nominated in the feature/enterprise reporting category for a story about a man living in a shed. The story highlighted the revolving door of the criminal justice system.
Louise Dickson and Lindsay Kines are vying for the legal journalism award for stories on a sheriffs shortage that led judges to dismiss charges against a pair of accused drug dealers.
The winners will be announced at the 31st annual Jack Webster Awards dinner on Oct. 12 in Vancouver.
“These nominations provide more evidence of the high quality of journalism provided by the Times Colonist,” Dave Obee, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, said Wednesday. “Our reporters are engaged with the community, and that is reflected in our pages every day.”
CBC’s Gloria Macarenko, host of B.C. Almanac and Stephen Quinn, host of On The Coast, will emcee the event. Vancouver Sun reporter Kim Bolan will receive the 2017 Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Jack Webster Foundation was established in 1986 in honour of legendary B.C. reporter Jack Webster.
Source: newsguild.org/mediaguild
Sept. 6, 2017 – Charges have been dropped against radio reporter Dan Heyman, who was arrested May 9 after he persisted in asking questions of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in a hallway at the West Virginia capitol.
“The State has determined, after a careful review of the facts, that Mr. Heyman’s conduct, while it may have been aggressive journalism, was not unlawful and did not violate the law with which he was charged,” a joint press release from the prosecutor’s office and Heyman’s legal team said.
He had been arrested for “willfully disrupting a State governmental process or meeting,” a misdemeanor. Heyman faced six months in prison if he was found guilty. He was released on the night of his arrest on $5,000 bail.
“Mr. Heyman certainly appreciates the State’s decision and affirmatively states that he was simply doing his job as a reporter by asking questions of a federal official as that official walked through the Capitol,” the statement said.
The arrest was widely condemned by advocates for press freedom and the right to report.
“This is a chilling attack on the right to report,” NewsGuild President Bernie Lunzer said at the time. “The arrest is part of a pattern of escalating attacks on the media since the Trump administration took office, which the union is determined to fight.”
Price refused to condemn the arrest, saying the West Virginia Capitol Police did “what they thought was appropriate.”
Heyman’s arrest was the first widely-known assault on press freedom during the Trump administration after Inauguration Day, when several journalists covering protests were charged.
Heyman’s arrest was quickly followed by other well-publicized attacks on reporters. NewsGuild member Ben Jacobs was body-slammed by Rep. Greg Gianforte on May 25, the eve his special-election victory in the race for Montana’s House seat. John M. Donnelly, a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, was “manhandled” and “pinned to a wall” by security guards after he attempted to question an FCC Commissioner after a public hearing on May 18.
Domestic Violence a Pre-Existing Condition?
Price was in Charleston on May 9 to meet with local and state officials and representatives of addiction treatment groups about the opioid crisis in the state.
Heyman repeatedly asked him whether domestic violence would be considered a pre-existing condition under the Republican health care bill, which had passed the House five days earlier. Before passage of the Affordable Care Act, in some cases being the victim of domestic violence was considered a pre-existing condition, Heyman said, and women who experienced it were denied health care coverage.
“I’m supposed to find out if someone is going to be affected by this health care law,” Heyman said after his arrest. “I think it’s a question that deserves to be answered. I think it’s my job to ask questions and I think it’s my job to try to get answers.”
Heyman was recording audio on his phone, which he reached out toward Price, past the secretary’s staffers, as he walked down the hall. He asked Price the question repeatedly but Price did not answer.
Heyman said he told police officers he was a reporter at the time of the arrest. He was wearing his press credentials over a shirt bearing the Public News Service’s insignia when he was charged with “willful disruption of state government processes.”
The West Virginia ACLU and numerous other organizations immediately denounced the arrest. “Today was a dark day for democracy,” the ACLU of West Virginia said on May 9. “But the rule of law will prevail. The First Amendment will prevail.”
Heyman has been a radio reporter since 2009 for Public News Service, which provides content to media outlets and publishes its own stories. Heyman has been a reporter for about 30 years, with his work appearing in the New York Times, NPR and other national news outlets.
Source: cwacanada.ca
Arnold Amber, a proud, passionate union leader, respected journalist, and fierce defender of free expression, died on Labour Day in a Toronto hospital with family at his bedside. He was 77.
Amber, director of TNG Canada from the time it was created in 1995 until he retired in 2011, shepherded its evolution into CWA Canada, the country’s only all-media union.
He earned many accolades and awards over his lengthy career as a CBC newsman, for his devotion to Canadian and international free expression organizations, as a trainer of journalists in emerging democracies, and for his unflagging dedication to improving conditions for all workers, especially those in media.
CWA Canada President Martin O’Hanlon, who took over from Amber in 2011, called him “a brilliant man who applied himself with equal discipline and passion to journalism, the labour movement, and defending freedom of the press.”
“All of us who knew Arnold will never forget his intelligence and sense of humour. He could be impatient and crusty, but he had a deeply tender and vulnerable side that made you love him.”
“He would have had some wry crack about what it took for him to miss a Labour Day parade; he marched every year. We’ll miss you old friend.”
Bernie Lunzer, president of the NewsGuild, said “Arnold Amber was of labour, and his passion and defence of it went back to the traditions he learned from his grandmother who worked with textile unions in Montreal. He worked hard on behalf of his peers at CBC and later for all the workers in what is now CWA Canada. As a leader he never forgot where he came from. He was truly a man of substance.”
Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America, said: “From the first time I met Arnold 20 years ago until the last time I saw him a year ago, Arnold demonstrated a constant commitment to the union and to a progressive world. He never gave up fighting for his life despite debilitating disease and he never stopped fighting to build the movement.”
Amber served as president of the CBC branch of the Canadian Media Guild (CWA Canada Local 30213) through significant periods in the public broadcaster’s history, such as the creation of a single bargaining unit for English-language employees in 2004 and the 50-day lockout the following year.
Prior to joining the CBC, Amber was a Reuters correspondent in Africa and Europe, contributing to leading international newspapers, magazines and broadcasters, as well as working as a media trainer.
In 1994, he led an international team that directed South Africa’s public broadcaster’s coverage of the country’s first democratic elections.
In 2014, the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom presented Amber its Spencer Moore Award for lifetime achievement.
The innovative executive TV producer, who won three Gemini awards for news specials, had a long list of accomplishments. They included: