Australia’s parliament passed its media bargaining code after making amendments that caused Facebook to decide to reverse its ban on journalism links—then promise to pay the news industry more. Canada vowed to enact parallel rules, but Facebook says it’d rather call the shots on who gets the cash: the Australian law seems to reward oldsters.
A month of online apologies
The law firm Gowling WLG apologized for “our screensaver message” which was evidently part of an effort to gather staff anecdotes on Instagram in honour of Black History Month. More apologies came from CTV, which now promises to review all its retro video streams after highlighting Delta Burke’s blackface on Designing Women.
“I used a word in a tweet last night that I shouldn’t have used and for that I am truly sorry.” Doug Smith observed how Dwight Howard looked like “more of a thug than a basketball player.” But the Toronto Star reporter reconsidered the word. This coincided with Masai Ujiri talking to ABC’s Good Morning America about being shoved.
Bracketing times at Rye High
The Ryerson School of Journalism has been making more news in the remote learning era, as a polemically Catholic student filed a human rights complaint about one campus newspaper at the same time he’s getting a credit for working on another. After much virtual classroom rebellion over that, the magazine team is taking another stand:
Global News Radio will sweat less with more oldies. Dick Williams, who started as a music DJ on London, Ontario, station CFPL in 1960, is back on those airwaves in a sign of Global trying to steer itself away from talk radio controversy. Meanwhile, the recently downsized Bell Media is adding an overnight show hosted from Toronto by Jim Richards.
Finally, an impenitent Peacock
Nurses ended its emergency first season airing in America with even less likelihood of a second-year pickup following the bad press it received for a scene perceived as anti-Semitic. The producers behind the Canadian series offered a mea culpa about the episode, which aired one year earlier on Global TV, whereas NBC just disappeared it:
