News item:
Harper to avoid national media, claiming bias
…”We'll just take the message out on the road,” the Prime Minister said. “There's lots of media who do want to ask questions and hear what the government is doing for Canadians, or to Canadians. So we'll get our message out however we can.”
The Canadian Newspaper Association last night handed out the National Newspaper Awards or NNAs. This is Canada's equivalent to a Pulitzer Prize — awards which recognize the best newspaper print journalism in the country. Local media — which I'll broadly define, in this case, as any organization which does not maintain its own office on Parliament Hill — picked up a lot of hardware (actually, it's a plaque) as they do every year.
So when the PM takes his “message out on the road”, I suspect he'll get some tough questions from these writers:
- Steve Buist and Joan Walters of the Hamilton Spectator, winners of an NNA for investigative journalism. (Second year in a row, by the way, that the Spec — a paper I proudly toiled at for two years — has won for investigative journalism.)
- Gordon Hamilton of the Vancouver Sun, an NNA winner for his coverage of the forestry industry.
- Colette Derworiz and Suzanne Wilton of the Calgary Herald won an NNA for Politics writing. (My colleagues and Parliamentary Press Gallery members Simon Tuck and Jeff Sallot of the Globe and Mail were runner-ups in this category.)
- Iain Hunter wins an NNA for the editorials he wrote for the Victoria Times-Colonist.
- A group of reporters at The Edmonton Journal were best at breaking news.
- Scott Dunn of the Owen Sound Sun-Times was the top reporter at a smaller-market paper.
- David Baines of the Vancouver Sun wins (another, I think) NNA as the top business reporter in the country.