The News: A Groundwork Guide

Do daily news broadcasts contain less actual information than they did even five years ago? Who owns the channels that you watch? Is the internet the most reliable way to find out what’s going on? At the launch of The News: A Groundwork Guide (Groundwood Books), author and educator Peter Steven will address such timely concerns during a lively onstage conversation with Hamutal Dotan, Senior Editor of Torontoist.com. Marc Glassman, Executive Director of TINARS, will host the evening.

The News – A Groundwork Guide Citizens all over the world rely on accurate, informed journalism, not just in order to participate in society, but for our basic health and safety. Over the past twenty years the news media has become more restricted, less diverse and of steadily declining quality; the news that millions of people get is unreliable, insulting or downright hazardous.

The trends are not all bad. Outside the West, particularly in Asia, citizens receive better and more diverse news than ever before. Rising levels of literacy and education in India, Korea, Indonesia and China have fostered vastly increased newspaper circulations, and the Internet has brought a much broader world to some restricted societies.

Peter Steven takes a critical look at the state of the news worldwide, including a solid overview of recent developments in television and radio news, the ongoing crisis in the newspaper world, the latest forms of Internet news and the crucial question of who owns the organs from which we get our news. He also provides an inside view of how journalists do their jobs and looks at the ideology of neutrality and unbiased reporting, at censorship and self-censorship, and at the white, male-dominated culture of newsrooms.

Peter Steven teaches media studies at Sheridan Institute of Technology and he is the author of The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media. His writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, the New Internationalist, Jump Cut, the Canadian Journal of Film Studies and the Beaver. He holds a PhD in Radio/TV/Film from Northwestern University in Chicago. Peter lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Hamutal Dotan is a Senior Editor at Torontoist.com. She is a recovering grad student currently living in the west end. Hamutal is equally compelled to write about architecture, farmers' markets, and city council meetings, which makes her either a Renaissance woman or a dilettante, depending on your point of view.

Media /Info:

Peter Steven: Kate McQuaid, kate@anansi.ca, (416) 363-4343 ext 29

TINARS: Chris Reed, coordinator@tinars.ca, (416) 598-1447