South of the border, U.S. president Donald Trump is facing a barrage of mockery for the fact that his proposed border wall is “a 1st-century solution to a 21st-century problem.” Perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to judge, given the way our own government struggles to implement technology. On Tuesday, Catherine Tully, Nova Scotia’s information […]
Michael Karanicolas
Posted inNews + Opinion
On journalism and biting the hand that feeds you
Last week, as part of their Fall Economic Statement, the federal government announced several initiatives to provide financial support to news organizations, including tax credits to support the production of original news content and to support subscriptions to Canadian news media. They also announced additional direct support for non-profit local news organizations to create open […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Sometimes a bad professor is just a bad professor
Higher learning institutions have become central to the current debate around freedom of expression. The issue arose in Nova Scotia with the controversies around Acadia psychology professor Rick Mehta and has now been reignited after Dr. Mehta’s termination last week. The university cited a number of factors, including failure to fulfill academic responsibilities, unprofessional conduct and […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How “snooping” harms us all
By now, you’ve probably heard about the Sobeys pharmacy manager who found herself in hot water after using a provincial drug database to “snoop” on the medical information of friends, relatives and even her child’s girlfriend. This is just the latest embarrassing privacy failure for the Nova Scotia government, following on from two personal data […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
100 different ways to keep a government secret
Politicians of all stripes love to talk about transparency. They praise it, they throw around buzzwords like “open by default” or, in the direct words of Stephen McNeil, promise to make Nova Scotia “the most open and transparent government in the country.” None of these promises mean much if you don’t read the fine print […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The FOIPOP breach and the dangers of criminalizing research
Last December, two journalists in Myanmar, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were invited to dinner by police officers to discuss their research into war crimes carried out by the military. The officers handed them some documents, then immediately arrested them under the country’s Official Secrets Act for possessing the classified material. As absurd as […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
When it comes to opinions, our diversity is our strength
As someone whose job essentially revolves around promoting freedom of expression, it’s been strange to watch over the past few years as this core human right has morphed into a polarizing flashpoint dividing the political extremes. Across the country, socially conscious activists have adopted positions which are shockingly regressive, while objectively terrible people (including literal […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Anti-social media: Why are academics like Rick Mehta so bad at Twitter?
Acadia University psychology professor Rick Mehta is in hot water over his social media posts about residential schools and multiculturalism. He’s not the first academic to find himself in this position. In October, a Drexel University professor was placed on leave after posting on Twitter that a “narrative of white victimization” was to blame for […]