Regulatory, Telecom & Media News – Duff Roman, Bob McKeown among new Order of Canada appointees

Canadian Music & Broadcast Industry Hall of Fame inductee Duff Roman, The Fifth Estate co-host Bob McKeown, and Quebec actor and comedian Marc Labrèche are among the newest inductees of the Order of Canada. The latest round of appointments also includes Janis Dunning, C.M. and Jacques Lemay, C.M., co-founders of the Canadian College for Performing Arts in Victoria. Dunning was a household name for decades as the creator and principal performer of national CTV kids’ television series Let’s Go! and The Rockets. Former Halifax radio personality, politician and disability advocate Jerry Lawrence, C.M. and Helga Stephenson, O.C., O.Ont., former director of Festival of Festivals (the pre-cursor to TIFF) and past Chairperson of Viacom Canada were also appointees. Read more here.

CBC has been ordered to pay nearly $1.7M in damages to a Manitoba investment advisor, finding that the public broadcaster’s coverage was defamatory. Justice Herbert Rempel said a television and online story on Kenneth Wayne Muzik that aired in 2012, negatively affected the adviser’s personal life and ability to earn income. The broadcast focused on a former client of Muzik’s, who had relied on the investment advisor’s advice to commute the value of his $675,000 Canadian Pacific Railway pension to an investment portfolio. The decision names the public broadcaster and former reporter Gosia Sawicka as defendants. 

The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) has launched Misinfo 101, a series of national training workshops designed to help Canadian post-secondary students identify misinformation and disinformation. The first session in the series will be held Jan. 20 and taught by ProPublica’s Craig Silverman, in partnership with Seneca College. The session will be open to all post-secondary students living in Ontario, who can register here. Some of Canada’s top investigative journalists, fact-checkers and researchers developed the workshop curriculum. Training sessions will take place in 13 provinces and territories across Canada this year, led by local instructors from CBC, Radio-Canada, ProPublica, and The University of King’s College.