Just got off the phone with a friend of mine.

She was talking to a personal injuries lawyer the other day who was absolutely livid that the media wasn't paying more attention to the tilting cruise ship in Florida, particularly when it came to publishing the names of injured Canadians.

And why were those names so important?

Potential clients, of course!

We all gotta make a living, I guess. :^)

From The Globe and Mail's Review section:

C'mon, everybody loves a good fart joke

Maclean's columnist Paul Wells rebuts some of Stephen Harper's pronouncements about the media dogs who, in the PM's mind, nip harder at the heels of Conservative prime ministers than Liberal ones.

From a series of BBC vignettes with a Chinese dissident, journalist and filmmaker about the impact of the Internet on them:

Li Xinde is a 43 year old journalist. He used to work for a state-controlled newspaper. But thanks to the internet, now he feels like a "real journalist."

He has gone freelance; criss-crossing China by train looking for injustice and digging up scandal.

In China, news organisations like papers and magazine are subject to strict censorship - the media is manipulated by the Party.

What does that mean? It means the media is the Party's mouthpiece. All reports have to comply with the Party line. This is why I quit the job of the official media.

My benchmark is the truth. A journalist once asked me whether I dared to report a case related to a provincial level leader. I said all I care about is if there is evidence. With concrete evidence, I am not afraid to report any case; even if it touches senior officials.