Journalism & Media

"Deep in the Sundarbans, a vast mangrove maze where the Ganges and two other great rivers weave their way to the coast in India and Bangladesh, the big-cat conservationist Alan Rabinowitz plays a video clip on his laptop for a cluster of men and women in an impoverished village where tigers — in one of their last big refuges — regularly kill or maim people scouring the shorelines for meager hauls of fish and crabs."

"The upcoming Thanksgiving holiday is generally celebrated with a bounty of food — and a mountain of leftovers, some of which, let's face it, will end up in the trash."

"In the scientific community, Max Bothwell is regarded as the go-to guy on 'rock snot,' an unsightly but amusingly nicknamed invasive algae that grows in streams and riverbeds. He’s been an Environment Canada scientist for 36 years, studied the slimy blooms for 22 of those and has published considerable literature on the subject." The Harper government kept him quiet.

Reporters trying to get information from federal agencies find press offices stonewalling and running out the clock on their interview requests. "The public information model," one agency flak said, "is dead." The result: the public is uninformed, the government is unaccountable, and people's health is endangered.

"The muzzles are coming off for [Canadian] federal scientists. For years, scientists who worked for the federal government were silenced by strict rules that made them seek departmental approval before speaking to the press. On Friday, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains said that scientists are free to speak to the media about their work."