Hey Saskatoon it’s Wednesday afternoon! The heat’s peaking right now at a balmy 17°C, but that’s nothing compared to the weather on deck: more than a week of sunny and mostly sunny days with highs as high as 27°C. Now that’s high! Maybe too high. Onward to news.
1. BOOM BUNGLERS AND CROWN KILLERS Well well well, what a frickin’ surprise. After vowing to not sell off crowns without a referendum, Brad Wall and his Saskatchewan Party government has met with Bell, Rogers and Telus about selling 49 per cent of SaskTel, which will raise everyone’s phone/internet bills, send Saskatchewan profits to telecom shareholders, wipe out good local jobs, cripple the ability of future Sask governments to fund needed programs and, most hilariously, open the door for a lucky MLA or two to land cushy post-political careers on telecom boards of directors like when former Manitoba premier Gary Filmon privatized the Manitoba Telephone System then took a job on its board of directors. Wall and his cronies must think you’re really stupid and you’ll go along with this without a fuss. Prove him wrong. And be funny and peaceful about it because John Gormley doesn’t need you giving him material to smear Sask Party critics with.
2. SASKATOON COURIER WANTS TO TAKE OVER FOR STC So what, we should cheer? That’s how privatization and cuts to public services work —the private sector gobbles-up the profitable bits of a dismembered public entity, and the money-losing services either aren’t provided at all or governments have to step in after the dust settles and fork over subsidies to private companies to keep unprofitable services alive. Along the way, good jobs die and big-money investors profit. Personally I’d rather have a few dopey failures like Spudco than the destruction of public services. YMMD.
3. FBI BOSS IS JUST SICK ABOUT IT James Comey’s admission that the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton’s e-mails put Trump in the White House, but the FBI director would play it the same way again.
4. BIGOTS AGAINST BODIES Turns out it’s legal for U.S. funeral homes to reject LGBTQ people’s corpses. Appalling.
5. HAPPY WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY! Here’s a column on the threat of an apathetic public, a story on persecuted cartoonists and an editorial on the need for Canada to guarantee press freedoms. Want to read more about the state of journalism? Check out Reporters Without Borders. Want to buy hard-working and often unappreciated journalists a present today? Subscribe to an online newspaper. The media can’t exist without you.
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Here’s a classic scene with some of my favourite fictional reporters at one of my favourite fictional newsrooms. Happy World Press Freedom Day!
