Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time, Herbert Gans. Vintage Books, New York (1980), 393 pp., $5.95

(2001). The Rights Revolution. Pacifica Review: Peace, Security & Global Change: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 197-200.

The Rights Revolution

Channels of Power: The Impact of Television on American Politics.@@@Over the Wire and on TV: CBS and UPI in Campaign '80.@@@Television Coverage of the 1980 Presidential Campaign.

As the environmental crisis worsens, the time has never been more ripe for a scholarly reclamation of Ontario writer and environmental activist Wayland Drew (1932-1998), known only marginally by Canadian literary scholars for two novels: The Wabeno Feast (1973) and Halfway Man (1989). In addition to these works, Drew published a trilogy, The Erthring Cycle (1984-86), which explores environmental holocaust, and several ecological essays, travelogues, and other nonfictional works. Forming a unique genre of "evolutionary fiction" rooted in the sciences of ecology and evolution and in his intimate knowledge of traditional aboriginal land practices, Drew stands alone in the Canadian literary tradition for making the global environmental crisis the central focus of his writing. His fictional and nonfictional oeuvre launches an unremitting critique of the anthropocentric discourses of humanism and reductivist science, as well as the current debates about cultural identity politics, in the interest of highlighting the "mystery" of evolutionary and cosmological history and our responsibility, as the now-dominant species, to pursue homeostatic living in order to protect the planet for the future of all biotic life. Moreover, Drew recognizes the irony that our species is driven by instincts that, if left unchecked, ultimately may lead to biospheric ruin: human curiosity and an urge for "progress," for instance, must be restrained if we are to safeguard the future of the planet. Drew argues with a voice unique in the tradition of Canadian Literature that humans must embrace their evolutionary inconsequentiality, and nurture their connections with other lifeforms (via a philosophy of "mutual aid"), as part of a broader survival strategy. His sustained argument is that not only Western nations but all of the Earth's denizens need to undertake a radical epistemological shift if we are to survive.

Honouring mystery: The evolutionary fiction of Wayland Drew

This essay is about portraits: judicial portraits. It offers a case study of the interface between law and visual culture. Its object of enquiry is a collection of pictures (painted and photographic), depicting the sixteen Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia, from 1824 to the present day. The original paintings hang in the Banco Court, Sydney. The photographs and digital copies of all the images are on the Court’s website. Beginning with a brief review of socio-legal scholarship on the judiciary, the essay explores existing work on the visual image of the judge. In response to the limitations of that research, the paper turns to art historical scholarship to facilitate an analysis of the aesthetic and technological factors (the continuities and changes) that shape and generate the meaning of these judicial images. It explores the relevance of context upon meaning. The paper demonstrates a number of methodological approaches and reflects upon the contribution that a study of judicial pictures may make to socio-legal scholarship.

Judging pictures: a case study of portraits of the Chief Justices, Supreme Court of New South Wales

Acknowledments Judgment Day: A Vignette Introduction: The Supreme Court Under the Media Lens 1 A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court 2 Equal in Alberta: The Vriend Case 3 Court and Spin Country: The Quebec Secession Reference 4 "Sea of Confusion": R. v. Marshall 5 "Parents Can Sleep Soundly": The Queen v. John Robin Sharpe 6 Judges and Journalists Conclusion: Reporting the Supreme Court through a Political Prism Appendix A: Interview Questions Appendix B: Method of Analysis -- Coding Instructions and Sample Code Sheet About the Authors Index

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The last word : media coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada

Few international issues have aroused as much passionate interest and political activity among Canadians. The contest on "the domestic battleground" has been decisive in determining Canada's policies in the Middle East. The Domestic Battleground provides the history and background needed to understand Canadian attitudes toward both the explosive unrest occurring in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the participants in the conflict - Israel, the Palestinians, and the rest of the Arab world. Taras and Goldberg analyse the struggles over the levers of decision making in Ottawa and the battle between moral stances and convictions that has taken place among concerned Canadians. The Domestic Battleground is the first book devoted to analysing the study of Canada's Middle Eastern policy. David Taras and David H. Goldberg take readers inside the Canadian decision-making process on key issues regarding the Middle East over the last forty years. Bringing together articles by scholars with differing perspectives, this volume brings to light the positions and actions of Canadian political leaders - Mackenzie King, Lester B. Pearson, Joe Clark, Pierre Trudeau, and Brian Mulroney - and assess the impact of media coverage, corporate and governmental interests, and Arab and Jewish lobby groups. The Domestic Battleground addresses the narrowing of the emotional distance separating Canada from the conflicts and disputes indigenous to the Middle East and responds to the presence of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mainstream of daily life and politics in Canada.

The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Prime ministers and premiers : political leadership and public policy in Canada

A passion for identity : introduction to Canadian studies

Notre point principal est que la structure des nouvelles televisees cree des distorsions dans la fa,on dont les questions de politiques publiques sont presentees au public. Comme etude de cas, nous situerons le traitement par la CBC du processus qui a mene6 l'Accord Constitutionnel de 1987, soit de l'entente du Lac Meech, fin avril 1987, a sa signature, debut de juin 1987, dans l'edifice Langevin. La couverture par CBC etait tres abregee, portait vers le sensationnalisme et etait braquee sur le conflit et les personnalites. Les questions plus vastes sous jacentes a l'accord n'ont jamais ete pleinement expliquees au public. Ceci a eu un impact sur le processus de formation de politiques, etant donne que le public en g6neral et les fonds d'interets concernes n'ont pas ete avertis de l'importance de ce changement.

David Taras

Papers

The last word : media coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada

The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Prime ministers and premiers : political leadership and public policy in Canada

A passion for identity : introduction to Canadian studies

Television and Public Policy: The CBC's Coverage of the Meech Lake Accord