Never forget that 2020 was the year that Black, Indigenous and otherwise racialized journalists in Canada stopped whispering and said it all out loud. In the order that I remember:

AUGUST WILL ALWAYS COME BEFORE DECEMBER

Journalism, for all its bells and whistles, shiny business models, is fundamentally built on honour. 
None of the big offices, fancy equipment will matter, if the humans are not humane.

That it was only in December you saw a call made since August, only because I amplified its contents, shows you exactly the problem, that a call has to exist, since August.

No one has to have to leave the system, and unwittingly seek a voice online, if the humans within the system had honour. 
 
Humans make the system. 
Where a system somehow leaves a person with no choice but to cry out online, only the humans indicted can make it right.

If humans who profess to be humane did just that, and insisted for more choices for each other, then there would have been no August. 
That I chose to point this out how and when I did, after several private efforts, is my prerogative, as Bobby Brown sang it.

That you choose to interpret it however assuages your bias and demigods, is your prerogative. What can never change, is that August came before December, and August brought December.

@StephenFlynnSNP @NHSGrampian

This is how bullies operate, they will say you are to blame but not care about why! Mrs Dickson and her practice has misrepresented me for the last time.

It was her staff who were rude and hung up on me because it was 16:50pm and she was tired.

The fact is, for the what 20th time, holburn medical got my prescription wrong, the day before Christmas Eve after ordering well in advance.

I have anxiety disorder, they know this. I had every right to be annoyed and while I was firm but not aggressive or shouting.

Her receptionist told me for NO REASON to "stop shouting" even though I was just speaking. When I tried to say 'hey, I'm not shouting, I just am annoyed and want help' she hung up the phone on me.

I called back and tried to explain what happens to someone else, who was also rude. I explained and said 'look, I'm working tomorrow, I need to know this is sorted', to this the woman rudley snipped back with zero empathy "well, we are working too"... This blew my mind.

I was not calling their work into question and I was in no way trying to boast, I was just trying to get help but when I said 'won't, I'm not trying to be funny ' this second woman turned it into an argument and hung up! I was left awestruck at this treatment.

@TheCanaryUK, journalism and free speech:

Like all news outlets, The Canary produces good and bad journalism. The same can be said of the Guardian, BBC and even the Daily Mail...

I don't agree with some of its editorial positions and at times I find some of the reporting over simplistic. But it also does extremely rigorous, well-sourced and informative analysis that addresses issues often overlooked by mainstream press (cf its reporting on Venezuela)...

What is relatively unique is the degree to which The Canary has been attacked by the left, centre and right. This is partly because of a perception that it has challenged the reach of mainstream media, especially on social media...

Though it's short history is a relative success story among news start ups, the notion that it competes on any level with either the audience reach or agenda influence of mainstream media is a constructed myth...

a myth that serves to obscure the enduring grip of national press and broadcasters over the public consciousness, and absolve policymakers of the need to address this...

Want to understand how pervasive media bias works? Read on.

Check out this awful headline from @AP. A gun was found on the scene, there are bullet casings and bullet holes on nearby walls.

This isn't simply an allegation. This was clearly was a gunman.

It would be bad enough if the Associated Press alone published this headline. But because @AP is a wire service, many other leading news outlets have republished this content, often verbatim.

Here's the article on the @WashingtonPost, for example.

And here's the same article, and same headline, on @YahooNews.

The article was republished in plenty more well-known media outlets. Here it is on the @ABC website.

Moving forward, the content of the article is deeply problematic. This is how an article about an attempted shooting attack begins: by focusing on the *response* of the security forces to being attacked.

@StefSimanowitz wrote about Eric in 2013. Here Eric speaks about standing up for journalist

Stefan Simanowitz on Twitter on 19.3.13...thread
In 2003, as Baghdad shuddered under the onslaught that was operation "shock and awe", 75yrold Eric Levy from Camden was huddled with a dozen other peace campaigners in an air raid shelter at Dura oil refinery in southern Baghdad./

The group found themselves in Iraq at the time of the Allied invasion after travelling there from London by double-decker bus. They called themselves the "human shields" and set off with the intention of protecting Iraqi civilians from Allied bombs.

If you're over 20, or were a precociously politically aware five-year-old in 2003, you might remember the human shields leaving for Iraq in a frenzy of media coverage. “The idea behind the movement was to use the racist way in which Western lives are valued /

more than Iraqi lives to either stop the invasion or – failing that – protect crucial civilian infrastructure sites,” Levy recalls ten years on. “We may not have achieved the first objective, but none of the sites where the shields were staying were bombed.”/