While Michael Cooke thanked the Canadian Journalism Foundation in a
speech
at its annual awards gala, another journalist thinks it’s “time
for a fresh start” for the organization.

In a National Post column, Terence Corcoran wrote:

“The Canadian Journalism Foundation is little known and is of little value to anyone outside the ingrown cabals of mostly Toronto-based old-line liberal media celebrities and groupies. Playing a supporting role are milling flocks of corporate public relations cads and charitable funds who share the cabals’ abiding interest in maintaining and celebrating the soft-left wonder years of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, when all problems could be resolved by a little more regulation and a lot more taxation. The corporate interest in backing the foundation may be more aligned with coddling media contacts than reviving liberalism, but not necessarily.”

Corcoran criticized the CJF for being what he calls “another branch of the Atkinson- Star Toronto-centric liberal collective that makes up the core of the Canadian media ideological value-trap.”

He adds that “Whatever the merits of the original objectives [of the CJF], they have been totally subverted. The foundation is now totally dedicated to furthering the very social and economic radicalism that the original founders naively thought they could reform.”