RE the apparent plagiarism of Peggy Wente: British journalists have to be more careful what they write because there are about 50 newspapers there, most of them cheek by jowl in Wapping, London. They watch and read each other. 

    That's one of our Canadian problems: our information emerges from a much small number of sources, which means that we listeners, readers and viewers have few outlets for counter arguments.

    If Carol Wainio, who is responsible for pointing out Wente's apparent plagiarism, had written a letter to the editor of the Globe complaining about Wente's apparent plagiarism, that letter would most likely have been consigned to the circular G file. 

    Same with the CBC. We are constantly being invited to comment, but those comments, if critical of a program or a host, rarely get read on air. Personally I loathe much of what Richard Stursberg did to CBC-2, but no one at the CBC seems to care about the introduction of what I call Rack and Roll to what was once a source of classical music.

    I have a personal gripe: soon after my biography of Peter Gzowski was published, it was damned on air by the hostess of the only CBC book show dealing with Canadian books, even though Shelagh Rogers claimed that she had never read the book. In fact she had read an advance copy of the book. She refused to have me on her show to answer her questions and complaints. Until now I have never complained, for I assumed that no CBC ombudsman would listen to me.

    The solution, it seems to me, would be to emulate Wainio's use of social media.