New Releases

Cover for Spin Doctors out November 2021.

New book: Spin Doctors

This book documents each month of the first year of the pandemic and examines the issues that emerged, from racialized workers to residential care to policing. It demonstrates how politicians and uncritical media shaped the popular understanding of these issues and helped to justify the maintenance of a status quo that created the worst ravages of the crisis. Spin Doctors argues alternative ways in which Canadians should understand the big themes of the crisis and create the necessary knowledge to demand large-scale change.

Out November 1, 2021

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Praise for Spin Doctors

“Spin Doctors relies not on one-off tragedies or impersonal statistics but rather a rhythmic and consistent approach to writing that couldn’t make the author’s argument any clearer: Canadian media failed to write stories that connected the country’s pandemic response to its own capitalistic impulses. And we are now paying the price.”
Sarah Krichel, The Tyee

“The Quebec City journalist, author and social activist likes to take hold of a subject and explore it with every tool at her disposal, and beginning in March 2020 the perfect opportunity presented itself. The result is her second book, Spin Doctors: How Media and Politicians Misdiagnosed the COVID-19 Pandemic (Fernwood Publishing, 368 pages, $35), a comprehensive, impassioned and highly readable work that itemizes how a confluence of factors created a perfect storm of denial and unpreparedness.”
Ian McGillis, Montreal Gazette

“What Loreto describes in her book is a multi-system failure. Canadian media is in system failure. Long-term care is in system failure. Capitalism is in system failure at the expense of the working class. Industry takes advantage of the failure by refusing to increase wages on pace with inflation, by eroding worker’s rights and providing care to society’s most vulnerable as cheaply as possible. As neoliberalism is wont to do, individuals are blamed for the spiral.”
Chelsea Nash, rabble.ca

“As someone who suffers from pandemic fatigue as much as any news junkie, I was surprised to feel a sense of relief as I read Spin Doctors. It is a much-needed reminder that confusion, rage, distrust, and nausea are not inevitable outcomes of a pandemic. If you are suffering from any of those symptoms, it is certainly worth reading.”
Kathleen Adamson, The Charity Report

Spin Doctors blurbed

“From the start, the North American obsession with China allowed politicians to lay blame at the feet of a foreign government rather than take responsibility for how unprepared for a pandemic North America really was. This obsession also drove media analysis, justifying a deluge of coverage on Wuhan, their farmer’s markets, Chinese government authoritarianism and what that government may or may not have hidden. It was easier to blame the Chinese than it was to ask why Canada’s pandemic stockpiles were depleted or how many post-SARS policies were still in effect.”

Take Back The Fight

Nora Loreto’s book explores feminism in Canada today, and how it has been bought and sold, co-opted by politicians and business leaders, and distorted by social media. To build a movement that can successfully fight against power, feminists need to build something that is pan-Canadian, anti- racist and anti-capitalist.

Check out the new Take Back the Fight podcast!

Available anywhere!

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