Barrie Wallace Zwicker
Biographical Notes
Updated 11 May 2005

Barrie Zwicker is an independent documentary producer, author and social and political activist. His latest production is the 75-minute THE GREAT CONSPIRACY: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw, on DVD and VHS (order by phoning 1-416.651-5588). Its world premiere was Sept. 9th 2004 in New York City. Reviews have been highly positive.

Zwicker instigated and was Director of the International Citizens' Inquiry Into 9/11, held at The University of Toronto 25-30 May 2004. It featured 40 presenters from three continents. Video from the Inquiry is being incorporated into numerous documentaries including The Great Conspiracy. The inquiry organization, Skeptics' Inquiry For Truth (SIFT) is incorporated and continues as an educational and activist group.

Prior to December 2003, Zwicker was the resident media critic (the only such in Canada) for 15 years with Vision TV, Canada's only independent not-for-profit TV channel and the world's first multi-faith TV channel. (One reviewer whimsically described Zwicker as "the professional furrowed brow for the small-r religious set.") Vision TV is available in more than 8-million Canadian homes via cable and DTH satellite.

In the 2001-2002 TV season Zwicker hosted VisionTV Insight: the MediaFile Edition, "a weekly half-hour commercial-free alternative look at the media," moderated its media panel and provided a commentary each program. Six of his MediaFile commentaries that season -- a series titled "What Really Happened on Sept. 11th?" - made him the first mainstream television journalist in the world to go on air and deeply question the official story of the events of 9/11. The commentaries elicited the greatest response of any programming in the channel's history. The response was literally 99% positive. The series became known as "The Great Deception" and was released on video under that title. The updated version (available on VHS and DVD) contains seven segments.

Zwicker has worked in journalism and communications since he was 16, when he joined the Russell (Man.) Banner as a Printer's Devil. He worked on major newspapers including The Vancouver Province, The Detroit News, the Flint Journal and the Lansing State Journal, for a year at Canada's largest-circulation newspaper, The Toronto Star and for eight years at "Canada's National Newspaper," The Globe and Mail. While the Globe's education writer, he won all three top awards of the Education Writers' Association of North America.

Zwicker taught journalism part time for seven years at Ryerson Polytechnic University. His courses were "Media and Society" and then "Media, Ethics and the Law."

He co-authored and co-edited, with the late Dick MacDonald, THE NEWS: Inside the Canadian Media (Deneau) and authored War, Peace and the Media (Sources). In September 2004 he produced Barrie Zwicker's 9/11 Resource Guide. He currently is working on a book planned for release in late 2005 or Spring of 2006 tentatively titled 9/11, the Media and Our Future.

He produced more than 200 media criticism segments for Vision TV in his last four seasons. Before that he contributed regularly to Vision's public affairs programs "It’s About Time," "Arts Express" and "Inventing Reality," from Vision's launch in September 1988.

Zwicker is also seen and heard as a media critic on CBC-TV, CTV's News1, RoB-TV and other TV and radio outlets and in print. For three and a half years his "Facing the Fourth Estate" commentary was nationally syndicated on 18 stations on CBC Radio.

He earned a Southam Fellowship (1967-68) and studied for three years under Marshall McLuhan. Earlier (1959-61) he was a University of Michigan/Michigan Press Club Co-operative Journalism Fellow, the first Canadian chosen up until then.

He owned and published the journalism review content from 1974 through 1981, when he sold that publication to Humber College.

In 1999, he sold his directory business, Sources®, The Directory of Contacts for Editors, Reporters and Researchers (www.sources.com)* which he founded in June 1977. He also founded Parliamentary Names & Numbers. He is Publisher Emeritus of Sources.

In the 1960s and 70s he was active in the Don Vale Association of Homeowners and Residents. Working in concert with then Ward 7 city Councillors John Sewell and Karl Jaffary, the association became a "giant slayer" at City Hall. The Association succeeded in abolishing a so-called "urban renewal" plan for Don Vale which would have razed numerous homes - including that of the Zwickers - and turned the sites over to developers.

As Corresponding Secretary for the Association, Zwicker wrote letters and press releases arising from democratic meetings. He named and helped found the ward's newspaper, 7 News. He also delivered it door to door.

He was awarded an honourary Life Membership in the Media Club of Canada in 1991 and is listed in Canadian Who's Who.

He was born Nov. 5, 1934 in White Head, N.S., a son of the late United Church minister, Rev. W. G. Zwicker and the former Norah Hall. He has been married to the former Jean Adie Muzzell of Owen Sound, Ont. for 41 years. They have two children. Xena-Linda is a musician and therapist. Gren-Erich specializes in audio post-production in Toronto and has worked with Norman Jewison and David Cronenberg. He has just finished working on Cronenberg's latest, History of Violence, to be premiered at Cannes this month.

Following the lead of his parents, Zwicker has long been a committed environmentalist. Jean is an avid gardener. Under Zwicker's guidance Sources was the first directory in Canada to be printed on all recycled stock. He and wife gave up automobile ownership in 1966; Zwicker has ridden a bicycle since.

In the Summer of 2000 he started a solo cross-Canada bicycle journey, off-road as much as possible on the Trans-Canada Trail, travelling 1,900km from Vancouver Island to Calgary. The Summer of 2001 he covered 4,000km from Calgary to Toronto. He plans to resume his cross-Canada tour from Toronto to St. Johns, Newfoundland when time permits.

Zwicker describes himself as "an atheist Christian humanist" and is a member of the Humanist Association of Canada. His hero is Bertrand Russell. He's a board member of both SIFT and of 9/11truth.org.

*The World Wide Web version of Sources is SOURCES SELECT® Online (www.sources.com). It's for the serious researcher, especially within the news media and particularly for the researcher seeking non-mainstream "alternative" human contacts (for instance, people in organizations normally overlooked or under-represented in the mainstream media).