Page one of the TandT has the headline “Report touts shale gas”. It is a hymn of praise to shale gas prepared by (surprise, surprise) the New Brunswick Business Council. It is reported in great detail. Of course, being the professional journalists that the TandT people are, they also
Continue readingAuthor: Graeme Decarie
The Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: June 10: N.B. won’t drop front licence plate"
Wow! Talk about a game changer! How do you like them apples, Mr. Irving? You’ll need to get a front licence plate – if you ever come back to live in New Brunswick. Take that from the gutsiest government we’ve ever seen. What half-wit assignment editor ever thought this was
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: June 9: What to do?
There is a reader’s comment at the bottom of yesterday’s post. It asks what we should do to stop Shale gas exploration. First – can it be stopped? Yes, it can be stopped. It has been stopped, even turned back after it began, in parts of the US and Canada
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: June 8: Words, words, words….
Us human types are forever using words we don’t understand – and, worse, we speak them to other people who don’t understand them either, but whose misunderstanding is a different one from hours.. And so we get into hopeless shouting messages so meaningless that one of us could be speaking
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: June 7: It’s hard to read this crap every day….
I’ve just noticed that Donald Savoie, at the head of his columns, is referred to as a policy expert. As a description. that is absurd. They never referred to Dr. Cleary as a medical expert. In fact, no critic of shale gas or of the Irvings, has ever been referred
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: June 6: police hold seminar on cargo thefts; council to vote on land purchase….
..and even more of the news YOU need to know. On p. 1. A Moncton man is happy with his job in film… Oh, and Donald Savoie says “Province must put shoulder to the wheel”. My, that man has a gift for le mot juste and the original, colourful phrase. I
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 5: special edition – by idiots – for idiots…
Let’s start with the editorial. Predictably, it’s a hymn of praise to the Native “firm” which SWN has contracted to check its safety procedures in fracking. Obviously, these are eight people of unusual insight. They can tell without ever having met them that the many, many thousands of New Brunswickers who
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: June 4: the fix is in….down and dirty
Lead story – “Policy expert calls for debate” The expert is Donald Savoie who never met an Irving or an fossil fuel executive he didn’t like. He is writing a special four-part series, a challenge for the looming crisis (as opposed to an unlooming one) that threatens New Brunswick. He
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: June 3: A very mixed bag…
Just back from a couple of days in PEI. Quite a revelation. I lived there for three years in my early teaching days – and hated it. This time, as I drove along its roads, I was quite taken by the high standard maintenance of its houses and grounds. Even
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: June 1: Back in the gutter again…
Whoever writes the editorials for the TandT wrote a sort of respectable one yesterday. It was really propaganda for SWN; and it was written to stir up fear and hatred of shale gas progesters. But at least it wasn’t the real down and dirty stuff that the editorials usually are.
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 31: Some good news….
When, a week ago, I saw Michael Sullivan’s first op ed column, I thought – and said – it was a disaster. It tried to define him as a conservative – but showed no understanding of what conservative (or liberal) means. It also gave bizarre examples of conservative. For example,
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 30: Sign it, you miserable wretch!
For many years, I did editorials on radio. I did not squeak in a high voice in with a heavy Pakistani accent to disguise my voice. I occasionally did one on TV. Again, no disguised voice. Nor did I wear a Ku Klux Klan sheet to hide my identity. And in
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 29: Blog post no. 1,000…
…And I had no idea what I was getting into. The TandT is its normal self, with a big first page photo of a cat up for adoption, and a big story how it’s still possible to rent movies. Oh, and shale gas representatives cancelled a meeting with a town council
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May28: "Metro employers tolerant of tattoos"
That’s front page news for the Irving Press. I cannot think of any serious, half-serious, or even comic newspaper carrying such a story on any page. But the Irving Press does this routinely. Why? It wants you to be trivial, to be uninformed, to be uncaring. That makes things so
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 27: poisoned words
Journalists can seem to be very sloppy in their use of words. Sometimes, it’s because there are lots of words they think they understand – but don’t. But it can be also part of a campaign to denigrate some groups by referring to them with a chosen word, thereby making it a sort
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 25: Straight As for the columnists
Belliveau, Norbert, Brent Mazerolle and Gwynne Dyer all did themselves proud today. With the exception of the editorial itself, the editorial and op ed page would do proud to any newspaper. Gwynne Dyer has a chilling but important column on rates of rape in Africa, and in the US army.
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 24: The Press as Pimp
Oh, first, let me begin with an apology. Yesterday, I said that Harper would soon become chair of an international commission on environmental protection of the Arctic. I was wrong. A Canadian will become chair. (That Canadian will be chosen by Harper – so it’s much the same as him
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 23: All hail Robert Goguen!
Yesterday, I received in my mailbox a tabloid sized, eight page newspaper printed on rather expensive paper. It purported to come from Robert Goguen, our Conservative MP. In fact, it was obviously put together for all Conservative MPs by a PR firm, then customized for each riding. The first page
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May22:I’m late in starting this because….
…I read my copy of the Times and Transcript early this morning. And at the end, I thought, “what can I say?” There are three ways to control people. One is to make them scared as hell. Once they’re sufficiently scared, a government can do anything under the guise of protecting
Continue readingThe Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad: May 21: Is Norbert a communist?
He may not be. It may just seem that way as a result of his sloppy use of words. (In a minor example today, he used the ugly word “gotten” as the past tense for “to get”. In fact, gotten is an American slang word that has found its way into
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