Tag: journamalism

Every year or two I find a reason to point to Declan’s post on the Media Failure Two-Step. (And actually I could find a reason much more often than that.) To review, the Two-Step looks like this: Step 1) Cause something (bad) to happen through your reporting. Step 2) Report on this (bad) thing from the perspective of an innocent bystander. And then you just repeat indefinitely. Our latest example? With the Globe and Mail leading the charge, since yesterday many in the media have been having a great old time implying that a Quebec politician who has previously been involved with the BQ is somehow unfit for her position as an interim leader for the NDP. That in turn would imply that about half the voters of Quebec are illegitimate participants in the democratic process until they somehow redeem themselves to the satisfaction of the Globe’s editorial board. And in case it isn’t obvious, deserting the BQ in droves to vote for the NDP isn’t sufficient for the purpose. And today, right on cue, we have John Ibbitson lamenting the fact that Quebec has become politically isolated from the rest of Canada. He cites a number of reasons for…

A favourite strategy of the Conservatives is to deflect discussion of the issues and instead try to make it look as though even an opponent’s participation in the conversation is somehow illegitimate. The best example was the focus on Michael Ignatieff’s years abroad but it’s a ploy they’ll use whenever the opportunity presents itself. It’s interesting to see the Globe and Mail doing it’s part by blasting the news that interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel was a member of the BQ for several years — as if it was a closely guarded secret that somehow implies something deeply significant. And it will be equally interesting to see how many other media players are quite happy to reinforce the frame while indulging in their favourite game: speculating about all the possible negative consequences for the opposition. It must be a slow news day. Of course, as Greg Fingas points out, the force of this shocking revelation would be somewhat blunted by the fact that prior to 2006, Turmel was deeply involved in NDP politics over a much longer period. So while the Globe story provides a brief history of her career with the PSAC, her previous association with the NDP is…

Yesterday the Calgary Herald published the kind of story that’s become all too familiar in Canada in recent years. This time it involves a scientist working for the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Dr. Kristi Miller heads up a project created to investigate the abrupt decrease in the size of salmon stocks on the west coast and she made a discovery significant enough that when her findings were published in Science this past January, the magazine contacted over 7,400 journalists around the world to draw it to their attention. And it worked — according to the Herald "major media outlets were soon lining up to speak with Miller." And the next clause in that sentence is: but the Privy Council Office said no to the interviews. At that point the government stepped in and issued a muzzle order. The Privy Council Office also nixed a Fisheries Department news release about Miller’s study, saying the release "was not very good, focused on salmon dying and not on the new science aspect," according to documents obtained by Postmedia News under the Access to Information Act. So the dying salmon are important enough to justify a $6 million project but not important…

I think it’s safe to add this one to the list of lies that refuse to die: that Stephen Harper confounded his critics on the left by showing himself willing to embrace Keynesian economics and use government funds to stimulate the economy during an economic downturn. Today it’s Bruce Anderson in the Globe and Mail. Mr. Harper spent massively during the recession — hard to square with the idea that he’s a fiscal radical. As if Harper surveyed the situation, determined that stimulus was the right thing to do and got down to business to do it. There is no acknowledgement in this column that the economic statement that led to the creation of the (short-lived) Liberal-NDP coalition — and the controversial prorogation of parliament in late 2008 — made no mention of economic stimulus and barely acknowledged the recession. The fact that the Economic! Action! Plan! was originally born under duress keeps getting written out of the story. A few months ago it was this same paper’s editorial board indulging in historical revisionism in support of the claim that Harper’s Conservatives could be counted on to provide principled and competent economic leadership. Here it’s in support of the thesis…

Sun Media pulls out of press council, citing issues with political correctness Sun Media is pulling out of the Ontario Press Council, saying it can’t adhere to the media watchdog’s "politically correct" standards. Glenn Garnett, vice-president of editorial at Sun Media, sent a letter this week saying that effective immediately the company’s newspapers are withdrawing their membership. … Garnett writes that Sun Media can’t be "bound by the interpretations" of its competitors on its journalistic obligations and objectives. I’m having a little difficulty seeing how Sun Media was "bound" by anything. This is from the the Press Council’s About page: A Press Council adjudication represents the collective opinion of a newspaper’s conduct shared by people from a broad cross-section of Ontario society and from the newspaper field. It is an opinion that the newspaper undertakes to publish, not an order that the newspaper must obey. So the burden that membership imposes is that the member newspaper agrees to report it when that broad cross-section agrees with a complaint registered about the newspaper’s reporting. So what are we talking about? A paragraph or two?…