No News Is......

.....No News?

CrimeOfTheCentury
LedgeVille

Apparently there was indeed a pretrial court appearance yesterday in Victoria by David Basi and Robert Virk involving the BC Rail/Ledge Raid bribery case.

This is no small potatoes because it reaches into the highest corridors of power and is of vital interest to all British Columbians.

Not unexpectedly, our friend BC Mary was surprised that this event did not warrant a story in her local newspaper, the CanWest-0wned Victoria Times Colonist.

So Mary, ever the citizen journalist, wrote the editor of the paper, Lucinda Chodan, asking why.

The following is the reply that Mary is reporting that she received from Ms. Chodan:

Subject: Re: Basi, Virk, Basi in court yesterday?

Dear Ms. Mary:

There was indeed a pretrial appearance by Basi, Virk et al yesterday. Our
reporter staffed the appearance, and nothing of note happened. As is the
case in such instances, the reporter consulted with his editor and did not
write a story. When there is news, we plan to report it.

Sincerely,
Lucinda Chodan
Editor-in-Chief
Victoria Times Colonist
2621 Douglas St.
Victoria, B.C. V8T 4M2


Fair enough. Not newsworthy Ms. Chodan has decided.

Thus, I decided to check and see what some of the other 'local' stories were that Ms. Chodan's team of editors and reporters did decide were 'news' that made it impossible for them to fit in anything on the Basi/Virk trial.

The following is a partial list from the TC Website for Sept 19/06:

First the much more important 'crime' story
Police record considerable success in bait-bike effort

Of course, there is also the much, much more important local story with international implications
UVic endowment will allow Ukrainian studies program to continue

And finally, there is the much more mostest important story that all of humanity must know about.
Stick 'Em Up: Self-defence course teaches cane users how to fend off attackers


Very, very, newsworthy indeed.

Sheesh.

______
Update Sept23/06: Gladly editted at BC Mary's request to remove one of the stories from the 'mucho importanto' trivial list (see our exchange in the comments).

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