The Sixth W

WhatComesAfterWhy?
JournalismVille


OK, here goes........

Last night a comment attached to this post took me to task for speculating that there might have been a political 'conspiracy'* afoot regarding the source of the information that formed the core of a Vancouver Sun story earlier this week which indicated that a potential witness in the Air India inquiry, Dashan Singh Bains, is the father-in-law of Liberal Member of Parliament Navdeep Bains.

(this is a big story in Canada at the moment for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, earlier this week referred to it when he tried to slag the opposition Liberal party for being soft on terrorism)

The comment in question, which I posted in full here, was apparently from reporter Kim Bolan, who wrote the original Bains/Saini piece that appeared in the Vancouver Sun.

The comment made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that the source of the information was not the police, but rather that it came from 'Sikh community contacts'. The commenter also stated this information was obtained very recently.

The comment and commenter both appeared to be legitimate, but, due to the lack of link or Email address associated with it, I couldn't be absolutely sure.

As a result, I contacted Ms. Bolan directly through her Pacific Newspaper Group Email account first to thank her for the comment and then to ask her a follow-up question that I considered to be crucial in attempting to lay the matter to rest, one way or the other.

Specifically, I asked her if she made the original enquiries about Mr. Saini or if it was the other way around.

In other words, was Ms. Bolan digging to get the information or was it offered up out of the blue?

I believe that this is a critical point because if it was Ms. Bolan that initiated the query then it is very likely that the story emerged as a result of a journalist following her nose with the '5 W's as her guide (which is a little cluster of questions to live by that so many of her colleagues seem to have forgotten or, worse, may never learned). If, instead, it was the 'contacts' that offered-up the info., unprodded, well, that would be a whole different story altogether.

To her great credit Ms. Bolan, without divulging any sources, was good enough to answer my follow-up question directly.

In a nutshell, she said it was she who initiated the proceedings by asking an Ontario contact about the whereabouts of Mr. Saini as she does this to keep track of folks that have been involved in the Air India case, and the closely related cases of the shootings of a local newspaper publisher, Tara Singh Hayer, in 1988 and 1998 (Mr. Hayer very publicly stated that one of the accused in the original Air India trial had told him that he had been involved in the fatal bomb plot; the second shooting of Mr. Hayer was fatal) .

(At this point I should interject to make it clear that Ms. Bolan has been covering all of these cases since the beginning, both as a reporter for the Sun and as an author of a book on the subject.)

In her Email reply to me, Ms. Bolan then want on to state that it was only after she had made her initial enquiry that the source then mentioned that Mr. Saini was the father-in-law of Mr. Bains, which she didn't already know at the time and which she found interesting (and, as she stated in the original comment, 'relevant', especially after Mr. Bains confirmed it).

Now, you may want to question the motives of the 'source' in divulging that information but, no matter how you slice it, I believe that Ms. Bolan has provided us with a reasonable explanation regarding the Fifth 'W'.

In other words, she has made it pretty clear 'why' she decided to write the story now.

As for me, I think I have now been given an answer to the lesser known Sixth 'W' which is 'how' (Ms. Bolan received her information).

Thus, I can only conclude that there was no pre-determined conspiracy afoot here.

OK?


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*I didn't actually use the term 'conspiracy' originally but, admittedly, I wasn't far from the giving my shiny new hat from the good folks from Alcan a try. I know a lot of folks are going to take a run at me now, especially since the federal Liberals are now asking the same questions I started asking on Wednesday, but hey, I asked Ms. Bolan directly and she answered me, straight-up. In my books, if the person is honourable, and I personally have no reason to believe that Ms. Bolan is not, that is all one can do, unless other evidence to the contrary surfaces subsequently. So, if somebody out there has the evidence in hand, let fly.
Finally, please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting in this post that I don't still have reservations about other comments and conclusions in Ms. Bolan's story, or about another related story that has received a lot of play, it's just that the thing that I made a fuss about originally was 'how' Ms. Bolan obtained the Bains/Saini connection info in the first place. Thus, that is what I have tried my best to get to the bottom of here.

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