ProMediaVille
Robert Matas works for one of the biggest media conglomerates in this country whose name is something like BellGlobeTSNCTVRDSCHUMAndJustAboutEverythingElseThatIsn'tAsperSonMedia.....
So.
When he wants to check the veracity of a claim made by a political party, presumably Mr. Matas has the resources available to actually try and find someone who could give him an unbiased read of any and all facts associated with that claim.
Which, in my opinion at least, is presicely what Mr. Matas did NOT do when he published his latest 'Crosscheck' piece in the Globe and Mail yesterday (Apr 25th/09).
It was a piece which purported to check out the NDP's claim that 13% of British Columbia's greenhouse gas emissions are generated by unnecessary natural gas well flaring.
Now, I have no idea what the actual number is.
Which is why I was happy to have a look at Mr. Matas' piece yesterday which had a sub-header associated with it in the dead tree version that said:
"Oil and Gas Commission says flaring accounts for between 1 and 2 percent of greenhouse gases"
Wow.
That is quite a difference, eh?
But hang on a second....
The "Oil and Gas Commission"?
Oh you mean that internal Campbell Government House of Flack-Hackery set-up, at least in part, by a very fine fellow named Steve Simons with a $6 million dollar, taxpayer-funded, deflector-spin budget in its first year?
Now......
How would someone like myself, a lowly member of the Fever Swamps, know something as arcane as this?
Well, it turns out that the ridiculous budget of this ridiculous 'commission' is one of the things that made the coming co-optation of everything by the 'Great Manager To The Corporate Stars' crystal clear to me, quite some time ago.
As a result of this realization, I started up this blog to rail against it, and one of the first posts I ever wrote was about the "Six Million Dollar Made Man" in, get this, 2004!.
So, given all that, who do you think that Mr. Matas went to for his money quote yesterday in the spring of 2009?
You guessed it:
Steve Simons, (Oil and Gas Flack-Hackery) commission spokesman (yes spokesmodel, not engineer, not well head operator, greenhouse gase emissions expert), said yesterday he has often seen the figure of 13 per cent in the media to indicate the contribution of flaring to greenhouse gas emissions. He does not know where the figure comes from. "I've seen no way to recreate it. I do not understand where they got their information from," he said.
The most recent statistics show that 97 per cent of gas produced in British Columbia is sold and 3 per cent is wasted through flaring, Mr. Simons said.
So.
Here's a question for Mr. Matas.....
Did Mr. Simons actually produce any evidence/hard numbers to back up his claim?
I mean really, are we truly a Province that runs entirely on flack-hackery now?
Because, if we are we're doing a heckuva job Brownie....errrrrr....Stevie.....
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That six million dollar flack-hack man piece I wrote back in Dinosaur (at least in terms of Blog years) times was based on information from a story by the always digging Sean Holman....Interesting bit of sidebar in there is that one of the initial recipients of the Oil and Gas Commission Wurlitzer money was a most excellent communicator to flack-hacks everywhere named Robin Adair.....Ironically enough, Mr. Adair, who is now running as one of the Great Manager's candidates in Saanich South (flack hackery, apparently, rises to the top in the eyes of the Manager), has just been whacked up the side of the head by Mr. Holman's shovel once again, for something that I have termed 'Insider Lobbying'.
Hey....That gives me an idea....All you CorpMedia types out there who are reading this (and we've been told that you are, indeed out there).....Here's a tip that just might save you some embarassment (if you care about such things)....The next time you are getting ready to run a story that involves a member of the Great Manager's Flack-Hackery, make sure you head over to Public Eye and type their (ie. the flack-hack's) name in the little search box just below the top right corner....then hit 'return' and check out the items (often quite numerous) that pop-up.....You just might learn something (again, if you care about such things)....OK?
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