ThePoliticsOfDestructionAreSteveVille
Just in case you missed it in all the kerfuffle over the release of the trailer for 'SmearGate3, The Justining', here is the actual lede from the Barrie Advance story under Laurie Watt's byline:
The Prime Minister’s office sent information yesterday to The Advance regarding a money-losing speech Liberal leader Justin Trudeau made in Barrie in 2007.
On Monday, PMO communications officer Erica Meekes sent The Advance details of an engagement that netted Trudeau a $10,000 fee, but left Georgian College with a $4,118 shortfall. The information was sent via email with the caveat it be referred to as coming from a “source,” not the PMO, when used.
“As a follow-up to the growing controversy over the weekend on Justin Trudeau charging charities for his speaking services, I have enclosed further materials that demonstrate the scope of this practice, cost on the organizations, and in many cases, poor outcomes and large deficits as a result of his speaking tour,” the email stated. “As discussed, these materials are provided to you on background, and should be attributed to a ‘source.’”
The material included invoices, a promotional poster and an accommodation receipt for the Toronto Four Seasons. Meekes wrote, “To be fair, there is an in-house yoga studio at the Four Seasons!”
When asked in a telephone interview why Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office was sending out unsolicited documentation, Meekes said the PMO routinely reaches out to the media...
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Now.
The real story in all of this is in that last line of the lede, above.
Because it explains the mechanism by which all this toxic, infectious crap has been inserted into pretty much every cavity and crevice of our collective body politic.
And once you know the mechanism by which an army of vile, sleaze-ridden infectious agents attack?
Well....
With that knowledge in hand you can very easily figure out how to effectively neutralize them before they can successfully smear again (see Ignatieff, M and Dion, S for the first two smearing).
And if every media outlet and reporter were to follow the Barrie Advance's and Laurie Watt's miracle drug-type lead the politics of the totally destructive disease vectors that are killing honest discourse in this country would be stopped, like, dead.
Immediately and forever after.
OK?
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Mr. Willcocks weighs in with a little more nuance, sans political pandemic metaphors....here.
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2 comments:
It is odd that we are celebrating Laurie Watt for acting like a journalist. (More power to her.)
My operating theory as a reporter was that the job was to find out things that were important or interesting and share them with readers as quickly as possible. Which meant, among other things, that, as a rule, when people offered off-the-record information it was better to just say no thanks. If I couldn't report it, it wasn't useful. (There are exceptions.)
Reporting, done right, is a trust. You're there on behalf of other people to get answers and provide information to the best of your ability. It should be serious work.
Laurie Watt did us proud.
Just a thought, but where did the PMO get this info on charities' spending? They didn't illegally use info from Revenue Canada? Inquiring minds want to know.
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