CulpaVille
Last weekend I linked to an apparently unbylined bit in The Province wherein Mike 'Cookie-Dough' de Jong clarified (contradicted?) the comments of his Big Birdness on the matter of what will happen if we return to the PST in the Armagiddeon (i.e. post-referendum) Times.
Anyway.
In the original post I made a snide remark about the bit being unbylined because maybe the author didn't want to have his or her (but I was pretty sure it was a him) 'Access To Evil' curtailed by actually telling us what they know.
And I did do a little due diligence. Specifically, I became suspicious when it turned out that the link to the very political bit was buried in the The Province's 'Health' section.
Well....
A sharp-eyed reader with a very pointy spade did a little digging and discovered that the bit was actually a side-bar to a Mike Smyth column in the dead-tree version of that particular edition of The Province that was not appropriately attributed online.
Thus, the reader, who we thank profusely, concluded:
"...(T)here was no conspiracy in the nameless story. Just poor desking. Which is, of course, part of the conspiracy, right?..."
Man.
The things you learn when you have conversations with people that actually know stuff about stuff.
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And, as I mentioned to our most helpful reader, I do still read a lot of dead-tree versions of a whole lot of different newspapers. The Province, unfortunately, is no longer one of them.
Meanwhile, what appear to be well-meaning folks still want to argue that we have to cut more costs on the Group Home front (see comments)....I now, officially, throw up my hands and wish them well when they fork over their share of our 3,462nd balloon payment on the new roof atop The Marsmallow in 2019.
Oh, and finally.....There's 'No Crying In Podcasting!'...(cue Ep89's 42 minute mark).
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5 comments:
I love Hanlon's Razor, and I bring it up every time someone discusses "conspiracies." (Had a bit of an argument today with a 9/11 truther today and I practically shouted about the likelihood of such an incompetent group of Bushies coming up with anything as complex as the theory he was proposing - and keeping it quiet.)
Anywaze: a poli-sci professor of mine, lo those many years past, once said that the quality of your government can be measured by the quality of your journalism. A good group of journalists that keeps a government in check, helps to raise the government's game. And so, the incompetence of our own mainstream media in this province is reflected back at us by such a profoundly muddle-headed government. (I will agree that there are exceptions - Jeff Nagel, Lindsay Kines, Paul Willcocks, Andrew McLeod - but my point is not lost.)
I know that some will suggest that our media is in cahoots with the Libs. I'm firmly convinced that, though they surely share common worldviews, the proper cause of our current malaise is sheer incompetence. I think it's clear that my prof was right: journalistic incompetence begets governmental incompetence.
Or am I just too harsh?
But ... could sheer journalistic incompetence bring about such single-focus results always in favour of the known shysters??
Like, a bulls-eye every time?
Just askin'.
Very interesting, and very differnt, perspectives Tony and Mary.
I've got to have a really hard think about this before I respond
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Don't have to think much about Tony's 'exceptions' however...I very much agree with the inclusion of all of them.
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Readers with an interest in today's journalism should read the speech of McClatchy's DC bureau chief John Walcott, which he delivered in 2008 while accepting the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. Walcott made interesting statements about the world he experienced but the same faults trouble BC's journalists.
There are extracts and a link to the full text here:
http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2011/08/truth-is-not-subjective.html
Thanks Norman.
Post on this comin'.....
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