Tagged: John Ibbitson
Harper’s bucket defence of illegal robocalls
The Harper government has mounted a classic bucket defence* against charges it illegally steered opposition voters to faraway, fake polling stations in a deliberate attempt to discourage them from voting. Their defenders say: 1. Nothing serious happened. 2. It happened to us too. 3. There’s no proof we did it. 4. In fact, it was the Liberals who did it. 5. The calls didn’t work anyway. 6. Voters don’t care about it. 7. It’ll blow over in a day or two.
Some of this commentary is just the predictable party-line pandering from pro-Harper media, but a Globe and Mail story purporting to show that the robocalls failed to reduce voter turnout rests on a surprising abuse of logic and statistical analysis.
Globe reporter Éric Grenier compared ridings with robocall allegations with ridings that had none. He found slightly higher voter turnout in robocall ridings. He also found that turnout in those ridings had increased more over the 2008 federal election than it had in non-robocall ridings
From this Grenier concluded that the robocalls “failed miserably” (the words of the headline) and that “Turnout was not much affected” (his own words). His data justifies neither conclusion. The turnout-suppressing impact of the robocalls may simply have been overwhelmed by one or more turnout-enhancing factors, such as what he acknowledges were tighter contests in the robocall ridings, or keener interest in what voters saw as a landmark election. The pertinent question is not whether voter turnout was higher or lower than other ridings or previous elections, but whether it would have been higher still without the robocall campaign.
That question—what would turnout have been without the robocall campaign?—is counterfactual and therefore not susceptible to proof. The flaw in Grenier’s reasoning is so basic and so obvious, it’s a wonder no editor caught it.** Given the “failed miserably” headline, however, it’s perhaps more likely his editors were egging him on.
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* The bucket defence, a Paul Wells or possibly George Will coinage, is akin to Freud’s Kettle Defence. That’s when a neighbor returns a borrowed kettle with a hole in it. Confronted, the neighbor responds, “The hole was there when you lent it to me. I never borrowed the kettle. Besides, I returned it in perfect condition.”
** Grenier backs off his claim that “turnout was not much affected” ever so slightly in this subsequent blog post.
Coast news editor on anonymous sources
Tim Bousquet’s rules for using anonymous sources:
- The information gained through granting anonymity is not otherwise available. Or, put another way, granting anonymity is not a shortcut to doing the hard work of gathering solid information and good reporting.
- The anonymous source must have something to lose, should anonymity not be given: loss of a job, etc.
- Using an anonymous source must result in some positive public good. “Spinning” someone’s view is not a positive public good.
Bousquet adds:
When I was a reporter at a daily in the states, I had a publisher who wouldn’t allow me to use anonymous sources at all. At the time, I felt that policy unduly constrained me, but I soon discovered it made me a better reporter: I couldn’t just put any old shit out there, I had to document everything, peg every assertion to a named source or document, etc. Mostly, as anonymity is used today by much of the press, it’s an excuse for lazy reporting.
Contrarian reader Stan Jones also weighs in on Ibbitson’s practice of letting Harper operatives issue dubious and partisan talking points without identifying themselves:
I have always thought Ibbitson’s main role was to transcribe whatever was the day’s conservative talking point into grammatical English. So I never read him, preferring to go directly to the source for my daily dose of nonsense.
Taking dictation from the PMO
An end of year column by the Globe’s John Ibbitson proclaims Harper’s prorogation of Parliament “a travesty… [but] devilishly clever.”
There’s an old maxim that no one ever hears what comes before the “but.” True to form, the thrust of Ibbitson’s column is to promote admiration for Harper’s cleverness, not mild regret at his abasement of transparency, accountability, and parliamentary supremacy – things the right once pretended to care about. Quote:
A senior government official, speaking on background, insisted that calculations concerning the Afghan detainees controversy played no part in the decision.
Rather, said the official, the government wanted to give itself time and breathing room to think through how to manage the economy as it emerges from recession and to put in place a long-term strategy for balancing the budget.
What conceivable reason would Ibbitson have for granting some Harper functionary anonymity from which to launch this risible proposition? The spinner contributes no novel facts or otherwise unobtainable information – merely a partisan talking point. Ibbitson doesn’t even pretend his source’s job would be at risk if his identity were revealed.
A columnist for the national newspaper should not be taking dictation from the PMO.
