22 May Caught in a falsehood, Herald lies again. And again.

A story by Judy Myrden in Friday’s Chronicle-Herald falsely conflated the cost of producing the NDP Government’s new Electricity Plan with the cost of a Pictou County media briefing and announcement of the plan. The effect was to overstate the cost of the news conference by four times.

Called on the falsehood, the paper repeats it in today’s lead story, also written by Myrden. Myrden then compounds this dishonesty by falsely accusing Premier Darrell Dexter’s chief of staff, Dan O’Connor, of denying he had anonymously posted comments to the Herald’s website pointing out the paper’s misrepresentation.

O’Connor told Contrarian Saturday morning that Myrden called him Friday and asked what his email address was. O’Connor gave her his government address (the same one he used to register on the Herald website under the pseudonym “O’Dempsey”). O’Connor said he did not think the request unusual, because he also has an NDP caucus email address, and emails to him sometimes go astray.

Myrden then asked if O’Connor had sent the paper any emails Friday, O’Connor answered truthfully that he had not. He thought for a moment, and repeated, “No.” The call ended.

“Two minutes later,” O’Connor said Saturday, “Myrden called me back and asked if I had posted anything to the Herald website. I said yes.”

If you have seen today’s paper, you will know the editors turned most of the front page over to a Myrden story falsely accusing O’Connor of twice denying he had posted comments to the paper’s website.

We can all agree that O’Connor showed terrible judgment posting pseudonymously. At least he ‘fessed up. Consider the Herald’s ethics: Caught in a lie, the paper repeated the lie, then fabricated another.

An interesting footnote is that the paper’s website never published O’Connor’s comments. It’s against the paper’s policy to post comments that impugn its reporters’ integrity. How ironic.