I hesitate to start this, for fear of luring Olympic-worshiping bores out of their rec-rooms, but US bloggers had a field day with the perfectly hideous opening ceremony in Vancouver. My favorite was Heather Havrilesky in Salon.com, Moneyquotes: Some dramatic photography paired with soaring music and a lot of melodramatic prose. "Here, where a swerving coastline submits to waves of glacial peaks, where the mapping of the Western world came to an end, the discovery yet begins anew!" Praise Jesus! Who writes this stuff? Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams perform the lamest song since that thing they play at the end of...

17 February, 2010
Contrarian reader Kirby McVicar responds to our post on MLAs’ pay and public begrudgery:
The question that springs to my mind is: “Who are you and what have you done with Parker Donham?" [caption id="attachment_4485" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Resigned MLA Richard Hurlburt"]Resigned MLA<BR>Richard Hurlburt[/caption] What I hear you say is, "Well, MLA’s only stole a little bit, and it's the media’s and the public's fault for not providing adequate salary." Are you serious? What does this line of thinking say to all the honest MLA’s who did not steal from the public purse: "You missed out on an opportunity we, the public and the media, set up for you. How stupid of you!" I agree that politicians need an independent body to set remuneration policy that is binding, but this issue should not be confused with theft from the public purse. Where is the CBC Parker, from the "Harry and Parker Show" who would have spent 15 minutes railing against such a rationale? Has the election of an NDP government outed you?
I was out of the country, but wasn't it a Tory MLA who resigned? After the jump, more reader reaction.
17 February, 2010

A friend asked recently why I had not written about the MLA expenses flap, and I confessed that I have trouble summoning much outrage over the issue. While I admire Brian Flinn's dogged pursuit of the facts in AllNovaScotia.com, I fear that the public and the media are almost as much to blame for the problem as our lawmakers. The public nurses an attitude of begrudgery toward politicians, and the media fans these embers at every opportunity. This is not our most attractive quality, and it makes it almost impossible for MLAs — who by definition must set their own salaries...

15 February, 2010
What's up with AllNovaScotia's curious blind spot for Cape Breton Regional Municipality Mayor John Morgan? Like many others, AllNS's editorialists took umbrage when the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society charged lawyer Morgan with professional misconduct for accusing Supreme Justice John Murphy, and Nova Scotia judges in general, of political bias in the performance of their duties. An AllNS editorial argued that it was dangerous and wrong to muzzle political speech by a politician who also happens to be a lawyer. So far, so reasonable. The odd thing is that the usually reliable news service seems to be letting its editorial passion slop over into its news columns. AllNS news stories have persistently misrepresented the comments that got Morgan in trouble. Instead of quoting or characterizing Morgan's original words, AllNS quotes only the sanitized version Morgan came up with after he got in hot water. The background is here, but in short, Morgan pretends he merely said Nova Scotia judges were not tree-shakers; in reality, he went on for paragraphs alleging political bias by the judge who first rejected his grandstanding constitutional claim for higher equalization payments — a lawsuit that was ultimately rejected by every judge who reviewed it, up to and including the Supreme Court of Canada.
13 February, 2010

CBC newsmen Rob Gordon and Craig Paisley left Halifax for Haiti aboard HMCS Athabaskan January 14, but returned home Friday without setting foot on the island. It seems the journalists were confined to the warship because their required training for operating in dangerous environments was not up to date. Both men had received the five-day course, provided by U.K.-based AKE Integrated Risk Solutions, before traveling to Afghanistan several years ago, but their accreditation has expired. As a result, CBC brass ordered the men not to leave the ship. "It's analogous to a driver's licence," said CBC's Atlantic Regional Director Andrew Cochran. "If you...

31 January, 2010

University of Wisconsin Journalism Professor Stephen J. A. Ward, who was founding chair of the Canadian Association of Journalists' ethics advisory committee, offers sensible guidelines for coverage of emotional stories like the Haitian earthquake [previous discussion here, here, and here]: The best disaster journalism is engaged and objectively tested journalism. Journalism based only on emotion can be incorrect or manipulated. Journalism based only on a studied neutrality is not only an inhuman attitude toward a disaster. It fails to tell the full story. A journalism of disasters is not a journalism of Olympian detachment. It is not a journalism fixated on stimulating...

27 January, 2010

Contrarian reader Miles Tompkins: I would like to see that little kid ask Anderson Cooper where the hell he's been for the past 20 years....

25 January, 2010

Cliff White defends Ormiston: I happened to catch both the clip of Ormiston holding the hand of, and then carrying, the little boy, and the one of  Cooper tousling the head of another. I didn't think there was any comparison. I was moved by the first and disgusted by the second. Watching Ormiston's reports over the last week or so, it's obvious she has been deeply affected by what she's seeing and reporting on. Her actions conveyed a real human warmth. It's not such a bad thing for viewers to occasionally see that reporters are not just automatons, but  are real people...

25 January, 2010

Herald columnist Jim Meek takes a shot at CBC reporter Susan Ormiston: In one story, the viewer was treated to moving pictures of CBC-TV reporter Susan Ormiston, who held the hand of a small Haitian child as they walked through a devastated, crowded neighbourhood. Ms. Ormiston later collected the tired child into her own tender arms, and on they marched. The made-for-TV pictures provided proof of Ms. Ormiston’s compassion, and I did wonder for a moment if the reporter or the youngster’s family was the intended focus of the story. I didn't see the piece in question, and I winced to see Ormiston...

24 January, 2010
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