J-school prof Ivor Shapiro's complaint that Canadian sports reporters uncritically promoted a we-was-robbed version of  the Canada-US Women's Olympic soccer final provoked Contrarian readers to provide contrary examples, and a testy chinwag amount tweeting Halifax journos (viz.:  @pdmcleod, @bbhorne). Ruth Davenport, who knows a little about news, thinks he jumped the gun: Shapiro’s beef stuck in my craw for the same reason any unfounded assertion of laziness or incompetence sticks in my craw: it’s unfounded. He was griping about a lack of reporting that was patently in evidence – he just didn’t bother to look.  Even if those particular pieces hadn’t been published...

09 August, 2012

Journalism prof Ivor Shapiro, writing on the website of the Canadian Journalism Project, thinks news reports of the Canada-US women's football semi-final, fell short of the standard required to condemn the much maligned ref. Was the ref biased? Of course the Canadian players and supporters thought so, but for a reporter, the best way — the professional way — to address a conflict is not to add to the yelling and bawling but instead, to show the evidence. Where was the tick-tock — the chronological list of tough calls the ref made (or didn’t make) through the match, for and against the Canadians? Where were...

07 August, 2012