For the second time in less than a week, the Globe and Mail has had to change a headline on a story due to public outcry. The first was on March 29th when the headline read "Wildrose would nix funding for costly Oilers arena if elected, Smith says"
With "Wildrose wouldn't fund costly Oilers arena if elected, Smith says" as the first one was factually wrong as NO party has ever agreed to fund the arena and which makes it impossible to "nix" something that doesn't even exist; but both headlines claim that is what "Smith says". Odd that and even stranger that they made both changes without even acknowledging they did so.
And it happened again last night when the Globe removed the loaded word "childless" from their headline on the Gary Mason column, which itself is a total mess that starts off factually wrong in the very first paragraph by calling Amanda Wilkie a "party worker" ( see BC Blue for all you need to know on that and how either Redford or Stephen Carter were not telling the truth) and then makes the audacious claim that the tweet would not have been a story if Daniel Smith had not issued the press release: "Huh? There was no story until she made it one." which also happens to be the premise of Mason column and also happens to be dead wrong.
It was a story; I saw the tweet as soon as it was posted and I also saw the immediate response; both being re-tweeted by many PC supporters and the backlash by the majority, and when it became clear that this was a staff member from Premier Redford's office it became more than just another smear on twitter, it became a story, it became NEWS. I even blogged about here.
While facts and reality are not much in abundance in Mason's column, irony certainly is.
-Like Twitter busting the Globe and Mail about the headline on a story written about a tweet.
-Or a story that goes into 'gender politics' and asks if Smith were a man would we be even talking about this, itself uses 'childless' in the headline.
-Or that the author of a story about a tweet doesn't understand twitter ( if he did he would know why this became a story).
-Or that a story which says that the issue was kept alive and driven by politics is now keeping the issue alive by the story and has become news itself!
-Or that a story about Alberta politics is listed under British Columbia. Okay, that last one wasn't irony. Incompetence yes, irony no.
And speaking of irony: I love it when people use the word 'huh?' to try and express some kind of mental superiority and end up looking not so superior when they turn out to be totally wrong.
That is our professional media for you. I think Ill stick with the blogs.
Related:
The Globe and Mail headline the day Redford became Premier: "Alberta steps into the present"
A copy of the now deleted twitter account of Amanda Wilkie. Please note that this was not the first tweet that was suspect as there are a few doozies in there including:
- Wildrose supporters are
- “ignorant rednecks”
- “Bipolar Tories”
- “ethics & integrity aren’t part of
7 comments:
Of course the Toronto journalistic frauds are engaging in a propaganda campaign to support Redford. The fact that they’re both fork tongued liars and manipulators has a lot to do with it.
The article by Gary Mason shows how the MSM is being sidelined by the internet. It was tweeted, up on the blogs and debated, then the ungracious apology happened. Smith releases her reply and the election is over.
This all goes on with the media barely getting its toes wet on the subject.
If ever there was an example of a double-edged sword, it is this whole twittering craze. We saw Nenshi make effective use of it (and the rest of social media) to rally his "purple wave" of supporters, and help him get elected mayor of Calgary.
Stephen Carter (previously Nenshi's and Redford's leadership campaign manager) must have figured he could used twitter to get a third electoral win. We shall see. So far, it looks like the twitter sword is cutting the wrong way for Carter.
But I think one lesson in all this is that a campaign team needs ADULT supervision. Another good example was when some "clever" CPC campaign workers produced that video of a puffin pooping on Dion's shoulder.
Dave Rutherford talking about this this morning.
I'm not so sure that this twit has inflicted a mortal wound on her glorious leader's quest for power - the real Achilles heel of the PCs is the parasitic AESO.
I don't think WRA is pushing this looming electrical disaster enough. Bill 50, 36, 24 and 19 and their impact on Alberta residential and business ratepayers and landowners isn't being stressed enough in the media.
You can campaign on healthcare and education all you want, but when Bill 50 really kicks in we can look to Ontario as to how that will effect industry and jobs in this province. There won't be any tax base left to fund your kid's education or finance healthcare, because a good chunk of the population will be unemployed and still trying to pay the costs of electricity.
In response to Anonymous' last post: The AESO debacle is the elephant in the room - Promises of more clinics, education subsidies, tax credits, dividends and so forth are cleverly designed to distract the gullible and ever short-sighted electorate.
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