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AdScam

September 11th, 2008

From the fairness in journalism file, today’s Waterloo Region Record (when did it change from K-W Record?) has the following front page:

Note the headline: In… & Out?

Oh, one thinks, must be something about the Conservatives In and Out – ahem – financing scandal. But a closer look and it’s two completely unrelated stories in one, tied nicely by a misleading headline clearly designed to prompt the casual reader, and studious one for that matter, to think of the Liberal Party talking point.

Stephen Harper moved to snuff out two potential fires yesterday by abandoning his opposition to include the Green party’s Elizabeth May from the leaders debates and setting a firm deadline for pulling troops out of Afghanistan.

The Conservative leader’s astonishing about-face on May in the debate came a mere 30 minutes after NDP Leader Jack Layton broke their common front by reversing his own opposition to Greens in the debate.

That’s right, In & Out applies to Elizabeth May and the troops in Afghanistan respectively. But the story itself is no less biased as the lead paragraphs above show. It’s just bad journalism, no different than if I named this post, say AdScam, even though it has nothing to do with adscam. 

Perhaps in the future I will run a nice story on Shawnigan, and Watergate, and call it Shawanigate.

bad journalism

  1. Kyoto Cowboy
    September 11th, 2008 at 11:31 | #1

    Why are not columnists who talk about the so called In and Out scandal: reporting on this Out and IN scandal story and demanding an investigation into these sordid matters? In the OUT and IN Scandal otherwise known as Adscam, money was taken OUT of the federal government treasury and put IN some Liberal pockets, millions of dollars of taxpayers money unlike the CPC’s who at least were transferring their own money from account to account.

  2. pyper
    September 11th, 2008 at 11:46 | #2

    Would you please contact me directly? We are looking for assistance with a national get out and vote campaign and could use your help.
    Many thanks,
    Pyper
    punitt at rogers dot com

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