D-Day coloured by annoying journalism
It was called “the cane routine” by the man who invented it  James Curley, a politician so colourful his career was fictionalized in the novel The Last Hurrah. Facing a tight re-election race as a Boston alderman in 1910, Curley hired a white-haired actor to appear at his rallies posing as a Civil War […]
On the road again, eh?
Pulitzer Prize-winner Walter Duranty, a reporter in Soviet Russia, annoyed fellow correspondents by filing stories that conspicuously quoted “conversations overheard in the streetcars of Moscow.” Duranty neither spoke Russian nor took the streetcar; he travelled by chauffeured limousine. Duranty died in 1957, but the streetcars-of-Moscow type of journalism rolls on. I once worked with a […]
Why should Election No. 38 be any different?
Canadians like their elections the way they like their hockey — smash and dash, with lots of hard checking. In campaigning, as in hockey, the point is to win. Media coverage is often raw and unkind. If you want uplifting news, read a church bulletin; everyone else is looking for a good scrap. Toronto Star […]
Media execs think Canadians have the attention of 14-year-olds
What would happen if, the night of a leaders’ debate, an imprisoned Martha Stewart incited a jailhouse riot? Which story would lead the nation’s newscasts? What if, on election night, Jennifer Lopez’s plane went missing? And Ben Affleck eloped with his cleaning lady? And Paris Hilton had Jacko’s baby? What then? Would the news director’s […]
Ipsos-Reid can spot a headline at a hundred paces
Roy Andrews, an explorer whose true life adventures inspired Indiana Jones, discovered while travelling through Mongolia in 1920 that villagers were mesmerized by his binoculars. Seeing the unseen provoked awe and wonder. In our century, pollsters inspire wonder with equally miraculous powers of perception — and none more so than Ipsos-Reid, the firm that can […]
Martin’s trip D.C. gets too much media hype for me
Campaigning near Elliot Lake, Ont., in 1949, Lester Pearson tried to impress a crowd by recounting his diplomatic exploits at a NATO conference in Washington. Pearson’s listeners fell silent. “That was a fine thing you did,” one piped up, “but it won’t help you much around here if you don’t get us a new post […]
Media coverage: steal, evade, weep, heal and triumph
In 1982 as a junior reporter on the courthouse beat, I once saw a judge in Brandon, Man., jail a man for the winter for stealing a wristwatch at Kresge’s. Nobody wept over the thief’s motive; we figured he wanted a free Timex. The only moral of the story was: don’t get caught stealing in […]
Journalists shouldn’t forecast
Nobody loves a forecaster. Stalin once ordered the arrest of a Soviet radio weatherman for his inability to predict rain or shine. None dared tell the generalissimo what every climatologist knows — long-range forecasting is 100 per cent fiction intended mainly as entertainment. That goes for election forecasting, too. But media, like the weather forecasters […]
Media drive-by shooting on PM
CBC TV journalist Julie Van Dusen, speaking on a radio panel, concluded: “People can see the government is kind of running scared and that this sponsorship scandal has totally put them in a vice-grip and painted them into a corner.” Mixed metaphors aside, media skepticism is snowballing like a house on fire. After 18 weeks […]
Ottawa’s thrifty (wink, wink)
In 1937 an English physicist, Reginald Jones, made a curious find. He discovered a tiny strip of aluminum triggered a ‘blip’ on radar. Jones theorized if one piece of tin foil confused detectors, a million might shut down an entire system. Putting the theory to the test, in July 1943 Allied bombers raided Hamburg by […]
