Apr 22, 2005
I had intended to listen to Paul Martin's speech to the nation last night, but I was engrossed in writing my newsletter and didn't remember to swicth from the Simpsons until half way through Gilles Duceppe's rebuttal. Jack Layton, lowest on the totem pole, would follow. Neither speaker, unformtunately, gave me any understanding of the substance of Martin's remarks.
I figure, though, that Martin must have done a credible job. How do I know this? Because coverage of his speech in the media has been minimal - something that should be surprising, given that it was a rare address to the nation. CTV coverage that evening focused, not surprisingly, on the rebuttals. On CBC this morning the coverage of the speech seemed to consist almost entirely of baseball coverage (no, I don't get the connection, but that's what they did - they went to a baseball stadium and interviewed probably the one group of people in the country who could not possibly have seen the address). The local newsrag, the Times & Tanscript, ran a below the fold article (today's big headline: Dieppe may do something about traffic) in which the first four paragraphs asserted (without evidence) that "NBers were 'unimpressed'" and the criticisms of a PR consultant from Toronto.
And so I'm left scratching my head. Despite consuming three separate news sources (four, if you count a half hour of CBC radio this morning, which featured a discussion of the book 'Alice Springs') I have no real idea of what he said. All I know that he proposed that people should wait for the results of the Gomery report and that he would call an election within 30 days of its publication.
It may be true that the politicians in this country are corrupt and untrustworthy. But it seems to me that the only people more corrupt and more untrustworthy are those people in the media.
Now to the web, and maybe I can find a transcript or something.
I figure, though, that Martin must have done a credible job. How do I know this? Because coverage of his speech in the media has been minimal - something that should be surprising, given that it was a rare address to the nation. CTV coverage that evening focused, not surprisingly, on the rebuttals. On CBC this morning the coverage of the speech seemed to consist almost entirely of baseball coverage (no, I don't get the connection, but that's what they did - they went to a baseball stadium and interviewed probably the one group of people in the country who could not possibly have seen the address). The local newsrag, the Times & Tanscript, ran a below the fold article (today's big headline: Dieppe may do something about traffic) in which the first four paragraphs asserted (without evidence) that "NBers were 'unimpressed'" and the criticisms of a PR consultant from Toronto.
And so I'm left scratching my head. Despite consuming three separate news sources (four, if you count a half hour of CBC radio this morning, which featured a discussion of the book 'Alice Springs') I have no real idea of what he said. All I know that he proposed that people should wait for the results of the Gomery report and that he would call an election within 30 days of its publication.
It may be true that the politicians in this country are corrupt and untrustworthy. But it seems to me that the only people more corrupt and more untrustworthy are those people in the media.
Now to the web, and maybe I can find a transcript or something.
