Category Archives: In the news

| In the news, Media

Montebello, welcome to your 15 minutes

The press is all over the summit at Montebello, partly because George W. Bush seldom visits this country, and partly because the protest is expected to be on a scale similar to what happened at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001.

So far the protests have been peaceful. Things like a caravan starting here at 8:30 this morning are well-planned photo ops to get the media on-side. And left-wing papers like Hour have been supportive, writing about them in a good light. The Globe, meanwhile, has a piece from Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, denouncing the meeting’s lack of transparency. Le Devoir is also on their side, suggesting that three conservative leaders (even by their countries’ standards), combined with executives of the largest corporations in North America might not have everyone’s interests at heart.

And there’s always the NDP. And The Dominion.

Of course, not everyone’s a hippie or hippie ally. The Gazette has a long editorial accusing the left of being paranoid, and trusting that the three amigos are not made of pure evil. It (only half-fairly) paints the environmental and labour lobby as obstructionists who oppose all progress just for its own sake. While it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see that happening, I’m not one for believing that these corporate leaders wouldn’t similarly object strenuously if a policy being considered hurt their bottom line in even the most minute way.

The editorial then curiously uses the example of the harmonization of pesticide regulations to make the point that being screwed over by the U.S. is good because it raises awareness about how we’re being screwed over by the U.S.

Antagoniste also wonders what everyone’s complaining about.

Other Montebello-related tidbits from the papers this weekend:

Finally, La Presse’s André Noël gets the award for lamest story lead related to this issue:

Connaissez-vous le PSP? Oui, bien sûr, il y a la PlayStation Portable de Sony. Mais soyez francs: connaissez-vous le Partenariat nord-américain pour la sécurité et la prospérité?

| Media, Montreal, Slow News Day

Beyoncé has too much power over the media

Remember when Le Devoir was banninated from a Police concert because they wouldn’t play ball with promoters? (And other Montreal media stayed mostly silent on the subject?)

Well, in the continuing saga of mainstream publications whining about the crappy treatment they receive when trying to treat concerts as news, some members of the media are saying they weren’t given enough time to shoot photos during the Beyoncé concert this week.

Maybe newspapers should consider not going to big-time Bell Centre concerts altogether. I, for one, don’t care what the song order and costume choices were for some big-time musician’s sold-out show that I couldn’t see if I wanted to.

| In the news, Montreal

Off the rails

I was at a protest today. It had two purposes mainly: to denounce a CN lawsuit against a protester who blocked their tracks, and as a run-up to this weekend’s massive protest in Montebello, where leaders of the three North American countries are meeting to discuss trade and security.

I’ve been to a lot of protests as a reporter (I worked at Concordia during the first half of this decade, after all), and at some point they all kind of blend in together. There’s Jaggi Singh, being vague about whether he supports rampant property destruction in protests. There’s the references to Palestinian occupation, whether or not Palestine has anything to do with the protest at hand. There’s the demonization of the local police, who are standing quietly to help clear traffic out of their way as they march. And there’s the fact that half the time the media covering the event outnumber the protesters.

The protest, organized as always by a loose coalition of left-wing activist groups (No One Is Illegal, People’s Global Action Network, etc.), started off at Central Station, which for about an hour today became the safest place in the world. A media scrum quickly built up around blowhard Jaggi Singh and someone else the media couldn’t care less about. After a press conference that lasted way too long, they marched to CN’s headquarters down the hall, demanding to be able to deliver a letter to CN CEO E. Hunter Harrisson.

Naturally, that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, they promised to send their director of public relations. Except they couldn’t find her, apparently. So then they promised to send a representative from that department, who would accept the letter but not answer questions. Then they pulled a little bait-and-switch and sent a member of the security department to pick up the letter. The protesters wouldn’t bite, and that ended that. A slow march to Dorchester Square, some more megaphone chanting and everyone dispersed.

Afterward, I spoke with one of the people behind the megaphones (I wanted to speak to someone other than Jaggi Singh). You’ll get some insight from her in Saturday’s paper.

The protesters’ cause isn’t crazy. They want CN to drop a lawsuit against a protester, and they want international negotiations to happen with public input. But when they start chanting “no justice no peace”, it’s hard to imagine too many passers-by thinking “yeah, I agree with that.”

It makes me wonder: Should we separate moderate-left causes which can gain popular support (like, say, the 2003 anti-war protests) from the radical-crazy-left anarchist/communist everything-is-about-Palestine-and-native-rights window-smashing “fuck la police” riots, so that the message of the former isn’t dragged down by the public’s repulsion to the latter?

UPDATE: Video of the protest has been posted to YouTube.

| In the news, West Island

The highway link to nowhere

Suburban mayors are going crazy over suggested solutions to the 440 West Island problem. Come, gather ’round the fireplace as I explain it to you.

440 link to the West Island

Many moons ago, the Quebec Transport Department figured out that expropriating land from homeowners to build highways was a very expensive and time-consuming process. To help solve it, they asked themselves: Wouldn’t it be a good idea to “buy” the land now for a highway development later?

Enter the 440. Expecting to eventually link this East-West Laval highway to Highway 40 in Kirkland, the government planned a route for it and reserved the land so nobody would build anything there. At the time, of course, the entire area was undeveloped forest and farmland. Now, with development all around the proposed route in both Laval and the West Island, it’s easy to see on a satellite picture where the highway is going to go: on the winding strip of green between those houses.

Hoping to alleviate the West Island’s rush-hour traffic problem, Pierrefonds wants to build an “urban boulevard” on the Montreal Island part of the link, between Gouin Blvd. and Highway 40. It would, Pierrefonds mayor Monique Worth says, alleviate traffic on the main north-south axes: St. Charles Blvd., St. John’s Blvd. and Sources Blvd.

North-South axes in the West Island

OK, I get St. Charles. But Sources? By what stretch of the imagination is some route that takes Sources now going to benefit by this new road 10 km west?

Anyway, Worth cut in to her own argument in a CTV News interview today when she admitted the obvious: That rush-hour travellers to downtown would “still hit traffic on the 40”. The other obviousness is that almost all of the northern West Island is east of this proposed boulevard, meaning they won’t use it to get downtown.

The idea isn’t necessarily bad. It will help alleviate traffic on St. Charles which heads between the northern West Island and western off-island areas. But it’s not going to help one bit with the Great West Island Trek Downtown, whose biggest traffic problem is the Decarie Circle (and Highway 20/Highway 13 merge).

As for Highway 440, the link would have some advantages, the biggest one being a fixed link between Ile Bizard and Laval. Currently, though there are three ferries, there is no fixed link from Highway 40 to the north shore between Highway 13 and Hawkesbury, Ontario. That makes some significant detours.

But the proposed link also runs right through Ile Bizard’s nature park. And cutting down all those trees to build a highway is not only unpretty, it kind of goes against the whole “environment” thing.

Let’s start with small steps, the first being a fixed link between Ile Bizard and Laval. When the roads along that route start overflowing with traffic, then we can talk about building a highway.

Until then, keep the right-of-way reserved for now. Maybe have a dirt path for people to bike through. It’s trees, and they’re good, mmm’kay.

| Montreal, Slow News Day

Watering lawns makes baby Jesus cry

At least one Pincourt resident is complaining that a ban on outdoor watering, put in place because of demand might exceed supply during the hot summer months, is literally going to turn her lawn into a desert.

Cry me a bloody river.

There are plenty of things people can do to help the environment. Drive less, use less electricity, recycle more. Wasting less potable water is on this list. It costs energy to purify water for drinking, and there’s not much fresh water left in this world.

On the other hand, we need to water our lawns. I mean, it’s not like they water themselves, right? It’s not like some mystical, magical force somehow causes water to spontaneously fall from the sky in large quantities every few days.

Oh wait, THERE IS!

It’s called rain. And if it’s not enough to keep your lawn green and healthy, then there’s something wrong with your lawn, and it doesn’t belong in this environment. Do something green for a change and don’t waste so much energy trying to override nature.

| In the news, Montreal

Montreal is still pedophilia-central (but don’t worry)

The Gazette has a long story today about pedophilia websites being hosted in Montreal. It talks about some of these sites, all of which are hosted by Epifora, which I told you about in May. Unlike last time when they were coy about giving away addresses, this story repeats one address almost a half-dozen times. Another one is repeated twice even though they get it wrong both times (it’s a .org, not a .com).

Epifora is a small-guy operation (fully aware of what sites it’s hosting) that’s getting its space from Steadfast Networks. That’s the company people should be targetting with their complaints.

Meanwhile, the children’s festival which brought all this into the limelight in the first place isn’t adding extra security, instead relying on parents to be extra paranoid vigilant.

| Business, In the news

Please leave your bags at the tax office

Plastic bag
“A Plastic Bag” by currybet

Quebec is considering a $0.20 per bag tax on plastic shopping bags. The intent is to cut down on their production, use and disposal.

I’m in favour of reducing the use of these bags. I have a green basket I use when doing grocery shopping. Those few bags I do use get reused to hold what little garbage I produce, and any which aren’t usable get recycled.

I’m even in favour of charging for bags. Something small, like $0.05 per bag, won’t make a big difference to the people who burn through money, but it might make some think twice about double-bagging that milk or using an extra one for the can of concentrated orange juice.

But I’m not crazy about the idea of a tax, that benefits neither the consumer nor the retailer, encouraging both to find a way around it. There’s an (admittedly self-serving) opinion in the Toronto Star which explains some of the cons to such a tax. Basically it comes down to the fact that people need something to carry their groceries in. In some cases this means finding loopholes — those bags which for some technical reason aren’t subject to the tax, and may be worse for the environment.

That’s basically my issue. We need an alternative. The green baskets are great, but they have a high initial cost (around $5), and you need to lug them around. The re-usable bags also require forethought, and might not be sufficient to carry a week’s worth of groceries. Their use should be encouraged beyond the $0.05 per bill rebate that Loblaws offers, but it’s not a complete solution. What about smaller stores? What about department stores like Wal-Mart? What about those clear bags we put fruit in? What about all that excessive packaging that’s used on electronics?

That, combined with the fact that plastic bags still seem to be the method a lot of places use as proof of purchase.

Once we handle these things, then we can talk about drastic measures to reduce bags. In the meantime, I don’t get why stores don’t charge a small amount per bag, and offer more incentives for people to bring their own bags (like, say, ending the policy of everyone having to surrender their bags at the cash when they enter).

UPDATE: The Gazette’s Max Harrold has some man-on-the-street reaction to the idea.

| Montreal, Slow News Day, Web design

Blog about Tremblay! He’s so rad!

Not news: Municipal party encourages supporters to write letters to newspapers, call in to talk radio and campaign for them.

News: Municipal party encourages supporters to write letters to newspapers, call in talk radio and write blog posts to campaign for them.

Yes folks, mayor Gérald Tremblay and his ilk are using the power of their crappy website to harness the power of ordinary Montrealers with absolutely nothing to do. They’re encouraging people to blog about them to tell everyone how rad they are. Like that Robert-Bourassa Avenue idea. How great was that?

I might have more respect for the move if the website wasn’t so badly designed. Of the major issues I outlined two and a half months ago when the website launched, they’ve only fixed about half of them. The easier half. And the fact that the website is ungooglable is a funny afterthought by comparison.

Since nobody’s taken the bait yet, let me be the first blogger to talk about Mayor Tremblay and his brilliant administration that’s in touch with the people. And add a </sarcasm> tag after it.

UPDATE: Tristan Péloquin tries to evoke the cyber army.

| In the news, Media, On the Net, Web design

MédiaMatinQuébec.com

Just learned that MédiaMatinQuébec, the free paper being run by locked-out workers at the Journal de Québec, has launched its website at MediaMatinQuebec.com.

And it’s already more impressive than any other Quebec media website. It’s fast, lean and easy-to-navigate.

You know, the more this conflict goes on, the more I think these workers should forget about the Journal and turn MédiaMatin into a business. Sell some more ads, rent a small office building and this could really be something.

| In the news, Media, Montreal

Why does nobody care about this missing girl?

Drew Curtis of FARK.com, in his book about the news media, outlines some of the largest clichés about stories that get covered by the media. One of those is “missing white chick.” There are thousands of people missing in this world, and most of them are forgotten. If you’re, say, an aboriginal prostitute in B.C., it’ll take dozens of disappearances before anyone in the media takes notice.

But if you’re a cute, white pre-teen from a middle-class family, you’ll get all the coverage you could dream of.

That’s been the case for nine-year-old Cédrika Provencher of Trois-Rivières. She disappeared last week under suspicious circumstances, and the police and her family are using the media to try to get some leads. The media, of course, has eaten it all up. Her name is popping up everywhere, her story has appeared in over a hundred news outlets, and everyone in this province knows who she is.

The inevitable conclusion to this kind of exposure has already reared its ugly head. Police tip lines are being flooded with bogus tips. One woman called from Abitibi to say that she saw a black-and-white dog (the girl was last seen looking for a black-and-white dog, though she doesn’t have any pets). The fact that the police needed to clarify that “we’re searching for the girl, not the dog” says a lot.

I don’t mean to sound like a heartless asshole or anything, but I find it very unlikely that any meaningful tips will come from the public in Toronto, Winnipeg or Edmonton.

And if the media really does care so much about finding missing people, why aren’t they talking about Marie-Pier Cardinal?

Marie-Pier Cardinal

Never heard of her? I don’t blame you. She’s a 16-year-old girl who went missing on July 11 in Montreal. There have been no news stories about her, no national campaign to find her, and no distraught grandmothers looking for her.

Why? Is it because she’s too old? Did she not disappear from the right family? Is she not cute enough? Are those looking for her not sending out enough press releases?
Why is it that she and the dozens of other people and kids still missing aren’t having stories written about them?

| Blogosphere, Slow News Day

Editorialist, criticize thyself

The Gazette has an editorial today about the Beaver survey and it notes that — gasp — online polls shouldn’t be taken too seriously:

Talk-shows hosts, bloggers, columnists, pundits and letter-writers have all had fun with that online poll, organized by the august historical magazine The Beaver, in which respondents named Pierre Trudeau “the worst Canadian.”

…

It’s all good fun, we suppose, but it should also be a reminder online polls of this sort are not worth the paper they aren’t printed on.

I looked up the story, and most of the bloggers I’ve found saw right through the lame, transparent attempt to get free publicity. The paragraph leaves out the paper itself in those it names as having “had fun”. After all, it put the non-story on its front page Tuesday morning, one day after the Beaver issued a press release about it. (Little tip folks: Get something on Canada Newswire that’s not business-related and some paper somewhere will rewrite it into a story to fill space. Don’t bother trying to support your outrageous claims with facts, nobody cares about those.)

The editorial makes a couple of points: that online reader surveys shouldn’t be taken at face value (duh), and that “participatory journalism” has its problems:

Reader-participation journalism, a clear trend in print as well as online, has many virtues and can be a valuable tool.

But without the constraints of rigorous sample-selection techniques and careful choice of questions, the findings of some such processes are not only laughable, as with the Trudeau choice, but they can also be potentially dangerously misleading.

Just in case it wasn’t clear yet that mainstream media has no clue what participatory journalism is, here we go.

At the risk of repeating myself, the following things are NOT participatory journalism:

  1. Letting readers vote in multiple-choice online polls and writing a story about the results.
  2. Blogs written by columnists and newspaper staffers
  3. Publishing “online extras”
  4. Writing about what you found on Facebook
  5. Writing about what readers posted as comments to your blog
  6. Republishing blog posts as articles
  7. Republishing articles as blog posts
  8. Asking readers for stories and quoting from them
  9. Publishing writers’ email addresses with their stories

Many of these things are good ideas, but they’re not participatory journalism.

Sorry, mainstream media, but you got suckered in by a press release about an outrageous unscientific survey. Don’t blame it on bloggers and new forms of journalism that are entirely irrelevant here.