The Independent officially hits the streets on Sundays but it seems that some outlets get their copies on Saturday evening. I found mine at a drug store in Mount Pearl so I picked it up to see what's in the paper people are talking about.
A few weeks ago, I took a harsh line (and promptly got a lengthy visit to the blog site from an unidentified Indy staffer) on its content. Last week, the paper appeared to have gotten its chops back as a place to find interesting and new stories. Hunt around and you'll find a different perspective from Express columnist Geoff Meeker; Meeker is a former journalist and now a public relations consultant.
Overall, the Indy is worth reading again if only because throughout the whole thing you can find some decently written and interesting features on the arts community.
It's biggest plus remains the photography by Paul Daly and Rhonda Hayward. I swear there may be better shooters out there somewhere, but they aren't working at newspapers. If the Indy had copy that rivaled the technical and artistic merits of their photographers, the paper would be a must-read for anyone in North America.
I am going to buy the Indy each week just to have something to ponder in Paul and Rhonda's captivating images. As for the rest of it, well, make up your own mind.
So what's in the Indy this week?
There's a page one story by Jeff Ducharme called "Paid 'allies'" noting that Fisheries and Oceans is paying the tab for the 11 national delegations to the conference starting in St. John's next week on Grand Banks fishing. The point seems to be that this is all a big con job. Ducharme has a sentence on the first page: "[c]ritics say the conference is a farce, meant to pacify detractors."
So I read on to find more on this point.
Flip to the second page and you'll find not critics plural but critic singular. The sole critic Jeff quotes is none other than Gus "Highgrade" Etchegary. As noted here several weeks ago, at least one former fisheries inspector has pointed to the standard policy of the company Etchegary worked for that instructed skippers to highgrade; that means they could only bring back the biggest and best fish, dumping thousands of tons of cod annually back into the sea - dead. Etchegary's company contributed as much to the decimation of cod stocks as any foreigner, apparently. But that's a story the Indy won't touch either to confirm it or dispel it.
Even if that highgrading story turned out to be completely untrue, Etchegary alone doesn't constitute anything more than the voice of one guy. So much for a new approach on the fisheries stories the Indy likes to run. Oh yeah, Gus has a letter to the editor in this issue too.
Let's look at the other stories.
There's a follow-on by Alisha Morrissey on her story last week that alleged an investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police requested by Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Chief Richard Deering included looking at a three year old probe into prostitution in the capital city.
Morrissey's story this week is based on her interview with Chief Deering in which he denied the contention in Morrissey's original story, supposedly based on information supplied by unidentified "sources".
Well, here's the upshot: seems that Morrissey's original story was, in a word, wrong. Her sources were wrong and her story was wrong.
Morrissey gives a partial transcript of the Deering interview, focusing on the sections where he took her to task for what he considered to be encouraging corruption by police officers or other police officials who breach their oaths of confidentiality. In a CBC Radio interview, Morrissey's boss, Ryan Cleary called Deering's approach "bullying".
It isn't bullying, Ryan. Deering took strong exception to the initial story and the approach your paper took. That's fair enough. He is entitled to his view and to express it strongly and civilly as he did. CBC Radio reporter Ronalda Nakonechny (apologies if I spelled her name incorrectly) noted that the RNC taped the interview. Under the circumstances that's an acceptable practice too since it allows for corrections to any misinterpretations that can arise in a controversial situation.
But again, the upshot of the whole thing is that the Indy got the story wrong. Their sources weren't that good apparently. This story is different from the fish one, however, because there isn't a pattern of behaviour. The Indy had information they thought was solid and went with it. Provided they had more than one source, their approach was legitimate. On the other hand if it turns out the RNC employee charged this week was the source of the leak and was the only source, we would all need to question Morrissey's contention in the transcript that "we follow a standard set of guidelines and ethics...".
On page three there's a half page on speculation about Danny Williams as a possible prime minister. We already dissected Bill Rowe's column on that bit of fluff last week. Most quotes in this piece, by Jamie Baker, go to a single source - Steven Frank, Canadian bureau chief for Time magazine. Aside from that, we have no idea who Frank is and why we should pay attention to his gushing opinion. There certainly isn't any detailed analysis of the premier's political credibility, contacts or ability to speak French. Nope. All we have is Frank's view that Danny Williams as prime minister "would be great". The second most quoted source in the column is Kevin O'Brien, recently appointed as parliamentary assistant to the Premier. I am not sure that counts as an independent source.
Oddly, from a news standpoint, you have to get past that half-page of bumpf to get to a more interesting story from this week, namely Fabian Manning's untimely firing as parliamentary assistant to the education minister. Curious too that the Indy reporter on the story picked up a suggestion tossed only by the Premier - maybe to discredit Manning - that the strong-willed and competent Tory member of the House of Assembly might be considering using his stand on the crab dispute as a springboard to federal politics. Manning flatly rejects that idea or the equally absurd notion he might bolt from the Tory caucus. Nice spec, Indy guys, but it is a good way to avoid writing a piece that has more weight than the one-note samba on page three.
There's another story on page four about the loss of federal jobs in the province. The story quotes a number of sources - all critical, except for John Efford. One of them is Loyola Hearn, reportedly the member of parliament for St. John's South Mount Pearl. Odd that the Indy mentions Hearn's crusade against the non-existent plan to close 86 post offices in the country - not 82 as the Indy reports but omits the completely bogus nature of Hearn's claims.
Would that fact - there was no plan - detract from Hearn's cred if the Indy actually reported the fact Hearn was...what is that word again...wrong?
There's also a nice little page filler - full page literally - on who might run in the next election. The Indy must be reading my blog - they actually raised the idea that Hearn is planning to stand for election in a seat other than the one he currently represents on paper. Unnamed "sources" are said to dismiss the idea. Let's wait and see what happens.
If I skim back over all that, I can see a pattern on sourcing that would be most unsettling if it turned out to be true.
Slide way over to page 25 and there is an interview with Dean MacDonald, re-appointed chair of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro and good friend of both the current and at least one former premier. MacDonald notes the cost of developing the Lower Churchill will be around $5.0 billion; this ties nicely with a story last week that the premier seems to be considering using the offshore bonus money - currently threatened by Stephen Harper with being defeated in the Commons - to build the energy megaproject.
In this piece, I like MacDonald's mention of the Upper Churchill power recall which he says has been resold once recalled from Quebec. What he doesn't tell you is that the power is resold to Quebec as part of an arrangement to keep solvent the Churchill Falls Labrador Corporation. MacDonald also makes an interesting observation on power consumption by oil refineries - a big part of the government's policy book on energy and economic development. MacDonald notes there hasn't been a new refinery built in North America in 25 years. Guess what? There isn't likely to be one built in the near future and likely not here without massive tax concessions.
Aside from a piece of amateurish poetry from John Crosbie, my favourite piece this week is a column by Indy owner Brian Dobbin. Seems Mr. Dobbin feels the need to warn us about those dastardly mainland Chinese and their business investments. Dobbin claims to have spent a lot of time in China, "including having operational offices in Hong Kong and Taiwan". He also mentions yet again - albeit cryptically - his experience in presenting a Taiwanese development proposal to the provincial government some years ago only to have it rejected by the government.
Ok. Dobbin would have a point if he was raising a strategic concern about the extent to which Chinese state-owned enterprises are investing heavily in foreign energy projects like the offshore.
But that isn't his point at all. Dobbin is apparently an environmentalist with concerns about Kyoto and the damage to the global environment being done by Chinese manufacturing industries. We'll take it under advisement, Brian.
But here's my closing suggestion for Brian and Ryan.
In the interests of complete disclosure, let's see a couple of things really soon in the front section of the Indy:
1. A complete review of the Taiwanese proposal Dobbin keeps mentioning using more than one source.
2. A complete disclosure of Dobbin's Taiwanese business connections. If this guy is going to be making public comment then we need to know how he is tied to the island and its ongoing dispute with the Chinese mainland. Taiwan is only China in the minds of the Taiwanese and Hong Kong is still a separate enclave.
Until Dobbin can show us his wider experience in dealing with the People's Republic, there is good reason to believe Dobbin might be a bit less than objective in his opinions on things Chinese.