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24 November 2005

Heads and bodies

In a small exercise in news reading, try this gem from the Globe and Mail.

Read the whole thing and then consider a simple question: Does the headline match the whole piece?

The short answer is no. The headline grabs attention but it is also misleading. The subhead just reinforces the misinformation.

All I can say is this: don't believe everything you read. Or believe it. It's up to you. But it could be accurate and it could be misinformation.

Meanwhile in the Land O'Spin that used to be Responsible Government League, any pretension that RGL is an unbiased, fair and balanced place to find reliable information definitely went out the window this week.

Take a gander at the piece on giving Paul Martin the boot, in which the PM is called a variety of names. My favourite part, of course, is where former reporter O'Brien practices "spin". [He is always quick to accuse others of doing it.]

Follow the link to the Prime Minister's speech and you'll see he merely referred to a military pay raise. Liam claims the PM was talking about soldiers not getting paid at all. Wow, my widdle tin top couldn't spin like that.

Of course, that's just the latest spintastic uttering from RGL. A little while ago he was telling us that a poll which - like all other polls - had the Liberals ahead of the Conservatives was actually a statistical tie between the Grits and the Connies.

Utter tripe, but RGL peddled it anyway.

And the RGL site seems to be descending rapidly into nothing more than name calling, for example calling the PM a "sick sob". The other day John Efford was called a sell-out.

Ah well, at least we know that RGL is written by an unbiased, non-partisan, fair and impartial writer who accurately conveys facts solely for the purpose of informing his readers such that they can form their own opinions.

Yeah right. I am just waiting for the latest Connie flash animation to pop up on a site that, sadly, is falling back into being a place where logic routinely takes flight if not Really Great Leaps.