by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
april 12, 2004
Two-time biathlon gold medal winner, Myriam Bédard became part of the adscam controversy when she came forward and said that she lost her marketing job with Via Rail. according to Bédard, she lost her job with Via, one of the Crown corporations alleged to be involved in improper payments, when she questioned the amount of monies that was being paid to Groupaction, the Quebec advertising agency at the centre of the scandal.
Bédard became more prominent in the matter when Paul Martin quickly fired, Jean Pelletier, after the Via Rail head referred to Bédard as "a pitiful single mother" who was trying to attract attention.
When Myriam Bédard was called as a witness before the Public accounts Committee she peppered the hearings with unsubstantiated gossip. Specifically, she testified that she had heard that Groupaction was involved in drug trafficking and that racing star Jacques Villeneuve had received $12 million of government funds just to wear an almost invisible Canadian logo during races.
While her status as a parent is hardly relevant to anything, her spreading of unsubstantiated rumours, particularly Groupaction’s involvement with drugs, could properly be classified as "pitiful". The Committee should never have allowed her to spew forth gossip but that is another issue. Even though she may have improperly been deprived of her job, certainly her gossip-mongering should strip away her status as a victim.
Nonetheless, Bédard has been given a free ride by the media. No one has ever questioned how she got the job with Via Rail in the first place. Was the Canadian Olympian even qualified for the job that she held with the Crown corporation or did she gain her employment simply because she was a Canadian Olympian? Perhaps one day, we’ll find out.
attacking worshippers
Last week, U.S. marines fired on a mosque in Fallujah as worshippers were gathering for afternoon prayers. Some media outlets, such as Citytv, merely reported that the U.S. attacked "worshippers" at the mosque, leaving the impression that this was simply an attack on a Muslim place of worship. Leaving out the reasons for the attack on the mosque constitutes nothing more than anti-american bias.
To even approach fairness, any report of the attack should have included the fact that according to the U.S. troops they were fired upon by a rocket launcher from within the walls of the mosque. Religious institutions are out of bounds under the Geneva Convention but can be attacked if weapons are stored or being used in those institutions, or if violence is being incited or perpetrated from the religious institution.
By omitting what those in the mosque were doing, the public is left with the impression that all persons inside the mosque were contemplatively at prayer when they were attacked.
Is that quote really a quote?
Sometimes it is difficult to know if something that appears in quotation marks is actually a quote. For example, the following appeared on CBC’s website on april 6:
" Baghdad-- ‘Enemy action’ killed four U.S. marines in the Iraqi province of anbar, while three more american soldiers and at least 60 Iraqis died in Baghdad battles, military officials said Tuesday."
Now the CBC is in a sense quoting what military authorities have told them, although they do not use a complete quote. Only "enemy action" is placed in quotation marks while the rest of the information is paraphrased.
When quotation marks are used in this fashion, it is more likely that the network was giving its opinion that it doubts that the deaths were the result of enemy action and the quotation marks were used, not to report a direct quote, but to cast doubt on what the military officials were saying. Quotation marks are a good way to inject opinion into an otherwise factual report.