Et Tu, Big Toronto-Based Newspaper?

Journalism is a tricky mistress. It's a craft that demands a lot from its devotees. The art of saying what one means while being clear and concise without muddling up facts with the writer's opinion, is such a balancing act that common sense demands that journalists be able to back up their words with a journalism degree. While earning a journalism degree, students learn how to get both sides of a story and how to ask proper questions instead of what we call "leading" questions (questions that are worded a certain way to evoke a specific response). Journalism students also learn how easy it is to get their asses sued. At the University of King's College in Halifax, NS, earning a journalism degree requires that students take an entire class entitled "How You Can Get Your Ass Sued For About a Million Different Reasons". We called it Media Law for short. Journalism students at King's are also required to take an ethics course, during which students learn about why many of our natural urges are wrong (we're not allowed to call people mean names without probable cause) and why transparency is the key to integrity in journalism. These classes taught us all how to be better journalists. Luckily for us opinionated types, there is a journalistic loophole that allows us to say what we feel and think, as long as we back up our opinions with facts. It's called the op-ed page.

On the op-ed page you can say many opinionated things that not necessarily everyone will agree with. You can be stubborn and insist that your ideas are not only correct but also awesome. In fact, being ornery and in-your-face is encouraged on this page (it's called the opinion-editorial page for a reason). Unfortunately, sometimes newspapers get a wee bit confused about where opinion editorials belong and accidentally slip them onto other pages of their newspaper beside stories about cats stuck in trees, subprime mortgages or who wore what to the Juno Awards (seriously, someone get Justin Bieber a stylist, stat). Even somewhat respectable newspapers like, oh, say, the National Post, sometimes get confused about what belongs where in their normally professional newspaper. Last weekend an article that should have been on the op-ed page of the National Post got waylaid and ended up on the front page instead. Oopsies. No biggie. These things happen. Except they shouldn't. And here's why – when a journalist chooses to put their own opinions into their news articles, it compromises the integrity of every journalist. Every single freaking one. My ethics professor showed our class a poll on the very first day of class that showed only 49 per cent of Canadians trust journalists – that's slightly more than than they trust lawyers but less than nurses and firefighters. That means half of you out there think I'm not trustworthy (ouch).

The article in the Post discusses a certain advertising issue between a certain paper and another, out-of-town paper. The article starts with the journalist praising the paper from another city. I say the journalist says it because the remarks are not in quotes, nor are they attributed to anyone. They are also not an undeniable fact, such as “people need oxygen to breathe and live”. Only irrefutable facts do not need to be attributed in an newspaper article that isn't on the op-ed page. After much gushing, the writer goes on to make several errors, such as saying that the Town of Millet is further away from the City of Wetaskiwin than it actually is (for the record, Google Maps says it is a distance of 18 minutes; less if you don't drive like a weenie). The article goes on to say that a certain newspaper's distribution and readership is mostly rural; it also implies that because that newspapers' office is in Millet, only people in Millet read that paper. The journalist must not have been wearing his reading glasses when he did his research, otherwise he would have found a brightly coloured pie chart showing that approximately 60 per cent of that paper's readership is urban, while 40 per cent is rural. The journalist is also confused about the differences between a weekly newspaper and a “shopper.” Newspapers that belong to AWNA (Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association) need to have at least 30 per cent editorial content. Shoppers don't qualify for membership.

Sure, it can be tough to find the time to fact check articles sometimes. I mean, sometimes more important things, like watching football or thinking up libelous statements, get in the way of solid journalism. But it's important that every journalist, no matter where they work, remember that opinion belongs on the op-ed page and in columns. Opinions and misleading statements have no place in news articles.