2010 Olympics Business News for the Vancouver and Whistler regions of British Columbia. Plus, Alberta, the rest of Canada, Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Montana & California

OlyBLOG Features:



Free Offer


The Vancouver Sun published a 2010 advertorial today (August 13, 2007) by investigative reporter Jeff Lee, although I am sure he would strongly insist that it is simply a news article. His work has been addressed in my book and blog a number of times. (Google "OlyBLOG.com Jeff Lee Vancouver Sun Olympics")

I mentioned in an earlier post that citizen journalists often use a process called "adopt-a-reporter." I'm not sure who coined the term, but it seems I've been inadvertently adopting reporters since 2004. In Mr. Lee's case, I didn't even remember I had reported about him until a a reporter (protected identity) called and wanted to know why I was focusing on Mr. Lee. I immediately responded to say that I was NOT consciously directing my energy towards Mr. Lee at all. The person came back with, "but you keep reporting about him," to which I replied, "Yes, but I'm really overwhelmed correcting misinformation propagated by local news media and can't keep up, and now that you mentioned it, it seems I have addressed a couple of his stories. Thanks for pointing it out, and then I thought, maybe I should keep a closer eye on Mr. Lee, especially considering that, according to this person, he is the official 2010 reporter for The Sun. Who knew?


Side bar: The challenge is that a good writer knows how to veil any perception of bias. They learn to do it on the job, not at school, and it comes with decades of experience. If you're VANOC's official reporter how is a reader supposed to know unless you identify the partnership at the beginning of each article? When you watch NBC, CTV, or CBC news, the Olympic logos are all over the place and you know where their allegiance lies. Not so with newspapers. It should be mandatory that newspapers identify their partnership with Olympics organizations. That way the community would recognize it as advertorial, not real news. It should be part of the journalistic oath, and now that the Vancouver Sun is being paid to officially boost the Olympics, readers should be alerted at the beginning of every article. Anything less is unethical. If we can do it here on our little blog (top left corner Pro-Olympics with a Twist) big newspapers can do it too. Even when we do it, people still miss it, so you can imagine how newspapers mislead readers.


Back to the phone call; I went on to say something like, "I'm not trying to undermine anyone's career. When I see something, I deal with it immediately and move on. If a reporter keeps showing up on my radar and consequently my blog it is NOT because I am gunning for him or her. It's because they wrote something in that moment that I felt needed to be explored and brought to the attention of our community." In some cases I also commend reporters for doing a great job of impartially telling both sides of the story.

I'm more like a gunslinger, not a politician or academic. 2010 is only two and half years away and closing fast. All that counts for me are results. VANOC, Mayor Sam and most local mainstream news media would prefer that we talk about it, while I prefer to first zing one over their heads, and then lower my sights if necessary. I'm not really a team player and I don't do group hug well at all, although if OV keeps an open mind as he indicated in his last post, and meets me half way I might make an exception. :-)

Until very recently I used to send periodic newsletters to almost 10,000 small business owners and media (8,000 SMBs in the GVRD alone,) but we rarely do that anymore because the people who are truly interested in what I have to say now show up at my blog on their own - international media included. We have enough of a following now that we don't have to waste time producing and distributing newsletters unless it is absolutely necessary.

As I wrote earlier in this (detoured) thread, the reason we decided to target and inform local small business owners was because time is short and they make up something like 98% of our community, which means that the average person on the street works for a small business and relies on small companies remaining healthy. I also learned through extensive and very costly research how and why the Olympics has a serious negative impact on many small businesses, which consequently led me to believe that "eventually" people would pay attention to what we were saying when they were so fed up that they did not know where to turn. That critical mass is approaching fast, but unfortunately not as fast as I had hoped, and not fast enough to keep the community healthy. In the interest of full disclosure, and I've repeated it many times, I contract my media communication services to many small businesses, and if they are NOT healthy, I am NOT healthy. I'm doing this to save my ass too, and wish I could say my values were more altruistic, but realistically, I'm pragmatic and simply want to survive.

Speaking of health, and to get back to the point at hand, today, on August 13, 2007 reporter Jeff Lee wrote about how VANOC is going to pull medical professionals out of our hospitals and clinics, and transfer their skills, time, and our tax money to Olympic projects. In other Olympic regions it is usually a hidden cost and rarely if ever reported.

OK, I lied.

Mr. Lee, a well-respected senior investigative journalist for the Vancouver Sun, never quite put it in these terms. In fact he never presented it that way at all.

Instead, in his opening paragraph Lee wrote, and I'm assuming his editor and publisher gave it approval, quote; "When an athlete, official, volunteer or member of the media get injured at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, as inevitably will happen, Dr. Jack Taunton is determined not to let it affect an already overloaded public health care system. But being able to say how the Olympics will affect public medical services is not an easy job, according to Taunton, the chief medical officer for the Vancouver Organizing Committee. That's because in the past Olympic Games haven't kept computerized records, to the point that, in some cases, treating physicians don't even know the blood type or medication history of athletes that come into an emergency ward" end of quote

My hat is off to Mr. Lee for giving readers a hint that taxpayers could be in for sticker shock, but considering he's a senior investigative reporter, it's not good enough. In the past, if blogs like mine or like BC Mary's, plus of course sites like TheTyee.ca and NowPublic.com hadn't put local mainstream news media under a microscope, disclaimers like Lee's quote above would usually be placed towards the end of the article and well after many people quit reading. At least this time Mr. Lee gave us a hint upfront, which is a great improvement in his writing style.

In our McGulp world, many of us never read a full article, so if you want to bury a disclaimer, place it in the second last paragraph, not the last, because lazy, less-sophisticated readers all too often cheat and jump to the last line when they get tired of reading or bored. This isn't an elitist remark. It's what happens. We are not all created equal. I wish I had the body of an athlete, but I don't. Thankfully though I have a nose for misinformation and half-truths. (You're about to jump to the end aren't you? When you come back look for the ***** so you know where to pick up again. LOL)

Lee's story omits a lot of critical information that our community NEEDS in order to understand what is happening in OUR Olympics region.

On the surface we could have a whole lot of fun with Lee's piece just by using common knowledge. For example, respective of the last line of Lee's quote above I immediately thought, of course they don't know the medication history of the athletes. Dick Pound at WADA (World Anti Doping Agency) has been trying to figure that out for a long time, but that would be too easy and not really relevant.

As an exercise in citizen journalism and crowdsourcing, if anyone wants to take a crack at why this article falls under Chomsky's "necessary illusion" umbrella, or fill us in on what he didn't to tell us, I would be interested to hear what you think. I'll reverse engineer his article and place it on my blog, but in the interim if you have comments, read Lee's entire article, and please share. I know some of you are loath to buy a copy of The Sun, so go to your local coffee shop and read it. I'm actually hoping you might be able to spot things I miss. If you come up with something I'll include it in my overview later as long as it isn't libelous and it is appropriate.

I don't know if David Beers at The Tyee will allow us to run an impromptu citizen journalism workshop in his thread, so I'd like to ask his permission before anyone comments in this respect. I placed this message on my site because it is long, and the Tyee only allows 3,000 characters (grrr) per comment.

I also feel guilty about pirating The Tyee's momentum regarding this topic, so thought this would be more appropriate than just jumping in on someone else's website and commandeering the space. Ideally, I'd like to see this post back on the Tyee to maintain continuity, but of course first there has to be interest and permission.

I'm also torn because the impromptu news media workshop process I'm proposing here is something that NowPublic could do very well too, so I'm also going to email Michael Tippett so he and David can arm wrestle over it if they like. LOL

I'll do it at both or neither, or you guys can cross post if you want, but eventually it will end up on my blog because it is a perfect example of what I've been writing about on The Tyee for the last few days. In fact this example is so easy I'm starting to feel like I'm being set up by The Sun.

Let me know. I won't jump to publish anything on my blog until I've heard from you all, but keep in mind that normally, if you expect a process like this to have impact, a citizen journalist has to move quickly while it is still in the public's mind.

While you're thinking, I'm writing and the 2010 clock is counting down.


Cheers,

Maurice (Working Memory)


Click here to return to The Tyee article


Talk to us before you talk to them ...
LeverageOlympicMomentum.com - the book





Have a comment?

»»CLICK HERE««