Others run for mayor - Part 2

Following is an unpublished letter-to-the-editor of the Ottawa Citizen.  The editor was interested enough to phone me and discuss the details of my follow-up letter.  He was quite surprised but accepted my word when I confirmed that he made the statements I attributed to him when we discussed my first letter, 

He restated the difficulty that any paper would have in dealing with a 20 candidate slate.  I suggested that this is the Citizen's problem and that readers expect better than the reporting they are providing.  Obviously we agreed to differ but the issue seems to have the attention of other editorial team members at the Citizen.  While the letters-to-the-editor editor took the time to phone me he said it is unlikely that it will be published.  However, its gone up the chain.  Here is the text from my letter:

Letter-to-the editor - Ottawa Citizen October 11, 2010



On September 30 my letter, “Others run for mayor,” was published in the Ottawa Citizen. I comment on media bias and in particular on the Citizen’s continuing focus on the actions and utterances of Jim Watson and Larry O’Brien to the exclusion of the other 18 mayoral candidates.


The day before my letter was printed I received a voice mail from a Citizen editor stating his belief that the Citizen is accurate in its reporting, but that a decision to focus on the “two leading candidates” was taken by editorial staff because it is difficult to focus on all 20 candidates.

I responded with my own voice mail suggesting that this was exactly the point my letter makes and pointing out that there are many important views made by other candidates that go unreported. The Citizen chooses to report irrelevant interchange between Watson and O’Brien instead. My continuing concern is that the Citizen chooses to adopt this policy, even when it is clear that O’Brien is not going to succeed and that other contenders are rising to take his place at the front.

On Friday October 8 on TV Ontario’s Agenda broadcast with Steve Paikin there was a section covering Local elections - Municipal Affairs. The discussion focused on mayoralty campaigns in various cities across Ontario. Joanne Chianello a Citizen reporter represented Ottawa.

Over the 30 minute program segment Chianello mentioned only two candidates O'Brien and Watson. She failed to mention that there is a slate of 20 candidates running for mayor, with some notable challengers including Councillor Clive Doucet, ex-Ottawa/Carleton regional government head, Andy Haydon.

On the topic of light rail she mentioned only the tunnel option that is supported by O’Brien and Watson when there are other viable options being promoted by other candidates. Chianello also made misleading statements about the project by suggesting that the tunnel is a done deal and that there would be penalties in place if it were cancelled. Here is what she said: “We’re going to build a tunnel….We have a financial plan for it…..It cost us over $35 million to cancel a previous plan.”

Such inaccurate, biased and misleading commentary and reporting is unacceptable, particularly for a newspaper of the Ottawa Citizen’s stature. It is time for the Citizen to clean up its act and to report in an accurate and unbiased manner.

I have no problem if the paper’s editorial staff chooses to support particular candidates or political positions in their editorial pages but it is not acceptable for reporters to distort the true facts.

Colin Hine