Anatomy Of A Complaint

The final version of my letter of complaint to the Vancouver Sun has been published (popup jpg) re: a Spector column titled “Appalling glee on the right at the prospect of US payback for a dithering PM”.
As I pointed out to his editors, the column was completely devoid of URL’s or direct quotes to support his accusation. That should have been their first sniff that something was rancid… but editors are lazy, I guess – trivial matters like going to the source for fact checking purposes is too much effort. So much for the professionalism of the “mainstream media”.
For background, read the original post and comments and compare it to Spector’s take. Note that the chain of events places the appearance of his column in the Vancouver Sun in very close proximity, time-line wise, with his suspension of authorship privilages from the same website he critiques. Norm asserts that his column was submitted prior to his suspension – I’ll take him at his word. (The details about his departure were not public until he chose to volunteer them in an announcement of his “resignation” at Blogs Canada*.)
I was invited by Patricia Graham, Editor in Chief, to submit a letter. The original version appears here in its original email form.

Thanks; I’ve passed it along to the letters editor so you may hear from us prior to publication.

On morning of March 8th, I recieved a cheery note from Cheryl Parker, Letters editor, along with a request for my phone and address for their files. I asked she include the url for my blogsite.

Thank you, Kate. I’ll add the url and let you know what day it will be in the paper.

Late in the afternoon I recieved a call from Fazil Milhar (editorial pages editor). He asked pointedly if the content of Shotgun post had been changed since it was written on March 2nd. I assured him that it hadn’t. He seemed reluctant to believe me, and the interrogation continued. It began to occur to me that the question was in fact, a veiled accusation.
I wonder where he got that idea?
I informed Mr.Milhar of the protocols concerning blog changes and updates, and that to the best of my knowledge, nothing had been altered or removed from the post or its comments by me or anyone else. (Oddly, he did not contact the editors of the WS for verification.)
He then declared that, under Canadian law, the Vancouver Sun was legally responsible for any libel that might be on an external link, and that because content might change after the fact, they would not provide a direct URL to the “Missile Defence” post at the Shotgun. I countered that on any given day you could find external links in the pages of newspapers – it didn’t seem to be a concern to the Montreal Gazette when they published a link to Monte Solberg’s blog.
There was complete silence for a moment.
In lieu of a URL to the thread, he offered to quote the post directly. That only addresed the remarks about the alleged comparison of Arafat to Paul Martin – not the “glee” he alleged in the comments. I suspect the Sun might have wanted to steer readers well clear of the thread, in view of their columnists contributions to it;

If you spent less time as an anonymouse writing long-winded, over- intellectualized and meaningless postings, you too could probably learn French. Lots of westerners have, including the deputy minister of finance. And it’s not as if French immersion hasn’t been around for a few years. Face it: you’re a bigot.”

During the discussion, I filled him in on the fact that Norm had been suspended and asked if he was aware of his conduct in previous weeks on the internet. He resignedly admitted he had, and from my end of the line, didn’t sound particularly happy about what he’d found.
As is their nature, editors have difficulty recognizing that readers are not employees. Later that evening, I recieved a sharply redacted rewrite of my letter, ending with this;

“I leave it to readers to decide whose interpretation is correct, Spector’s or
mine.”

I replied that my interpretation was not subject to majority vote, and unrewrote the rewrite. I received this reply:

“For legal reasons, we will not refer to Western Standard’s Shotgun blog.”

Legal reasons? This is the same Vancouver Sun that gave approval to Norm Spector to write;

” the website of the Western Standard — a diverse group united only in their antipathy to lefties and Liberals..”

From the Law Offices of Flip, Flop and Bipolar….
I finally agreed to the version that was published. It had become obvious to me that protecting Norm Spector from the embarrassment of his own misrepresentation trumps journalistic ethics and transparency at the Vancouver Sun. More to the point, the exercise had already served its original purpose.
Despite the title they preface the letter with – Treat Blog Writers With Respect Due Other Authors, there is no mention of SDA or the Western Standard Shotgun.
A raw text file containing the full exchange from which the exerpts have been taken is here.