Telegraph-Journal Apologizes to Prime Minister Harper - Monkeys to the Rescue

Well...my my! What a nasty little can of worms this turned out to be. You have to be very careful when you mess around with the Holy Ghost and the Catholic mass. Isn't it just the oldest game in history - mixing politics and religion?

Take a close look at this picture - just what is he doing anyways.....


Yesterday the National Post and a few other Canadian news media covered the story of how the Saint John Telegraph-Journal - Saint John's terribly one sided paper 'inaccurately' made the statement tht Prime Minister Stephen Harper was attempting to pull a little slight of hand with the communion wafer during the recent Romeo LeBlanc funeral mass.


I could not believe this when I read it. An amateur video showed Harper holding the wafer but not eating it... Was there no new lows this man would not sink to in his pact with the Devil? What was he doing with it? Was he not able to take communion because of unforgiven trespasses against God and man? Was he going to plant it on Michael Ignatieff during a political debate in an effort to discredit him? Just what was he up to? Did he commit a sacrilegious faux-pas by walking away with the body of Christ?



Yesterday the TJ were forced to apologize to Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the story which the newspaper said "was inaccurate and should not have been published." The story created a national controversy that lasted for several days while Harper was attending a G8 gathering in Italy and preparing to meet the Pope. THE POPE NO LESS!!


"There was no credible support for these statements of fact at the time this article was published, nor is the Telegraph-Journal aware of any credible support for these statements now," said the apology. "The Telegraph-Journal sincerely apologizes to the prime minister for the harm that this inaccurate story has caused."



The newspaper also apologized to the two reporters whose bylines appeared above the story. "Our reporters Rob Linke and Adam Huras, who wrote the story reporting on the funeral, did not include these statements in the version of the story that they wrote. In the editing process, these statements were added without the knowledge of the reporters and without any credible support for them," said the apology.


The story said that a senior Roman Catholic priest had demanded that Harper's office explain what happened to the communion wafer which was handed to the prime minister during the state funeral. The story also described video footage that showed the prime minister taking the wafer, but cut away before Harper was seen consuming it. I highly doubt that. With a Cathedral full to the rafters and media cameras galore, he was actually eyeing Harper to see if he 'chewed' or 'did not chew' the wafer. Yeah.


You would think that a paper would have checked all the facts before making a ridiculous statement such as that. A Telegraph-Journal newsroom employee who answered the phone said "no one will be talking" about the issue. An aide to publisher Jamie Irving said there would be "no comment."


CBC News has confirmed that editor Shawna Richer has been fired and that Jamie Irving is no longer the publisher of the paper. Earlier, their names had been removed from the paper's list of senior staff.


"Our reporters Rob Linke and Adam Huras, who wrote the story reporting on the funeral, did not include these statements in the version of the story that they wrote. In the editing process, these statements were added without the knowledge of the reporters and without any credible support for them. "The Telegraph-Journal sincerely apologizes to the prime minister for the harm that this inaccurate story has caused. We also apologize to reporters Rob Linke and Adam Huras and to our readers for our failure to meet our own standards of responsible journalism and accuracy in reporting."


Who the heck is in charge of editing this rag I wanna know? A room full of monkeys. Apparently no!...monkeys would have caught that gaff!!


The apology comes on the same day that a dozen professors from the University of New Brunswick, Mount Allison University and St. Thomas University issued a news release stating that they will no longer talk to the newspaper because of its decision to fire a student intern over factual errors that appeared in a story.


In May, Matt McCann was fired after writing a story about a faculty protest against Premier Shawn Graham receiving an honorary degree from the University of New Brunswick. Richer said McCann's story was unbalanced and contained three errors. The professors joining the boycott include six from St. Thomas, four from UNB and two from Mount Allison university. They say they will reconsider the boycott when McCann graduates in 2010 or if he is reinstated at the Telegraph-Journal.


It was another in an embarrassing string of events for the Telegraph-Journal. Saint John Mayor Ivan Court dared the newspaper's publisher to a debate and temporarily imposed his own ban on speaking to the Telegraph-Journal in January over his belief that the paper was too negative in its coverage of city hall. Court then said in late June that Irving and several senior newspaper staff members had told him in a private meeting that if the city cut taxes and replaced its manager, the tone of city hall coverage would change. "I and our former manager met Jamie Irving and his editorial staff in the manager's office. And we were told that unless we did what they wanted, they would continue what you see daily in the paper. And we saw the result of that: We no longer have a city manager," Court said.


From my point of view, this has nothing to do with the Irvings, this has nothing to do with the size of the family business. It all has to do with the editorial integrity of the newspaper, the health of civic debate and what looks to me like a bit of an infringement on journalistic independence.


Til later