🧵> Reporters, reporters, I’m begging you: Don’t do this. Never get into a pissing match with a skunk. The skunk has a deadlier weapon, and you spend the rest of your day trying to smell like a human again. -> <- Don’t allow guys like #Poilievre to draw you into an argument in scrums and newsers.

The moment you do, you’re an unpaid actor in his endless morality soap.

He’s the shining knight, saving the fair country from the evil du jour. You’re the dunce. ->

@AlexUsherHESA Unless you can point to countries that have done what you’re talking about, this notion is pure idealism.

It’ll be tough unless you include dictatorships imposing measures that force people into activities and behaviours they neither choose nor are particularly suited for. > @AlexUsherHESA < Geographical attributes that govern the kind of transformation you’re contemplating:

• World’s second largest land area. More land > more natural resources > more enrichment from extraction.

• Harsh climate most everywhere. This plus size makes cohesion hard to build. >

A short thread:
🧵
||| I never saw these “chefs use gas” ads until this week. Yet from my earliest days in home kitchens I preferred gas for top-of-stove cooking for a simple reason. 1/ ->

https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1613673129779363841

<- 2/ The fast-responding heat control of gas produced better results than electric with heavy stainless and cast-iron pans as well as lighter ones. No question.

Electric ovens produced superior radiant heat surrounding food in a closed oven, and for heat-on-top broiling. ->

@TLNewmanMTL I asked what you meant by smeared. After you stopped challenging the legitimacy of the question, you replied that some commentators & politicians said participants were all anti-vax & covid deniers. I agree, that was smearing those whose focus was lockdowns and border rules. You also mentioned
Trudeau’s comments. It was on Jan. 27, as the convoy neared Ottawa, that he called it a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” that were unrepresentative of Canadian opinion.

@TLNewmanMTL Maybe you were on a Twitter holiday or something. Did you miss the central Ottawa residents, one after the other, begging someone to do something about the honking, harassment, trash and disruption of life? @TLNewmanMTL Did you miss the videos of reporter after reporter trying to talk to convoy people, being rebuffed and slagged off as fake?

The endless footage of signs demanding that the PM step down, months after forming a parliamentary majority in the wake of *a national election*?

@JulietONeill Try this, prepared in Justice in 1988 after the act was passed.

publications.gc.ca/Collection-R/L…

I’ll try to supplement. @JulietONeill 🧵 One thing I think people are not getting about this emergency is the way in which it shows the rapidly advancing unworkability of the division of powers in Canada.

Jaded Ottawa hands & constitutional wonks please don’t eye-roll just yet. 1/
#canpoli

I want to suggest three ideas that should be part of the discussion about #journalism, objectivity and point of view, ongoing among @TomRosenstiel , @WesleyLowery , @jayrosen_nyu and others.

These ideas are centred on 1) method, 2) interpretation and 3) truth. 1/ 1) An open mind is not the same as an empty mind. Every inquiry is based on prior experience, accumulated information and awareness of knowledge gaps. This is as true of science and the humanities as it is of news reporting. Existing knowledge + identified gaps —> method. 2/

@CaraMcK If you’re in a public space, you as a journalist should be able to record audio or video (and take notes) of anything you consider newsworthy. I’d say review it before publishing so you can provide a description and context, plus ID of the subject & badge # of police. 1/x @CJFE @CaraMcK @CJFE You have the right as a citizen to do the same but if you are a journalist by trade or occupation, whether employed or on assignment or not, it’s best to be one prospectively. Gives you a reason for asking questions, getting names & so on. 2/x

@Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm Nearly 50 years ago I was walking home one dark night in Vancouver BC 🇨🇦 when a patrol car stopped and two police jumped out. My hair was long for the time but otherwise nothing remarkable about this white college student. 1/x @Democrat_Barbie @CarolineGoggin @josh_ross @mattmfm It was common at the time to stop & frisk, looking for drugs, which I never carried. This the two officers did. I could have asked them to stop, and arrest me if they believed they had grounds, but I was 20 at the time and lacked confidence, and it was a busy time. 2/x

@gregggonsalves deserves thanks for the thought put into his thread, which is well worth reading. However, it’s about the appropriateness of bunching together to protest, not the actions of leaders seeking to demonstrate allyship. @DonPlett is challenging @JustinTrudeau. 1/x

https://twitter.com/ArmineYalnizyan/status/1269277691271921665

Leadership is exercised in many ways. One of them is performance. Leading by example may take the form of a public demonstration, calculated to produce images that will be widely viewed. This political theatre is central to Trudeau’s leadership style, and often scripted. 2/x

Thread:

The @TorontoStar’s guiding Atkinson Principles:

- A strong, united and independent Canada
- Social justice
- Individual and civil liberties
- Community and civic engagement
- The rights of working people
- The necessary role of government

Which would you cross off? 1/x Prospective new owners of @TorontoStar , affiliate newspapers & parent company are corporate financiers. They say they’ll “promote” the Atkinson Principles. Can they be trusted? 2/x

@YoniFreedhoff @carlyweeks Thread:

Suggesting that “a large number of people are selfish assholes” displays a breathtaking lack of humility, unworthy of those MD initials.

Lots more could have been done to convey risks, starting with acknowledging large deficiencies in knowledge about SARS-CoV-2. 1/x @YoniFreedhoff @carlyweeks 1. The existence of asymptomatic transmission (AT) was initially denied. When it was acknowledged, its significance was played down. The difference between this virus and SARS (2002-2003) wasn’t sufficiently clear. 2/x

Call It Misogyny, Not Terrorism.

- my comment on this ex-agent’s piece, repurposed for Twitter.

——————

Misogyny should be called by its name. Not domestic assault. Not mental illness. Not senseless violence. And certainly not terrorism. 1/x

theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/ar… Since September 2001 Canada’s security forces have been steadily expanding the definition of terrorism,  and with it the scope of their mission. The first step was the Anti-Terrorism Act (2001). 2/x

@AlexUsherHESA Unis haven’t succeeded in imposing teaching quality standards on tenured profs to date. No reason that would be any easier now. Probationary, yes, via student & peer assessments and tenure committees. My guess would be that their hiring letters or tenure expectations ... 1/x @AlexUsherHESA ... already contain something about new delivery modes & techniques. If not they can be modified in the early probationary years. As for contract, they may have a seniority claim over a course they’ve taught several times, but they’d probably have to demonstrate currency ... 2/x

@DFisman @DFisman Respect your knowledge of infectious disease but socially, educationally & psychologically we’re in danger of walking off a cliff. We will need not only medical guidance but courage as strong as anything we’ve faced yet, & perhaps uncommon creativity. 1/x #COVID19Canada @DFisman We’re not nearly prepared to do education remotely at any level. K-6 families are climbing the walls. Homes aren’t properly set up, equipment isn’t in place, few people are trained and working parents cannot be expected to be educational aides forever. 2/x

@perreaux Jumping in at the risk of stirring the embers with @MarkBourrie.

There aren’t many people in MSM city newsrooms any more who walked in with no skills & were paid to learn on the job. J-schools and campus papers have provided the basics for 50 years or more. 1/ @perreaux @MarkBourrie The basics have changed. A much graater proportion of what young journalists bring to the table is technical. Using apps, search, social, analytics, design, graphics, complex WP, programming, database building, data analysis - some or all of the foregoing ... 2/x

PSA for #publichealth authorities & reporters working on #COVID2019.

Please think about people who are old, living with chronic illness and/or immunocompromised by medication.

They read/hear/watch your announcements, press conferences and news stories. They’re #Audience. 1/x As you know, people who are old, living with chronic illness or immunocompromised by medication (POCII) and are infected by the COVID-19 virus have an elevated risk of slow recovery, complications and death. This routine context appears in most guidance and news stories. 2/x

Look at Latin America, especially Brazil but also Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Chile. And look at all news media including radio, newsweeklies, TV, web, social as well as dailies. 1/x #Latam #AmericaLatina #periodismo

https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/1229059558225694724

In Brazil the commercial dailies were compliant after the military takeover in 1964 but eventually became combative. They pushed boundaries of press freedom, got documents, revealed hidden truths. I saw the end up close and was impressed by their sophisticated techniques. 2/x

@navalang Thread:
Don’t mind taking this on. Several of us have noted that the reaction in Canada and by Canadians has been much stronger than it was when the Air India plane was bombed in 1985 with greater loss of life. The official response so far is also much more coherent. 1/x @navalang 2 Those of us born in Canada haven’t eradicated the institutional and cultural racism we inherited, but we have diminished it. If the sense of a national tragedy and the outrage is stronger than it was in 1985, I believe that’s one reason. But there are others. 2/x

Threadd:

Sorry but tragedy falls in the field of literature and drama, not moral philosophy, law or ethics.

It’s the quality of an event or chain of events defined by its result, impact and effect, independent of motive or responsibility. 1/

https://twitter.com/pdrobertson/status/1215411381274583040

2 Would the child’s death have been any less tragic had it not been caused by illness?

For example, if the child had been struck by a car while crossing the street at a crosswalk? Or jaywalking?

Or shot along with mother and siblings by an estranged father?

2/

@CJR @mathewi @kylepope Thread:

Kyle Pope, like many journalism critics, says news people have two choices: make facts a fetish and write encyclopedia entries, or tell deeper, more honest stories. But another option is hiding in plain sught: the interpretive news report. 1/x @CJR @mathewi @kylepope 2 The craft of reporting evolved in North America from circumstances in which storifying, largely borrowing tropes from pre-existing morality tales, substituted for the absence of readily available facts and reliable accounts of events. 2/x