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A capacity crowd of 600 paying customers turned up for the Shaidle-Mansur-Levant freespeechapalooza in London, Ontario last week, but, as Kathy Shaidle's headline puts it:
Canadian Newspaper Editor Just Doesn't Have The 'Energy' To Deal With Whole 'Free Speech' Thing.
And that's pretty much what Paul Berton says.
Look, it's not difficult. As the très fatigué Mr Berton points out, his laughably misnamed newspaper The London Free Press ran a story about the event before it happened - by the paper's Bicycling Correspondent Randy Richmond. Whether or not the story was a "smear", it certainly had an impact: The original sponsors canceled the event, and it was obliged to find new sponsors, and a new venue.
In normal circumstances, if you decide an event is so controversial that it has news value before it happens, you have an obligation to report on it when it happens, if only to determine whether the ballyhoo was merited. Having been given the pre-game show, readers were certainly entitled to expect the game. That obligation is intensified when the original story has had such an impact that it put the event in jeopardy. The LFP chose to make itself part of the story, and then denied readers what Paul Harvey used to call "the rest of the story" - that the event had been moved to a bigger venue, and sold it out.
Aside from Paul Berton's lack of "energy", which is certainly reflected in his prose style, there's basic journalistic malpractice going on here: Bicycle Boy decided he'd determined the narrative - "Hatemonger en route to London!" - and when the plot wiggled free of him the paper simply dropped the story as if it had never happened.
More from Just Right Radio on "how the media creates uninformed citizens".
By the way, until Kathy mentioned it, I had no idea Paul Berton was the son of Pierre Berton. That line about a Canadian being someone who knows how to make love in a canoe would be funnier if it were true. On the other hand, Paul Berton is certainly very good at dozing in his canoe as it drifts to the falls.
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