Emailing Jeff Davis of Postmedia…
On 3/30/12 7:00 AM, “James MacMaster” wrote:
Dear Mr. Davis,
It is incredible that anyone could hear a story like this without alarm bells going off and red flags flying. Yet not only did you hear it, but you actually committed this blatant BS to print and publication.
It means one of two things: you believed it – in which case you have no brains, or, you did not believe it but chose to print it – in which case you have no ethics or credibility.
You have betrayed the public trust and done a disservice to your fellow journalists.
Yours truly,
Jamie MacMaster
From: JDavis@postmedia.com
To: “James MacMaster”
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:51:36 -0500
Subject: Re: Breitkreuz lauded guns for teen girls, student’s mom says
Hi Jamie,
I get many such insulting letters from gun owners – since I am the reporter on this beat – after most articles I write. They tend to be flippant, like this one, are appear to be primarily an attempt to impugn of my professionalism and ethics, rather than debate any particular point.
When something like this is said on the floor of the House of Commons, it becomes news. It’s really that simple. Just because you or I may not agree with that particular point, the fact remains that the accusation was made in the House.
That said, what exactly is your objection to the article? In which way did I demonstrate a lack of credibility or ethics?
Thanks for reading, but I’m frankly getting bored by these messages from the firearms community.
Jeff Davis
Update: Objectivity so deep, it calls for a shovel.
This is what’s wrong, this was not said on the floor of the commons, this was from Jeff Davis (or the generic “Post Media”) interview with Sakisheway:
“He took advantage of situation where he was welcomed into tell the children about his career,” she said. “He wasn’t invited to go in talk about his favourite political issue.”
Breitkreuz should have known better, Sakisheway said, than to describe violent and frightening scenarios — such as bank robberies — to such an immature audience.
“It’s so fantastical to tell this type (of) story to children who are impressionable and gullible,” she said. “The sad and mean thing he did to these kids is that he planted a really, really negative seed in their minds at an emotional level.”
In her letter, Sakisheway says Breitkreuz clearly told the students that “it should be much easier for Canadians to attain and own a firearm because it is their duty and their right to engage in gun violence.”
Davis quoted and published Sakisheway’s third hand account of what Breitkreuz wrote despite the obvious changing of words to fit her political view. That was unethical, that was lazy reporting, that showed bias, and that is why he is getting inundated by “gun owners”.
It’s hilarious, about 3/4 of my mentions column on Twitter right now is this guy or someone else piling on him. Love it.
And his “professionalism”? No such thing is possible. Journalism meets none of the requirements to be considered a profession. No educational standard. No oversite by peer review. No standards of conduct ot produce. No ethical quide.
Nothing.
He’s bored when we catch him lyin’ because it happens every time he opens his mouth.
Posted without additional comment…
https://twitter.com/#!/JeffDavisOttawa/status/185730583165546496
“@dsakisheway – Don’t let the ‘keyboard commandos’ get you down. They react en masse to any stories about guns. Loud but mostly harmless…”
This story could have been about how an MP said to a classroom full of children how killing kittens is good and he’d get the same damn reaction. His column is a pile of bullcrap. That’s the issue here. The fact he doesn’t understand that is proof he’s a complete idiot.
Can someone tell me what a Social Entrepeneur is? Twitter (Twit) Bio screams full of myself and loving it.
Davis doesn’t get it.
The article was based on ‘gun BS’. The outrage is about ‘BS reporting’.
That’s a pretty common bio add on Twitter Chris. It makes them seem smarter somehow I guess.
The most popular with the left is “Artist” About 80% of them have that in their bio. Maybe 1 in 100 actually mention what kind of “art” they do.
That’s why Twitter is do damn much fun! You get to see folks like Todd Kincannon, Kurt Schlicter, SooperMexican and of course our very own Kate, play with the morons in almmost real time. There are times I can almost feel the spittle from the “artists” when one of the above or one of many more get them totally and completely spun up.
I read that ‘story’. He’s right that it should be news. But when you quote the concerned insane mother at such great length, your bias is showing. And it’s also showing in your tweets. Jeff is a fish in the waters of lefty bias. The fish doesn’t eve notice the water.
Davis has proven himself to be lazy and without ethics. That is obvious. However, by smugly dismissing criticism as simply an attack by gun-toting rednecks, Davis also reveals another trait…blatant, unadulterated stupidity.
Don’t have a twitter account so I’ll say it here.
Quit worrying about a grade ten’s sensibilities and gun violence , and start reporting on the mess helicopter parents create.
The mother will still be screeching when her daughters thirty.
Hey, YOU try perceiving reality after you’ve fallen off your bar stool and landed on your head.
It aint so easy you know.
Well at least if he was drunk he would have an excuse.
@ AtlanticJim at March 30, 2012 3:08 PM
PMSL Thanks – I gathered as much.
Gun Control (and I paraphrase): The belief that it is morally superior to find a woman dead, strangled with her own panty hose, and raped than it is to find her standing over the dead attacker with a gun in her hand.
Mz. Sakisheway and Mz.Jeff Davis don’t seem to care much for preventing violence against innocent people.
I don’t want to live in Progville anymore.
“are appear to be“? “to impugn of my professionalism”?
Stup, no ethics, and he can’t type a note. I guess journalizing is hard.
“Stupid”, that would be. The Curse of the Grammar Nazi strikes again.
Anyway, in the article Davis wrote: ‘Sakisheway told Postmedia News that she is “just a mother” and has no political associations.’
And then he didn’t bother to google her name; or if he did google it, he didn’t bother to mention what he found. Hack.
His reply to myself and couple others this morning,
“Jeff Davis @JeffDavisOttawa
· Close Open Details @wullu5 @jfgroves @bcbluecon – Also, Google is not sufficient research in my field. We rely primarily on interviews, not Twitter accounts”
So I guess if Google is not sufficient, then it cannot be used under any circumstance.
Talk about taking the stand and incriminating yourself.
You accuse a guy of not checking the facts, and he retaliates with assumptions, inferences and deflections.
GUILTY!
He, heee, heeeeeeeeeee…….
AtlanticJim – so I guess Google is not “sufficient research”, but no research is dandy. (BTW, anyone know what an “Africanist” is?)
Watch for this story on CBC’s the National tonight. They’ll be gunning for the Tories even more now that their annual subsidy is down to just over a billion.
‘are appear to be”? “to impugn of my professionalism”?
Stup, no ethics, and he can’t type a note. I guess journalizing is hard.
Posted by: Black Mamba at March 30, 2012 3:47 PM
Well noted Black Mamba. Davis is getting taxpayer’s money for writing; he is accountable to us for his lack of skill using the English language in written form. From the brief letter Davis wrote to Jamie we should acknowledge this employee’s many failures and fire him promptly.
You noted one, lazy and failure to proof read formal letters to his employer; Jaymie is a taxpayer and this Davis character not only addresses Jaymie as a casual acquaintance (‘Hi Jamie’, should be “Dear Sir” or “Dear Mr. MacMaster”) but he fails to use the mechanics the English language properly, in this attempt to write a formal letter to his employer!
When composing a formal letter, one does not use dashes, tense agreement within sentences and paragraphs is basic grade III English structure. Epic Fail.
“Reading’ can be used as a Past Participle but in the sentence Jeff has placed it, it should have been used as a verb: “Thanks for reading my letter”. Jeff is not in a position to thank Mr. MacMaster for ‘reading’.
The tone of the letter is another matter and must be viewed as careless, confrontational, dangerous and juvenile.
Fire him.
So Newstalk is using this guys article for their coverage…
CBC is running this zero facts story also.
Jamie…..just a suggestion. email him back,and ask him to provide ONE,with verifiable references(NOT google),case DIRECTLY linked to any police service accessing the gun registry,and using that info to PREVENT either a murder,assault,and/or crime.I would love to hear his response.
We all know what the gutter snipe strategy is. Keep a “scandal” in the news every single week. The lib-dipper coalition uses the tactic quite effectively. The useful idiots in the MSM regurgitate anything the gutter snipes send their way.
Jeff Davis is a tool. The firearms community has been sparring with him over his yellow journalism for years. This is not new. Years ago, he did a drive-by piece in which he pretended to be an enthusiast in order to get an invite to club for some show and tell, then proceeded to trash the mmembers in his op-ed.
The bias he doesn’t recognize, and which is a well documented affliction of leftards is “confirmation bias”. The same problem the “warmist” scientists suffer from. Its a side branch of the “my shit don’t stink” disease that appears to be congenital in liberals.
“…frankly getting bored by these messages from the firearms community.”
Well then frankly, my dear, maybe covering firearms issues is not for you. (What is “this beat”, BTW? I don’t seem to able to find out, short of phoning the paper, which, meh, I do no research for free, unlike certain “reporters” who are apparently paid for it.)
(Is he publicly funded, Jema54? I’m not certain one way or the other.)
(In paragraph 3, sentence 3, “that” should be “a”. Paragraph 2, sentence 2 has a lot of problems, the least of which is that “an attempt” should be “attempts”. Since we’re picking on him.)
Sir,
All sorts of cranks write all sorts of things to their MPs every day. That does not make their rants news. A member of an opposition party decided to abuse parliamentary privilege and attract attention to herself by repeating the rant of some liberal dingbat based on what a Conservative MP may or may not have said to her daughter’s grade 10 class. You saw fit to gave the rant publicity in an attempt to tarnish the government’s reputation.
Rants by the spoiled, scatterbrained wives of Ottawa bureaucrats aren’t news. Slanders at the expense of government MPs aren’t news. A libel suit against Postmedia would very much be news, as would an Accurate News and Information Act shoved down the throat of a media determined to abuse freedom of speech to spread slander and sedition. I look forward to reading articles about both those pieces of news in the Ottawa Citizen.
If you don’t, and you take your job reporting on gun regulation seriously, stick to reporting on changes in the actual gun policy of the Government of Canada. Well-considered, well-researched opinions on the policy (by people qualified to give opinions) have their place, on the op-ed page. Leave hearsay to gossip columnists and the blogs of liberal cranks.
Yours, etc.
(Forgive me for not actually sending this, but what would be the point?)
What Dick Slater said.
I mean, really, letters to MPs written about hearsay by some crank having the vapours because ______ was discussed. What’s the matter? No good car accidents today?
For edification purposes, the letter in question is posted over at the NP under a Matt Gurney article…… surprise, surprise, nothing in the letter as reported by that lying liberal or Jeffy the jerk.
In the simplest term its a scabby attempt to get Garry,
Can someone tell me what a Social Entrepeneur is? Twitter (Twit) Bio screams full of myself and loving it.
Posted by: Chris in Ontario at March 30, 2012 3:01 PM
Pimp.
What Jeff Davis claims the letter said:
In her letter, Sakisheway says Breitkreuz clearly told the students that “it should be much easier for Canadians to attain and own a firearm because it is their duty and their right to engage in gun violence.”
What the letter actually said:
“My daughter and her peers were sent 3 messages by the federal government…it should be much easier for Canadians to attain and own a firearm because it is their duty and their right to engage in gun violence.”
Note the difference? Davis’ version implies a direct quote from Breitkreuz. The letter itself doesn’t state any such thing, it is speaking metaphorically.
This is so far beyond acceptable I’m amazed this Davis guy still has a job.
Black Mamba – my mistake, I had thought he worked for CBC but he works for another media outfit. That group owns Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail etc. The board of Directors speaks for the employee, IMO.
http://www.postmedia.com/company/
Sore loser Liberanos.
What the Liberals and the majority of the leftest dips don’t seem to be able to distinguish one form the other is “gun violence” VS being able to protect oneself FROM violence – be it a grizzly at a camp ground or a hyped-up gang-banger who thinks he’s “entitled” to your recent withdrawl at the ATM.
The reporter is clearly a moron for not pointing out the difference between what was said and the mother’s hysterical extrapolation of what she thinks was said or implied from what her child said.
There are places in the Dakotas for instance and of course Switzerland where EVERYBODY has at least one gun and often what would be described as an arsenal by some city dwellers and there hasn’t been a gun murder in years – decades sometimes. That’s because those people TEACH gun laws, gun SENSE and gun safety. The last thing those people would think of is using a gun to settle an argument.
To associate the simple ownership of a firearm to those criminally inclined is idiotic and an insult. Under these circumstances the mother has a right to her moronic extrapolations and so does the reporter. It is somewhat amusing how these “journalists” shoot themselves in the foot by reporting a mother’s claim that this PROMOTES GUN VIOLENCE and then shoots himself in the knee by way of trying to wriggle out of any responsible reporting by
insulting those pointing out the fact that he is, in the end and typically uneducated, leftest, unethical and lazy. Sadly the norm for modern journalism.
No.
None of that sounds off AT ALL.
A few times in the past I’ve written the CBC Ombudsman to complain about the lack of journalistic integrity & professionalism of some of their reporters. 99 times out of 100 such legitimate claims are just dismissed out of hand.
My guess is that if a Left-Of-Centre journalist (ie. most of them) were hooked up to a lie detector and asked whether they had a Leftist bias, they would say “Of course not” and pass with flying colours. Such is the amazing & absolute self-awareness of the Leftist mind.