The Globe and Mail falls off its “pedastal”

A story by Oliver Moore on page R14 of Saturday’s print edition of The Globe and Mail carries the headline “Off the bike, and the pedastal”.  Can’t find it with that headline anywhere online. 

To be fair, though, it was pointed out to me that the teensy, tiny cottage industry that is this blog used the (legitimate) variant “miniscule” rather than the more appropriate “minuscule” in a previous post.

“Pedastal” though, seems to be just a goof.

Margaret Wente’s “Big Wind”: another error?

In her latest column against sustainable energy, Margaret Wente writes that, “Big Wind is among the biggest lobbyists in Washington”. 

She provides nothing to support a claim that appears to be false.  Here’s a list of the 20 biggest lobbyists in Washington from the Center for Responsive Politics.  Topping it is the US Chamber of Commerce which spent $136 million on lobbying in 2012, followed by a variety of sectors like Real Estate, Pharmaceuticals, Blue Cross, Oil, and Communications.  “Big Wind” is nowhere “among the biggest lobbyists in Washington”.

The same body notes that, “Until 2008, AWEA (American Wind Energy Association) failed to crack the $1 million mark in annual lobbying expenditures -- and most years, it spent less than $500,000.”  

According to Business Pundit, which lists “10 of the biggest lobbies” in Washington, Tech (at “$120 million” - Google alone doled out $20 million for lobbying in 2012), Big Oil (“$150 million”), Agribusiness (“$150 million”), Financial (“hundreds of millions”), Big Pharma, Defense, Mining, and AARP all dwarf the pitiful lobbying dollars of wind power.  Even the NRA and the Pro Israel lobbies are larger.

In 2009, lobbying by the American Wind Energy Association did increase dramatically to $5 million and then dropped back down to about $2 million in recent years.  A report from January 2013 in the Washington Free Beacon confirms this, noting that,  “The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) spent more than $2.1 million in 2012, a 61 percent increase from the $1.5 million it spent the previous year.”

It’s not clear what Ms. Wente means by “Big Wind”. Aside from the industry organization, many individual wind energy companies’ lobbying expenses were so miniscule they fell below the threshold for reporting, but if she is referring to Nextera (which she mentions in her article), her claim is also incorrect. 

Nextera, formerly Florida Power and Light and now one of the largest providers of wind energy, spent about $5 million in lobbying last year.  But as wind makes up about half of the company’s power portfolio (the rest includes gas, nuclear, hydro, solar and others), it would be equally erroneous for Ms. Wente to claim that this company isthe “Big Wind” lobby.  Half of $5 million is about equivalent to the amount spent by the American Wind Energy Association and is still dwarfed by any one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists in Washington who spend many, many times that amount.

Perhaps Ms. Wente meant to say that “Big Wind” or Nextera was one of the biggest electric utility lobbyists in Washington.  But this wouldn’t be true either.  It’s lobbying constituted only about one third of the nearly $16 million spent by the largest electric utilities last year, and if one subtracts the non-wind percentage of its holdings, it drops out of the top ten utility lobbyists altogether. 

By any measure, $2 million represents a tiny fraction of what the “biggest lobbyists in Washington” spent last year.  So unless Ms. Wente can provide sources and facts to support her claim, it should be corrected.  

As for her claim that Nextera paid no income tax, Ms. Wente omits to mention that there are dozensof other companies, like Verizon and Boeing, who, due to U.S. tax structure, are in a similar position.

In addition to a significant number of pastplagiarismand attributionproblems, Margaret Wente has engaged in previous misrepresentations of environmental issues, from nearly doubling the number of polar bears in Canada (to support her claim that they’re not at risk), to her claims about electric cars.  One might also ask whether, when writing about energy issues, it might be appropriate to disclose her longstanding position on the board of Energy Probe.

According to its wikipedia page, “Energy Probe is a non-governmental environmental policy organization based in Toronto and best known for its role in opposing nuclear power,[1][2][3] and as a free-market lobbyist for fossil fuels[4] and well-known Canadian proponent of climate change denial.”

Another Margaret Wente error…

…to add to the last column (and the growing list).

In yet another article on the 'death of men, Wente writes:  

“Male” jobs disappeared and, when men couldn’t find other “male” jobs, they gave up. Millions of men also went on disability, which has become a runaway welfare program for the American middle and working class. (In some months recently, more U.S. men have gone on disability than found work.) And the decline of men has closely tracked the rise of women.

Fox News:  More Americans went on disability than found jobs over the last three months, according to fresh figures crunched by the Senate Budget Committee. 

Despite the Republican ‘war on women’, last time we looked “Americans” meant both genders.  




In fact, if Wente had wanted to contribute something original to the countless other articles on this topic (or the long Rosin interview in last Saturday's Globe), she might have wondered if the that 'war on women' has anything to do with the gender job situation.  But that would have required some thought.  

In the meantime, perhaps The Globe could do their part to address the situation by hiring a young male editor for Margaret.

Correction please.

Margaret Wente’s sins

Not ‘original’ sins, mind you (Wente is rarely original).  In fact it is possible that her error today about Episcopalians, whom she describes as “the American equivalent of the United Church”, reflects the New York Times article which perhaps inspired her own version.  Ross Douhat’s earlier OpEd on the collapse of the liberal church (“Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?”) cites the same figures for Episcopalians.

Episcopalians are, of course the American version of Anglicans.  But what the heck – for Margaret’s purposes - a drive-by smear of the United Church - they'll do just as well.

Borrowing from the Times isn’t new for Wente, and errors related to sloppy attribution practices are common.   Best known was "John", but there are more examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here andhere.  And another just recently. 


Update, Error #2:  Wente writes that Mormonism “requires obligatory missionary service”.  “Missions are voluntary”, says its website.


Update #2:  While it took them a day or two (or three) an Editor's Note was finally appended to the online version of Wente's article: 


The Episcopalian Church in the United States is equivalent to the Anglican Church of Canada and not the United Church. Mormons are strongly encouraged, but not required to do mission work. An earlier online version of this story, and Saturday's original newspaper version, were not clear.


 In addition, it's worth noting the gracious 

response

 from Mardi Tindal of the United Church.   

Margaret Wente: that boat don’t float

Coming down hard on the Elliot Lake rescue, Margaret Wente writes: “Then there was the man who fell out of a boat into a lake in England. The lake was three feet deep. Emergency crews were summoned to the scene, but refused to rescue him because they were not trained to enter water that was more than ‘ankle deep.’ By the time the specialist water team arrived, the man was dead”.

A boat in three feet of water?  Hmm…sounds odd.  Perhaps, memory failing, Ms. Wente decided to spice up the story?  (In the past she’s been happy to changea scientist into a fisherman, or borrow a character and place him at an event he didn’t attend).    After all, what does it matter?

From the Daily Mail , the case of Simon Burgess, who, while feeding swans at the edge of a  three foot deep artificial lake, went in to retrieve his plastic bag, suffered a seizure, and fell in the water:

“12:15 pm:  Witness Gillian Hughes dials 999.  Simon Burgess, who had entered the lake to retrieve a plastic bag, is lying face down in the water and has stopped moving…

12:22:  When Fire Rescue arrives, Mrs. Hughes says the victim has been in the water for between five and ten minutes…there is no visible sign of life…”

Apparently, “the first fire crew to arrive hadn’t been trained to enter water higher than ankle-deep”.

"12:31:  Specialist Water Support Unit arrives…officers wade into the pond to retrieve him…"

Lack of judgment on the part of the rescuers?  Over cautious?  Absolutely. 

But if Ms. Wente expects others to do their jobs, we also expect her to do hers.  That means accuracy in reporting, and not making up characters or events to suit one’s opinion, or because it’s too much trouble to check facts. 

Update:  The following Editor’s Note is now appended to the online version of Wente’s article.  We await a similar correction for the error noted above:

Editor's note: An elderly woman had to wait for an ambulance after falling in a Niagara Region hospital entrance last year. An incorrect location was used in an article Thursday.

Neil Reynolds’ “ludicrous” error(s)

In today's instalment of the Globe and Mail's ongoing effort to discredit unions, Neil Reynolds reprises a Margaret Wente article from a few days ago, relying largely on talking points from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s campaign. 

But he ventures beyond spin and into fiction when he writes:

“Naturally, as in any bureaucracy, “special privileges” extended to the ludicrous. Correctional workers were entitled to book off sick and collect overtime pay for the very shift they didn’t work”.

This does seem ludicrous.  That might be because it’s not true.  

Under the heading “$150,000 Correctional Officers”, a document from Walker’s own campaign against unions makes clear that these officers may be paid overtime for the following shift- not the same shift for which they booked off sick, as Reynolds has it: 

“Officers can call in sick for a shift, receiving 8 hours of sick pay, and then are allowed to work the very next shift, earning time and a half for overtime”.

Still a little excessive?  Maybe.  But certainly not as “ludicrous” as Reynolds wants it to be.  An error?  A deliberate embellishment?  Won’t know til we see a correction.  


Update:   The following Editor's Note now appears at the end of the online version regarding another error in Reynold's article.  No sign yet of a correction for the one above.
Editor's Note: The Wisconsin teachers’ union (WEAC) created the WEA Trust insurance company in 1970. The union does not run the insurance company. Incorrect information appeared in the original newspaper version and an earlier online version of this article. This online version has been corrected.


Update, the second (now appearing at the bottom of Reynolds' online version): 
After calling in sick for a shift, correctional workers in Wisconsin were allowed to collect overtime for the following shift, not for the shift for which they called in sick. Incorrect information appeared in the earlier versions of this column. This online version has been corrected.

Meet Margaret Wente’s Québec student protester - not from Québec, it turns out (but it’s all Greek to her)

In a nasty piece on the student protests, Margaret Wente lays on the clichés about lazy, demanding, ungrateful Québecers - protected cradle to grave by the “Québec model” nanny state –  all subsidized, she adds, by Anglophone Canada.

She describes Québecers as ingrates not sufficiently beholden to those in the ROC who pay the bills: “In France, which many Quebeckers feel more connected to than they do with the rest of Canada, growth has stalled and generous entitlements have far outrun the government’s ability to pay. The same has happened in Quebec. But it gets a helping hand from the rest of Canada in the form of equalization payments, which will amount to $7.3-billion this year”.

Wente makes the student protest emblematic of a French/English divide, and tells Québec to take a hike:  “The rest of Canada looks on, appalled. If this is an example of Quebec’s distinct society, we want no part of it”.

Comparing Québec to Greece, she concludes: “They want the Germans to send them money forever and ever, and no matter how much the Germans send, they’ll keep demanding more. The student protesters are the Greeks of Canada. And we’ve had it”.

So who is the emblematic Québec student Margaret quotes?  After describing a protest at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Ms. Wente offers a single, exemplary quote from a protester. 

But it turns out the protester isn’t quite so exemplary.  He’s not a Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, nor a Leo Bureau-Blouin  or any other Québec protester (who could no doubt have provided a quote in English).  No, Wente’s example for this exercise in Québec bashing isn’t from Québec.  The spoiled, entitled brat that “people in the rest of Canada simply cannot understand”, is a student named Ethan Feldman, from, well, somewhere in “the rest of Canada”.

Here’s Wente’s quoted example of his motivations:

“Governments are completely saturated by neo-liberal ideology, disconnected from the public interest. These protests – like others around the world – are about showing there’s a limit to how far the state can go to protect capitalist interests at the expense of the people.”

And here's Ethan Feldman (an out of province McGill student) in the Montréal Gazette:

 “’Governments are completely saturated by neo-liberal ideology, disconnected from the public interest. These protests – like others around the world – are about showing there's a limit to how far the state can go to protect capitalist interests at the expense of the people.’

He (Ethan Feldman) points out that few of those involved would be seriously affected by the proposed gradual tuition increase. They're working for future students. His out-of-province tuition is around $6,700.”

Of course this isn’t the first time Wente has offered up a sloppy cartoon of lazy, “entitled” students.  A more significant example of her lax standards was "John", the fake Occupy protester whose bio and quote originated on an American website – but who, it turned out, was not an Occupy protester at all.

While not as egregious an error, presenting an Anglophone out of province student as exemplary of the Québec protests is still irresponsible.  Particularly when Wente is so actively inciting ill will - asking us to view the Québec protests as something  “the rest of Canada” (read Anglophones) “cannot understand”, “has had it with”, and “wants no part of”.

I suppose from where Margaret Wente sits in her upscale Toronto neighbourhood, Greeks and Québecers might look the same – tiny, and far away – especially when you can’t be bothered to look.  Most Québecers disagree with the protests, but that doesn’t stop Ms. Wente from ramping up and exploiting Anglo outrage.

Clearly Wente doesn’t care to find out what’s going on, and omitting the identification of her protesting poster boy as someone from outside the province serves her purposes.  Wente’s article achieved its objective, eliciting an outpouring of nasty anti-Québec comments on the Globe’s website.  

But before she engages in any more divisive baiting, maybe Ms. Wente could do a bit more research.  Given that his “parents cut the cheque” for his “$6,700” out of province fees, maybe Ethan Feldman isn’t so far away after all.  Maybe Margaret could actually interview him.  Maybe he lives next door.

  

David Warren, Raymond Lahey, errors, and child porn

What’s the right word to describe David Warren’s writing?  Maybe it’ll come to me. In any case, we try not to waste time here on the absurdities and logical inconsistencies, focusing instead on errors of fact and attribution (just browse the archive).  Sadly, Warren has been resurrected in the pages of the Ottawa Citizen after his Easter break with a column on abortion.

Another news item today reveals an earlier error.

Here's Warren, on October 11, 2009, writing about disgraced Catholic Bishop Raymond Lahey (who had been caught returning from an Asian adventure with a computer full of child porn):

“I offer this extenuation of the behaviour of Raymond Lahey -- the former bishop of Antigonish, charged with possession of child pornography (i.e. pictures on his laptop) two Fridays ago, and removed from his office by the Pope the next day”.

Two things worth noting here; first that Warren excuses Lahey (he blames “liberals” for tempting him), and second, Warren claims that in 2009 Lahey was “removed from his office by the Pope the next day”.   But it seems Lahey was not removed from office at that time.

Two years after Warren announced it, though, Lahey has finally been removed from office, as we learn today:  “A Roman Catholic bishop who was convicted of importing child pornography into Canada has been stripped of his clerical duties.”

In the intervening time, details emerged about the contents of Lahey’s laptop:

“Among the contents of Mr. Lahey's laptop were pornographic stories about children which, like some of the photos, depicted torture. A character in one of the stories, entitled ‘The Masturbation Chronicles,’ shares Mr. Lahey's name, Father Raymond. …Mr. Thompson told the court some content on Mr. Lahey's laptop ranked among the worst he has seen during the course of what he estimates are between 50 and 300 child-porn cases.

‘They're right up there,” he said. “I mean, it doesn't depict infants but the explicit images of torture are disturbing.’”

Aside from the falsehood about the Pope removing Lahey in 2009, we’ll note that while today he seems to advocate the re-criminalization of abortion on the grounds that a fetus may be able to experience pain, Warren remains unconcerned about the pain involved in child porn and torture when it comes to Catholic clergy.

In fact, he argues that we should inflict further suffering on victims’ families for the sin of embarrassing the church.  Writing about Lahey on the website “Catholicity”, Warren says:

 “…we should withdraw sympathy for people who claim their faith has been shaken by horrors within the Church – who make a parade of their own offended innocence, and abandon the Church in her distress.

If they do not know that their ‘relationship’ is ultimately with Christ, not a priest, then they need to be taught, urgently and publicly. More profoundly, they need to be taught how to feel shame instead of unctuousness.”

“Unctuousness”.   Maybe that was the word I was looking for. 

Margaret Wente: Fabulous Fake Protesters, Fishermen, Polls, Pew Reports (and other possible P words?)

The Globe and Mail added an Editor's Note to address Margaret Wente’s latest error (about the Pew Global Christianity report) that we identified here - the fourth correction in seven months (sadly, others equally worthy, have been ignored).

Hmmm...anything worth looking at in the rest of the column?

For example, Wente mentions Philip Jenkins’ 2002 book “The Next Christendom” only late in the article and in passing, even though much of her column relies on his ideas (and the corrected claims are now attributed to him). Some parts also sound a lot like previous reviews of Jenkins’ book.

Library Journal: by the year 2050, only about one-fifth of the world's three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Caucasian.

Wente: By 2050, only a fifth of the world’s three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Caucasians.

Library Journal: with the rise of Islam and Christianity in the heavily populated areas of the Southern Hemisphere, we could see a wave of religious struggles, a new age of Christian crusades and Muslim jihads.

Wente: The rise of Islam and Christianity in the heavily populated South could create a new era of religious strife, of jihads and crusades.

Ms. Wente also provides exactly the same Jenkins quote that had appeared in another online review, then follows up with a paragraph that begins: “Or, you could argue that Christianity is simply returning to its roots” - sort of like the “or” indicates that what follows is her own contribution or counter-theory, when in fact, the paragraph includes both Jenkins words (Jenkins: “As Christianity moves South and East, it is returning to its roots” – emphasis added), and a number of his other ideas in a form similar to the same book review which contained the quote.

Wente: It was born as the religion of the outcast and the dispossessed. Today, it’s embraced by young rural migrants flooding to the giant, impersonal cities. Like Islam, Christianity is a reaction to urbanization, cultural upheaval and displacement. It provides meaning, community, refuge, support networks and an anchor. It also offers blessings and redemption. Christianity, in its original form, preaches that supernatural intervention can help you in the here and now…

About.com: They are, quite simply, fulfilling profound social needs. Countries in the south are experiencing great economic and demographic difficulties – traditional ways of life are fading away while young people are moving in increasing numbers to the cities…Increasing numbers of people, disconnected from tradition and family, are searching for meaning and community in impersonal cities….Christian groups form a sort of “radical community”…where supernatural power is shown to act in their lives, here and now…

Wente doesn’t attribute these ideas to Jenkins or the various reviews. But as we’ve seen, there are other instances of what people might consider plagiarism or improper attribution. And it’s difficult to understand why the Globe would correct a 19 word attribution issue from the New York Times, but leave other, longer examples standing.

And there’s this little attribution problem (noted in comments) from December 22: “According to a poll by Ipsos Reid, two-thirds of Canadians approve of its efforts to boost the military and fight crime. Sixty per cent of the public feel the government is enhancing Canada’s reputation in the world. And a whopping 80 per cent agree with its decision to ban the niqab at citizenship ceremonies – a move derided by much of the progressive left,” Wente informs us.

The last of those results are not from Ipsos Reid, who didn’t poll on the subject of the niqab at citizenship ceremonies. Could be an older Angus Reid poll on the niqab in Québec, or a Forum Research survey done for Sun News. We don’t know, because the Globe and Mail won’t say.

I wonder if Ms. Wente will offer up one of those year-end reflections on columns past? As a member of the Q Media Panel on CBC, she was asked to select the most over-rated story of the year. She chose the Occupy protests, and had the brazenness to claim that they were a “media projection”.

Well, in her hands they were. Wente set out to paint the Occupiers as lazy, entitled students. The laziness and entitlement seem to be hers, though – since, rather than go out and interview anyone herself, she just picked up characters from other stories - one of whom, it turned out, was not an Occupy protester at all.

While Wente’s “John” was not fabulism (among other things, inventing a character from scratch would have required more work), one could argue that the effect was the same – and that “John” as a “face” of the Occupiers, went past the notion of a ‘media projection’ into fiction – a character cut and pasted from one narrative into a different one (in which he had no part), similar to the scientist who mysteriously became a fisherman in Margaret’s story.

The Globe corrected the most recent Pew error, probably because Pew contacted them, and they carry some weight. But it should have been corrected because it was wrong. Otherwise, they seem more interested in protecting their long-time columnist and former editor from further embarrassment. Sadly, in so doing, they seem less concerned with their responsibilities to readers, or with upholding the standards that (hopefully) the rest of their writers still respect. Let’s hope for better things in the New Year.