Sometimes a story appears in the press that takes an unpopular stand, or paints a person, organization or business in an unflattering light. Sometimes information is revealed on the front page or 6 p.m. news that someone finds embarrassing, annoying or possibly incriminating.
There are options. Assuming the story is fair and accurate, a differing viewpoint could be expressed in a letter to the editor, or in a follow-up story.
Then again, the person could pitch a fit with squawks of “fake news,” demands for retractions and threats to get the reporter fired. That “fake news” tactic has grown in popularity over the past few years, ever since the former American president told a television journalist he demeans and discredits the press so no one will believe negative stories about him.
Although “fake news” is a relatively new phenomenon, the stories that have caused the biggest stink over the years have always tended to be the ones that are dead-on accurate.
A good example on a local level would be a police report about someone charged with street racing or impaired driving. News outlets are allowed to publish names of people who have been formally charged. Some choose to do so while others do not. Canada has an open and public legal process – people who have a run-in with the law are not charged, tried and convicted in secrecy. They do not disappear, never to be seen again. That is the up-side. The down-side is sometimes they get their name in the paper, and they do not like it one little bit.
Another example on an international scale is the recent news story about Pearson Airport being among the worst in the world for delays. That translates into tales about bad experiences – long lineups, flight disruptions and missing or mangled baggage. One news story quoted a social media post calling Pearson Airport “a special circle of hell.”
The airport has apparently found a solution to the bad press it has been receiving. Lest travellers become hopeful things are about to improve, it should be noted this is definitely not the same thing as coming up with adequate staffing and compensating passengers appropriately when things go wrong.
Goodness, no. It seems the airport will be requiring media people to apply for permission 24 hours before they plan to visit the airport. It will also be assigning an airport employee to accompany them – a “minder,” to use a bit of terminology that hearkens back to Soviet Russia during the Cold War. It may have been Red China or another totalitarian regime, come to think of it.
Pearson Airport’s new policy may indeed be nothing more than an attempt to know who is visiting the airport. However, it looks suspiciously like a ham-fisted attempt to change the message by muzzling (or shooting) the messenger.
Throughout much of history, news both good and bad was delivered in person, and there was always a tendency to take out one’s anger on the messenger. At certain times, for example, in ancient China, there was an unwritten code of conduct that prohibited harming diplomatic envoys, hence, the sentiment that one should not shoot the messenger.
Plutarch wrote of Tigranes, who ordered a messenger’s head cut off. This effectively discouraged anyone from bringing Tigranes any intelligence – a disastrous situation in time of war.
Modern communications have made it a lot more difficult to stop a story from getting out. Sometimes the journalist goes to their airport to get the story; sometimes the story comes to the journalist. Hell hath no fury like an irate traveller with a Twitter account, who wants answers about why their luggage went to Antarctica when they were only going to Halifax.
The airport might want to consider a different option for changing the message: treat the paying customers like paying customers, in other words, with a reasonable amount of respect and consideration, not like credit cards with annoying humans attached to them. Now, that would be a story!
