Laura Payton

I haven’t been blogging since I stopped freelancing, but I’m hoping to get some new content on here soon, probably focusing on journalism and media in general. It will help now that I’ve figured out my long-forgotten password.

The indefatigable Michael Petrou, who has travelled to just about every dangerous place in the world that you can name, made an access to information request to Foreign Affairs. Hijinks ensue. As you read this, keep in mind that the legislation exists so that Canadians have, you know, ACCESS TO INFORMATION. As opposed to blacked-out pages.

We (reporters) have all experienced this. Some people are better than others. I recently had a great experience with Foreign Affairs, although it took three weeks to work through the echelons of higher-ups for approval. There are other people there who I know won’t get back to me on time and won’t have any useful information.

From Petrou:

“For those of you blessed not to work in media, it is close to impossible to get a coherent and timely response from Foreign Affairs. You, as a journalist, will call with a very specific question. Days go by. A media spokesperson calls back and reads from a prepared statement that often has nothing to do with what you asked in the first place. You point this out. The spokesperson repeats his prepared lines. Your ears start to bleed.

For a while I tried not giving them my e-mail address, figuring they would have to call me back and answer questions that way instead of e-mailing the statement. But, like Petrou writes above, they just read it to you instead.

“This doesn’t mean that the Foreign Affairs media people back in Ottawa ignore press inquiries. They spend an awful lot of time working on them, just not on answering the questions they are asked.”

Here’s the thing - apologists for both parties (because, as Wells points out, this didn’t start with the Tories) argue that journalists are muckracking, looking for trouble, and a big bunch of whiny whiny thumb-sucking babies who don’t deserve to get the information or should find it another way. These aren’t stories with national security implications - which is an excuse that’s abused in certain departments.

If reporters don’t get this info, nobody gets this info. People - real people, like YOU - don’t read the stories in the paper or watch them on TV or hear them on the radio. So this isn’t just a media-centric story. Everybody should care when the government is LITERALLY hiding information.

Paul Wells and Kate Heartfield echo Petrou’s complaint.

Well, it’s not really news. I’m just glad to see people are still talking about a Veronica Mars movie.

This was one of the best tv shows of the past decade, but because it ran on the WB, then the post-merger CW, rather than a main network, it never got the viewers that it needed. At least, that’s my opinion - you can find a lot of other theories online about why it didn’t attract high enough ratings (another credible one is that it was an adult show based around high school students - it was hard to get the message across that it wasn’t another 90210 knockoff). The fans were definitely rabid enough to allow for plenty of online discussion. Veronica Mars was critically acclaimed and drew high-profile fans like Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon who loved the dark, sarcastic detective show about a high schooler who’s trying to find out who murdered her best friend. The plot also made no bones about Veronica being at times unlikeable - unwilling to take on most cases unless she got paid, cranky and demanding of her friends, and able to hold a nasty grudge once she was hurt. A nuanced show that, if it put its characters in unbelievable situations, still made the people themselves absolutely realistic and true.

Anyway, via Maclean’s TV guy Jamie Weinman, former Veronica Mars dad Enrico Colantoni did an interview with a German website where they asked him about the potential for a movie.

EC: Wouldn’t that be wonderful? I’d love to see Veronica Mars on a big, big screen! I talked to [show creator and producer] Rob [Thomas] on occasion, and I know he is keeping this one very close to his chest. But I really don’t know what is going to happen. It makes me sad even talking about it because I would love to do it, and I would love to see it.

After doing a bit of online searching, it looks like Thomas and show star Kristen Bell are also in. Bell is asking fans to get in touch with Warner Brothers to convince them there’s a desire to see the movie. Let’s hope they succeed.

This is important.  A lot of people are saying what happened in Honduras wasn’t a coup, or at least was in the interests of democracy.

A Daily Kos poster argues otherwise.

“The same Congress that, after the military had kidnapped, beaten and dumped President Manuel Zelaya in Costa Rica had declared one of its own, Roberto Micheletti, as the coup “president” today passed an emergency law stripping Hondurans of the following rights from the country’s constitution:

1. The right to protest.

2. Freedom in one’s home from unwarranted search, seizure and arrest.

3. Freedom of association.

4. Guarantees of rights of due process while under arrest.

5. Freedom of transit in the country.”

(via Andrew Sullivan)

A friend of mine is living in Cairo now, surrounded by American ex-pats. They have been teasing her about Canada Day, so I came up with a list of things I love about Canada and posted it on her facebook page. That inspired this list. Feel free to add your favourite things in the comments section.

1. Legal gay marriage.
2. Hockey
3. Roughrider football
4. Ryan Reynolds
5. Vancouver
6. Really good beer
7. Universal health care (despite its problems)
8. The Arcade Fire
9. Seth Rogen
10. CBC Radio 1
11. CBC Radio 3
12. Peter Mansbridge
13. George Stromboulopoulos
14. Joel Plaskett (well, really, all Canadian indie music is pretty awesome)
15. Poutine
16. Montreal
17. the Rockies
18. the Prairies
19. Being able to walk around at night, by myself, without worrying about my safety
20. Knowing my vote will be counted. Knowing I can vote without intimidation. We can debate first-past-the-post and proportional representation, but compared to lots of other countries, my vote counts.

This is the premiere of my new website. I’ve been blogging for almost as long a I’ve been in Ottawa, but it’s time to take it on more seriously. I won’t always be talking about work, but I’ll try to make sure anything I post is entertaining or enlightening.

Thanks for stopping by.

Weather in Ottawa is crazy. Two hours ago it was 40 degrees with the humidity.

My basil and my cat are sweltering.

All the poor cat does is lie in front of open windows and try to position herself near one of our fans. The fur coat isn’t really conducive to staying cool when it’s this hot.

After a brief weekend spent relaxing and ignoring the rest of the world, I’m catching up on news. Particularly in Iran.

A lot of people are talking about Neda. According to the person who posted the video on Youtube, this woman was shot by a paramilitary force.

It’s not a violent video, but you’re watching a woman bleed to death. Another woman screams, a man cries her name repeatedly. It’s powerful.

Here it is if you want to see it. Youtube makes you sign in to swear you’re not a minor, but Mashable provides it to everyone.

Twitter re-schedules maintenance around Iran

The primary user I’m following says the usual proxy sites and ISPs are down. There are rumours of Hizbollah in Iran and protesters taken to Evin - a notoriously nasty prison in Tehran. Also rumours the government is tracking Twitter users and blocking access to the primary discussion feed on twitter (#iranelection). Discussion is moving to www.twitter.com/#iran9. And here’s a New York Times article on how protesters are using social media to organize and get news in and out.

I’m captivated by what’s happening in Iran. Some people are calling it a revolution.

Photos here They make me wish I were a photographer - words can’t always do justice to a story. It’s just not possible to use words as effectively as pictures to show a woman’s fear as a group of men surrounds her and begins beating her and her companion, or the sight of police in riot gear chasing protesters, batons drawn and swinging.

Dozens of updates every 10 seconds here

In particular, I’m intrigued at protesters’ use of Twitter to pass information and keep all of us on top of what they’re seeing. Of course it’s all relatively anonymous, so it could be somebody faking it. But they’d be devoting a lot of time to a fake feed. Also incredible is how non-Iranians are drawn to help: warning readers that the government is monitoring the Twitter feed, passing on proxies so Iranians can continue to Tweet, and ganging up to ask Twitter to delay planned maintenance so they can keep getting information out.