The camera was a dead give away of course - you don’t see many professional digital cameras with mega zoom lenses around the park, other than Lynx photographer par excellence, John Bradley’s.  It turns out the camera belonged to a National Post photographer who was with a reporter, Joe O’Connor.  I cringed.  They were at Lynx Stadium on Wednesday, the night of Game IV for the other Ottawa franchise playing the other Buffalo franchise.  Kyle characterized it as “the perfect storm”:

“We are Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme playing [a concert in upstate] New York, and Woodstock is happening less than a mile away.”

And it probably was a perfect storm; certainly the weather itself didn’t help matters.  And of course, neither did Mr. O’Connor’s piece, which I refuse to link to.  Someone characterized it as a “hatchet job”.  I respectfully disagree.  The article was an agenda driven hit;  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Mr. O’Connor had a pretty good idea of what he was looking for when he came out to Coventry Road.  And he certainly found it.

Regular readers know that I struggle with these types of articles - do I draw attention to the negative, or just let it go?  Unfortunately, there are days when I simply can’t let things go and today is one.  Given what I know about the Lynx organization, I’m going to make a fairly safe assumption and say that the National Post was probably given a very warm welcome and every professional courtesy was extended.  I’ll bet that they were given full access - to the team, the field and staff.  I’ll further wager that they didn’t pay a cent for tickets or parking,  which is not to say that they owed the team a positive story, or that their integrity (dare I say, impartiality) should be or was compromised.  What I think they did owe the team was some indication of the angle that they were pursuing.  I think, as a journalist, you owe it to people you’re interviewing to advise them when they are about to make admissions against interest - their own, or those of their employer.  Translation for Mr. O’Connor:  warn people that you’re going to use their quotes to throw them under the bus, before you throw them under the bus.  Members of the fourth estate would protest that doing so would mitigate against getting honest answers.  I would respond that you need to let people know what your agenda is before you ask them to go on the record.  Common courtesy.

If you want to find the article, you’ll have to Google it yourself -but I can save you the time.  It’s just one more in a long list of gloomy “stories/articles” written about the team.  And perhaps, Mr. O’Connor, that’s the worst indictment I can level against you; in addition to everything else, your hit piece lacks any originality.