I have been meaning to touch on this for a few days now: Jane Taber's work lately has been beyond the pale. Her dislike for the Tories was always fairly evident, but for some reason it went into overdrive last week. I don't know whether it's that she's overworked from her double duty as a Globe scribe and a CTV talking head or that the Harper press shop is treating her badly, but what she is doing is not right.
My antennae first went up when I saw this story, which appeared on page A4 (!!!) of the Thursday Globe and Mail. After reading it, for the first time in my life I seriously contemplated filing a complaint with the Ontario Press Council. It is not just the content of this total non-news "story" that is farcical, it is the sarcastic tone.
It gets worse on TV. I mean, who opens up an interview with the question "Are you a bigot?" The answer: Jane Taber, today, when interviewing Gwyn Morgan on Question Period. It's like that old joke about asking a politician "When did you stop beating your wife?" But the difference is that the wife beating joke is a joke, and Taber was dead serious! At least Morgan had the decency to laugh it off.
Also on today's Question Period, Taber interviewed Rona Ambrose. This time, Taber looked as though she wanted to lunge into the camera and grab the environment minister by the throat. Seriously. Watch it from start to finish.
Then there was this panel on Friday's Mike Duffy's show, in which she proudly called the Prime Minister "petulant." (Lawrence Martin used the same word and several more, including "arrogance," but this is expected behaviour from him.)
Maybe she just had a bad week. Maybe she just needs a holiday. But it seems that Taber, like Keith Boag, is letting her personal frustration with the new way of doing things in Ottawa affect her reporting of the news. And that's wrong.
(A bit of a tangent but somewhat related: It has become patently unclear just exactly what Taber's primary job is in Ottawa. Is she a pundit? Is she a commentator with opinions? Or is she a straight-news reporter? You can no longer tell from her written stories or TV work.)
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 6:40 PM
