Why we hate the media

Having been away the last four days, I hadn't seen the weekend Globe and Mail until this afternoon. I was not disappointed, the front page teaser is for a story so bad it's hard to believe this isn't really a parody.

Here's the teaser:

Teaching kids what to eat and why is as important as teaching them to read and write, so why is Canada the only G8 country without a school lunch program?

Think about that for a while. It gives a lot away right off the top.

For example, is there anyone other than the school system who might teach them these valuable skills? Maybe those people children typically refer to as "Mummy" and "Daddy" might manage the job. Or maybe we could teach children how to read and write and then tell them to figure it out for themselves?

And would it be too impolite to point out  that schools aren't doing such a hot job on the teaching-them-how-to-read-and-write front.

The absolute gem in the piece, however, is this quote from Paul Finkelstein:

If we don't change the way kids eat, we're doomed.

Doomed! Well that clinches it, sign me up for higher taxes to pay for this.

And then there is this stunning bit of logic:

Youth obesity rates in Canada have doubled over the past 30 years; among children aged 6 to 17, the rate tripled to 10 percent of the population ....

Okay, but let's step back a minute. The other countries in the G8—you know, the ones that already have school lunch programs—what is their youth obesity rate? Because, unless those other countries are doing much better (and they aren't) this data, while it definitely points a problem somewhere, does not suggest that a school lunch program will make any difference.


And notice something odd about the sources quoted in the story:

• Debbie Field: a director of FoodShare, an advocacy group pushing for more food education in schools.
• Evan Fraser: author of Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations.
• Mary McKenna: who is with the Canadian Research Institutefor Social Policy at The University of New Brunswick
• Paul Finkelstein: a culiary arts teacher who already runs "an entire operation" that is "aimed at teaching children the value of real food and how to to make it for themselves".

That's all of them. Gee, I wonder what journalism school the writer Jessica Leeder went to that they didn't teach her that a story that quotes only people who are advocates for the cause the story is ostensibly "reporting" about is totally #$%^ing biased! And whatever happened to those people, I think they are called editors, whose job it is to make sure that crap like this doesn't gets into the paper? How is it that, rather than sending Ms. Leeder out the door with a stern warning that if she she really wants to keep her job, she needs to do better than this.