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RICK MacLEAN: Reporters aren’t tape recorders. Only news is news

The reporter came in the morning after covering an evening meeting and greeted me with a roll of her eyes.

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“He did it again,” she sighed.

I knew who “he” was and exactly what “it” was.

The “he” was a provincial member of the legislature who’d spoken at a public meeting in town the night before. I could have written the story myself the day before he spoke, he was that predictable.

That was pretty much the text of every speech he had ever delivered, at least in the time I was running the twice-weekly newspaper in my hometown. And I’d been doing it for more than 15 years at that point.

The “it” was equally predictable.

“The media are biased against us. They never report on all the good news we’re responsible for when we’re in power. And they ignore our justifiable criticism when we’re out of power and attacking those guys for not doing anything useful.”

He only used the “media-bad” line when one of our reporters was in the room, I’d been told more than once. But he always called us to announce when he was giving a speech, so I guess he liked the line.

Bury it with the classifieds

I looked at our reporter.

“Did he say anything we haven’t heard before?”

“OK then, do........

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