There were a few years, early in my journalism career, when I worked hard to please all political parties.
One day, I was covering the prime minister of the day - probably Joe Clark - and noticed the national tv crews plastered their equipment cases with stickers for the party leaders they were covering.
This was probably to ensure their stuff got on the right bus or plane.
“That’s cool!” I told myself.
I only had one piece of electronic newsgathering equipment in those days, an almost-indestructible Sony 110 audio recorder.
So I put a Liberal sticker on one side on the leather case, with Conservative and NDP stickers on the other sides. (If there were other choices in those days, they had few candidates and even fewer stickers).
Even though I was trying to be fair to all the parties, I soon learned political stickers were not a good idea for a small-town radio newsman.
People would see just one side of my machine and immediately started spreading the word that I had declared myself as a political partisan.
Soon, the whole town was buzzing that I was NDP.
Or Liberal.
Or Tory.
And that’s when I changed.
I gave up trying to keep everybody happy.
Every morning since then, I’ve risen out of bed and asked myself: “How can I outrage the whole bloody lot of them today?”
There were a few years, early in my journalism career, when I worked hard to please all political parties.
One day, I was covering the prime minister of the day - probably Joe Clark - and noticed the national tv crews plastered their equipment cases with stickers for the party leaders they were covering.
This was probably to ensure their stuff got on the right bus or plane.
“That’s cool!” I told myself.
I only had one piece of electronic newsgathering equipment in those days, an almost-indestructible Sony 110 audio recorder.
So I put a Liberal sticker on one side on the leather case, with Conservative and NDP stickers on the other sides. (If there were other choices in those days, they had few candidates and even fewer stickers).
Even though I was trying to be fair to all the parties, I soon learned political stickers were not a good idea for a small-town radio newsman.
People would see just one side of my machine and immediately started spreading the word that I had declared myself as a political partisan.
Soon, the whole town was buzzing that I was NDP.
Or Liberal.
Or Tory.
And that’s when I changed.
I gave up trying to keep everybody happy.
Every morning since then, I’ve risen out of bed and asked myself: “How can I outrage the whole bloody lot of them today?”
How’m I doing so far, dear readers?