Winter Walking and Cycling

[dtkvictim]

Perhaps political categorizations, but I find it quite easy to categorize her as a poor journalist. She's grossly, one-sidedly misrepresented stories that I had enough insider information on to know how wrong she was. I don't know if this is was Dan was referring to (or just a difference of opinion), but it's hard for me to trust anything she writes now. That said, there isn't really anything contentious in this article, so that's good.

Her column’s are opinion pieces, not news reports.

From her own page on The Record's website: "Luisa D’Amato is a Waterloo Region Record reporter and columnist.". None of her recent articles are in the Opinions section. None of the articles I was originally referring to are in the Opinion section. All of those original articles have actually had her name removed from them at this point, although they still contain her email and Twitter handler at the end of the articles. If her pieces are truly opinion articles then they shouldn't pretend to be otherwise. And regardless, the categorization absolve her from being responsible for what she writes (it would just make it slightly less bad).

[tomh009]

Her column’s are opinion pieces, not news reports.

From her own page on The Record's website: "Luisa D’Amato is a Waterloo Region Record reporter and columnist.". None of her recent articles are in the Opinions section. None of the articles I was originally referring to are in the Opinion section. All of those original articles have actually had her name removed from them at this point, although they still contain her email and Twitter handler at the end of the articles. If her pieces are truly opinion articles then they shouldn't pretend to be otherwise. And regardless, the categorization absolve her from being responsible for what she writes (it would just make it slightly less bad).

I have no idea which articles you are referring to. But all her recent articles are under the opinion section -- and from the headlines, it's quite clear they are opinions, not news.
https://www.therecord.com/opinion/columnists.html

Paraphrasing Voltaire, you may disapprove of her opinions, but I'll defend to death her right to publish them.

[danbrotherston]

From her own page on The Record's website: "Luisa D’Amato is a Waterloo Region Record reporter and columnist.". None of her recent articles are in the Opinions section. None of the articles I was originally referring to are in the Opinion section. All of those original articles have actually had her name removed from them at this point, although they still contain her email and Twitter handler at the end of the articles. If her pieces are truly opinion articles then they shouldn't pretend to be otherwise. And regardless, the categorization absolve her from being responsible for what she writes (it would just make it slightly less bad).

I have no idea which articles you are referring to. But all her recent articles are under the opinion section -- and from the headlines, it's quite clear they are opinions, not news.
https://www.therecord.com/opinion/columnists.html

Paraphrasing Voltaire, you may disapprove of her opinions, but I'll defend to death her right to publish them.

Whether her articles are opinion or not, that does not exempt them from criticism, nor from a reasonable expectation of accuracy and rationality.

Basically, you're welcome to have whatever opinions you want, but if you want people to respect them, they should be well researched, rational, and generally fair given the facts.  It doesn't hurt to also be empathetic and positive.

As for the right to publish them, your paraphrasing I believe actually changes what Voltaire was saying, D'Amato is not simply having and expressing her opinions, TorStar is publishing them through their media outlet of The Record and sending them to hundreds of thousands of readers. The problem is her opinions get more publicity than others because she is privileged with a platform that others do not have. That should also be a responsibility. We're all welcome to have our opinion and to shout them from the rooftops, we do not all have the same platform.

That being said, I'll give her this, she's no PST.

[jeffster]

To be frank here, anything that you read in the paper is opinion 90% of the time. Hell, even flyers can be an opinion piece when the numbers aren't correct (just happed to me at Shoppers, luckily the cashier honoured the flyer).

Quite often though, pieces that are written can only have an opinion, and quite often they have a slant. Quite often that slant leans towards the pulse of the community. Or sometimes it does the reverse, depending how the writer wants things to go. Either way, if you have people talking about it, for example, D'Amato's work, then you have done your job, even if you disagree with it.

That said, just because we don't agree with an opinion doesn't mean it shouldn't be published, even if the opinion isn't popular.

Dan: what does PST mean?

[tomh009]

Voltaire would have also supported your right to criticize.

But, Voltaire was certainly a strong supporter of the freedom of the press. TorStar and The Record do not have a monopoly on this -- and even less so now, in the age of Internet and social media.

[danbrotherston]

Voltaire would have also supported your right to criticize.

But, Voltaire was certainly a strong supporter of the freedom of the press. TorStar and The Record do not have a monopoly on this -- and even less so now, in the age of Internet and social media.

You're not wrong...the press is obviously important. But I do think it is reasonable to hold the press to a different standard from any asshole's opinion. Just as we do for others in power.

As for monopolies, no, TorStar does not really have a monopoly, but media, including traditional media is orders of magnitude more centralized than historically. I believe at a national level this is probably true, but at a local level it is indisputable, there are very few independent local papers left, and while I am somewhat convinced by the claims of editorial independence, it is still the case that an analogous "soft power" is still present, through hiring and corporate policies....we hear from fewer viewpoints and hear a more establishment voice than we've ever had. Some of it is merely an artifact of larger companies being more establishment than smaller ones...pretty much by definition.

The saddest part to me, is that the internet gave us the promise of democratization of information, where anyone can post and publish at near zero cost....which, in some ways it has achieved, but it has also resulted in the single largest concentration of media power in the history of our society...social media companies have a scary amount of power over what most of us see.

Anyway, very off topic, but I do think the "anyone is entitled to an opinion" while true, is so oversimplified as to be irrelevant most of the time, a far deeper discussion is needed.

[danbrotherston]

To be frank here, anything that you read in the paper is opinion 90% of the time. Hell, even flyers can be an opinion piece when the numbers aren't correct (just happed to me at Shoppers, luckily the cashier honoured the flyer).

Quite often though, pieces that are written can only have an opinion, and quite often they have a slant. Quite often that slant leans towards the pulse of the community. Or sometimes it does the reverse, depending how the writer wants things to go. Either way, if you have people talking about it, for example, D'Amato's work, then you have done your job, even if you disagree with it.

That said, just because we don't agree with an opinion doesn't mean it shouldn't be published, even if the opinion isn't popular.

Dan: what does PST mean?

Being able to identify and differentiate between facts/data, personal opinion, and slant/characterization is a woefully deficient skill in society at large (that's an opinion of course, although someone may have some data to quantify it).

As for D'Amato, you're not wrong, her job is to help sell papers...but I find that unsatisfying...in an idealized world her job should be to inform and enlighten, and I don't feel she does that terribly reliably.

As for what opinions should be published, again, the reality is the job is to sell papers, which I don't like. But if we speak in an idealized situation, yes, whether an opinion is popular, or controversial shouldn't govern whether it is published, I believe what should govern if an opinion is published is whether is is backed up by data and reason (i.e., rational and fair) and whether it is negative or positive influence on the community.

Publishing racist opinions is clearly harmful, and generally not backed up by any real science (plenty of bad faith false science is used to back up racism mind you), that kind of thing shouldn't be published, I don't care if people agree or disagree.  Her article on the COVID bike lanes was clearly opinion, and while I disagreed with it, my biggest objection to her was the mischaracterization of the supporters of the bike lanes as the "cycling lobby". I believe doing so was clearly harmful to the community because it dismisses and minimizes the voices of people in the community.

Which brings me to PST....which is simply Peter Shawn Taylors' initials. Frankly, he goes beyond slant and opinion and straight into the bald faced lie category.

[panamaniac]

What was racist about the column???

[danbrotherston]

What was racist about the column???

Nothing was racist about that column, it was given as an example of harmful opinions that should not be published.

[ijmorlan]

I wouldn't call her fiscal conservative, or at least, I don't think opposing bike lanes is particularly fiscally conservative.

Indeed, a real fiscal conservative would be opposed to building and widening roads, unless there is a plan to pay for them that doesn’t involve just issuing more bonds. And a fiscal conservative would have no expressed opinion on building bicycle infrastructure, because the amounts of money involved are so small as to be irrelevant compared to all the colossal wastes of resources in other parts of the government budget.

[dtkvictim]

Apologies in advance for any mods that may have to move this off-topic discussion.

First of all, I'm quite disappointed anyone would interpret my comments as supporting or encouraging suppression of Louisa's opinions... I never said anything of the sort, and never will. She is free to self-publish whatever she pleases, and The Record/TorStar are free to publish whatever they like (including her writing), within the bounds of the law. I am a strong supporter of free speech, and even encourage providing a platform for controversial ideas whether or not I agree with them. Opposite of Dan, I think societies suppression of broad-stroke racist content has allowed race based pseudoscience to flourish (I don't agree with the entire book, but The Blank Slate frames this issue well).

Secondly, forgive me for being confused about how The Record categorizes its content. I've spent 20 minutes looking through it and I still can't figure it out, despite their claim that "The Record clearly labels content on all platforms to draw a clear line between news and opinion."

According to https://www.therecord.com/news-glossary.html, the category breakdown is

- News
-> Analysis
-> Investigation

- Opinion
-> Editorial
-> Opinion
-> Advice
-> Blog

And some others under opinion.

If I click on the Opinion section, I can see all these articles clearly labelled as Opinion or Editorial: https://i.imgur.com/JNXqQYY.png
If I click on one of those specific articles, I can see the Opinion section is still selected on the menu, and the articles clearly has an Opinion tag: https://i.imgur.com/0U9rXg2.png
If I click on Louisa's article from the Opinions section, I am then taken to the Local section (which doesn't preclude being an opinion, but is slightly misleading), but the article does not have any of the opinion tags on it: https://i.imgur.com/8z0TlH0.png

In fact, the URL for all of Louisa's recent articles are under therecord.com/news/ instead of therecord.com/opinion/ except for one, and that is her only recent article with the Opinion label on it.

Perhaps I'm still missing something, but it shouldn't be difficult to figure this out. Even if many of us are able to tell by reading the headlines, or analyzing the articles, most people will simply take these opinions as fact if it's not very, very clearly labelled. But all of this is an aside; I don't care if she is writing opinions or news articles, I was just stating that I don't trust her to be honest and thorough.

[tomh009]

Yes. The web site indeed does not do a very good job of this.

[danbrotherston]

[the_councillor]

Nobody is happy that we were unable to come up with a solution... but neither has any other city. The only thing worse than not taking action is taking the wrong action. Peterborough's sidewalk snow clearing standard is two days after a snowfall and (like every other city that does this work) you can bet there will be many times a year it exceeds 2 days. We've had people skating on roads, live on CTV, a week after snowfall (and roads are easier to maintain than sidewalks). I hardly believe that qualifies as 'car-free-living year round' unless your employer permits you to call in sick for 2+ days every time it snows. I didn't support the pilot project in the first place because I knew what the results would be from researching other cities, but it did confirm to all that it wasn't a panacea, and that the cost was actually more than double staff's pre-pilot estimate.

So no, we didn't opt for a $10 Million/yr program that still left 6% of sidewalks impassible (actual data) but I would add:

- there was no mention by any councillor, or staff, to relax standards. In fact, the sentiment was to come down hard on chronic offenders (unless they're unable to do the work, in which case...)

- we increased the sidewalk-clearing program for seniors/people with disabilities from 100 to 175 properties, and to increase that by 75 more properties each year until demand is met. (At a cost of ~$118k now and ~$53k each subsequent year.)

- we changed pro-active bylaw enforcement to focus on priority-walking routes (e.g. school and shopping areas.)

- requested an issue paper in time for budget on how we might increase the number of pro-active inspectors through seasonal methods (e.g. deputize tree/forest maintenance staff for snow events in the winter.)

Like City-clearing, these changes won't solve the problem, but it is an improvement until a solution is found. The difference is this approach leaves a funding-hope for other initiatives. Unless you believe there's no limit to how high we can raise taxes*, approving full-city clearing would have frozen all other progressive actions for the better part of a decade, Covid or not.

(* Remember that we can't tax progressively. Property tax does not distinguish between a single mother in a $450k townhouse vs. a couple of Google engineers in a $450k condo.)

[jamincan]

@thecouncillor: I want to say, I really appreciate that you are honestly willing to have a dialogue about issues and it's one of the things that I respect about you, even if I strongly disagree with you on this particular issue.

Fundamentally, the problem with snow clearing is that you either have a clear route, or you don't. If you have 50% of the route clear, it's only marginally better than having 100% of it uncleared. We already know that the existing program for clearing snow from sidewalks (through enforcement of bylaw standards and then city clearing of non-compliant properties) is not effective. Even with most residents being compliant, enough are not that the way is effectively impassable for a certain subset of the population such that wheelchair users are often forced to go onto the street with cars to get by. The mechanism we have to address this is slow and lenient such that it may be well over a week before anything is done (if it is addressed at all).

We know the City of Kitchener is failing to provide clear sidewalks for residents. I judge the effectiveness of you and the rest of council by how well the city fulfills its mandates and the money you are spending now is accomplishing next to nothing towards that goal. It's the definition of wasteful spending. I happen to think a municipal clearing program is the most efficient way for the city to meet its mandate but I'm open to other ideas that might work. I know that the existing program is wasteful and largely spending theatre to demonstrate that you are doing *something* rather than nothing (the worst kind of spending, in my book, by the way). I'm skeptical that the minor tweaks that are proposed to the existing program will fundamentally change it especially as they seem to do nothing to address the problems that have already been identified with the existing enforcement scheme.

One thing that I think the city could do better without necessarily spending more now is changing how they evaluate the situation. Current measures are deceptive. Just to use random numbers - 90% of properties clearing sidewalks seems much better than 75% being cleared. But is it really? Has accessibility actually improved for the people who need to use the sidewalk? You can't evaluate the situation by assessing each property individually. The reality is that one property that is non-compliant on a key route is a much bigger problem than a property at the end of a cul-de-sac. Properties on streets with bus routes are way more important than properties on less-busy streets with no bus routes. Evaluation should take this context into account as it actually tries to understand how the present situation affects accessibility which is the fundamental need that we are trying to serve.