Winter Walking and Cycling

[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.