There’s nothing wrong with one newspaper criticizing another, and certainly I think The Coast is as open to critique as anyone else. Still, it would nice if criticism thrown our way at least pretended to adhere to the fundamental tenets of journalism.
At issue is a Chronicle-Herald article published late Thursday, following up on my Thursday feature article on layoffs at a Dartmouth firm called Cobham Tracking and Locating, headlined “From Nova Scotia with love.” As the subhead for that article explains what it’s about:
Canadian taxpayers spent millions of dollars to help grow two companies that make some of the best spy-tech gear in the world. But a multinational firm bought the locals, and is now sending those good Dartmouth jobs to the United States.
But Chronicle-Herald reporter Bruce Erskine misrepresents what’s in my article when he writes about his interview with Cobham spokesperson Monica Hallman:
Hallman said the layoffs were not coincidental with a $500,000 ACOA loan to the company, as suggested in the Coast on Thursday, since that loan never happened.
I realize it is Hallman, not Erskine, making the accusation that I “suggested” the layoffs were “coincidental with a $500,000 ACOA loan,” but these are Erskine words, and fairness would dictate that he correct Hallman’s mis-characterization of my piece. In fact, I properly reported that the $500,000 ACOA loan never materialized, and I never suggested there was a connection between a possible loan and the layoffs. Here’s what I wrote:
There’s some mystery concerning the $500,000 ACOA loan that insiders say was announced in the company’s Burnside office this January. The Coast began trying to verify the existence of the January ACOA loan a few weeks later. ACOA will not say one way or the other whether it loaned or intends to loan Cobham money this year.
“ACOA cannot speculate about projects that may or may not be under evaluation, until a final decision is made and a contribution is publicly announced,” ACOA spokesperson Chris Brooks says. ACOA does not make such loans part of the public record until 60 days after the loan is finalized.
And this Tuesday, Cobham spokesperson Monica Hallman told The Coast that indeed Cobham “looked into ACOA funding several months ago,” but “we have not received any funding, and are not currently pursuing any funding from this agency.”
The company insiders, however, insist that an announcement of an approved ACOA loan was made January 6. It’s unclear what happened with regards to ACOA and Cobham in January. Perhaps the insiders have the story wrong. Or maybe The Coast’s questioning somehow derailed a pending loan. Or it could be that Cobham pursued a loan but then rejected the idea for business reasons that have nothing to do with ACOA.
Any literate teenage reading this would understand that the loan never materialized. I tried to verify the existence of the loan, was told it was not made, and offered three possible explanations as to why employees were told of a loan but it never came about.
The only way I could see how Erskine could so badly screw this up is that he is conflating the next paragraph with the preceding paragraphs:
Regardless, the company definitely did receive an ACOA loan, also for $500,000, in 2008. According to ACOA documents, that loan was intended to “acquire new equipment to commercialize new product line.” ACOA won’t say, precisely, what the equipment was or if the product line came to fruition. That loan, says ACOA spokesperson Alex Smith, “is being repaid by the company.” Smith will not say how much of it has been repaid and how much is outstanding.
But again, anyone with reading comprehension beyond that of a snail would understand that I’m talking about two different ACOA loans in the amount of $500,000— one that was made in 2008, and one from earlier this year that was investigated and announced in the company office, but which never materialized.
Yet, Erskine, again channeling Hallman, writes that:
She said Cobham hasn’t received ACOA funding and didn’t know if its predecessor companies in Nova Scotia had.
This is just flatout wrong, and bad reporting.
Readers can look up the 2008 loan from ACOA to Cobham themselves, on the ACOA project information search site. Type “Cobham” in the “client name” field and hit search, and the following result pops up:
The 2008 ACOA loan to Cobham actually happened, and yet Erskine quotes the company spokesperson saying the company never received any money from ACOA. It’d be one thing if this was some obscure bit of information, but the quote is easily verifiable, on a website that any business reporter in Atlantic Canada should have bookmarked and use on a regular basis, and yet Erskine doesn’t correct Hallman’s misstatement. Instead, he quotes it approvingly, in what amounts to a half-assed attempt to criticize The Coast.
Properly, the Chronicle-Herald should correct the record.
Related Stories
Breaking news: Cobham Tracking lays off 17 more local employees
Journalism still awful
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2012.
The Chronicle Herald piece by Bruce Erskine on the Cobham smoke and mirrors story is silly, and once again shows how little investigative journalism survives at the CH.
First, the January 2012 ACOA loan is an incidental part of the Cobham story. The real story is that 2 independent Nova Scotia companies started building electronic tracking equipment and became leaders in the world – one tracking wildlife and the other tracking criminals (or suspected criminals). They sold stuff to the FBI, Homeland Security, NOAA, NASA, and police forces across North America. The US Air Force, NATO and other air forces around the world fly with crash locator beacons designed and built in Dartmouth. Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Nova Scotia even use their tracking devices to monitor lobster boats (without the owner’s knowledge or consent). SOCOM – US Military’s Special Operations Command – has a GPS tracker on just about every vehicle on the ground in Afghanistan, and many of those little black boxes came from, and were designed in, Dartmouth.
As for the ACOA grant, if Erskine had bothered to investigate, rather than merely to regurgitate the official Cobham story as told by its PR head, he would have found that the grant was indeed announced by the then-R&D manager in Dartmouth on January 6th. Nothing conditional, nothing ambiguous about it – “We got the ACOA grant!” the R&D manager shouted out that day, and at least half a dozen staff heard him. (Maybe the grant was subsequently revoked after at least 3 Halifax news outfits, including the CH, started enquiring about it a few weeks later — who knows.) Erskine could have gone further — a lot further. He has good local sources inside Cobham. All he had to do was pick up the phone and ask them what really happened. Why didn’t he?
The Coast’s story was obviously tirelessly researched, over weeks if not months. All Erskine did after the story broke was make a single phone call to Cobham’s mouthpiece, then use her to take a cheap shot at the Coast. This is journalism?
Bottom line: this isn’t a story about some chicken-shit grant – this is a story about how Canadian taxpayers helped a bunch of smart Nova Scotians create some of the most technologically advanced surveillance gear in the world and then sell tens of millions of dollars worth of it around the globe — until some multinational came in and snatched it up for its American friends. Orion and Seimac were headed for great technological success — and now they’re gone. But that’s not a story that interested the CH. Why not?
Your criticisms are fair from a journalistic standpoint, but what’s up with lines like “…anyone with reading comprehension beyond that of a snail”? Kind of seems like the only one actually taking personal shots is you.
Tim your ego and arrogance has no limits does it? The hypocrisy of you calling out a Chronicle Herald reporter for misrepresenting your article when you did exactly the same just a few months ago is gold. Let me remind you of your January 5 editorial titled “Trade Secrets” where you completely misquoted David Jacksons Chronicle Heralds article “Poll: No thanks on convention centre”. Your article was a transparent attempt to attack Trade Center Limited based on a misquote.
So how did you phrase it in this article:
“anyone with reading comprehension beyond that of a snail ….” I guess we should apply this judgment to your reporting skills as well since you were unable to accurately quote from a Chronicle Herald article.
here are links
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/trade-secre…
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/46988-p…