Who killed TGCTS?

I thought it might be Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick, or maybe Rosanne Wowchuck driving her car while talking on a cell phone, but I was wrong on both counts. I went to the Save the Marty Fundraiser last night, where Marty Gold laid it all out with a seemingly endless string of emails in a powerpoint presentation.

Marty is a systematic guy. Obviously very passionate about what he does, but also very deliberate and organized. He might make a good Process Architect, if he's looking for a career change. I am not going to go into any detail because my memory isn't that good -- probably as a result of not eating fish as a kid as documented in my last post. If you want more details go to Graham's blog. Here is my point form summary:

• Free Press reporter Melissa Martin covered a mayoral debate for Mynarski Ward, wherein the eventual winner, Ross Eadie, declared that he was receiving support from the provincial NDP. Melissa neglected to mention this tid bit in her report.
  
• Marty Gold took her and the paper to task for not picking up on this statement, which if true would violate our civic election laws.
• Melissa got very upset by the criticism and complained to Free Press editor Margo Goodhand
• Margo called new RRC chief Stephanie Forsyth explaining that one of her reporters had been personally attacked and defamed.
• Stephanie, apparently without doing any research into the validity of these claims, "suggested" to certain execs at RRC that Marty's show be terminated.
• Marty's show was terminated

You might wonder: did Ross Eadie really say that he was receiving support from the NDP? Well, that's what some people heard, and there are complaints to that effect currently sitting with the city elections official. There were also a couple of witnesses from the New Winnipeg forum, at least one of whom I have met personally so I know they are a real person.

You might also wonder: why would Captain Stephanie so willingly comply with the complaint by the Free Press? The answer to that depends on how well you can read between the lines, how good your imagination is, and/or how tightly your tinfoil hat is screwed on. Potential answers include:

1. Steph is a media whore and did it as a quid pro quo for getting her picture in the paper three times the following week.

2. Steph is lazy and decided that cancelling the show at the threat of a lawsuit was easier than investigating if there was any merit to the complaint.

3. Given that Freep co-owner Bob Silver is closely tied to the governing NDP party, whom Marty has beat up on his show, and that RRC is partly funded by the gov't, there may have been veiled threats made about reductions to funding for RRC if they did not comply.

4. Stephanie and Margo are secret lesbian lovers, and are planning to adopt orphans from Botswana, leave their current partners, and start a new family on Cape Breton Island after Margo arranges a departure from the Freep with a generous severance package, which would be put at jeopardy if she could not contain the damage to the paper's reputation that was being done by Marty Gold.

Of those, I think the last one is obviously the most plausible, but to shield myself from lawsuits I want to make it clear that I have no evidence about any of those.

Coucillor Harvey Smith (a.k.a Father Time) was there, and promised to look into the Ross Eadie issue by following up with the elections dude, although if he remembers to put on his pants every day I think that's all we can reasonably expect at this point.

As an aside, those of us who attended got free copies of Retropeg, a coffee table book with old B&W photos of Winnipeg. Harvey, who was sitting directly behind me, made a comment as we were leaving about how nice the book was, and I came this close to asking him if there were any pictures of him in there. Although I later realized that the pictures were all from the 70s when Harvey was already getting up there in years, so perhaps it wouldn't have been as funny as I imagined it would be.

I guess if there is one message that I would like to pass along to the Free Press, it is this: it is not too late to cover the Ross Eadie thing, even if it turns out to be a non-thing. The original article that covered that debate was very brief and touched on a lot of things so perhaps you can be excused for not getting into the details. However, a sitting councillor being investigated for potential election finance violations, or the failure of the elections official to conduct the investigation, is a fairly significant story. Especially if it implicates the provincial governing party. Better to get on top of it now, even if it turns out to be that he simply mispoke and everything is cool, because if it eventually does come out that he was breaking the rules then it could be embarassing for the Free Press that they knew about it all along and failed to report on it.