Angry in the Great White North

In response to my piece about the vastly different headlines in the Globe and Mail when they reported the significance of the Sgro Report (as my piece appeared in the Western Standard), a reader Robert McClelland, author of the blog My Blahg, commented:

This is without a doubt, the dumbest thing I've seen come out of the right whinging noise machine yet. You do realize the Globe And Mail is not a single entity but a collection of people who have differing opinions, don't you? Obviously not.

I think he brought up an important point, and I decided to share with you my response to him for your consideration.

First,

"This is without a doubt, the dumbest thing I've seen come out of the right whinging noise machine yet."

I'm number one! I'm number one! (OK, that was sarcastic, but sometimes you need a bit of humour to lower the intensity of emotion during a discussion.)

Second,

"You do realize the Globe And Mail is not a single entity but a collection of people who have differing opinions, don't you? Obviously not."

Here I have to point out the problem I have with Mr. McClelland's comment. On the commentary page, differing opinions are expected. Indeed, they are the draw of that page, with columnists and pundits battling it out in ink. But this was the news page. The editors have a job to do, and that is to take the news and present it as the pronouncement of the Globe and Mail, a single monolithic news entity. The same goes for the editorials (of course) -- the editorials represent the consensus of the different individuals that make up the staff of the paper. Despite their personal opinions, they agree as to what the newspaper's opinion will be.

The point is that differing opinions don't belong on the news page. An interpretation of a news story and it's significance can differ or evolve over time. My point was that the interpretation has whiplashed so dramatically without any new information being developed that it makes me wonder just how carefully the news was vetted yesterday.

Does this make sense, or was I treating the Globe and Mail too harshly? Is Mr. McClelland right, and should we expect the news to alter dramatically as "differing opinions" come into play?