Or maybe I'm just a pessimist after being on the receiving end of 36 years of lying and propaganda from almost all parties involved. Surely never having dealt with the National Newsmedia Council before I should have some sort of confidence in them.? Shouldn't I ????
O.K. perhaps the "in-house " comment above isn't exactly so. I'm not sure but I think that this group is some kind of voluntary Transparency/Accountability effort by the print media here in Ontario. In other words I think that member newspapers basically are in control of it but again I would love to be wrong about that. Regardless there are a few reasons for my concern. Firstly I tried a number of times to telephone them with their published phone numbers including their Toll free number. Nothing! No response. Then I began e-mailing and yes I have heard back from them basically being told to go through their formal on-line complaints procedure. Much of those questions I found a tad bizarre but answered as best I could. These included a detailed description of my complaint which then oddly (to me) was repeated later in the process although I was supposed to do it in a particular format with a particular type of file.
My computer skills are super basic. Asking me to submit this or that via a particular file is ridiculous so I then sent a separate e-mail to my contact at the National Newsmedia Council advising them that I have in writing (e-mail) as well as earlier in their formal complaint form clearly outlined what my complaint is hence this request to do it all again but in some special file type was beyond my capabilities.
Now a skeptic (who me?) might suspect that this complaints procedure was designed to weed out complaints not by their veracity or seriousness but by the complainant's (me for example) lack of computer familiarity. The proof will be in the pudding. If I get an e-mail back saying that I didn't properly comply with all their hoops and loops and they won't accept my complaint then I will know that they are just one more phony oversight body just like MECAC (Municipal Elections Compliance Audit Committee) that darkened our door here in Elmira several years ago. On the other hand if they get back to me and suggest a different/simpler way to comply with that one question that I had difficulty understanding then I will begin to believe that they are for real.
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