The thoughts of a dying photojournalist.

I was on my first pacemaker/ICD when this was taken.

As I write this post, I'm publishing the developing piece online. If any journalists have suggestions, I'm listening.

Soon, I will be 73-years-old. Will I see my 74th birthday? I hope so but I am not sure. I have a relatively rare, gene-based, heart disease: ARVC. This is a progressive condition where the heart's right ventricle muscle slowly converts to fat and fibrous scar tissue.

Strenuous exercise aggravates the condition by causing the heart to expand. The heart tears under the stress. The tears heal with fat and scar tissue. As this continues, heart failure ensues.

In my case, my expanding, deteriorating heart stretched its electrical system to the breaking point. As a result, I have a 100 percent heart block. I'm on my second pacemaker/ICD. Without a pacemaker, I'd be dead.

But, today I am alive and I'm going to make the most of it. I'd like to spend some of my now very valuable time by attempting to improve the profession I've spent a lifetime dancing about the fringes: journalism.

More than a half century ago, I was introduced to photojournalism by reporter/photographer Andy Whipple. Andy opened my eyes to the magic offered photographers by a long lens. Using my 300mm lens he created images I had never dreamed possible. When Andy died from Parkinson's disease, the Bulletin in Oregon did a lovely piece on their Renaissance man.

Andy was just the first of a long list of inspired and inspiring photojournalists I have had the good fortune of knowing. Many of those photojournalists were men and woman with  whom I worked at The London Free Press. Others were dedicated members of the NPPA in the States, or the ONPA in Ontario.

For many years I had the honour of running the annual ONPA photojournalism seminar held at Western University in London, Ontario. It was thanks to my time running the popular seminar that I got to know world-famous photojournalists like Eddie Adams, the man who took the photo of Vietnamese Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong on the streets of Saigon with a shot to the head.

After spending years giving back to the profession I love, I am now going to expand my interests to involve journalism proper. I would like to right some wrongs, force journalists to confront problems that all to often they ignore and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to leave the world a better place.

Donald Trump has propelled the damning words "fake news" to the forefront of many discussions on media honesty. So, let me make one thing clear; I hate the term "fake news." I have personally known too many good reporters doing incredibly good work to smear the entire profession with those words. And yet, I must admit that honesty in journalism can be improved.

Anecdote

Consider how the media erred so egregiously when it widely promoted Liberation Therapy. For a brief time, many in the media claimed it was a miraculously successful treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS). Ask  yourself, how did a fine investigative journalist like Randy Richmond, lauded as Canada's top journalist in 2020, get a story so very wrong as he did in 2011 with a piece headlined "Out of the fog"?

The partial answer is the use of the anecdote. Journalists rely on anecdotes to add a human dimension, a rich, emotional overlay, to a narrative. In doing so, all too often journalists make the error of sampling bias.

Let's examine The London Free Press story which was part of a series on the shortcomings of the Canadian healthcare system. Randy introduced us to a local London woman, Susan Skeffington, who suffers from MS and was forced to travel to the Arizona Heart Institute in search of treatment. There she had the Liberation Therapy procedure. OHIP refused to cover the cost of a procedure unavailable in Ontario.

From Randy's story we learn: "Balloons were inserted into three of (Skeffington's) veins, bringing blood back to her heart to expand the walls. The balloons were collapsed and removed. The blood flow keeps the walls expanded.

Skeffington said she immediately noticed the effects of the procedure. "When I was sitting in recovery I was looking around the room and I thought, I am really moving my eyes easily."

Back home at the beginning of March, she has noticed more improvements. Her hands still have some pins and needles, but are more nimble. She has more energy, though she is not pushing herself.

"The brain fog is gone," she says.

It's a great story but it is an anecdote and anecdotes can be unreliable. This is not science. At least two Canadians died from complications after undergoing Liberation Therapy. In the end, as CBC Radio reported in December, 2017, Dr. Zamboni concluded the therapy he devised was an "ineffective technique; [and] the treatment cannot be recommended in patients with MS." 

 

It turns out the London woman was given excellent advice by her doctors. OHIP was right to refuse to cover the cost of the quickly discredited procedure.

One would think a man who went on to become Canada's top journalist would know well the danger posed by sampling bias. In the end, it was clear this story was lost deep in the fog of an unreliable anecdote. To the best of my knowledge, neither The London Free Press nor Randy Richmond every corrected the original story. But, the tale does appear to have disappeared from the newspaper's web site.

Pack Journalism or Herd Instinct

Journalists hate being scooped. When I worked at the local television station, every day there was a morning meeting to discuss what stories would be part of the six o'clock news. One big consideration was what was on the front page of the local newspaper that morning. If a story made the paper, it would make the nightly newscast.

The UFFI story is an example of pack journalism at its worst. As I recall, a U.S. investigative journalism television program, possibly 60 Minutes, originally broke the UFFI story. It made for gripping entertainment. The rest of the American media hated being scooped and immediately ran their own stories on what was claimed to be a growing health crisis. The Canadian media, for instance Marketplace, jumped on the band wagon and finally the daily newspapers raced to grab a piece of the story.

The problem, and this may surprise you because the truth is still not widely known, the story was a crock from start to finish. The media did a great job at spreading the UFFI myth but has failed miserably at getting the correction out. The myth was a front page story. The correction gets buried.

I recall taking pictures of a retired gentleman living in South London. He personally removed the brick from the exterior of his home, he could not afford to have it done, he scrapped the foam out the foam filled the space between the studs, treated the empty cavity, filled it with Fiberglas batt insulation and then rebricked the dwelling.

He was angry and rightly so. He had read everything he could about the various types of home insulation. It was clear that UFFI was the way to go. He insulated his home with the foam and then, within months, the UFFI story flipped. The media was filled with UFFI horror stories. Although neither he nor his wife had had any health problems, the couple watched their home, their retirement nest egg, become almost worthless.

He knew many of the "facts" being reported were wrong and I knew it too. How did I know. I had UFFI in my home as well. And like the gentleman rebricking his home, I still had the advertising bumph. We could show beyond any doubt that the supposed promises made by the manufacturers were never made or at least were not made to either of us. We both agreed the newspaper reports were bogus.

I recall driving to Grand Bend with a fine reporter by the name of Bill Eluchok. We were going to Grand Bend for a story on bacterial contamination of the water along shoreline of the Lake Huron resort. When we reached Grand Bend, Bill introduced me to a fellow from the Ministry of the Environment and told him I thought the UFFI story was hooey. Bill was surprised when the fellow agreed with me but he only agreed off-the-record. He was not prepared to take on the entire North American media.

I've done a number of blog posts on the UFFI story. I suggest you read them. Each one reveals another way that journalism failed readers while inflicting harm.

Journalists should not be storytellers

What Brian Williams brouhaha and UFFI have in common: Torquing.

Where's an investigative journalist when you want one?

On giving your head a shake

Truthiness reigns in newsrooms

https://netwar.wordpress.com/2007/07/30/anecdotalism-and-journalism/

https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/verification-accuracy/journalism-discipline-verification/

https://books.google.ca/books?id=J-HKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT96&lpg=PT96&dq=journalism+herd+instinct+scoop&source=bl&ots=Zd06KkWLzN&sig=ACfU3U3bvX6UNFByt9aFsmIGEbZEd2-6Ng&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVkObG14nqAhWVbc0KHexZCp8Q6AEwCHoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=journalism%20herd%20instinct%20scoop&f=false

I'm proud of how good Londoners are at following orders

Last night my wife and I picked up seven bags of groceries without entering the store or making contact with anyone. As we left the lot, we noticed a very loose line-up of people patiently waiting to get into the LCBO (Liquor Board of Ontaro) store. The line wrapped right around the store.

My wife  and I are both amazed at how willing Londoners are to follow the social distancing guidelines. (My picture is not from the LCBO. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring my camera with me to the grocery store. Oops.)

Call in your grocery order and simply pick up later

A car sits with its rear hatch door open as the owner waits to have his groceries brought from the store to his car. With the fear of catching COVID-19 growing daily, more and more Londoners are taking advantage of the Express service offered at some area grocery stores.

Call the store, give them your order, when your order is ready the store staff will call, pay with your credit or debit card and then drive to the store for pick up. There are reserved parking spots at the front of the store. Use your cell phone to tell the store staff you are there and within minutes your groceries a have been brought out and placed in your trunk.

I wonder if the service will be as popular once the coronavirus has been brought under control.

There's a new normal.

I have some friends, who on returning to London from a cruise, self-isolated. They believe it's the best thing to do and at the end of two weeks it will be over. Life will return to normal. The danger will have past. Maybe not.

COVID-19 is highly contagious. Why? Because it hides. Consider the Diamond Princess. Tests of most of the 3,711 people aboard the large cruise ship confirmed that 634, or 17 percent, had the virus; 328 of them did not have any symptoms at the time of diagnosis.

“Children with very mild disease are probably going to be one of the major contributors to spreading the virus across the population,” says Graham Roberts, an honorary consultant paediatrician at the University of Southamptons. -- BBC Future

COVID-19 can spread quickly and quietly. The fact that it attacks the old in a dramatic fashion and not the young means in a youthful population it may go almost unnoticed. But let the virus get into a senior's home and all hell breaks loose. Again consider the Diamond Princess. On board the cruise ship those 70 and older were most vulnerable, with an overall fatality ratio of about 7.3 percent.

COVID-19 is ripping through our world. The number of infected spikes higher daily. The death toll continues to climb. Self-isolate, practise social distancing and you, even if you are old, get through this. Soon herd immunity will bring the numbers down. But the danger will not be over despite what my friends seem to think.

Until there is a vaccine, this new coronavirus will linger. Hiding in the young and the asymtomatic. It will make those younger than fifty mostly mildly ill, if at all, but it will infect our seniors and an uncomfortably large number will die.

In the near future going out to shop or attending a family gathering will carry a ominous undertone: COVID-19. The virus may well become endemic: a part of life until a vaccine is arrives to eradicate it.

70 or older? It's time to self-isolate.

Dr. David Williams, Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario, is instructing  all Ontarians over 70 and those of any age with compromised immune systems or underlying health condition to stop going out. Stay home. Avoid visitors. Practise self-isolation and social distancing. And do it now.

People in these categories should keep appointments and access services by phone or online, and have family, friends or neighbours run essential errands for them: groceries, prescription pickups, etc.

If you must go out, say to take the dog for a walk, keep 6-feet away from anyone you encounter. But strangers are not the only ones to steer clear of; avoid visits from loved ones.

The rules are tough but the danger from not following to them is tougher. You can die.

If you want one ray of hope in all this bleak news, check the case fatality rate for children up to age nine: 0%

If snow closes schools, the strike is off as well

It's snowing in London today and it is forecast to continue through the night. If it does, the school buses may be canceled. If that happens, school may be canceled. And if that happens, then the school strike walkout, slated for tomorrow, may be canceled. Striking on a full snow day hardly inconveniences the school board but it does cost the teachers a day's salary.

Where's an investigative journalist when you want one?

I spent my life in the media. Today, I'm retired. And today, I am filled with guilt. There were a number of stories on which I worked that I now know were wrong. Some, I doubted were true at the time. But there was one I knew was wrong right from the start and yet I still helped spread the lies.

Why the guilt? Because of the scale of the financial pain caused by the oh-so-very-wrong media-spread story. Tens of thousands of people were affected, some reportedly lost their homes and the overall financial losses totaled in the millions.

The story: The urea formaldehyde foam insulation, or UFFI, story. Please, don't stop reading because you know all about the horrors of UFFI. You read all about it in your local paper or saw the story reported by television news. Possibly a well-known investigative journalist was behind the local exposé. Maybe you caught the story on 60 Minutes or Marketplace.

But, I won't ask you to simply take my word. Please read what Michael T Newhouse, MD, MSc, FRCP(C), FACP, FCCP, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences - McMaster University, Hamilton, ON Canada - Chief Medical Officer and Dr Jeff Norman of the Dept of Epidemiology of the McMaster Health Sciences Faculty have said after spending almost a decade investigating UFFI complaints.

They revealed the UFFI story "for the nonsense it was" and they revealed "the pseudo-science surrounding the hypothesized adverse health effects of urea-formaldehyde foam insulation and of formaldehyde in plywood and broadloom carpeting." Note quotation marks.

I ask: Where's Randy Richmond, the investigative reporter at The London Free Press? Why does Marketplace, the CBC Canadian consumer affairs program, still brag about the part Marketplace played in the entire fiasco? And why are newspapers still referencing the completely discredited story as if it were true?

It is time to raise the bar for journalists and to open journalism to criticism.
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If you are a journalist and want to know more, here are some links. Forgive the writing. I need an editor but that's another story.

• Journalists should not be storytellers.
• What do Brian Williams brouhaha and UFFI have in common? Answer: Torquing.