Tickled pink about regular News feature

By Letter to the Editor on January 5, 2018.

Contributors to Ticked Off and Tickled Pink in the News have recently been rather harshly criticized as ignorant, cowards and childlike. But, it is the News itself which invites, encourages and publishes these different comments. This feature must be fairly rated by management since it is twice a week in this paper.

Anonymity undoubtedly gives the writers more bravado in their comments. But, commentaries in the News also include quite regularly silly sarcasm. Are such comments more legitimate and/or credible because they have a signature?

Today’s communication technology includes a growing use of Twitter with short statements. The comments are all over the map, from sensible to ridiculous to obnoxious. And, some providers allow their users to comment under a pseudonym. Then it appears that Ticked Off and Tickled Pink could be described as tweets in the print medium.

The newspaper industry has had a history of generating public discussion through editorials, commentaries and letter writing. Well, try writing letters today to the national publications with head offices in Toronto, and criticize the so-called elites and the sacred cows of the true Canada, that is, Ontario and Quebec, and then consider your probability of getting published. It is zero.

Try writing letters to these national publications and to our elected representatives on a timely topic, for example, the discriminatory use of the public purse to generously fund public-sector pensions (30 per cent of the workforce) and to throw crumbs to the private-sector workers without any pension plan (70 per cent of the workforce), and one doesn’t even get an acknowledgement of the letter. How should we describe this disregard for dialogue?

Ticked Off and Tickled Pink is not the highest form of dialogue, but it is expression. For this format and the others in a variety of editorials, commentaries and numerous letters to the editor, our local newspaper the News should be applauded for its record on public discussion.

This small-town newspaper is a heck of a lot better example of upholding our freedom of expression than other supposedly sophisticated publications, especially the ones with head offices in Toronto.

Larry Samcoe

Medicine Hat

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