A bit of background:
Remembrance Day is not a holiday save for employees of banks and the federal government, however, the City of Ottawa has a bylaw that prohibits retail stores from opening until the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the National War Memorial are finished (around noon). (As an aside, I wholly support the commemoration of Remembrance Day and believe it should be designated a statutory holiday for everybody.)
A couple weeks ago T&T Supermarket (a chain of supermarkets, recently acquired by the Loblaw Companies Ltd., that specializes in Asian groceries) opened its first Ottawa location to much fanfare.
I read two articles about the incident, one by the local CBC affiliate and another by the local rag, the Ottawa Citizen.
While I usually find the Citizen to be nothing more than a right-wing Canwest corporate mouthpiece and the publicly-funded CBC to be well balanced and insightful (at least in their coverage of national news) the roles were reversed in their coverage of this story:
CBC News - Ottawa- Asian market fined for opening Nov. 11 morning
The Ottawa Citizen - Food store apologizes for Remembrance Day opening
Notice the derisive and inflammatory tone of the CBC Ottawa headline, it starts off with the word "Asian" which may as well be bolded to emphasize blame and the fact they chose "fined" as the verb definitely suggests a judgment of guilt be passed on the subject of the headline.
The article goes on to mention that the store received the lesser of two possible fines (seemingly only to fuel indignation) and includes a quote from the manager pleading ignorance of the bylaw which serves only to play to the "dumb immigrant" stereotype.
Not surprisingly the inflammatory and biased coverage of the story has lead to predictably racist responses in the peanut-gallery comment section of the article.
Conversely, the Ottawa Citizen article headline "Food store apologizes for Remembrance Day opening" is much more fair and well-balanced, notice the complete lack of blame and judgment in the headline.
The Citizen article opens by stating that T&T was one of approximately 40 Ottawa businesses fined under the bylaw for opening on Remembrance Day. It sets the store's transgression in the proper context. Instead of playing to the "dumb immigrant" stereotype of the CBC article it instead quotes T&T's corporate director for strategy and marketing who explains that it was an honest mistake (there are no such bylaws in any of the other jurisdictions where T&T operates) and in addition to publicly apologizing committed to donating all of the store's profits from the Remembrance Day morning to the Royal Canadian Legion's Poppy Fund.
Remarkably, the term "Asian" does not appear once in the Ottawa Citizen coverage.
I have to say I'm extremely disappointed in CBC Ottawa's lack of journalistic integrity when covering the story. The CBC Ottawa story was a textbook case of sensationalism and poor journalism and wouldn't have looked out of place on Fox News.
While I still rely on CBC for balanced coverage of national stories it seems the team working at their local Ottawa station lacks the tact, professionalism and balance to fairly and responsibly cover a story.
EDIT:
It seems the Citizen did publish an article in today's print edition that also interviewed the store manager and made mention of the charging of the lesser fine:
The Ottawa Citizen - Ottawa stores charged for opening early on Remembrance Day
However, they still include a much better context (the article is about all 40 of the stores in the city who received the fine of which T&T is specifically mentioned presumably because it is the most high-profile) and treats the fact that the store caters to Asians very matter-of-factly. The store manager's quote in this article gives much more detail and explanation and overall the Citizen article is free from the racist undertones of the CBC article.
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