DTM renames 2009 Canadian Open after Bell Canada

I’ve having a hard time taking a snapshot of the web page, but here is the text from the online Sports section of today’s Globe and Mail:

2009 Bell Canadian Open

Rain slows Open to a crawl

Records in jeopardy, if the rain ever lets up at the Bell Canadian Open at Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ont.

Jul 25, 2009 4:17AM EDT 0 0

As some of you know, I am a big fan of accuracy in media. Occassionally, mistakes are made, small or large, which is why it is so important in my mind that the media live up to our collective expectation to get their facts right. Particularly on stuff involving individual reputations.

This excerpt from today’s Globe is a perfect example of the type of thing that occurs each day around North America. This isn’t defamation, of course, but it speaks to the simple reality that corners are cut each and every day at large media outlets.

Someone is paid to check for accuracy, and it didn’t happen.

To think it can happen to the Royal Bank, a huge print advertiser in the Toronto market — in its second year of sponsoring the Canadian Open — and the DTM turns the clock back to 2007…the last time that Bell Canada was the marquee sponsor of our annual PGA Tour event.

The fact that the body of the article gets the name of the tournament correct, yet the header and sub header refer to a telecom provider and not a bank, is just too funny. Maybe the headline writer didn’t read the piece, perhaps?

Michael Grange

OAKVILLE, Ont. — Globe and Mail Update
Last updated on Saturday, Jul. 25, 2009 04:17AM EDT

Given all the milestones at play in this year’s RBC Canadian Open, it’s perhaps fitting that the record books get dusted off too.

Conditions continued to be perfect for low-scoring golf yesterday as the field scrambled to finish the rain-delayed first round and get in as much of the second before the skies opened up again or darkness fell, whichever came first….

This summer, Canada’s Supreme Court is considering throwing out the 100 year-old book on libel law, and replacing it with something called “the responsible journalism test”. The test pre-supposes that even if media get a few facts wrong, it doesn’t make them liable from defamation.

As we’ve seen this morning, even if you spend millions of dollars a year as a newspaper advertiser, the DTM can still cut corners and get a story wrong. This isn’t life and death to most of us, it’s only golf and marketing after all.

But it is just another reminder that, like the rest of us, the ink-stained crowd make the most simple and avoidable mistakes. Oversight processes fail each and every day, throughout the newspaper.

Why should the Supreme Court dilute Canada’s 100 year libel law tradition to make accomodations for that?

MRM