Yesterday’s Examiner, September 16, carries an article on page 14, about the launch of a new Forestry Tasmania product called ‘hardlam.’
The article carries a picture of furniture maker Peter Collenette along with a ‘hardlam’ cabinet he prepared earlier.
All sounds fairly innocent – right?
Dead wrong.
Mr Peter Collenette, or P.C. to his friends, is a former journalist with the Launceston Examiner.
Nothing wrong with that, he’s obviously a gifted cabinet maker too.
Mr Collenette is quoted in the article talking up how ‘hardlam’ ‘was an interesting timber to work with.’
I’m yet to be convinced that glorified MDF board is a timber per se, but that’s not my point.
The following paragraph quotes the ‘furniture maker’ stating the following:
“And from a bigger picture it’s a genuine attempt by FT to explore ways to get the most out of the resource.”
Now my issue isn’t with PC’s use of passive, rather than active sentence construction; it’s with way the article identifies him, and the framing of his comments.
You see after retiring from the Examiner to pursue cabinet making he took up a position as Communications Manager of the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, A fact that somehow managed to slip through the cracks on the sub-editor’s desk at the Examiner.
The quote is clearly trying to frame the embattled GBE in a positive light, nothing wrong with that either – provided the audience knows the whole story.
On top of this P.C. was, and I believe still is, a card carrying member of the Liberal Party and once stood for Parliament (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidates_of_the_Australian_federal_election,_1998#Tasmania_2 )
The Liberals and FIAT are both opposed to the splitting of FT in addition to the former being bitterly opposed to the present IGA process, to which FIAT is a party.
Can someone tell me why this article makes no reference to Mr Collenette’s connection to FIAT, it’s not like the Examiner wouldn’t have known, a simple editor’s note would have been sufficient.
*Cleaver is known to the Editor
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