December 10, 2008, 4:23 pm
My colleague Drew Snider has a new post up on his blog about media coverage of the SkyTrain security plan, which the Buzzer blog talked about last week. (There’s been a lot of interesting discussion over at that post so far, and Miss604 even linked to it in a post about the same topic.) Anyway, we actually filmed the whole press conference, and the video is available on YouTube if you’re interested in hearing the full discussion with Doug Kelsey, Ward Clapham, and the media in attendance. Again, check out Drew’s new post for the links.
November 20, 2008, 1:17 pm
My colleague Drew Snider has a new post up on his TransLink media relations blog, responding to a Province article that appears to link the presence of a SkyTrain station to a crime wave south of the Pattullo Bridge. Just thought I’d let you know in case you wanted to check that out.
November 14, 2008, 11:31 am
This morning, the top story in the Province newspaper was all about the salaries of TransLink executives and the increases they’ve seen in recent years. So Ken Hardie from our media relations team put together the following response, which we wanted to share with all of you.
The blazing headlines in this morning’s Province newspaper on salary increases for some of TransLink’s executives gives us an opportunity to do a useful reality check on a number of fronts.
First, the information in the article came from TransLink’s annual “Statement of Financial Information,” which, as a public body, we are required by law to publish and make available to the public each year. This statement must list gross earnings (salaries and benefits) plus expenses for any TransLink staff member earning more than $75,000 per year, as well as a list of companies and amounts paid to them totalling $25,000 or more.
This is a level of transparency that is unique to us and to other public agencies, and over time, each public agency is subject to the nature and tone of the coverage we saw in this morning’s Province. Clearly, the fact that our salaries are public information is just one of the aspects of public service that we ‘sign up for’ when we work at an agency like TransLink. But there are others that the paper chose not to examine.
Read more »
November 13, 2008, 2:58 pm
My colleague Drew Snider from TransLink media relations just posted the saga of a complaint TransLink filed with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council over at his blog, Vancouver on the Lines. The long and short of it: we filed a complaint about CKWX (News 1130) misrepresenting and sensationalizing an interview from Doug Kelsey, CEO of SkyTrain—and the Council ruled that News 1130 had indeed violated multiple articles of two broadcast journalism ethics codes in their reporting. Read Drew’s blog for more.
