Be neither an eternal cynic nor a forever optimist.
Yet, it seems there is a certain sect of the population, including a number of candidates running for election this fall, appearing as eternal cynics.
Or at the very least, they are mimicking Chicken Little, crying the sky is falling at every turn.
The Canadian Energies proposal to establish a manufacturing campus in Chatham-Kent to help build renewable energy components is the latest case in point.
And, yes, we’re wading into the social media weeds, which is where such negativity slithers and seeks to pull in others.
To us, it is way too early to give the project a thumbs up or a thumbs down. We just don’t have all the details yet, nor has this evolved much past the pie-in-the-sky stage.
Yet others are very quick to speculate what this project will be exactly. They seem to think they’ve revealed the Da Vinci Code of conspiracies, and were determined to be the first to discuss such things.
In the media, there is the desire to be first to break a news story. And the Internet has only exacerbated that desire.
It comes with consequences. Be sure you have your facts correct. There were instances where various Toronto media outlets tripped over one another years ago in their desire to be first to report the death of former Toronto Maple Leafs coach Pat Burns. However, at that point, he was not dead.
They did not learn from their error. The same thing happened with Gordon Lightfoot. He too was alive, despite reports to the contrary.
Now, what we will agree on in terms of the proverbial sniff test is the timing of the Canadian Energies announcement – mere weeks before an election. We’ve seen such announcements in the past, only to have the proposed developments vanish.
This time around, however, the timing was tied to the Canadian Investment Summit, which took place in mid-September in Toronto and was led by the prime minister. This does not hang around the neck of Mayor Darrin Canniff as an election prop.
That doesn’t mean to approach the proposal without caution. However, we’d lean towards cautious optimism rather than pure skepticism. But we don’t live and breathe for social media; we’re real media, where algorithms mean nothing and facts mean everything.
