12:58 a.m. - 2003-03-19
Clouds in My Coffee
Another pretty morning between the moonset and the sunrise. Met one of the reporters I used to deal with a lot, when I was a volunteer, on the train this morning. She was one of my favorite reporters because she was so thorough in her research. Her "beat" was education issues and a lot of my time was invested there.
Most committees I worked on, the one job no one wanted was liaison with the media. The general line was that one always sounded like an idiot after the reporters got through with you. No different for me a lot of times, but I never cared as long as the issues we were trying to deal with were thoroughly examined in a public forum. Heck, a lot of times it didn't matter which side "won" the debate, just as long as there was one. Keeps everyone putting in their best effort if they have to explain their reasoning. That said, the lady in question was instrumental in helping our communities when we needed the Provincial government, who is responsible for education funding, to build schools so that our children weren't spending three or four extra hours a day on busses going to schools in other quadrants of the city. Without realizing it, one of her quotes "no hole in the ground, no seat in the legislature" with respect to our two elected representatives just days before an election was called, was the final push needed to get the funding for one school. Sometimes timing is the best and only strategy there is. What did we talk about? Our families and schools.
She has been working for a trade publication for the last decade. A lot of the best reporters have left the newspaper industry here, because the editorial policies just aren't ethical any more. When we were working together years ago, she showed me how factual stories, that she and other reporters had written, were edited to reflect the papers' owners' point of view using articles written about issues I knew inside and out. The editing was very subtle and very skilled, but it was also very deceptive and dishonest.
Going back to the idea of people feeling like idiots after seeing themselves quoted; what often happens is that the quote may be word for word what one said, but restructuring the sentences around it creates an impression that is out of the context or scope of one's discussion with the writer. Sequencing of information can manipulate the readers' perceptions too. Radically changes the meaning of your words. The illusion created is so subtle that unless one is prepared beforehand, it would be difficult to see how the intent and meaning are being twisted and manipulated.
Following up on the idea of illusions, some were cleared away at work today. The new team member, C, although she has worked for the data management team in the past, is free-lancing on this job. She let me know that this morning. The reason she got the empty office instead of me even though she is junior in terms of time on the job and skill level, is that T2 assigns higher status to independent consultants than to people from our service. That's certainly her perogative, but it begs the question of why she keeps using the service. Apparently her behaviour in excluding our staff from a lot of things has consistently reflected that point of view. Why doesn't she just use independents then?
It also makes me a bit leery about the question I was asked the other day about what would happen to me at the data management company,if this contract was cancelled. Would there be an ultimatum that I quit if I wanted to continue working in this office? The contract we sign with the data management company includes a clause that forbids us taking employment with a client of the firm for six months after the end of an assignment unless a "finders fee" is paid to the data management firm. I guess that comes from too many people using the company as a springboard to a permanent job while leaving the company high and dry for staffing. With 30% of employees in this industry being contract workers there is a very high potential for abuse otherwise, both from clients who use contract agencies as screening tools to find and assess employees and contractors themselves. I have had my contract bought out before but I don't think I would want that in this case unless the supervisor was someone other than T2. Her permanent staff are pretty beat down despite the ethics policy the company has in place. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
C is finding the same disturbing evidence in the files that I have been. She brought me a file this afternoon that I had worked on a week ago because she had new material to add. Between then and now, several things have gone missing and new material had been added. Had I not kept very detailed notes of the work, plus retained the inventories of the boxes my material has come out of, it would have appeared that I was very incompetent or careless in my work. Fortunately, I could show C everything I had done with backup documentation.
What is disturbing is that T2 has been insisting that all that evidence not be created and that the inventories from the boxes be destroyed. Today we were told that everything we set aside is to be shredded by the end of each day - not. For example, B found an old printout from the database the company uses to capture the records we create. We have all noticed a lot of material missing or altered in significant ways. We have also noticed a lot of records with identical barcodes but with very different material in them, sitting on the shelves. One of each pair shows up in the database, the other half of the records aren't searchable nor is there a record of them existing anywhere else. Wouldn't one think the old printout might be a good tool to track back what has happened to those records or even determine what was done to make them "disappear"? Hmmm.
�
�
