The Journal de Montréal wouldn’t be a tabloid if it didn’t like to plunge head-first into the murky waters of sensationalism. Its attempts to generate scandal are frequent and, sad to say, frequently successful. Earlier this year, the paper’s “investigation” into the use of English by store clerks in Montreal, which involved few hard figures but a sensational account of how a young reporter, Noée Murchison, was able to serve customers entirely in English while working undercover at a handful of retail stores. The investigation was manipulative, ethically dubious and cynical, but it managed to win the Journal a lot of attention by reigniting nationalist sentiment.
Every so often, though, the Journal’s attempts at manufacturing controversy fall flat. The most recent example of this has been the Journal’s three-article series on fare evasion in the STM. Last month, Noée Murchison decided to see how easy it would be to ride the STM’s buses without paying. Weilding an expired transfer, she managed to board 27 buses; only once did a driver refuse to let her board. Since that article was published on April 1st, the Journal must not have gotten the reaction it desired, because Murchison is back at it today, writing that she was once again able to board 10 buses with an expired transfer. Another article accuses the STM of encouraging “laxisme” among its drivers.
Fare evasion is a big deal — it costs the STM more than $20 million per year — and it’s certainly worthy of media coverage. But the Journal’s glib treatment failed to look at the issue in any real depth, choosing instead to focus entirely on Murchison’s success at evading fares without examining why those fares were so easily evaded and what the STM is doing about it. In the original article, for instance, there is absolutely no mention that the STM is in the midst of overhauling its entire fare collection system. There’s no word about the new electronic fareboxes that were installed on buses in 2006, which have eliminated cash fraud; there’s no word about the impending arrival of the smart card, which will make it nearly impossible to forge monthly or weekly passes; and there’s nothing about the introduction of new magnetic-strip transfers that will be scanned and verified by the new fareboxes. Laval has already been using the new transfers for more than a year; Murchison could have seen whether or not they have been successful in reducing fare evasion, but she didn’t.
Even in today’s articles, the only reference to the STM’s new fare system is a short, inaccurate paragraph that reads like an afterthought: “L’implantation de nouveaux équipements de perception dans le métro et les autobus doit être annoncée d’ici à la fin du mois.” This isn’t even true. The installation of the new fare equipment was first announced in 2006 — the STM has had a webpage detailing the new system for several months — and the new equipment, including the smart card, will be introduced by the end of the month. In other words, the faulty fare collection system that the Journal has gone to such lengths to decry will be completely scrapped before the end of the year. Whatever point Murchison and the Journal have tried to make is already moot.
What we need in Montreal is accurate and insightful reporting on public transit issues. Luckily, we have three daily newspapers that provide that: La Presse, Le Devoir and the Gazette — but it’s a shame that this is something our most widely-read newspaper, the Journal, seems incapable of doing.
Photo by Pascal Ratthé, Journal de Montréal
12 comments
I cannot figure Murchison. If you were a young journalist, would you really want to build your rep with crap like this?
Great critique! These stupid exposés in the Journal are so annoying because they tend to target things who are lax for a reason. For instance, would you rather live in Montreal where the bus driver will give you a break or in Toronto where you have to show your picture ID as well as your bus card? Same with their stupid airport security “exposé” and the border crossing one. Is that what they want, cops and security barriers everywhere? What makes Montréal great is that the citizens here know how to live together and cut each other slack. We can have a citywide party that lasts all night with all ages and open alchohol and nobody stabs anyone or gets arrested, unlike, say, Vancouver. Let’s keep it that way.
I am not one to defend the Journal. At all. In the least. But I think there may have been some confusion here.
In my experience, implantation is used a lot to mean “implementation”, the activation especially of an I.T. system. The writer probably meant that they would announce by the end of the month when the system would go live. I don’t know if that is true, but to my knowledge, they haven’t announced it yet so it strikes me as plausible.
Meanwhile, the Journal‘s slow-news-day scandal has done its job of filling space.
Tim, that certainly makes sense, although the STM has already announced that the system will go live later this month. In that case, wouldn’t “L’implantation (…) doit être achevée d’ici à la fin du mois” make more sense? Or maybe that’s just my anglophone mind misleading me.
Even then, though, the implementation of the new fare system this month deserves more than a one-sentence mention in a series of stories about fare evasion!
Le Journal is the most widely read paper in the city?? That is truly frightening!
Chris, totally agree that the matter deserves more than a dismissive afterthought—like I said, I’m making no excuses for the Journal.
I had only heard intentions to implement in April, and if it’s officially announced then the Journal is definitely in the wrong, no matter how you mince the words.
According to one of our correpondents, the smart card will be officially launched tomorrow, April 16th. If that’s the case we should have something on it.
Actually, I remember reading in La Presse a few weeks ago that it had surpassed Le Journal as the number one paper… at least on Saturdays. Perhaps not every other day.
Journal de Montreal is trash.
At a summer job a few years ago they had JdM in the break room so I’d kill time with a red pen circling all the french mistakes. This was back in cegep by a guy who only ever failed one class, a cegep french class because he made too many french mistakes.
I’m not the least bit surprised people are confused by what she meant because JdM in general is rarely clear but the way I read it it seems to say they’re going to announce installing new equipment soon. She probably meant to say what Tim pointed out but that’s not the way she wrote it.
Le Journal perd des lecteurs au profit de La Presse à un rythme de plus en plus rapide. La Presse le dépasse déjà les weekends et pour les abonnements, tous les jours. Ces articles qui créent de toutes pièces de faux scandales sont pathétiques et très mal écrits, comme presque tout le reste du Journal.
@Martin: Oui, mais les sports! 8¬P~
I see bus drivers checking for expired transfers all the time, but it seems that this verification happens almost exclusively to young black men or other *very*-disadvantaged-looking people.
Now that’s something the JdeM might want to investigate!