It will sure play well to an Ottawa readership, though!

I had hoped that Mike Blanchfield would make the most of his opportunity to explore the subject of civilian contractors in Canada's operations. It's not a topic that lends itself to easy explanations.

Of course, we've already gone there, following Dave Perry's lead...I wonder if Blanchfield's one of our readers?

While I was moderately impressed with the piece I've linked to above, reading the companion piece in the same paper was a thorough disappointment. Editorials should be clearly identified as such, and not passed off as straight reportage:

The Defence Department is keeping secret the names of dozens of companies that received almost $42 million worth of contracts in Afghanistan. [Babbler: I'm sure they led with that because it's the most important take-away from the entire subject. What? They led with it because it's accusatory? Never!]

However, an analysis by CanWest News Service suggests that more than $1.1 million in business has been awarded to an Afghan company that bears the same name as one of Kandahar's most infamous warlords. [What, are we playing Seven Degrees of Gul Agha Sherzai here?]

Citing national security concerns, the Defence Department has blanked out the names of all vendors from an internal database of contracts released under Access to Information. The contracts cover services ranging from hauling gravel to supplying specialized communications equipment and toilet paper.

The censorship is only one example of the growing trend toward secrecy that appears to be enveloping the Canadian Forces as it expands its use of civilian contractors and persists despite pledges by the Harper government to improve accountability and transparency, a key plank of the platform that brought the Conservative party to power nearly two years ago. [I see precisely one fact in that entire sentence: accountability was a key Conservative plank. The rest is pure spin, and has no part in anything but a column or editorial. Which this isn't.]

A three-month investigation by CanWest News Service has concluded that Canadian commanders in Afghanistan retain considerable discretion over which contracts are awarded and how they are reported.

The result is that Canadians aren't given all the information they need to determine whether they are getting good value for their tax dollars. [At least they've dropped the one-fact fig-leaf they were hiding behind a couple of paragraphs ago. Of course, unapologetically spinning isn't much of an improvement, now is it?]

In censoring the vendor names in the Defence Department's database, officials say they are trying to protect contractors from being targeted by the Taliban.

The disclosure policy, however, appears to be arbitrary and inconsistent, since some of the names from the list have already been published on the department's website. Federal departments are required to publicly disclose the details of all contracts over $10,000. ["Arbitrary and inconsistent" - or perhaps Canada's government and Defence Department haven't had much experience, until recently, finding a balance between transparency and secrecy in the middle of a shooting war, and are learning as they go. But hey, I'd guess "arbitrary and inconsistent" probably sells more papers.]

At that point, we're two hundred and seventy-one words into the article. What exactly have we learned? That DND keeps secrets when it comes to Afghanistan? That the CF deals with local leadership when paying for things to get done? That the local leadership in Kandahar wouldn't fit in well at a downtown-Ottawa Starbucks? That guys like Sherzai and the contracts awarded to him are a far cry from Boeing and their RFP submissions?

Come on.

This is a serious topic. It would be nice to see it handled professionally. That doesn't mean you can't flip over rocks and see what scuttles away from the light. It also doesn't mean you have to report entirely without interpretation, or even without spin - I don't think it's even possible to completely eliminate the writer's perspective in such a piece.

What it does mean is keeping fact and opinion as separate as possible. What upsets me is that Blanchfield and his editors don't appear to have even tried.

This entire article is nothing more than a whine: We, the press, think we have a right to know whatever we say we do, and we'll spank you in public if you don't show us exactly what we think we should have access to. Operational security? We'll tell you what that should mean, thank you very much.

Surely there's a better way to determine if Canadians are getting value for their money than throwing a hissy fit on newsprint.