While I was running for the federal nomination in our riding back in February of this year I had a minor dust up with Warren Kinsella over some advertising that appeared on his Blog. At the time I decided I had better things to do with my time than play his game, so I let it go. However, inspired by some recent posts by Kinsella, I decided to follow up on that exchange, and I wrote a letter to his editor at the National Post:
To the editor of the National Post,
I am not one to advocate for media censorship, and I will defend the right to free speech vigorously, but I feel someone at your publication should be made aware of the public conduct of one of your columnists, Mr. Warren Kinsella.
In exchange for financial compensation Mr. Kinsella has made his web site available to Google AdWords advertisers. While I was recently campaigning for a federal riding nomination, one of my text ads appeared on Mr. Kinsella’s web site.
When the presence of my ad was brought to the attention of Mr. Kinsella he chose to publicly and erroneously ridicule my campaign. His original text is posted here:
When I became aware of the comments posted by Kinsella I wrote him a short, private email to offer some clarification and some context:
Mr. Kinsella’s response to my email was not a retraction of his erroneous comments, nor an apology, rather he chose to to first revise his earlier posting to read “less incorrectly”:
Next he attempted to find out more about my personal background. He sent me an email enquiry to which I replied with an offer to speak with him personally. He never did call:
Finally, he chose to once again make a public statement intended to cause harm to my reputation. His post is still on his blog here:
As I mentioned at the beginning of this note, I will defend Mr. Kinsella’s right to free speech, however the flip side of that coin is accountability. As someone who oversees and publishes Mr. Kinsella’s remarks I’d like to suggest you speak to him about journalistic ethics.
Best regards,
Andrew Keyes
There. That feels much better now.
By the way, I would like to tip my hat to Blue Blogging Soapbox who originally reported on this little skirmish and who have kept a pretty good record of the events.
Update: Quite a lot has been written about the self-described “Prince of Darkness” and the methods he uses to twist the truth. Here’s a recent look at these methods by Mark Steyn.
[...] 2: Well, if Warren says so it must be true: “My God, my God, this guy is [...]
[...] the Prince of Darkness fawning over Obama is enough to give me a tooth ache: Look, I love Barack Obama as much as [...]
[...] many clichés come to mind when I consider the antics of this fellow. Something about living in glass houses and throwing stones is appropriate, along with the kettle [...]