There’s controversy on the Saskatchewan prairie.
It seems that workers at the Moose Jaw Super 8 have a beef with management and have been locked out. Moose Jaw Today has been covering the story, at least until it quoted an employee making unkind comments about the motel’s manager, among other things comparing him to Vladimir Putin, which is not very Canadian Nice.
Evidently the Super 8 people bitched to Moose Jaw Today which issued a retraction, regretting that it had quoted the disgruntled employee. The retraction semi-hilariously repeats the same insults that pissed off Super 8 management in the first place:
I enjoyed this example of the Streisand effect (the story was picked up by the website Retraction Watch, ensuring a wider audience). Unfortunately Moose Jaw Today, evidently cowed by Super 8 going all Will Smith on it, decided to disappear previous online news coverage of the “labour” dispute. Two links to stories now send you to a “Whoops!” error page.
Not a shining example of Fourth Estate courage under fire.
There’s not much I can do about it. But you can be damn sure that the next time I’m in Moose Jaw, I will not be staying at Vlad’s Super 8.