I can’t simply make a fun Star Trek related blog post, I have to tie it into the Canadian political discourse also. So, here we go.
Ottawa Citizen reporter, Glen McGregor came up with a manifesto to guide modern journalism. He’s seen journalism fall prey to some ridiculous habits, like commenting on the tweets of celebrities as if they are newsworthy. It’s hard to deny that celebrity tweets are amusing, but they are rarely “newsworthy”. Journalists, in newspapers, should stick to roughly the guidelines in Glen’s #cdnpoli Dogme95.
A few days ago I posted a video of the International Space Station zooming over Regina. More recently, William Shatner who played James Tiberius Kirk on the sci-fi TV show Star Trek, tweeted to Commander Hadfield who is a Canadian working aboard ISS. Although it’s not really news, it does help promote the news that the Canadian commander is tweeting from aboard the space station, so it’s not so bad that CBC is using time to write about it, especially since it’s their entertainment/community team focused on it. It’s when they automatically make it a “Top Story” that I worry for the state of our country’s journalistic defenders.
@WilliamShatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we're detecting signs of life on the surface.—
Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) January 03, 2013
.@TrekMovie @Cmdr_Hadfield @WilliamShatner "I just love scanning for lifeforms" youtube.com/watch?v=dWBmaK… Tiny little life-forms. Where are you?—
Saskboy K. (@saskboy) January 03, 2013
@Cmdr_Hadfield So long as you're fixing the ISS warp drive, alien threats will consider you to be Scotty, not the token Red Shirt.—
Saskboy K. (@saskboy) January 04, 2013
It is fun to see this play out. It’s not the biggest priority on the list, but fun keeps us sane…or at least sane enough.