About that Olympic torch route...

See update, below.

Last week Don Martin wrote a column about how the Olympic torch route is heavily biased towards Conservative ridings. Only 21 Liberal ridings would get a pitstop, he wrote, compared to 126 Conservative ridings. He had other embarrassing details, like the fact that the opposition-dominated city of Halifax "doesn't rate a downtown pitstop" and "Winnipeg is bypassed in favour of stop-overs in surrounding ridings held by Conservatives".

Wow -- following on breathless allegations of bias in how the government is spending infrastructure money, Martin's column hit the sweet spot.

Kelly McParland wrote a response pointing out that, geographically speaking, Liberal MPs are bunched together in small urban areas like Toronto and Montreal, whereas Conservative MPs represent more of the larger, rural ridings through which any torch route must naturally go. But McParland's justification was just that: trying to justify Martin's embarrassing facts.

Except that Martin's facts were wrong.

Take a look for yourself at the Olympic Committee's interactive map of the torch relay route and click around the country, especially in opposition ridings.

Click on Halifax. The torch route doesn't skip the city as Martin says it will. In fact, it will go down just about every big road in town, and then it comes back again two days later for another go at things. And in terms of "pit stops" as Martin calls them, there's a big "community celebration" planned for the Grand Parade grounds right downtown, with the torch's arrival being the highlight of the night.

Or click on Winnipeg. Again, the torch will visit that city not once but twice. It's not "bypassed" as Martin says it will be. The exact torch route is not yet mapped out on the Olympics website, but it's clear that two days are planned for the largest city in Manitoba, not the zero days implied by Martin.

Or look at all-Liberal Newfoundland and Labrador where, later this week, the torch will spend five days.

Only a severely bored journalist -- or one desperate for a story idea -- would try to turn something as non-partisan as an Olympic torch run into a political scandal. Martin's column was less about reality and more of a Rorschach test about his own eagerness to pin something on the Conservatives, no matter how gimmicky.

How did Martin get his facts so wrong? Did he do any research -- even just clicking on the map -- or was he just happy to be spoon-fed the latest anti-Conservative spin from the Liberal war room? There's nothing wrong with getting story tips from partisans, but a newspaperman of Martin's experience owes it to his readership to double-check the facts for himself, not to be wilfully blind to them.

Martin was a participant in the Liberal strategy of a gimmick a week -- most of which has fallen apart upon inspection and, judging by last night's byelection results, none of which has had an effect on voters. Martin's story has a blazingly large headline. Too bad the correction, if it ever comes, will be in 8-point font.

Update: Don Martin replies, in my comments section. He calls my blog entry a "cheap shot". I'm not quite sure how it's a cheap shot; either his facts were correct or they weren't; either my criticisms are correct or they aren't.

If I were an Olympics volunteer who was helping to organize events in Halifax or Winnipeg, I'd probably say that Martin's column was a cheap shot -- and I'd hope that my neighbours came to the torch events despite his claim that they don't exist. Oh well; I wish Martin had the same sense of humour about being caught in an error, as he does when he's the one doing the catching.