[starseed]

Heads up. Andrew Coyne just started tweeting again a few minutes ago.

https://twitter.com/acoyne

So anyway… I have resigned as editor of Editorials and Comment for the National Post, effective immediately. I will remain a columnist.

2. Postmedia executives and I had a professional disagreement. Their view was that the publication of a column by the editorial page editor…

3. … dissenting from the Post’s endorsement of the Conservatives would have confused readers and embarrassed the paper.

4. My view was that that was what I was paid to do as a columnist: give my honest opinion on issues of public interest.

5. I don’t see public disagreement as confusing. I see it as honest. Readers, in my view, are adults & understand that adults can disagree.

6. The confusion, if any, would have been to have left the impression that the paper’s views were mine, or that my views were the paper’s.

7. To be clear, the owners and managers of a newspaper have a perfect right to set the paper’s editorial line as they wish.

8. Likewise they have a perfect right to decide who and what they wish to publish in their pages.

9. Nobody has a God-given right to be published and the country will get along very well without me telling them how to vote.

10. My concerns were and are merely a) that there should be no suggestion that I was personally endorsing or voting for the Conservatives.

11. And b) that I could not do my job as a columnist if I was obliged to stay silent where these conflicted with those of management.

12. While Postmedia’s intervention was unprecedented in my experience, I could not allow the precedent to stand.

13. So to protect my reputation and to preserve my editorial freedom as a columnist, I felt it necessary to resign the editorial position.

14. I think that’s all I need to say on the subject. If anyone’s still interested, I will be voting for the NDP candidate in my riding.

15. The short-form reasoning: the Conservatives don’t deserve to be re-elected, and the Liberals don’t deserve a majority.


Finally, my prediction: Airheads 143 Fascists 116 Commies 71 Traitors 5 Ewoks 2 Unabombers 1 (#rathagainstthemachine - oh let me dream…).