The Green party has gained its first ever member of Parliament — Blair Wilson — a Vancouver-area Independent who quit the Liberal party last year.
Wow. All arguments about whether May should be participating in debates aside, Wilson most certainly did not quit the Liberal party. It quit him and, as I pointed out below, until recently he was trying very hard to overturn that decision with no success.
That's a pretty obvious error to make.
Update:
I'd swear this wasn't there when I first read the story but here's the third and fourth paragraphs I see now:
The MP for the West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country riding was turfed from the Liberal caucus last year after allegations of spending irregularities in his 2006 campaign.Wilson reminded reporters that he was cleared of any wrongdoing after an eight-month investigation by Elections Canada.
Am I losing it, going too quickly or are they writing their stories on the fly?
Having worked in a wire-service sort of a situation before, I can say with a breaking-news situation it often is written on the fly. Get the basics up right away, and then add to it. Make calls for reaction, add comment, flush it out.
Hopefully they'll do more research though, and see his "departure" wasn't really about the spending irregularities.
When I was looking around earlier, in the process of preparing the update, I did find that the CBC was also carrying a Canadian Press story that had the detail on Wilson well down in the body of the story. So I guess it's possible that it's as you say: someone put up something quickly, went back looking for more detail, and then added those two paragraphs to supply the context that I suggested was missing.
That said, none of the stories I've read today have been particularly forthcoming about the fact that it was only two weeks ago that Wilson's attempts to get back into the Liberal party were being reported. I think that's important context as well.
hey was their an election call already - I just saw an election commercial run on my TV- seriously it ended with a girl saying "i'll be voting for the first time and I'm voting for Stephen Harper." WTF?
it was 11:15 on YTVW
No election called yet. The Conservatives have started advertising anyway.
The CBC has a distressing habit of not noting when their stories have been updated or changed. Clearly somebody doesn't grasp the idea of accountability etiquette on the internets.
let's see.....ex-liberal now has green seat. may is a former conservative. green party hijack complete.
Everybody wave at the nice visitors from the CBC.
The story is now much different than the one I originally saw and linked to.