There's an old adage in journalism: show, don't tell.
It's an extremely effective writing technique that allows readers to feel, see and experience a story. For example, a journalist writing about Canadians living in poverty may describe a family in a sparsely furnished basement suite dining on wieners and beans from the food bank. It's not necessary to bluntly point out that mom and dad don't make any money.
Broadcast and radio journalists employ similar techniques through images, sound and language. They don't need to tell you not to trust a stuttering politician or the guy who shoves his hand into the camera lens or the recently accused shyster seen running from the courthouse.
I wish Premier Christy Clark had learned how to show instead of tell from her brief stint in broad-cast journalism. If she had, British Columbians would save a cool $15 million on those Global BC ads studded with positive self-talk. Instead, the premier is wasting our money to tell us how fabulously we're doing, which, depending on who you are, may or may not be true.
So what could $15 million buy in B.C.? Here's a short list:
* It would fund a popular science education outreach program for the next 15 years. The Program for the Awareness and Learning of Science (PALS), which brought science programming to communities across B.C., was funded with a $1 million grant to Science World.
The grant was cut earlier this year.
* It would pay for 1,145 hip surgeries and 1,034 knee surgeries. My mom waited nine months, in pain, for a hip replacement. I wonder how many others rendered immobile from pain will watch Clark's ads from the prison of their couches.
* It would pay for a month of foster care for 18,660 children up to 11 years old, or 16,485 children between 12 and 19 years old.
* It would pay for one new elementary school. Within days of the premier's first ad on Global, the government announced the official opening of the $15.4-million Begbie View Elementary in Revelstoke.
* It would provide income assistance to 1,379 people with disabilities - people deemed unable to work - for an entire year.
* It would give 5,882 homeless people emergency shelter for a month.
* It would fund 108 psychiatric hospital beds for a year.
* It would fund Community Living B.C., which provides services to adults with developmental disabilities, for 4.5 months.
* It would fund animal cruelty investigations currently paid for by donors to the non-profit BC SPCA for the next 6.5 years. The BC SPCA is provincially mandated to enforce the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, but gets no government funding to carry out its work.
* It's almost the exact amount that TransLink reported in lost revenue due to fare evasion last year.
Clark's government will argue the $15 million is a mere drop in the bucket in its more than $40 billion provincial budget. But in the same way, every resident of B.C. is a drop in bucket. And I think every drop should count.
