Fox News Plans to Run Canadian All Harper, All the Time Network

I posted yesterday on the news that Harper's former communications director and long time Reform Party activist Kory Teneycke, would be joining the ultra right-wing Sun Media, heading up their Ottawa bureau.

However, I have just learned that he is applying for a license to operate a Fox News style, all Harper, all the time; television network that will run 24 hours a day. (Big Brother, anyone?)

A new, all-news network directed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former chief spokesman could soon be coming to Canadian living rooms. uebecor Media Inc., has filed an application for an English-language TV news network with the CRTC, the federal broadcast regulator. The application comes in concert with Quebecor's appointment of Kory Teneycke — Harper's former communications director — as vice-president of development.

By hiring Teneycke, Quebecor and its president and CEO Pierre KarlPeladeau are following the path of Fox News Channel, whose founding presidentRoger Ailes is a former communications adviser to Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.

The role of Glen Beck will be played by Dimitri Soudas, while Stephen Harper will be playing himself.

They plan to add a children's segment, where Harper will instruct the kiddies on how to clean the sand out of their fingernails after throwing it in their opponent's eyes. It will be called 'Sponge Harp, Kick in the Pants'. Featured Guests include Dick Dastardly and Simon Bar Sinister.

The Joker declined an invitation, saying that Stephen Harper was simply too scary to work with.

We should have seen this coming after learning in December that Harper's office had appropriated almost two million dollars for the creation of movies, that would replace real news.

Taxpayers are being asked to pay an extra $1.7-million this fiscal year to help bolster Stephen Harper's communications support services – just as the Prime Minister's Office begins distributing government videos of Harper to the news media. Supplementary estimates tabled last month by the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's bureaucratic back office, boosted internal operational spending by almost $7.3-million for 2009-10. That's on top of existing budgets.

The Privy Council Office already has an archive of more than 300 videos of Mr. Harper dating back to his first months in office, according to an Access to Information request by The Canadian Press. In the last two weeks, the PCO started sending news organizations links to new videos in the same way the PMO has routinely distributed photos shot by Mr. Harper's official photographer. The photos, and now the videos, have sparked a debate over media access and when the use of government-produced and approved images may be appropriate in an independent news media.

“It's not access,” said Chris Waddell, who holds the Carty chair in business and financial journalism at Ottawa's Carleton University. “Access is an opportunity to ask questions and an opportunity to engage in independent work according to journalistic principles. What they're giving you is public relations.” Dimitri Soudas, the Prime Minister's spokesman, says there is no difference between a press release and a photo or video release. (1)

Can't wait to see what our two millions bought. Harper at the Beach, Harper at Home, Harper Making Voodoo dolls of Michael Ignatieff.

Not too surprising, because George Bush did the same thing. And we all know that whatever Georgie does, Stevie's not far behind:

Even more insidiously, the Bush White House is infiltrating local news broadcasts with taxpayer-funded propaganda. On March 13, 2005, the New York Times published a major expose on the production and distribution of Video News Releases, or VNRs, government-sponsored "news" stories distributed to the American people by the so-called independent media.

"Under the Bush Administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the pre-packaged, ready-to-serve news report that major orporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least twenty federal agencies have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, research and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role," " (2)

Can I just say how much I love living in a dictatorship. I no longer have to think for myself with people like Kory Teneycke around to (try to) do it for me. I just have to set up my PVR, because I don't want to lose a minute of watching Harper videos. And remember: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Harper is good.

Sources:

1. Taxpayers on hook for $1.7-million as PMO rolls out video, By Bruce Cheadle, The Canadian Press, December 08, 2009

2. Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America, By Maude Barlow, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2005, ISBN: 0-7710-1088-5, Pg. 58