Help Put an End to Rupert Murdoch's Criminal Empire

The ongoing scandal in the UK involving media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is making waves everywhere.

His stock prices are on the decline and citizens are beginning to mobilize against him.

AVAAZ has launched a petition to End Murdoch's Criminal Empire

Murdoch's Fox News North in Canada reveals the depths they will go to, in their bid to turn people off, while rallying hate groups. The scandals in UK, show the depths they will go to, to get a story.

Can we topple an empire?

Conrad Black destroyed Canadian media, by shifting it to the right. He ended up in prison, not for crimes against journalism, but for fraud.

Al Capone got away with his crimes, but was sent to prison for tax evasion. Whatever it takes to put an end to this.

This week, CTV's Quebec City Bureau Chief, Kai Nagata, resigned over the horrible state of the Canadian media.

Coverage of Will and Kate's visit stumped legitimate news, but there was so much more.

Stephen Harper is literally getting away with murder. Says Nagata:

Right now, there's a war going on against science in Canada. In order to satisfy a small but powerful political base, the PMO is engaged in a not-so-clandestine operation to dismantle and silence the many credible opponents to the Harper doctrine. Why kill the census? Literally in order to make decisions in the dark, without the relevant data. Hence the prisons. Why de-fund scientific research? Because whole branches of the natural sciences are premised on things like evolution, a theory the minister responsible made it clear he doesn't understand -- and likely doesn't believe in. Why settle for weak platitudes on climate change? Because despite global scientific consensus, elements of the Conservative base don't believe human activity could warm the planet. Centuries of rational thought and academic tradition, dating back to the Renaissance, is being thrown out the window in favour of an ideology that doesn't reflect reality.

When are we going to wake up?

Last night on my local television news (CKWS), they briefly discussed Harper's new border security deal with the U.S., which in part demands that U.S. Homeland Security be notified every time a Canadian citizen takes a flight to third world country, including Mexico, if that citizen flies over the United States.

This was news months ago, part of a broader shared "security", where Canada will relinquish its sovereignty.

CKWS provided little background. In fact they provide little of anything, when it comes to national coverage.

It's so frustrating that all of our news is now contrived, or spun to the point of not being considered news at all.

Time to take back our media from criminals like Murdoch and Black. We deserve and NEED better.

Harper Government Charging Taxayers Millions for Dirty Work

Back in the day when Preston Manning was leader of the Reform movement, and Stephen Harper writing policy, the media unveiled something that Manning had instructed his candidates to do.

He told them to keep dossiers on their opponents, so that they would be prepared for any debate. And if they could dig up dirt, all the better, come election time.

These practices were not common in Canadian politics, and hence it made the story newsworthy.

Dirty tricks by the Corporate party of Canada, are no longer newsworthy, except when it involves taxpayer money. And that is the case with the latest discovery. The Harperites have cut down on opinion polls, since they don't really care what we think, and instead have hired agencies to keep track of media stories.

I wondered how they were able to come up with things so quickly. Often in the House of Commons, when a member of the opposition asks a question, someone from the government side will pull up a quote from a news story, turning it back on the person asking the question on our behalf.

The Harper government spends more money keeping track of what the media is saying than it does soliciting the opinions of ordinary Canadians, an Ottawa Citizen analysis of contracting records shows. The government has been steadily increasingly the amount it pays for private "media monitoring" services over the past three years, after dramatically slashing spending on public-opinion research. The prime minister's own department, the Privy Council Office, is the leading spender on media monitoring, the data show, having run up a bill of $3.8 million keeping tabs on newspapers, broadcasters and websites since 2008.

I would like to know who these companies are and what they are tracking. Fodder for attack ads? I mean, we pay their bills, shouldn't we get to know what we're paying for?