Should the Canadian Media Make New Year's Resolutions?

I watched Chris Matthew's Hardball yesterday, where the media panel was asked about their New Year's resolutions, speaking of them as a whole.

Most gave the obvious.  Invest in hard journalism, ask the tough questions, cover politics seriously and don't get distracted by shiny objects.  All important goals, but aren't they what journalism is supposed to be about?  Does a doctor really have to make a resolution to heal or a teacher to teach?

The best answer came from Washington Post's David Ignatius.  Recognizing that the media had to shoulder much of the blame for today's toxic political climate, he said that those in his profession had to stop contributing to the noise, divisiveness and confusion that is putting the United States near the point of breaking down.

And Ignatius is actually one of the few who can still call himself a journalist.

I thought that the Canadian media had hit bottom when those covering a Stephen Harper excursion were held hostage on a plane, because he didn't want them to ask him questions about unfolding events.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is sneaking back into Canada through the front door.  Harper flew back from Switzerland today.  While in the air his office announced the appointment of five new Senators and the Supreme Court ruled he has the power to decide to ask if Omar Khadr could be repatriated.

What does Harper have to say about these developments? Nothing.  Journalists travelling with Harper are being kept on the plane to ensure the Prime Minister doesn't face any questions in his short jaunt from the bottom of the staircase to his waiting limousine.

When the journalists live blogged this unusual tactic, a staff member came on board and said that they were free to leave, but would have to find their own way home.  This sounds more like a Stalin move, and yet one those "kidnapped", actually tried to defend it.

David Akin, while writing that they were only allowed three questions in three and a half days, even before the hostage taking, suggested that he was somehow seeking balance in not being too critical.

... for what it's worth, our readers and viewers, of course, include both Harper's supporters and his detractors and reporters must remember that we write for all of them.

Harper's detractors may think we should just give the metaphorical finger to such directives from the PMO but, at one photo opp while we were here, a reporter who did just that and asked a question at a photo opp, despite warnings not to, was immediately warned that, if she continued, reporters would no longer be allowed to attend such photo opps. That would not be good for our access would be curtailed even further. PMO staff also made veiled threats that that individual's organization might suffer further sanction -- all because of the impertinence of asking a question. If you are a media organization in Ottawa, these are no small consequences.

Since when does crippling the media's ability to their job, mean that we are Harper detractors? Shouldn't everyone who believes in democracy oppose this? Akin was telling us that they are being threatened and yet still tried to defend it.

Fortunately for him, he is now with Fox News North where he no longer has to pretend to be a journalist.  Only part of the noise.

There is something that our media, those left who still remember why they chose journalism as a career, can do.  Stop covering Harper and his party.  Only ask questions of the opposition and only publish their answers.  If Harper wants his mug in the papers and his press releases printed, demand that he answer questions, and ones that are not presented in advance.

If he lacks the ability to think on his feet, then he is the one who can't handle his job.

The Conservatives don't have to impress the National Post or Sun TV, but if they want to continue to keep up the delusion that they are moderate "Tories", they need the press.  It's time that the mainstream media remembered that.

And advice to the Canadian public came from Chris Matthews himself.  Too much "noise" and not enough substance?  Change the channel.

Mushy Middles, Dirty Words and Why we Must Rebuild the Centre

When I posted on why Jack Layton should drop the "brothers and sisters" socialist talk if he hoped to survive the next four years, I received several comments and many emails, telling me that I was wrong.

Many of his followers actually fully support the socialist label, because like Stephen Harper, they believe that Canadians should only have two clear choices. Right or left. Neoconservatism or socialism.

They have no problem with a Harper majority, because they believe that Canadians will become disillusioned with the right, so will jump to the left next election for solutions.

One said that the reason they set out to destroy the Liberals, was because they hated the "mushy middle". The Liberals (and PCs) were able to borrow from both right and left, while attempting to stave off the excesses of both. Not always successfully, but that strong centre has made us who we are as Canadians.

Or at least who we were.

But this reader was convinced that with no "mushy middle", Canadians would get tired of their "empty wallets" and look to the NDP to fill them.

Good luck with that.

Barack Obama was one of the most progressive political leaders that the United States has had in a very long time. And yet the right-wing noise machine, through the Koch Brothers sponsored Tea party, and the Republican Neanderthals, have all but destroyed him.

First by painting him as a "socialist" and then making "socialist" a dirty word. A very clever strategy.

Because the question became not whether some form of socialism might be good for Americans (especially with healthcare), but whether or not Obama was one. And since you had to ask it must be something to be feared.

The same tactic used in identifying him as an Islamic. They actually had polls asking Americans if they thought that Obama was Muslim, as if being Muslim was a disease.

Look at the two images, both produced by Fox News, North and South.





Anything strike you as familiar?

The neocons in the U.S. were even able to destroy ACORN, an umbrella group of community organizers, that has done so many good things.

They first used dirty tricks, and then once they felt that they had discredited the organization sufficiently, they then linked it constantly to the president. It was once something he was proud to put on his resume, now his affiliation, is something he is supposed to be ashamed of.

Obama's ACORN, Ignatieff's Coalition, Layton's Socialism.

Negative connotations to legitimate things.

How many times did the Harperites use "socialists" during the coalition crisis? A coalition of "separatists and socialists". Now the socialists have destroyed the separatists and the picking off of "the socialists" will be like taking candy from a baby for Harper.

Because he has all of the Tea party money and nonsense behind him, and next time around I doubt Layton will get much media support, when they are promised a zero tax rate.

"Mushy middle" parties strived for balance.

The Right-Wing Noise Machine

In her book It's the Crude, Dude; Linda McQuaig discusses the debate around Kyoto. Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration of course hated it, but they also hated any talk of conservation, something Cheney sneered at.

Ralph Goodale responded to Cheney by saying that "conservation was a characteristic of an advanced, intelligent society." (p. 133)

McQuaig goes on to reveal how a Canadian anti-Kyoto group sprang up overnight, sponsored by the oil companies, to defend Dick Cheney's position.

To give some idea of what Jack Layton would be up against if he still plans to go it alone, that group, Responsible Environmental Solutions, was headed up by Guy Giorno and included Harper's former environmental minister, John Baird.

Layton would later allow Stephen Harper to talk him into bringing down the Liberal government on the day that Kyoto was to be ratified, and agreed not to attack Harper during the campaign.

As a result, we will go at least a decade with NO CLIMATE CHANGE plan.

Assorted right-wing think tanks, advocacy groups and noise machines, will never allow the NDP to get elected, and if by some miracle they do, will never allow them to govern.

The Fraser Institute was started to challenge the NDP government of Dave Barrett in British Columbia. Ontarians for Responsible Government (a branch of the National Citizens Coalition) was established to challenge the NDP government of Bob Rae in Ontario.

They won't need to establish a new think tank to take down Jack Layton, because they already have numerous groups, all corporate financed, most American neoconservative inspired.

By destroying his allies, Layton has made himself a big fish in a very small barrel.

Margaret Wente and Her Lies Damn Lies

There is an excellent blog that I stumbled across: media Culpa, where they expose media stories that are erroneous, intentionally or unintentionally.

This week it was a column by right-wing journalist Margaret Wente, who misrepresented and “radically misconstrued” comments made by British environmentalist George Monbiot.

Monbiot has since corrected Wente's version of the facts:

Margaret Wente's column, in which she claims to summarize and support two articles of mine, contains a number of outrageous misrepresentations and distortions. She suggests I said that environmentalists "don't understand the science and they don't understand the economics." I've said nothing of the kind.

She also claims that I am Elizabeth May's "biggest critic." If so, May has little to worry about. I am a great admirer of hers, and I'm delighted that she is now a member of parliament. I am sure that, like Caroline Lucas, the sole Green MP in the UK, she will do an excellent job of holding the government to account, and will enrich the political life of the nation. Her "biggest critic" has never said a word against her.

This is quite a fall for the award winning journalist, who once gave a lecture entitled; Lies, damn lies, and journalism: how the media misinform the public.

Yes Margaret. Lies, damn lies. I guess it's now OK to try to misinform the public. Maybe Media Culpa should look into a few more of your columns, since clearly you believe it's now OK to just make stuff up.

Ruth Ellen Knows She's Made it When Sun Goes on the Attack

The latest round in the attacks on Ruth Ellen Brosseau, concern the fudging of her resume. Apparently she did not graduate from St. Lawrence college as noted, but left before completing the program.

The NDP is apologizing to their most famous MP-elect for "inadvertently" embellishing her resumé. The NDP's online biography of Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who won the Quebec riding of Berthier-Maskinongé without ever having set foot in it, says she "has a diploma in Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communications from St. Lawrence College in Kingston." But the college says while she attended classes there, she didn't complete the course.

This was a lead story on our local news last night.

Not the Manitoba floods, the new law in Uganda that allows gays to be executed or the Conservatives trying to influence Supreme Court decisions.

But the fact that a new NDP MP, may have had her resume bolstered a bit. More fodder for the right-wing noise machine.

Jack Layton has got to step in here before the media gives this poor girl a nervous breakdown. He might suggest that they look at a few Conservative resumes.

John Weston claimed to be part of the diplomatic corp. It was later discovered that he took the course but was never accepted. David Sweet removed any mention of his involvement with the anti-women Promise Keepers. And Stephen Harper calls himself a trained economist, despite the fact that he has never worked a single day in the field.

Unless you count his job in the mail room at Esso, when he discussed the price of postage stamps.

And he completely left out the years he spent running the National Citizens Coalition.

Was I thrilled that she got the job and we lost so many hard working and progressive MPs? Of course not. And if names on her nomination were forged, then they are fraudulent, and a different issue.

But it appears to me as though the media is hounding this poor young woman, looking for anything and everything to discredit her. They should be ashamed.

They interviewed one of her former teachers at St. Lawrence last night, and she said that Brosseau was hard working, inquisitive and caring. All positive characteristics.

Layton needs to assign a veteran, someone like Libby Davies, to take the girl under their wing and under their protection. Start fighting back, or they will continue this kind of assault on all the young NDPers, unprepared for the new toxic climate of Canadian politics.

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?

How Stephen Harper Controls the Media

An important element of democracy is a free and independent media. But we in Canada have only a silenced one.

In Preparation for Fox News North Harper Government has Made it Legal for Media to Lie

It has been discovered recently that the Harper government has now removed all barriers for the media to just make stuff up. And I love their justification for this.

Rick Mercer and Jon Stewart do it.

Mercer and Stewart are not part of the media. They are comedians. Their shows are billed as comedies, where Fox News North will be anything but funny.

Oh, and they also bring up Santa Claus. Of course. Who doesn't love Santa?

Stephen Downes, of the National Research Council of Canada, raised the point that the current law "makes it illegal to broadcast news reports of Santa's journey from the North Pole on Christmas."

We have to rewrite our laws to accommodate Santa. But as Michael Geist says: "If enacted, the changes would move the Canadian broadcast framework closer to that found in the U.S." Of course it will move us closer to the U.S. model. Doesn't every single thing that Stephen Harper does, move us closer to the U.S. model?

What's that? It was a CRTC decision and has nothing to do with Stephen Harper? Guess again. Harper has appointed 11 of the 14 current members of the CRTC.

Just another day in Harperland.

Yelling at the Radio? I Know the Feeling

There is an excellent piece in the Tyee: Yelling Back at the Radio, One working guy's rant not likely to get through on the call-in shows.

Ernie Raj Peshkov-Chow speaks of his frustration in having to listen to right-wing nonsense. If you go on the Corporate Party of Canada's website, they actually tell you what to say, in an attempt to monopolize the airwaves.

Owning the newspapers and television isn't enough.

You know who really, really makes me mad? Workers who buy into the bullshit that the right-wingers are selling. I mean smarten up, eh! Think. Read a little history. Radio talk show hosts, newspaper columnists, TV celebrity idiots, preachers and politicians who want to weaken or destroy unions, get rid of minimum wages, cut public services, chop pensions, encourage private schools, get rid of corporate regulation, say government-paid healthcare is bad, start wars and promote hatred based on skin colour or religion are not on our side. They want to divide us. They are working for the rich folks who prefer a world based on the principle of one dollar, one vote rather than one person, one vote. They are our enemies, not our friends.

He said it. We need more people to rant like that. There's many times I've felt like Mr. Raj Peshkov-Chow.

In fact I had to cancel my Whig Standard after 35 years, now that it's Sun Media. When I get a full-size pin-up of Stephen Harper and columns by both Ezra Levant and Peter Worthington on the same day, it's time to call it quits.

And our local television "news" is worse. At CKWS their anchors sing out the news with all the banality of a talk show host. And political discussion shows? Don't get me started.

You'd hear more intelligent debate in Mrs. O'Grady's kindergarten class when Cindy Lou tells Bobby, that she can too pee standing up.

Right-wing noise is deafening us all. It's time to start yelling back.

Canada's Right-Wing Media is in Trouble

For all the efforts that began with Conrad Black, to turn Canada to the right, we are simply NOT a right-wing country.

The National Post may have sung the praises of neoconservatism, but in the end neoconservatism has bit them in the butt.

News today is that there are layoffs and buyouts in the works for many of the original CanWest publications.

The entire National Post newsroom has been offered buyouts - and they have until Friday to accept, sources at the National Post confirm. Sources also say that there is no guarantee any employee applying for a buyout will receive one. ... . The news follows a series of buyout offers and layoffs at other Postmedia papers last week. The Globe and Mail reports 20 layoffs at the Edmonton Journal and 20 at the Calgary Herald.

It's a shame really but they had to know that Canadians have no stomach for constant negative attacks.

No one is saying that we want news from a left or right wing bent. We just want fair and balanced journalism. Maybe we can now return to that.

Are you listening Kory Teneycke?