These are Getting as...

...common as Hitler parodies:

A Journalist Tells The Truth...

...about why the media isn't telling us the truth:

Spanish Journalist on Why Hamas Never Photographed in Action: ‘If Ever We Dared Point Our Camera on Them They Would Simply Shoot at Us and Kill Us’

A Journalist I Could Actually Like

I've actually read/viewed a lot of things in the last few days that popular sentiment is shifting in the Arab world. They are sick and tired of Hamas and the whole Palestinian-Israeli conflict and are blaming Hamas for starting this one. Since all journalism in the Middle East (outside of Israel) is state controlled, I have to ask: Will wonders ever cease? Could it be a result of the Arab Spring?

Holy Moly!!

CBC union wants taxpayers to pay more

Will you look at that survey result? The question asked is "Is the CBC worth a tax increase?". Of course, this isn't a random survey, so the distribution may be unreliable, but still, a random survey would no doubt garner a similar distribution of answers.

94% say NO. Only 5% say yes and 1% say maybe. Even if you throw the maybes in with the yeses, that still leaves a resounding 94% of us who do not want to feed the beast. It's hard to imagine a truly random survey would yield the opposite result, with a large majority wanting to continue funding the thing. Faster, please.

Wow! Just Wow!

A journalist with integrity!!

We All Know "Climate Skeptics" ...

...are "Anti-Science", right?

And we all know that big journalism doesn't "spin" the very same subject, right?

Climate Skeptic Groups Launch Global Anti-Science Campaign

Riiiight.

Pretty lame.

More On One Of Our Scandals-du-Jour

The media vs. Rob Ford: Barbara Amiel explains why the war is over the top

"A quick reprise. There is said to be a tape showing Mayor Ford smoking crack cocaine. Who cares, would be my response, but that’s idiosyncratic. Still, the actual tape has never appeared. Posses of journalists are asking the mayor if he is a crack cocaine addict. Every crack cocaine addict I have ever seen is a bundle of skin and bone. Mayor Ford could be their poster boy: Smoke crack and not lose an ounce."

[---]

"In summary. The elder brother of Rob Ford is alleged to have sold hash, a soft drug that both the Globe and the Star have suggested should not be criminalized—except perhaps when it involves the Ford family. There is zero evidence for these allegations. So what is the crime—dealing in soft drugs or being a member of the Ford family? This story has been 18 months in the making. The reporters worked hard but came up with nothing. Not their fault; it happens. You don’t publish. Was all that consulting and agonizing described by the Globe in a note with the story simply its editors wrestling with the morality of making accusations with no evidence? Do they think the absence of evidence is evidence? This is about as bad as journalism gets.

By the 1980s, psychiatrists at Ontario’s Addiction Research Foundation had backed the idea that people should inform themselves about the consequences of drug use and make their own decisions. Even earlier, we had the LeDain royal commission on drugs recommending decriminalization. If every word about Doug Ford and family were true, what we have is a 26-year-old story of a couple of kids who were selling soft drugs at a time when controversy over usage was declining."

[---]

"One can only imagine the hysteria and accusations if this were done to a protected icon of the progressives: if newspapers or TV aired “alleged” nasties about the family of David Suzuki or Stephen Lewis. They would rightly be told where to get off. Right now and here."

Yup. I've already said (on SNN's webpage comments, I think) that when all is said and done, it will be journalism that is lying dead on the floor. Suicide, apparently.

Awe. Too Bad. So Sad.

Police may be arresting marginal terror suspects to clear decks for Olympics says watchdog

Puts me in mind of PET and what he did during the so-called October Crisis. He had bleeding heart journalists and lawyers crying foul, too.

And This is Supposed...

...to be startling news???

Treasury Board orders silence on cuts

"Clement says bureaucrats told departments not to include details in annual reports ahead of budget"

[---]

""It's crazy and unacceptable, especially for a government that rode to power on accountability. It is entirely unaccountable to keep information secret from Canadians about what they're doing," said Liberal MP John McCallum."

Um. No. The timing of the release of that information is well within established practice. This strikes me as just another incidence of a journalist (and a Liberal MP) crying in his beer because he can't squeeze a scandal out of a situation where their isn't one. After all. We really need to deflect attention away from Trudeau the Younger and his drama classes.

The Latest...

...from Julian Assange:

The Breathtaking Hypocrisy of Julian Assange, Kremlin Pawn

"That’s right: Assange, self-styled foe of government secrets and conspiracies of the powerful, is going to be a star on a TV network backed by the Kremlin. The same Kremlin that has done suspiciously little to investigate or prevent the killings and beatings of journalists that have plagued Russia for more than a decade. The same Kremlin accused of blatant fraud in December’s parliamentary elections. The same Kremlin whose control of the country’s broadcast media allowed it to suppress coverage of the massive protests mounted in response to that fraud. The same Kremlin whose embrace of corruption led to Russia being named “the world’s most corrupt major economy” by Transparency International in 2011.

And so on. That Kremlin is Julian Assange’s new patron.

The same Julian Assange who accused President Obama of putting “a chill across investigative journalism” by prosecuting Army leaker Bradley Manning."

[---]

"Actually, though, maybe it makes sense. After all, Assange has said “it’s an international disgrace that so few western journalists have been killed in the course of duty, or have been arrested in the course of duty.” Russian journalists certainly aren’t disgracing themselves in that regard: They’ve been dying by the dozens, and their murders are seldom solved: Only three of the 33 murders of journalists committed in Russia since 1993 have been solved,..."

Don't You Wish Journalists...

...understood science?

You and 6,999,999,999 other people

"If our numbers are beginning to challenge the ecological carrying capacity of the globe, it is only through our own success. Whether we can save ourselves from extinction will depend largely on what got us here in the first place: human ingenuity."

Yes. Yes. Yes. It's entirely possible homo sapiens have reached the max. We may have to deal with the consequences, but we are hardly the first or only species to reach the precipice of the carrying capacity of the eco-niche that sustains us. That does not mean we will become extinct. It only means we may experience a die-off that returns the planet to a more balanced place. That is how species and carrying capacity operate. A species that meets and then exceeds the carrying capacity of it's niche will begin to experience stress and, as a consequence, enough will die that the balance will be restored. It's not the end of the species. Just the end of the stress created by over population. Sheesh, you people. I guess if global warming hysteria hasn't worked you have to dig up some other pseudo-scientific scam in order to keep your jobs. I have a better idea. In order to "save" the planet, or even the species, why don't you volunteer to go first?

The Real Reason He Quit His Job

Last week a CTV reporter and Quebec bureau chief, Kai Nagata, made a big splash with fellow journalists when he wrote an essay about why he quit his job. The rest of the media was all over it, nodding and agreeing, including the Toronto Star, which reprinted the thing. Read it and ask yourself, is it any wonder the MSM is dieing?

Anyway, here's some choice quotes:

"As master and commander of my own little outpost, I had significant editorial control over what I covered and how I treated it — granted, within a recognizable TV news formula. My bosses trusted and encouraged me, my colleagues at the station in Montreal were supportive and fun to work with, and my closest collaborator, cameraman/editor Fred Bissonnette, quickly became a close friend.

I was a full-time employee making good money, with comprehensive benefits and retirement options (I was even lucky enough to be hired before Bell bought CTV and began clawing back some of those expensive perks)."

[---]

"It was what I would classify as a “great job,” especially for a 24-year old. But there was a growing gap between the reporter I played on TV, and the person I really am and want to become."

[---]

"I didn’t quit my job because I felt frustrated or that my career was peaking. I quit my job because the idea burrowed into my mind that, on the long list of things I could be doing, television news is not the best use of my short life. The ends no longer justified the means."

[---]

"...I never bought a television. I was raised without one, and once I moved out on my own I decided I didn’t want one in the house."

You're almost like me, except I would never work in the industry 'cause it sucks!

"TV news is a curious medium. You don’t always know whose interests are being served — or ignored. Although bounded by certain federal regulations, most of what you see in a newscast is actually defined by an internal code — an editorial tradition handed down from one generation to the next — but the key is, it’s self-enforced. Various industry associations hear complaints and can issue recommendations, or reward exemplary work with prizes. There are also watchdogs with varying degrees of clout. But these entities have no enforcement capacity. Underneath this lies the fact that information is a commodity, and private TV networks are supposed to make money. All stations, publicly funded or not, want to maintain or expand their viewership. This is what I’ll call the elephant in the room.

Consider Fox News. What the Murdoch model demonstrated was that facts and truth could be replaced by ideology, with viewership and revenue going up. Simply put, you can tell less truth and make more money. When you have to balance the interests of your shareholders against the interests of the viewers you supposedly serve, the firewall between the boardroom and the newsroom becomes a very important bulwark indeed. CTV, in my experience, maintains high standards in factual accuracy. Its editorial staff is composed of fair-minded critical thinkers. But there is an underlying tension between “what the people want to see” and “the important stories we should be bringing to people.”"

[---]

"For some reason, job losses and factory closures in the media sector tend to generate a lot of coverage. But at every network the bean counters are looking at a shrinking, aging audience [Emphasis mine] (fixed incomes are harder to sell to advertisers) and there is intense pressure to keep the numbers up."

Well, duh! How do you think they pay you? But the bashing continues.

"Human beings don’t always like good nourishment. We seem to love white sugar, and unless we understand why we feel nauseated and disoriented after binging on sweets, we’ll just keep going. People like low-nutrition TV, too. And that shapes the internal, self-regulated editorial culture of news."

Arrogance personified.

"I admit felt a profound discomfort working in an industry that so casually sexualizes its workforce. Every hiring decision is scrutinized using a skewed, unspoken ratio of talent to attractiveness, where attractiveness often compensates for a glaring lack of other qualifications. The insecurity, self doubt and body-image issues endured by otherwise confident, intelligent journalists would break your heart. And clearly there’s a double standard, a split along gender lines. But in an environment where a lot of top executives are women, what I’m talking about applies to men as well. The idea has taken root that if the people reporting the news look like your family and neighbours, instead of Barbie and Ken, the station will lose viewers."

He continues.

"Aside from feeling sexually attracted to the people on screen, the target viewer, according to consultants, is also supposed to like easy stories that reinforce beliefs they already hold."

[---]

"On a weekend when there was real news happening in Bangkok, Misrata, Athens, Washington, and around the world, what we saw instead was a breathless gaggle of normally credible journalists, gushing in live hit after live hit about how the prince is young and his wife is pretty. And the public broadcaster led the charge."

He rips SunTV apart and Fox News for their bias. Then he gets to the real meat of his complaint:

"...I don’t see any true debate within the media world itself, in the sense of a national, public clash of ideas."

Then comes the real reason for his disillusionment:

"I have serious problems with the direction taken by Canadian policy and politics in the last five years. But as a reporter, I feel like I’ve been holding my breath. Every question I asked, every tweet I posted, and even what I said to other journalists and friends had to go through a filter, where my own opinions and values were carefully strained out. Even then I’m not sure I was always successful, but I always knew at the CBC and subsequently at CTV that there were serious consequences for editorial. Within the terms of my employment at CTV, there was a clause in which the corporation (now Bellmedia) literally took ownership of my intellectual property output. If I invented a better mouse trap, they owned the patent. If I wrote a novel, they got a cut. Rhymes on the back of a napkin? Bellmedia is hip to the jive, yo. And if I ever said anything out of line with my position as an “objective” TV reporter, they had grounds to fire me. I had a sinking feeling when I first read that clause, but I signed because I was 23 and I wanted the job. Now I want my opinions back."

[---]

"Under those criteria, I see no sense in buying stealth fighters more than a decade after the Cold War, or building bigger prisons when crime rates are decreasing. If we have that kind of capital to spend, it should go on high-speed rail or renewable energy infrastructure."

[---]

"I think a government ought to err on the side of keeping its mouth shut. If a woman needs to get an abortion or a gay couple wants to get married, one minister’s opinion shouldn’t be relevant. If a theatre festival wants to explore homegrown terrorism or an arm’s-length agency criticizes a military ally, there better be a damn good justification for yanking their funding. (Our funding, Kai, not theirs.) And when science debunks ideology, reason should be allowed to prevail in determining public policy. (Then why haven't the Greens led the charge?)"

[---]

"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 defund 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 (uh huh), 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."

Uh-huh.

"One Conservative campaign ad told us Canada is a “courageous warrior,” and yet we lost our seat at the UN Security Council (which is a good thing, no?). The Canada whose values I thought I was signing up to promote and defend is increasingly unrecognizable from an international vantage point.

We have withdrawn from humanitarian projects because aspects might offend evangelicals back home. We have clung so tightly to our U.S. allies overseas that we figure on lists of terrorism targets where we didn’t before. We are deporting people to be tortured and closing our borders to the family members of foreign professionals. We have become, in Mr. Harper’s characterization, an island. A sea of troubles lapping at our shores. In other words, we are closing the harbours when we most need to be building bridges.

On climate change, the conclusion I am forced to draw is that the current federal government has completely abdicated its responsibility. The message to my generation is: figure it out yourselves. The dogmatic refusal to accept that people have created this crisis and people must do what they can to avert it reminds me of the flat-earth crew. Except this time, we really are going to sail off the edge. We need to be recruiting international scientists, funding research, stimulating the green economy, legislating disincentives to fossil fuel use, and most importantly, reaching out and building alliances with the countries who are already taking a proactive stance. As an Arctic nation — a country of inventors, diplomats and negotiators, we should be taking the lead in brokering global accords that might save the world as we know it. Instead we are closing ourselves off, alienating our neighbours, and looking inward, to our past achievements. In the interests of short-term political gain, and medium-term profits for energy companies, Conservative politicians are abandoning my generation and any that hope to come after."

[---]

"I thought if I paid my dues and worked my way up through the ranks, I could maybe reach a position of enough influence and credibility that I could say what I truly feel. I’ve realized there’s no time to wait."

So, what this boils down to, Kai, is you wanted to use your employer's time and resources to spew forth your loony-toon ideology. I mean, what with the Internet, blogs and all, it's getting harder and harder to get an ideologue's message across, isn't it?

Leach!!

And you speak of bias! Good riddance.

PS: You know. This isn't the first time this thought has crossed my mind, but now I understand why my parents' generation was so appalled at the '60's generation and their counter-culture, hippy, drugged-up and everything else ideology. A generation of spoiled brats. Good luck with the disillusionment phase, Kai, and may you come out the other end a committed conservative. But dress warmly. As you haven't noticed, the climate is getting colder.

CBC Kicks Up a Shit Storm

...without a single occurrence of the word "Harper".

But this one is BIG, and I mean BIG!!!

UN had evidence linking Hezbollah to murder of Lebanese PM: CBC

Lebanon response to scandal over Hariri probe may be war against Israel

Lebanon PM to visit Iran amid tensions over UN-Hariri report

Hariri tribunal slams CBC report

Return to civil war feared in Lebanon

Prosecutor of Hariri Court Says Media Reports on Probe Endanger People's Lives

Let's hope Neil MacDonald has a well trained and armed contingent of body guards.

And then there are these angles:

Saad Hariri himself is doing everything possible to stay alive.

Hariri defends Hezbollah over murder

Of course, that comes from Iran's state press.

And Hezbollah shrugs it off.

Oh, Those Journalists Journolisters!

Remind you of anyone?

Liberal journalists suggest government censor Fox News

"The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel law."

I suppose this is one of those higher forms of patriotism.

Seriously, Journalists Have Lost It

Based on the language in the first few sentences of this article, you'd swear it was an opinion piece. But no, the tab at the top says it's "news". Interesting, anyway, but sheesh! Why not call it what it is?

The Iran Hostage Crisis and Journalism

...as it's called, happened almost 31 years ago. I mentioned it in a comment at SDA. Curious, I went looking for a bit more information about it, especially about the Canadian part in helping some of the American Embassy personnel escape to freedom. And viola! This was written while the hostage crisis was still underway. Although there are details in this Time Magazine article that I had previously not known, two things stand out. First is this:

"Anders [Ed: one of the rescued personnel] read a carefully prepared statement thanking reporters for keeping their sensitive secret for so long but saying of their colleagues still held captive: 'We must not and will not forget them.'"

What's that you say? The media actually put the safety of their fellow citizens above their rapacious need to get the scoop?? Well, I'll be darned. But wait.

"Privately, some Canadian officials said they were "extremely upset" that the story of the escape had been broken by Jean Pelletier, a Washington correspondent for Montreal's La Presse and son of Canada's ambassador to France. Like a number of newsmen, including correspondents and editors of TIME, Pelletier had long been aware that the six had been hidden in Tehran and had kept the secret. When Pelletier learned that the Americans were out of Tehran, he felt the news would quickly become public, and his newspaper decided to break the story. This destroyed a Canada-U.S. plan to hide the escapees in Europe until the fate of the 50 U.S. hostages still held in the embassy was resolved."

Oh well.

Oh Man!

I wish somebody could just buy the CBC and put us out of our misery.

Hehehehe. You have to love the bureaucratic gobbledy-gook, too:

"Acquiring CTV's range of premier video content enhances Bell's execution of our strategic imperatives by leveraging our significant broadband network investments, accelerating Bell's video growth across all three screens — mobile, online and TV — and achieving a competitive cost structure," said George Cope, president and CEO of Bell Canada and BCE, in a statement."

Huh?

And Speaking of "Foot-in-Mouth" Disease

Physician CBC heal thyself.

"CBC may demand accountability from the government but Canada’s taxpayer-funded broadcaster is going to court once again in order to keep its own affairs secret."

[---]

"It’s not the first run in between the state broadcaster and the Access to Information Act. The CBC became subject to the act in 2007, since then close to 900 complaints have been filed. While some of those cases were resolved and a small number were found to be without merit, as of June the information commissioner had 498 active complaints against CBC.

By comparison Canada Post, the organization to receive the second highest level of complaints, only had 116 complaints filed total."

[---]

"In the case before the court on Sept. 13, the CBC is arguing that to release the information would jeopardize the Crown corporation’s “journalistic, creative or programming activities.”

Two days later on Sept. 15, the CBC will be in court again to keep more information secret.

In that case lawyer Michel Drapeau, who is an access to information specialist that works with Sun Media and other news organizations, will appeal a lower court decision that ruled the CBC did not need to hand over information in a number of other cases.

Drapeau said the CBC broke the law by missing deadlines and failing to provide any response to several requests, other than an acknowledgement that a request had been received.

In one case Drapeau described the document he did receive as being more redacted than the Afghan detainee documents that the CBC has demanded the Harper government release."

[---]

"Some documents requested have gone without a reply for more than two years.

Lawyers for the information commissioner have argued in court that allowing the CBC to ignore access to information requests will weaken the entire system and that other government agencies and departments will copy what the CBC does."

Kill the beast!!

ht: Blazing Cat Fur

If I Ever Reincarnate....

....I better not be a Kurd or a secular Arab dictator.

"Just weeks after the global media outrage over Israeli "crimes against humanity" in Gaza, the mainstream media is keeping strangely silent over allegations that Turkey is using chemical weapons against its own citizens in Kurdistan."

Or, God forbid, a journalist.

I See We Have At Least One Canadian Journolister

His name is Jeet Heer. Not a CBCer, though. His doctoral thesis focuses on the critical subject of "the cultural politics of Little Orphan Annie".

Seems that he's a perpetual student, too: BA 1991, U of T; MA, 1996, York University; PH.D in the works (since 1996).

Seems he studies comics and is a proud, unabashed leftie. Calls himself a journalist, but there doesn't seem to be a journalism degree in his curriculum vitae.

Quelle surprise!