CBC draws flak for fuelling Kamala fever while Charles Adler’s appointment gets, um, mixed reviews
Plus! Saucy BBC sex scandals, no more print editions in St. John’s and The Star’s just gotta Star
There are a few sages still around like Norman Spector, chief of staff in Brian Mulroney’s government, who remember when mainstream media could make or break a politician’s career.
This past week, he posted famous pictures of Robert Stanfield fumbling a football and Pierre Trudeau pirouetting behind the Queen with the comment:
“Two famous Canadian Press photos in today’s Globe and Mail (years later, we’re still paying the price of the Globe and #cdnmedia in general having created Justin - from the day he was born.)”
The days of media making history aren’t entirely over, but as we pointed out two weeks ago, journalists aren’t nearly as important as they used to be. Which is a good thing. Because if they were, US Vice President Kamala Harris could declare that, if she becomes president, she would invade Canada and most of our legacy media would probably salute, click their heels and reply with a smart, American-accented “Yes ma’am. Y’all help yourselves.”
Giggling like school girls in the thrall of the latest boy band, much of the nation’s commentariat was clearly very excited when the unelected, untested, uninterviewed Harris was anointed the Democrat’s candidate. She is, after all, not Donald Trump and cognitively aware. What other qualities are required to be Leader of The Free World?
As Cosmin Dzsurdzsa of the True North Centre pointed out, CBC “has aired 68 stories fawning over the Kamala Harris campaign in the past month alone— that's nearly 4X their coverage of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Why is Canada's taxpayer-funded broadcaster acting like the Democrats' PR team?”
Indeed. Such is the almost universal antipathy towards her opponent, Republican candidate Trump, even the dependably Pyrrhonistic Andrew Coyne succumbed to Kamala fever, calling her Thursday night delivery the “greatest acceptance speech I’ve ever seen. Maybe some equals for content, but none for delivery.”
The Toronto Star carried a piece forgiving Harris for brushing off the five years she spent in Canada in her youth as filled with yearning for home even though “it’s difficult to believe.”
But while US TV anchors did their best to build and retain audiences for the Democrats by spreading rumours of a Beyonce performance that never happened at the Democratic National Convention, not everyone was buying into the euphoria.
Rupa Supramanya of The Free Press had clearly had a bellyful when she posted on X: “It should be called the Disinformation National Convention. So many false assertions taking comments from Trump entirely out of context and distorting their meaning. Where are the fact checkers?”
And Robyn Urback of the Globe & Mail weighed in with something no one else wants to talk about when former president Bill Clinton took the stage:
“I will never understand how Bill Clinton survived the MeToo movement and how he can be invited to speak — and celebrated!! — at the DNC.”
If anyone can answer that one, please avail yourself of the comments. They are open to everyone.
If legacy media are worried they are perceived as biased against conservatives, there was little evidence of that in some of the coverage of the Canadian Future Party’s official launch.
Many reports referred to Dominic Cardy, the party’s interim leader as a former Tory but the Toronto Star’s headline really took the cake with: “A former Progressive Conservative who calls Pierre Poilievre ‘terrifying’ is launching a new political party.”
Well, The Star’s gotta Star.
Cardy certainly did a spell as a New Brunswick Progressive Conservative before being evicted from its caucus. Objective reporting might have indicated that for most of his career, Cardy was a New Democrat.
And, as proof The Rewrite aspires to be fair, the CBC did just that when its report stated:
“Cardy, a former cabinet minister in New Brunswick's Progressive Conservative government and the former leader of the province's New Democratic Party, said the new party is oriented neither to the left nor the right, "but forward."”
When it comes to naughty behaviour, no one quite does a sex scandal like the English. Clinton may still be adored by Democrats despite his outrageous track record, but the BBC’s Jermaine Jenas was unceremoniously sacked for writing suggestive notes to co-workers.
Jenas was a presenter for the BBC’s Match of the Day - the UK equivalent to Hockey Night in Canada.
As The Sun, which specializes in sex scandals, reported “JERMAINE Jenas denied being a sex pest and insisted he had done nothing illegal as his texting scandal rocked the BBC.
“But he apologized if he made the women he had messaged feel uncomfortable.”
Not sure President Clinton ever did that.
There used to be a line used in newsrooms any time one of their number went “over the wall” and into the world of politics.
“He finally made it official,” is the phrase that came to mind for many when veteran talk show host Charles Adler of Winnipeg was appointed to the Senate.
There was a lot of that - and some much worse. Western Standard’s Cory Morgan used the term “presstitute” and Spector revived the old Brian Mulroney line “there’s no whore like an old whore.”
Conservatives have felt betrayed since Adler, without explanation, transitioned from a career - including a spell at Sun News - as a right wing commentator, into one that featured alarming references to people such as Alberta premiers Jason Kenney and Danielle Smith as evil.
It’s possible but it would be surprising if that shift was done without it involving a corporate decision by Corus to seek out a new audience more inclined to leftish views. But that’s all as maybe.
As it turns out, Adler’s biggest difficulty in settling in at the Senate (where there are several other former broadcasters) is less likely to come from conservatives than it is from Indigenous leaders.
As Blacklock’s Reporter revealed in an exclusive, Adler had been chided 25 years ago by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council for some deeply insulting references to Indigenous people - phrases that these days would almost certainly have led to his dismissal.
This caused the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to call on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to rescind the appointment.
It’s hard to see this ending well for Trudeau or Adler, particularly if it comes to light that the old shock jock was preferred over an Indigenous candidate for the appointment.
“It’s appalling that someone who has such a disregard for the plight of our people is appointed to such a prestigious position,” Acting Grand Chief Angela Levasseur of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Inc. of Nelson House told Blacklock’s. “The vile words and contempt he has spoken are so vicious and racist they could be considered hate crimes.”
Having had to rescind the hiring of a new head of the Human Rights Commission, my guess is that Adler will turn on the charm and the PM will dig in. He is nothing if not stubborn. We shall see.
It was a busy, albeit sad, week for many in private sector media. The once magnificent St. John’s Telegram printed its final paper, bringing to a close a tradition that began April 3, 1879.
Coincidentally, new owner Postmedia laid off over 30% of newsroom staff. Pathetically, that consisted of four out of 13, leaving nine people at the now online only Telegram to cover the city and the province 24/7. The move follows Postmedia’s takeover of Saltwire, which was in receivership after running Atlantic media into the ground. Expect multiple Zombie newspaper husks to appear down east where the Halifax Examiner called the takeover “an irreparable loss to reporting across Atlantic Canada” ….. Layoffs continued at Corus/Global with a number of local presenters signing off with dignity. Meanwhile, CBCNN celebrated its 35th anniversary, with Kathleen Petty recalling how the prime time “schedule 6-12ET came from Calgary.
“I was among the small team helping produce those 6 hours a night,” she recalled on X. “It's a lifetime ago, but it's all flown by.”
Indeed, it has.
The Rewrite will return after the Labour Day weekend.
Peter Menzies is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a former publisher of the Calgary Herald and a previous vice-chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Excellent article. Just signed on as a paid subscriber.
The fawning news coverage is soul crushing for those who used to work in the industry. The media has always been biased, but it wasn’t that long ago when journalists would be mocked mercilessly by colleagues for even contemplating the gushing diarrhea we see today. It breaks my heart.