If you want American news, it turns out there’s no better source than Canada’s taxpayer-funded public broadcaster, the CBC.
Created to ensure Canadians were not overwhelmed by American news and understood their own country, it turns out that the CBC’s main newscast may have become the cultural enemy it is supposed to protect us from.
Western Standard ran the numbers comparing The National’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention vs Canadian political party conventions and this is what it came up with;
“During the (August) DNC, The National reported on it for 1 hour 28 minutes 42 seconds.”
“The National spent one hour six minutes eight seconds covering the (July) Republican National Convention (RNC).”
“The National onlycovered the (2023) Conservative Convention for 4 minutes 3 seconds.”
“The National dedicated no time towards covering the (2023) Liberal National Convention (LNC).”
Certainly that’s a novel approach to fulfilling the mandate to contribute “to shared national consciousness and identity.”
Political media and pundits were all agog in August over the flood of positive reviews for Pierre Poilievre’s Northern Ontario tour. They repeated allegations from the Conservative leader’s opponents that the party leading the polls was employing bots to falsely accelerate its views. So great was the excitement that the accusations may have generated more traffic than the original flood of tweets.
The NDP went so far as to demand an investigation by the Commissioner of Canada Elections, while Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen declared the Conservatives guilty and Liberal Party spokesperson Parker Lund told the CBC:
"It's extremely alarming that 'bots' were posing as fake Pierre Poilievre supporters and boosting the Conservative Party's messaging over the weekend.”
Winnipeg cartoonist and college instructor Chris Chuckry was out of the gate swiftly posting “Is Pierre Poilievre’s popularity the result of bot farms along with rage farming? It seems so. All the bots went to see him at Kirkland Lake, ON, and then they all tweeted the same message about him. Some people are desperate and insecure enough to pay for attention because they’re lacking in merit and character. And that, is wacko” along with this cartoon:
Turns out it was all, as the English say, a load of old cobblers, or what Canadians call “bull$h!t.” An independent report found absolutely no evidence to support allegations of Tory involvement.
But that didn’t stop the Winnipeg Free Press, the day after it posted the report debunking the accusations, from publishing this editorial cartoon:
Two lessons here. Donald Trump isn’t the only politician in the world prone to stating absolute howlers and media owe it to their readers and to the integrity of their craft to demand evidence when accusations are made.
The other lesson is the timeless old journalism injunction that “assumptions are the mother of all screwups.”
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One of the most compelling recent news stories involved the Israeli rescue in a Gaza tunnel of Qaid Farhan Alkadi, a 52-year-old Israeli Bedouin Arab who had been taken hostage by Hamas terrorists in their Oct. 7, 2023 attack.
Given the ongoing narrative from the Islamo-left in Canada and elsewhere that describes Israel as an “apartheid” nation bent on “genocide,” one might have thought this event worth highlighting. After all, is it not passing strange that genocidal apartheid practitioners would take the time to rescue, feed and give medical attention to an Arab Muslim before returning him to the loving arms of his two wives and 11 children?
Apparently not. The Associated Press story picked up by the CBC, Globe and Mail and others made no mention of Alkadi’s religious affiliation. CNN did, as did the BBC , Sky News and of course most of the Israeli press, which reported on how an emaciated Alkadi recalled the death of his “Jewish friend” at the hands of Hamas.
These, to me, are compelling angles to a deeply human story that challenges oft-repeated allegations made without evidence (see above). But it’s looking a lot like that’s not an opinion held these days in enough Canadian newsrooms.
Honest Reporting Canada, an organization dedicated to keeping an eye out for journalism that fails to treat the Israeli perspective fairly, feels CBC Ottawa should have pushed back harder in its interview with Emily Quaile, of Community Solidarity Ottawa.
Quaile was asked to respond to the controversy surrounding Capital Pride, which, after declaring its affiliation with the Palestinian cause, has been snubbed by Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, the Liberal Party of Canada and many others. While Quaile tried obnoxiously hard to explain to Jews that the primary threat to them and to the Queer community is “far right, white nationalists” and made other comments of a radical and intellectually incoherent nature, I disagree with Honest Reporting Canada on this one. My sense of the interview was that Quaile had been invited to outline her perspective, not to be challenged on it. Provided CBC Ottawa was offering similar opportunities to other parties involved in the controversy, it was doing its job. Leaving viewers and listeners free to come to their own conclusions isn’t always bad journalism.
It’s once again pretty much forbidden for Calgarians to take a bath and it is absolutely illegal for them to water their lawns or gardens. Officially, that’s because the City discovered more problems with the water main it took six weeks to fix earlier this summer and is back fixing it again for God Knows How Long. So water restrictions and accompanying fines of up to $3,000 for not following civic orders are back in place. Unofficially, it’s because the City has been run by incompetent boobs for at least 15 years.
Alas, only one of those two views is reflected in media. CTV Calgary reports, for example, have consisted of regurgitating what municipal bureaucrats and politicians have to say (at the time of writing it was mostly that Calgarians are behaving badly and if they don’t improve they will have no water at all).
This is not journalism. It is stenography. Little wonder the City refers to media as its “partners.” When journalists begin to understand again that it is their job to serve the citizen and not the powerful, they may begin to rebuild the public trust they have been so rapidly losing.
And why do people even need to read media reports if the exact same information is available on the City’s website and social media feeds? Little wonder Bellmedia is begging for federal subsidies.
The Calgary Herald put in a little more effort but still failed to ask citizens why they aren’t buying the city’s message and used bureaucratic words to describe bureaucratic tactics.
No one seems to know what to make of Rebel News, which has a massive online following but was denied status as a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization by a government-appointed panel.
That disapproval, if nothing else, recommends Rebel highly to a number of people. Others, meanwhile, scoff, sniff and toss their hair lest they be considered in the same category. So there was not a lot of media excitement when Toronto police dropped all charges against Rebel’s oft-arrested reporter, David Menzies, (no relation).
Videos of at least one of those arrests - when Menzies attempted to grab a quote from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland last January - prompted outrage, including from X-owner Elon Musk. It’s worth watching the link just to see Ivor Shapiro, journalism prof at Toronto Metropolitan University, ponder the question (and it’s worth pondering) “if you are an advocate, are you necessarily not a journalist?”
Last week, Rebel founder Ezra Levant declared victory because “the last of the trumped up charges against our reporter David Menzies have been thrown out of court. Now we sue the woke Toronto Police for violating David’s rights.”
He then posted a link where supporters could show their financial support. Rebel’s gotta Rebel.
Finally, Blacklock’s Reporter filed its appeal of a Federal Court ruling that gave the green light to the sharing of news subscription passwords, but not before Liberal MP Leah Taylor Roy implied reports concerning Chinese Communist Party members possibly being employed at polling stations were inspiring the “scourge” of “anti-Asian” racism. Accusing journalists of fueling Islamophobia, racism, etc., is all about intimidating them. Unfortunately, threatening them like this has been a highly effective strategy for a number of years now. If journalists want the public’s trust back, they have to thicken their skin.
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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).
I retired from Calgary Water in 2016, having been the Sr. Infrastructure Engineer at the time of the first concrete main break (2004) and started the inspection program that would have reached the current problem by October.
I gave two interviews to Lily Dupuis of CBC, who did extremely good "explainer" pieces on the technical problem. Two interviews (and a new one yesterday) to Don Braid of The Herald; and talked for 15 minutes to Rob Breakenridge on QR77.
I told all three journalists of my contempt for the City of Calgary Communications Department, that grew from about 10 people to 300 in my last few years there. "Communications...doesn't" was my joke to other staff. That I was pleased that retirement allowed me to do what I was allowed to do on the job until about 2008.
Engineers LOVE to talk about their work; journalists have to shut them up, and edit heavily. The Communications people have set up a whole structure that prevents us from talking to the media any more, or every journalists in Calgary would be able to write a book on why that main failed, and why we didn't catch it.
As to the journalists just accepting that, for crissake don't blame them; they have to write four stories a day these days; and have no time for you, vastly prefer if you set it all up for them - and Communications KNOWS that, and panders to their overwhelmed needs.
Yesterday, I told Braid that a colleague was willing to explain why they cancelled the project that would have provided a relief/resilience second main by 2022, in great detail, was polishing a 13-page narrative on it. The document is ready today, but Braid ran a story based on my two sentences of summary of what my friend talked about(!) That's when I got how desperate the News is, these days: no story should take more than 2-3 hours of your time.
The Cdn press can quit its whinging & wailing about loss of trust because OMG BOTS! are misleading Cdns! The leftie press ARE the damned bots. It richly deserves its loss of reputation.
I was hanging onto the G&M subscription but, that, too, is going into the bin. Whoever runs that show, fire the editors & retire your partisan writers. It’s so tedious I think I look at it once a week because, you know, I paid for it.
I retired from Calgary Water in 2016, having been the Sr. Infrastructure Engineer at the time of the first concrete main break (2004) and started the inspection program that would have reached the current problem by October.
I gave two interviews to Lily Dupuis of CBC, who did extremely good "explainer" pieces on the technical problem. Two interviews (and a new one yesterday) to Don Braid of The Herald; and talked for 15 minutes to Rob Breakenridge on QR77.
I told all three journalists of my contempt for the City of Calgary Communications Department, that grew from about 10 people to 300 in my last few years there. "Communications...doesn't" was my joke to other staff. That I was pleased that retirement allowed me to do what I was allowed to do on the job until about 2008.
Engineers LOVE to talk about their work; journalists have to shut them up, and edit heavily. The Communications people have set up a whole structure that prevents us from talking to the media any more, or every journalists in Calgary would be able to write a book on why that main failed, and why we didn't catch it.
As to the journalists just accepting that, for crissake don't blame them; they have to write four stories a day these days; and have no time for you, vastly prefer if you set it all up for them - and Communications KNOWS that, and panders to their overwhelmed needs.
Yesterday, I told Braid that a colleague was willing to explain why they cancelled the project that would have provided a relief/resilience second main by 2022, in great detail, was polishing a 13-page narrative on it. The document is ready today, but Braid ran a story based on my two sentences of summary of what my friend talked about(!) That's when I got how desperate the News is, these days: no story should take more than 2-3 hours of your time.
The Cdn press can quit its whinging & wailing about loss of trust because OMG BOTS! are misleading Cdns! The leftie press ARE the damned bots. It richly deserves its loss of reputation.
I was hanging onto the G&M subscription but, that, too, is going into the bin. Whoever runs that show, fire the editors & retire your partisan writers. It’s so tedious I think I look at it once a week because, you know, I paid for it.