Canadian Media

CNN's Chetry: 'Please Tell Me It's Not Lipstick Again'
By Mike Bates | September 10, 2008 | 11:40 PM EDT

 On CNN's American Morning today, White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported on Barack Obama's campaigning in Virginia.  Afterwards, anchor Kiran Chetry had a question:

CHETRY: All right. And Suzanne, what's on tap for the campaign today? And please tell me it's not lipstick again.

MALVEAUX: Let's hope not. He's going to be in Norfolk, Virginia. That is in southeast Virginia, and it's home to the world's largest Naval base. It's one of the most competitive areas that the Democrats and Republicans are fighting over. It's a critical piece of property, piece of land there with folks in Virginia, and they want those voters.
Nat'l Post: 'You'll Miss' The Old Media When Its Gone
By Warner Todd Huston | August 7, 2008 | 10:08 PM EDT

Jonathan Kay of the National Post (Canada) is sure that we'll miss the old media when its gone. So sure he wrote a paean to how great the media is... and he missed the target by a wide margin on every point he made. Unfortunately, he took a good point and made a mockery of the truth of the matter with his wrongheaded reasoning.

In "You'll miss us when we're gone" Kay asserts that the media exists for "a genuine, altruistic desire for an educated citizenry" and hopes that predictions of its "imminent extinction" are wrong. He also claims that there are "certain kinds of important stories that simply cannot be covered, except by deep-pocketed traditional media organizations employing professional journalists." Aside from imagining that the press is at all interested in "education" he isn't too far off the mark here.

We do need the media, at least a media with "deep pockets" that can afford to cover things in some depth and at distance, the distance of the whole globe. Not too many bloggers and new media folks can afford to go about the world interviewing folks and investigating stories. Sure its a small world these days, but boots on the ground is an important thing to investigative writing. So, the old media does serve an important role. It isn't a role that bloggers and new media people cannot do, of course. But it is an important role nonetheless.

Mark Steyn Cleared by 'Human Rights' Panel
By Matthew Sheffield | June 28, 2008 | 12:13 PM EDT

Great news for free speech fans that likely won't get reported much of anywhere outside the rightosphere: the national Canadian "Human Rights" Commission has declined to prosecute a "hate speech" allegation against columnist and author Mark Steyn and the magazine Maclean's.

The allegation, brought against Steyn as part of an effort by the Canadian Islamic Congress (that country's resident apologists for radical Islam comparable to CAIR here) to use the government to censor critics of Islam. It was the second of three motions before three separate bodies to be dismissed; Steyn still awaits the decision of the British Columbia provincial commission.

The national commission did not announce the dismissal publicly so here's the Maclean's reaction:

Is NYT Writer Sympathetic to Conservative Speech Suppression?
By Tom Blumer | June 11, 2008 | 3:31 PM EDT

The New York Times is in the midst of publishing a series of articles called "American Exception." Its purpose is to "examine commonplace aspects of the American justice system that are virtually unique in the world."

The latest in the series is by Adam Liptak. It carries a June 12 date, and is called "Out of Step With Allies, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend."

If you think this is yet another "we should be like 'the rest of the world'" piece (in reality, referring to countries overrun by political correctness that have lost their way), you've about got it right.

Here is how Liptak opens (bold is mine):

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatens Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

Canadian Reporter: Social Conservatives Are 'Knuckledraggers'
By Matthew Sheffield | April 7, 2008 | 7:02 PM EDT

If you ever feel like the leftward tilt of the elite media in this country can't get any worse, take a look outside our borders to the press in other countries. There you'll find, with a few exceptions, the bias problem is far worse.

North of the border in Canada, Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper faces a much more hostile press as you can see in the video at the right where CTV reporter Robert Fife uses a litany of terms such as "knuckle-draggers" to describe social conservatives in Harper's ruling government.

Fife's remarks were made as he reported on a big hullabaloo involving a Candian parliament member who made an anti-gay remark in a 17-year-old tape that emerged last week. The news set the left-wing Canadian media afire as Kate McMillan emails: