My Fellow Canadians: Where do you get your news?

Do you get paper delivery each morning? Read the national, provincial or local headlines from newspapers at work? Catch up on the news from papers left at Tim Hortons?

Do you instead get your news from the airwaves, via radio? From TV? Or online, from traditional or alternative news magazine and newspaper sites?

Regardless of where you get your news, its delivery begins with the journalist or reporter.

Everything you know about the goings-on in government and politicians' activities during and between election campaigns depends crucially on journalists getting that information for you, unless you do the digging yourself.

When a government or politician severely restricts or bars journalists consistently from doing their work, that government or politician is effectively restricting or barring YOU from getting crucial information.

That information in aggregate ultimately shapes the views of we citizens about the functioning of our government and the activities of our elected politicians. That information together tells us what we must know to make an informed ballot decision at times of elections.

This is why all Canadians should feel deeply disturbed that Steven Harper, as both the current Prime Minister of Canada and now as a federal candidate, consistently restricts and more often bars, both reporters' presence from key events and prohibits their questions.

Contrast this with the full access to media and the public by leaders of the opposition parties.

An attack on freedom of the press is an attack on you and me.

If you don't get that or don't care, then you are responsible for the further erosion of Canada's democracy.

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Simplistic Interpretation of Female Support Shift

I take exception to Keith Baldrey's simplistic interpretation of why female voters will play a key role in the next BC election - not that they will, but why their support may be shifting from the NDP to the Liberals.

According to Baldrey (chief political reporter for Global BC - oh dear!), one of the pillars pushing women's support away from the NDP is "the brutal take-down of a female leader" by members of that party.

I submit the reason instead to be the problems with the NDP leadership, provincial council and other internal machinery.

Baldrey's second pillar is squeezing that former NDP female support toward the Liberals.

were [Liberal leadership candidate Christy Clark] to become premier it is likely the Liberals would stand a good chance of corralling a huge chunk of the electorate denied them in the past. I suspect Clark appeals to a lot of young and middle-aged women voters...

Why? Because she's a woman?

Women have been voting for men for decades.

We also don't vote as a block. Women don't vote on the basis of gender but on a candidate's ability to represent the values and concerns that each female voter deems important. Just because a candidate wears a skirt doesn't mean she shares another woman's concerns.

As for female support leaving the NDP, Baldrey has more to say:

The NDP has long prided itself as a champion of the interests of women, and it even implemented an affirmative action policy to ensure more female candidates in the last election. But it is now seen as the party that undemocratically turfed a female leader, and it will undoubtedly elect a man to succeed Carole James.

In fact, it will be interesting to see if any women even run for the NDP leadership... If none do, it will be a stunning commentary about the party's true commitment to the interests of women.

Traditionally, the NDP has drawn more female voters than have the Liberals. According to Baldrey's logic, that must mean the NDP has always had female leaders.

As for that "stunning commentary about the party's true commitment to the interests of women" should no female candidate for leader come forward... again there haven't always been female leaders or female candidates for leader.

Should we construe from this that the party has never previously had a commitment to the interests of women? And does it have such an animal now - specifically to women, rather than to people, men or women, who share similar concerns?

Putting Baldrey's simplistic interpretation of the situation aside, women are more likely leaving the NDP because they see, as many men have seen, that trouble is a-brewing. A party that can't manage itself shouldn't be given a mandate to manage a government.

As for Clark's alleged appeal to an alleged mysterious block of women because she's a woman, I suggest instead that the appeal is her (again, alleged) outsider status to the Campbell government. That appeal has drawn interest from both men and women and as more becomes known of Clark's background and (absent) policy, that interest will again likely shift.

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What does it take to become a columnist?

More to the point...

What does it take to become blacklisted from future employment as a columnist by Canada's traditional media?

The Globe and Mail has removed the unsupported-by-evidence column by Norman Spector regarding PM Harper's marital state. But let us not forget this opinion also expressed by the same man and unapologeticly repeated by him.

Most media outlets seem keen to rewrite history. They have removed articles referring to that too. They forget Google. I've linked to the cache version of one of those articles.

So what does it take?

If there comes a vacancy, I wouldn't mind the job, to be truthful.

ETA: In case that cache version is removed too, this is what Norman Spector said of then MP Belinda Stronach on CKNW's Bill Good Show, October 30, 2006:

"I think she's a bitch... I mean it's as simple as that, and I think that 90 per cent of men would probably say she's a bitch for the way she's broken up Tie Domi's home and the way she dumped [Foreign Affairs Minister] Peter MacKay. She is a bitch."

What infuriated me at the time: Spector placed no blame on TIE DOMI for breaking up his own home (or on Peter MacKay for any role he may have played in his own breakup with Stronach). Spector's comment was not just inappropriately personal but more to the point for me, it was flagrantly sexist. All the blame rested on the woman, none on the men, as though the men were helpless to stop themselves.

ETA 2: I don't give a damn about the love affairs or marital accord or discord of politicians or other public figures. Doubtless, most of the public doesn't either. If only traditional media would get that message.

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Media Annoyance

To the editors of the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, etc., etc., etc....

That so-and-so plans to announce something isn't news.

When so-and-so DOES whatever he/she/it plans, then it's news, provided that so-and-so and the deed in question are themselves news.

Got it?

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Shameless Self Promotion

First, it's my birthday today. Sixty years of age. I made it!

Second, my name, the WISE book and economicus ridiculous get mentions in an article today in The Tyee.

The writer has done a good job on the issue. That's no surprise coming from The Tyee, an independent media organization that does British Columbians proud.

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Media Fail

According to CTV, Canada's "Federal justice minister," Rob Nicholson, "addresses [the] Jaffer case." Or so one would think by the headline.

What Nicholson does instead is declare he's "all for allowing the public to know" stuff, about stuff.

On that, he might consult with his party leader. Stephen Harper prefers the public to know zilch about anything.

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Cheeks Red from Slap in Face

CBC has shown how NOT to reward loyalty. I wrote the following over at Scott's place, in response to CBC's new licensing policy - better named 'gag order' on Canadians at large.

Among the ironies for me: The linking policy on this blog and our others has been to hunt for - even WAIT FOR - CBC (or indy) articles on news items that have come up in the queue, rather than to write posts linking to Canwest Media or CTV.

In other words, we have been doing our level best to support our public broadcaster and independent media by sending people to their sites, not to the sites of their private competitors.

Our faces are red, from the slap across both cheeks.

CANADIAN copyright laws apply in this country. That includes the fair use policy I quoted yesterday in another article pertaining to copyright.

To the publicly-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and to any other media corporation serving in Canada that might entertain such notions: Don't try importing U.S. copyright law over here. You'll get a battle you'll wish you'd never provoked.

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National Post: Not "mainstream"

In National Post writer's own words:

The Liberals, on the other hand, can still count on their constituent groups to help out. That old network came to life, as if on cue, in the past few weeks. One such group is the mainstream media.

Guess the National Post no longer sees itself as mainstream. What took it so long?

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Politicos, Media: Stop Telling Canadians What We Care About

Politicians and certain media conglomerates are in the habit of telling Canadians what we care about. Not only do they busy themselves telling us what issues we do care about, they also tell us what we don't care about: process.

Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament and the tens of thousands of volunteers from across Canada who have been and continue to be involved in campaigns for democratic and electoral reform would disagree on both scores.

Process matters. In fact, it appears to matter more to us - at least to 1 out of every 160 of us - than any given issue.

Issues, after all, are ephemeral. Deal with one, or don't, and it's on to the next issue. Flavours of the month are like that.

So why is the consistent message from politicos and their media friends that process isn't something Canadians care about? Might it be that addressing the processes of democracy isn't considered, in their eyes, to be in their own interests?

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Sloppy Journalism

The National Post this morning reports on a poll conducted for Canwest News Service and Global National that shows Canadians to be as disenchanted with our politicos as ever.

No surprise there.

What caught my eye was this bit:

When asked if they agree with the statement, "I've tuned out of participating in any kind of political activity, including voting," better than two out of three, or 67%, said they disagreed with that statement.

Still, the last time there was a general election, in the fall of 2008, just 59% of eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot.

The second paragraph isn't relevant to the preceding one.

There is so much more to political involvement than just voting. The people who responded to that Ipsos Reid question know that; among them will be those who no longer vote but are otherwise politically involved.

Apparently, the pollster and the National Post have trouble sorting out certain distinctions, even when their own polling questions suggest them.

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On Becoming Newsworthy

How to become Canadian Press Newsmaker of the Year: Screw your country and country(wo)men.

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Google to Limit Access to News Content

This will only increase the importance of social media and bloggers in enabling democratic access to information.

A not insignificant number of people can't afford to pay for the news of what's happening in their world. Ergo, the Internet community, fostered by social media, will become all the more crucial to properly functioning democracies.

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About Those Acronyms

Ever wondered what an acronym used in an article meant and searched, in vain, for its written-in-full introduction?

The Tyee, at least, has got the message from frustrated readers. For your morning smile, go read Rex Weyler's hilarious article.

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CTV, Ethics and the Harper-Duffy Show

Thomas Mulcair, NDP MP: "Why did they make the announcement hundreds of kilometres away from Parliament and not in Parliament as they were supposed to do with a cream-puff interview with Mike Duffy, the former TV guy from CTV who's now a Conservative senator?"

Like Harper, Mike Duffy is an embarrassment. He's an embarrassment to journalism. He's an embarrassment to the Senate. He's an embarrassment to Canada.

So is CTV. Word is that some spokesperson for the network declared CTV would NOT air the Harper-Duffy Show. Then it did. Now if that's true - I've not a TV and refuse to access CTV newcasts online; hence I cannot verify this -, then such behaviour sounds awfully familiar. Recall the Steve Murphy-Mike Duffy Live treatment of Stephane Dion's interview outtakes, subsequently found to be in breach of journalistic ethical standards.

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CTV and Mike Duffy (Live) Found 'Guilty'

OK, it's not quite that, but they have been found by the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council to have breached journalistic ethics when they broadcast or re-broadcast outtakes of the Stéphane Dion interviews.

The CBSC's Atlantic Regional Panel examined the CTV Atlantic broadcast, while the National Specialty Services Panel adjudicated the Mike Duffy Live broadcast. The [Atlantic] Panel observed that the phrasing of [Steve] Murphy's question was "confusing, and not only to a person whose first language is other than English. In the strictest grammatical sense, Steve Murphy's question mixes not only tenses (present and past), but also moods (subjunctive and indicative)," so "blame for misapprehension cannot simply be laid at the feet of the interviewee."

The Atlantic Panel also concluded that the broadcast breached Article 8 of the RTNDA Code because CTV had committed to not air the false starts and its decision to override that commitment was "discourteous and inconsiderate [...]. The Panel ... considers that restarts and retakes are a common, not a rare, occurrence. The decision to extend such a courtesy was neither unreasonable nor even unusual. The Panel considers that this courtesy was the moreso justified in light of the poorly framed question."

With respect to the Mike Duffy Live Prime Time broadcast, the majority of the National Specialty Services Panel shared the view of the Atlantic Panel about the poorly-worded question and concluded that the rebroadcast of false starts on the Duffy program was unfair and contrary to Clause 6 of the CAB Code of Ethics. The majority also found that Mike Duffy's repeated misrepresentation of Liberal M.P. Geoff Regan's views on the matter constituted a breach of that same clause.

The Panel's views of the pertinent issues was that "the Liberal leader and his team had every reason to expect that the restarted matter was, in effect, “overwritten” or banished from use. The Panel considers this the moreso reasonable in light of the imprecision of the question and the confusion resulting from the failure of the interviewer to ever render what he sought clear. Had the question been articulate and well-framed, the Panel might have expected the Liberal leader to wear some responsibility for the confusion that ensued. That was not, however, the case. Even had the question been properly put, though, the broadcaster’s commitment to permit the restarts would likely have put the filmed content off-limits. In the circumstances, the question was bad and the commitment was made. The Panel views the broadcaster’s actions in the rebroadcast of the outtakes on the Duffy show as an unfair and improper presentation of news, opinion, comment and editorial."

And now CTV is rumoured to be about to get a handout from the Harper Conservatives. Nothing like rewarding the worst of the worst, now is there? GM, Chrysler, Canwest, CTV...

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"This book had better be banned in the PMO"

This book should be read by all high school students. The Liberal and Conservative backroom boys won't like it though.

Renowned electoral scholar Lawrence Leduc makes it clear that if history and the experience of other democracies is any guide, it's likely, and even desirable, that "[a] coalition government would certainly be more stable than a minority that lurches from one parliamentary crisis to another … [it] would also represent a wider spectrum of opinion than any single-party minority government, and even some majorities."

He concludes with a clarion call certain to cause collective heart failure in Ottawa’s Langevin Block: "Best of all, [a coalition government] would be more faithful to the principles of representative democracy." This book had better be banned in the PMO.

You can rest the rest of this book review in the (gasp!) National Post. (To be fair, they do sometimes publish good articles.)

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WAY TO GO SHAW!!!

That headline must have you scratching your head, but on Vancouver Island, Shaw Communications provides the best darn high-speed Internet service around. Anytime I've had a problem, which has been - oh, maybe, TWICE in the past eight years - they've worked their butts off trying to fix it.

NOW the company is offering its customers the chance of opting out of Fox News!

Some Canadian viewers still steamed over the Canadian military being trashed on a Fox News show two months ago will be able to exact a little revenge. Shaw is allowing customers to get rid of Fox News and opt for another cable channel.

The Fox show "Red Eye" caused a national uproar when its participants took turns trashing Canada and its reliability as an ally in a segment that aired just before four Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan.

Fox is beamed into the homes of about 700,000 Shaw customers.

"We've made changes to how we offer Fox News. There have been recent inappropriate and disrespectful comments on the channel regarding the Canadian Military's efforts in Afghanistan, comments that were found to be offensive to our customers," says a notice on the Shaw website.

"In response to the concerns expressed by our customers, we are moving the channel to an opt-in service starting May 19."

--

Shaw is contractually obligated to offer Fox News to customers on its news package so cancelling the channel was not an option said Bissonnette.

Phone calls to Fox News asking for comment were not returned.

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Toronto Star, Your Bias is Showing

Since when is providing equal Employment Insurance benefits to all parts of this country a "radical" idea?

Note from your own article TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond having said:

standardizing access to EI (and for the most part also standardizing the length of benefits) at the same qualification standard is a fairly common recommendation made by many, including ourselves.

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UPDATED - Citizens! Fund the Journalism You Want

... while providing work for laid-off journalists. It's a match that could potentially serve democracy a whole lot better than the media model we have now.

An interesting phenomenon is happening over at The Tyee, which I wrote about yesterday and then unexpectedly became a part of.

It has come to the attention of at least one dead-tree media outlet. [Woo hoo! Now the CBC has caught onto the story!]

British Columbians who say the media is ignoring the most pressing issues in next month's provincial election now have an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is.

The Tyee, a B.C. online web magazine, is collecting pledges from its readers to fund its election reporting.
Those who donate can tell the magazine's brass what election issue ... their money should go towards covering.

It's a handing over of editorial control that David Beers, the Tyee's founder and editor-in-chief, admits is somewhat nerve-racking.

"Editors like to be the boss. They want to figure out what the issues are and then find reporters that cover them. In this case, I'm turning the reins over a bit to our readers," Beers said.

And those readers seem to be running with that opportunity. The Tyee hoped to raise $5,000, enough to hire an extra reporter for each day of the election campaign. Donations are already nearing $7,000 with the pledge drive slated to run until April 14.

Actually, as of about 24 hours ago Beers reported donations to be at $8560.00 "and counting..."

Here's something else of interest reported in the Winnipeg Free Press article:

While community-funded reporting may be a new phenomenon in B.C., to David Cohn it's quickly becoming old hat. Cohn, a 26-year-old graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, founded Spot.us, a project through which the public can commission journalists to do investigations. The San Francisco-based non-profit has been up and running for 20 weeks, during which 20 different stories have been funded.

Cohn said the organization is currently working on a major investigation of Bay Area police forces. "There was a young man named Oscar Grant who was shot by (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police officers and it was caught on video," he said. "The investigation of the police department continues to expand because since the Oscar Grant shooting they've been under a microscope."

Cohn, who received a grant from the Knight Foundation to launch Spot.us, said it's grown so quickly that he's now trying to pull back on the reins to ensure the quality of the work remains high.

Hmm...

With all the journalists getting laid off in Canada, one would think there might be a few enterprising souls who would be eager to run with this idea and create a Canadian and/or provincial and/or regional and/or community-based version of Spot.us.

Then again, perhaps we do have something like that and I've just not heard of it. Anyone?

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UPDATED: Want to Support BC-STV and Excellence in Independent Media?

CHALLENGE ISSUED. SEE COMMENTS SECTION.

You can do both by donating to The Tyee's fund-raising campaign aimed at presenting the most thorough provincial election coverage ever. The Tyee is asking donors to specify the election issue which they consider the most critical.

I, of course, would say (and have said, repeatedly) electoral reform! No other issue comes close: not the environment, not poverty or homelessness (and I say this as a poverty activist), not violence against women (which I and women I've known closely have experienced), not education, not corruption. And there are some eminent feminists who agree with me.

Why are we so adamant that electoral reform is THE issue? Unless voters are powered with the means to elect MLAs whose jobs depend on listening to and heeding their constituents rather than to their party bosses, little will change. VOTERS voices will continue to go unheard, our issues go unresolved.

So if you want to make this message heard by politicos LOUD and CLEAR. If you would like to support the best damn alternative news site in British Columbia, perhaps in the country, then visit The Tyee, make a donation and specify Electoral Reform and the May 12th BC-STV referendum as your number one priority.

Go! Don't wait. Donate now! Deadline: April 14.

ETA: See related, follow-up post. This has got the attention of other media outlets!

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