Adscam Media Coverage: Know The Players

Great post Kate! The message couldn't be any clearer. Scumbags! Scumbags! Scumbags! They're all on the take!

The only thing missing is the line at the end that asks "Any questions?"

Not fair, Kate. The front pages of websites change by the moment, as you very well know. The front page of a newspaper stays the same all day. The proper comparison would have been a cbc.ca screenshot from about 4:00 yesterday afternoon.

Go to globeandmail.com right now; what's the lead story? The pope's funeral.

Herb, this is a GIGANTIC story. That it slipped off the front page is absurd. It's the only thing people are talking about and yet it's not even in the top 3. Please. If they aren't deliberately playing it down, they're just incompetent! (I'll vote for the latter.) But since when have they cared about what their audience wants?

In this case, it's a good thing nobody watches the CBC ...

While I was at the Globe's site, by the way, I noticed that their "poll of the day" question was: should Brault's testimony lead to a non-confidence vote? You have to vote if you want to see what the results are, so I decided to vote "yes", on the basis that if the Bloc moves for no confidence, it will be interesting to see what the Conservatives do (though I think it makes perfect sense for them to duck a vote next week and wait a bit longer to see how this plays out -- or to wait for Gomery's final report, if it seems prudent).

Anyway, the result was pretty interesting; out of about 14,000 votes (a huge number for that feature) it was 53% yes, 47% no. Much closer than I expected.

Tim, of course it's a gigantic story! I agree! My point was that it's unfair to draw any sort of conclusion by comparing a newspaper front page with a constantly changing webpage -- or even an hourly newscast, for that matter. Radio news reports every hour or two, and their obligation is to give you the top story of that hour. Like it or not, the pope's funeral was the top story of midday today.

I will grant that you have a point if The National leads with the pope's funeral tonight.

(Oh, by the way, Tim, it didn't slip off the cbc.ca front page; look again at the screenshot Kate posted.)

It's not only the screenshot - which still is no excuse, as this is the largest scandal in Canadian history. The Pope has been dead for over a week, and that was their number one story. The third was on weather in Saskatchewan. Brault didn't fit in that lineup???

The radio coverage has been no better. Spin, downplay, minimize.

Just like their scanty, superficial UN oil-for-food scandal coverage. NOT ONE WORD on the Chretien -connected Canadians implicated at the investigation.

Where is the Fifth Estate? You'd think they'd be waiting outside the offices of PowerCorp with microphones in hand.

A very unfair characterization of the CBC. The CBC happens to have the best resources regarding the scandal which is clearly visible in your screen cap: InDepth.

Anyone interested in about 2 hours of Brault's video testimony can view it here courtesy of the CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/groupaction/brault_testimony.html

"The Pope has been dead for over a week"...um, yes, but they buried him today in what I gather was a fairly big production.

Personally, I have no interest in that story at all, but Catholicism is the single biggest Christian denomination in Canada; I suspect that if the CBC buried his funeral halfway down their newscast, they'd be excoriated fiercely by the country's Catholics. (Note as well that the pope's funeral remains the top story right now at cnn.com, foxnews.com, nytimes.com and globeandmail.com.)

CBC: "This just in from the Vatican - the Pope is still dead".

Those looking for a link roundup to almost all of the media coverage are advised to scroll to the bottom of this post:

http://www.polspy.ca/items/2005/04/07/1100.php

The only stories I haven't been linking are the repeats from CP/AP/Reuters, etc.

And tell me - where do they rank the weather reports from Saskatchewan?

And why no comment yet on the contributions from CBC board members to the Bloc?

http://www.cbcwatch.ca/?q=node/view/15/62

"CBC directors - all but one are Chretien appointees and many have close ties to the federal Liberals - operate in virtual secrecy. Their meetings are secret and exempt from the federal Access to Information law through which the public and news media are able to get information about government spending."

Watch the CBC at:

CBC Watch

Read & gnash your molars, incisors, and spit out the Liberals .... corruption & more corruption,,,,&&@@@, &&&&&, XXXXXX....XXxxxx.

http://www.cbcwatch.ca/?q=node/view/15/62

The arrogance; the so-what-attitude; the what-are-you-going-to-do-about? face of the federal Liberals; the on-the-take attitude of some Canadians; modus operandi of the CBC Board secrecy, & more secrecy. It is there.

Third world dictatorship, banana republic, one-party state & etc.; there it is: Sea to sea. Proud are we? Not this Canadian. Ashamed.

Rise up; throw the Liberals & PM Martin out of office; or, live with it. (Who said: I hate those bastards?)

P.S. whatareyougoingtodoaboutit? comes from Boss Tweed (search)

nice work.

re;crerar
a ferret,wrong,not
gopher buddy gopher,not ferret

Herb's right. Website pages change hourly at times. Nice try, Kate, but you've wasted your time on a conspiracy theory.

You are attracting more than your share of cranky lefties,toots.You must be doing something right :)

Curious about what our non-blogging comrades might have had to say in their emails to the Communist Broadcasting Corporation, I wandered on over for a read. One email from a reader posted on the recent testimony on Adscam. One. Thank God for blogs.

The CBC is only interested in Catholicism when the Pope dies. At any other time it's "shaddap and keep your holy opinions to yourselves."

Kate, how did 3% manage to get donated to the people with the hidden agenda. Are those who contributed the 3% still on the Board or have they been purged.

Anonymous

I justed checked www.canada.com (1:46pm CST) for their top stories (sorry, no screen shot) and noted the following top 3 stories:

1. Popes funeral.
2. Adscam.
3. Ahenakew.

Further down: National Post - Canada's Watergate

Tonight on Global National: Can a minority government survive yesterday's explosive testimony at the Gomery Inquiry? Reporter Troy Reeb caught up to Paul Martin in Rome. The P.M.'s reaction on tonight's Global National.

Quick look at www.ctv.ca (1:51pm CST):

1. Pope
2. Adscam
3. Toronto Transit

Now www.canoe.ca (1:53pm CST)

1. Pope
2. Adscam
3. Masters Golf

Quick look at www.cbc.ca(1:54pm CST):

1. Toronto Transit
2. Pope
3. Spammer sentenced.

In fact, CBC has not one mention of Adscam on their front page. Is the CBC avoiding the story? Looks damn obvious to me.

Howie, I'm not a cranky lefty, I'm a cranky centrist. (I realize it's hard to tell the difference from the extreme right.)

Matt wrote, The CBC is only interested in Catholicism when the Pope dies. At any other time it's "shaddap and keep your holy opinions to yourselves."

And I write, yes exactly. The message in this elegantly simple post is that the CBC is using a very Christian occasion, which would otherwise would not be fron and centre in the Ceeb's mind, as cover for the Adscam story.

Oh yes, that and the subtle message of the 15% contributions to the separatists which I presume were made by people running Radio-Qu�bec, errrr Canada.

OT ; has anybody been able to get on to the Shotgun . I've been unable to all day.

The 82-15-3 donation split is interesting, but does anyone know what the dollar values of those various percentages are? Eighty-two per cent of diddly squat is less than diddly, but if it's in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars then it's a different story.

Incidentally, speaking of the dreaded "liberal media", does anyone else find it hilarious that up here in Canada they're being blamed because they haven't done enough to expose a political kickback scandal, while down in the US, the right-wing bloggers are blaming them just as vociferously for going overboard in doing precisely that, in the Tom DeLay affair?

Funny, I always thought the thing about principles was that they had to be applied consistently.

To find out more about the research, go to http://www.stephentaylor.ca

That graphic is only one of several research projects done by bloggers before Elections Canada got wise and rendered the public search engine unusuable.

It happened right after reports of questionable contributions to the Liberal Party were revealed in the National Post.

Centrist? sure....

I'll postscript that - those National Post reports didn't credit the blogger Vitor Marciano of What It Takes To Win (he's on my sidebar), but he's the guy who got the ball rolling.

ok, just checked cbc.ca at 16:33 EDT Friday

here copied right from the front page (sans images):
------------------------------------------
Last Updated: 16:33 EDT Friday, Apr 08, 2005

Top Stories

Toronto transit workers to strike Monday
People in Toronto will face commuter chaos on Monday as the city's transit workers say they'll walk off the job then.
Huge crowd attends Pope's funeral
Spammer sentenced to 9 years
Mideast truce threatened by proposed rally at sacred site

----------------------------------------
nothing on the front page at all.

ok, in case you missed that, let me re-iterate, "nothing on the fron page at all"

Even if you click more news, you see only a tiny, tiny reference to it.

So the fact that a spammer got 9 nine years (yay!!) seems to be far more important. Oh and a Toronto transit strike (boo!!), which would be important to me if I did not work at home and used planes for work travel. It certainly isn't a big deal to people in say Belleville or Kingston, much less the rest of Canada.

Talk about a sense of perspective here.

If that doesn't say something, then I don't know. Frankly, I think Kate is right on the money with this.

Herb, I dislike that meme, but those pushing it would say there is no contradiction since the "US liberal media" attacks a conservative admin in the US and the "Canadian liberal media" refuses to attack a liberal admin.

I personally don't see the contradiction you are alluding to.

The best argument for selling off all crown corporations like the CBC, VIA, et cetera is that these institutions create habitat for corrupt liberals. Places for them to stuff their loyal cronies. They also tend to underperform compared to fully private corporations. Look what happened when CN was unloaded. It went from a liberal money wasting cesspool to a solid investment almost overnight. There's nothing like firing the bastards to get their attention.

Herb,
I guess your point is that your lieberal thieving lefty klepto's have stolen millions and brought shame to our nation, and you are trying to make up some relativistic story to downplay it, by using some obscure impossible connection

The short answer is no it's not hilarious,... the lieberal appologists desperate arguments are though.

Howie, what a thoughtful response. I'll be mulling it over for days.

Capt. Joe and richfisher: I take it from your responses that you aren't familiar with the DeLay affair. In a nutshell: prominent federal politician accepts lavish "gifts" and favours from companies and lobbyists doing business with the feds. A family member is paid half a mil by his PAC. And more.

Sound familiar?

And you guys wouldn't possibly approve of any of those things, right?

I don't have a problem with private broadcasters being biased as much as I don't want my tax money used to forward a certain ideology.
The CBC should be privatized and the sooner the better.

Why do we need the CBC? Huh?

Herb,

The point here is that the liberal media is not painting the adscam scandal as strongly as they should. That is the same issue with DeLay. As DeLay is a conservative (Republican) the media is latched on and will not give an inch.

The whole point of principle is exactly what is missing. The media and freedom of the press are given protection by means of the constitution and charter of rights, but what happens when the media presents a single perspective on most issues? The protection that they were afforded should no longer be considered valid. The freedom was intended (I would expect) to allow the media to report on anything that was not in the best interest of those they serve, namely the public at large. The CBC and MSM now serve only the liberal sides on the issues they cover, to the extent that lower profile methods are being employed such as bloggers who choose to pursue stories. While bloggers do not have to present both sides of a story at least I can go to one or the other side and read their perspectives. A blog does not present itself or deem itself as balanced as the "journalists" do.

The CBC is rarely on in my house, and without HNIC will probably not be for a while.

Under the Soviet Union TASS was the state mouthpiece of the government. We are not communist but I trust the CBC in much the same way as I had trusted what was released by Soviet State Television.

I'll add another observation that has so far been overlooked -- in case you didn't notice, the "hot weather in Saskatchewan" (read global warming is real) story is positioned directly beneath the spending figures for Kyoto. That is not accidental.

Herb, how can any American politician's behaviour possibly be relevent here? Do you not know what conutry you live in? If you seriously believe that any foreigner's conduct can justify the criminality of the Canadian Liberals, why don't you just cite Robert Mugabe as your precedent, and claim the right to do anything he does?

You've made it clear that, whatever self-serving lies you bleat out, you approve of this conduct by the Liberals. You want it to continue. Don't bother inviting us to deal with you, little man. You and your kind are damn well going to be dealt with.

There's no bias here. Posting yesterday's Adscam news as a recurring top headline isn't necessary. The CBC isn't posting anything differently than its competitors, from my survey at The Sudden Sage

"There's no bias here."

You might as well add that the entire Adscam is a 'vast right wing conspiracy'. Can anyone tell me what the hell Paul'Gay Marriage'Martin is doing at the Pope's funeral anyway? He never seemed to be too interested in his faith before, now suddenly he has to jet across to Rome to pay his respects. My theory is that he's hoping to swipe a couple of artifacts from the Vatican when nobody's looking.

Front Pages from across the Distressed Dominion
Calgary Sun
Edmonton Journal
Guelph Mercury
Hamilton Spectator
Kitchener
La Presse
Vancouver Sun
Winnipeg Sun

They are really on top of things in the Peg.

Great post Kate: As far as CBC exec donations to the Libranos, I find it even more disturbing that Canada's Desmarais family is heavily tied into the CBC. Cretien's daughter married a Desmarais son. All PMs except Kimble Campbel works for Desmarais. And, Desmarais is the front figure in the Oil-for-food fraud in France. Adscam is just one small cog in the Librano gears.

Check this out for more info on the Desmarais family:

http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=article&article_id=542

Correction on my last post: All PMs except Kimble Campbel "worked" for Desmarais.

I emailed the CBC to ask them why there is no mention on the headline section of their website. Awaiting answer.

BTW nice going Kate, Nealnews has linked to your story.

We've all read that Steyn article 100 times. I need more smoking gun material before rises in status above the 57 1/2 alleged Bush-Cheney-Halliburton plots.

Bias would be comparing yesterday's Globe and Mail NEWSPAPER headline to a radio and television outfit like the CBC. The Globe online, which is a melding of breaking news today, and yesterday's print news, dropped Adscam stuff lower down early on. The CBC still has it top of page, right side. Oops, the Globe and Mail just dropped it lower, it's off the bottom of my screen.... CBC now has more up on the first screen shot than the Globe.

No, this isn't CBC bias, this is your bias.

Mark: You obviously didn't read the Steyn article; or else you ignored it's most obvious point. The trail to Desmarais and the PMO over the last several decades is many many times more solid than anything that links Bush or Cheney to Halliburton. And, owning controlling shares in the major bank and oil company involved in the Oil-for-food scam is in its very least a more direct line to Sadaam than anything anyone can conjure up concering Cheney and Halliburton. Coincidence alone can not account for a fraction of where Paul Desmarais' name pops up. As far as Mark Steyn, I challenge you to find one example of where he has been wrong... except in his prediction that Bush would sweep the USA election.