The editor of the Winnipeg Free Press;
provided at least one (unpublished) letter from readers critical of the Crocus Fund, directly to Crocus CEO Sherman Kreiner in Feb. 2003.
Then-editor Nicholas Hirst warned Kreiner “This letter become insidious if followed by others. It suggests there really is something wrong.”
[…]
Hirst explained his emailing the ‘Letter to the Editor’ to Kreiner, “as an example of one of the many letters we are receiving about your fund.” Saying he had already found it “difficult to keep such letters out of the newspaper”, Hirst admonished Kreiner “I was not being light”.
Payback time. Susan Delacourt fesses up – “the Keen controversy is all about us”.
Joan Tintor whacks her with a rolled up newspaper;
Under [the Liberals], Hill reporters were not treated with independence or distance; they were treated as pets to be cultivated and – if deemed sympathetic – rewarded with leaks from inside government, weekly caucus meetings, and not-so-underground leadership campaigns. (Sounds like trifling and playing to me.)
Delacourt’s comments suggest that reporters have decided to take a stand on their independence – by sabotaging it (“How dare Harper treat us like we’re biased, we’ll show him – by being biased!”).
To those who wonder why there is so little competitor interest in the CBC’s professional betrayal in the Erickson-Rodriguez affair – this is your answer. They don’t consider it noteworthy, because they’re not journalists, they’re gatekeepers – and reporting on unethical journalism carries with it the risk of retaliation.
Related: The Globe & Mail sanitizes criticism of radical Islamists.
“The Keen controversy is all around us.”
This whole “Keen controversy” has me incensed. The fact and manner in which she defends her actions, and her refusal to take responsibility reinforces the need to get her the hell out of that job. Her flippant attitude toward endangering the lives of hundreds or thousands of Canadians and others around the world is sickening.
The “just doing my job” answer makes it worse! She clearly does not get it, and we clearly cannot afford to have someone like her in a position where lives are at stake.
Lunn got it right, and the media is getting it wrong. Their arrogance is offensive, and their seeming inability to appreciate the irony when they deny bias while meting out “payback” is most telling. If the Government (ie: the people of Canada’s representative) isn’t supposed to fire her, then who the hell can. So, it violates her independence? Independence from what – common sense, reason, and good judgement? Did she think she could do anything she wanted without jeopardizing her job? I wish I could do that.
I used to listen to CBC Radio 1 a lot, and watch the national every night. It was always slanted, but never before has it been like this. I never listen to CBC radio anymore. The turning point was during the last provincial election in Alberta, when they ran a Conservative ad (under the equal time rules), and sped it up to make the voices sound funny. Then host Ron Wilson went off on the Conservatives, unable to hold back for a moment longer. That was it for me.
My girlfriend bans me from watching The National whenever she’s around. She says it’s bad for my blood pressure and my health, and I have to agree. I never thought I’d say this, but the CBC has to go.
It’s not only the CBC – which, as an institution funded by the taxapayers, certainly has to go. It’s the whole MSM system in Canada.
As noted by others, it’s a small, very small, incestuous community, with its members married to, children of, relatives of etc..each other. The media is ‘their baby’; and it is impossible to divest it of their particular ideology and perspective. They are, almost 95% of them, socialists-leftists, either Liberal or NDP.
Then, since many of them are also government employees (CBC), this same set is filiated with government bureaucracies. As noted, their relatives often work within government, and particularly within the Liberal and NDP parties.
So, it’s impossible for our Canadian MSM to be anything other than loyal to those two parties and their similar socialist ideologies.
What would change this? Yes, getting rid of the CBC would help. Greatly. But what is really needed is some kind of dilution and break-up of the closed incestuous family clique of Canadian journalists.
I think blogs are vital in breaking up this set. Other publiations have been tried (National Post, Western Standard) but the Canadian population base still isn’t large enough to topple the majority Left control of the MSM. But, chipping away, via blogs is vital. We are seeing a larger number of journalists in newspapers who are not part of the clique. This hasn’t spread to television which is still firmly controlled by the clique.
I always find it funny listening to reporters talk about how things would be different if there was a different “media startegy”
As you have indicated…the strategy always needs to be, scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours….she implies that all facts being equal that if there was a different media startegy that the story would be told differently.
Does she listen to herself speak?
Much like the needle stuck in a track on an old 78 record, I have to repeat my charge, that MSM were the enablers of the malfeasance and corruption for more than a decade of the Chretien / Martin Liberal government.
Watching the shenanigans of the Szabo chaired parliamentary “ethics committee” makes me want to shout MSM complicity rather than enabling.
That leftist love-in with the Libs/ ND’s / Greens has not abated and is manifesting itsself again with more intensity as the Harper minority remains in power.
The Keen AEC affair, the Afghanistan prisoner appeasers, the CBC sourced Pablo questions all point to the toxic nature of MSM to conservatives and Stephn Harper in particular.
One hopes that the cbc will unwittingly be the reason behind their own demise.I have a greater hope that I belong to a majority of like minded voters.
MSM – LPC Can you see a difference? I can’t see a difference.
Without any reasonable means to run it, it would be interesting to equate MSM spin with political party contributions. The CBC shills for the Libs its charged with finacial contributions exceeding allowable limits. The Globe and Mail runs a smear against the Conservatives it would be charged with contributing to the coffers of the opposition parties. The National Post does something similar for the Conservatives the same would apply.
Yes I know it would never work and yes I know the consequences would be worse than the malady we now suffer but it is fun to dream.
Greg bashes Harper over Keen, yet clever survivalist writer that he is, he covers butt far down page with this . .
===================
** Harper’s reign of fear has not been limited to officers of Parliament.
It is well known in the senior ranks of the public service that anyone who gets in the way of the Conservative jackboots is likely to be trampled.
The environment department, for instance, is littered with bodies who correctly thought the Conservative clean air legislation was a complete crock.
Of course, clashes between politicians and public servants is not a uniquely Conservative phenomenon. In some ways, the Liberals have been the worst offenders.
===================
For three years, Jean Chretien’s goons hounded federal business development bank president Francois Beaudoin, first out of office, then through a living hell of harassment, all because he blew the whistle on the then-PM in the so-called Shawinigate affair.
Heck, at one point, Chretien’s crowd even launched an ugly smear campaign against the nation’s beloved auditor-general, Sheila Fraser, in an attempt to discredit her damning report on the sponsorship scandal. That worked well.
Some lynchings of officialdom, on the other hand, are obviously justified — for example, ex-privacy commissioner and expense account champ, George Radwanski.
Therein lies the tricky part of the current controversy over the firing of the nuclear regulator.**
================== Now that is great balance eh?
torontosun.com/Comment/2008/01/20/4782995-sun.html
Do Toronto-Sun Liberal readers ever read this far down the page? Clever Greg.= TG
It’s worse than all this. Keen’s statement to the House Natural Resources Committee regarding the 1/1000 chance of an accident at Chalk River was completely wrong. It overstates the risk to such a degree that it is sufficient by itself to indicate she is not appropriate as the head of the CNSC. Even the Globe and Mail appeared to understand this in the news article in today’s paper.
More to the point, she defied a government Order in Council, and topped that by questioning the competence of the Minister in writing. This is not about nuclear safety, it’s about basic governance.
Finally there was the leak of the Minister’s letter to Keen in late December. Simply consider which party had the most to gain by such a leak, and you’ve found the source.
And yet I seem to hear a small voice somewhere in the distance crying …. “What BIAS? Show me the BIAS!!”
The pathetic whine fades into the distance……..
“Conservative jackboots”
There’s nothing quite like the MSM fantasy that they’re standing up to fascism.
I recommend a twelve or thirteen step recovery program for The MSM addicted to their LIberal groupthink.
Re:”Keen’s statement…regarding the 1/1000 chance of an accident at Chalk River was completely wrong.” – cgh
You’re right. It’s unbelievable. We could go on and on. She is so wrong for the position, in so many ways, and keeps reinforcing that view with her statements. I think that’s what happens when you think you’re totally untouchable – you lose any sense of right and wrong because you think you’re the one who determines right and wrong.
What really disgusts me is the way so many in the media attack Harper over this. The Star seems to think that eveything was great until they fired her, implying that it was only a partisan decision, unfair, violating some sort of unwritten hands-off code regarding senior beurocrats, and mean spirited.
Don’t they see it’s an important role? And that she put people’s lives at risk? And her risk appraisal is completely suspect?
When Parliament has unanimously voted to overturn a decision you made which jeopardizes many lives, I’d say that’s a good reason to suspect your position is untenable. She should have resigned.
nah leave the CBC, someone needs to come up with a Canadian Fox News!!! Then have teh Canadian Fox news weekly embarras the CBC…
keen, a liberal appointed by a liberal, using her position politically jeez, business as usual. greg weston, never read his stuff and id o read the sun.
Jimbo, you are so right. It’s even worse than all this. Keen’s notions of independence came from her and her staff’s reading of the Nuclear Safety and Control Act. What almost no one knows is that the Act was written by the Commission itself in the late 1990s. Parliament gave it a cursory review and passed it. So we have the situation of an administration that wrote their own legislation to suit their own agenda. However, even though the CNSC wrote their own legislation, the preamble to the Act requires them to undertake “reasonable” actions. Reasonable is a concept rather well defined in law. It is highly questionable as to whether or not Keen’s views would be seen as “reasonable”. Hence her claim to stand on the law may be a lot weaker than it appears.
I read somewhere, but can’t find it now, that,
An un-named source, has confirmed that Keen recieved a late night phone call from someone connected to the person who appointed her, asking/telling her to “find a safety issue to keep that reactor down for as long as possible”
Apparently she will be rewarded for her Liberal loyalty in the not to distant future.
Keep your eyes and ears open folks, I wonder what kind of reward is in the offering, probably some kind of Liberal party job.
I wish that un-named source would come forward,
what a bombshell that would be.
William, that would be staggering if true. NRU supplies about two-thirds of the world’s supply of Molybdenum 99. It’s utterly essential for radio-diagnostics. Tony Clement did not understate the health consequences of its shortage. I have trouble believing that anyone could be so criminally irresponsible as that.
As was pointed out elsewhere, the backup pump was not installed / made operable 17 months ago.
Why the delay by CNSC in enforcement if this was a “serious” safety issue.
If Keen wanted to pull the reactor operating license, she should know the consequences of that action (for the reactor owner, also a crown corp) and inform the minister (her boss).
She failed on those two counts, so she was rightly removed.
The more the MSM pushes her removal, the more it smells of opposition (Liberal) opportunism.
Keen:
“I was appointed to lead, not to read.”
Re:”Keen received a late night phone call from someone connected to the person who appointed her …”
I’m not familiar with that particular story. The person who appointed her was Ralph Goodale.
*
“puddin and pie says… The more the MSM pushes her removal,
the more it smells of opposition (Liberal) opportunism.”
whaddaya mean… i for one applaud steffi and the fiberals for
their principled stand in voting against the harper bill that
restarted…
“hey… wait a minute…”
*
One possible hypothesis is that some folks in the bureaucracy with close ties to the organizations that put them there were trying to execute some maneuver that would ostensibly effect leverage over the plant operators while at the same time effecting some embarrassment to the government, that the maneuver blew up in their face, and that as a result they are now trying to deflect all blame to the government in order to try to cover their tracks.
Just now, on Newman, Travers (with smile) said after 2 yrs of kicking the press around, now PMSH wants kind treatment. Ain’t going to happen IMHO.
We now have two journalists saying they will not be kind to the conservatives. Do we need more proof they are biased and mad. Wait till we get a majority, many might decide on a new career.
Consider the following common manifestations:
Denial – Cognitive dysfunction – Self Imposed isolation from other groups – Delusion – Dependence on Enablers – Self Reinforcing behaviours – Emotional Outbursts – Manic Episodes – Violent Episodes – Disregard for the Safety of Others and so on…….
The addicted personality of Liberals!
Ipso Facto
I agree, all they are is “gatekeepers”. Why haven’t they changed now that it isn’t just right wing Conservatives that are onto them? Because it hasn’t hit the editors and the people running the media in their wallets yet. But that is coming.
We identified this problem on SDA threads a couple of years ago about the New York Times. The stock has been sliding for years but only in the last month has the NYT’s hired Bill Kristol Editor of the Standard Weekly (his father was the original neocon) and now the editors at the NYT have real ideological competition amongst their writers.
Follow the money, when this starts to hit the wallets of the lefties in the MSM, then it will change.
I watched that late night debate on CPAC with Keen on the chair. She kept smiling in a ghastly way, as she said that she had been given a government mandate to shut down the reactor if she decided to shut it down – she did not HAVE to explain WHY she shut it down; she did not get an application to continue operation in time so she shut it down because the previous Liberal government had given her the POWER to shut it down. It was an ‘entitlement’; all arguments about the actual safety of the reactor and the endangered lives of Canadians made no impact on her pat line “I did not receive the application requesting permission to continue the operation on time”. She encouraged the government to urge the owners of that plant to present her with an application so she could ‘process’ it (at her leisure, I would presume) and then she could, maybe give the ORDER to restart the reactor. It was all about the late application….
Any sane person would fire such a heartless, egocentric power monger. Gary Lund did the right thing – all people who have ever had anyone in their family suffering from Cancer should write Gary a thank-you note.
Other than the Black Rod, my favorite Canadian bloggers are all women: Werk, Shaidle and Tintor.
They’d make a helluva law firm name.
Werk, Shaidle and Tintor:
“We take the meat and the bones, so you don’t have to.”
Surely most people have twigged that self-important media hacks like Weston, who’s obsessed with hatred for Harper, Travers and Delacourt, the list goes on, are acting out like kids not invited to your party.
“All The News Unfit To Print” says it all. It’s down to bloody vitriol of the worst order, some outright innuendo and fabrications. Like the story about a rift between Harper and Hillier. Not true. Did not happen.
If I recall, the decision to restart the reactor was unanimous in parliament.
Now there are questions?
the MSM is just stirring the $hit for no other reason than they think of themselves as the official opposition while the libs sit rocking on their own nuts waiting for Dion to self destruct.