Playing hardball … fuddle duddle eh!
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has advised The Canadian Press he intends to sue the national news agency for defamation for a headline it ran on a story featuring controversial comments he made on a home-movie videotape made more than 16 years ago.
“The headline of the article is false and defamatory of Premier Wall and, given the breadth of its publication, is likely to result in significant damage to Premier Wall’s reputation,” says the letter from the premier’s lawyers, dispatched Friday to The Canadian Press.
The headline, published Thursday, referred to the release of a video by Saskatchewan’s opposition NDP that showed disparaging comments from Wall, current Saskatchewan Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski, and others who were working on the 1991 provincial re-election campaign of then-Tory leader Grant Devine.
Update:
Brad Wall announced this morning that he will not proceed with the suit.
So much for growing some.
This is the result of our MSM trying to out do the National Enquirer.
I wonder if someone will sue Tonda McCharles of the Star for her comment on this morning’s CTV Question Period in which she suggests that Mr. Lukwski’s comments from almost 17 years ago are somehow related to Ecole Polytechnique?
How far into the gutter are our so-called unbiased journalists willing to sink?
If a forest fire was started 20 years ago and over the years people had worked to put the fire out and suddenly someone comes along and throughs a couple of cans of gas on the fire again, I think I would go after the person that threw the cans of gas. People forget back then people were contracting AIDs and Hep C (thanks to Paul Martin and the Liberals)from the blood scandal and were very angry which resulted in huge court battles for justice. Alot of people did not survive to see justice. MSM has selective memories.
There is a hateful word in the linked article!
Let’s recap:
Left wingers shamelessly and deliberately using the Holocaust to make a cheap shot cartoon specifically designed to sway the public during an ongoing election campaign by caricaturizing a man who had never made any anti-Semitic comments as a death camp nazi. Cost of extraction? One quick I’m sorry and the shuffling of a flunkie from one government paid job to another.
Right wing private knuckle dragging party, definitely not meant for public consumption and definitely done as misguided but nonetheless egregiously unacceptable form of humour. Cost of extraction? Nothing short of resignation will do.
Ah, the media, fair and balanced as usual. They could hardly wait to help Pumpermint Patty put the Hip into hypocrite when she said how she agonized about whether to make political mileage out of an evening of stupidity.
The people on that tape are guilty of stupidity for making the tape and for allowing it to fall into enemy hands. That’s it!
The ethnic joking by Wall is not a big deal. Most people have indulged in ethnic stereo typing and joking at some point. It’s just humor. No one gets to die over it.
Regarding the dirty fingernail disease spreading …
If memory serves me … the first case of AIDS in North America was traced back to a gay airline attendant around 1986 who may have contracted the disease in Africa. Contrary to the claims of the good reverend Wright of the Barry Hussein crowd it is a disease that originated with green monkeys in Africa. It has since spread widely first through the gay community then into the rest of society.
So Lukiwski’s comments although crude, were not entirely inaccurate.
Anyone?
But,But,But, he doesn’t even look like Gamil Gharbi.
Update on the facts of AIDS (sorry to digress)
Main article: AIDS origin
AIDS was first reported June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now still classified as PCP but known to be caused by Pneumocystis jirovecii) in five homosexual men in Los Angeles.[149]
Three of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are:
1. A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in Kinshasa, today part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[150]
2. HIV found in tissue samples from “Robert R.”, a 15 year old African-American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.[151]
3. HIV found in tissue samples from Arvid Noe, a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976.[152]
Two species of HIV infect humans: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is more virulent and more easily transmitted. HIV-1 is the source of the majority of HIV infections throughout the world, while HIV-2 is not as easily transmitted and is largely confined to West Africa.[153] Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are of primate origin. The origin of HIV-1 is the Central Common Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) found in southern Cameroon.[154] It is established that HIV-2 originated from the Sooty Mangabey (Cercocebus atys), an Old World monkey of Guinea Bissau, Gabon, and Cameroon.
Most experts believe that HIV probably transferred to humans as a result of direct contact with primates, for instance during hunting or butchery.[155] A more controversial theory known as the OPV AIDS hypothesis suggests that the AIDS epidemic was inadvertently started in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski’s research into a poliomyelitis vaccine.[156][157] According to scientific consensus, this scenario is not supported by the available evidence.[158][159][160]
A recent study states that HIV probably moved from Africa to Haiti and then entered the United States around 1969.[161]
Yes, this outrageous smear job has gone too far and it’s time to sue a few arses off, including those twits in the MSM.
What have theses holier-than-thou people got to gain from this sort of behaviour? We all know not one single person, politician or not has not at some time or other done or said something stupid or regrettable. It certainly isn’t anything to bring a person down for. No murder or crime was committed.
I for one am sick and tired of the whole bogus outrage by the hypocrites in the Opposition. Homosexuals are not the only people to ever be insulted and they’re no more or less important
than anyone else.
FWIW back in the day this disease was called GRIDS…which acronym means ‘gay related immune deficiency syndrome.’
this was before the ripples had spread wider of course…..
I think Brad Wall is barking up the wrong tree with this one. Unlike the case of PMSH against the Liberal Party where they continued to publish lies on their website, nothing in that headline is factually wrong. And it changed as the story developed. I actually think this will make Brad look foolish. Considering there’s really no spot light on him regarding this story, all the lights on Lukiwski, he should just let this one slide i.m.o.
It’s about time the courts were brought into this, my only question is whether they will respond or beg off/shirk making a decision. Will they hand down another revenue producing decision for their industry or will they give some decisive guide lines within the law? I doubt the latter. It seems the courts these days are just as prone to making political decisions as legal ones. At any rate I suspect if this does go to a court any decision will be less that decisive.
Suing CP is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Wall needs to find something to do with his bloody time.
I think Wall is correct to sue the Press. The headline, with its assertion of ‘racist, homophobic’ remarks is defamatory and untrue.
To make fun of an accent isn’t ‘racism’; to reject homosexuality isn’t ‘phobic’. Wall has every right to sue.
Our MSM has moved into yellow journalism, linked as it is with the Liberal Party, which has degenerated from acting as a political party to a collection of people engaged only in ongoing rabble-rousing, ad hominem smears against other people.
The Liberal Party has no policies. It ignores its duty as the Opposition in that it provides no intelligent critique of government policies; simply rejecting any government policy because it comes from the Conservatives is not an intelligent critique.
All that the Liberal Party is doing is based around its sense of entitlement to power. The MSM, allied as they are with the Liberals, have degenerated to being the sewer conduit for the Liberal mudslinging.
Both the Liberals and the MSM should be sued by their victims.
For the record, Jay Branch, who makes the “ink by the barrel” threat on behalf of CP, was a long time Broadcast News and Canadian Press reporter before joining the NDP.
Canadian MSM, are leftist and corrupt.
Good on Brad Wall for taking one of the leaders on.
Sandra Buckler should should publicly out Robert Fife for his toxic “knuckledraggers” comments about current conservative MPs.
Yellow journalism Bastards!
I hope this scandal turns to focus on the initial theft of the videotapes by the NDP!
The MSM has had it head up the Liberals asses so long they find it warm and kozy and just ignore the smell. When shit comes down the pipe, they eat it up and say it tastes good. One must effect change. I am sure the MSM worry constantly what would happen to them with a CPC majority. If this report holds true, Wall has missed the mark. The NDP hate disturbers should be a target as well. Why has the Block never been represented on Question Period panels and why does the Maritimes and Western reports rarely make up any panels except when fuzz face is in B.C..
So Lukiwski’s comments although crude, were not entirely inaccurate.
Anyone?
So what is he apologizing for?
Tonda McCharles suggests that Mr. Lukwski’s comments from almost 17 years ago are somehow related to Ecole Polytechnique?
Brian Smith
Except she suggested nothing of the kind.
he should just let this one slide i.m.o. I actually think this will make Brad look foolish.
Agreed. He should let sleeping dogs lie.
Thanks for the graphics W-d-E-s…nasty, but true.
I agree with Joe M. and Bushman…and I would also like to see some of the other ‘party people’ head to their lawyers and go after the NDP…that was a private party!
Just some redneck language for the Question Period panel.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Fight back.
Now how about a class action suit against CTV??
“Dear Sirs: Your commercial support of unprofessional journalism is incompatible with my commercial support of your business. Yours truly…”
That’s all that needs to be said, in sufficient numbers, to advertisers to begin to have a positive effect.
Louise, are you stupid?
Who would the aggrieved class of victims of defamation be? Readers? One can only file suit when one’s own character is wrongly impugned.
“class action” indeed!
P.S. I apologize for implying you’re stupid. While my words may not have been entirely inaccurate, they were crude.
“Tape with Sask premier and Tory MP has racist, sexist, homophobic comments: NDP.”
Gotta go with Reid (3:56) here.
Factually spot on and the headline was refined as events unfolded.
Nothing particularly partisan at all, so accusations of bias seem unwarranted.
But I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.
There has to be an accounting of the media. They’ve gone too far. I think it’s desperation because they see their Lieberal party regaining power little by little slipping away. So they are declaring war, torquing everthing up to high gear. They want to create a diversion from their party that is so pathetic right now.
It’s a scandal a week now. Started last fall with Mulroney,Schrieber that didn’t work. Next Cadman, that fizzled. Then on to Nafta-gate nothing there. Brenda Martin sorta backfired, DND blueprints supposedly found in a trash bin now this scandalis tape. See a pattern here?
Makes you wonder what it will be this coming week.
Another twist on the whole thing, is that somebody created that tape. That tape is their intellectual property. By default, in Canada, they hold the copyright to the contents of that tape.
The tape was published without the consent of the copyright holder. It was not in the public domain prior to its publication.
If there is to be legal recourse, I would suggest this avenue be explored.
The national post has a good story on this matter. go to http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story/.html?id=423006 .In the story they bring up numerous remarks by the liberals that were also derogatory to gays but were never really noted by the media.
Yes this is an interesting morality displayed by this failed Sask NDP.
99% of the honest people who find? something that is quite obviously somebody elses, usually has the honor and dignity to find the rightful owner and return it to them.
And especially something of no monetary value.
But let me guess.
The dim-witted and blatantly dishonest Sask NDP couldn’t figure out who made/owned the tape and so had to make it public?
These crooked Sask NDP display the same thieving morality as the crooked Communist Wheat Board that boasts that it is their right to take $5/bu from one farmer, and give it to a another farmer.
Or maybe even a friend of theirs.
May it be a long, long time before Sask ever considers re-electing these despicable people in this despicable NDP organization to office again.
Charlton Heston is dead. I notice the CBC is describing him as contraversial, for his conservative opinions.
How come socialist opinions in Holywood are not contraversial?
OK Rhetorical question. CBC sucks.
I wonder what the NDP say when they are in private?
Manny,
What is he apologizing for? Good question and I will quote my own blog entry to demonstrate what I think of his apology.
“Sheesh … what a wimp! … Why not be a man and just tell the truth. Back in ’92 it was far more acceptable to say such things about gay people because they had not yet fully hijacked the political elite as they have in recent years.
This guy is freaking because his political career may have just gone down the rabbit hole.”
Does that cover it?
Well Zilla, we know that Dr. Fruitfly would have those who disagree with him jailed.
Zilla 6:03 I would think Sieg Heil would cover their agenda.
The class action would be on behalf of the people that lost money on the income trust issue. You have the NDP, Liberals and medial all involved at the same time. Expose them all at once. This case parallels the promoting of hatred, again, again, again.
Ha Ha Ha! Freedom of speech is out the window and it’s Go, Wall, Go!
Looks like the lefties were right, for once.
I think that by attributing the quote to the NDP, as the headline does, might cover their collective asses a bit. All the writer needs to do is find one dipper who made remarks to that effect and – tada – they are just reporting what was said. Now all they have to do is find one loudmouth dipper to attribute it to. I think the writer can take his pick…
Reporting (repeating) what you hear or making misleading statements, without corroborating evidence is hearsay and amounts to slander or libel and has never saved anyone from liability before the courts. I guess we’ll find out if the press gets preferential treatment or not.
I wonder who handed him a pair finnaly. His Wife, more than likely.
frmgrl
I agree: an honest person would have realized that you do not steal or interfere with something that you “found” and which, therefore, does not belong to you. If not actual theft, there is a moral issue involved here. So much for the NDPs’ overweening “principles”.
The standard for proof in civil court is much lower which will be to Wall’s advantage. It seems the only way to stop misrepresentation of the truth is to drag their asses through court.
Ms. party-pooper Atkinson has now outlawed a common form of humor. Does this mean no more All in the Family, MASH, Southpark, Simpsons, Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairies?
Of course, the CBC will suffer certain death, because they carry racist programming that stereotypes groups of people…like Muslims.
Damn, there goes my copy of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding!” I so hate sanctimonious Progressives! I refuse to walk with my head as close to my sphincter as they do!
While I am a huge fan of push back I am pretty sure that this is not the way to do it. Going to Court over a headline? And a headline which, as one commentor above points out is largely correct…not smart.
Push back by all means but push back by pointing out that the tape was stolen and used in violation of copyright. Point out that the incident occurred years ago and that people who want to make a big deal of it now need to get on with their lives.
In Wall’s case the so-called slur barely makes it over the bar of “in somewhat bad taste”. My sense is that he should simply tell the opposition to get over it and move on. Dragging it thorough the Courts just means it lingers.
From the article: “‘We feel we accurately portrayed the allegations made by the NDP, and that the tape was a matter of public interest,’ said Scott White, Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Press.”
Well there you have it. The Canadian Press dutifully discharged its responsibility to be the official mouth piece of the New Democratic Party. Nuff said.
I’m relieved he’s not complaining to one or other or several HRCs.
Perhaps the collective “knuckle draggers” could threaten a class action suit against CTV as well.
Unfortunately, and as sympathetic as I am to the unfairness and hypocrisy of it all, he’s letting the “enemy” choose the battlefield of faulty logic, smears, quoting out of context, guilt by association, etc.
By that I mean this: As long as people let themselves get dragged down into this “you-said-it-no-you-said-it-first” type of debate, they aren’t out there debating on the battlefield of ideas, where the war of ideologies must be waged.
Who would the aggrieved class of victims of defamation be?
====================
Members of the Conservative Party of Canada. That’s who the CTV idiot accused of being knuckledraggers.
Thank you Drained Brain. We agree on that and I certainly think it’s worth investigating whether a class action suit would be possible.
with all the damn politicians in court suing each other, who is running the show, the parlement cleaning lady?????????
I’m on board as to supporting a class action suit. It’s about time some of these so called journalists be brought to task. They need to be held accountable just like they are calling for Mr. Lukiwiski to be held accountable.
Why can’t we hold our news agencies to a certain standard? If we don’t they will stoop lower and lower.
Typical of the Wall gang mentality. “Blame the media”
Yeah, sure Brad……
From the article: “‘We feel we accurately portrayed the allegations made by the NDP, and that the tape was a matter of public interest,’ said Scott White, Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Press.”
Well there you have it. The Canadian Press dutifully discharged its responsibility to be the official mouth piece of the New Democratic Party. Nuff said.
Posted by: Louise at April 6, 2008 7:18 PM
If you read the criminal code they are trying to avoid hate charges. Problem is when does a frat party become public inerest when permission by the individuals did not give permission to avoid it being made public. Gotcha!!!
Does that cover it?
John West
Well if you think Lukiwski’s sentiments are just fine, then say it loud and say it proud. I know you do, but what about Harper and co. Are all Conservatives cowards as well as knuckle dragging troglodytes?