Shortly after the Sun Media group of newspapers announced this week that it is pulling out of the “media watchdog” known as the Ontario Press Council (“representing the collective opinion of a newspaper’s conduct shared by people from a broad cross-section of Ontario society and from the newspaper field“), Toronto-based Jeffrey Dvorkin, first Executive Director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, rued the decision, saying “there’s now no mechanism in place for any kind of public accountability with Sun media. It’s really too bad.”
“Accountability” is a noble-sounding word, but it starts to mean something else when ombudsmen who appoint themselves as the arbiters of journalistic accountability are doing so in political terms. The high-minded Dvorkin, for example, who isn’t a member of the OPC but is the first Executive Director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, certainly seems to hold views about “media conduct” that are in some manner political; in this post on his blog, for example, titled “Fox News North: Looks Can Deceive“, he refers to Ezra Levant’s “rants”, and writes:
His approach is far to the right while devoid of serious analysis….Anti-CBC criticism will be easy to ignore when lumped together with Levant’s sophomoric tirades…but the CBC shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet on the belief that the threat has passed.
Freedom of expression and freedom from outside interference is surely more important than the “standards” of self-appointed outside overlords. The Sun chain of newspapers’ decision not to voluntarily grant journalistic oversight to the OPC is “too bad”, but not for the Sun chain or its readers.
Member of the Communist Party, no doubt.
Well isn’t this interesting. Just over a week ago I sent an email to the Sun asking why they continue to have this piece up online.
http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/07/04/brad-pitt-vs-prince-william
I said that the author is lying.
Conformation of this is in the audio. http://www.canadian-republic.ca/av/CKNW_7-1-2011.mp3
I said there should be a correction at least.
I sent another email on Monday saying I had not heard anything from them and would go to the Ontario Press Council. Now I’m positive the two things are not related but it was interesting to see. There has to be some sort of accountability, does there not? If The Sun won’t respond who can I go to?
On a less serious but somewhat parallel note, it’s interesting to watch what happens if a business decides to pull out of the local community’s Tourism Association. According to the latter you’d think that the business is absolutely destined to failure. Not usually.
In the future, perhaps Sun News will strive to setup a new oversight council, one that is not beholden to Leftard Politically Correct viewpoints.
“If The Sun won’t respond who can I go to?”
Somewhere with more clout and wider exposure than the Ontario Press Council, comment sections & blogs. As you are.
There has to be some sort of accountability, does there not? If The Sun won’t respond who can I go to?
You have more opportunity than ever before in human history to communicate your story.
You’ve just demonstrated that.
You don’t need no stinkin’ council.
Jeff !!!!!!!!!!!! ask your mummy.
…but the CBC shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet on the belief that the threat has past.
(Or maybe “the threat has passed“.)
A bit pedantic of me, no doubt, but I have to chuckle that Mr Dvorkin loves “standards” when it comes to the political slant of reporting, but can’t manage to meet basic standards of English composition.
[Ugh – 6 a.m. brain. Not pedantic at all. Thanks. — EBD]
Actung: you will assimilate or else. We are the tolerant ones, as long as your thoughts and speech conforms with ours we will not drag you through years of Turdo’s human rights thought police kangaroo coourts. If you deviate we will have no mercy. Like prayer in schools we here in the intelliduncia know what kind of prayer is acceptable!
Speaking as a regular guy in his early middle age, I can honestly say that I’d not notice either way if the CBC or CPost ceased to exist. I do understand intellectually that the economy depends on mail service (somewhat) but I suspect we’d survive none the less. I see no need for physical invoicing for example.
Anyways, I’m not trying to be political, but I suspect that most folks my age and younger wouldn’t even notice if both these entities disappeared tomorrow.
The Conservatives should be aware of this, and use it as leverage against the opposition. PMSH could run on these things if he promised to spend $$ in other places to sweeten the pot for those aforementioned folks that vote Left.
The professor says he watched Ezra – I doubt he did. The vast majority of those who say they have watched fox/oreilly/hannity/beck and dislike them have not any more than I have watched Question Period more than a few minutes by mistake – IOW I wasn’t in control of the remote.
Uh Jeff?
Regardless of what you might think, an opinion article wouldn’t be subject to the OPC anyways. You ask about accountability – use the only accountability that matters, don’t consume the product if you don’t like it. Vote with your feet. If there were true accountability with the OPC, then Heather Mallick and Lawrence Martin would be cited and censured on a regular basis.
Further to Oxygentax’s point, newspapers and broadcasters are held accountable by advertisers. Piss off the ad men, no ads, no money. This is simple enough even for someone in the Ontario Press Council to understand. That is, unless they work for the CBC, who get money no matter if they sell any ads or not.
“…is a professor of Journalism at Ryerson University”
The laddy doth profess too much, methinks.
“there’s now no mechanism in place for any kind of public accountability with Sun media. It’s really too bad.”
There is; it’s called customers (both readers and advertisers) and the courts. But then Dvorkin wouldn’t understand such concepts.
The Ontario Press Council is a joke. It’s there to bolster the press, not the citizen. As a pro-lifer, I took a few cases many moons ago. In the last one I bothered with, in the “in camera” hearing, I won the case, hands down. But the verdict, arrived at by the council, after I and my newspaper protagonist had left the room, was the opposite of what had actually happened. The OPC write up of the case, published in the newspaper I’d challenged, left out all of my arguments!
The OPC chairman was a very nice man and when I contacted him to find out what the heck had happened, he admitted that the verdict happened this way: after I’d left the room, the OPC came to its verdict right away—it decided I’d “lost”. With that out of the way, the OPC then culled, from the testimonies, the arguments that supported its decision. ’Neat, eh? That, of course, explained why my arguments had entirely disappeared by the time the case was written up in the paper. (’Very embarrassing.) I wrote off the OPC as a bad joke at that point.
BRAVO Sun Media for thumbing its nose at this anachronism.
“there’s now no mechanism in place for any kind of public accountability with Sun media. It’s really too bad.”
Actually, there’s the best kind of public accountability there is: the right of the public not to watch.
If Sun TV does something worthy of finger wagging or needs to be brought to account, the public does that with their eyes. Something the CBC doesn’t need to fear.
There is no place in a free Society for Press Councils that are not voluntary
The CBC is not threatened by the freedom of the Press, nobody is challenging thier right to expression.. They just don’t deserve taxpayer’s money for thier Communist agenda…
BTW: The CBC hypocrites first Film Clip (Video) on Tuesday covering the UN drought disaster in Africa clearly identified “USA”, in large letters, on the bags of food (grain) been provided to the victims.. Every replay since has masked the USA label.. Typical Assholes
Sniveling “If they won’t respond what do I do”, first change your diaper then write a letter to the editor. Honestly that remark is indicative of why those self regulating arseholes are nothing more than a cabul of PCed arseholes.
Robert Elgie, the chairman of the Ontario Press Council, is quoted as saying:
“It’s too early to tell what impact the pullout will have on the press council’s finances. We’ve been through a pretty vigorous cost control and cost reduction process for the past year and we’ll have to evaluate what the situation is once we get everything, all the numbers put together…I hope it won’t have an impact, because I think we play an important role on behalf of the public and the press.”
I don’t know, but it sure sounds like the Sun chain in Ontario was *paying* for the privilege of having the OPC evaluate the acceptability of their reporting.
Also interesting:
“Quebecor spokesman Serge Sasseville said the company has been brought before the (Ontario Press Council) for taking certain angles on stories, not for violating codes of conduct.” (emph. mine)
“It has become a platform for people who want to settle a political score.”
Shocka!
“Accountability” mean censorship. Jeffrey Dvorkin, go p*ss up a rope.
(Indy, 35 is not “early middle age”. Don’t say things like that and drive me to the Kosher heroin.)
The OPC represents 37 newspapers, 27 of which belong to SUN!
Obviously these idiots didn’t know “which side their bread was buttered on”. Or another way of putting it, “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”.
A handful of politically incestuous Lefties decide they are going to impose their political censorship regime on yet another business, and they actually have the audacity to act surprised when the business says “enough!” and pulls out?
The OPC may as well fold — they only have 10 newspapers left in Ontario that they can bully now.
The OPC’s Public Members are pretty much left wing.
Of the nine members I’ve just checked out, it seems that eight are reliably “progressive”: an NDP insider, a retired CUPE executive, a Teachers’ Union executive, an ex Liberal MP, two social workers, a co-ordinator of a family violence prevention program, and a co-ordinator of education programs for Canada’s judiciary. One doesn’t get very far in those fields of endeavour unless one is reliably pro-feminist and, these days, pro-gay-activist-agenda as well. (The ninth member may also be a lefty, but there’s not enough information to tell.)
I think Sun Media has made a very wise decision. These left-wing types control just about every regulatory agency going. If one can avoid being subject to their hypocrisy and “nannyism”, all the better.
don’t like it? don’t watch it/read it. simple. (cheaper too)
“I think we play an important role on behalf of the public and the press”
Is there anything more pathetic than pompous, self-important fools issuing silly little statements such as this?
In his own mind, Elgie undoubtedly believes that his organization serves a useful purpose. I don’t know whether he deserves ridicule or pity but he certainly deserves to be ignored.
Good.
Prediction: by 2020 Sun Media will be the only firm still printing newspapers in Ontario (or for that matter most of the rest of Canada). The Globe and the Canwest papers that don’t fold will fall back on their websites, where they will be reduced to recycling wire reports and linking to six-month-old cat videos, and fade into neglect, insignificance, and irrelevance even on what little remains by then of the fashionable left.
Meanwhile, investigative journalism will have never been healthier in Canada. Kate McMillan, Kathy Shaidle, Arnie Lemaire and many other like-minded bloggers will finally get the recognition for speaking real truth to power and the full-time opportunities in journalism and punditry they’ve deserved for years.
By 2020 Kathy may even have replaced Warren Kinsella in Sun Media’s lineup of pundits. And not a moment too soon.
Further to Lookout’s research as to who is amongst the OPC’s public members, I went to the Organization of News Ombudsman website to contact Jeffery Dvorkin (see my response to him below.)
http://newsombudsmen.org/contact-us
Lo and behold, it says the website is “Supported by the Open Learning Institute”, which as many of you know, is the flagship of George Soros. Nuff said.
———————————-
Dear Mr. Dvorkin;
According to the web site ‘Small Dead Animals’ you are quoted as saying in regard to Sun News Network and Ezra Levant:
“His approach is far to the right while devoid of serious analysis….Anti-CBC criticism will be easy to ignore when lumped together with Levant’s sophomoric tirades…but the CBC shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet on the belief that the threat has passed.”
As an ombudsman (ombudsperson?) should you be taking such an approach? After all your opinion, like most, is entirely subjective. I would disagree that his ‘approach’ is far to the right, but rather pragmatic. And by judging his style to be ‘sophomoric’, you imply that by extension, you and your cadre are more sophisticated that the naive, simple plebes who enjoy his program.
And why as an ombudsman, do you perceive Sun to be a ‘threat’ to our national broadcaster – that receipient of more than #1 billion tax dollars annually – the CBC? Where is the open minded liberal attitude of divergent opinion and open debate that a true ombudsman should encourage?
I note that at the bottom of this page it says that your organization is “Supported by the Open Society Institute”, the foundational organization of George Soros. This tells me all I need to know about the impartiality of the Organization of News Ombudsmen and a full understanding of why Sun News Media would wisely distance itself from you.
I also noted this tidbit under the ‘About’ section of the ONO website.
What is a news ombudsman?
A news ombudsman receives and investigates complaints from newspaper readers or listeners or viewers of radio and television stations about accuracy, fairness, balance and good taste in news coverage. He or she recommends appropriate remedies or responses to correct or clarify news reports.
Yup, being a recipient of ‘support’ (read: dollars) from the Soros Open Society Foundation, we can certainly rely on them to receive, report on and adjudiate ‘complaints’ in a critical and unbiased fashion. Surely the CBC will be treated in EXACTLY the same fashion as Sun.
These guys will most certainly be networked with other Soros organizations (including Avazz) in order to solicit complaints in order to both discredit Sun and to provide themselves with a raison d’etre.
Thanks for that, lookout (4:03). I’m not surprised; it’s always progressive types who claim to be unbiased, and then step forward to putatively act for the good of everyone else. The rest of us know that, just as there there’s no such thing as a completely unbiased news organization, those groups and associations who wish to set journalistic standards for others aren’t politically unbiased.
No Guff (5:01), just to be clear, Jeffrey Dvorkin isn’t with the Ontario Press Council, he’s the first Executive Director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen. My point was simply that the Poobahs of organizations with a self-appointed mandate to set standards for media organizations about what constitutes appropriate “media conduct” may well be evaluating their, erm, subjects through a partisan lens, and aren’t necessarily as ‘noble and pure’ as they claim to be in their mandate/mission statement.
As far as I’m concerned its like they finaly left the Mob.
Good letter, No Guff.
EBD, I recognize that Dvorkin is with the Organization of News Ombudsmen – and being a lefty group I’m amazed that it’s not the PC Ombudspersons – and in review of my previous posts, I think I made that clear.
While slightly off the original Ontario Press Council topic, I was referencing Dvorkin’s unnecessary and ill conceived attack on Ezra Levant and how it laid bare his (Dvorkins)obvious contempt for impartiality and fairness – both of which of which should be hallmarks for one who labels himself as an ‘ombudsman’ or arbitrator.
Just received the following response from Jeffery Dvorkin regarding the letter posted to him earlier by myself.
I would only add two points regarding his response.
1. He who pays the piper…… and
2. You’re known by the company you keep.
Lefty minded organizations always tend to minimize or dismiss their associations with Soros, the Tides Foundation etc. It’s almost like they’re, ummmm, embarresed about it.
___________________________________________
Dear Mr. Xxxx
Thanks for your note. I’m not sure that the website was entirely accurate in quoting me, but I’ll take it as in the ballpark.
For the record, I am not an ombudsman any longer, but I remain involved with ONO. My own blog http://www.nowthedetails.blogspot.com is about media
and media ethics in general and it was there that I was commenting on the tone that Mr. Levant takes in his criticisms of the CBC. Mr. Levant
of course, has the right to his opinions.
OSI does support some of what ONO does (revamping the website and paying for translation of columns,etc.) , but it has no say in what our organization or its individual members may do, say or write.
Most of ONO’s funding comes from dues paid by its members.
Regards,
Jeffrey Dvorkin
Executive Director
Organization of News Ombudsmen
775 Manning Avenue
Toronto, ON M6G 2W7 Canada
tel/fax: 416-537-2892
mobile: 647-401-5330
jdvorkin@newsombudsmen.org
http://www.newsombudsmen.org
Judging from the pages linked at Jeff Dvorkin’s nowthedetails blog, my impression is that when it comes to public broadcasting, he’s a lot more interested in the ‘public’ part than the ‘broadcasting’.
Lefties like things ‘public’ because it means they rely on the state rather than the literal public for their income. They only have to convince a bureaucrat or two once every few years instead of having to provide something of value to customers each and every day.
One story on nowthedetails, dated June 13, was titled “In Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, who controls the media?”
Quote: “Media and civic society in the region are making valiant efforts to emerge from a journalistic culture which has been deeply intimidated and deformed – first by decades of Soviet repression and now by a rampant commercialism. The urge to move into a better, more democratic place, is there, but how?”
Note the attempted moral equivalence between socialist repression and capitalist freedom, smeared as “commercialism”. The unspoken idea, the predominant one that underlies the left’s entire focus on “public services” provided by government as well as their dislike for the free market, is that trading for something is bad while getting a freebie is good. This is the evil of altruism, and it goes back to the false and malevolent philosophies of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel, at least.
And note the standard leftist misuse of “democracy”. A democracy is a country in which government representatives are elected by the people. The media are not supposed to be controlled by the people through government, they’re suppose to be controlled by the people through the marketplace — in which the consumer can vote with his dollars every minute of every day, instead of having one vote lost among millions every four or five years.
Another story, dated June 17, is titled, “CBC: ‘Value for Money’ = Deepening Commercial Values”
This story refers to the recent study for the CBC that pegged its value to the Canadian economy at $3.7-billion. However, this figure is arrived at by including every spinoff transaction made by everyone who has anything to do with the CBC. The same stunt is regularly pulled by the arts community, who like to claim their economic impact is something like eight times the dollar value. What they don’t tell you is that if the analysis were performed on a regular business, the benefits would amount to forty or fifty times its economic value.
On occasion the leftists claim that people on welfare have this kind of economic impact too. But if everybody in the country went on welfare, we wouldn’t have two or three times the GDP, we’d have zero times it.
Anyway, back to Dvorkin, the CBC and the alleged economic analysis:
“The problem with the study is that it presumes that the values of the commercial sector now apply completely to the public broadcaster as well.”
“This puts the CBC on very perilous ground. By establishing commercial benchmarks against which it will henceforth be judged, the CBC must now prove itself to be an undoubted commercial success. And that can only mean more programming that imitates the commercial sector and fewer programs that don’t.”
The problem with this anti-commercial attitude is that it would let the CBC do anything it wants with its billion and not be accountable or have to provide any kind of programming that is useful to anyone. In other words, it’s a recipe for a waste of resources.
It’s true that there are works of art out there like movies and music that are extremely good but almost unknown, while there are over-exposed and popular works that are mediocre. But that doesn’t provide an excuse for raising taxes to support a public broadcaster, it only shows that we need columnists and/or intellectuals to explain why they think the public is sometimes wrong in its artistic choices. And they too belong in the marketplace of ideas.
The false underlying notion behind this leftist pro-“public”, anti-commercial attitude is that government is perfect and a perfecting agent in society, rather than a necessary institution that has a monopoly on coercion to deal with people when they get out of line. I need hardly bother to demonstrate how ridiculous this is, as anyone who has dealt with the bureaucracies can probably attest. It too derives from the aforementioned bad philosophy, particularly that of Hegel.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
*GASP
HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHA
Blazing a trail for others to follow.
Awesome.
I hope Ezra eats them up.
Is it the “Open Learning Institute” or the “Open Society Foundation” or does Soros fund both?