Sun Media has pulled its newspapers out of the Ontario Press Council, complaining about the “politically correct mentality” of the province’s print-media watchdog.Glenn Garnett, Sun Media’s vice-president of editorial, sent a letter to the council earlier this week saying that the company’s newspapers were withdrawing their membership, effective immediately.
“The editorial direction of our newspapers, especially our urban tabloids, is incompatible with a politically correct mentality that informs OPC thinking, in the selection of cases it hears, and the rulings it renders,” Garnett wrote.
Well done.
It's past time for push-back. Good on Sun Media.
I took the Probe and Fail to the Ontario Press Council back in the '80s and while I "lost" the case (hey, no surprise), at least my objections to the writer's/paper's bias was fully covered in the article that appeared in the Globe saying that I'd lost and the Globe had won.
Like the position of CBC Ombudsman, the members of the OPC are journalists and former media types who like to scratch each others' politically correct backs. The Press Council has little to do with media standards and taking the public's part concerning media bias and a lot to do with circling the wagons when the media is taken to task: all wagon, no horses!
It's like deja-vu all over again.
~Yogi Berra
http://tinyurl.com/66nkovr
The OPC got defunded basically in one swell foop.
"The press council has for years overseen 37 dailies, including 27 Sun Media newspapers such as the Toronto Sun, the Kingston Whig-Standard and the London Free Press."
After losing about 72% of it's members.....the OPC cannot claim to represent anything other than a hand-full of lefty rags.
Watch for the usual suspects protest that Sun has a monopoly on Canadian media....
Checking the OPC web site, it's interesting that they are only reporting membership as of 2009...
Reading some of the comments at the Star I came to the conclusion the want the government to control the news. As if it wasn't bad enough now.
Excellent news.
Cross post by me from "Gatekeepers" the other day:
"The OPC's Public Members [at the present web site]: 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."
As I opined, the OPC's a joke. It's great to see it cut down to size: it couldn't happen to a more deserving crew.
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;: Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all."
Score
Sun Media - 1
Ontario pres Council - 0
YES!!!!!
That's all fine and good until you get slimed by some journalist, Sun Media or otherwise, and there's no longer a press council. Press councils exist for those who can't afford the cost of a libel suit.
Hey Joe if ya get slimed ya can always suck up to the hrc.
Who's going to make sure they use fisher instead of fishman, now?
Just another Wheat Board, Human rights commission, bilingualism, type of liberal Turdo organization sucking money from the ever dwindling money pit. Good on Sun, like the other shakers of those old liberal money fruit trees, Gerry Ritz, Ezra Levant etc with enough shaking all the liberal nuts will fall to the ground where they will finally be exposed and nature will take its course. Only the strongest and the best survive in nature, there is no liberalism in reality, remember liberals started out as the hairdressers and cat domesticators, time they went back to what they are good at.
Lloyd Fister, you’ve been sleeping at the back of the class haven’t you?
Now, pay attention:
The OPC is there primarily for the press, not the public.
At its own discretion, the OPC turns down as many—or more—cases than it agrees to hear.
The OPC is stacked with lefties.
The OPC modus operandi, as I explained the other day, is illegitimate. Immediately after the hearing, the first order of business? They decide the verdict. Then, for the write up, which gets published, they cull only the evidence that suits their decision. Evidence that challenges it is ignored.
The OPC’s decision, made “in camera”, is final. There is no appeal process.
So, given the facts of the matter, your statement that “Press councils exist for those who can't afford the cost of a libel suit” is poppycock.
Further to Lookout's point above a scan of the former directors shows a high membership of political hacks, trough feeders and former pols who need to top up their pensions.
Here's to freedom of the press. Thank God for the internetand bloggers like Kate. Bell and the rest of the big telecoms are trying to bring us back under their control.
A quick skim of the complaints listed on the OPC website finds that no more than 25% or so of the complaints received involved a Sun Media paper, despite their accounting for 73% of the OPC's membership.
So in justifying their pull-out, looks like Sun Media's going the right-wing victimhood route (which, not coincidentally, is right up SDA's alley).
So, nothing is better than something? You get screwed by the Sun or any other paper, and you can just get a lawyer or just p*ss off? Yea, no chance the newspapers will indulge in even more sleaze, maybe bug a few phones, right?
I remember when times were not politically correct and life was simpler, easier and clearer. A lot less BS and a lot more accountability.
Bless the Sun for it's bravery and a special kudos to Ezra ... I think no one has worked harder in this cause than Ezra Levant. He has really put himself out there more than anyone else I can think of. With the great support from Mark Steyn, Five Feet, Kate here at SDA and many others some sanity may return to Canadian society.
Let's all get behind the Sun and push the hard, dry turds of political correctness and multiculturalism over the cliff.
Start by canceling your subscription with Bell media and don't watch CTV. Bell refuses to air Sun TV.
I wish Sun Media would start its own independent press council so we could launch formal complaints against the leftoids and greenie whackos . . . just to scruff up their reputations and make their lives miserable.
Go after Mallick & Strombostupidulous etc . .
Just because
going the right-wing victimhood route
Posted by: Davenport at July 16, 2011 10:37 AM
----------------------------
That is just about the funniest thing I've read in a long time. LOL!! Too rich!
This is how its done my friends. One does not attempt to reason with Lefties, one defeats them. OPC in this case is defeated by simply by refusing to be a member. Way to go Sun Media.
You can't reason with the Left, our trolls here are evidence enough of that. Not reasonable.
Might want to stop feeding them too. Just sayin'.
Lloyd Fister: "That's all fine and good until you get slimed by some journalist, Sun Media or otherwise, and there's no longer a press council. Press councils exist for those who can't afford the cost of a libel suit."
You're kidding, right?
Either that, or you haven't bothered to read the first-hand experiences of people, like lookout and me, who've taken the media to the OPC and have encountered the entrenched brick wall of the Ontario Press Council process. The whole process is rigged by the you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours-good-ol'-boy/gal media network and by the politically correct, leftist makeup of the Council.
The OPC has no one to blame but itself for Sun Media's departure from their in-house, no-appeal, gulag. The OPC balloon is losing air fast ... PHSSSSST ...
Too bad, so sad. Boo hoo.
'Interesting, isn’t it, that Davenport and Fister just don’t get it? One can lead a horse to water, but one can’t make it drink. Too bad for the horse!
Is there some way we can show our suport for this ? I think iti is great !!!
I also think it is funny that canada post has officially lost a good portion of it's users due to the strike ....the reasoning i herd was that people needed there mail so on and so forth so they stopped usuing canada post and have switched to online billing so on and so forth ..lol.
unintended consiquences ....i think so !! lol.
After reading the comments at the Star i applaud Sun News for withdrawing, it's clear the progressives don't want a Free Press they want a regulated socialists' complaint press.
Freedom of speech....as long as you say what we want to hear.
Come on everyone, I'm sure that the reason leftist papers won't say anything critical of Islam is that they are afraid of facing an OPC complaint. Right Davenport and Fisher? There's no more effective way of complaining than launching a free complaint to a watchdog agency, is there?
Good Grief. PLEASE don't pick on fister and davenport.Don't you all know that kids will be kids?And it is no suprise they support the OPC or whatever crap Morontario brings out.
Go Sun Media.
Sun Media has gotten my respect leavig this orginization of biased socialists.
It took some guts too telling them to take a hike.
Especially in the social Climate of PC & other lunicies.
Posted by: paul in calgary at July 16, 2011 11:23 AM
Paul has a good idea. Any idea of a way to show support for this decision and by so doing show our disgust with the OPC?
They worry about a photo showing a little bit more "ankle" of Kate Middelton, but the media coverage of that totally nude parade of Toronto cyclists -- in plain view of children and in violation of the law -- was acceptable.
That's what "political correctness" means -- censure the beautiful legs of a future princess, but it's acceptable to expose the public to a bunch of exhibitionists and perverts with their dicks flapping in the wind.
re fisher - fisherman
I picked my name a long time ago on a fishing and hunting blog, which I have since been banned from for my political take (the owner is very PC and frightened because of his professional dealings with the predatory MNR here in Ontario). My original name choice was meant to be a tribute to Red Fisher, the first on air fishing show host in Canada. For those of you who have never seen it, think CBC's "Forest Rangers" with a grown up Chubb, a 40 of CC and Bobby Hull guest hosting.
I am an ardent fisherman, hunter and libertarian, and didn't realize the politics of my name choice at the time.
I'm too obstinate to let a bunch of thoughtless yabbering leftarded seagulls like Chiffarobe and Floyd Lisper influence my online continuance, I refuse to play along.
Sorry for the somewhat OT narcissism.
Thank you Kate and Sun Media for pushing back at the de facto moral relativist, PC, socialist, death culture that has for far too long been dominant in Canada.
We are winning.
Lloyd @9;20, why do you trust a State body to be a good and benevolent master (don't give me any of that "arm's length" cr@p)? I'm sure it's lovely to have them on your side if they approve of you ideologically or if you are friends with or related to one of the highers-up. Otherwise what they do amounts to censorshutthehellup.
Capitalism may be unjust, but in a capitalist society money is, well, the currency. In a statist society influence is the currency. I know which I prefer. It's not like you're not in a good temporal position to scan and contrast recent historical examples.
And the News of the World is closed, dead, finita, yadda yadda. In this case the system worked. So phone-tapping is a poor argument just now with which to further your case.
I loved Ezra's riff on "accountability" and the alleged lack thereof in cancelling membership in a quasi-regulatory body made up of leftist trough-feeders.
It really fascinates me how little these people understand the free market which requires you to be accountable -- hourly, daily -- to your customers or go broke.
As the involuntary "client" of a securities commission, I make this point over and over again to blank faces.
So, nothing is better than something?
- Lloyd Fister
Speaking as a businessman over some 30 years and an unabashed libertarian, most times, YES. Moreover, after regulatory "reform" it's almost always the case that the new status quo will be worse than the status quo ante, often by orders of magnitude; and it's almost always the case that the BIG BASTARDS are stengthened and the little guy weakened, distracted and de-moralized.
Yes, Lloyd, "don't just do something, stand there, or even better take a nap".
A good example to follow for the government of Canada..... withdraw from the UN and from NATO.
Great idea, OMMAG. 'Couldn't agree with you more about withdrawal from the UN and NATO, the watchdogs of the world, only they've let the foxes guard the chicken house ... with more than a few Kalashnikovs.
That'll work ... uh huh.
Wonder how the girls over at the CRTC are feeling these days? With every passing day the internet makes their mandate increasingly irrelevant.
Nice to see the force of the marketplace take a few prisoners.
What's with the labels? Don't you know that "left wing" stands for completely unbiased, objective, fair-minded, righteous, true and purer than the driven snow???????????
What's with the labels? Don't you know that "left wing" stands for completely unbiased, objective, fair-minded, righteous, true and purer than the driven snow???????????
Posted by: jack at July 16, 2011 8:18 PM
Bring me a bucket...
:)
This is a move that is long overdue :)
What I would like to know, is that if Sun had 70+% of the membership, why they didn't have a say on who was on the council?
Would that not have been a better long-term solution - to take control of the council?
"I do not care to join an organization which would have someone like me as a member."
-- Groucho Marx refuses membership in the Beverly Hills Country Club