Roggio: Canadian Media On “Death Watch”

63 Replies to “Roggio: Canadian Media On “Death Watch””

1. um tony, my apology was not to you.

   But I can understand you being put off by the lynching remarks. Tokyo Rose only got 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

   Bill, good luck and thank you for your efforts. God bless you and all our brave soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

2. I believe it comes down to this:
   We are the soft underbelly of the Snake, and unique in that our identity angst invites a political correctness regime that affords the widest aperture for exploitation by skillful and determined opponents. Consequently, we are a desirable target of this malignancy that besets Islam called Wahibiism. There is no need to agonize over why we deserve… we don’t! simply, circumstances have conspired.
   This is the backdrop against which our press must play their bit. Some feckle elements in that press are sufficiently rewarded by the mere reflection of their power to shape public opinion, and thus affect history. Others in the press, probably a minority, operate on a deeper agenda.
   But this isn’t a social program or a spending line item in a budget. We’re talking about the very stability of our economy and the underpinnings of our society. The press is thus playing with fire. Let us suppose that their efforts to turn public opinion against our efforts in theatre succeed. In the end, they become beasts of burden of the ruling elite, and lose all power.
   It is time for member of the press to grasp what is really going on in this world, to dismiss their petty powerplays and see the larger drama that is unfolding – that without the sacrifice of those men and women for whom they wait in “Death Watch”, a society in which they have no real use will swallow them up.
   The perception of death watch could change. It could be perceived as a solemn duty, to be attended with reverence and dignity.
   Nevermind their fealty with propping up a larcenous, hypocritical regime in this country for decades; what really gets my ire is their craven attempt to use the fallen as though they are merely pawns in a debate that equates to such triviality as who is awarded a road or bridge building contract and other matters of urgent pork.
   It is their myopia that raises my ire – their inability to understand or accept the consequences of handing a victory to those that would extinguish us both. I find that inpenetrable.

3. I am just starting to consider — awfully late, really — the extent to which producers/editors are the real gatekeepers, and how reporters within a large organization cannot be seen, read or heard without their consent.
   Which brings me to CBC. Having taken so many shots at them, I feel duty-bound in the name of honesty to acknowledge what ol’ Schmidt said earlier in this thread: that tonight’s National was quite good. And that, not incidentally, it seemed like there was more reporter and less producer. The entire hour seemed less of a promo for GTA Liberalism, and more like a group of real Canadians from across the country had popped their heads out of the CBC cent (and their logo-ed paper suits) to address recent events in Missassauga.
   Christina Lawand’s story on Mark Bourque’s death, too, showed not only that certain reporterly personal integrities can be simultaneously national, unavoidable and important, but also reinforced that her take on Gomery, back when, was just as it appeared: an odd (prescient?) burst of integrity in a dominant, obsequious sub-culture. And Brian Stewart tonight showed a trademark and highly-welcome negative capability and wisdom and reserve — all quintessentially Canadian qualities — that was recently unfamiliar, and quite welcome.
   Could it be that the death-watch culture has reflected a producer’s culture that got pinned on reporters?

4. A number of comments rather late in the day of this thread. I’m not a night hawk, like so many others!
   tony: Yeah, the war in Afghanistan is a mess. What would you expect? An antiseptic operation, done and finished in the time it takes a sitcom to air over a season? Check out WWI and WWII. They were a bloody mess from start to finish, but rather necessary to safeguard and maintain democracy and freedom in the West. Had we not waged these wars, we would be, as shaken points out, “beasts of burden of the ruling elite, and [would have lost] all power.”
   The entitled and nihilistic members of the MSM seem to have lost all long-term perspective on what this war on terror is all about. Again, as shaken and others so presciently point out, “without the sacrifice of those men and women for whom [the press] wait in ‘Death Watch’, a society in which they have no real use will swallow them up.”
   It takes my breath away that the members of the MSM cannot see the magnitude of the threat we are up against: too much left-lib “education” and not enough reality, I guess.
   Re the CBC’s more or less balanced coverage last night: First, something to be grateful for and second, it might have something to do with the feedback they’re getting. I logged onto the letters section of their Web site last night, and except for a few “I’m so worried about a back lash towards the Muslims in Canada,” the vast majority were unequivocal in their condemnation of the fanatic Islamists and their call for Canadians to wake up and get serious about this threat to our safety, security, and democracy. Maybe, hopefully, the CBC will wake up to who actually pays for the butter on their bread.
   I’m with shaken, too, in his indignation at how the MSM have been using our military as a pawn in making petty, politically correct points and agree with Lorraine, that, yes, “the rise of radical extremism and hate against other countries could be instigated and fed by the news media.” I’ve thought this for years.
   The MSM agenda has been to undermine any value that they see as too bourgeois or “traditional,” such as being proud of our country and being willing to defend it for the posterity of our children and grandchildren. The MSM seem to have no concept of what it means to defend our democracy for those who will come after us. I sometimes wonder if any of them have families and children.
   To Bill Roggio: God bless you. Thank you for your reporting from the front, and for counterbalancing the largely negative reports we all too often are subject to in the Candadian media.

5. One more thing: Why can’t the CBC and others in the MSM acknowledge that war is Hell? Why can’t they, instead of using “war is Hell” as a pretext to cutting and running, and insisting that war is therefore “bad,” begin to show respect for and support of those brave men and women who are enduring Hell every day for their/ our sake? For the sake of freedom and democracy? For the sake of handing down a life of freedom to future generations?
   Maybe the arrests of the Islamist fanatics this past weekend will be a wakeup call for the MSM as well as all Canadians. If the CSIS building had been blown up, the blast would have taken a lot of CBC employees out as well. None of us are immune from this terrorist threat.

6. I too saw the National.
   Hooray, we’re all celebrating a balanced story! The CBC acknowlegded that a plan to kill thousands of innocent Canadians is an inherently bad thing!
   Kind of says it all doesn’t it.

7. June 6: D-Day plus 62.
   Mark
   Ottawa

8. Tuesday, June 06, 2006
   How’s That?
   What happens when you can’t talk at a party without anyone misunderstanding you? When you say something hilarious and people go, ‘huh?’ When there’s a world out there that only you can see. When maybe you re-up just to talk to someone. Is it you that’s going crazy? Or have you just woken up?
   Roger Simon reviews Pat Dollard’s film from Iraq, shot in large part by men who were there while they were.
   Try Pat Dollard – direct from Iraq. Pat explains what he’s doing:
   Welcome to the only thing sleazier than overbilling lawyers, overprescribing doctors shilling for pharamaceutical companies, greedy coporate executives, and used car salesmen: the American Journalist. Flawed and crooked and self-centered as the rest of us, but riding around on a high horse, pointing out everyone else’s sins, but ignoring their own. This is the last great industry-wide scandal left uncovered in America. Because of course, they’d have to cover it themselves. And none of them have the bravery to take their own inventory, to list their own pathologically self-centered faults. They’d rather just go after yours. mine and those who disagree with them politically.
   Do not miss this. (Warning: high raunch factor) (ht: Andrew Breitbart)
   … more
   http://www.fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/

9. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. …
   Dishonor (Michael Yon dispatch)
   Michael Yon Online Magazine ^ | Friday, June 2nd, 2006
   Posted on 06/05/2006 11:48:37 AM PDT by StarCMC
   A major new magazine has been launched in the US and Canada by one of the world’s largest magazine publishing empires. HFM is a French company that also publishes such well known periodicals as: American Photo, Boating, Car and Driver, Cycle World, ELLE, ELLE Decor, ELLEgirl, Flying, For Me, Home, Metropolitan Home, Popular Photography & Imaging, Premiere, Road & Track, Road & Track Road Gear, Road & Track Speed, Sound & Vision, Woman’s Day and Woman’s Day Special Interest Publications. Their latest magazine is called SHOCK. In the widely distributed press release announcing its upcoming debut, Mike Hammer, editor-in-chief, coined it as “the Life Magazine for the new millennium.”
   The people behind this magazine know well the draw of powerful images; they are banking on that power. Hammer has been quoted in numerous publications and websites saying:
   “Shock elicits a strong emotional response from consumers when they see these photos and read the stories behind them. Shock is filling a void for today’s consumer whose visual appetite has grown but has not been effectively served by other media properties. Shock provides a dazzling visual feast with attitude.”
   They are certainly filling voids with a lot of something, but there is little dazzling about how SHOCK used one of my most important photographs, without my knowledge or consent, as the centerpiece of the first course of that “visual feast with attitude.” The most prominent image on the cover is my photograph of Major Mark Bieger cradling a young Iraqi girl Farah, who was mortally wounded in an insurgent car bomb attack that brutally targeted a group of children who had run out to greet the soldiers on patrol. But smeared across the photograph was the sensational headline claiming: WAR IS STILL HELL! Jarring Proof that Iraq is the new Vietnam.
   The actual article connected to the cover is nothing more than a re-issuing of photographs from both wars, paired in sets that are supposed to “prove” how alike these conflicts are, and using my work might insinuate that this is my opinion.
   The circumstances captured in that image, including the key fact that I had taken the photograph, were easily ascertainable. In fact, I don’t know how any professional photo agency or magazine could reasonably claim to not know that it was my photograph, that it was taken immediately after an insurgent car bomber attacked the children, and that I had just emerged from a protracted dispute with the Army in order to protect the copyright. The reason I assert that the team behind SHOCK knew all this and still acted with clear intent is found on the inside cover of the issue.
   There, along with the Table of Contents, is a photograph of me, holding a framed copy of the photograph in question. That photograph was taken to accompany an article by Mitch Stacey for the Associated Press. The caption reads:
   Picture This: Amateur photographer Michael Yon captured history when he snagged our cover shot while reporting on the war for his blog. Could you be our next cover photographer? Send pics!
   And with that caption, no wonder some readers were angry with me. SHOCK implies that I supplied the photo and that I am somehow affiliated with that magazine. But HFM clearly did know that I was the photographer. When confronted, they claimed to have gotten the photo “legally” from a photo agency, Polaris Images, but I have no relationship with Polaris Images and never authorized them to distribute my work.
   When we confronted Polaris Images, they at first claimed they might have been given permission to sell the photograph by the wife of the soldier pictured in it. But the Major’s wife has a habit of saving emails that put an end to that nonsense. In the end, it doesn’t really matter outside of the courtroom who learned about it and when they were so enlightened, because once they did learn, the clock started ticking on their obligation to rectify the situation.
   That’s why when I learned of this blatant infringement of my copyright on that photograph, I issued an immediate statement clarifying that I had not given anyone authorization for this use, and never would have allowed an image which I’ve called ‘sacred to me’ to be used in a flagrant attempt to profit from discrediting and demonizing American soldiers. What outraged me the most is how the timing of this launch coincided with the Memorial Day weekend, putting 300,000 copies of a slick attack on the very same soldiers Americans were honoring across the country. I am so disgusted with what they did with that image, which to me symbolizes the true nature of our military, that I demanded the publisher take it off the shelves. …
   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643779/posts

10. This tribute is not from the MSM. This tribute is from the Internet; from our friends and allies in the United States.
    God Bless America. …
    “O Canada, we stand on guard for thee,” valor remembered, Juno Beach
    On June 6, 1944, some 21,000 Canadian troops led by its 3rd Infantry Division stormed Juno Beach at Normandy, while American and British forces struck at other main target beachheads. This year, after a long fund-raising and marketing effort led by a Juno Beach veteran, Garth Webb, now 84, the Canadian prime minister unveiled and opened the Juno Beach Centre overlooking the beach-landing zone that so many gallant Canadian warriors assaulted 59 years ago. This is Canada’s first D-Day memorial. As Canada’s neighbor, ally, and friend, we Americans should pause to salute her courageous sons who, like ours, died for freedom. Our photo gallery here tries to do that.
    June 8, 2003
    Sometimes, we Americans give our Canadian neighbors short shrift. We shouldn’t. They have been terrific neighbors. It is with that in mind that we were attracted to an AP headline we spotted yesterday: “First Canadian D-Day Memorial Inaugurated.” The article was done by Kim Housego, and originated from a place called Courseulles-sur-Mer, France.
    Ms. Housego began her article this way:
    “Grayed with age but standing proud, nearly 700 Canadian veterans who fought their way ashore in the D-Day offensive to free France from the Nazis returned 59 years later Friday to open the first Normandy memorial to their sacrifice.”
    As you might suspect, the description of Canadian veterans “standing proud” caused us to dig in deeper. We learned some things, one of which is they have every right to stand proud.
    http://www.talkingproud.us/Military060803.html

11. Kids in schools often lean against their desks, cross their arms, put their hands in their pockets, and slouch when Canada’s National Anthem begins.
    I won’t let them slouch through O Canada. I tell them that we are “standing on guard” for Canada, and that means standing straight and tall, with arms at our sides, being proud of our country. I don’t expect that half of them know what the heck I’m talking about (‘sad, isn’t it?), but I raise the standard anyway. I figure that if this idea of national pride goes into their “computers” it will be stored somewhere and maybe someday, they’ll understand what it’s all about.
    Every once in awhile, I’ll remind them that a soldier died that week for their freedom. If they don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s OK. If they think I’m an old bag, that’s OK. I figure they’ve got to start somewhere hearing someone talking about patriotism, pride, and courage.

12. Q .Whats the difference between a suicide bomber , and a Gitmo homebrew suicide.
    A.Innoscent people do not get killed .

13. Q. What is the difference between a suicide bomber and a Gitmo home brew suicide.
    A.Innoscent people don’t get killed.