My friends, watch out for the left-wing propagandist with an idea;
CBC Television has agreed to pull the movie Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story from all future scheduled broadcasts in response to criticisms it was historically inaccurate.
When the two-part miniseries ran in March, it received some good reviews but also criticisms from historians who said its portrayal of James Gardiner, premier of Saskatchewan in the late-1920s and mid-1930s, was inaccurate.
One example cited was the suggestion Gardiner drank alcohol, when in fact he was a teetotaller. In one scene, Gardiner berates miners in the 1931 Estevan coal strike in a broadcast to the province. However, historians say the speech never happened and Gardiner wasn’t premier during the strike.
On Monday, members of the Gardiner family received an e-mail from CBC Television’s executive vice-president Richard Stursberg.
“In response, we are pulling Prairie Giant from all scheduled broadcasts and we have halted both home and educational sales,” Stursberg said in the e-mail.
Now, may we please have our money back?
Update. I now have contents of the letter of apology;
Dear Mr. Gardiner and Ms. Gardiner,
On behalf of everyone at CBC Television, I regret the mischaracterization of James Garfield Gardiner in the mini-series `Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story’ that we aired earlier this season.
The criticisms that you and others expressed about the credibility of this portrayal concerned us greatly even as we came to its defence. To help us address the criticisms, we engaged an outside third-party historian with no ties to CBC, your family or the Douglas family to assess the way in which Mr. Gardiner was depicted. I regret to say that his conclusion was that the character created for the film does not reflect the accepted historical record-and that, as you well know, the characterization in the mini-series is significantly different from Mr. Gardiner’s true personality and behaviour.
In response, we are pulling `Prairie Giant’ from all scheduled broadcasts and we have halted both home and educational sales. Our hope is that we can find a solution that will address concerns regarding the characterization of Mr. Gardiner before resuming distribution.
All of us at CBC Television greatly regret the distress that this has caused, and thank you for drawing this to our attention.
Sincerely,
Richard Stursberg
Executive Vice-President
CBC Television
I think I’ll watch a lame Keifer Sutherland movie instead…
This reminds me of the fact-challenged hatchet job that CBS was going to air on President Reagan. When confronted, they folded.
This also speaks to the power of ordinary folks holding the MSM’s feet to the fire. These agenda driven lefty morons are so slow at the learning curve.
Before the internet, think of all of the print and televised garbage we were subjected to without instant fact-checking and organized outrage.
CBCpravda – terrorist update- just a new assignment – a successor!!! CBCpravda makes this sound legit.
Successor named for al-Zarqawi
Last Updated Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:03:27 EDT
CBC News
Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, an unknown militant, has been named to succeed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to an Islamic website.
“Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s council has agreed on Sheik Abu Hamza al-Muhajer to be the successor for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the leadership of the organization,” said a statement on the website that often posts messages for the insurgent group.
Few details about al-Muhajer have emerged. The statement described him as “a beloved brother with jihadi [holy war] experience and a strong footing in knowledge.”
Al-Zarqawi was killed last week when an Air Force F-16 dropped two 225-kilogram bombs on his hideout. He was the most wanted insurgent in Iraq and had a $25-million bounty on his head.
Blockbuster have been carrying this DVD and touting it in a prominent position (at least in Calgary).
I wrote to the Canadian head office today. Some more e-mails along these lines might be useful.
“Customer.ServiceCanada@blockbuster.com”
CBC has announced that it will no longer air this production, and that it is halting all retail and educational sales of the DVD.
I noticed yesterday that it is on the shelves of my local Blockbuster: Crowfoot Centre in Calgary.
Will Blockbuster be advising its stores to withdraw this DVD from their rental collection?
Typical left wingnut garbage from Pravda! When will the socialist hordes ever wake up?
Do you think if we found enough inaccuracies, that hero-worshipping Trudeau movie could get pulled too?
Maybe we can demmand some kind of affirmative action and force them to make one on Preston Manning….
Solve the real problem and shut down the CBC today
GM: Maybe they could just do a prequel on PET’s fascist youth advocating the violent separation of Quebec and opposing war against Hitler and Mussolini.
Mark
Ottawa
How sad that the CBC in order to spice up what was a boring story decided to defame an honourable man. Typical CBC…where was the checking of facts before production? Oh,I forgot this is CBC and truth is not relevant to them.
I met Mr Douglas on a few occasion over the years and found him to be a hard working man who did his best as he saw it to do a good job for the citizens of Sask. and Canada. The C.B.C. has also done Mr Douglas a diservice by trying to make him into someone he was not. The C.B.C.
has done so much damge to so many people so often they are a disgrace to all those who hold honesty in high regard. I’m an old guy who believes diversity in political life is a good thing. These producers make me sick
Reminds me of the slam on Canadian WW2 bomber crews, although they never did back down from this piece of fiction.
I wonder why they backed down this time?
But hasn’t the CBC pulled the movie and apologised?
I find it HILARIOUS that you right wing cult extremists are now HUGE defenders of Liberal Premier Jimmy Gardiner!!! Sheesh give me a break. Since when did you cultists start defending Liberals – Ahhh shucks anything to attach medcare, ‘eh!!? Excuse me… but your thinly disguised motives are showing)!!
Hey left dog…shouldn’t you be on the porch licking yourself? You are? Never mind.
Sorry Kate.
As far as the CBC goes; too little, too late.
@astards
todd,as much as I utterly detest what the CBC represents in this country,I agree.Is it not hypocritical to do to the CBC what we claim they have been doing to us for years?Should they not be recognised for at least taking some action to right a wrong?
So tell me – how do you work it out that some Liberal Premiers ARE good and other Liberal Premiers are BAD! What is your formula for determing which Liberals you like and which Liberals you hate? See, you cultists are so obvious in your political behaviours, it is NO surprise that this entire site is viewed by most bloggers as EXTREME and OUT TO LUNCH!!!
Hey lapdog, Back then Liberals were just liberals, not a bunch of NDP socialists/commies in disguise. Today I think Liberals of that era would be called conservatives.
Butcher said, “socialists/commies in disguise” … EXCUSE ME PEOPLE! Did no one tell you that the cold war ended in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down! You are all still fighting ‘communists’ …sheesh sounds like someone needs a poli sci 90 class – (that’s the one for ABSOLUTE beginners who know ZIP). “Socialists/commies , let me guess, I bet you also believe that planet earth is only 6,000 years of age and that Noah’s Ark is actually ‘history’. Unreal!!!
So what other program(s) has the CBC aired, turned out to be inaccurate? It certainly makes one wonder. So much for credibility.
I guess you troll if you can’t get people to come to your blog…
too bad all the rest of the commies did not quit/disappear with they did in eastern Europe.
You cannot call a movie a documentary if it is laced with fiction. The investors of the production wanted a documentary, CBC wanted a documentary. They were as embarrassed as the rest of us over how fictional the movie was.
Now they have their escape route and approval for spending dollars to correct the issues…
Did no one tell you that the cold war ended in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down!
Don’t think that message has penetrated academia, most of the the MSM, ANSWER, the Democratic Underground, Code Pink, all of those little Che t-shirt wearing moonbats, many Dems/Liberals, labor unions, Castro, Chavez, Putin, North Korea and socialism in general yet. But, thanks for the heads up.
Last spring and summer CBC’s news departments constantly peddled the fiction that Conservatives are dangerous to the country. Gee, what a surprise that they would spend large amounts of money on a union/lefty propaganda film, or that in an attempt to shoehorn the leftist view of the world into our “official” national narrative they would make stuff up outright and present it as Canadian history.
The commenters above who laud CBC for apologizing and withdrawing the film don’t seem to understand that there’s a difference between a factual error or two, for which an apology would suffice, and a colossal, teamworked undertaking that undertakes to present fiction as fact.
How much did this falsified “propadrama” cost Canadian taxpayers? And d’ya notice that on CBC the heroes always “dress left”?
Spot the other “Big Lie”* about the late Rev. Toomy Douglas.
BTW, Macleans magazine received over $4 million from tax dollars in direct subsidy in 2004-2005.
CBC pulls Tommy Douglas movie because of historical inaccuracy
Macleans, Canada – 1 hour ago
REGINA (CP) – The CBC has pulled a movie about the life of medicare founder Tommy Douglas from its broadcast schedule, citing historical inaccuracies in the … google
*”Big Lie”… Douglas was the “medicare founder”. Not. Ever. …-
MEDICARE! I want all of the money stolen from me in the guise of medicare BACK!
Hmmm… maybe time for a Reality Check feature by the CBC National on careless reporting.
What about Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine that seems to broadcast a couple times a month? (I thought they were all about Canadian content?)So many lies in that piece of work, in fact all his work, they quit calling them documentaries.
It’s a shame the Saskatchewan government didn’t build a shrine to Tommy, preserve his corpse, and put it on public display like Lenin and Trigger.
“Tommy’s Tomb” has a nice folksy ring to it.
We could at least get at him to put a stake thru his heart.
I agree with Penny (2.04pm).
The internet is changing MSM and mercifully the CBC to a small degree.
The CBC is and has been from its inception dominated by leftist ideology.
No longer can the CBC producers distort facts in documentaries as they as have been doing for decades.
The public is onto them, exposing their creative dishonesty.
The public broadcaster that exists by money extorted from Canadians by government has become nothing more than a vital Liberal government propaganda organ.
Eventually leftist governments were be able survive and even thrive while involved in malfeasance abetted by friendly information disseminator organs, as has become the CBC.
It;s time for Canadians to get free from the indignity of coercive taxation which feeds and keeps alive the public broadcaster.
Let them compete in a free market for survival.
When was the last time the CBC actually ran something historically accurate? Remember the hatchet job they did on our military involvement in WW II?
“Our hope is that we can find a solution that will address concerns regarding the characterization of Mr. Gardiner before resuming distribution.”
What does this mean? Smear and discredit the third party historian? Re-write history?
No doubt if the care homes are canvassed, they’d find a few CCFers that would swear they drank swish and played crib behind the Co-op with Jimmy Gardiner every Sunday after church.
The producer has defended the film:
“But DeWalt said Prairie Giant is a dramatization, not a documentary. Its fictionalization is stated in a disclaimer that accompanies the movie, he said.
“We feel we portrayed the times accurately. Did we have to take some creative licence? Absolutely. But we’ve been very clear on that,” DeWalt said.
Because the primary sources for information on Gardiner and Douglas were personal accounts, newspapers and transcripts from the provincial legislature, filmmakers had to find a way to dramatize the story, said DeWalt.”
So the Gardiner character is fiction. I wonder what other characters in the film have been fictionalized?
Mike
Penny, Joe and Oldie: Oldie’s post is another confirmation of the truth behind Penny and Joe’s statements in their posts. There was no internet when the inaccuracies regarding our military in WWII upset so many. Before internet it would have taken a lot more time, money, frustration etc. to have the apology and the Tommy Douglas movie pulled. Given my Canadian history is pathetic not having gone to school in Canada (my British history is not that good either)it is important that those who know the facts do use everything within their power, particularly internet, to correct the record. Anne
Leftdogs charge of extreme should be taken as a complement. Right and wrong are extreme opposites, like night and day. Those who want to keep people from discovering what is right and what is wrong have an interest in making sure we live in permanent greyness.
Hmmmmm a socialist propaganda medium with a politically motivated rewrite of the historical record….how uncommon 😉
Add this public funded pravad filme to the stack along with the hatchet job the McKenna Bros. did on Bomber harris and the Canadian forces, Bush, Regan, Thatcher and now the iconization of Canada’s wheatfield national socialist/eugenicist TC Douglas.
I am still sitting here laughing at all of you extreme right wing cult members DEFENDING A LIBERAL PREMIER!!! Come on folks – as I said yesterday, your phony motives are showing!! What other Liberal Premiers will you defend? McGuinty? Bourassa? Peterson…come on someone …please .. Oh and FREE, you want your ‘medicare money back’? I want all of my Conservative created GST money back – and since I live in Saskatchewan (where 16 Conservative MLA’s went to jail for FRAUD and THEFT, I want that money back too – Where is Brad Wall when you need him (?) on second thought … who needs him?
Defending truth and accuracy, not defending a specific person.
If you cannot see the difference, no one can help you.
What other cbc documentaries are out there that are full of errors. Makes one wonder about the all the articles and movies re the school abuse suffered by natives. Watching how the Caledonia episode is playing out, makes one suspicious of every so called wrong against them that native leaders have thrown out there over the years. The cbc moviemakers ignore the fact that there are thousands of cdns still living who were witnesses and lived thru the historical events. With the internet they can no longer get away with their lies. Many cdns tried very unsucessfully to tell the truth about PET, before he was elected leader of the liberals. The cbc and press and magazines of the day refused to publish letters or articles against him. The few talk radio programs of the day refused to accept callers against him. Now a new book comes out with the truth and everyone appears shocked. With their history of bias and lies, one waits with baited breath for the day they discover they have been wrong about Bush. The US msm drive-by-media has lost another attempt to get Bush. Karl Rowe is not going to be charged in the CIA leak. Message to all Canadians-if it is on CBC, against Harper-Bush-pro terrorist etc. beware, it is propably wrong.
leftdog:
Defending individuals based on their actions and record is not unusual for conservatives. Obviously, we are not extreme “cult” members. This is evident from the fact that we are defending someone…regardless of the party that they belonged to.
Also, you would be well advised to study some history…especially when it comes to liberals (both big “L” and small “l”).
Did you know, for example, that it was Laurier (a Liberal from the 1800’s to 1900’s) who first tried to get a free-trade agreement with the US – something that the Liberals of the 1980’s freaked out about.
You would also be well-advised to talk to older people who have been members of the Liberal party from the pre-Trudeau era – and/or members of the Democratic party from before the Hubert Humphrey era. I think you will find that they all agree that something in those parties drastically changed. With the Democrats, people seem to generally agree that the huge shift to the hard left began at the 1968 Democratic Convention when the party was taken over by the pro-hippie movement.
With the Liberals, no one seems sure – but it was evidently sometime during the Trudeau era. Talk to some old Liberals – I have. They will tell you that, “in the old days”, it was often said that NDPers were on the left, Conservatives were on the right, and Liberals were in the center. But, today, the Liberals have moved the goal posts so far to the left that no one knows where the center is anymore. But, it would seem that the modern Conservatives are closer to that position.
Only in Canada can a party (the Conservatives) that has the same policies on health care and abortion as the Socialist Party of France be called “extreme right-wing”.
And by the way, Trudeau was initially strongly against universal health care – you can look it up. That was the Liberal party of old. The new one is something far different.
bryceman it is indeed refreshing to finally hear from someone on this site with intelligence. I repeat my primary contention once again; the reason that this blogsite is so strongly defending Jimmy Gardiner is only because they see it as an opportunity to slam Douglas (and even more so – publically funded health care). Folks here are generally free market extremists who want healthcare to be a ‘commodity’ on the open market. I am merely calling them on the phony crocodile tears that are being shed for Liberal Premier Gardiner. Period.
Ok so do the rest of us get an appology from CBC for the fact that they presented a completely one sided and therefore very inaccurate portrayal?
TCD was no saint and no genius either.
OMMAG
I haven’t seen Prairie Nazi yet, but the fights that are described DID happen, only a little differently. Tommy had a big debate over Crown Corporations with Ross Thatcher in Mossbank in 1957. Tommy lost bad! Ross proved, beyond a doubt, that may of the crown corps. were complete failures being propped up by huge grants from the CCF government.
C.M. Fines, Tommy’s right hand man, stole millions of dollars and ran off to Bermuda with is secretary. He turned up a few years later in Florida for cancer treatment, where he died before he could be extradited back to Canada to stand trial.
Tommy also had a huge public fight in the 1970’s with none other than Ed Broadbent. Ed accused Tommy of “Waffling” to the “right” because Tommy apposed Ed’s plan to “Nationalize” all private property. Meaning the government would confiscate every one’s home and redistribute the property according to socialist philosophy.
Tommy went on to sit on the board of Husky Oil in the 1970’s. Many people felt his 8 year tenure as a director of that company was a form of payback for services rendered.
By the way leftdog, 18 people were tried, 16 PC’s and 2 NDP’s and 8 PC’s were convicted, 2 did time and both NDP’s were convicted.
One last thing leftdog, I have always liked Liberal Premiers, Saskatchewan best Premiers have all been Liberal.
Oh, and leftdog, don’t forget that Tommy was sued by a Liberal for lying and LOST. Tommy was certified a liar by the courts of Saskatchewan WHILE he was Premier.
You may now rant, scream and use profanity to try and rebut my comments, it is what I have come to expect from socialists…
Would the NDP government please do the honorable thing and pay for the the propaganda called “The Praire Giant” and reimburse the Saskatchewan taxpayers?
If they do not, I believe that a class action lawsuit should take place for the Saskatchewan taxpayers to recover their money. This is identical to the kickback scheme that the Federal Liberals used in the sponsorship scandal. The NDP gets free propaganda and the taxpayer pays for it. It is even been passed off as educational.
Failing a class action lawsuit, an inquiry should be struck determining the full government involvement in this production. I have been led to believe that our Premier spend a considerable amount of time on the set. How deep does the NDP involvement go on this one? Sounds like another Spudco to me.
Rob
All these negative comments against the CBC and yet they didn’t even produce the thing, they simply broadcasted it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439404/companycredits
Why not send a message to Minds Eye, the company that wrote and produced it?
http://www.mindseyepictures.com/contact.html