So what happened?

Bottom line is that the CBC and the Globe and Mail and the Liberal Party could not acknowledge that a Liberal candidate had been taken down by a weird coalition of lefty (Dawg), neutral, (Black Rod) and apparently righty (me, Kate, Kathy, Free Dominion and the rest of you scoundrels) bloggers. So they had to invent the idea that the CJC was driving the action.
Kids, the CJC found out about Ms. Hughes because the Lying Jackal smelt death in the air. Left to their own devices those fearless Nazi hunters would not have found Hughes. Ever. The Jackal earned his keep.

The CBC and the Globe and Mail hate being killed on a story. They were killed here even though a Globe and Mail reporter had called the Hughes HQ before I did. Making the best of a bad situation they have thrown the credit to the CJC….tough nuggies Dawg and Black Rod. At least you made it into the Post.

What the Hughes story is actually about is laziness. A lazy Liberal Party which cannot be bothered to vet its candidates and a lazy national media which cannot do the most basic invesitgation.

Or acknowledge their sources.

Give Vince Carlin his due;

Review of complaints about Heather Mallick’s column of September 5, 2008
This office received about three hundred complaints concerning a column by Heather Mallick entitled “A Mighty Wind Blows Through the Republican Convention” (CBCNews.ca, September 5, 2008).
[skip to end…]
Policy calls for opinions to be based on fact. Ms. Mallick’s item generally stays in the opinion column but she does offer some flat statements that appear to offer “facts” without any backup. For instance, there is no factual basis for a broad scale conclusion about the sexual adequacy of Republican men. In fact, that type of comment, applied to any other group, would easily be seen as, at best, puerile. Similarly, the characterization of Palin supporters as white trash lacks a factual basis. I asked Ms. Mallick to explain the basis for these characterizations. In a note she explained her opinions of Ms. Palin, but did not provide a factual justification for the statements.
Ms. Mallick is free to draw her own conclusions about Ms. Palin’s appearance, as irrelevant as that might be to her worth as a public official, but a similar sortie against one of her children is, at best, in poor taste. Had Ms. Mallick’s article been labeled “satire,” there might have been scope for such descriptions and conclusions—they have a certain cartoonish tinge—but even the best and most pointed editorial cartoonists have, at some point, run afoul of sensible editorial authority. There is a significant difference between censorship and appropriate editorial oversight. CBC journalists are required to exercise appropriate oversight over material that appears on CBC outlets. Ms. Mallick is entitled to her opinions, and those opinions should not be censored, but those opinions must also be expressed in a manner that meets our Journalistic Standards and Practices. Liberty is not the same as license.
[…]
But there is another significant aspect to our policy. As mentioned, it calls on CBC outlets to touch on the widest range of views possible. On CBCNews.ca, there does not appear to be a wide range of “pointy” views. For instance, many of those who complained claimed that there is no one of an opposite ideological viewpoint readily apparent on the service. Unfortunately, this appears to be true. As I observed in an earlier review concerning CBC Newsworld programming, the CBC should not necessarily avoid having people of strong views on the air, but we must ensure that people of differing views are given a fair opportunity.
[…]
CONCLUSION:
Portions of Ms. Mallick’s column do not meet the standards set out in policy for a point-of-view piece since some of her “facts” are unsupportable.
[…]
Vince Carlin
CBC Ombudsman

“This was not Mr. MacDonald’s finest work….” (PDF)
h/t Jim O.