Lawrence Martin does not understand the difference between being a political moderate and a political partisan. Which might explain his endorsement of the Liberal Party of Canada as the party of non-partisanship:
The subject of media bias is a complex one in Canada because of the political culture. Normally a journalist is considered neutral or objective if he or she is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, reflecting neither the left- nor right-wing point of view.
But in Canada, the big mushy middle is the home of the Liberal Party, which has sought to locate itself in the mainstream and has profited over time from doing so. Therein lies the conundrum. If you’re a centrist, you can well be accused of having a Liberal bias.
I was going to comment on Martin’s article but there’s just so much fisk and so little time. Yours is a valid point. Another is that Martin seems indifferent to the specter of a partisan hack appearing as a supposedly neutral pollster on a programme by a supposedly neutral broadcaster.
‘If you’re a centrist, you can well be accused of having a Liberal bias.’
Oh, so pretty soon PMSH will be called out for having a Liberal bias? He’s pretty much in the center as that is the only way to get elected.
Larry is correct that the “Liberal Party …has profited”. Where’s the Adscam $40 million?
But for Larry to de facto admit that the Liberals stand for nothing and that they simply put their wet finger in the air to seek the wind direction is quite the confession.
It would be one thing if Larry said the Liberal wet finger was trying to reflect the values of the voters. But we know better, it’s a Trudeau finger. The Liberal elitists are seeking power to control our lives and using Frank Graves/EKOS/CBC to use culture wars to achieve that end.
The middle is not a virtue. The middle by definition is simply half way, that’s all , it means nothing. That’s what Larry inadvertently confessed, that the Liberals are meaningless.
The problem with this statement is that the political centre is moving further left every year.It will take a real gutsy government to reverse this trend.We need a Margaret Thatcher or a Ronald Reagan.Or maybe a Stalin or a Mao but on the political right.Someone like Trudeau was but on the political right.
spike 1 said: “We need a Margaret Thatcher or a Ronald Reagan.Or maybe a Stalin or a Mao but on the political right.Someone like Trudeau was but on the political right.”
Not how it works, spike. Ain’t nobody on a white charger going to come and save us from socialism.
What’s going to save us is -us-, grinding down the government a nickel at a time, a fired bureaucrat at a time. Every single time some local initiative comes to build a new ice rink or ball diamond at taxpayer expense, it gets voted down. Every time some councillor wants to raise property tax by one measly percent, he gets voted out.
White chargers with heros to deliver us from our chains are LIBERAL ideals. Conservatives break the chain by hitting it with a handy rock.
The Liberals are meaningless, they stand for nothing. That’s why they’re latching onto anything they think they can gain politically on, wafergate, Jaffergate, and the detainee issue they’ve created by hounding on it ad nauseum. This could be the issue that will inadvertently take them to the abyss. This PM will not release documents that will jeopardize the safety of the troops or anyone else involved in other nations.
What good will censored documents be to them when they have to remain secret? They’ll simply stand in the HOC and blow off about knowing something but can’t say what just to imply the Conservatives are somehow responsible for terrible deeds and their gotcha games go on.
An election is the only way to put them out to grass.
But in Canada, the big mushy middle is the home of the Liberal Party………
More from Lawrence “I’m not bias” Martin
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/michael-ignatieff-is-tacking-left-finally/article1542198/
WTF is it Lawrence.
Lawrence martin can’t even produce good quality sophistry.
The is a hell of a difference between small “l” liberak abd Big “L” LIBRANO. The difference is things like ADSCAM, “hidden agenda” ad nauseum.
Liz J has a valid point….the classified material cannot legally be referred to, even in the HOC… so what is the point unless it is to leak it. Or another “hidden agenda” straw man.
The premise of Martin’s statement is that journalists and media are supposed to be political. And that to be non biased your political bent must be centrist.
That is stupid. News agencies are dying a slow death because they don’t report information. They editorialize everything. Like the Mansbridge sigh that shows his disgust with conservatives. They are dying because they are political and can’t be trusted.
Lawrence Martin is truly a low life,scumbag,leftist POS.
He is quite literally the Canadian equivalent of the 1930’s New York Times reporter named Walter Duranty,in that during the cold war Lawrence Martin,stationed in Moscow,wrote bullshit stories in the Globe and Mail glorifying the Soviet Union and writing propaganda about how good life was over there.
If I ever saw Lawrence Martin in person I’d spit in his face!
If Martin states that the LPC is non partisan, the very least that should happen to him is to have his credibility vaporized in public.
Personally I think any scribbler this delusional should be committed to institutionalization and given shock treatment.
If I ever saw Lawrence Martin in person I’d spit in his face!
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Really? I think you can be prosecuted for that kind of thing, can’t you?
Liz the liberals are the Masters of Propoganda
they are currently on a scandal binge, they are trying to give the taxpayers the impression that they have cleaned up their act while also giving the impression the conservatives are a party of scandals.
you will notice that when Liberals talk about the Current Govt they try to make the point of Scandal after scandal after scandal many which dont amount to a hill of beans Other then the liberals have succeded creating a illusion in the publics eyes about the conservatives, Much like they pulled off back in 2004 when they created the Harper ‘tanks in the streets’ & ‘hidden adgenda’. And all this with the help of the MSM in Canada i might add.
When the Jaffer crap started the PM was quick to nip it in the butt, In order not to give them an edge. Also now the media is playing another twist as evident on last nites Power Play in the Fife/travers segment, They are saying was the PM to quick to remove guergas.
The wafer??
If I ever saw Lawrence Martin in person I’d spit in his face!
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Really? I think you can be prosecuted for that kind of thing, can’t you?
Posted by: David at April 29, 2010 1:06 PM
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Probably,but considering I don’t know what he looks like,and I don’t hang out amoungst Communists and other scum,there’s not much chance of me running into him.
Any other questions,Detective?
“But in Canada, the big mushy middle is the home of the Liberal Party…”
If that’s the case, then in the words of Kent Brockman:
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Democracy simply doesn’t work”
I think Lawrence Martin’s error is to assume a correlation where there is, in reality, none. He’s mixing up a linear spectrum with a majority perspective.
The ‘centre’ of a linear spectrum, as nomdeblog points out, has no relevance because it is in the centre of a linear viewpoint and thus is ‘neither here nor there’.
The basic ideology of a society DOES have relevance but its definition is not ‘in the middle of some kind of linear spectrum of left versus right’. The ideology of a society is the majority not the linear middle. There are two very different statistics.
Therefore this majority can be socialist or collectivist; or it can be individualist or conservative.
Martin’s error is to assume that the Liberal Party represents this basic substratum. It doesn’t. The Liberal Party, located in the East and the three big cities of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, represents 1950-60s Old Canada where the focus was only on Ontario-Quebec. The rest was irrelevant. This Liberal Party’s ideology is of Big State Govt that rules over Canada from the elite wisdom of the Ontario-Quebec perspective. This is no longer the majority of the population of Canada and is no longer the majority view.
The Liberal Party therefore represents a Canada, with its Big Govt Welfare State that no longer exists. That’s why the Liberals don’t come up with viable constructive policies but focus only on personal smears and Tabloid scandals.
I second Mr.G’s sentiment.
Could just pretent to spit just to see him running away sobbing about being “assaulted”, LOL.
Martin doesn’t seem to get, or doesn’t want to get, the issue of Graves and the CBC. Yes it’s true that pollsters do work for specific political pary’s, but they’re not supposed to then go on the public broadcaster without revealing that association. That’s dishonest. I suspect Larry knows.
Martin is a aging twerp. The point he misses is that reporters can be of any political bent they want – the key is that their reporting be based on all of the facts – not be filtered of facts that counter the reporter’s politics. The problem with much of the MSM is that they think their bias filtering is a public service.
Let’s ask the Non Partisan Party of Canada where the other 39 million stolen taxpayer dollars are?
Yep, theft is a ‘centrist’ Canadian value?
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
‘If you’re a centrist, you can well be accused of having a Liberal bias.’
Just because the Liberals have brainwashed Canadians since Trudeau and insist their view is middle of the road and objective does not make it so.
And it ain’t that reporting is less objective these days, just poorly done and self censored by socialist thinking.
I take issue with on the issue of neutrality or objectivity that Lawrence Martin seems to think that the CBC broadcasts. During the whole global warming debate (if you can say that CBC debates) I have looked for fair and balanced reporting. Do they not have one reporter who isn’t a Climate Change Lemming? Now I have learned that George Stroumboulopoulos of the Hour sits on the Board of Directors for the David Suzuki Foundation (http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about/board/). I guess there will only be the “settled science” viewpoint on that newscast
MSM-liberal-left bilge.
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“Be glad you don’t live in Calgary TheChronicleHerald.ca” [Halifax]
These 3w… links never work on my comp, can see it’s just to a cbc product, not worth the bother.
Many modern Liberals don’t seem so much moderate as expedient.
LibIffy = Kyoto Dionky, says Graves.
Graves/CBC’s bee-ess: “even as the leaders of both parties suffer from dismal approval ratings.”
…-
“Tories’ lead solid as Ignatieff slips: poll
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives continue to hold the edge over the Liberals among decided voters, a new poll suggests, even as the leaders of both parties suffer from dismal approval ratings.
The Tories garnered 31.9 per cent support in the survey to the Liberals’ 26.6 per cent. The New Democratic Party was at 17.6 per cent, the Greens at 10.9 per cent and the Bloc Québécois at 9.7 per cent.”
“Ignatieff’s approval sliding”
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/04/29/ekos-poll-april-29.html
Mr. Martin writes this — “Is it any surprise that the old liberal Canada did in fact have a liberal-biased media? The Canada of today does not have such a media.” Absolutely spot on Larry,because we all remember the monunental changes that the CBC has undertaken since the Liberals were last in power. F’er instance,Don Martin retired and was replaced by ultra right-winger Evan Solomon,and let’s see,well I can’t think of anything else ,but I’m sure things have changed drastically since 2006. (:-)
Lawrence Martin is clearly acting the cheerleader for his team.
No bias there at all….eh?
Nice try Martin… Since when is being a commie, marxist bullsh#t artist the mushy middle, or centrist… This sounds like Martin back-peddling for outing Gravy’s Libturd bias…Martin should stick to doing what he does best, writing glowing tributes to Jean (the boss) Cretin, and sucking back quarts of vodka with Jim Travesty at the TO red star.
Lawrence Martin doesn’t understand very much at all, if the truth be known.
Liberals support the the taxfunded murder of the unborn, the Khadr terrorist family, the terrorist Tamil Tigers, the disarming of the law abiding, the schooling of pre-teens in hetero/homo sexual techniques, the confiscation of hard earned wealth, the fraudulent science behind global warming, the Trudeaus, and the HRCs and Universities shutting up the Levants, Steyns, and Coulters of the world. And that’s just for starters.
Is anyone else laughing at Mr. Martins ignorance?
The problem is from Martin’s (and a goodly chunk of the media) prospective Liberals no doubt are middle-of-the-road and the soft center. If the political spectrum you are exposed to spans from Fabianists to Black Bloc Anarchists, then the Liberals are even on the right side of the spectrum.
Larry Martin is a poor specimen of a man, IMO. He has the look of a satisfied slug on good days and that of a petulant blob of grease on ‘off’ days.
Well said Marko!
“Lawrence Martin does not understand …” Enough said. Just stop there.
I think Jim Travers is the biggest laugh of all, as he desperately tries to prove the Tories are at least as corrupt as the Grits and way meaner:
Jaffer affair = Sponsorship Scandal
Detainee Issue = Somalia
Let’s see, two issues for which there is no criminality (yet) proved, equals issues where there was clear violation of the law.
Jaffer makes puffed up promise of $5 million government loans, and that is the same as the LPC stealing $20 – $40 million of taxpayers money, and not repaying one penny.
That’s how I define Liberal bias. I don’t care about Lawrence Martin’s watered down BS version.
If Canada wants to head to the right simply get the huge number of people not voting to vote.
People who feel Government should get out of their lives think that by not voting they lead by example.
Sorry but Martin is an a$$h@le! Plain and simple.