As reported on CTV Newsnet. Yes, that means that a “seal rotting on beach” story has now gone international.
Seriously? I hope it was clubbed.

*

Victory is rewritten by the media.
Update: typo corrected.

Rewritton?
Posted by: ulianov at March 25, 2008 10:32 AM
Typo. Should be rewrotten.
Posted by: Richard Ball at March 25, 2008 10:40 AM

Well, my secret is out – my sniper vision ain’t what it used to be.
So, here’s the deal. If every person who reads this page would just drop $20 in my tip jar, I could buy myself glasses.
Plus, a new Dodge Ram 1500.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune would like to exploit your misfortune to further their anti-military agenda under the guise of “news” journalism.
If, on the other hand, you’re a media consumer who considers the Star-Tribune’s actions to be dishonest and intellectually insulting, you can contact reporter Pam Louwagie at 612-673-7102 or e-mail plouwagie@startribune.com.

I recall a CBC Sunday Edition interview with Michael Enright in which Enright opined that in the wake of 9/11, American paranoia had become so deep and irrational that he had relatives in Montana who feared terrorist attacks.
Hitchens countered that he should ask the people of Beslan about that.
Answering the question How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? Christopher Hitchens is a rare bird – a lefty with historical memory;

We were never, if we are honest with ourselves, “lied into war.” We became steadily more aware that the option was continued collusion with Saddam Hussein or a decision to have done with him. The president’s speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, laying out the considered case that it was time to face the Iraqi tyrant, too, with this choice, was easily the best speech of his two-term tenure and by far the most misunderstood.

Read it all.

The Canadian Press is not making this up;

Within the diverse crowd of different ethnicities and ages was father and son Kevin Barrett and six-year-old Caleb, who had to be convinced that nothing was wrong, even though a phalanx of police officers stood by ominously looking like they were ready to pounce.

Oh, that left wing media.

Caught between a blank page and a deadline…

Hey, Don… what about a five part series… on non-existent grenades, lasers, or hey… photon torpedoes?

“In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube.” – Ayn Rand

Yaacov Ben Moshe;

Fairness and its often silent partner “evenhandedness” are the fulcrum by which the media’s good intentions are flipped into the upside-down world of moral relativism and political correctness. The media’s job is not to find the mid-point of competing political agendas, but to report the news regardless of how that plays out for or against any particular group’s interests. In the name of “fairness” our media too often aim for a sort of “average” position between opposing groups. Whether those opposing groups are political parties, cultures that are competing for survival or warring armies, the “mid point” between them is seldom anything but a barren no man’s land. The sort of fairness that we find routinely in the media is, at best a morally blind position based on reporting both sides equally credibly and credulously. The reason that no one seems to be satisfied that we are not getting fair and honest representations of events is, simply, that we are not.
This tautology of universal offense is one of the hand-maidens to the most dangerous public delusion in Western Civilization: moral relativism, which holds that no set of values or opinion or culture is superior to any other. This radical variant of multiculturalism, which refuses to judge other cultures by our own (or any) standards, dominates much of the media and academia.
It seems safe to say that in all of human history there has never been a conflict in which both parties were exactly as right (or good – or nice) as the other. In truth, the morally neutral approach actively undermines the side with the most moral clarity and confers an unfair advantage on any side that is less democratic, ethical and open. So why is the media intent on making believe that all causes are equal?

REWARD
Lost: One puppy, answers to the name “Voters’ Desire For Change”
Where: Alberta
When: Election Night, Monday, March 3, shortly after 8 p.m., Mountain Standard Time
Owners: Canadian Media Punditocracy

Ward’s comment-turned-post gets a shout out today in the Toronto Sun, in this
Lorrie Goldstein column.

It’s a toss-up;

There was a piece that was supposed to be about the Conservatives extending the amnesty on rifles and shotguns… you know… the Liberals infamous and totally ineffectual 2 billion dollar “Farmer Bob Rifle Registry.”
In the midst of a slow montage of various pictures of rifles and shotguns sitting in racks… CTV suddenly cuts to a jarring clip of a man firing an MP5 submachinegun… a restricted weapon used primarily by SWAT Teams around the world.

Which appears to be the original intent of the Las Vegas Sun;

Correction (March 4, 2008): The following story had several reporting and editing problems as well as some factual errors. The premise of the story was that even affluent and normally peaceful Summerlin, where a Palo Verde High School student was shot to death by another youth while walking home from school, was not immune from the crime that occurs in other parts of the Las Vegas Valley.
The story quoted two of many racist-tinged comments from a Web site to support the thesis that some people in Summerlin held racist views. (The victim, who lived in Summerlin and did not know his assailant, was white; the alleged shooter, who did not live in Summerlin, was black.) The problem was that the quotes were anonymous and, because of the way the Web works, could have come from anywhere in the world. Although some people in Summerlin may hold racist views, these quotes, because of the lack of identity of the writers, in no way proved that possibility.
It is the Sun’s policy not to run anonymous letters to the editor and in the future the Sun will not run anonymous comments from Web sites.

And that’s just for starters. The full details are here.
(h/t JimmyF)

Reader “Ward” in the comments;

Apparently “widespread” and “appetite for change” must mean something different than I have always thought they did. Maybe I’ve also been wrong about the definitions of “bias” and “sore losers” as well?
from the Globe and Mail reporting on the Conservatives capturing (at this time) 71 of 83 ridings.
“Liberals were never able to exploit widespread sentiment in the province that it was time for a new government.”
From the CBC at the same time (cons leading in 71 of 83)
“Despite an apparent appetite for change, voters in Alberta stuck with the tried-and-true, giving the Progressive Conservative party an unprecedented 11th consecutive majority government.”

I predict a flurry of opinion columns along a similar vein from other members of the Carnack the Magician set in the coming week. Because, you know – nobody they know voted for the Conservatives.

Just on the other side;

A BBC producer failed to give police information that would have helped track down the July 21 bombers, the trial was told.
Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, which featured the group paintballing and an interview with Mohammed Hamid, was shown on BBC2 on June 12, 2005.
Nasreen Suleaman, the producer, told the court that Hamid said he would use his £300 fee to settle the fine he had been given by magistrates for racially abusing two policemen at his Oxford Street stall.
Called as a defence witness, Miss Suleaman admitted that she had spoken to Hamid in the days following the July 21 attacks and found out he knew the wanted men.
She said she thought he was scared the fugitives might try to call him but did not contact the police because she felt under “no obligation” to do so.
Miss Suleaman claimed she told BBC managers of the situation but no one passed on the information to the authorities.

This trial has been going on for some time. Considering the gravity of the July 21 bombings, you’d think a story of BBC complicity in protecting wanted terrorists would find a spot much higher on the international news food chain.
*snort*
More here;

Phil Rees, who produced the show, told the court that he was impressed by Mr Hamid’s sense of humour while looking for someone to appear in the documentary. He said: “I think he had a comic touch and he represented a strand within British Muslims. I took it as more like a rather Steptoe and Son figure rather than seriously persuasive. I saw him as a kind of Cockney comic.” Mr Rees, who now works for the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera, gave Mr Hamid a signed copy of his book Dining With Terrorists.

The New York Stock Exchange halted on-the-floor trading of Sun-Times Media Group Inc. (STMG) when its share price opened at $1.00.
h/t Maz2

After Time.

James Kautz has a transcript of an exchange between the CBC’s Carol Off
(As It Happens) and Pakistani General General Rashid Koreshi (spokesman for President Musharraf) that reveals more about the host than perhaps she intended;

Carol Off: But surely the President reads the papers. Surely he watches the news. Every single day.
General Koreshi: Yes.
Carol Off: Every paper, every headline – except for some media, which is close to the government – every headline is about how he has to go; that it’s time for him to leave. Is her enured to that? Does it mean nothing to him that he sees every single day the newspapers are saying, reporting on yet another group that says, ‘President Musharraf, take a hint – there’s the door.’?
General Koreshi: I would like to ask you, if media starts a campaign, in your country, against your President or Prime Minister, will he just get up and leave? No. No!
Carol Off: Well, sometimes you take into consideration that maybe they’re telling…
General Koreshi: No, there are millions, there are 160 million people in Pakistan. There is a system in place. If for some reason the elected representatives do not want President Musharraf, there is a system in place, there is an impeachment, where two thirds of the elected assembly can impeach the President.
Carol Off: You see, really, do you want to wait until it comes to that? To be impeached, to be tossed out? Is that…

whole thing.
There is no requirement for the Constitutional process to play out, no purpose in consulting the citizenry proper – for she has determined the mob’s cause to be just. Musharref must “go”. The Mob has demanded it and the Mob has a printing press.
She’s representive of a growing number of individuals who, while impersonating journalists, hijack the public debate in an attempt to effect change in government and direct public policy. It happens in Pakistan, as it happens in Canada.
It’s the single most corrupting force in the modern political arena – this branch of the journalistic profession that seeks to govern without the messy inconvenience of running for office.
It helps to explain why the extreme left has such a disproportionate voice in the political media, why so much approving coverage is granted fringe politicians like Elizabeth May. With political views that are largely rejected by the electoral mainstream, they gravitate to journalism. There, they can have their voice “heard” through the proxies of political parties and advocacy groups. They provide the Green Parties and the Marijuana Parties and other marginal political movements an unearned legitimacy they cannot achieve through popular support.
You need look no further than the common reference to the unelected May as an “opposition” leader for evidence of that.

*

This leads overburdened reporters to fill the pages of their newspapers with “Flat Earth News”, a worthless commodity defined here as an unreliable statement or story “created by outsiders, usually for their own commercial or political benefit, injected via a wire agency into the arteries of the media through which it then circulates around the whole body of global communication”.

Nice catch at Canwest by Darcey.