“Now, normally, beating up on someone like this isn’t very much fun. But we are talking about a profession that specializes in passing judgment, often snide, on everyone else. And so, onward…“

“… writes a powerful defence of the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan and nobody reports it, is that the same as if he never wrote it at all?

It’s not an accidental oversight.
Full text here.
(Reminder: For informed analysis and coverage of Afghanistan that the self-admitted Liberal waterboys in Canadian media can’t be bothered to provide, bookmark the Torch.)

The editor of the Winnipeg Free Press;

provided at least one (unpublished) letter from readers critical of the Crocus Fund, directly to Crocus CEO Sherman Kreiner in Feb. 2003.
Then-editor Nicholas Hirst warned Kreiner “This letter become insidious if followed by others. It suggests there really is something wrong.”
[…]
Hirst explained his emailing the ‘Letter to the Editor’ to Kreiner, “as an example of one of the many letters we are receiving about your fund.” Saying he had already found it “difficult to keep such letters out of the newspaper”, Hirst admonished Kreiner “I was not being light”.

Payback time. Susan Delacourt fesses up – “the Keen controversy is all about us”.
Joan Tintor whacks her with a rolled up newspaper;

Under [the Liberals], Hill reporters were not treated with independence or distance; they were treated as pets to be cultivated and – if deemed sympathetic – rewarded with leaks from inside government, weekly caucus meetings, and not-so-underground leadership campaigns. (Sounds like trifling and playing to me.)
Delacourt’s comments suggest that reporters have decided to take a stand on their independence – by sabotaging it (“How dare Harper treat us like we’re biased, we’ll show him – by being biased!”).

To those who wonder why there is so little competitor interest in the CBC’s professional betrayal in the Erickson-Rodriguez affair – this is your answer. They don’t consider it noteworthy, because they’re not journalists, they’re gatekeepers – and reporting on unethical journalism carries with it the risk of retaliation.
Related: The Globe & Mail sanitizes criticism of radical Islamists.

Pull a curtain.

“Palestinian lawmakers attend a parliament session in candlelight during a power cut in Gaza January 22, 2008. Israel agreed to allow some fuel, medicine and food into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Tuesday, at least temporarily easing a blockade that has plunged much of the territory into darkness and sparked international protests.” REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

Their very mandate…

… is to provide Canadians with a view of their political life unobstructed by bias. To do that, we must be detached from partisan interest, and professional and dispassionate in all aspects of our reporting. We must be seen to be all these things as well.”

….except when reporting on Conservative governments;

The picture of Canadian special forces in this SRC (CBC) article, which was also on their homepage, was taken in the fall of 2001 when the Liberal party was in power under Jean Chretien, long before Canada had any more than a few dozen JTF-2 members in Afghanistan. I remember because the picture was on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen back then when the debate was about the LIBERALS letting our armed forces transfer Taliban prisoners over to US forces.

h/t to reader muttsrus.

Heh.

Extinction by suicide;

In 2003 27.4% of the poll’s respondents said that they trusted all or most of what the MSM reports. In 2007 that number plummeted to just 19.6%. 23.9% said they believe little or nothing that comes out of the MSM.

(h/t to reader OttRob)

Tear down that wall!

Now bring us the reasons she won.

It would all be quite funny, if it weren’t so utterly pathetic.

Stephen Taylor;

Tonight, I’m hearing from a very well-placed source that Krista Erickson has cleaned out her desk and is going on “stress leave”. Whether this indicates a hushed firing or a quiet reassignment outside of Ottawa politics after a short leave is unclear.
UPDATE: I’ve heard that she is moving to CBC Sports.
I should also mention that everyone that I’ve spoken to at the CBC about this has, for the past few weeks, told me that they do not approve of the ways by which Erickson pursued this story. From an outside source I’ve heard that she will issue an apology tomorrow.

Related: “Mr. Carlin – tear down that wall!”
Another Update (at the original link);

UPDATE 1/9, 5pm: A well-placed source at CBC has amended some of the details given above. Erickson’s reassignment to sports (or anywhere else) has yet to be confirmed (or even acknowledged by CBC management). Further she still has her desk at CBC Ottawa and that she has not yet issued an apology today.
Outside of that, what remains is that Erickson has been the topic of meetings held by senior management for the past couple of weeks and that a disciplinary review has been held.

Oh, that liberal Canadian media. It’s a compilation of gush reporting that should cause editorial faces to flush red from one end of the country to the other.
(So be sure to forward it to your favourite news department or columnist.)
Update: On CTV National News tonight, the coverage of the New Hampshire debates was summed up in this way (paraphrased): “Pundits declared Obama as having come out on top in the Democrat debate and Romney as the big loser in the Republican side.” Now, that’s balance.
But wait! It gets better! – “And on cbc news Sunday, they turn to Susan Sarandon for her analysis of the US election.”

$23B.

At Canwest, party skanks are the new news.

When the New Year’s Eve carnage was over, Tracie Egan was left with wine on her walls, vomit on her walk-out roof, broken possessions and a $450 cleaning bill.

At this rate, we’ll soon be reading stories on missing prostitutes last seen getting in cars with strangers.
Oh, wait.

Spinning for Khamenei – “When journalists use ellipses, it’s always interesting to see what was left out.”

The sixteenth paragraph…

The headline.

*

We shall fight on the beaches …

If our political leaders muster the will to act, 2008 could very well mark the year in the history books when the appalling but silent enemy of poverty in Canada was finally engaged.

Informed Canadians get their news from the Brits these days;

Today, we put him in the spotlight again by naming Gen Petraeus as The Sunday Telegraph’s Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognise outstanding individual achievement.
He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq’s escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.
So far, it has achieved what many feared was impossible. Sectarian killings are down. Al-Qaeda is on the run. And the two million Iraqis who fled the country are slowly returning. Progress in Iraq is relative – 538 civilians died last month. But compared with the 3,000 peak of December last year, it offers at least a glimmer of hope.

h/t Joan Tintor.