Joel Johannesen;

This afternoon on the CBC Newsworld (channel 390 on my dial, with other CBC channels taking many of the rest of them), the so-called “news” anchor Sarika Sehgal (think of a George Stroumboulopoulos but of an alternate gender choice) interviewed perpetually state-employed CBC show host and leftist agitator Avi Lewis.
For reference, Avi Lewis is the son of the image former you’ve got to be kidding party’s Stephen Lewis, who sounds very much like a communist to me. Stephen Lewis is the son of Federal NDP Leader David Lewis, who similarly sounds very much like a communist to me. Stephen Lewis is married to Michele Landsberg, a feminist activist and former writer for the leftist Toronto Star, which is perhaps the most left-wing mainstream newspaper in North America, and the liberals’ Globe and Mail. She sounds very much like a communist to me. Not to be outdone, young Avi Lewis is married to far-left-wing feminist activist and Bush-hater Naomi Klein, daughter of an American draft dodger; and her brother is a director of the far left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (the “alternative” they speak of being global socialism and an end to capitalism as we know it, which sounds very much like communism to me). Naomi Klein was also a Toronto Star writer. She sounds very much like a communist to me.

That’s just the warm up.
h/t

Bob Tarantino;

At 4:38pm (the time I accessed the story) on Friday, June 1, 2007, this story, carried at the Toronto Star website, reads (in part) as follows:

The federal Conservative government has rejected Ontario’s call for a ban on handguns. … [Stockwell] Day argued that other countries where handguns have been banned have seen the numbers of gun crimes increase. “In jurisdictions that have eliminated or tried to eliminate, to ban handguns – the United Kingdom, Ireland, other jurisdictions – in fact crime with guns has unfortunately gone up,” Day said.

Here comes the torque:

Day’s statements, however, don’t appear to match with the facts.

Interesting. And, dear Canadian Press, what evidence do you marshall to maintain this assertion?

There was a 16 per cent drop in the number of firearms offences in the United Kingdom in 2006 compared with the previous year, according to figures from Britain’s Home Office.

I know this particular blogging tic is increasingly frowned upon, but permit me to indulge: You. Absolute. Morons.

Read the whole thing. Terry Pedwell doesn’t get the stats a “little” wrong. He gets them deceptively wrong.

For further proof of the correctness of Day’s statement, and the absolute mendacity of the Canadian Press, let’s look at this Home Office report. Here’s what it reveals: there was a sixty percent (60%) increase in firearms crime from 1999/00 to 2004/05 (page 72). Also see Figure 3.4 – although it is a bit difficult to tell because the gradations are not provided, firearms crimes involving handguns more than doubled from 1998/99 to 2001/02, before declining somewhat until 2004/05, though finishing at a number approximately 50% higher than in 1998/99.

As of 7:39pm, there’s been at least one edit. The sentence now reads “Day’s statements, however, don’t appear to match with recent facts.”
Related;

“A few years back, Los Angeles gave 1.5 million in grants to a group known as “No Guns.” ATF just arrested its founder for sale of a machine gun, two silencers, and other toys.
Note to LA government: be cautious about trusting a million bucks to a guy who goes by “Big Weasel.”

What’s that saying? “As California goes, so goes…”

Ace of Spades;

Representative quote:
“This is a very positive story for the vast majority of Muslims,” says Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. “They’re highly assimilated, and the largest proportion of their friends are not Muslims.”
Terrific.
The survey “clearly shows that the American Muslim community is well integrated in our society,” says Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C. “The overwhelming majority of American Muslims reject terrorism and religious extremism.”
“Overwhelming majority.” 26%-69% on the terrorism justified vs. never justified question amoung young Muslim American males.
Again, I was more hoping for something like a “unanimity.”
[…]
[T]he majority of the media worked very hard here to not report a key finding from a major poll with significant ramifications for US security and foreign policy.
This is what j-school taught them? How to actively withhold information from the public?
Thank God we have Allah, and of course Pravda, to tell us The Truth.

Keep tweaking: the saga of an evolving headline at the AP.

Many thanks to Richard Evans for pulling this together.
Previous: Joke’s on you, Canada.
Update – Check out this question;

“As you may know, there has been discussion about the treatment of Taliban detainees captured by Canadian forces and handed over to the Afghan authorities. There have been allegations that they have been mistreated. Some people say that Canadians should be outraged by these allegations and that Canada’s reputation in the world has been hurt. Other people say that the Canadian government and forces should not be held responsible for what happens to prisoners held in Afghan controlled detention centers. Which view is closest to your own?
Notice that the pollsters gave a lot of info on the supposed “mistreatment” of “detainees” but none whatsoever, as Adler noted, on the taliban themselves.

In the words of Tim Wollstencroft – “That would be ..ah ah.. that would be provactive and would probably be viewed as a biased question.”
More: The Toronto Star jumps aboard the “better government through push-polling” train – because nobody knows foreign policy better than an off-duty waitress just back from the bingo hall.

It wasn’t a poll.
It was an IQ test.

Charles Adler: Canadians are telling his firm that they think that it’s a good idea to negotiate with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents as a way to end the violence. this poll was conducted for CTV and the Globe&Mail and there was almost two to one support….
[…]
I know some people would object to the question, but let me ask the question anyways – does everyone know who the Taliban is? […] Were any of the people participating in this poll told that the Taliban have been known to chop people’s heads off?
Tim Wollstencroft, Strategic Counsel: That would be ..ah ah.. that would be provactive and would probably be viewed as a biased question.
CA: My guess is that it would be informative, you see my guess is that if Canadians knew that the Taliban engaged in this kind of thing, they would think they’re not the kinds of people who you can negotiate with.
TW: ah …that might be that these are tough guys, but in the end these people are going to have to be talked to or dealt with in a diplomatic manner.
CA: You’re saying you the pollster have decided that’s what ought to be done and then you ask the question, is that the point?
[…]
CA: Let me just ask you Tim, and forget the poll – what do you know about the Taliban?
TW:That’s not my job, my job is to get ah an accurate measure about whether people think that Canada should negotiate with the Taliban, yes or no.
CA: But what do you say to someone who says, “you know what, been down there and I know what the Taliban is all about and the question is preposterous”.
TW: Ah.. well it’s not preposterous …

Listen to the whole thing.
Via Damnation – “Why, pray tell, would the Globe and Mail, which also sponsored the poll, and CTV hire a certain Mr Donolo (link via Milnet.ca) if they are seeking unbiased information?”

From 1993 to 1999, Peter served as Director of Communications in the Prime Minister’s Office and chief communications strategist for Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his government. In that position, Peter established a strong record in developing successful communications strategies for the most important government initiatives and most contentious political and public policy issues of the past decade. In the process, he established a strong personal reputation in one of the most intense and high-pressured jobs of its kind.
Following his tenure in the PMO, Peter served for two years as Canadian Consul General to Milan…

Why, indeed.
(Editor’s note – the Corus audio version is difficult to access on some computers. If someone saves this gem to Youtube, do let me know. This “unbiased” pollster is deserving of much wider public mocke attention .)
Update – you can get a podcast at Step To The Right (where there are weekly podcasts on recent Canadian political events.)
UPdate 2 Ladies and Gentlemen – we have Youtube!

Michael Yon strikes a familiar theme;

As the British increase their forces in Afghanistan, they are drawing down in Iraq. Although the drawdown in Iraq is based on pragmatism, the enemy apparently is attempting to create the perception of a military rout. So while the British reduce their forces in southern Iraq, they are coming under heavier fire and the enemy makes claims of driving “the occupiers” out.
In reality, the Brits were about to transfer authority over the Maysan Province to the Iraqi government. Thus, the day’s purpose, although seemingly more ceremonial in nature, was to counterpunch in the perception war, by focusing on the progress being made by the Iraqi Security Forces in the region. Some of the biggest battles in Iraq today are being fought not with bombs and bullets, but with cameras and keyboards. For whatever reasons—and there are many—today, when Western media is most needed here, it’s nearly gone.
[…]
And that was it: no big drama. The journalists all disappeared. The important political people went back to Baghdad or wherever, and few people seemed to notice that another Iraqi province was turned over. A sampling of the resulting coverage of the ceremony might explain why the handover of authority to Iraqis in a fourth province did not resound as loudly as one would think, given the phalanx of reporters and camera crews.
The transfer of authority did not even make the cut for news for most US publications and networks. Of those which included the story in their news reports, most mentioned it only as part of an overall report about the day’s activities in Iraq. Many of those included it in reports which were headlined or sandwiched with bad news about the violence in other parts of Iraq.
The Washington Post’s “Bombers Defy Security Push, Killing at least 158 in Baghdad” briefly mentions the transfer in a sentence in the seventeenth paragraph. Likewise, The New York Times’ “Bombings Kill at Least 171 Iraqis in Baghdad” mentions the transfer of the province somewhere in the sixth paragraph.
This general theme carried over in the UK media coverage as well.

Lots of photos.
Via email;

“Am not saying that all of Anbar is peaceful, just that I am seeing zero action where I am. Nothing at all for days. This might not seem like much, but it’s a very significant departure from the noise and smoke one can grow accustomed to here in Anbar Province.
Published a new dispatch from Maysan Province. After this, I’ll publish four more about our British friends, and then a substantial piece about the Marines I am with now.”

If you’re inclined to write the editors of those newspapers whose commentary on Iraq offers little more than recycled UN reports by Bush-bashing Ottawa imbeds, you might include a link to Michael Yon’s dispatch to remind them what journalism looks like.
Or print it off and include it with your cancelled subscription.

UPDATE This 2004 report sheds a bit more light on the actions of Sacha Bond. As it turns out, the gun was loaded after all;

Islamorada – An Islamorada man was arrested Saturday just before 4 a.m. after he pulled a gun inside an Islamorada bar and began pulling the trigger.
Fortunately for the people he was shooting at, the first four times 19 year old Sacha Bond pulled the trigger, he was firing on empty chambers. Deputies who recovered the gun found only two bullets inside. He was tackled by employees and patrons of the bar just before firing on one of the live rounds.
The incident occurred at Woody’s Bar in Islamorada. Bond was inside and reportedly failed to compensate the entertainer who was performing for him so he was asked to leave. He returned a few minutes later, pulled out a revolver, pointed it at the people inside and began to pull the trigger. After he pulled the trigger four times without discharging a bullet, two employees and a patron of the bar tackled him to the ground.
Deputies James Freed, Alvin Burns and Joseph Moran were called to the scene and when they arrived, they found Bond still being held on the ground. A search turned up a holster for the gun clipped to his belt and a knife in his pocket. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead and he was taken to Mariner’s hospital for treatment of the minor injury. He was then charged with four counts of attempted murder, four counts of aggravated assault and he was booked into the Monroe county Detention Center. There is no bond allowed on the charges.

What motivated CTV’s Kathy Tomlinson to whitewash the facts of this case to the extent she did in this so-called “whistleblower” segment?
(h/t reader Ann.)

Gunman Kills Four In Florida Strip Bar

and this one?

Mentally-ill Man’s Family Fights To Get Him Home

Answer: forgetting the bullets.
It’s a not-so-subtle distinction that manages to elude CTV’s Kathy Tomlinson – who apparently believes that “exposing” Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day as a man who won’t accept “drunk and off his medication” as an excuse for attempted murder elevates this bit of apologist journalism to “whistleblower” status.

In January, 2004, Sacha Bond was in Florida visiting his mother, who was living there temporarily. He wasn’t taking the prescribed medication which controls his mental illness and behavior. Late one night, he took his mother’s car out to a strip bar in the Florida Keys. He was 19 and underage, but still, the bar served him approximately 10 drinks. While intoxicated, Bond got into an argument with a bouncer, who threw him out.
“I don’t remember very much,” Bond told CTV News, in an interview inside the prison.
Police records show Bond came back to the bar with his stepfather’s gun, and pointed it at several people. He tried to fire it, but there were no bullets in the chambers. Bar staff tackled him, roughed him up and called the police.
“All I remember is when I dropped on the ground and they were beating me up,” said Bond.

Beat him up? He should be thankful they didn’t kill him. Florida is a “shall issue” state.
Bad choices, bad consequences. But they could have been worse – he might have emerged from his self-inflicted drunken stupor long enough to load the gun.
Related trivia: psychologist Dr. Merry Sue Haber is quoted in the CTV report;

“You have a young person who has a future,” Dr. Haber told CTV News, in Miami. “And who, really, without drugs and alcohol and on the proper medication is not dangerous at all.”

Dr. Haber has a history. She took conducted now discredited “memory retrievals” in the infamous Country Walk “ritual child abuse” case;

Q. All right. Now I want to get back again to these — the sessions that you had, because the next names on my list here are Dr. Rappaport and Dr. Haber.
Do you recall if — when they would start these sessions what would they say to you? Do you recall what they would say?
A. No. I can hardly remember. This has been so long. You know, I remember just that I will calm down, and I just wanted to get it over with because, you know, they told me this happened, this happened, this happened.
And I will break down and say no, no, no, it didn’t happen.
And then they would tell me that yes, I have to accept it, I have to confront it. So they were long sessions and tiring. I just remember that that was the procedure.
And I would go to bed, and I don’t know why, but I would dream about the same things the kids were saying and the same things they were telling me.
So I came back, and the first question was so what did you dream about last night, did you have any bad dreams or did you not. If I had bad dreams had to tell them about my bad dreams in detail. And they did tell me, you see, you remembering.

More here.

From a gossipy Globe & Mail article based on letters filed in the Conrad Black trial;

Mr. Asper’s son, David, a CanWest executive, began taking issue with the Post’s coverage of the so-called Shawinigate scandal, which involved allegations that Mr. Chrétien had improperly helped a business colleague get a loan from a federal agency for his hotel in Shawinigan. At the time, Lord Black and Mr. Chrétien were also sparring over his appointment to Britain’s upper chamber. The Aspers were long-time Liberals and many observers were convinced they would rein in the Post’s coverage.
On Jan. 5, 2001, Lord Black wrote Mr. Asper to complain about David’s interference saying it was “not reconcilable” with the corporate partnership. “I am aware that considerable pressure has been exerted by David on National Post editorial personnel on behalf of Chrétien,” Lord Black wrote, adding that the Prime Minister’s Office “is not composed of reasonable people.”
On March 7, 2001, David wrote a column in the Post criticizing the paper’s coverage, calling it unfair. The Post ran an editorial the same day defending its reporting and taking David to task.
Six days later, Mr. Asper fired off an angry letter to Lord Black threatening to sever their joint ownership of the Post. Mr. Asper called the Post’s criticism of his son “outrageous” and blamed Lord Black for orchestrating the subsequent fallout in other media.
“Neither you nor I would profit from a public battle, which would give great pleasure to those who wish neither of us well, but regrettably, you have chosen to publicly throw a gauntlet, administer a public slap in the face which has both embarrassed, humiliated and held up to ridicule and dishonour both my family and my company,” he wrote. “You will readily understand why I won’t remain silent.”
Lord Black replied: responded the next day, calling Mr. Asper’s reproaches “completely unjustified.” “The piece [David] wrote was un-rigorous and hostile to your own employees with consequences that were foreseeable and predicted,” he wrote. “I did not orchestrate anything.”
Lord Black said senior editors at the Post had told David that if he wrote his article it would “produce great resentment amongst the journalists and would appear to anyone in [Canada] still interested in an independent press to be servile toadying to a rather corrupt regime in what is now more or less a one-party state.”

Clayton Cramer;

Remember in 1984, where Winston’s job was to revise newspapers of the past to keep up with the ever changing present? This is very interesting. A couple years ago, during the Katrina disaster, I linked to a CNN report and quoted it […]
One of my readers ran into that posting of mine–and noticed that the CNN report at that link no longer said anything like that. It was much, much more upbeat. Nothing about the police snipers on the roof. Did I copy the wrong link? Did I have a brief attack of delusion, and make something up?

Producer to intern: “We need a fawning description of him from the White House website to show how influential he was with conservatives.” Intern to producer: “Great! I’ll just google white house falwell…”

h/t

*

*

Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons sees the future of “old media”….

… and chooses an interesting metaphor.

A paper that ought to be required reading in every newsroom in the free world;

Based on content analysis of global media and interviews with many diplomats and journalists, this paper describes the trajectory of the media from objective observer to fiery advocate, becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda.

That is, if they value the future role of the free press in western democracy. I’m not so certain they do.
The full Harvard report here. (PDF)

In related news;

The crack investigative journalism team at the Los Angeles Times have uncovered a skeleton in Fred Thompson’s closet – one created in a television prop room;

Thompson played a white supremacist, spewing anti-Semitic comments and fondling an autographed copy of “Mein Kampf” on a television drama 19 years ago.

As if to drive home the point, the newspaper actually quotes the script.

A sensible point of view when you live in the frigid north. It’s just surprising to see it at the CBC:

in this country, with its maybe 12 climate zones, there are real advantages that come with warming in some places.
But if advantages do exist, they are generally reported by being bracketed in with evil otherness. For example, while there was mention of warmer weather increasing tourism in some parts of the country, we were warned by the Globe and Mail that, “by 2050, snowmobiling could be history in Eastern Canada.” There was exactly zero — let me underscore and bold face — zero mention of winter-related deaths and injuries.

The request for a probe into the treatment of Afghan prisoners comes from Michael Byers, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia, and William Schabas, another Canadian professor who is director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway.
Byers said he and Schabas sent a letter to the court’s chief prosecutor on Wednesday outlining media reports of “serious allegations of misconduct by Canadian soldiers and Canadian decision-makers in terms of transferring detainees into an apparent risk of torture.”

The Torch has more on the man NDP defense “critic” Dawn Black calls to ask “what she needs to know”;

According to the Canadian news media, Michael Byers is nothing more than a “human rights activist,” a “political science professor,” and an expert on international law. Somehow or other, on a file so politically charged that it has dominated the news columns and airwaves for weeks, so politically dangerous that it threatens to sack the Minister of National Defence, it has been deemed irrelevant by the Canadian journalistic establishment that one of the key instigators of this drama is a declared partisan for one of the parties in opposition to our effort in Afghanistan.

We now know where the she gained her military expertise on huge scary guns.

Reporting that inserts file footage of Canadian soldiers into a story about Iraq war funding.

CBC: Where agenda journalism meets incompetence.
Good question – “If parliament can demand a meeting with Hockey Canada officials for some stupid incident that was proven to be false, why can’t they demand a meeting with the idots at CBC who use wrong footage or doctored photos to enhance their personal views?”
UPDATE – Plattytalk has a response from Jonathan Whitten, executive producer of The National. They’ll be acknowledging the error on this evening’s newscast.

Media still at large;

The U.S. announced on Friday that it captured the mastermind behind the 7/7/2005 bombings in London.
But you would not know it by reading the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Associated Press.
None of them mentioned the London bombings in reporting on the capture of the man who organized that attack, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi (aka, Abu Abdallah).
Instead, reporters concentrated on where this major player in the war on terrorism was held after his capture.

Secret prisons! Gitmo! Oh, the humanity!
The same holds true for the CTV report and I can find no mention of the capture at all at the CBC website.
You have to go to the Times of London for the details North American media saw fit to omit;

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans.
Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.
Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.
Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.