Toronto Star (CP);

OTTAWA – Officials with the Prime Minister’s Office have lodged a complaint with the CBC ombudsman over a report broadcast on the public broadcaster’s French-language network.
The complaint, signed by communications director Sandra Buckler, was not made public Tuesday but rejects certain aspects of the report which it contends do not reflect reality.
It takes issue with Radio-Canada reports about a meeting between U.S. and Canadian officials in Texas which suggested the existence of a project to quadruple oilsands extraction from here to 2011 to meet U.S. needs.
The Conservatives have rejected contentions the meeting was secret and said they had not been sworn in as the government. They said the meeting was planned in 2005 by the previous Liberal government of Paul Martin.
The Conservatives complained about the report the day after it was broadcast and the radio arm of Radio-Canada agreed to a retraction but no such assurances have been forthcoming from the TV arm of the broadcaster.
The government pursued the matter with the ombudsman, decrying the linking of the Conservatives and the meeting and assertions the meeting was secret.
The complaint also takes issue with assertions by the TV journalist that Canada is the only country to opt out of the Kyoto accord on greenhouse gases.
Radio-Canada has 20 days to respond to the complaint.

Well, it’s not as if the CBC can claim they weren’t told.
Jan 25 Update – Stephen Taylor has the text of the complaint letter from the PMO.

Another grim milestone in the media battle with red ink. Glenn Reynolds;

I said earlier that the Blogosphere has more reporters in Iraq than many major media outlets. And certainly more now than the Boston Globe.

It’s a quagmire.

“Rosa Parks on the 20, the 15 and now she’s heading for the end zone!“

Bob Tarantino;

Now, while I still pay my share of attention to politics, I paid a lot more back in 2005. And I can safely say that I never heard the Liberal budget of 2005 being referred to as the “Green Budget”. Not once. Ever. That is until seeing said CBC piece, wherein the reference to the possibly apocryphal “Green Budget” is made twice, including in the subtitle (or whatever you call it in a news article). There’s a Green Budget Coalition, but that has nothing to do with the Liberals or their 2005 budget. A Google search on liberal + “green budget” + 2005 doesn’t seem to turn up much of relevance. So, I throw it to the legions of fervent readers: is the notion of a Liberal “Green Budget” in 2005 a smidge of the CBC revisionism?

I’m not a legion, but I did find this March 2005 speech given by then-Environment Minister Stephane Dion in which he refers to the “Goodale Budget” 16 times. The words “green budget” do not appear.

Columnist Bill Thompson, for the BBC;

Unfortunately for those already working as journalists, many readers and viewers seem to feel the same way […] The rapid growth of citizen journalism seems less a sign of the emergence of a vibrant new area of online newsgathering and reporting than a symptom of the decline of existing forms of news journalism.
It points to a career-threatening loss of trust in what people see on their TV screens or read in the daily papers as they become what citizen journalist advocate Dan Gillmor calls ‘the former audience’.
[…]
This new localism is a serious challenge to the current practice of journalism.
Cavalier disregard for the feelings of others and studied disavowal of the consequences of what we say or write does not work any more.
Inconsistencies, contradictions or plain errors of fact are noticed, tracked and widely publicised.
Some writers find this impossible to cope with, and seek refuge in the old world where their privilege and power remain intact, refusing to engage in conversation with their readers and resenting the intrusion of e-mails from an informed public.
But instead of resisting we should embrace this opportunity, because it may provide us with a way to regain the respect and even the interest of the former audience.
Local journalists are involved in the conversations around them. They are known and – it is to be hoped – appreciated as members of their communities.
Sometimes, of course, they uncover things that people would rather were kept hidden and sometimes they intrude into private grief. But they do so with an understanding of the real needs of the community as a whole and with an awareness that their errors and misjudgements will not be forgotten and will have a serious impact on their future standing.
A good local reporter gets the balance right and earns respect each time they make a difficult call, while the national press has grown used to practising slash and burn journalism, content to clear-cut the forest, take what it wants and then move on.

The distinction between national and local is an important one. Setting aside the “citizen journalism” focus of the piece for a moment – I find the local reporting by mainstream affiliates in my part of the country to be, by and large, reasonably thorough and not nearly as tainted by the political “default setting” that infects much of national and international coverage. Nor do local reporters tend to cover events with quite the level of hyperventilation we witness when pundits or news anchors a thousand miles away get in on the action.
Indeed, one wonders how different our perceptions of the national mainstream media might be if the chattering quasi -experts, political mouthpieces and overpaid anchors were sent into early retirement, and replaced with editing teams that simply compiled reports submitted by local affiliates and journalists in the field.
Removing the conclusion-drawing, forecasting and speculation that currently infects hard news could go a long way towards restoring the credibility of a troubled industry and the confidence of that “former audience” – those news consumers who have turned to the internet, not for its speed, but for the sources – to fact check, cross-check and provide context.
But, that said, I suspect the ship has already sailed.
h/t Pierre Legrand.

It might be helpful to the anchor of Canada’s public network to let him know that, as of today, thousands of Canadians (619 in the last hour) are onto the Guy Gendron controfacture before he even gets a chance to “break” it.

An update and a very good question;

So what does a nine month long investigation into an alleged “secret” conspiracy based on a public document cost Canadian taxpayers anyway? Anyone?

That sounds to me like a good question to ask by email or toll free call 1-866-306-4636
Ombudsman Vince Carlin
More Response – Fort McMurray Today: “CBC Story ‘Wrong’ – Stringham”;

“The CBC represented it as the Americans saying, ‘We need to do this and we need to do it now,’” Stringham added.
“The CBC was wrong; I’m quite surprised with the story, to be honest, because this (meeting) was over a year ago, remember, and it wasn’t a private meeting; it was hosted by three levels of government and there’s been subsequent ones for gas and electricity.”
The conference was part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, “a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater co-operation and information sharing,” according to the SPP website.
Energy security is one of its priorities, with an aim to “keep our borders closed to terrorism yet open to trade.”

CBC Watch;

Guy Gendron’s report for Zone Libre exclusive offered the impression of a seemingly secret meeting in Houston between oil executives, oil sands interests and representatives of the governments of Canada and the US regarding the need to expand Canadian oil sands production.
The problem with that?
Well for starters, the “obtained document” by Gendron has been available both on the conference USEA (United States Energy Association) website and on the US Department of Energy website since March 2006 for anyone who has wanted to view it.
Where was the fact checking on this one? The journalistic integrity?
Why is CBC treating such a meeting with horror and shock? Apparently, the usual targets (George W. Bush and oil industry) were too juicy for Radio-Canada and CBC producers to bother to adhere to j-school basics.
A telephone call to the USEA confirmed that the report has been available online for the better part of the year.
Like the previous day’s Margo McDiarmid piece that failed to clearly identify Glen Murray’s Liberal partisanship while he attacked the government, the sensationalized Gendron oil sands report is just another in a recent spate of advocacy journalism over the environment. And this environmental activism is blinding CBC to objective reporting.

More at the link.
Related – Stephane Dion – the then-Environment Minister know nothing.

Another poll going horribly blue ….

Winds of Change peels back a curtain to expose the steady drumbeat of clichés and sloganeering dotting the media landscape … well, you get the drift;

Every 100 deaths in Iraq is a “grim milestone,” by fiat of the media. It is the most overworked cliché of local journalism since, “Rain couldn’t dampen the spirits/enthusiasm of _____ graduates of _____ high school during last night’s commencement ceremony as they looked to the future and pondered the past.”
It requires no thought or reflection. It treats round numbers as the definition of reality. This has been a media trope since the first shots were fired (“After days of intense searching by ground and air, U.S. forces on Saturday found the bodies of two soldiers missing north of Baghdad, as the toll of American dead since the start of war topped the grim milestone of 200 …” — Associated Press, June 29, 2003). I doubt anyone who wrote any of these headlines could explain to you why death number 3,000 was enormously more significant than death number 2,997. Certainly not to the parents of number 2,997.
Does it help you to know these numbers divorced from context? Are there not many Americans who would consider, say, every 1,000 abortions nationwide a “grim milestone?” Even if you set 1,000 battle deaths (not the AP’s preferred 200) as the benchmark for “grim milestones,” you had a grim milestone every five days during America’s involvement in World War II with nary a “grim milestone” headline to show for it.

See for yourself.
h/t

A reader sends this along;

Thank you for your e-mail to The Canadian Press regarding Tim Cook’s coverage of Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s visit to Western Canada.
You’re right. Tim Cook did not realize that Lonny McKague was the Liberal candidate in the federal riding of Souris/Moose Mountain last year. As you know, he did ask if McKague was a Liberal supporter, so CP was comfortable quoting him in that context. But more to your point: Had we known he had been a candidate, we would either have included that information in the story or perhaps chosen not to use his quotes at all. CP treasures its role as an objective news service. Feedback from readers like you helps us do our job better.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions.
All the best and, again, thanks for your interest.
Heather Boyd
Bureau Chief, Prairies Region
The Canadian Press
Canada’s No. 1 Source for News

Flashback – commentors notice that this letter is “virtually word-for-word identical to one that Kate posted on 22 December, that one signed by Lorraine Turchansky, Prairies News Editor, Canadian Press and Broadcast News.”
They must have to send out a lot of them.

Gone horribly wrong…

Update. Now, this is funny. Not content with going “wrong”, this particular Globe poll appears to have just gone away…

h/t – to those of you in the comments who have been following the poll results and examining source code.

“What’s a poor media consumer to believe?”

Via Maz2 who comments that “If you thought the Press was ticked before……imagine what this is going to do to them.”
Financial woes force Press Club to go dry. An anonymous comment;

I was a member. Back when it was the National men’s Press Club. We changed the name then. Charles Lynch joked that if our wives found out there were women journalists they’d never let us come back. Most of you and most Canadians can never understand the importantce of that second floor bar in the National Press building on Wellington street….Peter Stursburg, the aforementioned Lynch, Ron Collister, Lowell green Paul Akehurst, George Bain, Peter Riley, Max Keeping, Ernie Calcutt, Don Leger, and about 5,000 others I am sure graced those hallowed portals for a game of shuffleboard and a beer or two. Tim Rafe, the guy who yelled “How far would you go?” to Trudeau. One night arguing over handgun legislation, Tim put his fist through the window next to his seat.
It all changed . The news bureaux faded into huge TOronto run remote control zombies… the Parliamentary press Gallery is peopled by dirt poor freelancers and bearded Marxists now, and the black and white pictures upon the walls of those who have gone before are only dimly remembered by the new breed of Ryerson dropouts. Time was, the very best of Journalists didn’t have a degree… now they have to be shaped and molded before they’re allowed to write. what bull crap.In the Gallery is a stone fireplace with the words carved: “…and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, makes thousands, perhaps millions think.” …-

If you watch any amount of television, you’re probably familiar with the
latest incarnation of Capital One’s "What’s
in your wallet?" no-hassle credit card ads. These are the ads featuring
everyday Joes and Janes being followed around by bankers with their hands in Joe’s
and Jane’s pockets. (The ads feature Indie musician Jim Guthrie’s catchy tune,
"Hands in My Pocket".)

While I initially thought the ads were cute, there was something about them
that bothered me. I finally realized what it was. Someone correct me if I’m
wrong, but I could swear that every single "greedy banker" visible in
the Capital One ads is an older white male. Because, y’know, all we white
males ever do is oppress people and screw them out of their hard earned money.

I note that Capital One also offers their
services to Canadians, but I think I’ll be turning up my nose at their
credit cards as I have no interest in giving MY hard earned money to a company
that portrays me — a white male approaching middle age — as the capitalistic embodiment of evil in its advertising. In
other words, I can tell you what’s not in my wallet. Feel free to send an
e-mail to their Ombudsman at ombudsman@capitalone.com
if you’re offended by their advertising as well. More contact information can be
found here.

On January 4, 2007 09:26 PM ET, reader Darryl mentioned this mathematically challenged CTV report in the comments…

This zinger from the CTV web site:
“The size of cabinet has increased from 27 to 32 positions, with a smaller percentage of women on the team.”
I tried to use my slide rule but couldn’t tell the difference. Went back to using a calculator to determine that the percentage change in women went from 6/27=22.22% to 7/32=21.88%. So rounding, that would be a change from 22% to 22%.
Clearly this is a big news story and should have dominated the day’s events.

He didn’t provide a link, so I went looking tonight. Sure enough, when running a search on Google News for the phrase, it scored a hit.

But, when I clicked on the link – lo and behold – the text had been altered and CTV page updated as of “Thu. Jan. 4 2007 10:46 PM ET”. Well, mistakes happen. One can’t really blame CTV news staff for noticing the math error and quietly correcting it.
So, deprived of mathematical evidence that the “percentage of women” in the Harper cabinet had dropped, did CTV news staff correct the sentence to indicate the percentage was unchanged? Did they simply drop the self-evident portion? Nope.
They went looking for a new negative to fit the narrative.

Call me a cynic, but I think the “critics” CTV news staff consulted in this case just happened to be the ones sitting at their keyboards.

After 6 weeks of near total silence on the controversy over the disupted “6 Sunnis immolated, mosques burned” story, AP has now issued a report that recognizes one exists – and it alludes to accusations by unidentified bloggers over the whereabouts of their sole source, one Jamil Hussein. The Iraqi government has reportedly issued a statement that Jamil Gholaiem Hussein “faces arrest” for talking to media.
Curt, at Flopping Aces, Michelle Malkin and Bob Owens have the most recent updates. At the moment, most are willing to to give the benefit of the doubt to the AP;

So it appears Jamil Hussein may be real. Good. that means there is a real person to question regarding 61 mostly uncorroborated stories provided as exclusives by Hussein to the Associated Press.
This includes the story that made him (in)famous, where Hussein and the AP claimed 24 people were killed–six by being pulled from a mosque, doused in kerosene, and purposefully burned alive, where the other 18 merely died in an “inferno” at another mosque under attack–during a series of four mosque attacks. In later AP stories, the four mosques trickled down to one, and 18 of the 24 dead mysteriously disappeared, without the Associated Press releasing a retraction or a correction.

By this metric, don’t be surprised if the AP uncovers three or four more “Jamil Husseins” as events unfold…
More – Gateway Pundit reviews the list of inconsistancies.
More reaction;

The AP’s initial response to questions raised about Capt. Hussein stated that he “had a record of reliability and truthfulness,” neglecting to mention that the AP itself could not verify at least one of his prior claims and had contrary information. Moreover, The New York Times was unable to substantiate the story and reported that some neighborhood residents denied it. Similarly, the Washington Post reported that two local imams denied such an attack took place. Months later, disgraced former CNN exec. Eason Jordan found “conflicting and unconfirmed information regarding whether there’s a Captain Hussein and whether the reported immolation happened.” (I expect the left-leaning blogs that suddenly discover the Jamil Hussein story now will focus on the eeeevil right-wing blogs and largely ignore that The New York Times, WaPo and IraqSlogger were all a part of this particular VRWC.)
We now know there is a Capt. Hussein, but we pretty much knew that already; he appears to have been a source for al Jazeera before he was a source for the AP. But we are not much closer to knowing who he is—his background, possible biases arising from that background, the origin of his ability to be intimately aware of incidents outside his jurisdiction, why he claimed four mosques were burned, and so on. Nor are these moot questions, as it seems that most of the AP stories sourced to Hussein are not corroborated by other press accounts. Indeed, in this case, there remains no evidence of his claim that four mosques were attacked, and only the word of three anonymous Sunnis that six people were burned alive (one of whom contradicted the first AP story in one respect).
I do not expect the AP to respond to those questions any better than it did questions about Capt. Hussein. With a Gallup Poll showing that most Americans believe that the news media’s coverage of the situation in Iraq is generally inaccurate, you might think they might care more. Then again, why should the AP’s attitude about its Iraq coverage be any different from its usual attitude? AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll gushed over the AP’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina—stories the AP later reported were highly exaggerated, sometimes outright false. Carroll also denied that photos of bodies taken after an Israeli airstrike in Qana, Lebanon, were staged—despite the fact that you can see the staging on video. Despite this, the AP dressed up the photo-op stage manager, Salam Daher, as heroic. It is not a track record that inspires confidence in the AP’s ability to police itself.

Me, me, me, me, moo….
Kelly, from Pincher Creek writes;

I did a little analysis on Heather Mallick’s New Year’s column over on the CBC website:
Total words in article – 1090
# of times the word “I” is used – 52
# of times the word “my” is used – 25 (or 26 if you count the headline that links to the article)
Total # “I” and “my” words – 77 – which is just over 7% of the article
Sure glad we’re paying for Heather to tell us all about herself – repeatedly – in the quite thoughtful “Analysis and Viewpoint” section of the CBC “News” website…isn’t this kind of tripe usually reserved for the filler for the centre community section of the local village newspaper, usually penned by a nice old lady that has lived in the community since the Great War, and featuring such nuggets as the tricks taught to the pet goldfish of her daughter’s cousin’s girlfriend back in the 1940’s?
If the divine Ms. HM does not define self-absorbed rumination, then I have no idea what (or who) would…
ru·mi·na·tion (rÅ«’mÉ™-nā’shÉ™n) n.
1. The act of pondering; meditation.
2. The act or process of chewing cud.

You know, that sounds less like a comment than it does… a poll question!

Warren Kinsella’s prediction #6 for 2007;

Bloggers will continue to believe they are supplanting the mainstream media, when – in fact – the data will show that the growth and influence of blogs is waning;

Alan D. Mutter, “veteran media executive”;

Vaporized: $13.5B in news stock value
In a dramatic repudiation of newspapers by investors, the shares of publicly held publishing stocks in the last two years lost nearly $13.5 billion in value, or 20.5% of their market capitalization.
To put this in perspective, the vaporized value is greater than the enterprise value of the Tribune Co. or the combined value of the McClatchy, New York Times and Media General publishing companies.
The vertiginous drop came at the same time the Dow Jones industrial average soared to an all-time high and other market indicators gained by healthy double-digit percentages.
[…]
The sell-off has been prompted by declining readership, falling revenues and rising concern over the industry’s ability to respond effectively to competition from the new media. As Goldman Sachs recently noted, 2006 likely was the first “non-recession year” in history in which newspaper revenues declined.

More here – “Although investors forced management to sell Knight Ridder in the interests of improving shareholder value, the transaction has resulted in precisely the opposite outcome.”
Set aside the fact that I don’t actually know of any bloggers who either aspire to or believe we are “supplanting the mainstream media” – if current trends continue, the question may be moot. We could end up having to.
(Providing they aren’t taken by force.)
h/t Jeff Jarvis.

In the dozens;

“All right Mr. Associated Press. I’m ready for my close up*.”