You all better sit down.
I’ve signed on for the duration of the election campaign with the CBC, writing at Election Roundtable, which isn’t so much a blog as it is a discussion page between five bloggers of varying background and ideology. I believe I’m there to represent the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. That’s what they’re going to get, anyway.
Expect about a post a day at the forum – I’ll let you know when they appear for your reading convenience, but they won’t be crossposted because of the nature of the agreement. Otherwise, my other blogging should remain unaffected.
The first post is up now. Let me know what you think.
Update – The reviews begin to roll in, and it seems that some of those on the left have jumped to the conclusion that I’ll move to foreign shores if the Liberals win the election.
It reminds me that the largely confusing nature of leftist ideology may actually be rooted in poor reading comprehension. One would think that a line that refers to the tearing up of the country would tip off even the most stubbornly resistant remedial reader about what I meant.

Bell Globemedia on one side, Liberal Party on the other, and a lobbyist in the middle;

A lobbyist for the corporate giant that owns two of this country’s most prominent media outlets is now running the Liberal campaign in Ontario in the upcoming federal election. Isn’t that lovely?

And like all good Liberal lobbyists, he comes with Earnscliffe credentials!
(Previous post here.)

CTV has launched an “election blog” with such distinguished authors as “CTV news editor” .
Get with the program, people – you represent a national media corporation. Sign your posts.
(Flashback – an unsigned email from a “CTV news producer”.)

Paul Tuns quotes Greg Staples;

“how can a campaign chairman for a party be allowed to work for the largest media conglomerate in Canada?” and how can Canadians “expect disinterested coverage from the Globe and Mail and CTV when one of their own employees is responsible for getting the Liberals re-elected in Ontario?” Especially when he’s the main source for the Globe’s front-page stories.

Last night on The World Tonight I said something about journalistic malpractice, and the lack of competition in media. I should have added that there is a nearly total absence of self criticism. A story like this should be among the top items nationally for “rival” news organizations, because it undermines the integrity of the industry, not to mention the legitimacy of the democratic process.
As I said, Greg asks good questions. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for these people to provide answers.

Stephanie Matteis of CBC’s The National e-mailed James Bow;

Hi James,
I’m hoping you can help?
I’m looking for someone who was going to vote Conservative in the last election but changed their minds along the way because they were scared, freaked out or worried about the Conservatives, the Conservative agenda or its leader. So, instead, they voted Liberal. Now you’re facing the same dilemma this time. If this describes you AND you are willing to travel for a couple of days next month AND you are willing to appear on television then please get in touch immediately.
If this doesn’t describe you, please feel free to forward this email to someone you feel might fit this description.
Thanks.

I suppose it’s possible the invites to those who were “going to vote Liberal in the last election but changed their minds along the way because they were disgusted, insulted or angry about the Liberals, the Liberal lack of agenda or Mr Dithers” are still in the mail qeue…
h/t Bob Tarantino, who didn’t get one, either.

Someone has some Xplainin’ to do…

Video here at Political Teen. I know there are some photo/graphics techies in the audience (Sean McCormick, I’m talking to you) – can anyone isolate the black lettering at the bottom of the image?
Update – A Winnipeg blogger gets ‘er done. CNN states it’s a technical glitch, but has launched an investigation. Maybe, but it sounds like a strange one. From Drudge – A rival network news director asks: “When has an ‘X’ ever aired on CNN before? Who had the graphic sitting in the key signal? Who generated the ‘X’?”

It depends on where you get your news.
Check out these two versions of the same report by Andrew Panetta of Canadian Press.

The rest appears to be worded identically. So, who made the changes and why?
And isn’t this trade diplomacy at its finest? By using softwood to castigate Bush publicly for the purpose of pre-election posturing at home Martin is certain to move the issue forward with the administration – right into the “round file”.
Odd timing, this escalation of rhetoric – except when you consider that Martin has more to gain politically in milking this dispute for the anti-American vote, than he does from negotiating a settlement.

Little Miss Attila;

“Well, mine are newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and The New York Times. You know,” he replies. “Respected media sources.”
Respected by whom? I wonder. Other members of the media? I know those people. I have dinner with them every month. They are just as shallow and intellectually lazy as anyone else.

Jeff Goldstein;

BlackJack catches the AP in an early iteration of a Bush poll numbers story making the claim that Libby was indicted for outing a covert agent-something with which no one was charged by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald for the simple reason that Valerie Plame was not covert.
Which raises an compelling question:� When the press begins overtly lying to you, where do you go for the truth?

Don’t bother coming here- mainstream Canadian coverage of poltiical controversy in the US is reduced to Democratic talking points, with occasional rebuttal by Moveon.org spokespersons.
Glenn Reynolds notes the White House is now pushing back at misreporting by the Washington Post;

Maybe the press should learn to use Google. Instead of, you know, hoping that we don’t. . . .”

Speaking of which, don’t forget the Hootenanny at Let It Bleed!
Add your own (related) finds in the comments.

The architect chief victim of Rathergate is out flogging a book. It doesn’t appear as though she used the time off since her firing to improve her research skills. The “anonymous” Bill Ardolino;

I will grant her one thing – the “school of sharks” analogy is pretty accurate, though her description of a helpless victim (a multi-million dollar respected professional news organization) is a bit … off. And let’s not forget who chummed the water.

This is good, too.

Kevin Libin on the latest journalist to openly declare for the Liberals;

The Sun’s Maria McClintock, who I hear has just been appointed to be Belinda Stronach’s chief flack. McClintock’s always been a tough reporter, but no one knows better than Belinda that everyone has their price. But exactly how long has McClintock been in negotiations over this gig? Up until today, she was filing stories for the Sun on the Gomery report and the rumoured election. On Wednesday, she was on a Mike Duffy panel, when she uttered this Belinda-ism:
MCCLINTOCK: Well, Stephen Harper is between a rock and a hard place here. He doesn’t have the numbers. He has to be careful about being seen too close to separatist Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe and…[ellipsis in original]
So, if the McClintock thing is true�and my sources are good�that adds her to the growing list of journos who have been successfully assimilated. Here’s just a sampling: Jason Moscovitz (from CBC to the BDC), Drew Fagan (from G&M to Foreign Affairs), Susan Murray (from CBC to Scott Brison’s office), Ian Jack (from FP to Industry Dept), Jim Munson (from CTV to Senate), and Michaelle Jean, of course (RDC to GG). There’s more here.

He quotes columnist Tom Korski;

“Many journalists prefer the rich glow of influence that is only reflected in cufflinks and chauffeured cars. There have been more journalists named to the Senate–59, in total– than doctors, bankers or financiers.”

It’s not a stretch to declare that the movers and shakers in Canadian media regard themselves as part of a ruling establishment – an establishment afflicted with an Ontario-Quebec urban mindset that largely views western Canada as the “other” – too quaint and too crude, too friendly to the US, too admiring of large and intimidating pickup trucks to be trusted to govern their fair and sophisticated land. Their problem with Harper has little to do with social conservativism or lack of personal charisma. It’s more basic than that – the Conservative party as it now stands is populated with outsiders, “hidden agenda” just codespeak for “they’re not one of us”.
The Liberal culture of entitlement has long and generous fingers. A Harper government is indeed “scary” – the prospect of being on the outside looking in frightens the bejesus out of long time journalists and media pundits who understand that with a Conservative victory, the sweet little Liberal patronage pot at the end of their career rainbow is unlikely to be claimed – or offered.
Update : LIB Election Bias Hootenanny – it’s a new project at Let It Bleed.

Media self-parody by the Associated Press

NBC: busted again.*
H/T Nealnews

Anatomy of a photograph

This may be a violation of site policy (I didn’t get a manual), but I just have to recommend Calgary Grit’s fall TV lineup.
My favourites:
“Lost: A plane with all 307 members of parliament crashes over the Pacific Ocean…and no one looks for them.”; “Everybody Hates Steve: A look inside the Globe & Mail newsroom.”; and “The Biggest Loser: Joe Clark makes his return to the Canadian airwaves”

It looks like the CBC is back!
[chirp]
Q. If a tree falls in the forest and the CBC does a remote broadcast of the event, does the tree make a sound?
A. Not unless the tape gets played on Hockey Night in Canada.

Greg Staples;

You just have to check out the second video clip of the Stephen Harper speech via CTV. Listen very carefully to the end of the clip. After Stephen Harper finishes speaking you can clearly here the CTV translator snidely say -“no kidding”. Seems the hate Harper vibe has been completely ingrained at CTV.

The clip is here. See what you think.

Conservative politicians, pay attention. Since most of us despise pretentious airheads in media as much as we do pretentious airheads in politics, “giving as good as you get” once in a while shows you own a backbone. Whatever their political stripe, voters admire that. You don’t need to be a US Army General to stand up for youself and the truth.

Honore: And Mr. Mayor, let’s go back, because I can see right now, we’re setting this up as he said, he said, we said. All right? We are not going to go, by order of the mayor and the governor, and open the convention center for people to come in. There are buses there. Is that clear to you? Buses parked. There are 4,000 troops there. People come, they get on a bus, they get on a truck, they move on. Is that clear? Is that clear to the public?
Female reporter: Where do they move on…
Honore: That’s not your business.
Male reporter: But General, that didn’t work the first time…
Honore: Wait a minute. It didn’t work the first time. This ain’t the first time. Okay? If…we don’t control Rita, you understand? So there are a lot of pieces of it that’s going to be worked out. You got good public servants working through it. Let’s get a little trust here, because you’re starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay? What we’re going to do is have the buses staged. The initial place is at the convention center. We’re not going to announce other places at this time, until we get a plan set, and we’ll let people know where those locations are, through the government, and through public announcements. Right now, to handle the number of people that want to leave, we’ve got the capacity. You will come to the convention center. There are soldiers there from the 82nd Airborne, and from the Louisiana National Guard. People will be told to get on the bus, and we will take care of them. And where they go will be dependent on the capacity in this state. We’ve got our communications up. And we’ll tell them where to go. And when they get there, they’ll be able to get a chance, an opportunity to get registered, and so they can let their families know where they are. But don’t start panic here. Okay? We’ve got a location. It is in the front of the convention center, and that’s where we will use to migrate people from it, into the system.
Male reporter: General Honore, we were told that Berman Stadium on the west bank would be another staging area…
Honore: Not to my knowledge. Again, the current place, I just told you one time, is the convention center. Once we complete the plan with the mayor, and is approved by the governor, then we’ll start that in the next 12-24 hours. And we understand that there’s a problem in getting communications out. That’s where we need your help. But let’s not confuse the questions with the answers. Buses at the convention center will move our citizens, for whom we have sworn that we will support and defend…and we’ll move them on. Let’s not get stuck on the last storm. You’re asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don’t get stuck on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don’t confuse the people please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don’t understand, maybe you’ll confuse it to the people. That’s why we like follow-up questions. But right now, it’s the convention center, and move on.
Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that’s happening this time, though, and did not have that last time…
Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I’m not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we’ve got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let’s talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

The rest is here.

I’m a CBC worker in Toronto, and ‘locked out.’ (I have a problem with that status. Management gave us notification of the lockout about eighty hours before we were locked out. [Law gives 72.] If they hadn’t have blinked first, it would have been a strike call within eight hours or less. But because management jumped the gun, we all can strut around saying we’re locked out even though it’s just a technicality.)
The tenor of what I’ve heard from the loudspeakers is that it’s all a part of the Alamo mentality. We are the last bulwark against the neo-cons. Then we got our pets show. The Barenaked Ladies. The Roging Grannies. Various piggybacking soul and rap singers.
Arnold Amber (my fearless leader) wrote in the Globe and Mail that jounalistic integrity would be compromised by more contracts. One would curry favour. But from what I’ve seen in the past weeks, we’re already currying.

The NDP shows up every week, all sorts of other union-left groups show (International Day of Solidarity? Is the ComIntern still operating?) and promote themselves upon my aching back.

The post-Katrina poll results you didn’t hear about.