C. Dodd Harris IV (of the famed, but sadly defunct Ipse Dixit) protests the content of this post;

As a lawyer, I deeply resent the implicit comparison to journalists in this post.

My deepest apologies to any other lawyers who were similarly insulted.
And to used car dealers, whorehouse piano players, pickpockets, dog catchers, meter readers, proctologists, and tax collectors, who, though not mentioned specifically, no doubt felt the hot flush of knowing how it feels to hear their occupations mentioned in the same breath as “reporter”.

Michelle Malkin;

Catch that? The apparent “sting” involves targeting Nascar and other sporting events. ‘Cause that’s presumably where the fair and balanced NBC news staff thinks all the bigots are.

UpdateNBC’s news-staging stunt is now making the news. NASCAR officials are unimpressed.

Paul Jackson on the Ottawa “rat pack”;

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has good reason not to trust the Eastern-based Lib-Left dominated media.
So did Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day.
As did Reform party leader Preston Manning.
The Lib-Left media — led by that wholly-owned subsidiary of the federal Liberal party, the CBC, the Toronto (Red) Star, the pompous Globe and Mail and their naive hangers-on and acolytes — did all they could to mock, heap scorn on, ridicule and twist just about everything Manning and Day said.
[…]
While Harper went through a similar meatgrinder during the 2004 campaign — with the Eastern media for the most part dancing to Martin’s slurs — by 2006 our new prime minister had learned a thing or two.
I actually warned Manning, Day and Harper to stay away from the CBC, Star and Globe and every other media outfit of a Lib-Left bent.

In these parts we have a saying for what the media has brought upon themselves – it’s called “pissing in your own bed”. Well, let them soak in it for a while.

Harper may find he has initially been too stringent in ordering his cabinet ministers and MPs to have tight lips — but, let’s be honest here, many are young and inexperienced — and he may have maintained too much bitterness over the treatment of Manning, Day and to an extent his early days as Conservative leader.
What he must do now is cautiously loosen the reins on his ministers after they settle into their roles. Then, just as cautiously, he should build relationships with journalists he can trust.

Read the whole thing – particularly if you’re one of those now cooling their heels while the new government keeps you at arms length. And make no mistake about another thing – if you think the general public shares your self-pity or buys into the shrill ” threat to democracy” hyperbole, think again.
For a better understanding of just how little most care that the rules have changed for the pack on the hill, may I suggest this little exercise – pull up one of those dozens of articles written by jilted scribes chastizing, whining and threatening retribution over the treatment of the fifth estate by the new Harper government.
Now, replace the words “media” or “journalists” with “lawyers”.
The heart bleeds, I tell you.

Teletubbies plot next move as they attempt to outmaneuver new rival … ;

The creators of “Sesame Street” are releasing a new line of videos Tuesday targeted for children as young as six months, outraging some child-development experts who feel no form of TV or video is suitable for kids under 2.
The DVDs _ part of a series called “Sesame Beginnings” _ are intended to be watched by parents along with their small children. Sesame Workshop developed the shows with help of experts from Zero to Three, a well-regarded nonprofit advocacy group.

Developing…

He calls papers like The New York Times �a tablet of stone, it is a paper of great authority. And if you ever go to a New York Times editorial meeting, it�s a bit like a religious ceremony.� He talks about the effort and resource that goes into the front page. ��Believe us,� is the message. If it goes onto the front page of The New York Times it�s there because it�s important�. �You may not want to read it but it�s our opinion.� And this is a model that has existed again for a hundred years�.
�This is journalism as revelation: �We are the figures of authority. All these important people at the top speak to us. You can�t speak to because you�re too little�. We are the conduit and we tell you what�s important. It�s like this. Believe us.� And occasionally, the little people would write a letter�. And we�d print a few of these letters very graciously. But most of them we�d drop in the bin�. This was the paper I inherited in 1995, which had been printed since 1821�.�
Then came technology that enabled the conversation, first in the form of email. �This was a big challenge to journalists because they didn�t know quite how to respond and some journalists got quite huffy about this and said, �Look, push off, I�m the figure of authority here� Our job is to tell you what�s what. We don�t want to hear from you because frankly we�re the experts around here.�� Others, he said, found it valuable to improve their journalism.
But often, the people were ignored, so: �What happened next is that these people started talking to each other. They didn�t ask our permission to do this at all� And they started forming little groups of people who began critiquing newspapers� They went behind our back to our sources because, increasingly, the information that we were using was available on the internet�. A bit cheeky of the readers to do that�� (Remember my warning about irony, folks.)
He says it got to the point where he would come into the office and if the paper had made �a mistake about anything, dozens of people around the world had already spotted this and were challenging this. This was a different kind of audience. The old audience� were willing to take on trust your view of a wide range of information that we were saying is important. And these people are, to a much greater degree, self-selecting�� That is, they follow the news that interests them. �Now they�re not wrong, these people, because the internet now does an awful of information on an awful lot of subjects that�s better than newspapers. I shouldn�t be saying this, live, to the world outside. I should be keeping this as a secret.�

Who is “he”? Alan Rusbridger – editor of The Guardian.
Jarvis writes;

I recommend that every American journalist and news executive listen to this speech on newspapers in the age of blogs…

The mp3 file is too large for me to contemplate downloading over dialup, but it comes highly recommended.

As I work here at the shop, I’ve been watching a panel of journalists and ex-politicos on CPAC navel-gazing about the current wrestling match between the Ottawa press and the Harper PMO.
There’s been some interesting general discussion, including a laughable half-denial/dismissal of “perceived” liberal bias in the Canadian media – “(oh, it exists, of course that’s acceptable, because that’s the enlightened small-l liberal world view – unlike the propoganda on FOX and US talk radio”). This was followed by – I’m not making this up – ironically revealing comments from David Halton on the “docility” of the American press towards the Bush administration, and their supposed practice of labelling anyone who disagrees with their policies as “unpatriotic” – confirming suspicions in some quarters that Canadian media uses Democratic Underground forums as a source on US politics.
Just in case you thought these people were capable of meaningful self-examination. I suggest you catch it, if it’s still on. If anyone digs up a transcript, there’s blogging gold in there….

PMO keeps reporters at bay with new rules (Warning – Canadian Press item contains scenes of extreme whining that may offend some readers.)
Another useless tool of the CBC responds to remind Canadians just who runs this damned country, and offers up a threat;

Harper�s treatment of the media is that of an ingrate. The media made Harper. The media also first made Trudeau and Mulroney. Later, the media made both Trudeau and Mulroney and their parties suffer at the polls.
A similar fate awaits Harper if he doesn�t change his basic suspicion and hatred of reporters and news commentators.

And thus, in the space of two short paragraphs, we have public acknowledgement of the ethical bankruptcy of his profession, as well as justification for Harper’s suspicion and efforts to restore the Canadian media to an appropriate level of influence.
Nicely done, Mr. Zolf.
via Jack’s Newswatch
update – I’ll give CTV News credit where it is due here, as they actually mention SDA by URL, unlike so many items in which debate on “the blogs” is mentioned without specifying where it can be found. (Or maybe it’s just a sneaky way to send CTV readers to commentary calling Larry Zolf a useless tool…)

Can Edwards attended a rally for Rahman and noted the (predictable) focus of the media;

Media turnout was good. There were, by my count, four television cameras there, including one from NBC Nightly News. The producer for Andrea Mitchell, a guy named Carl, kept asking question after question designed to elicit a critical response towards President Bush. Finally I had to say something.
“This is not a political issue. This is about a man in Afghanistan who is going to die because he believes in Jesus Christ…It’s a human rights issue…There are political overtones to everything, but that’s not why we’re out here. That’s not why President Bush should act…If y’all turn it inot a political issue–conservatives vs. Bush or conservatives vs. liberals– then you will have failed to get the message out.”

As they so often have. Because journalism is no longer about delivering factual information about current events in appropriate context. It’s become a faux-profession increasingly populated by individuals who aspire to influence political outcomes and public policy – but who are too lazy (or too stupid) to earn that right by running for political office the old fashioned way.
Update: What I said.

The armies of Ipsos-Reid, Decima and SES are once again firing up the phone banks to survey election-weary Canadians so that our national media can run front page headlines declaring “Majority of Canadians Don’t Want Election”
Aren’t they?

A commentor at Roger Simon’s gets to the crux of what is so utterly unprofessional about this type of internal communication;

As a Producer, if Green wants to deliver an unbiased product, he has an obligation not to influence his staff to one view or another, regardless of what he thinks in his heart-of-hearts

Green is an executive producer of Good Morning America. Matt Drudge reports he has other emails of this type that “reveal the inner workings of the nation’s news outlets”.
No doubt he does.
Via Instapundit

There is much hullaballoo in the media about PMSH’s “control” over what is and is not said by various ministers in his cabinet and where they say it. There is great concern over what this means to democracy (because without the media, we have no way of getting information, do we? and no way of verifying the accuracy thereof, either).
The very thought that perhaps PMSH is trying to avoid the kind of mixed messages coming from the Opposition parties on Afghanistan appears to be just a little too difficult to believe for those who fear a hidden agenda.
Gimme a friggin’ break already. This strikes me as an exercise in filling the airwaves with drivel rather than actually going out & looking for news, like, say, our paralympic team’s many successes, or the real quagmire that is Palestinian politics.
Crossposted at Waking Up On Planet X

Harper takes the Other Culture Of Entitlement down a flight – Politics Watch;

The Parliamentary Press Gallery is accusing the Prime Minister’s Office of impeding the freedom of the press to access decision makers after a decision to move the location for scrums with cabinet ministers.

What I said.

One of the best talk show hosts in Canada is doing his final broadcast this weekend. Thanks, Peter – you’ve provided a lot of weekend entertainment around here, (as well as more than a few items that have made their way to SDA). You’ll be missed.

Jon Stewart* – watch your back – CBC “reporter” Neil MacDonald is after your job;

MacDonald deceptively edited another Bush statement – mid-sentence:

“I would like to tell the state level that we are fully prepared�. End of CBC edit.

From the USA Today transcript we learn that the full quote goes:

“I would like to tell the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm to help you deal with the loss of property.”

Read the rest. Write the Ombudsman.
We’re paying for this crap.

Drudge has a great exerpt from the Bill Sammon book Strategery (currently #5 on Amazon).

Although Memogate was initially expected to harm the president, it ended up backfiring spectacularly on the press.
�The guy that it hurt most was Dan Rather and the executives at CBS,� White House strategist Karl Rove said in an interview for STRATEGERY. �It further disgraced a network which is third in ratings and, if you look at the demographics of their consumers, it�s like 70 percent Democrat.�
Rove said Rather�s eagerness to broadcast obviously forged documents proves he is �no serious reporter.� As for Rather�s insistence, to this day, that the documents are real, Rove said: �That�s really bias.�
Memogate has helped accelerate the decline of the mainstream media, generally defined as CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times and other establishment news outlets.
�I think what�s healthy is that there�s no monopoly on the news,� Bush said. �There�s competition. There�s competition for the attention of, you know, 290 million people, or whatever it is.
�And the amazing thing about this world we live in is that there�s a kind of free-flowing, kind of bulletin board of ideas and thoughts out there in the ether space, sometimes landing on somebody�s desk and sometimes not, but always available. It�s a very interesting period.�
Having long been pilloried by the mainstream media, Bush now finds the rise of the alternative media nothing less than revolutionary.
�It�s the beginning of the twenty-first century; it also happens to be the beginning of�or near the beginning�of a revolution in newsgathering and dissemination,� he said. �Not in newsmaking�that tends to be pretty consistent.�
Rove considers Memogate a watershed in the rise of the alternative media.
�The whole incident in the fall of 2004 showed really the power of the ‘blogosphere’,� he said in his West Wing office.
�Because in essence you had now, an army of self-appointed experts looking over the shoulder of the mainstream media and bringing to bear enormously sophisticated skills,� he added.
[…]
Rove expressed astonishment that CBS ignored the warnings of document experts hired by the network to authenticate the National Guard memos.
�It goes back to the failure of the mainstream media, in this instance, to honor their own experts,� he said.
Rove is not the only senior Bush adviser who considers the mainstream media biased against the conservative president. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was outraged that the TV networks refused to declare Bush the winner on Election Night, even after all the votes were counted in the pivotal state Ohio and it became obvious Kerry could not win.
�Some of the talking heads,� Card said, �were rooting for a crisis in Ohio. It wasn�t just that they were afraid to admit we had won.�
Card became particularly incensed when Bush�s Ohio lead reached 120,000 votes, which was mathematically insurmountable.
�Nobody wanted to call it so that we had won,� he said. �It was like, c�mon, are they just afraid to say it?�

Sounds like a fascinating read.
more -Now it’s slanted polling from CBS – The Fake but Accurate! Network.

In its classic “fair and balanced” tradition, CBS slanted in favor of Democrats its poll that found Bush has a 34 percent approval rating and a 59 percent disapproval rating, an all-time high for a CBS poll.
On the bottom of the PDF version of the poll (page 18) it says how many Democrats versus Republicans were contacted.
“Total Republicans” contacted: 272 unweighted and 289 weighted.
“Total Democrats” contacted: 409 unweighted and 381 weighted.

The national average of Dems to Republicans is 33% – 30%.

It’s not often I see Rex Murphy get something wrong, but he does here;

As for the rest of Mr. Harper’s cabinet, last sighted wandering through the governor-general’s mansion for the swearing-in, they have been as tight-lipped and invisible as a band of antisocial hermits. A cabinet is not a monastery, and a communications strategy that so far consists in refusing to communicate and refusing to communicate while you are not communicating, is not really so much a strategy as a mindset that cannot attach to the most public office this country has.
It is not necessary to like the press. Majority opinion may even concur with the prime minister there. But it is necessary to talk to them. Until that fairly elementary point is conceded by Mr. Harper, the office of prime minister’s communications director is an emblem of iconic idleness, just a Maytag repairman with a Blackberry.

Of course, by “press”, Murphy means “Ottawa press gallery” – as though there is no other way for a Prime MInister to communicate than be waylaid in a scrum or pick up the phone and gift next morning’s Globe editorial with frothy spin from the PMO.
When Brian Mulroney won his landslide majority in 1984, a talking head (whose identity I’ve forgotten) announced to the nation that in the face of such a one sided parliament, the media would assume the role of opposition .
That was a signal that something was about to go desperately wrong, and it did. The Canadian people had already spoken as to what voices they wanted in parliament. The Ottawa press gallery weren’t on the ballot, yet they declared themselves elected, and they’ve by and large behaved like pompous, entitled Liberal senators with a broadcast license ever since.
It’s time they were forced to relinquished those seats.
When those in media assume a de facto role in government, the instution becomes inherently dangerous. When a declared “opponant” owns the kill switch and the ability to reshape the message to reflect a political agenda, not just truth, but democracy itself comes under threat. Having assumed a political stance of being in “opposition to the Mulroney government” those 20 odd years ago, it’s no wonder that so many have lost trust in what we are hearing and reading – indeed, the mining of the Mulroney era negative messaging to “taint” the Harper government is already in full swing. It matters not what Harper appointees like Michael Wilson have accomplished before or since in private life – if they had any association with the Mulroney government, that is how the media frames them.
If Harper is making a concerted effort to reposition the role of media in this country, we can only applaud – no matter our political views. The opportunity has arrived to push back, because the tides of technology are changing – with subscriptions and television ratings losing ground to the internet and other alternative sources like talk radio, the legacy media no longer have exclusive control of the filter.
The talking heads have had their hands on the levers of political power for so long, not even they realize how inappropriate it is. Now, they’re getting them slapped – and we shouldn’t be surprised that these particular members of the “culture of entitlement” will be bitching and whining loudly about their reversal of fortune.

..a new government squeaked into office. They immediately proved to be a bunch of hypocrites and so the people rose up against them. The defeated party has only to pick a new leader and they will be easily re-elected and order will be restored to the kingdom.
This isn’t a plot for This is Wonderland, the recently cancelled CBC comedy. And it’s not the next reality TV show.
It is, however, the latest drama being written by hundreds of authors across the country. Day after day we read in the newspapers and watch on TV how the Conservative leader Stephen Harper is under fire after the defection of Vancouver Liberal David Emerson. The shamed Liberals, we are told, are chomping at the bit to pick a new leader and regain the reins of power from the faltering Conservatives.
There’s only one prob lem with this scenario— it’s a fantasy.
Says who?
Says the Canadian public.
What’s being reported is literally a scenario, a plotline created and followed meticulously by the country’s mainstream media journalists.
National Post columnist Adam Radwanski says they can’t help themselves. In a piece earlier this month (Biased—in favour of a good story. Feb 3), he wrote how journalists have a bias, alright; a bias for “an easy narrative.” It’s a pack mentality, he says, that agrees on a storyline and then slants every news element to fit.
During the election campaign it was Liberal Stumblebums. After the election, it’s obviously Conservatives Hypocrites.

Sounds about right.

Via commentor “Mississauga Matt” who writes; “seems that the CBC’s Jennifer Ditchburn was trolling for information about the Woodbridge couple murdered this week in Mexico”.
Posted by Susie Q Roo;

Ms. Ditchburn has apparently decided against using me as a source as I haven’t received a response to my last e-mail. Here’s the progression:

Quote:
ME: I live less than 10 miles from Barcelo Maya… I’ll answer any questions you may have.
Quote:
Jennifer Ditchburn wrote: Could we call you for a phone interview?
Quote:
ME: I’d prefer to answer your questions via e-mail, if possible. I checked my map after I wrote you… Barcelo is actually only 3 kilometers from here.
Quote:
JD: Hmmm…it’s hard for me to use any information from an anonymous source. People are always skeptical. I promise it would be painless…!
Quote:
ME: Jennifer, I’m not sure how I’m any more anonymous via e-mail than I am via telephone. My name is Susie, I am an American expatriate, living in a small community south of Playa del Carmen and north of the Barcelo. My phone connection is wobbly at best, and costly at worst! I’m happy to answer whatever questions you have via e-mail, but it’s certainly up to you. I will be happy to give you my Mexican cell phone # (984 115 xxxx) if it proves to you that I live here… but, seeing as how it’s Mexico, I don’t have service in my home, only when I drive out to the main highway, and I’m not willing to do that.

And no response… guess I was right, eh?

Just an interesting thread, no more or less. The rest is here.

Buried deep in this Globe And Mail article, this startling admission;

Roughly 70 per cent of [221] journalists who responded to the survey also said they had seen the images.

Arguably, the biggest international story of the new year – one in which there was considerable Canadian coverage and controversy – and nearly one in three professional journalists surveyed admit they had not yet seen the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.
How can this be?

A particularly good one from Steyn;

So anyway David Gregory’s going bananas and yelling “I will yell!” and “Don’t be a jerk!” at the White House press secretary, and there’s more smoke coming out of his ears than from Ronald McDonald in Lahore, and I’m thinking, you know, maybe Karl’s latest range of Rovebots that he planted in American media corporations are just a wee bit too parodically self-absorbed to be plausible. And then this lady pipes up and asks, “Would this be much more serious if the man had died?”
Well, maybe. And maybe it would be even ever so much more serious still if, after peppering him with birdshot, Cheney had dragged him into a safe house in the Sunni Triangle and decapitated him with a rusty scimitar while shouting “Allahu Ahkbar!” and then sold the video to al-Jazeera.

On a slightly more serious and related note, Flemming Rose,(culture editor of Jyllands-Posten) on why he published the cartoons;

As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.
The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants.

Not to be dissuaded from the now familiar pattern of tying their professional credibility to a non-story and riding it into the quicksand, the media heads into week two of “Cheney’s-got-a-gun”. As the new round of magazine covers and feature articles roll out, one wonders Just what a “sinister fascist who really runs the Whitehouse” has to do these days to collect on some of that appeasement normally due a hard working totalitarian – convert to Islam?