The Andrew Coyne column that’s creating all the buzz today is up. If you have only time to read one thing today – make it this.

I don’t suppose that when she wrote;

“… when the U.S. corporate media were cheering the attack on Iraq these [conservative/right wing bloggers] weren’t attacking them for their complicity then.” … and … “Why are the U.S. corporate media downplaying Iraq…”

… that she realized her words were an admission that she doesn’t actually read conservative blogs or the “US corporate media” .
But onward newbie blogger! Hard on the heels of the dismissive “corporate media” posts, she recovers from the bout of Zerbisiamnesia to explain why her brand new Toronto Star hosted “blog” doesn’t allow comments;

It’s not like this is some independent blog not worth suing. It’s a billion dollar media corporation that pays huge premiums for libel insurance. And, Canada has very onerous libel laws, much tougher than in the U.S.
Then there are our hate laws. They’re there for a reason.

Talking down to her readers. Nice touch.

But never lose hope. The Star is not closed to the idea of opening up the comments sections … one day.
Personally, I would love an electronic free-for-all. It would save me a lot of cutting and pasting. (Please, a favour? No fancy typefaces!) But, as it says at the bottom of this page, the Star has the copyright. I am but a wage slave and therefore must put up with those trucks above my head. That doesn’t mean the Star isn’t fair game. Look here and here.
In fact, you can bet that the suits are watching this blog very nervously because they know that, to maintain even a shred of cybercred, it has to be free-ranging. That they went with the intemperate me as their beta blogger — others will follow — suggests that they are either out of their minds or taking this enterprise very seriously.

“Either, or.” In the two dimensional Land Of Zerbisias, possibilities only come in twos!
Here’s another, Antonia – instead of hiding in the skirts of your corporate nanny, consider blogging like a grownup.
Get your own.

Head over to Instapundit this morning for a taste of how the storm is gathering over the Newsweek Koran fiasco. (The link is to the main page – just keep scrolling.)

Glenn Reynolds on the now retracted Newsweek story about desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay;

Two points: (1) If they had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they’d feel much worse — which is why they generally don’t report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don’t extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars; and (2) If a blogger had made a similar mistake, with similar consequences, we’d be hearing about Big Media’s superior fact-checking and layers of editors.
People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because — let’s be clear here — Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

Indeed.

Right now, I have a CBC cameraman in my studio, doing an piece on blogging.
So, this is a demonstration.

I probably should have changed out of my work clothes. Actually, we were dressed rather alike, come to think of it.
Question (inspired by the comments): If you take a CBC cameraman hostage, does that make you a “militant”?
Just asking.

Daniel Henninger on the rise of conservative media in the US in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s dismantling of the “Fairness Doctrine” in media.

Ronald Reagan tore down this wall in 1987 (maybe as spring training for Berlin) and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination.
It wasn’t obvious that conservatives soon would dominate talk radio. Radio programming has always been a soulless decision based on ratings. If programmers thought they could win the drive-time slots with Don Imus reading “Das Kapital,” that would be on the air and advertisers would support it. But it’s not.
What worked after speech became free in the spectrum ozone was hyper-articulate conservative hosts opening their microphones to millions of hyper-angry conservative voters–not least in such liberal bastions as New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.
In 1994, Newt Gingrich, his Contract With America and the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952–the years in which the Fairness Doctrine largely kept politics off the air. This didn’t happen because the Gingrich candidates were getting their message out in the Los Angeles Times or Boston Globe.

M.K. Braaten;

Last week, after my research (here and here) on the Liberals ‘Audits’ created a firestorm in the media and the House of Commons, I received an email from a CBC investigative journalist wanting to do a piece on the story. He was planning on investigating the conflict of interest regarding the Liberals and the accounting firms that had conducted the ‘audits’.
After several phone conversations with him, and after him telling me he had interviews scheduled with some prominent forensic accountants, he informed me that his bosses did not want to pursue the story. The reason was because ‘information that [I] dug up has already been reported.” It should be noted, however, that this journalist has exposed some past scandals within various levels of government and frankly, I am not questioning his integrity (which I respect) but what I am questioning is the integrity of his superiors reasoning for not reporting this story.
To his credit, this producer seemed genuinely interested in this story, and from what he told me, he had already done some extensive research on the topic. But, I think the explanation for failing to finish this story that I was given doesn�t make sense. For example, only two news organizations reported this topic (CanWest and Globe and Mail), but they only reported what was said in parliament. Not one news entity has used ‘investigative’ journalism to actually dig around for some information that would be news worthy � and there are a lot of newsworthy items in this topic.

“The speech-astonishing not so much for what it said as for who said it-may go down in history as the day that the stodgy newspaper business officially woke up to the new realities of the internet age.”– The Economist”

What I worry about much more is our ability to make the necessary cultural changes to meet the new demands of the digital native. I said earlier, what is required is a complete transformation of the way we think about our product and the Internet itself. Unfortunately, however, I believe too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers. Too often, the question we ask is “Do we have the story?” rather than “Does anyone want the story?”
And the data support this unpleasant truth. Studies show we’re in an odd position: We’re more trusted by the people who aren’t reading us. And when you ask journalists what they think about their readers, the picture grows darker. According to one recent study, the percentage of national journalists who have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the American public to make good decisions has declined by more than 20 points since 1999. Perhaps this reflects their personal politics and personal prejudices more than anything else, but it is disturbing.
This is a polite way of saying that reporters and editors think their readers are stupid. …
Newspapers whose employees look down on their readers can have no hope of ever succeeding as a business.

Amen
The speech, and Jeff Jarvis’ posts here and here should be required reading by every newspaper editor and journalist in the business.
Via Instapundit

Blog chatter on the CBC’s selective poll reporting makes it to the Toronto Sun;

Did you know that an Environics Research poll released last week found that a startling 73% of Canadians surveyed believe Prime Minister Paul Martin is either “very responsible” or “somewhat responsible” for AdScam?

Yes, actually. Most people who surf blogs did.

But you wouldn’t know any of this from the highly selective reporting of this poll last week by the CBC, which commissioned it, and by other media, who, incredibly, portrayed it as a positive finding for Martin. (For alerting me to this controversy, I’m indebted to blogger “Michael” of Winnipeg, who first wrote about it Sunday on his website, bluemapleleaf.blogspot. com.)

Kudos to Nealenews, who is headlining the article at the moment. The CBC has been skewing their reporting (or lack of it) so heavily for the Liberals, you’d almost wonder if they have something to hide.

I’ve been up since 5 am for no reason at all, other than my sleep patterns are completely disrupted from three days and nights of waiting on an expected litter of puppies. The wee darlings arrived by c-section yesterday, giving my VISA card a case of the bends.
So, there are sometimes sensible explanations for small dead animal postings made at 2 am – namely, small live animals.
Listening to the local news this morning, I caught an item about a businessman in Regina named “Craig McMillan” who’s pulling some crafty scheme to the evade the smoking ban. My ears perked up. You see, that was the second time I’d heard the name “Craig McMillan” this morning.
The first time was at just past seven o’f*ckingclock, when the phone rang with a call from someone who said they were looking for the guy.
As I said, I was already up. Somewhere out there is a reporter who just missed an excellent two word interview.

When assigned to cover a war zone, you’d hope that the colleagues watching your back aren’t carrying knives.
h/t The Corner.

Keeping an anxious nation* updated on continuing developments in the “Summer Weather Comes Early To Saskatchewan” story as it unfolds;

“Winter Weather Lingers Late In Saskatchewan”.
After a front moved in with high winds from the northwest all day Saturday, Saskatchewan residents were greeted this morning by rain, which has now turned to snow. Winter storm warnings were issued late last evening for the southwest. The sun rose at ….

Today’s weather here underscores the absurdity of the CBC’s attention to “breaking records”. The fact is this – there is no such thing as an “unusual” temperature on the prairies in the month of April. Or May. Or September or October or November. The only constant is inconsistancy.
Like the rest of the national media, The People’s Network is oblivious to this. For all the purported claim to “bringing Canada to Canadians for the low, low cost of $1billion dollars a year!”, Western viewers are resigned to seeing our presence on the national networks largely confined to residents jogging in January, snowbound in June or standing in a feedlot.
As someone snarked the other day, it’s a good thing that the grain elevators are coming down in Saskatchewan – it may finally force CBC reporters to look for different backdrops.

This is the number one story across much of the nation.

(Apr.10…original G&M cover has moved, so replaced with another from the same day)
This is the front page of the CBC website this morning.

This is your explanation.

Update – A reader writes: “Our pals at the CBC, who stand on guard for We, waited until 9:17 tonight to post today’s bombshell that has testimony linking adscam directly to the PMO.”

The Pulitzers are out. Generating the most buzz is the winner of the Murders Orchestrated For The Camera category.
(details of selection criteria)

In the fine tradition of “Fake, But Accurate”, CBS erroniously reported on March 28th via their website that Terry Shiavo had died (Radio host Glenn Back grabbed a screen capture (pdf).) – then quietly removed the story absent retraction, correction or apology. (And some claim that bloggers lack “journalistic ethics”…)
One wonders how a news organization with as many resources as CBS could manage to jump the gun so badly on the number one news story of the day – perhaps someone finally noticed the Kinko’s fax number on the leaked “death certificate”?
hat tip OTB

“Bush’s spread lacks Southfork flash”
An actual headline, from the Globe and Mail – a proud member of the Canadian media establishment that is far too sophisticated to view the world through the distorted lens of American TV.

This may be Texas and President George W. Bush may like to walk with a bit of a regional swagger but his new house is no Southfork, the over-the-top pile of the Ewings on TV’s Dallas. Instead, it is a low-slung building with a large wraparound porch that appears to fit effortlessly into the landscape.

None of the rest is worth bothering with. Waste of electrons.

Sean at Pol:Spy has done a bang up job of unravelling the James Roszko grow-op story. For all of the “my illegal pot smoking didn’t kill those police officers – someone else’s stolen trucks did” defensiveness in the media and punditry in the confusing days following the murders, it seems the initial report was closer to the truth. The quonset was outfitted with water tanks, a $30,000 generator and close to 300 plants – with nary an engine puller to be seen.
Once the “only twenty plants” meme took hold, it appears that the major media outlets simply did their investigative journalism while reading someone else’s paper over the morning coffee. Quite the little echo chamber they turned out to be.

Andy Barrie of CBC radio has advice for a Canadian who takes issue with having to support a left wing network with tax dollars. Leave. (Which reminds me – when I get home, I must remember to call the CBC afternoon request line and get them to play a little Toby Keith.)

Jeffrey Schuster revisits the looting of the Iraq National Museum in the days following the fall of Saddam Hussein, and how foreign journalists grabbed misinformation fed them by “museum officials” – Baath party appointees – without skepticism or verification, and ran with it.

By the end of the day on Saturday, April 12, then, the major outlines of the story had been set by the journalists in Baghdad. According to the officials who had been located and interviewed on the museum grounds, most if not all of the collection had been removed by looting Iraqis. Again, according to a handful of Iraqis on the grounds, the American forces, who could have prevented this catastrophe, did nothing. Writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, Paul McGeough, who linked the museum story to his wider anti-war stance, did not hesitate to cast the first stone. “After witnessing three weeks of attacks on Baghdad and almost a week of looting – especially of the Iraq National Museum,” he writes, “questions about where the criminality lies become blurred.”

The numbers of artifacts lost inflated as one report followed another, and academics joined the chorus. The “170,000” items of antiquity lost from the undefended museum were worth “billions of dollars”. It was an “act of violence against humanity”, “a tragedy that has no parallel in world history”. No latitude was given to a US military occupied with battling the murderous Saddam Fedayeen – the “no war for oil” chorus rewrote the pages of their songbooks. The charge that “lives are more important than oil” was replaced with “pottery is more important than lives”.

Some reporters, like McGeough, used the situation to take a cheap-shot at the US administration. Others, like Burns, were simply “disposed to believe the worst.” And still others were unable or unwilling to fact-check some of the basic points of the story, the most crucial being the figure of 170,000 coming from Nabhal Amin, a former official who was not privy to all of the procedures that had been implemented over the preceding months to safeguard Iraq’s antiquities. The academics, however, probably come off with the largest stain on their reputations. That members of a professional class who swear by the tenets of critical thinking and the presentation of evidence at every turn would be the first ones to accuse the US military without waiting for a proper investigation tells us a lot about the state of current political discourse in academia. There were few apologies and when they did come they were uttered through clenched teeth.

Via the German blog, Medienkritik.

Mick Stockinger notices something odd in a CNN report on a US Senate vote over oil drilling in Alaska.

The picture’s caption reads: “Musk ox graze in an area proposed as a possible site for oil exploration inside Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

Hmmm. Considering that the proposed drill site is on the coastal plain and that the Brooks range is nearly over the horizon, at the southern edge of ANWR wilderness area, I would say that this is a flat-out lie.
[…]
There are actually two kinds of deception going on here. The site may well have been included in a 1987 proposal to congress, but it bears no relevance to the current ANWR drilling proposal. Captioning the photo makes me very suspicious that this is no inadvertant mistake or simple sloppiness. Aside from the equivocation on which proposal is being discussed, I believe CNN inserted this photograph because it has a much more appealing esthetic than the coastal plain where the facility is actually proposed to be built. Tundra just doesn’t tug at the heart strings the way snow- capped mountains do.

Via Michelle Malkin.