There’s a genesis of a discussion beginning at the Shotgun over an article that asks Why Don’t Journalists Get Religion?
I think the premise is wrong. I think that journalists think they have it all nailed. They get religion just fine, thankyouverymuch. Nice religions have shaved heads, smiling non-judgementalism and celebrity endorsements. Or brown skin. You can be as judgemental as you wish if you have brown skin. It’s why Yassin stubbornly held onto his description as “spiritual leader” all through his years inciting terrorism and hatred, and why Al Sharpton is held to a different standard than Pat Robertson. Journalists also like victim religion, which goes a long way to explain why the deferencial, self effacing pedophile Woody Allen is pardoned while a naked Ariel Sharon is featured in political cartoons tearing the heads off of Palestinian babies with his teeth.
You don’t quite agree, do you? Well, let’s take a look at this fawning hero worship article in yesterday’s Toronto Star;

The Dalai Lama wrapped up more than ten days of public appearances in Toronto today by completing the initiation of thousands of devotees into the spiritual teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. About 7,000 people, including dozens of robe-clad monks, attended the ceremony marked by prayers, chants and teachings from the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Complete with quotes from the devoted;

Tina Petrova of Toronto, a practising Tibetan Buddhist, travelled to southern California in 1996 to take teachings from the Dalai Lama. Her reaction to seeing him in Toronto was summed up in one word: “Wow.”
“I mean just to be in his presence, he feels like an ocean of love and peace and grace,” she said. “He just instils in one a sense of deep calmness and serenity, and you can just feel his purity of heart.”
…
In the final rite of the ceremony, the sand was to be poured into Lake Ontario, allowing “the perfect peace” of Buddhist philosophy “to flow with it into the everyday world.”
Today marked the final day of public appearances for the Dalai Lama, who arrived in Vancouver on April 17 for his first visit to Canada since 1993. In the two-and-a-half weeks since, he has become the first Tibetan spiritual leader in history officially welcomed by a Canadian prime minister, been honoured and entertained by several of the country’s luminaries and feted by celebrity devotees from south of the border, including Richard Gere and Goldie Hawn.

Now step back from this scene for a moment, and imagine a different one:

The American evangelist wrapped up more than ten days of public appearances in Toronto today by completing the initiation of thousands of born-again Christians. About 7,000 people attended the ceremony.
Tina Brown of Airdrie, a practising Baptist, travelled to Illinois in 1996 to take teachings from his institute. Her reaction to seeing him in Toronto was summed up in one word: “Wow.”
“I mean just to be in his presence, I feel the power of the Lord working through him.”
In the final half hour of the ceremony, on the shores of Lake Ontario, prayers were held that “the world will learn to live in harmony and peace” and to “preserve the lives of the unborn”.
Today marked the final day of public appearances for Billy Graham, who arrived in Calgary on April 17 for his first visit to Canada since 1993. In the two-and-a-half weeks since, he has welcomed by Leader of the Opposition, Stephen Harper, been honoured and entertained by congregations across Canada and feted by celebrity devotees from south of the border, including Mel Gibson.

Tell me, and be honest. Would such an article have been written without alluding to the “Passion violence/anti-semitism contraversy” or “right-wing conservatives” ?
Or would it have been covered from the perspective of the placard carrying pro-choice protestors and gay marriage advocates on the sidelines?
Could Stephen Harper even afford to be photographed with Billy Graham in an election run-up?

Observations about the reaction to the Vietnam Vets who denounced John Kerry yesterday;

Interesting, isn’t it, that the party membership of the swiftboaters is relevant, according to the left, but the activist group membership of the 9/11 families who slam Bush is completely irrelevent.

In the rightful condemnation of the abuse of former members of the Saddam Fedayeen Iraqi prisoners, let’s hope we Canadians have the good sense to choose our words carefully.

Oh, and before I forget… would someone please alert the Globe And Mail’s sysadmin?
Their website has been hacked by giggling, drunken first year poli-sci students, writing under the identity of one “John Doyle”.

It has been decided.
Vote for Don Cherry for the Greatest Canadian Ever and watch the CBC squirm.
Now, go forth and spread the word. One vote per Canadian.

Damien Penny at the Shotgun has this:

…this British cartoonist tries to explain why the members of his association voted the “Sharon eating Palestinian babies” editorial cartoon the best of the year.

The interviewer asked him why no one draws the same sort of thing about Arafat.
“Because Jews don’t issue fatwas,” he says, sheepishly.

L. Ian MacDonald – Montreal Gazette, on Martin’s upcoming visit to the White House;

What Bush doesn’t need to hear from Martin is a lecture on why Canada stayed out of the war or hectoring over weapons of mass destruction that have never been found. If there’s one thing that drives Americans to distraction, it’s the insufferable Canadian sense of moral superiority. Nor does Bush need an offer of Canadian troops to help with the occupation in a time of murderous insurgency. Not that we have any soldiers to spare.

The insufferable Canadian press, reporting directly from BBC and CNN headlines and Ted Kennedy quotes, doesn’t help our credibility either.

What Bush could use is help from Canada in institution building, assuming the U.S. ever gets the insurrection under control and truepolitical and economic reconstruction underway. Martin will apparently offer such assistance, as did his predecessor, Jean Chretien, at last fall’s Madrid Donors’ Conference on Iraq.

Uh, yeah. Like the institutions Canada has built in other modern war-torn former dictatorships, liberated at the cost of American blood …. eh …. where was that again?

The Canadians talk about a smart border. They want trade crossing it. The Americans talk about a secure border. They don’t want terrorists crossing it.

The problem is that the Liberals keep forgetting where the smart border problems exist – at the shoreline of the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Fix that, Mr Martin, and the one to the south will take care of itself.

Both men face elections this year. Both are in more trouble than they expected to be a year ago when Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and announced the end of military engagement in Iraq. In this cruel month of April alone, more American soldiers have been killed there than during the war itself.

Hmmmm…

Both men face elections this year. Both are in more trouble than they expected to be a year ago when Martin was quietly serving as a regular MP, the Liberal party in a peaceful transition period, and before the auditor-general revealed explosive details of Liberal corruption with the “Adscam” Scandal, with tentacles reaching into his very office during his tenure as Finance Minister.

There, that’s better. And so much more Canadian content than MacDonald’s version.

What it does involve is land-based systems with a command at NORAD, North American Air Defence, in which Canada has been the junior partner since 1958. Since we’re already at this table, all Martin has to do is announce we’re staying there. And since the U.S. is going to build NMD with or without us, it’s in our national interest to be there

reading on….

But Martin really shouldn’t worry about being seen with Bush. The Oval Office visit, a day after Bush’s secret testimony to the 9/11 commission, will feature waves of photographers and reporters wanting to know what the president said there. The other guy in the shot will be lucky to get a question, unless it’s about the Khadrs, Canada’s first family of terror.

And, the headline for this piece?
“Martin can help Bush and defend Canada’s aovereignty”

And while the local and national news affiliates were giving us items on the new Kentucky Fried Chicken menu, another investigation into the world’s best known case of Death By Rich Playboy and the disappearance of world champion mule deer antlers….

SUDAN ORDERS SYRIAN WMD OUT OF COUNTRY
LONDON [MENL] — Sudan has ordered the removal of Syrian missiles and weapons of mass destruction out of the African country. Arab diplomatic and Sudanese government sources said the regime of Sudanese President Omar Bashir has ordered that Syria remove its Scud C and
Scud D medium-range ballistic missiles as well as components for chemical weapons stored in warehouses in Khartoum. The sources said the Sudanese demand was issued after the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry confirmed a report published earlier this month that Syria has been secretly flying Scud-class missiles and WMD components to Khartoum. The sources said the Bashir regime has been alarmed over the prospect that the United States would discover the Syrian arsenal and conclude that Damascus and Khartoum were cooperating in the area of missiles and WMD. They said this would have delayed or dashed U.S. plans to lift sanctions from Sudan. A U.S. official confirmed the Syrian missile shipments to Sudan, saying they were meant for use against rebels in the south. But the official said the U.S. intelligence community has not determined that Syria sent WMD systems to Khartoum.

hat tip Instapundit
And, via Dr. Joyner this related article, on the ongoing and unreported discoveries of prohibited WMD and precursor weaponry in Iraq.
(Cross-posted at the Shotgun.)

Sarah Mills, 650 CKOM radio news announcer, earlier today [paraphrasing]:

“Organizers say up to 750 thousand are expected to march in Washington in support of abortion rights today!”

Just now, and with the same breathless emphasis:

“Tens of thousands rallied in Washington in support of abortion rights today!”

Via Instapundit – a very good article on the media disconnect with the public they serve, and how the Bush administration has capitalized on that weakness.

As a first step out of this trap, journalists need to ask themselves: how did we become so predictable? Is it possisble to go back, and pull the wire that made this so? The game of Gotcha does exist. Auletta, a liberal journalist, can recognize it as easily as Karl Rove. Knock him off stride. Get him off the talking points.
But instead of rolling our eyes, we ought to realize that Gotcha has been incorporated into a new thesis, now in power in the White House. Behold the basics of President Bush’s press think. You don’t represent the public. You’re not a part of the checks and balances. I don’t have to answer your questions. And you don’t have that kind of muscle anymore.

Read the whole thing.The comment section is as good as the article.

Ted Koppel just stumbled upon something that Arthur Kent was warning about ten years ago when he left – then successfully sued – NBC;

His relationship with NBC began on a freelance basis, as Kent spent much of the ’80s covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
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After covering the Tiananmen Square uprising in May 1989, the network made Kent its Rome correspondent, dispatching him to cover the fall of East Germany and, in the assignment that would result in the moniker “Scud Stud,” the Persian Gulf War.
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A bitter contract dispute in 1992 resulted in Kent suing the company for $25 million for breach of contract, fraud and defamation.
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At the heart of Kent’s dispute with NBC, and its parent company General Electric, was the shift in management’s concept of the news.
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In addition to cutting budgets drastically, international hard news was both losing airtime to magazine-style programs like Dateline NBC and being “crafted” to fit the more entertainment-oriented style.
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“It was a clash and a confrontation that was totally unnecessary, because once I had been convinced to join Dateline, I warned them in writing that the editorial direction of the program was dangerous and that the manipulation and re-editing of stories was going to cause trouble.”
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A climate was being created in which corruption was imminent, Kent said.
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“You could see that something like the exploding truck fiasco (a Dateline story about unsafe GM trucks in which toy rockets were used in test crashes to ensure fiery explosions and which caused a number of NBC resignations) would happen eventually.”
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Kent offered to resign, but NBC dug in for battle, assigning him to cover the war in Bosnia without the proper equipment or preparation. When he refused, the network publicly called him a coward.

With the millions he was rumoured to have recieved in settlement, Kent established an independant production company.

In 2001 while much of the network news industry was focusing on shark attacks and the Chandra Levy mystery, Arthur Kent’s production company, Fast Forward Films, was warning Americans about the dangers posed by the Taliban regime’s reign of terror and repression. Kent’s hour-long documentary Afghanistan: Captives of the Warlords, was broadcast nationally by PBS in June of 2001, and was extensively rebroadcast post-September 11. The program has won the Gold WorldMedal at the New York Festivals and a Golden Eagle award from the CINE organization.

Kent’s 1997 book, Risk And Redemption is a worthwhile read, and unsurprisingly prescient about the blurring of the line between news and entertainment that continues today.

I mentioned this observation from The Belmont Club earlier, in reference to the two NYT reporters who were “captured” and released – he now has three such stories that suggest a special forces unit is targeting western journalists in a disinformation campaign. Not coalition special forces – someone elses’.

A team from a writer or newspaper respected by conservatives is captured on the road. The journalists are taken to a picturesque location where they are first greeted with hostility, then granted surprising liberty. A sense of shared danger bonds them with their captors. Scenes are provided to lend color. Due to a surprising coincidence, the captured journalists stumble on information every Western intelligence agency wants to know. The preparations to defend the Golden Mosque, the fate of the missing German counterterrorism agents. Then, as quickly as they were captured, they are released. Not for them is the long and slow incarceration of Terry Waite, but a hearty goodbye, encumbered only by the promise that they will tell the world the truth, on their word as Americans or Englishmen.

Have a look.

Canadian media and Liberal party response for the past year on the failure of Russia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol: “La la la la, I can’t hear you, la la la la, I can’t hear you”
Colby Cosh;

Kyoto is deader than Abe Lincoln, and has been, really, for more than a year. This is not exactly a secret. But there appears to be a — what? A conspiracy? A gentlemen’s agreement? — not to mention it. The elderly guest has expired in the parlour, but his teacup must be kept full, despite the gathering flies. It’s like a protracted and even less funny version of Weekend at Bernie’s.

You know that favorite gag in futuristic science fiction movies – Schwartzenegger battles his roboto killer wife while a nifty projected television screen hovers in the background, the newscaster reads out bizarro future news –

“Mars shuttle pilots enter third day of strike, stranding passengers at Moonport” … “Genetic Savings And Clone announces new cat cloning production line” … “Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell named to official list of History’s 50 Greatest Leaders”.

Then the station turns back to prime time Thunderdome action, or a grey haired Oprah interviewing a wise Klingon poet….
Except that, I heard two of those three stories on the radio today.

Just after the Rice testimony had concluded, the local talk-radio station had their usual hourly news blurb. They’re a CNN affiliate – I will assume this was a CNN feed. update – In an email from the station’s news director, I am told they use both CNN and ABC – so the post has been edited to reflect that.

Another update My complaint to the station yields results – in the lastest broadcast, the local news director Kurt Leavins interrupted the tape in the portion that was edited out, with brief verbal commentary that went something to the effect of “Rice finally gets around to answering the question”. The missing testimony was not reinserted or mentioned, (probably not possible), but the voice interruption is an improvement.
The overall suggestion that Rice was avoiding the question remains intact, though – Leavins being an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, no surprise there. It would have been more reassuring had he chosen to paraphrase the missing segment, instead of editorializing a news item.

The upstart Western Standard has upstarted a blog – “The Shotgun”. update – the url has changed, and I’ve changed the link accordingly. Comments and trackbacks are now active, so it’s becoming a blog in the truer sense. Mark Steyn writes for this new Canadian magazine. It’s gotta be good.

Publisher Ezra Lavant – “Enough about us. The Western Standard is about you – thoughtful readers who want to know the other side of the ‘official’ news and views. If you watch the CBC, we will be your antidote. If you read Maclean’s, we will be your fact checkers.”
Fact checking Macleans? Can you do that in only 72 pages?
Hat tip Jay Currie

Press release

Friday, April 2nd, 2004 – Reporters Without Borders Presents a public conference with Alina Fernandez(Castro), daughter of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
…
A 26-minute documentary “One party, one newspaper : Cuban press from the republique to Castro” on the history of liberty of the press in Cuba from 1952 to the 1990s will be presented before the debate. This event will take place Friday, April 2nd at 6:00 p.m. in the amphitheatre of the Henri-Julien pavillion, located at 4750 Henri-Julien (Mount Royal metro.) [ ed- in Montreal] The event is free and open to the public, but donations would be appreciated.
…
During the March, 2003 crackdown, 27 independent journalists were arrested, adding to the three journalists who were already in prison. The journalists were charged with “acts against the independence and economy of Cuba” (law 88) or with “acts against the independence and territorial integrity of the state” (article 91 of the Cuban penal code) and were condemned to sentences of 14 to 27 years after summary trials that often lasted only half-a-day. In general, these journalists are accused of collaborating with the United States by publishing articles that present a different vision of Cuba than is presented in the official press. Their articles generally discussed opposition within Cuba (which is not recognized by the official press), human rights violations and the daily life of Cubans.
For further information: Emily Jacquard, (514) 521-4111 or email: rsfcanada (at)rsf.org

More here
Sounds like the makings of a movie plot… someone call Spielberg.
Eh.. .come to think of it, someone call the media. They’ve been all over this Cuban jail story.

Jeff Jarvis takes a break from his crusade to save Howard Stern to rip a strip from Oprah.

Hypocrite. Oprah: You can’t act as if you don’t bear considerable responsibility for this. You brought sex to afternoon TV. Now I don’t think you should be fined for that and I don’t think you should be taken off the air for that; I just don’t watch you. But you’re doing nothing different from Howard Stern — except getting away with it. So cut your holier-than-thou disapproval of sex on the rest of TV. You are the Queen of Trash.

Jeff doesn’t mention her greater and more destructive hand in creating the “Culture of Victimhood”.
It began with countless shows about child abuse, especially child sexual abuse. The same juicy and shocking details, cloaked in weepy concern and repackaged as “public service”. The biggest fallacy of the time was cultivated by Oprah – “Children never lie about these things”.
Well, they do, and they did, and largely because of the myths that Oprah and her copycats fostered, innocent people – child care workers, parents, neighbors – were smeared, accused and jailed because it wasn’t appropriate to question the veracity of a child. Then we got countless more Oprah shows educating the mainstream about “repressed memory” – and more broken families and lives ruined, based on false accusations and true-believer therapists.
Victimhood was good for ratings. Child abuse. Spouse abuse. Substance abuse. Date rape. Disease of the Week. Oprah shifted gears effortlessly, from trash talk to trash thought, creating an afternoon sisterhood of victims and transforming unproven and sometimes ludicrous theories into mainstream “fact”. And the over-riding message – no one was ever personally responsible. There was always an underlying excuse. Someone else was always to blame – a monster in the past, an uncaring parent, a teacher who bullied. Society. History. Cultism. Racism. Sexism.
Now, we have an entire generation suffering the effects of “Oprahism”, and wonder why so many “dysfunctional” North Americans blame everyone but themselves.

Via Pol:Spy this – “Columnist criticizes foreign correspondents’ coverage of “boy bomb’ story; they respond

Gentlemen of the press: Peter Dudzik of German television ARD, Dietmar Schuman of German television ZDF, Jorg Bremer of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, Gilles Paris of the French Le Monde, Patrick Saint-Paul of Le Figaro, our dear Charles Enderlin of France 2 television, Ms. Emma Hurd of Sky TV, Steve Farrell of the Times of London:
You are all respectable journalists who represent important news organizations. Colleagues.
Maybe one of you knows why, by Thursday morning, none of you had bothered to report to your millions of viewers or readers the story of the boy Abdullah Koran, 10 or 12, who was sent to carry an explosive charge through an IDF roadblock for five shekels by Palestinian “freedom fighters”? Is there no public interest in that story? Does it not have interesting details?
How is it, Ms. Hurd of Sky TV, that when the first missile fell on Gaza your network went into a ‘live” broadcast in prime time for about seven whole minutes (a television eternity), without having current footage (it showed Palestinian pedestrians), but passed over the story of the Palestinian child bomber? How do you explain the nearly complete disregard of the French media for that story? (I understand the Spaniards, who did report the story briefly; they had 200 terror victims to bury). The French news agency devoted a sentence and a half to it at the margins of something, while stressing it was a story whose credibility was problematic.
Well, gentlemen, it is not the credibility of the story that is problematic. It is your credibility that is problematic. The IDF roadblocks are a serious, distasteful reality. They should be covered and reported and so you do. As do we. Ask Gideon Levy. But the other side doesn’t have B’Tselem and Gideons. It has people who take a 10- year-old boy and send him with five shekels and a backpack full of explosives over to our side. To fully understand the roadblocks, from both sides, you have to report that. If you don’t report it, you are fooling your public and yourselves. If I had the authority here, you would all be on the plane on the way home. That might be the reason I do not have the authority here. Have a nice day.

Read the “responses”.

David Frum reviews the Clarke book causing this week’s furor.

Still, there are things that can be learned from the book. One is that for all the praise that Clarke pours on Bill Clinton personally, he presents an absolutely damning account of the terrorism record of the Clinton administration. Time and time again, he and his team agree that a course of action is vital – up to and including air raids against the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan (air raids not cruise missile raids – cruise missiles are slow and gave the Pakistanis time to tip off al Qaeda that the bombs were coming). And nothing happens. Either the bureaucracy refuses to carry out the order or the military drags its feets or (most typically) President Clinton rules out courses of action that carry any risk at all.