I sent an email to CTV news today. I asked them where their coverage is on Joe Wilson’s exposure as a liar and fraud. Considering the breathless reporting they gave to the infamous “16 words” in the State Of The Union address, and the “Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa” contraversy, one would think they’d be over this complete vindication of the Bush administration like white on rice.
A search for the words “Joe Wilson” produced only this year old item on the initial contraversy.

The 16 words in the State of The Union Address last year in which Bush stated that British Intelligence had reported that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa have been upheld by the Senate Intelligence Report.
Did you know that?
The same report quite clearly exposes Joe Wilson, husband of the infamous “outed” cia agent Valerie Plame, as an out and out liar.
Now, Mr. Fryer et al – why have you not revisited this information to correct it for Canadian viewers? The SOTU address recieved tremendous coverage at the time.
Or, does anyone at CTV actually READ the reports you “report” on?

Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds is gloating.

LIKE MILLI VANILLI’S GRAMMY AWARD, this “Restore Honesty” website by the now-discredited Joe Wilson is mostly of comedic value now. But wait, there’s more — scroll to the bottom and you’ll see that it’s “Paid for by John Kerry for President, Inc.” Quite an embarrassment.

Indeed.
Now, I think it’s time for an experment, fellow Canabloggers – Join me in emailing CTV. (I don’t watch CBC tv at all, so email them too if it’s appropriate). Ask them where the “Joe Wilson lied and Iraq did try to buy uranium from Niger” story is.
Let’s see if we can get a reply.

Coming to a cable channel near you – the Official News Service Of The Islamic Jihad;
Globe & Mail;

The federal broadcast regulator is expected to announce today that it will permit Canadians to subscribe to the Arabic Al-Jazeera network but is turning down an application to offer Italy’s RAI International as a digital specialty service through cable or satellite. The decision, more than a year in the making, will be announced by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in Ottawa.

Brought to you by the federal licencing body that protects Canadians from the propogandist FoxNews.

For those who are making a career of being outraged over the FCC fines directed at Howard Stern’s behavior – The CRTC has pulled the broadcast license for Quebec City’s most popular radio station, because of offensive comments by a couple of radio personalities. They recieved 47 complaints.
We should all complain more about the CBC, methinks.
This is the same CRTC that will not allow Fox News on Canadian cable, but has no problem with CBC’s “it’s not porn if there are subtitles” or with CTV scheduling the Sopranos uncut and Nip/*uck-fests on prime time.

Jeff, at Beautiful Atrocities, does a masterful job exposing the double standard of the entertainment media with a side by side comparison of “reviews” of Moore’s Farenheit and Mel Gibson’s Passion Of The Christ
A sample:

A.O. Scott, New York Times:
F9/11: Mr. Moore’s populist instincts have never been sharper…he is a credit to the republic.
Passion: Gibson has exploited the popular appetite for terror and gore for what he and his allies see as a higher end.
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post:
F9/11: Moore exercises admirable forbearance … his finest artistic moment.
Passion: Gibson has exhibited a startling lack of concern for historical context.

Go read ’em all.
hat tip – Marcland – who also has a pretty funny post on US reaction to the Canadian election.

Last night, CTV National News was at it again.
With the stories of Alberta’s health care reforms and the indictment of Saddam Hussein by a soveriegn Iraq for crimes against humanity to choose from, which do you think they put second in their news lineup?
Neither.

NBC’s Tom Brokaw interviews new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi;

Brokaw: I know that you and others like you are grateful for the liberation of Iraq. But can’t you understand why many Americans feel that so many young men and women have died here for purposes other than protecting the United States?
Allawi: We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York. And the war have been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.
Brokaw: Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The 9/11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaida.
Allawi: No. I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September atrocities or not, I can’t vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists.

Donald Sensing – “Lay aside the breathtaking arrogance of an American newsreader trying to tell a head of state what he should think about one of the most important issues facing the prime minister’s country. The fact is that Brokaw was flat wrong about what the 9/11 Commission said.”
He has more thoughts on media bias. And lots of examples of outright misrepresentation.
hat tip – OTB

Why isn’t it being reported on by our taxpayer funded media, and their competitors?
Via Instapundit
Amir Taher has been touring Iraq. .

Iraq today is no bed of roses, I know. I have just come back from a tour of the country. But I don’t recognise the place I have just visited as the war zone depicted by the Arab and western media.
[…]
Despite the continuing terrorist violence Iraq has attracted more than 7m foreign visitors, mostly Shi’ites making the pilgrimage to Najaf and Karbala where (despite sporadic fighting) a building boom is under way. This year Iraq has had a bumper harvest with record crops, notably in wheat. It could become agriculturally self-sufficient for the first time in 30 years.
“Iraq has always had everything that is needed to build a successful economy,” says Heydar al-Ayyari, an Iraqi politician. “We have water and fertile land. We have oil and a hardworking people. What we lacked was freedom. Now that we have freedom we can surge ahead.”
Nor should one believe the claims of self-styled experts that the Iraqis are not ready for freedom. During the past 10 months elections have been held in 37 municipalities. In each case victory went to the moderate, liberal and secular candidates. The former Ba’athists, appearing under fresh labels, failed to win a single seat. Hardline Islamist groups collected 1% to 3% of the vote.

What is wrong with our media? What great dysfunction has set in, that I must go to the internet, to private sources, to find these reports for myself?
Surely there are reporters and editors who surf through here. I see it in my logs- “cbc.ca”, “abc.com”.
I want to hear from you. You covered every anti-war demonstration. You quoted every naysaying Canadian politician. You gave a closeup to every half-wit Hollywood actor who could move their lips. You covered UN deliberations. You’ve dissected every hoped for disaster, from the “massive humanitarian disaster” to the “quagmire” of the stretched supply lines, to the “failure” to catch Saddam, to the “uprising of the Arab street”, to the “Vietnam” of El Sadr’s militia, dancing to the rhythm of every RPG to be tossed into the Green Zone. You even reported on the ones that “caused no casualties”. So, it’s not like you didn’t have the time and space.
Are you intentionally trying to mislead and misinform the Canadian public by reporting out a tiny window facing in a single direction?

Translation: We really prefer the unfavourable stuff, actually. See Entertainment. See Selling. See Gotcha.
Crossposted at the Shotgun
And, added to the Traffic Jam

Matt Drudge is so funny. From his current “headlines”;

Clinton’s Book Signings Draw Adoring Throngs in NYC…
CNN: ‘My Life’ sets records; 90,000 to 100,000 unit single-day expectation..
PUBLISHER CLAIMS: 400,000 copies bought in U.S. in one day!
BUT… Sales slow in Florida…
Stacks Left Untouched on Maryland Shore…
SAN FRAN YAWN…
Clinton book sales quiet in Arizona…
Memoirs not on Houston’s best seller list…
Tome slow out of gate in Cincinnati…
Not flying off shelves in Hudson Valley…
Mixed reaction in Manitowoc…
Mixed book sales in N.E. Georgia…
Creates little hoopla in San Antonio…
Not Selling in Shenandoah Valley…
Book not so magical in Wichita Falls…
Hoosiers react quietly to memoir…
Just hype? asks Gainesville…
Sales can’t measure up to Harry or Hillary in suburban Chicago…
Memoirs don’t stir Saginaw…
Memoir is no 1st-day best-seller in Ft. Wayne…
Not selling in VA Beach…
No best seller in Billings…
Slow in Sacramento…

A little mental exercise, now if you will.
If there had been no Monica Lewinsky in the White House, what would the buzz be around “My Life”? today…
think.
hard.
….
Can’t think of anything, eh?
So, why would anyone other than the usual suspects run out and buy a book, when they can get their curiosity satisfied for free on 60 minutes?

The Aboriginal justice commission was formed in response to the freezing deaths of Indian men on the outskirts of Saskatoon – in locations that coincided with an incident in which Saskatoon police dropped an intoxicated Darrell Night to walk back to the city, in the dead of winter. Yesterday the commission released its final report.
The Federation Of Saskatchewan Indian Nations did not attend the news conference, but responded today. Early broadcasts of comments of Vice-chief Lawrence Joseph had some particularly descriptive criticism of chair Willie Littlechild’s report (which included emphasis on the need for Indian and Metis communities to take responsibility for their own future)… now, lets see who wants to include it in their print coverage.
Looking for the money quote: Globe and Mail ? not here.… the CBC …nope. … FSIN news release ? eh… no.
So far, I can’t find the statement in any coverage at all.
Ok, so this is from memory, from a local 650 CKOM radio clip this morning (it’s been dropped from later reports). FSIN Vice-chief Lawrence Joseph;

” they want to train Indian leadership to be good little white leaders.”

That may not be the exact wording, but it’s damned close. If anyone has the actual transcript, please send it along.
(update, June 24 – revised to actual quote.)

William Safire’s NYT column on the fiasco last week in which the world press uniformly reported:

“Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie” went the Times headline. “Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed” front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words “Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . .” This understandably caused my editorial- page colleagues to draw the conclusion that “there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . .”
All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission’s runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney’s outraged objection, the staff’s sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.
“Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?” Kean asked himself. “Yes . . . no question.” Hamilton joined in: “The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don’t disagree with that” – just “no credible evidence” of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.

Jeff Jarvis weighs in.
update- This isn’t incompetence. It’s outright deliberate misrepresentation by the LA Times.

The recent Pew study on trust levels in the media has been generating some discussion. Typically, the media who is shown to be overwhelmingly distrusted, doesn’t even notice. CNN’s Matthew Furman rejoices.

“”We’re obviously pleased — once again we’ve been voted the most trusted news organization in America.”

Will Collier has a pithy response;

Memo to Matthew Furman: When 68% of your potential audience doesn’t trust you, you don’t have any reason to brag.

As one of the commenters says – give America credit.

Inspired by Reasons Chris Bray, Joe Katzman at Winds of Change discusses the ineptness of the media when reporting on matters military. Great round up of links to illustrate how bad it can get.

It seems like a simple problem that could be cured by some basic diligence, research; and professional standards that demand real subject expertise to the same level as, say, sports journalism. But that doesn’t seem to be happening, which leads one to wonder why not.

With examples like this it’s hard to argue.

“One of the things you learn quickly in the military is to never, ever rile an Army Ranger, as foes have learned the hard way from Normandy to the Middle East,” wrote Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Kilian, with near-audible grunts and chest blows. How tough are the Army’s elite infantrymen? So tough, Kilian explained, that Rangers brag about parachuting into Alabama — and walking all the way back to Fort Benning, Georgia.
It’s worth pointing out that Fort Benning, Georgia, sits on the Alabama border. In fact, part of Fort Benning sits inside Alabama, including the part with the parachute drop.

Actually, anyone who has ever been interviewed about a specialty field can probably relate similar stories. Even in my own little niche sport, they very nearly always get something completely wrong.
Even worse, they often get confused about what constitutes an expert source – such as when they consult a humane society spokesperson to flesh out a piece on purebred dogs. Rather like asking the concession guy at a Nascar race about engine specifications.

Canadians moving inland, says first news dispatch from beach head
By Ross Munro

WITH CANADIAN FORCES LANDING IN FRANCE, June 6, 1944 (CP Cable) – In two hours and 45 minutes of fighting on the beaches here, the Canadian invasion force won its beach-head and shoved on inland.
At 10:45 this morning the Canadian commander (Gen. Keller) sent this message to Gen. Crerar, G.O.C. 1st Canadian Army: “Beach head taken. Well on way to intermediate objective.”
The strip of coast won by the Canadians in this initial assault was quite narrow, but it gave them the beaches and provided a base for further penetration.
There was some stiff street fighting in the little coast towns and the Canadians also met considerable enemy fire on the beaches and as they worked their way into the defences. They had to overcome numerous steel and wooden obstacles which were placed out on the tidal part of the beach and which were covered at high tide to trap landing craft. However, the assault went in at 7:15 a.m. just as the tide began to rise and many of these obstacles were cleared away by engineers before the water covered them, thus enabling followup craft to beach and unload.
Some casualties were suffered in the assault by the Canadians from enemy machine-guns, mortars and artillery fire.
By 10:00 a.m. the Canadians were about 1,000 yards inland and going strong, meeting only small pockets of Germans. The first prisoners were taken and identified as belonging to a coastal unit.
On other parts of the front near us the operation is moving along. Canadian and British airborne troops did a good job when they dropped and came in by gliders at 3:30 this morning. They captured several bridges and held them.
Cruisers provided very effective support to the Canadians and one cruiser knocked out a troublesome battery about a mile and a half from the coast with six direct hits.
Enemy tanks are reported about 10 to 15 miles south of the beach-head and some enemy transport is also moving.
Up to noon the German air force has not shown up. It is estimated to have 2,350 aircraft in western Europe but it looks as if the air attack will come tonight.
The French coast is still wreathed in smoke driving far down the Channel. In some of the bombarded towns, fires are burning ….

So far the operation seems to have gone as well as could be expected. Destroyers and gunboats are cruising up and down the coastline banging away at last coastal points of resistance on our beach. Now the rest of the assault troops are going in. I am going ashore with them.

The rest is here.
(Ross Munro, war correspondent for The Canadian Press, died in Toronto in 1990 at the age of 76. Why can’t our war reporting of today be as clear and unobstructed by bias as this?)
Hat tip – Rick Hiebert

The media and pundits are leaning hot and hard on Harper in the past 24 hours, now that there seems to be more than a “good scare” looming for the preferred Liberals. The word “extremist” is getting thrown around, and breathless discussion of abortion law is swirling.
We should be working hard to point out what is happening. Fiamma Nirenstein, former Communist, human rights activist and Italian journalist;

“when you call a person a right-winger, this is the first step toward his or her delegitimization.”

The abortion debate is a classic example of the unresistable force of one person’s right to choose coming against the immovable object of the other person’s right to exist. There will never be an acceptable common ground for those on either side of the debate, so compromise is not possible.
Law has to choose one side or the other. In Canada, abortion is legal. But legality does not render a position “moderate”. There is no halfway position between life and death. Those who oppose abortion, and want to change abortion law through democratic channels are no less moderate or legitimate than those who want to retain the status quo. Yet, this is how they are characterized in the press and by the pro-choice advocates.
So, while I’m personally pro-choice, I cringe when I hear the pro-life position being described as “right wing” or “extremist”.
Jailing or stoning homosexuals is extremist. Executing people for having extra marital affairs is extremist. Flogging women because they do not cover their hair is extremist.
Being opposed to the taking of life for reasons of convenience is not extremist, nor is it right-wing. It is simply an opposing view, on an issue that has no middle ground.
When we hear the “extremist” meme in our media and from our politicians, we should be aware of what they are doing – it is an attempt to delegitimize that opposing view, so that they do not have to address the issue on its merits, or face the possibility that it is a majority viewpoint that may just prevail if subjected to the democratic process.

Via Instapundit this article in the Statesman about the suppression of stories by the BBC;

Just before the war against Iraq I began to receive strange calls from BBC journalists. Would I like information on how the leadership of the anti-war movement had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party? Maybe, I replied. It was depressing that a totalitarian party was in the saddle, but that’s where the SWP always tries to get. Why get excited?
Oh there are lots of reasons, said the BBC hacks. The anti-war movement wasn’t a simple repetition of the old story of the politically naive being led by the nose by sly operators. The far left was becoming the far right. It had gone as close to supporting Ba’athist fascism as it dared and had formed a working alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain, which, along with the usual misogyny and homophobia of such organisations, also believed that Muslims who decided that there was no God deserved to die for the crime of free thought. In a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, would allow themselves to be organised by the opponents of democracy and modernity and would march through the streets of London without a flicker of self-doubt. Wasn’t this a story?
It’s a great story, I cried. But why don’t you broadcast it?
We can’t, said the bitter hacks. Our editors won’t let us.

The rest is here.

Hundreds of women are murdered every year in the USA by their spouses. A significant percentage of those will be pregnant.
So, please, someone explain to me – why does the Scott Peterson trial merit any attention whatsoever outside of the Modesto, CA area? What can possibly be in the minds of the editors and news directors who choose this schlock to feed us day in and day out, at the expense of real news items?
You’ll notice, I have provided no link to any of the reports on the trial. It does not deserve one.

I listened to Rush Limbaugh on the drive home Monday, and he received an lengthy call from a US soldier back in the states after nearly a year in Iraq. He had put about 200 prisoners in Abu Graihb, and recounted some of the crimes that they had committed. He confirmed that the vast majority of Iraq is at peace and reconstruction efforts are going well.
There’s a brief transcript of part of the call up on his site. I don’t have audio capabilities, but I suspect at least part of the call is available for download there.

“You could sit here and you say you support the soldiers, but if you’re sitting here and saying you don’t support the president, you don’t support the administration, then I got news for you: you’re not supporting us.”

The caller echoed concerns about the media both in Iraq and at home – there are reporters on “every corner”, which interferes with the ability of the military to conduct operations without interference or second guessing. And despite surviving two roadside bombs, scores of missions and firefights in Baghdad, the first time he was truly “scared” was upon returning home to discover that the Iraq being reported was totally unlike the one he served in – and was afraid that the mission there would be lost in the media.

Martin A. Grove at the Hollywood Reporter chronicles the manipulation of events that led to Michael Moore’s film making it onto the pages of the New York Times, and from there through the world press, and to Cannes.

The “Fahrenheit” fracas first broke on the front page of The New York Times in a story with a Washington, D.C. dateline. Typically, stories about movies are covered from Los Angeles or New York, so the fact that this one was being reported on from Washington immediately suggested its origin was atypical. Its headline packed a powerful take-no-prisoners punch: “Disney Is Blocking Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush.” Whoever planted the story with the Times’ Washington bureau had a political agenda in mind beyond wanting to secure a movie distribution deal.

You think they might have checked their facts before running with a story supplied by the agent of a well known political flacktivist. But some stories are too juicy to pass up, and fact checking might deflate the balloon of enthusiasm. Instead, the Times followed this up with an editorial titled Disney’s Craven Behavior”.

Moore’s reference to the Times’ article on his Web site wound up being cited later on by AFP (and, presumably, by other media outlets around the world) without mentioning that Moore’s own agent was the person the Times had quoted about those claimed Florida tax breaks for Disney that would be supposedly be endangered if Disney dared to let Miramax release “Fahrenheit.”
After the Times’ article appeared, Florida officials denied that Disney was receiving any tax breaks from the state. In an Associated Press story May 5 Gov. Bush was quoted as saying, “What tax break? We don’t give tax breaks that I’m aware of to Disney. I appreciate the fact that Disney creates thousands and thousands of jobs in our state.” In another AP story the same day Eisner was quoted as stating, “None of that (Florida tax breaks) was ever discussed. It is totally not true.”
Nonetheless, in stories written over the course of the past few weeks journalists have continued to refer to those so-called Florida tax breaks as if there’s no question at all about them being reality. Indeed, without the tax breaks issue the whole argument falls apart as to why Disney didn’t, in Moore’s view, want to let Miramax release his movie. The importance of this issue was hammered home in a Times’ May 6 editorial attacking Disney. Under the headline “Disney’s Craven Behavior,” the Times said the company deserved “a gold medal for cowardice for blocking” the film’s distribution by Miramax. It then went on to say: “Mr. Moore’s agent said that Michael Eisner, Disney’s chief executive, had expressed concern that the film might jeopardize tax breaks granted to Disney for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor. If that is the reason for Disney’s move, it would underscore the dangers of allowing huge conglomerates to gobble up diverse media companies.”

Perhaps the NYT should just start a “Mea Culpa” page to compliment their corrections column. “Correction” isn’t really the right word for what they’ve been up to lately – the word implies an honest error, and these aren’t honest errors.
“Agenda-mongering” seems more appropriate.