Terrorism + Child Abuse Joke = National Post
What do obsessive coverage of terrorism and a joke about how to beat children have in common? As it turns out, it’s today’s National Post. Firstly, everything in the first 5 pages was devoted to the terror suspect arrests, except for one article stoking the idea of staying in Afghanistan, so that’s related. 5 pages. [...]
More Bad News for Dreams of Solid Journalism
A little over a year ago, I wrote about the importance of supporting and encouraging community papers, even in this electronic era with the ascendance of ambient media. But today we’ve seen another fail in the possibility of quality community journalism in BC with the announcement of another shakeout in community papers in BC. Black [...]
More Despinning the Spin and Chill Around Israel
Ten points to Mark Hasiuk for not just agreeing with my perspective on the chill and spin involved with Libby Davies and Israel. The ten points go for calling out corporate media as dropping its diligence in reporting on that and two other stories. Nothing new with that trend, but one thing refreshing about this [...]
Globe and Mail’s Irony: Calling The Yes Men Cynical
The Globe and Mail‘s editorial yesterday calling the Yes Men cynical is a classic example of psychological projection, calling another group cynical when corporate media today cannot likely be any more cynical. The entire editorial is below, but here are ten comments about how deluded the editorial department at the Globe and Mail is. We [...]
Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 3.1.10: an Olympics Hangover Analysis with Budget Previews
Imtiaz Popat on “The Rational” and I, along with former Green Party Vancouver Parks Commissioner Roslyn Cassells talk about the Olympics, democracy, protest, animal welfare, and a provincial and federal budget coming up this week. The audio is weak in places, but the discussion is strong! The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista [...]
Agents Provocateurs Launch Olympic Torch Relay?
Agents provocateurs were outed at the FTAA protest in Montebello in August 2007. I expect they’re at it again in BC on the first day of the Olympic torch relay, this time with marbles. The huge contingent of police officers watched as the group blocked traffic in several major intersections and even threw marbles at [...]
Ambient Media Has Now Killed Off Broadcast Media
Time of death: 11:14pm, Saturday, August 15, 2009. And I’m qualified to call it because of how media works today. See below if you don’t get it yet. This clip above is the most important 4 minutes and 23 seconds of the rest of your 21st century. Watch it. If you’re like me, much of [...]
CanWest/Global: Mondaylessness in Victoria
CanWest/Global is lying about why it stopped publishing the Times-Colonist on Mondays. Read it below, though their last sentence may not be completely accurate. They “say” that it’s because of the evolving newspaper industry. The truth is that they’re fast going broke. They first announced a plan to “temporarily” stop publishing the National Post on [...]
Canadians Need a Real Education in Politics
Ipsos/CanWest just released a poll that shows that Canadians need far more education about how politics is supposed to work in a parliamentary system. Here’s what they found [see below for some of the ambiguous juicy quotes]: a large minority think Igg would do a better job of running the country a slim majority think [...]
Why the BC NDP Lost the Election
The BC NDP hasn’t joined the 21st century. Because of that, we missed a chance to pivot British Columbia into a healthy social, economic and political future. The BC NDP entered an existential crisis 6 days ago. This election loss, a voter turnout shamefully below 50%, the loss of meaningful electoral reform: all these things [...]
Vindicating Politics, Re-Spun
It was nice to read Allen Garr’s piece last Wednesday in the Courier. It sure helps that he’s one of the handful of good journalists in the province, and this piece shows why. Essentially, he’s reporting on how national media skipped their fact-checking and trusted a highly biased civic blog that reported completely incorrect information [...]
NDP 6, Liberals 1, Plus 2 Doses of Fear
The week ended very, very badly for the Liberals, particularly Gordon Campbell, John Les, John van Dongen, Marc Dalton, Laura McDiarmid, Jesse McClinton. These 6 Liberals could provide very good news for the NDP, far more than Ray Lam’s resignation provided for the Liberals. They now have a scandal cloud over 6 of their candidates, and [...]
Keith Baldry’s Sloppiness in Hiding His Bias
CanWest/Global’s Keith Baldry conveniently misses some details when sliding out some concluding statements lately. First case: An Opposition party usually wins when enough of the electorate desires a change in government. So far, there is little evidence to suggest that is the case in this province. via Are the days of mass political rallies over?. [...]
Destroying the CBC: Another Step Today
I’ve already written about the slow destruction of the CBC. And I’m at it again today. The short list of what I wrote before: constrain funding to lose Hockey Night in Canada lose the rights to the HNIC theme song kill the CBC orchestra And now: “the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. plans to cut up to [...]
Keep Reading Your Community Newspapers, Or Else
Despite the sexiness of the internet, print is not dead. If you are not spending more time reading your community newspaper, you are on the wrong road, for yourself and for the health of our society. Granted, decades ago television supplanted newspapers as the dominant source of news and information for the majority of North [...]
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