the blog quebecois

Ohmigod.

The Liberals are out in full force tonight.

CBC is running video of Paul Martin, John Manley, Sheila Copps, Tony Clement (OK, so he's technically not a Liberal, but close enough) scouting out the ethnic (and SARS paranoia) vote.

All of them seem to have gone to the same Sihk temple and topped their heads off with the same bright-orange faux turban that one must apparently wear in such settings. I laughed until I cried when I saw Manley, for whom I might have voted before this tragic event.

Actually, Sheila Copps looked quite fetching in a simple dark scarf. She'll have to put a pistol to my head, though, to get my vote, and she'll probably not get it even then.

Does anyone remember how Gilles Duceppe was ridiculed in the press when he toured some Quebec cheese factory and was required to don the obligatory hairnet?

Not that I have any brief for him or his BQ ideology but can we at least savor this complete moment of . . . double standards?

The Toronto Star 01/28/04:

ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON (CP) - Any doubts about Tony Blair's integrity in joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq were dismissed today by the findings of a public inquiry, which concluded the BBC inaccurately reported that Britain's prime minister exaggerated the case for war.

Blair's government was also cleared of behaving in an underhanded manner towards weapons expert David Kelly, the source for the BBC report whose suicide last summer led to the inquiry by Lord Hutton, a senior appeals court judge. The chairman of the British Broadcasting Corp.'s board of governers resigned hours after the report was issued.

I watched CBC's The National last night, completely baffled as to why they'd devote 15 minutes to a "documentary" (the scare quotes are entirely appropriate) about the upcoming release of the Hutton report that went on and on about the perfidous Blair Government and its duplicitous Defence and Intelligence agencies and the poor henpecked BBC, yadda yadda yadda.

I've only been following the story superficially since last year, but even I could have told the CBC that this was going to blow up in its face, as it indeed did when Hutton more-or-less completely exonerated Blair and Co. and put the blame squarely on the BBC.

It says something -- I'm not sure what, but something -- that I care more for the integrity of the CBC than the CBC apparently does.

The next time you're not sure about something, CBC, give me a call.

Or maybe you should make that call when you are sure about something.

Washington Times:

Iraq's Red Crescent relief organization found its own way to mark the Thanksgiving holiday yesterday by announcing that it had sent a $1 million "thank you" donation to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The sum, transferred by wire on Sunday, amounts to 20 percent of the organization's annual budget.

"I wish we could have a billion dollars to give," Said Hakki, the organization's president, said by telephone from Baghdad. "Even then, it is not enough to show our appreciation for what the U.S. has done for Iraq and is still doing."

The donation was made with the approval of the office of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and is thought to mark the first time that Iraq has sent aid to the United States.

Haydar al-Abadi, a senior adviser to the prime minister, said in a separate telephone interview that he was worried that the gesture -- though noble -- could prompt complaints that the money should have been spent on the country's own emergencies.

But Mr. Hakki was adamant.

"Giving thanks is an Iraqi tradition as well as an American one. This is the minimum we could do after the Americans shed their blood in our country, mixing their blood with ours," he said.

Via Nealenews

ABC News:

Yet despite these and other deprivations, 77 percent of Afghans say their country is headed in the right direction — compared with 30 percent in the vastly better-off United States. Ninety-one percent prefer the current Afghan government to the Taliban regime, and 87 percent call the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban good for their country. Osama bin Laden, for his part, is as unpopular as the Taliban; nine in 10 view him unfavorably.

Progress fuels these views: Despite the country's continued problems, 85 percent of Afghans say living conditions there are better now than they were under the Taliban. Eighty percent cite improved freedom to express political views. And 75 percent say their security from crime and violence has improved as well. After decades of oppression and war, many Afghans see a better life.

Via normblog

Washington Times:

If Washington seems increasingly pessimistic about Iraq these days, Iraqis themselves aren't. In fact, 47 percent of Iraqis surveyed by the International Republican Institute in October said that the country is headed in the right direction (37 percent said it wasn't). That's a higher percentage than last year, when 42 percent of Iraqis thought so (45 percent did not) -- despite the problematic ongoing security problems.

Via protein wisdom

The Tyee:

The radio dial of the future could contain 30 percent female musical content if a new proposal in the campus and community radio sector is widely accepted.

If enough campus and community radio stations support it, FemCon (female content) could follow in the footsteps of the 35 percent CanCon (Canadian content) regulation.

Inspired by a study conducted by Status of Women Canada and created by the campus and community radio collective Women's Hands and Voices, FemCon is an attempt to address a lack of balance between the sexes on Canada's campus and community stations. According to a resolution by the National Campus and Community Radio Association (NRCA), "FemCon is defined as music which meets two of the following categories: music, artists, lyrics and production by women." The NCRA represents 35 campus and community radio stations across Canada.

If I listen to a female musician, it'll be because she's worthy of being listened to, rather than because she meets the quota of women that some bureaucrat decides I need to hear.

Editor & Publisher:

It was only a couple of people who cheered and they, thankfully, are not among the people who get a say in news play. But obviously news staff shouldn't be cheering or jeering the day's news, particularly as Boardman points out, 'when we have an outside guest in the room.'

They are, however, dispassionate professionals who wouldn't dream of letting their non-existent bias creep into their work. Or so they are constantly assuring us. Fortunately it seems to be quite rare.

Newsbusters:

Joe Scarborough has pulled back the curtain on the liberal bias at MSNBC, describing an incident in which people in its newsroom ceaselessly booed President Bush during a State of the Union address.

Maybe not that rare. I remember vividly a female CBC regional anchor bursting into delighted laughter on-air when the NDP did much better than expected in a provincial election.

Among sports reporters, it's still considered an extreme faux pas to cheer on the home team from the press box. It's nice to see that some corners of the media retain some semblance of integrity.

Michelle Malkin:

Gibson: HAHAHAHAHA. HEHEHE. I didn’t even know about it. Um. So, you’ve got me at a loss. I don’t know. Uh. Uh. But my goodness, if it’s got everything including sleaziness in it, we should talk about it this morning.

Roma: This is the American way!

Gibson: Or maybe this is just one you leave to the cables.

Gibson is a blithering nincompoop or an utter incompetent or a liar if he claims to know nothing of ACORN's latest antics. But there remains another, more sinister possibility, which explains his new nickname.

Malkin prefaced Gibson's remarks with a plea:

Bernie Goldberg’s looking for new names for the "mainstream media." I’m pitching ostrich media. How about you?

John Gilmore:

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

You're welcome, Chuckles. Looks good on ya.

Via SDA

Red State:

In 1998, a reporter at the Cincinnati Enquirer, Michael Gallagher, wrote an 18 page exposé on Chiquita Brands International and its corporate goings on in Central America. The report sourced phone calls leaked to the newspaper.

In fact, Gallagher had illegally tapped into Chiquita’s phone system.

In 2010, NBC’s parent company General Electric paid a $23.5 million settlement to the SEC on allegations that its subsidiaries bribed Iraqi officials to win UN contracts.

In neither case was Gannett, the parent of the Cincinnati Enquirer, or GE hauled before Congress with its CEO sworn in to answer questions about their conduct.

In neither case did media sensationalize what was going on.

But things are different with Rupert Murdoch. Why? Because he is amazingly successful and many other media properties unwilling or unable to compete would rather destroy him than innovate ahead of him.

The story of what News of the World did is news and it is bad and it should be punished. But the level of piling on with no evidence against Murdoch or even his son, James, is astounding. They are being tried in the court of public opinion solely because of their last name.

But beyond that, critics in the United States are using the situation as an excuse to go after the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and other Murdoch properties. There are no allegations of wrong doings at those other properties, but their competitors just can’t help themselves.

As reprehensibly as some of Murdoch's employees behaved, at least they were in pursuit of real -- if sleazy -- stories.

Compare and contrast some of "quality" journalism's bright young stars (until they were found out), like Janet Cooke or Stephen Glass. (Or for other examples, google Dan Rather or Jayson Blair.)

These people weren't chasing pathetic B-listers like Hugh Grant; they were fabricating stories out of whole cloth that conveniently fit their political biases and prejudices like a glove. They utterly betrayed their readers/listeners' trust. That's a far greater crime than anything Fleet Street's hacks have come up with.

Via Jack's Newswatch

Toronto Star:

Polling and journalism, particularly political journalism, have a lot in common.

Both enjoyed huge surges in prestige, as well as income, in the 1970s and 1980s, when the trades began to be viewed as professions.

And that's about as much as I can take from the likes of Susan Delacourt, who is a hardbitten practitioner of the oldest profession of the bunch.

Daniel Greenfield:

The Nazi propaganda rag Der Sturmer may have gone out of publication around the time that the Fuhrer's ashes were smoldering in his bunker beneath the Wilhelmstrasse, but its motto is present today in almost every liberal newspaper in the Western world. Der Sturmer's daily invocation of "Die Juden sind unser Unglück!" or "The Jews are our misfortune!" is omnipresent in the media coverage of almost anything involving the Middle East or Islamic terrorism.

The theme is much the same now as it was then, the Jews are responsible for all our problems. The presentation is of course much more subtle, but then Der Sturmer was considered vulgar even by much of the Nazi hierarchy, which preferred the more staid Völkisch Observer. Today's papers prefer to be in the Observer mode, the Storming they leave to the "plausible deniability" blogs of an Andrew Sullivan or a Glenn Greenwald, material that they pay for, but like a lot of the Nazi hierarchy and Der Sturmer, don't necessarily want to be too closely associated with.

This was written a couple of years ago, but plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as we Froggies say.

Toronto Star:

I just bring the snark.

CBC:

The head of the Royal Bank of Canada has denied that it is replacing Canadian workers with temporary foreign workers, saying that the bank is providing jobs for anyone impacted by the move, which only involves one temporary foreign worker.

"Absolutely not," said Gord Nixon, the bank's CEO, in an interview with CBC's Amanda Lang on The Lang & O'Leary Exchange. "Firstly, RBC has not and does not hire any temporary foreign workers."

Nixon made the comments following a CBC News report that dozens of employees who facilitate various transactions for RBC Investor Services in Toronto will be losing their jobs, replaced by foreign workers.

I'm just thinking that we could perhaps save a few dollars by outsourcing some CBC announcers. They seem kind of shy to let us know exactly how much they're paid, but it's a fair guess that some are in the upper six figures.

How difficult can it be to read a teleprompter? I mean, they've trained that clown south of the border more-or-less successfully to do it; and I'd be surprised if he's being paid more than 20 bucks per shift, plus all the waffles he can eat.

As to the content, it's a bit like Charlie Brown's teacher, anyway:

Peter: Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah Yes, Harper Evil? Wendy?

Wendy: Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah Yes, Harper Evil! Peter?

So maybe the accents would be somewhat strange and possibly we'd have to substitute some sitar for the trombone (if I could figure out how to spell the sounds) but it'd be so gloriously multicultural.

Pejman: Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah Yes, Harper Evil? Wahida?

Wahida: Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah Yes, Harper Evil! Pejman?