Sun Media finally show some responsibility... maybe…

It was back on 13th September that Sun News Network crossed a line that they’ve crossed about a million times before, but something about this was different.

It was on their show “The Source with Ezra Levant”, that Ezra made his big mistake.

The response to that commentary was different to anything else.  Trudeau has long been a favourite target of Sun News presenters for commentary and ridicule, but this was something else.  This was a personal attack, both on him and his father.  Not the first and probably won’t be the last, but Justin Trudeau decided that enough was enough and that he was going to boycott Sun Media journalists until the company apologised.

This boycott almost backfired on him spectacularly, as the following video, also from Sun News Network, in this case their “Byline with Brian Lilley” programme, demonstrates.

Okay, so maybe there’s a bit of desperation about the boycott by Trudeau, but the question is serious enough to possibly cause trouble.  However, it didn’t and Sun News Network is now about to apologise for Ezra Levant’s completely irresponsible rant.

Congratulations, Sun Media Corporation.  You finally learned a little lesson about media responsibility, finally, almost too late to matter, almost too little a lesson to really have any meaning, but you have learned it.

Aww, who the heck do I think I’m kidding???  Of course they haven’t learned their lesson, they’re just so desperate to get Justin Trudeau to answer their questions that they will do whatever he wants to try to get him to end his boycott.  After all, you can’t keep crying all the time about the fact that the Liberal Party leader, and possibly the next Canadian Prime Minister, is refusing to answer your one sided, conservative-biased, moronic questions that are actually bad attempts at traps to try to trip up Trudeau and keep Stephen Harper in office for as long as you can.

You really don’t deserve to have the ability to call yourself a news network.  That’s not a complaint about bias, by the way, that’s a matter of definition.  Sun News Network doesn’t have a news programme in it’s primetime line-up, they are all opinion shows. 

BATTLEGROUND: An opinion show all about politics, especially favouring conservative politics.  5pm to 6pm ET.

BYLINE: An opinion show on stories you won’t find on any other channel, because no other channel is dumb enough to report propaganda.  6pm to 7pm, repeated 9pm to 10pm.

THE ARENA: They say the show presents “…strong balanced opinions to challenge conventional thinking…”.  I say the show presents opinions that have been balanced on the edge of a cliff in order to challenge gravity(!).  100% of the time, gravity wins.  7pm to 8pm.

THE SOURCE: Ezra Levant basically lets rip on anything and everything that his extreme conservative sensibilities find abhorrent, which to be honest, is pretty much everything.  8pm to 9pm, repeated 10pm to 11pm.

It’s not merely the opinions that I object to, it’s the irresponsible attitude behind them that leads them to think they can say anything they like without actually worrying about the response from the people they attack.  They think they can copy the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck, forgetting that they do not live in the United States and as such do not have those first amendment rights, and even then, I would define freedom of speech separately from having the right to spew hatred, lies and propaganda.  It’s fine to have opinions, based on facts, but you can’t make up your own facts, based on nothing but your own opinions, which are not based on any facts.

When any media organisation thinks that they can make up their own facts to advance their own agenda, they make themselves many things, a laughing stock, irrelevant, disconnected from actuality, and they end up also exposing themselves as liars, propagandists, and haters.

Sun News Network is one of a number of channels and organisations who have no concept of how to be a responsible media platform.  Fox News Channel, and their sister business station, Fox Business, and sister newspaper The New York Post are the obvious and long time examples of irresponsible media, and in the UK, tabloids like The Sun, Daily Star, Daily Express and Daily Mail, are the very definition of irresponsible media, but in Canada, the Sun News Network, and their associated newspapers, like The Toronto Sun, and the Calgary Sun, are also the definition of irresponsible media.  Internationally, you can also add Press TV in Iran and Russia Today to the list of irresponsible media, and there are no doubt one or two others that I have yet to encounter.

Time to say no to biased media

You mean like Fox News Channel?

This seems to be a bit of a problem for FOX as they advertise something called “The FOX Nation” that will be launching on 30th March 2009.  The trouble is they leave themselves wide open to an accusation of hypocrisy.

Fox News Channel = Biased Media.  Talk Radio = Biased Media.  Both are HEAVILY Conservative, yet they seem to think otherwise.  They seem to think they’re “Fair and Balanced”.  Yet they have a predominacne of Conservative voices and no Liberal voices at all, at least not on the TV channel. 

If FOX want to practice free speech, then maybe John Moody should stop sending out his daily talking points, and they should ACTUALLY report some real news.  Then he could actually have a liberal host their own daily show on the network, so that both sides get free speech on the network. 

I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to happen.

O'Reilly vs Olbermann. The feud heats up

Okay, so this feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann has now exploded all over the internet. Both TV Newser and Inside Cable News are all over this story, and especially the article written by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.  Newsbusters has the story as well, Murdoch's US newspaper, The New York Post has also weighed in and not surprisingly, Olbermann Watch has spun the story so hard, that they think they're about to acheive orbit!

Unfortunately, none of them have hit the target!  Most of them get close, but like a bad marksman, they cannot hit the bullseye!   They haven't realised what has really been going on.  Allow the TruthSeeker to explain.

Bill O'Reilly has made a career at Fox News Channel out of presenting himself as part of some no-spin zone.  In reality, he's spinning the items in his show to favour right wing thinking, not necessarily the Republicans, but right wing thinking in general.

Like most people who have a conservative/right wing mindset, Bill O'Reilly is incapable of admitting he ever makes a mistake.  It is part of the conservative/right wing mindset to blame someone else for their error, even when it is their fault exclusively, they will blame someone else, just because they refuse to ever blame themselves.

You will occasionally see or hear an apology from some conservatives for some of the really dumb things they have done, but not every time, and in all the times I have watched Bill O'Reilly's programme, I don't think I've ever seen him issue an apology on his show.

Keith Olbermann on the other hand, when he has made a mistake on air, has apologised on air.  In fact, he's even awarded himself some bronze medals in his "Worst Person In The World" segment for doing so.  The Bill O'Reilly equivalent would be to see Bill call himself a pinhead in his "Pinheads and Patriots" segment, for something like the "Malmedy" incident when he got the details mixed up twice!  But there was no apology then, just an attempt at a get out of jail free card!  And Bill O'Reilly has never called himself a pinhead.

Now, I said most of them got close, but kept missing the reality.  Here's why.

The New York Post rightly pointed out that...

"...Olbermann walked out of MSNBC years ago in a huff after also blowing up at ESPN, so TV insiders are curious if this recent behavior is a sign that history will repeat itself."

But, they also say that...

"...Olbermann recently encouraged management to oust the cable channel's lone conservative, Tucker Carlson, and it's also no secret among producers that Olbermann refuses to introduce Dan Abrams' show, which follows his own."

Those statements cannot be backed up by any independent source.  Also, please note, that the New York Post belongs to the same News Corporation that Fox News Channel belongs to, so if there was a definite dirty tricks campaign eminating from Fox, the New York Post would be an obvious outlet.

Now to Inside Cable News, which is one of my favourite blogs, and Spud, who runs that has a lot of respect from me, for going against the corporate spin that eminates out from the corporate news operations in New York and DC.  But this time, he's missed the mark.  His commentary on the Washington Post story began thusly:

"...The problem for NBC is that Bill O’Reilly has become as adept and skilled at distorting and misrepresenting NBC and GE as Keith Olbermann is at distorting and misrepresenting O’Reilly and Fox. It was all fine and dandy for NBC when it was just O’Reilly and anything Murdoch getting beat up. But now that it’s a two way street, NBC is whining."

This sounds like something out of an O'Reilly Talking Points Memo, or something Fox News' anti-Keith Olbermann specialist John Gibson might come up with.   Spud fails to mention that Bill O'Reilly has always been adept and skilled at distorting and misrepresenting people, organisations and companies he didn't like.  But from what I have seen of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Keith hasn't misrepresented anything Bill O'Reilly has said.  In fact, he's been very specific with quotes from the mouth of Bill O'Reilly himself.  Bill O riles against what he sees as "hate speech from the left", but rarely ever touches on the mass of right wing hate speech that comes out from people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and many other right wing talk show hosts and columnists continue to spout on an almost daily basis.

And by the way, Keith Olbermann is the only so-called "left wing loon" that Bill O'Reilly never has mentioned by name, on air.  Not once.  Yet he's happy to name the likes of Rosie O'Donnell, Al Franken and many others.  Instead of directly challenging his opponent, he shoots all around him, at every other target possible closely associated with Keith Olbermann, hoping that one of those damages Olbermann too, but as before, like a bad marksman, he keeps missing the target.  He needs to refocus on dealing with Keith more directly, then he'll look like less of a coward.

Basically, Bill O'Reilly can stop this feud immediately, by stopping lying to his viewers.  He can stop the distorting, the misrepresenting, and start dealing in facts and truth, not lies and spin.  His so-called "No Spin Zone" is spinning so fast, the centrifugal force inside it must be close to fatal levels!!!

But as I pointed out earlier, those of a right wing mindset, will never admit they've made a mistake, so Bill O'Reilly and his so called "No Spin Zone" will end up spinning so fast that it will end up destroying The O'Reilly Factor and Fox News with it.

Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo: Race baiting part deux!

Why do one story once when you can do the same subject repeatedly and really reinforce your point, even if it is wrong.  It's the old idea of if you repeat something often enough, people will accept it as fact.

He even sends another producer-monkey to do an ambush!

 

 

Make no mistake, race-baiters are BillO's "enemy du jour" and he will stop at nothing to make sure you get the idea that race is an issue in this election, even though Barack Obama has done everything possible to minimize it as an issue.

A Biased BBC??? Not Likely

I'm not ashamed to criticise the BBC when they get something wrong, but that's not nearly as often as some commentators try to claim. Take the blog Biased BBC.

They have used this online report as an indication of bias against Israel in its reporting. But as usual, this is not the case. The BBC is actually providing an unbiased report, which is not what the blog writer wants.

"...Who are these Hamas "militants" to whom the BBC obliquely refers? Can't they say the word "terrorist" since that is clearly the word which best sums up those who shelter amongst Gaza civilians whilst targeting innocent Israeli civilians with indiscriminate rocket fire?"

What this writer clearly forgets is that the BBC is a global broadcaster and these online stories can be read around the world. To some Palestinians, the people he calls "terrorists" would be called "freedom fighters". Language is much a weapon in these wars as missiles and bombs. So, to avoid being seen to be taking sides, the word "militant" is used, which is defined by the dictionary as "...aggresive or vigourous in support of a cause." "Militant" is a word that avoids taking sides. "Terrorist" means the writer thinks that side are in the wrong.

Perhaps this David Vance, who writes this blog has also forgotten that it was Israeli militants back in 1948 that made a land grab for the area we now know as Israel, which was formally called Palestine. Pre 1948, Israel did not exist. The land grab was illegal at the time, but because the Jews had suffered massively at the hands of the Nazis, it was left relatively unchecked.

But of course, like many conservative minds, and bad tabloid journalists, David Vance never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.

I give him half a point though for the BBC not reporting the many rocket attacks from Gaza to Israel. However, the information he seeks is available from other sources, but it does little to support his cause that the BBC should be reporting this. The following information snippets came from the site of the Intellitgence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC).

"...terrorist attacks originating in the Gaza Strip continue, the genuine source of the Gazans' suffering. On the day of the human chain six rockets were fired at Sderot and western Negev towns and villages, resulting in the wounding of a 10-year old boy; several civilians were also treated for shock."

"...Rocket and mortar shell fire at western Negev towns and villages continues. During the past week 22 rocket hits were identified in Israeli territory, compared with 45 the week before. In addition, 40 mortar shells were fired at IDF forces and villages near the security fence. The rocket fire on February 25 badly wounded a 10-year old boy. About 15 civilians were treated for shock during the past week."

Not one single death reported from all the rockets fired into Israel. And if David Vance is correct in his assertion that hundreds of these rockets are being fired into Israel, how come only 22 hits were reported? Perhaps this next clipping I've found might answer that question. It comes from the site Global Sercurity.org.

"...The Qassam rocket was first launched into Israeli territory on March 5, 2002, by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. While the rocket lacks a guidance system and is very inaccurate, the initial psychological effect of the rockets upon Israel has been significant."

So, it lacks any form of guidance and is very inaccurate. No wonder very few deaths have ever been reported from these rockets. It would be more through bad luck on the victim's part, rather than any judgement by Hamas. No wonder the large number of Hamas rocket attacks don't get reported normally.

But David Vance completely ignores the facts, much like his conservative broadcast bretherin at Fox News, and uses any slim opportunity he can to attack a public broadcaster doing its job. His Pro-Israel bias is blatantly obvious, yet he seems to see bias in an unbiased report. As The Doctor once said, "I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there!"

The "Biased BBC" blog is like far too many others out there on the web in that they espouse a non-factual, purely political point of view. They present opinion and propoganda as fact and hope you don't notice. Unfortunately for Mr Vance, I could see already that his "story" had more holes in it than a block of Swiss Emmental Cheese! A little research then proved that his story had no legs to stand on. Yet, there are people out there who believe this rubbish and others like it, whether it be politically conservative or liberal.

It just goes to show, choose your information sources carefully, and don't believe everything you read or hear anywhere, without a little research to see if it holds water, like the BBC report does, or leaks like a sieve, like the "Biased BBC" blog entry does. I don't expect him to even acknowledge this entry, despite the hours of hard work that went into it. But for me, the satisfaction comes in getting the facts out into the public domain, something it seems that a lot of blog writers know nothing about.

No Spin Zone becomes Fearmonger HQ!

Does anybody else get the feeling that Bill O'Reilly hates George Soros?

Why he does, I do not know, but I do get that impression very strongly after seeing some of his recent "Talking Points" memos.

I've decided to do a little background research on George Soros, and guess what I've come up with.

First of all, his own website, which has the usual favourbale biography that most official sites do.

Next, comes the Wikipedia entry. Now these entries can be written and re-written loads of times to change the focus, but this one seems to be independent of the usual degrees of political bias, and seems quite centred.

From this entry, we can tell why Bill O'Reilly is picking on Soros. Soros has publicly voiced his dislike for President Bush, and spent money back in the 2004 campaign to ensure that Bush did not get re-elected. Of course, we know what happened. The rest of the world is having to put up with the result of that election.

But Bill O'Reilly seems to have the idea going that Soros is influencing political opinion in the US through websites such as Media Matters for America, and MoveOn.org. And a couple of weeks ago, he went even further, saying...

"The goal of George Soros, Peter Lewis, Suzy Thompkins Buell and other radical financiers is to buy a presidential election. —By that I mean find and fund a candidate who will tacitly do what he or she is told to do."

Such a charge, on US primetime television, should have resulted in an immediate suing of Bill O and Fox News, but strangely enough, I have heard nothing to that effect from the Soros camp. It could be that they don't want to give the claim any legitimacy by taking any legal recourse. However, I could be wrong.

Now, having checked out MoveOn and Media Matters for America, I can say this. Both organisations, to coin a phrase, do what they say on the tin. Move on want to realise what it calls the "...progressive promise..." of America, whilst Media Matters describes itself as a "...progressive research and information center...". So both organisations admit that inpolitical terms, they can be described as progressive.

Bill O rounded up his Talking Points memo on Monday 7th May by saying...

"Soros is so powerful that he can ruin most countries financially if he decides to attack their currency by selling it short. And now Soros has set his sights on the political landscape here in America. He has his character assassins lined up. He has MoveOn ready to move out. And he has direct access to the highest levels of our government. This, ladies and gentlemen, is an urgent situation."

No, Bill O. The "urgent situation" here is to get you back to the real world, not the Republican world of political fearmongering. Politicians and Pundits both, need to get back to the REAL world, which the rest of us have to survive in, down the political centre, whilst petty politicians and their pundit supporters stake out their territory in the wildreness of political extremity.

Biased News on NPR? I don't think so!

There is a blog which purports to monitor "...rightwing, pro-government and corporate bias..." on the programming of National Public Radio News, called NPR Check. The reality is that this is a blogger that is looking for a news service to be explicitly liberal, in the same way that Fox News Channel is explicitly conservative.

Thankfully, for people like me who are fed up with biased news, from any source, liberal or conservative, NPR News is not biased, but sticks very closely to just reporting the facts. I have listened regularly to NPR's top shows, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and I find it to be very fair, airing reporting that is based exclusively on fact rather than even the slightest agenda.

Most blogs which attack the public service broadcasters (NPR, PBS, BBC, CBC, RTE, ABC Australia etc) are run by bloggers with a conservative political bent. This one is decidedly liberal, proving that the anti-public service broadcasting community comes from all sides and colours of the political spectrum.

For crying out loud, people STOP TRYING TO FORCE EVERY NEWS ORGANISATION TO MATCH YOUR POLITICAL BENT! If you want BIASED news, there are plenty of newspapers and websites out there with enough bias to fill the Pacific Ocean!!!

Let those of us who would actually PREFER some unbiased news, some sources like the BBC, NPR, RTE etc.

Bias In The Media - Don't conservatives get it?

I have noticed something in my observations of the various blogs and commentators on the internet, and that is that there is no single "enemy" organisation for conservatives. Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Natalie Solent and others regularly target almost all other mainstream media outlets. The BBC, The CBC, The ABC in Australia, US network newscasts, Al-Jazeera and Air America Radio are among the favourites, as are The New York Times and The Washington Post, but nearly every news organisation cops it from conservatives, except one.

Fox News Channel is about the only major news provider than conservatives do not attack for reasons of bias. Why? Because Fox News is as biased as they are.

They accuse everybody else of being biased, and yet cannot see their own bias. Perhaps they should challenge their own opinions every once in a while, like I do on a daily basis. Maybe they'd realise that it's just slightly possible that the majority may be right and they may be wrong.