Apparently, it’s reprehensible for Canadian journalists to take shots at Gov. Sarah Palin, but right-wing mudslinging is A-OK. Do Canadian commercial media operate on a double standard? It seems okay to trash Muslims because that’s in the Canadian tradition of free speech. But watch out if you go after Sarah Palin and old, white, male …
Grit Leader done in by the media? You read it first in The Tyee. When Stéphane Dion announced his decision to step down as Liberal leader on Oct. 21, he blamed his dismal showing on a Conservative ad blitz that kicked in as soon as he won the party leadership in late 2006. The advertising …
People love her; many mainstream journalists loathe her. With a few notable exceptions, Canadian media commentators and book reviewers trashed Naomi Klein and her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Knopf Canada, $36.95). Meanwhile, the book continues to do well on the bestseller lists, ranking close behind Brian Mulroney’s reminiscences, which …
The United States: one of the most peaceful nations in the world, as the Fraser Institute claims, or one of the least peaceful, according to a recently released global peace study? It depends what’s meant by “peace”. The Fraser Institute ranks the U.S. as the third most economically free country in the world. And the …
A former developer himself, Premier Gordon Campbell holds the purse strings to an Olympic-size sweepstakes payout. The 2010 Olympics were still a gleam in Jack Poole’s eye when he addressed a roomful of real-estate developers in the spring of 2002. Vancouver had been shortlisted for the Games, but it would be more than a year …
CanWest, CTV play along as Tories label Dion. Is Stéphane Dion a flip-flopper? When you think of him, do you picture a fish out of water, flipping and flopping in a desperate attempt to get back into the (main)stream? If enough Canadians believe he is, Dion stands to lose the next election. That’s what happened …
Stephen Harper was a 15-year-old student in Etobicoke’s Richview Collegiate just west of Toronto when MacMillan Bloedel chairman Jack Clyne and other corporate leaders chipped in a total of $75,000 to start the Fraser Institute in 1974. Obviously, they didn’t have a Stephen Harper government in mind when they helped MacBlo vice president Patrick Boyle …
Committee’s long-awaited report shrugs at CanWest, targets CBC. In February 2005, the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications visited Vancouver as part of its cross-country study of the Canadian news media. It heard nearly a dozen presentations bemoaning the fact that one company — CanWest Global Communications — has a near stranglehold on Vancouver news …
The people out to ‘poison the debate on climate change.’ In early April, the Financial Post published a letter addressed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and signed by 60 “accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines,” as they describe themselves. They want Harper to begin a debate on the Kyoto Protocol. Begin a debate? …
Harper’s aim given scant scrutiny by media giants. Canadians are poised to axe the Kyoto Accord, but seem unaware that’s what they will be doing when they elect a Stephen Harper government today. Less than two weeks before voting day, with a majority government in sight, Harper said he would abandon the CO2 emission limits …
The bias, the blank spots and the damage Welcome to the CBC, the Corporate Broadcasting Company, disseminators of the propaganda video Medicare Schmedicare. This distorted and biased attack on our public health care system aired twice on the CBC in December, during the second week of the federal election. The thesis of the program is …
Close advisers schooled in ‘the noble lie’ and ‘regime change.’ What do close advisers to Stephen Harper and George W. Bush have in common? They reflect the disturbing teachings of Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish émigré who spawned the neoconservative movement. Strauss, who died in 1973, believed in the inherent inequality of humanity. Most people, he …
Mixed messages from reporters and editorial board rooms. On the evening teachers wrapped up their vote to return to school, BCTV legislative reporter Keith Baldrey surmised that they had succeeded in putting class size on the public agenda. Thanks to teachers’ efforts, the Campbell government will need to address this issue seriously in the months …
The evening after the British Columbia government introduced legislation imposing a contract on the province’s teachers, Michael Smyth interviewed British Columbia Teachers’ Federation president Jinny Sims and Labour Minister Mike de Jong on his CKNW Nightline BC radio show. Smyth was argumentative and surly with Sims. He accused her of not being straight with the …
On October 21, the Fraser Institute will present a policy briefing on what speaker Tim Ball calls the flawed consensus on global warming. Ball is a retired professor of climatology from the University of Winnipeg now living in Victoria. As a global-warming skeptic, he is in high demand by the front groups sponsored by the …