Tinfoil soldier

My friend Huge Seagull -- not his real name, duh, but pretty clever, no? -- posts in the comments below a link to this from the Drudge Report. It's worth highlighting on its own.

President Bush, for the first time, is hailing the rise of the alternative media and the decline of the mainstream media, which he now says “conspired” to harm him with forged documents.

“I find it interesting that the old way of gathering the news is slowly but surely losing market share,” Bush said in an exclusive interview for the new book STRATEGERY. “It’s interesting to watch these media conglomerates try to deal with the realities of a new kind of world.”

Meanwhile, that awful CBS reports that Bush's approval ratings have hit an all-time low.

And, for the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care.

Just 30% approve of how Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low. "By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq," CBS observed.

Only 41% say that invading Iraq was "the right thing to do."
Some 54% say we "should have stayed out."

Must be a conspiracy.

New blogs, old tricks

Caught this Financial Times piece by Trevor Butterworth about blogging reprinted in today's National Post. It really doesn't offer anything new, but it reinforces what many of us have said all along about the phenom: Despite the shrill voices of the right wingnuts, the MSM are here to stay.

But as the old media wrestle with the significance of blogging, it is sobering to hear some of the heroes of the “revolution” now speak of its insignificance. Late last year, I went to the ramshackle East Village apartment of Choire (pronounced “Corey”) Sicha, a former gallery owner and now a senior editor at The New York Observer, a vibrant weekly newspaper that covers the rich and powerful of Manhattan.

Dressed in a pink shirt and blue jeans, and unshaven to the point of looking like a young Bee Gee gone preppy, Sicha is less than starry-eyed about blogging - even though it helped put him and Gawker on the media map.

“The word blogosphere has no meaning,” he said from across a folding table vast enough to support the battle of Waterloo in miniature (the apartment owes much to eBay, the Ikea of bohemia). “There is no sphere; these people aren’t connected; they don’t have anything to do with each other.” The democratic promise of blogs, he explained, has just produced more fragmentation and segregation at a time when seeing the totality of things - the purview of old media - is arguably much more important.

“As for blogs taking over big media in the next five years? Fine, sure,” he added. “But where are the beginnings of that? Where is the reporting? Where is the reliability? The rah-rah blogosphere crowd are apparently ready to live in a world without war reporting, without investigative reporting, without nearly any of the things we depend on newspapers for. The world of blogs is like an entire newspaper composed of op-eds and letters and wire service feeds. And they’re all excited about the global reach of blogs? Right, tell it to China.”

So, to all the fans of Michelle Malkin and her ilk ... nyah-nyah.

Balance of power

CBC News Supremo Tony Burman weighed in today on how the public broadcaster fared balance-wise during the election campaign. (I added the links, both PDF.)

The good news — for us and, one could argue, for CBC's audiences — is that the major study done by an outside research firm concluded that CBC News was "balanced" throughout the campaign. It also indicated that the "tone" of CBC's coverage toward the political parties and their leaders (negative versus positive) was consistent with its competitors and other media.

This study was done by ERIN Research, a respected independent research firm. It was based on a weekly campaign analysis of our flagship news programs on CBC Radio and CBC-TV, as well as CTV National News as a way of contrast. CBC had no influence over the results. Among the study's conclusions:

* Overall, "CBC's coverage was appropriately balanced"; CBC and CTV were "very close" in their "tone" and "direction" toward each party; and for the first time in memory, debate about "policy" assumed as much importance as discussion about political "strategy" and "the horserace."

A second report — also available through a link below — is CBC's internal "election story logging." This was compiled on a daily basis by CBC staff:

* It quantified the length of stories about each party, their leaders and the issues, and provided a weekly snapshot of the weight of coverage given to the major parties. The final breakdown was remarkably parallel to the popular vote.

The ERIN report is 43 pages long and I admit I only skimmed through them. But, even a cursory look over all the charts and stats lends credence to Burman's claim.

Take that Warren Kinsella.

I am trying to imagine any other news organization going so far to prove it was balanced - and how nervous they must be right now at CBC to commission such a study.

Ethically-challenged?

Joan Tintor asks if CP24's popular anchor David Onley isn't in a conflict of interest situation now that he chairs Ontario's new Accessibility Advisory Council -- with a $225 per diem.

In a letter to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and the Radio-Television News Directors Association, Tintor wrote:

On the afternoon of Friday, December 16, 2005, Mr. Onley conducted an on-air interview with Ontario’s Minister of Health. On the afternoon of February 7, 2006, Mr. Onley conducted an on-air interview with Ontario's Attorney-General. As of February 20, 2006, Mr. Onley was still performing anchor duties at CP24. The Code of Ethics of the RTNDA states, under Article Six, “Broadcast journalists will govern themselves on and off the job in such a way as to avoid conflict of interest, real or apparent.” I believe that Mr. Onley’s provision of paid advice to the Ontario government is a clear conflict of interest with his duties as anchor on a news channel.

As much as I have long admired Onley, it's pretty tough to argue with Tinto here.

Just don't sit too close to the screen

Ever since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, CBC-TV's Wendy Mesley has questioned why she was struck. She's a healthy eater, leads an active lifestyle and doesn't know of any cancer in her family. And yet ... ?

Doesn't it seem that cancer is spreading like, well, cancer nowadays?

It's not your imagination: Almost half of all Canadians will be diagnosed with the disease within the next generation. Why?

Mesley tells her story, and reports on the grim facts Sunday at 7 on CBC MarketPlace and Saturday, March 11 at 7 when the show reruns on CBC Newsworld.

Chasing the Cancer Answer travels the world to provide revealing interviews with an outspoken American doctor, frustrated cancer victims in southern Ontario, pharmaceutical sales representatives in Paris, France, and an activist in London, England.

According to the Canadian Cancer Society, an average of 2,865 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer each week.  Chasing the Cancer Answer invites viewers along on the journey to find answers to one of the country’s fastest growing medical crises.

No wonder the medical system seems so overloaded.

Hacksess of Evil

The Ottawa press gallery just can't get close to the new government, says the Hill Times of Parliament's resident hacks.

All of Mr. Harper's media availability for major announcements have been in the House of Commons foyer where political staffers get to decide which reporter gets to ask questions.

"We always favoured Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers going to the National Press Theatre," (Parliamentary Press Gallery's President Emmanuelle) Latraverse said. "We get to control who gets to ask questions, it's a more formal setting, it's more organized and there's simultaneous translation for members who don't speak French or aren't strong in English."

Another seasoned Hill columnist who did not want to be identified said that although it's still early to tell if this inaccessibility will be a pattern, "there's an acknowledgement in the Press Gallery that things have to improve."

Mr. Harper doesn't like the media, and he doesn't think he needs them either, the columnist said. "Martin's government very much cared about what was going on in the media, they were called flinchers because they'd flinch every time they saw something they didn't like," the columnist said. "Harper thinks he's very capable and doesn't need the media to carry out his agenda."

Looks like -- so far anyway -- the Harperites are taking yet another lesson from the Bushies.

Via Neale News

Uncivil Discoures

News Dissector Danny Schechter asks a very very good, if ungrammatical, question:

Is Media Cheering on Iraq Civil War?

It's true: Ever since last week's terrible bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosquein Samarra, most media are non-stop talking civil war. But few are delving into all the implications of such a disaster.

Obviously there's the cost to human life. But there's much more -- such as which side does the U.S. choose and, if it doesn't choose, what does it do? Increase troops? Pull out?

Things seem to have calmed down a bit -- to the extent that anything is calm in Iraq -- but it's alarming how simplistically most of the media approached this one.  (CBC Radio One's The Current had a good discussion about the bombing today, available here.)

By the way, there is all kinds of online chatter about who was behind the attack and why. I am having much too good a hair day to be wearing a tin foil hat to get into this one.

Token of Gratitude

A brand new feature right here at Zerb's blogging store: your must-read of the week!

This is from the New York Review of Books, in which many a great piece on the Iraq war has appeared. It's a review of My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope by Paul Bremer, the proconsul who slunk out of town, and The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, by New Yorker writer George Packer.

It reveals, in one relatively easy read, just how political the attack on Iraq was.

Bremer says that Bush "was as vigorous and decisive in person as he appeared on television." But in fact he gives an account of a superficial and weak leader. He had lunch with the President before leaving for Baghdad —a meeting joined by the Vice President and the national security team—but no decision seems to have been made on any of the major issues concerning Iraq's future. Instead, Bremer got a blanket grant of authority that he clearly enjoyed exercising. The President's directions seem to have been limited to such slogans as "we're not going to fail" and "pace yourself, Jerry." In Bremer's account, the President was seriously interested in one issue: whether the leaders of the government that followed the CPA would publicly thank the United States. But there is no evidence that he cared about the specific questions that counted: Would the new prime minister have a broad base of support? Would he be able to bridge Iraq's ethnic divisions? What political values should he have? Instead, Bush had only one demand: "It's important to have someone who's willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq." According to Bremer, he came back to this single point three times in the same meeting. Similarly, Ghazi al-Yawar, an obscure Sunni Arab businessman, became Bush's candidate for president of Iraq's interim government because, as Bremer reports, Bush had "been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition."

The more you know, the worse it seems.

Badger of Honour

epedMy colleagues at Political Notebook had this first but it's also a media story so ...

The Star's veteran needler of Queen's Park politicos Richard Brennan (aka The Badger) is taking his thorn-in-the-side act to ... well, we're not supposed to say just yet. Just know that not all politicians can breathe a sigh of relief.

Last week, when word got out, Premier Dalton McGuinty could not contain his joy before a scrum which would run live on both CP24 and CFRB.

“You’re leaving!” he beamed to the veteran scribe.

Later, during the scrum, Brennan asked one of his trademark pointed questions about the government’s strategy on averting a strike by Canadian Union of Public Employees members.

“You’ve got to be up to something here, you’re picking a fight with somebody, obviously you’re trying to do something, what is it?” the reporter thundered.

McGuinty didn’t miss a beat.

“I’m going to miss you,” the premier cracked to howls of laughter in a scrum broadcast live on radio and television. “I really am.”

Star QP bureau chief Richard Benzie put out the word today that a hoedown is in the works.

To celebrate - OK, politicians are celebrating, we in the bureau are not - there is a party here Wednesday night. The fun gets under way at 5:30 p.m. in Room 257 - appropriately enough the Government Caucus Room - and there will be Creemore Springs and VQA wine on tap for $3.

Wait, it gets better. Premier Dalton McGuinty, PC Leader John Tory and NDP Leader Howard Hampton will all deliver tributes.

This might give farewell bash a whole new meaning.

Plaming Liars

Well, well. What have we here?

The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.

The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.

You have to wonder which, if any, journalists were protecting Cheney as a source in this, and how much they have to answer for.