The Northern Shrub

Just because it's funny.

Burn in Heil

Further to the post just below...

The fanatical Proud to be Canadian - although it boasts a dozen U.S. flags on its site - is where you'll find that offending (and stupid, stupid, stupid) mistake that CBC's The National made Tuesday when it showed images of Stephen Harper adjacent to the Memories of Hitler ''heil'' word.

But, according to PTBC, CTV is also the evil instrument of the liberal Great Satan.

Which must make me the whore of Babble-on.

Heil to pay

So remember that scary photo of Stephen Harper that the Globe and Mail ran a few weeks ago? (Here's a scanned version on Ouimet's pro-CBC blog.) Well, it scarcely registered in the right-wing blogosphere.

But the other night, CBC's The National screwed up with a graphic and now, all hell is about to break loose.

The CBC has apologized to a viewer who complained that a news graphic appeared to juxtapose the name of the prime minister-designate with the German word "heil" - a salute usually associated with Adolf Hitler.

Watch the video and read the right-wing reaction here.

How could the National's producers have missed this? Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Right Cross, Left hook

Aaron Brown, late of CNN's NewsNight, laid it on the line in a speech yesterday (I added a link):

Important issues, such as the prosecution of the war in Iraq at home and abroad, are being clouded over by "mud-wrestling" that skirts substance, he said. Consider what he called "the swift-boating of John Murtha," the Democratic congressman whose war record was smeared when he called for an exit strategy in Iraq. "Cable didn't search for the truth, but engaged in mock debates pitting those making the charges against Murtha's defenders," he said.

Many Americans on the left and the right aren't interested in the truth, but simply want news that confirms their viewpoints, he said. "You'd think that it's no more complex than good vs. evil," he said.

Kind of like in the blogosphere, no?

Brown continues:

Journalists have fallen short in presenting important news in ways that allow viewers to see how it matters in their lives. But viewers must take up the battle as well, he said. "It's not enough to say you want serious news. You have to watch it. It isn't enough to say you want serious debate. You have to engage in it."

Precisely. Conventional wisdom in the corridors of TV power is that liberals don't watch their news as much as they read it, either on paper or online. What's more, they're less likely to veg in front of a news channel as Fox viewers do. That's one very important reason why shows such as MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann or Phil Donahue's last kick at the can, which was cancelled in the I-rah-rah--raq attack days, don't fare as well as Fox News' loudmouth line-up.

But really, even CNN is not much better. The truth is, there is no truth even on supposedly serious debate shows such as Wolf Blitzer's Late Edition. There's only the Democrat side of the story and the Republican side of the story.

Up here in the great Multi-Coloured North (very cool but ultra slow loading), we need to stand on guard that our media don't go down that road to hell. But Skippy is concerned that the conservatives have already started their engines:

Some conservative bloggers are still drunk, posting about paper shredders and the Liberals as if they can continue in that vein forever. Others, like my little friend, are having trouble adjusting. But Steve Janke, aka Angry in the Great White North, is quicker than most. He's already come up with the brand new theme, and it's spreading.

Poor us, frets Janke. Poor, poor us. How terrible it is that those moonbat leftists want to destroy us, while we want only to have this thing called democracy. How terrible that they are bringing the politics of destruction to Canada, that they think only of wiping out our party, that they are threatening our very democracy with their insistence on polarizing politics!

I worry that in Canada, the potential exists for what has happened in the U.S. - the fight between the left and the right will become intensely personal, at least for the left. George W. Bush is hated on a very personal level by Americans who have never met the man. Is Stephen Harper in for the same sort of treatment, hated for committing the crime of being a conservative?

Geez, if anybody is making this personal, it's you dude.

As for Bush, he's not only hated on a very personal level by Americans who have never met the man, he's also hated on a very personal level by people all over the world who have never met the man.

Damn that liberal media.

You know you want to ...

Via The Daily Nar

G'head. Poop all over me.

 

Legal Brief

This punkalawyer blogger is threatening an Ottawa-based blogger named Mark Bourrie with a libel suit over a post that has something to do with the former's supposed role in the Adscam thingie.

I would have linked to Bourrie's blog. But, today, he posted the notice of libel which contains the contentious paragraph. If I link to it, it could mean that I would be guilty of republishing the libel which is just as bad as making the original libel. I would rather avoid the grief.

Bourrie refuses to back down.

I am not familiar with the precedents, if any, on blogolibel lawsuits so I am going to keep an eye on this one.

UPPITY DATE: Tod Maffin has a great take here.

My prediction: Kinsella will back down when he realizes his case is unwinnable. In which case, Mark the blogger deserves an apology.

Dude. Seriously. You’re a lawyer. Relax. Drive your BMW around a couple of blocks.

TOMORROW NITE DATE: Uh, Warren, does this mean you're not giving me a lift to tomorrow night's blogstravanganza anymore?

Poster Boys

That Steve Maich Maclean's column that, um, irritated David Asper is now online. Read it here.

You might consider yourself a model of productivity, a font of clever ideas, and a heck of a guy to have around at the Christmas party, but to the accounting department you are a cost centre and nothing more. You're doomed to feel forever threatened, no matter what those quarterly reports say, because profits can always be higher, costs can always be lower.

Such is life for the poor ink-stained wretches toiling away for CanWest MediaWorks -- the income trust launched last year, and comprised of the big city newspapers like the Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald and Ottawa Citizen, formerly known as the Southam chain. A couple of weeks ago, the trust reported its first set of quarterly results and a new era of anxiety began. On first blush, they looked pretty good: revenue up five per cent, cash flow of $47 million, good for a margin of around 15 per cent. Naturally, this wasn't good enough.

The analysts saw only rising costs, and results that didn't live up to their lofty expectations. MediaWorks CEO Peter Viner dutifully promised to do better, invoking the accountant's favourite euphemism for blood on the floor. "We will increase our focus on cost containment," he told analysts, and staff across the chain immediately began reviewing the layoff provisions in their union contracts. But don't blame Viner. He's caught between an irresistible force and an immovable object.

On one side he has CanWest's controlling Asper family, which has never met a cost that couldn't benefit from a little more "containment." No matter what the question, less money is always the preferred answer at CanWest.

Maich's thesis is that the Aspers will get rid of many of the remaining journalists they haven't already axed. But Viner has said most of the savings will be found at the middle-management and junior executive levels -- folks who will, in my opinion, be made to pay for what were probably multi-million dollar golden butt-kicks for former honchos Rick Camilleri and Michael Williams. (For the record, sources say, the paper had a less-than-disgraceful first quarter, followed by a passable second. Now other sources say that the second quarter ain't quite over.) That said, if any more cuts come out of editorial, it isn't good for job one: journalism.

Meantime Dose isn't doing all that great -- although if it disappears I will miss it -- and the company seems to have a wonky growth strategy, if you can call it a strategy. (The New Republic?? Turkey????)

Back to the fun stuff.

Seems that Maich and David Asper have a history. Maich, who was a well-respected writer at the Financial Post, started looking around for other opportunities in 2003 after he wrote a scathing and totally prescient feature about Conrad Black's legal woes. A week later, Asper took Maich to task in the paper, in a 1,120 word refutation of his own reporter:

Lord Black's critics now cry scandal. They are busy creating the malicious impression that, facing a cash crunch, he could possibly lose control of Hollinger. Lord Black has categorically denied this and should surely be given the benefit of the doubt until proven wrong.

Last week's Financial Post feature evoked the possibility that the flamboyant media mogul, known for his vast knowledge of military history, is about to meet his Waterloo. This dire prediction was made by Hal Jackman, who shares with Lord Black a fascination with Napoleon -- hence the historical allusion. Mr. Jackman would have been better advised to put friendship and loyalty before taunting mischief that, however intended, can be easily misconstrued by the avowed enemies of his old friend.

More importantly, until all the facts are known, no one is in a position to cast judgment on Conrad Black's fate. Lord Black, for his part, has resolutely refuted the murmured innuendo and angry accusations about his business practices. He moreover has asserted that he is not about to lose control of Hollinger. "Control of Hollinger has not been, and will not be, for sale," he said.

As a journalist and author, Lord Black will appreciate the spirit in which this newspaper published the article examining some of the claims -- however unfounded they may be -- made against him. Newspapers must publish without fear or favour. They also must strive to achieve balance and fairness.

It seems to us that, while reportage on Lord Black's current quandary is entirely legitimate for any newspaper, there is also a duty to take a proper measure of the man, a complex figure by any standard, and the equally complex dynamics of the situation in which he finds himself.

Innocent until proven guilty. No dispute there. But this was a public flogging of a journalist who did exactly what he was supposed to do.

No wonder Maich brushed up his C.V. and started looking around. He left a year later.

Anyway, I'm hearing that CanWest CEO Leonard Asper jumped into the fray with a barn-burning op-ed of his own which was to have been published today. The piece was meant as a counterattack to Maich and Maclean's editor/publisher Ken Whyte, who was fired by the Aspers from his berth as the Post's founding editor in May 2003. But, say sources, at the last minute, cooler heads prevailed and the Asper piece was pulled.

Did that three-quarter page full-colour Maclean's ad on the back of the Post's A-section today have anything to do with it?

Nahhhhhhhhhh.

UPPITY DATE: Ironically, last year Maich was offered a job as a senior editor at the Financial Post, which he turned down. He was subsequently promoted at Maclean's by Whyte, Black's protege at both Saturday Night and the Post.

 

 

Bombs Away

Further to this week's column (not yet online) about the National Post by Maclean's Steve Maich, who used to be at the Post until he quit 2004:

A few years back the Aspers decided that the only way to improve the Post was to diminish its resources. They figured readers and advertisers loved the paper so much, they'd pay even more to get less of it. Every penny is now stretched until it screams, but profit remains elusive.

Which inspired this retort about Maich - as well as founding Post editor-turned-Maclean's-editor-publisher Ken Whyte - to what I asked David Asper yesterday:

Question: What did you make of the Steve Maich piece in the newest Maclean's? Utter garbage written by bitter former employee and published by fired former publisher editor who has taken his high priced tea party to another employer who will eventually also get tired of the act and the losses.

Why do my spidey senses tell me this is going nuclear, and the big guns are about to come out?

Post Mortem

Maclean's continues to take on the complexion of the National Post and Saturday Night, Ken Whyte's former stomping grounds as editor.

Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Kenneth Whyte is pleased to announce two additions to the Maclean's editorial team.

Tony Keller joins Maclean's as Managing Editor, Special Projects.  He will oversee and expand the universities franchise and also write for the magazine. Keller was the founding editor of National Post Business from 1999 to 2004. He has been a contributor to The Globe and Mail, the National Post and Maclean's, and he writes a monthly column for The Toronto Star.  Keller holds a B.A. in history and political science from Duke University and Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School.

Keller essentially replaces Anne Dowsett Johnston who bailed (scroll down) for a high-ranking communications and alumni relations gig at McGill University. (That's where Whyte cooled his heels as visiting fellow in media and communications at its Institute for the Study of Canada between his Post and Maclean's jobs. Some media observers feel that Johnston's departure was not as painful as it might have been because of that connection.)

As for Keller, his departure from the Post after Whyte was fired by the Aspers was over a disagreement of editorial direction.

The other of Whyte's new hires:

Dianna Symonds comes to Maclean's as Managing Editor and comes from the National Post where she held the position of Associate Editor.  Prior to that, Symonds had a long association with Saturday Night magazine, beginning under the editorship of Robert Fulford. She served as Editor-in-Chief of Saturday Night during its transition to a weekly publishing schedule in the late 1990s, during which time the magazine won dozens of awards for its art and journalism.

No surprise there. Symonds and Whyte are tight, and have been for years.

I'm hearing that she was one of the Post's top earners because Whyte originally hired her there straight from her multi-award-winning editor's job at Saturday Night. So, either she was lured to Maclean's with a juicy deal, or she is jumping ship before it sinks.

After all, there is that threatened ''cost containment'' coming.

Will the last person left at the Post please blow out the candles?

Camp Pain Trail

Here's a condensed version of the Western Standard story I blogged yesterday. It ran on the National Post's op-ed page today.

Reporters on the Martin campaign seemed to become almost consumed with Liberal bungling. They began filing stories speculating that there might be a mole in the Liberal war room deliberately leaking stories to hurt Martin. When Martin did get around to announcing his education plan (it matched the details CP had reported the previous evening), the subsequent news conference was dominated by questions about the leaked story, the possibility of a mole, and then tough questions about the income-trust scandal that had been dogging the Grits since December. Only a few reporters bothered asking about policy.

It was becoming clear that the media pool had been poisoned. The next day, at a Whitby, Ont., seniors' centre, after Martin announced hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for seniors and the disabled, the press was openly hostile to Martin. As Allan Woods of CanWest was beginning to ask for the prime minister's response to breaking news about fresh scandal -- the possibility of bogus billing by a Quebec group called Option Canada -- he was cut off by Liberal handlers. The prime minister walked out of the room, leaving reporters shouting questions at his back.

Interestingly, the Post did not cut out the references to the excellent work performed by the Canadian Press throughout the campaign. Last week, when the Post picked up Warren Kinsella's rant against the media, the complimentary bits about CP were cut.

The Post does not subscribe to CP, although it does use its stories on the website. CanWest meanwhile is a subscriber to CP.

POST-DATED: Post publisher Gordon Fisher suddenly quit his seat on CP's executive committee the other day. (Gerry Nott, CanWest's Ottawa bureau chief, still sits on the CP board.) Fisher's move is causing some to speculate on the Post's imminent demise.