Moving on up

Global TV's Washington correspondent Troy Reeb is stepping behind the camera and behind a big desk. He's just been appointed vice president of news operations, to be based in Toronto. Announced Steve Wyatt, senior v.p. of news, in a memo to staff today:

In this new role, Troy will be responsible for coordinating our efforts at the local and national level. He will provide strategic direction to our news directors and the Global National team to enable us to make the best and most efficient use of our resources across the network on a daily basis.  He will be based in Toronto.  Troy will report to me and I will now be able to devote more of my time on the strategic growth of news programming in broadcast and beyond in concert with the Broadcast Leadership Team.

But what's this? (Boldface is mine):

Peter Kent will continue to report to me as Deputy Editor-in-Chief with primary responsibility for current affairs and documentary development. Also, he will continue to be our point person in enhancing our relationship with our print partners.  Peter will continue to play a key role in the introduction of new digital technologies. 

Peter Kent? Considering his run as a Conservative in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's during the last federal election, I would think he would be sticking to his responsibilities as executive in charge of equipment. But no.

One of those things that make me go, hmmmm.

Dem bones rise again

So remember last week when the Winnipeg Free Press (sub. req'd.) mistakenly had Lloyd Axworthy, former Liberal foreign affairs minister and current president of the University of Winnipeg, blaming the Asper family, which controls the CanWest Global media empire, for shaping Canada's policy towards Israel?

No? Then read about it here and here.

And here's the best part of the WFP's apology and correction:

Where we quoted Axworthy as saying "the Aspers," he in fact had said "diasporas." We sincerely apologize to both Axworthy and the Asper family.

So anyway, yesterday, the contrite WFP gave Axworthy acres of newsprint to say his piece, unfiltered in a lengthy op-ed. Here's the relevant bit:

Today 'Diaspora' has a broad definition, referring to any group or groups of people that maintain an ongoing interest and sense of belonging to other regions or states as well as to Canada. We have learned to consider these other views and interests when crafting national and international policies.

The "Diasporas role in the creation of foreign policy goals" is still not fully understood, although it is the subject of a major research project participated in by many Canadian scholars and non-governmental organizations. It has also been the subject of inquiry by government agencies who want to better track the changing landscape of Canadian society and what it means for the priorities we should set internationally.

Some readers of this newspaper regrettably have taken objection to the use of this term attributing value judgments to what is simply the description of a reality. It shows how in times of war the potential of misunderstanding increases manifold.

Well then, that clears the air, I bet.

Take debate

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED & CLEANED UP TO FIX A FUNKY FONT:

The National Post's Adam Radwanski was, like me, appalled at that offensive post last week on the Western Standard's Shotgun. Here's what he wrote about it last week on his own  blog.

I normally find it easy to ignore the yahoos at the Western Standard's site, who pretty much represent the worst tendencies of the blogosphere (ideologues with nothing fresh to say sitting around stroking each others’ egos and paranoia until they’re convinced they’re in the mainstream). And I’m not generally in the habit of following Antonia Zerbisias’ lead. But two of their recent discussions, here and here, are truly jaw-dropping – at least to those of us who don’t spend a lot of time reading hate literature.

In sum, we’ve got a frequent poster (and blogger in her own right) ranting about “the devil that they call Allah,” labeling Islam “a death cult” and calling for the entire religion to be banned in Canada…and when she slightly clarifies her position (without backing down) after Chris Selley calls her on her bigotry, the rest of the Western Standard community turns on her for being too moderate.

If I were Ezra Levant or Kevin Libin, both of whom frequently post on there, I’d either get this hatred the hell down or clearly and unequivocally distance myself and my magazine from it. The fact that they’ve done neither is a much better reason to avoid the Western Standard than any reprinted cartoons.

To date, there has been no repudiation of that post -- at least none that I can find -- from the publishers of Western Standard or its blog overseers.

Anyway ...

Radwanski columnizes on the matter today for the paper's ''Issues'' page. (sub. req'd.) He argues that political blogs are about two warring sides dug deep into their opposing trenches from where they lob their verbal fireballs.

If Right Girl had stood on a street corner calling for Islam to be banned, passers-by would either have shouted her down or dismissed her as a kook. Any newspaper that published her views would have been deluged with disgusted letters to the editor. But in this forum, the comments that followed her post lauded her for taking such a brave stand -- and, in some cases, went even further in their attacks on Muslims.

The blog in question was The Shotgun, found on the Western Standard's Web site. But the issue wasn't the conservative magazine, which of course can't be held responsible for the messages that wing nuts post on its blog. The issue was the broader blog medium that's having a nasty effect on public discourse.

The blogosphere is good for music and trading notes on pop culture. It can be great for sports commentary. It's a way to pass time for those interested in reading the mundane details of strangers' personal lives.

But what it is absolutely lousy for is political debate -- mostly because what it encourages is not debate at all, so much as support groups in which the converted preach to one another about the evils of some dark and mysterious enemy. Those frequenting blogs don't learn much and their views are rarely challenged. What they get out of the experience is having their own views reinforced over and over again, until even relative moderates are converted into hard-liners.

Frankly, I think he's wrong. Just look at my comments threads although, admittedly, since July 12, the ones relating to the Middle East smell of burning flesh. My blog is not the only one that has contributions from both sides of the political spectrum. Radwanski, who has no comments on his blog, has some nerve knocking other blogs that do.

This is not to say that he's completely wrong. For example, I agree with him completely here, although it's not a new idea:

Go to right-wing political blogs, forums and online magazines, from the big names -- National Review Online, Instapundit, Little Green Footballs -- to an army of smaller ones, and you'll read only of the joyous success of U.S. foreign policy and the evils of Democrats, the "mainstream media," Hollywood and all things "liberal." Go to their equivalents on the other side of the spectrum, notably the enormously popular Daily Kos, and you'll find left-wing types working themselves into a lather over the evils of the Bush administration, the right-wing media and all things conservative.

Both sides would have you believe they're engaged in a righteous war with one another for the soul of America. But because they never actually engage each other, it's not a war at all -- it's just two sides endlessly rallying the troops.

<SNIP>

This would be a relatively minor concern if such fulminating was limited to the Internet. But conditioned by their online reading, as well as listening to Fox and talk radio, consumers are demanding the same stuff elsewhere.

The rise of an (she-who-will-nevermore-be-named-on-this blog) on the right or an Al Franken on the left -- commentators who spend most of their time attacking cartoon versions of liberals and conservatives, respectively -- suggests where this culture is taking us.

<SNIP>

In Canada, we're moving slower. But there's little doubt we're headed in the same direction.

Here, the right is a little more organized than the left -- the "Blogging Tories" group creating a community of hundreds of like-minded blogs with similar obsessions (the liberal media, pacifists, etc.) to the ones found south of the border. But it's the Canadian left that has actually shown the biggest crossover into mainstream media, courtesy of Antonia Zerbisias -- a media columnist and blogger for the Toronto Star whose main job appears to be attacking conservative commentators on both sides of the border.

Uh, did he just make me out to be the lefty Canadian version of that right-wing she-who-nevermore-etc. in the U.S.? Doesn't he read my stuff about CBC??

But Radwanski is correct: So far in Canada, we have avoided that all-heat-no-light partisan political punditry that ''informs'' Americans.  And we should strive to make sure it doesn't happen here.

But with commentators increasingly emulating the zealous partisanship of the online crowd in the hope of eliciting similarly strong reactions, it might not be long. It's a trend that should remind us to hold ourselves to a higher standard, to seek out dissenting views and think critically about the perspectives being sold to us -- because the last thing we need is a nation of Right Girls and their sycophants.

But you, my sycophants on either side of the debate, you get the thumbs up.

Just do me a favour will you? Keep it down to a low roar. I am now being bloody ruthless about deleting or editing comments. No appeal.

UPPITY DATE: Robert McClelland in the comments below found this response posted today by Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant.

I think it is a better approach to let the marketplace of ideas sort these things out. Artificially censoring what can and can't be written -- like Zerbisias does -- or not permitting feedback at all -- like Radwanski does -- are old media calling cards. In the new media, if you don't allow people to react and respond, they'll go elsewhere where they can. It's quite democratic, and like other aspects of democracy, it can be grubby.

In the end, I believe that by maintaining a balance of views on the blog -- libertarians, conservatives, hawks, isolationists, people from different countries and different religions -- we will get a great debate. I acknowledge that some of the comments have been less than smart, or even vulgar. But that, too, is the nature of democracy, and it is far more interesting reading than the bowdlerized letters to the editor of the MSM.

Give Zerbisias and Radwanski some credit: At least they know what a blog is, and have one themselves. But I'm loathe to accept criticism about our rough and tumble free comments threads from writers whose own newspapers don't allow them to have free comments threads. It's like when Zerbisias came out against the Danish cartoons -- the fact that her employer had ordered her to comply with their censorship undermined her claim to independently having come to that journalistic conclusion on her own, and she knew it.

The Western Standard will continue to have the freest blog of any in Canada affiliated with a corporate media organ. That will ruffle the feathers of politically correct enforcers, but it will also continue to make us a center of the debate, and give us 2-million page views a month and growing. In fact, the very idea of an MSM enforcer shaking a finger at too-rough bloggers sums things up pretty well -- an impotent scold who can't get the public to obey their politically correct line. That's the MSM in a nutshell.

Two things.

One, I wonder, had RightGirl had said "Judaism" instead of Islam, if Levant would have been so unperturbed.

Two, I am hurt Ezra! HURT! That it took a column in the National Post for you to finally pay attention to this matter.

UPBRAID DATE: J. Kelly Nestruck, bless him, calls Ezra Levant out in the comments below. Seems that Levant has indeed edited Shotgun, to protect his friend Prime Minister Stephen Harper or, more specifically, Laureen Harper. Wonkitties has the details.

Dem Aspers dey run everyding

Further to this story yesterday, the Winnipeg Free Press (sub. req'd.) today published a GREAT! BIG! OOPSIE!

WE APOLOGIZE

Friday, July 28th, 2006

We reported wrongly yesterday that Lloyd Axworthy, a former Liberal foreign affairs minister, criticized Winnipeg's Asper family for using its media empire to defend Israel and shape Canadian foreign policy. He did not say that. In fact, Axworthy was referring to groups of diaspora -- various ethnic communities in today's multicultural society -- influencing Canadian foreign policy. Where we quoted Axworthy as saying "the Aspers," he in fact had said "diasporas." We sincerely apologize to both Axworthy and the Asper family.

Can you imagine what went on behind the scenes on that one?

Broker this

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

As reported in today's Winnipeg Free Press (sub. req'd.), former Liberal foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy came out swinging against the Harper government, accusing it of throwing away the opportunity of being the ''honest broker'' in the Middle East.

"I am increasingly concerned about the view that the only role that Canada should play is to adhesively stick itself to Bush administration policies and at the very time when in fact those polices are increasingly showing they are not working,'' Axworthy said yesterday in an interview.

"The morass in Iraq is such a talisman for everything that is going on.''

Axworthy said that by calling Israel's response to Hezbollah's kidnapping of its soldiers "measured,'' Harper closed off any chance for Canada to be an honest broker at the emergency talks in Rome yesterday which failed to find a solution to end the fighting.

"Canada has a distinct role to play in certain areas without exaggerating the influence we can have,'' said Axworthy.

Axworthy goes on about how he believes Israel has a right to defend itself and then comes the media angle to this post:

Axworthy also took a shot at Winnipeg's Asper family, saying they are using their media empire to advocate staunchly right-wing positions when it comes to defending Israel.

"The Aspers are increasingly playing a far more important role in shaping Canadian foreign policy."

The front page of Tuesday's National Post -- never mind the opinion and editorial pages -- said it all. Big play for this poll and even bigger play for this guy.

SEE The FREE PRESS'  APOLOGY/CORRECTION HERE!

The other Middle East conflict

Found this one via that scurrilous rag, eFrank:

During one particularly bruising round of negotiations over the future of The Jerusalem Post, Israeli businessman Eli Azur paid a 3 a.m. visit to the hotel room of Canadian newspaper magnate Leonard Asper.

According to just-released court papers, that night in January 2005 Azur was hoping to rescue his joint bid for the Post with Asper, after a midnight meeting a few hours earlier had ended with Asper "hurling" his Blackberry to the floor. Asper, a Canadian media heir, was furious at a suggestion from self-made Israeli businessman Azur that Azur would play a lead role in their deal to purchase the Post from the flailing empire of Conrad Black, another Canadian tycoon.

The late-night peacemaking efforts at the Hilton Hotel failed, and Azur assumed sole control of the Post and The Jerusalem Report, a weekly magazine also owned by The Palestine Post Ltd. A few days later, Asper took his case to a New York court, demanding a controlling stake in the company.

It took a year and a half, but two weeks ago the arbitrator presiding over the case decided to give complete control of the Post to Azur's company, Mirkaei Tikshoret Ltd. In a humiliating slap, Asper was also ordered to pay all of Azur's legal costs.

<SNIP>

The newspapers owned by the Winnipeg-based CanWest, including Canada's National Post, are famous for reflecting the Asper family's rightwing pro-Zionist views. In an effort to extend the family's influence, CanWest made a failed bid to acquire The Jerusalem Post in 2000, when Asper's father, Izi, was still alive. The arbitrator said that Leonard Asper wanted to make another bid to fulfill his father's dream of owning a business in Israel.

Azur, on the other hand, is famous for keeping his beliefs to himself. He has focused on such profitable media ventures as talk radio stations and Russian-language newspapers. One of the primary points drawing Azur to the Post was not the newspaper's history but its hefty debt, which his associates had calculated as a tax benefit for other profit-making ventures in Israel. In the court documents, it emerged that one of Azur's chief concerns with Asper was the "extreme rightwing views" of the Asper family, which Azur feared might hurt the Post.

The article is wrong on some counts. For example, when it says that "Asper's media fortune was built on a politically driven brand of journalism," that's hogwash. The Asper media fortune was built on simulcasting U.S. shows, and that had nothing to do with politics. What's more, Israel (Izzy) Asper was a Liberal.

Still, it's a good gossipy read.

CBC frequency

Oh here's a surprise: The guys in the Financial Post comment pages who scribble stuff about global warming being ''junk science'' hate CBC Radio. Here's the latest, written by William Watson.

CBC Radio is deeply into self-parody. The Massey Lectures this year were given by ... wait for it ... Stephen Lewis. (Dalton Camp and Eric Kierans couldn't make it, being dead.) Looking over the list of lecturers since 1961, we see names like Galbraith, Heilbroner, Saul, Ignatieff, Chomsky, Jane Jacobs, Barbara Ward, Charles Taylor, Gregory Baum, Ursula Franklin. The always-sensible Robert Fulford does sneak in in 1998, though talking about narrative, not politics. I guess all the right-wing thinkers have been busy for the last 45 years.

Just Society doesn't like this one bit.

The CBC should have "free-market supporters" (read here corporatist windbags, these guys wouldn't know a free market if they wound up standing in the middle of one looking for a pair of socks - they all have an all too narrow view of equality) like William Watson on, and let him go head to head with Judy Rebick or someone like that.

I mean, it's not as though Watson and his kind don't have a pulpit (The National Post, and to a lesser extent, the Globe and Mail), but sure, let them, even more often than they already are, on the CBC - because then all the social activists are there, like Professor Watson, free market activist, and no one can use that old, tired phrase, because the social activists are paying for the CBC

Then we can actually get on to a discussion about what's really wrong with the CBC...

Now that should fill a column or two thousand in the Post.

H/t to K-Dough.

 

Izzy or Izzy not?

On Saturday, The Winnipeg Free Press' Morley Walker wondered (sub. req'd.) how it is that Peter C. Newman has been sanctioned by the Asper family to write a bio of the late patriarch Israel H. when fellow newsroom denizen Gordon Sinclair Jr. has a book deal for the same subject.

Gord has been at it for more than two-and-a-half years. A few minutes before we received the terrible news that the founder of CanWest Global Communications had died of a heart attack, and I swear this is true, Gord said to me: "I'm going to write a book about Izzy. He's such a fascinating guy."

That was Oct. 7, 2003. Since then, whenever Gord deigns to come into the office, he has kept me in his loop.

He had first suggested the idea to his publisher at McClelland & Stewart in 2000. It would be the follow-up to his book on the J.J. Harper affair, Cowboys and Indians, which M&S released in 1999.

Gord, you should know, is a glutton for punishment. It's a sickness he has. Some guys climb Mount Everest. Gord bangs his head against brick walls.

Anyway, M&S wasn't convinced at first. But after Izzy died, they saw the light. Gord signed a contract in early 2004 and received a sizable advance to start the research.

Early on, while trying to set up interviews with members of Izzy's Winnipeg mafia, he heard the same refrain.

"Sorry, the family has asked us not to speak to you. They have someone else in mind to write the book."

That someone has turned out to be Peter C. Newman, the venerable chronicler of Canada's business and political elite.

Newman's Toronto agent insists the project is still up in the air. I reported this in a brief story earlier this week.

Somebody, however, is not telling the truth.

I've since learned that Newman was in town last month conducting interviews at the Ramada Inn -- with many of the people who wouldn't go on record with Gord.

Asper's widow, Babs, gave Newman an estimated 10 boxes of material to aid his research. He's being helped by the Winnipeg writer and historian Allan Levine, who once wrote a CanWest corporate history.

Newman first interviewed Asper a decade ago for his 1997 book Titans, the concluding volume in his Canadian Establishment trilogy.

The two men hit it off. Both saw themselves as outsiders who clawed their way to the top. Both loved jazz almost as much as life itself.

Newman's chapter on Asper, The Kid From Minnedosa, reflected his admiration -- in a superficial magazine-profile kind of way.

Asper loved it. He told many people that if anyone wrote his biography, he wanted it to be Newman.

And who wouldn't want Newman? It would be a prestigious thing. The titan of Canadian journalism validates the kid from Minnedosa for the bastards in Eastern Canada.

Asper's widow and children apparently decided to honour his wishes, although the project is being kept so hush-hush you'd think they were negotiating a hostile takeover of Bell Globemedia.

Normally, when a star author signs a book deal, the news is trumpeted by the publisher. But if Newman doesn't have a contract, who is paying for his time?

Could it be CanWest Global itself? This is the inescapable conclusion, although it's unthinkable that a journalist of Newman's stature would risk his reputation by taking money from the family of the subject he's writing about.

And would this mean they would vet the material? That's not biography writing. That's vanity publishing.

On the other hand, Newman has made no bones over the years about his need for money to pay off his ex-wives. Maybe he needs the cash for that undisclosed settlement with Brian Mulroney.

In any event, Asper was such an outsized figure that there may be room for two books about him.

Who knows when Newman's will come out? But Gord's is due next May. The cover is already posted on Amazon.ca.

So? Is there a publisher -- or is celeb lawyer Michael Levine looking to negotiate a juicy deal?

H/t to my friend in the 'Peg, D.R.A.

Report retort

Since the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communication published its final report on the Canadian news media last month, many of you wrote to me asking me when I would ''weigh in.'' To be honest, I thought there would be little point in adding anything to what the Star's editorial board had to say -- three editorials, no less! -- since I agreed with virtually every word of it produced. So I decided to take a step back and see how the media covered the media report, figuring it would produce much more interesting grist for my mill.

I was not disappointed. Which is to say, they acted just as I had expected them to act.

So, without further ado, here's some of today's treeware column on the subject, as published in the Business section. I've tossed in a couple of links.

On June 21, the day the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communication published its final report on the Canadian news media, there were two pertinent stories in the papers.

One got front-page headlines across the country, was the target of countless columns and editorials, was screamed over the airwaves, debated on hotline shows and in the blogosphere and was the focus of the committee's news conference that day.

The other? It was buried in the business pages.

The former was CBC-TV's decision to bounce its flagship newscast, The National, one hour later throughout the summer to accommodate a simulcast of ABC's The One: Making a Music Star. Pundits are still bloviating about it, even though it's going to affect only Tuesday nights, and only in certain time zones.

The latter story was Sun Media Corp's announcement that it would be cutting 120 positions across its newspaper chain, shutting down its research libraries everywhere except Toronto, slashing its political coverage, dumping local lifestyle and entertainment writers for one big merged and converged happy journalistic family in Toronto.

Now I ask you: If you're reporting on, or commenting on, a Senate study of media concentration, which story would you find more relevant? An American simulcast on CBC-TV, or the radical consolidation of Canada's second-biggest newspaper chain?

And yet, in all those thundering editorials and news stories about the Senate report, most of which dismissed its findings while chastising CBC, not a single one referred to the bloodbath that had just happened at the Sun papers.

Which tells you all you need to know about Canada's giant media corporations.

It's also a perfect illustration of why the Senate Committee began studying them three years ago when there were alarming signs that concentration was stifling opinion in this country...

The column says it all, except for one thing: When the corporate media claim that there are lots of news alternatives available via Google and Yahoo, they're talking out of both sides of their ... hats. It won't be long before they take serious steps to prevent the search engines to stop ripping them off from using their material.

A new meaning to blogrolled

Maybe some bloggers would be thrilled and flattered to pick up a national newspaper and discover that one of their posts -- or at least 60 per cent of it, just enough to distort the essence of it -- was reprinted, without payment or even permission.

Not so the folks at Spacing Wire, a blog about public space issues in the big city.

Imagine their surprise when a post about World Cup fever by Shawn Micallef was, not to put too fine a point on it, ripped off by the National Post last week.

Here's the original and here's how the Post used it. There's quite a difference in tone.

According to  Spacing publisher & creative director Matthew Blackett today (emphasis is mine):

(T)he piece focused on ethnicity, and the National Post is not regarded as a highly enlightened publication when it comes to immigrant issues or multiculturalism. A piece like this deserves to be printed in its entirety (not just 60%) so that the author’s arguments can been fully realized. Shawn had originally quoted text from John Barber, a Globe and Mail columnist and a National Post competitor. The quotes from Barber played an integral role in shaping Shawn’s Spacing Wire post. But the National Post removed Barber’s words which dramatically warped Shawn’s point-of-view. To add insult to injury, Shawn is a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail and has consciously decided not to have anything to do with the National Post. (Shawn said he was just as offended to have appeared on the same page as the SUV-loving, cycling-hating Jacob Richler).

We contacted the National Post and began to work things out. The Toronto editor was apologetic and said it was part of an “experiment” where the Post was using the blog world as a news source. We talked to our media lawyer (luckily, she writes for us too) and were encouraged to hear that we were in a good position to demand a few things. We asked that Shawn be paid more than what he would have received if he was commissioned to write the piece. We also asked for an apology that would appear on page A2 of the paper. Both requests were granted and today the Post published their apology ...

Here's the apology.

An excerpt from an article by Shawn Micallef from Spacing Magazine (spacing.ca/wire) appeared in the National Post of June 29 -- with the headline "Soccer fans play rough" -- without Mr. Micallef's or Spacing's consent, although the byline, credit and Urban Scrawl label implied the author's consent had been granted. The Post apologizes to Mr. Micallef and Spacing Magazine.

This is alarming on many levels. But I will name just two.

First, that bloggers appear to be considered fair game for what, in this instance anyway, was copyright theft infringement. (Joe Clark in the comments says I got it wrong.)

Second, that the Post is now resorting to blogs as a news source. Not that bloggers can't be news sources because, Lord knows, they use the MSM as news sources all the time. Why should it not be a two-way street? That plus bloggers have indeed broken stories. But the Post is doing this without informing readers, not to mention at least one blogger, at the same time as it does not use Canadian Press. (Meanwhile the rest of the CanWest Global chain of papers has served notice that it too plans to drop out of CP.)

The thing is, using bloggers is a great idea. I have been pushing for this at the Star for over a year now. So far, we had Marc Weisblott's Paved but not much more. I have also proposed a webcam-based bloggers' political podcast/show to be hosted by moi. Still waiting on that one.

Anyway, maybe the Post's move is a scheme to get bloggers to buy the paper to see if they made it into the mainstream? Kind of like a loto?

Only you don't get a cent.