Joan Brydon (CP) bends over backwards to show how Canadian journalism could never go the way of the Murdoch scandal by slanting her reporting to make sure we know that Stephen Harper would never be influenced by the media. She adds Harper’s antagonism towards the press, “immunizes him against any suggestion that a similar scandal could happen in Canada”.
Ms. Brydon is just using journalistic sleight-of-hand. The story is not that Harper could be influenced by the media. It’s the other way around. Harper doesn’t need to court the media. Canada’s press is virtually 90 percent Conservative. Harper can act the media lout all he wants. It’s all a smokescreen supported by the media. He has the media in his pocket.
By furthering the meme that Harper is faced with a hostile press, Brydon is merely playing the part assigned to her. Criticisms in the press of Harper are carefully choreographed to give the appearance of ‘fair and balanced’ but the overwhelmingly positive coverage countering the negative cancels out any criticism.
It’s not just the Canadian Press. Postmedia, Sun Media, the editorial board of the Globe & Mail, Macleans are all Conservative media. Postmedia originated from a right winger who is now a convicted felon for fraud (sounds kind of Murdochy to me) and the very Conservative Aspers. There is no question Sun Media is a far right wing empire whose sole purpose is to further Conservative memes (sounds even more Murdochy). Globe & Mail? The editors championed Bush, loved the Iraq war and wax endlessly about the majesty of Sir Harper. Give me a break. Macleans has a history of Conservative writings, featuring none other than Mark Steyn, he who is an inspiration to right wing extremists like Breivik (complete Murdoch).
And then there’s the Canadian Press. Joan Brydon (and her ‘experts’) does nothing to address Stephen Harper’s control of the press, an obvious truth she works so hard to hide. In a free society with a free press, no leader should get endorsements from 90% of the media. Especially one as knee deep in scandals as the Conservative party. It defies logic. Then again so does our media, as this CP story so aptly proves.
What’s even more frustrating about Brydon’s writing is that she acknowledges the only heads of the media Harper has met with are right wingers (although she curiously does not acknowledge them as such).
By contrast, lobbying records show Stephen Harper has met three times in five years with executives of two different Canadian media outlets — twice with Quebecor’s Pierre Karl Peladeau and once with Bell Media’s Ivan Fecan.
Harper also met once in New York with Murdoch, who owns no media properties in Canada, for what Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas calls “a perfunctory lunch meeting to frame Canadian perspectives on issues of the day to promote Canada’s interests.”
Joan, Joan, Joan. The article you should have written is right there. That says it all. You needn’t have squandered the rest of your word count on turtled ‘experts’ and mock balance. Canada is in a crisis of too few progressive voices. The Toronto Star and the faltering CBC are not balance against the behemoth of the ‘Media’ empires. There’s your story, Joan. But I guess it is one that the CP won’t touch.
It’s only a matter of time before someone spills the beans about the complicity of our media and the Conservative party. I scoff when I hear Kady or Rosie Barton naively claim the Murdoch scandal couldn’t happen here. I get pissed when Postmedia or Sun Media trot out their foot soldiers to protect their own when a Murdoch or Breivik scandal could implicate their writers through a similar investigation. But when the supposedly neutral Canadian Press spins the state of our monopolistic Conservative media to prove an opposite, that’s not just laughable, it’s pure propaganda.
