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Media Bias [Merged]

>Aside from that, do you see an accuracy in  his comments? 

No.  It's the usual self-serving hyperbole.  All of those criticisms apply in at least a minor degree to all political parties in office, and sometimes those out-of-office.

The various ABC supporters - media and otherwise - are indulging in a spate of self-congratulation over the end of the decade of darkness, the politics of fear and division, etc.  They are - apparently - lacking in sufficient self-awareness to see their own 11+ year (this stuff goes back to the 2004 election) long version of a "Two Minutes Hate" - fear-mongering and division writ large and long.
 
Some commentary about reporters from a former/sometimes reporter/columnist:
.... It is important to understand that, except a few, the journalists are not ideologues. They are, once again, typical products of our drive-in universities, and journalism schools which have, if possible, even lower intellectual standards. They know no history, nor anything much about the topics on which they write, and can be easily mesmerized by a narrative they have themselves written, by rote. Such is the nature of promotion within what has become a niche of the entertainment industry, that those of independent mind and moral fibre are quickly weeded out.

I’m inclined to use the term “progressive” rather than dwell on Left and Right wings, for there is some contrast between, say, MSNBC and Fox in the USA, between CBC and Sun News up here. There is a growing Right — an opposition within the media to itself — but it is not a significant improvement on the monotony that preceded it. The idea that, as a form of entertainment, news coverage should aspire to “tabloid” conditions, and avoid subjects which require knowledge, governed the rightwing impresarios from the start. The Right is fresher and feistier than the Left, and by its Pavlovian habit of reacting to Left agendas, sometimes traps itself in a principled position; but this is a random, not intended effect. Both sides continue to share the post-Christian worship of abstract “liberty,” “equality,” and material “progress.” They clash on who can deliver these empty buckets quicker. But the battle is fought from both sides with the same weaponry — platitudes and clichés — in a kind of unending spiritual Verdun. “Progress” invariably emerges as the victor ....
 
On cbc.ca today:

"Canada's economy grew by 0.1 per cent in August — the third consecutive monthly gain following five straight months of shrinking — as the economy continued to pull out of the mild recession that began at the start of the year."

So much for even the "technical definition of a recession".  Inconvenient for narrative?  Make your own definition!
 
George Wallace said:
How long do we have to accept this BS from the CBC?

CBC smears Canadian military with bogus airstrike "investigation" (and gives ISIS free propaganda)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/fifth-estate-canada-airstrikes-iraq-civilian-casualties-1.3292723

If you read the comments (shudder), it sounds like the Communist Broadcasting Corp is simply shoring up JT's position to bring them home and quiet opposition to that plan by saying that we should have no part in bombing women and children.

The election is over, but the Trudeau Liberals are already collecting on their marker for upping cash to the CBC.

The truth has never really mattered to either of them.
 
recceguy said:
If you read the comments (shudder), it sounds like the Communist Broadcasting Corp is simply shoring up JT's position to bring them home and quiet opposition to that plan by saying that we should have no part in bombing women and children.

The election is over, but the Trudeau Liberals are already collecting on their marker for upping cash to the CBC.

The truth has never really mattered to either of them.

I just don't watch or read the CBC.  If I want real news I look at the BBC.
 
recceguy said:
^^^ This. I'll add my vote for BBC World also.
Especially the podcasts - quality information & comedy you can listen to whenever you want.
 
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/christie-blatchford-when-a-cloying-peter-mansbridge-became-too-much-for-even-trudeau-to-take

Christie Blatchford: When a cloying Peter Mansbridge became too much for even Trudeau to take

Christie Blatchford | November 5, 2015

Photo at link: CBC's Pete Mansbridge rides with Justin Trudeau on his way to be sworn in as prime minster in the CBC "Behind-the-scenes of Justin Trudeau's first day as Prime Minister" video.

I was trapped in a Toronto court Wednesday with an alleged murderer — some days, you just get lucky — and so missed the massive coverage of The Ascension, as I have come to call Justin Trudeau’s arrival as prime minister and, more really, the return of the federal Liberals to their rightful place in power.

So Thursday, I looked up the CBC special I’d heard about, wherein anchor Peter Mansbridge got special, exclusive, nay unprecedented, access to Trudeau on the day of his swearing-in.

It was, ah, edifying.

Now, I grant you the young PM is a genuine charmer, and smart on his feet; that there are many engaging and accomplished people in his new cabinet, and that much of the country seems won over by Trudeau’s “sunny ways” optimism after almost a decade of relatively dour Conservative government.

I get all that. It’s pretty contagious.

But throughout the election CBC journalists, I thought, were caught in a difficult position: There they were, covering a campaign where one leader (Stephen Harper) had cut the CBC budget and seemed inclined to do more damage and two others (Trudeau and Tom Mulcair) were promising to reverse the recent cuts and pronouncing themselves in favour of stable, long-term funding for the public broadcaster.

How do you do that fairly, when one guy is threatening your livelihood and the other two are whispering sweet nothings in your ear?

I didn’t watch enough of the campaign coverage to have a clue how CBC’s reporters managed it — probably well — but it ought to have made the broadcaster institutionally cautious and keen to keep a certain distance once the Liberals won.

Instead, in what must look to cynics and Conservatives like a classic quid pro quo, the CBC and Mansbridge got — I presume sought — this ne plus ultra access to the PM.

The special ran to almost 25 minutes, and began with Trudeau and his two oldest kids riding to the top of the Peace Tower to raise the new flag for the day. (There’s a new flag every day. The twist was that Trudeau was this day the one to raise it.)

As they rode up in the elevator, Mansbridge asked if as a kid, Trudeau and his siblings had gone to the tower with their dad, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

It was one of several moments when Mansbridge strove desperately for the cloying, and young Trudeau resisted. (I have to say, such moments greatly endeared Trudeau to me. It would have been so easy to hit these big sloppy softballs out of the park with rank sentiment, but he declined manfully.)

“I think my dad made us take the stairs,” he told Mansbridge, who then went a bit gaga and mewled, “all the way from the bottom?” as though that was akin to climbing Everest.
Related

Trudeau then showed the kids his new office — telling them in French that it had also been their grandfather’s — and then the cameras followed him to a meeting with senior staff.

There was talk of “small announceables” and what to expect from the coming scrum with the press (it’s not just Harper’s PMO that talks of such crass matters), and Trudeau offered that he was astonished people still get worked up about the “gender balance” in his cabinet.

One of the staffers said that the best way to answer such questions was to just reference the year, which of course, to much applause, is what Trudeau later went on to do when a reporter asked why gender balance was so important to him and he replied, “Because it’s 2015.”

It was probably his weakest but most revealing moment because here he sounded just like those who are so over-the-moon to see the Liberals in charge again, and all right with the world. As a cynical friend wrote, after watching the CBC special, “It’s all so much better when we all agree and all is good and there’s no one else disturbing the peace.”

Besides, as that muse of mine puts it, if you really wanted genuine equality, surely there’s a good case for just doing it, not announcing it beforehand and reaping all the fawning. There’s a certain diminution of women inherent in saying a quota is needed.

On and on it went.

Photo at link: CP/Sean Kilpatrick: He walks! Justin Trudeau, with his wife Sophie, and members of his cabinet arrive at Rideau Hall to take part in a swearing-in ceremony, Nov. 4, 2015.

Mansbridge and Trudeau rode in a limo to 24 Sussex where Trudeau would meet his family and walk to Rideau Hall, and Mansbridge burbled, “How will you handle all this — the limo, bulletproof (glass) or whatever it is? That’s not you. …  Now that you’re in ‘the bubble,’ how will you stay true to yourself?”

Trudeau did not roll his eyes, but I thought he deeply wanted to do. “It’s not a challenge for me,” he said. “It’s a challenge for the RCMP,” meaning those charged with keeping him safe as he mingles with the public.

At one point, when Trudeau was talking about the difficulty of raising normal kids in a privileged family, Mansbridge actually shook his head in admiration.

But my favourite moment was when Trudeau and the new cabinet ministers got on a bus to head to their first meeting.

Mansbridge was just beside himself: A bus! A bus! What magnificent, one-with-the-people symbolism!

And the new PM looked quizzically at him and told him, essentially, to cool his jets. “There will be cars and limos,” he said, because those things go with government.

And Peter, Trudeau added, “Lots of people take a bus every day to go to work.”

All in all, it was a more effective arse-handing than the one he famously delivered to Patrick Brazeau.

National Post

 
The prevailing consensus seems to be that the media has an overly "liberal" bias and that this bias affects coverage of the Conservatives. This recent report seems to paint a different picture however, and it's not surprising given the ownership of media in Canada.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/10/newspaper-endorsements-harper-study_n_8523676.html

The report from the Canadian Media Concentration Research Project found that 95 per cent of newspaper endorsements in the 2011 election went to Harper. That’s every daily in Canada that endorsed a party, except for the Toronto Star, which endorsed the NDP that year.

It was “roughly three times [Harper’s] standing in opinion polls at the time,” Carleton University Prof. Dwayne Winseck wrote in the report.

It changed a bit in the last election,  because even Conservative supporters like Coyne were turned off due to (insert reason):

In the 2015 election, things weren’t quite as monolithic, but 71 per cent of all newspapers endorsements still went to Harper. Seventeen of 23 newspapers that endorsed a candidate endorsed the Tories, the study found....

The issue of newspaper endorsements was particularly contentious in the most recent election. Perhaps most controversially, Postmedia and Sun Media newspapers (now part of the same company) ran full-page, front-page ads for the Conservatives the weekend before the election.

That led to calls for a boycott of Postmedia by some people on social media who argued the newspaper chain had overstepped ethical bounds with the ads.

The issue of how newspapers determine endorsements came into the spotlight with reports that Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey ordered all the major newspapers in his chain to support Harper’s Conservatives, a decision believed to be linked to the resignation of prominent journalist Andrew Coyne as the National Post’s editorial and comment editor.

Then there's television. It's safe to say that CTV, Global and Sun News (now defunct) are largely in the Conservative camp, which leaves us with the CBC in terms of national news. The CBC is firmly neo-liberal and pro-market. I would compare it to CNN, not much in the way of real reporting, and giving equal time to all parties (and equal credibility to their arguments) seems to trump hard reporting of facts. Many at the CBC harbour ill will towards the Conservatives no doubt, largely because of funding issues, but the board is ALSO stacked with Conservatives. 9/12 members contribute to the federal Conservatives. Would the obvious bias of the board trump the obvious bias of SOME of the journalists? I say some here because the CBC DOES employ journalists with more Conservative leanings (Terry Milewski for example).

I would imagine that the majority of online "news"  (not counting blogs here) are more progressive and take a more critical stance of the Conservatives. However there are also numerous Canadian conservative news sites. I'm not aware of a study or report that summarizes the online landscape, if anyone has something like that it would be interesting to see.

Still, the majority of posts in this thread seem to be referring to the mainstream "old guard" media. That is, newspapers, television and magazines. It's hard to see how these guys are obviously anti-Conservative given what we know about their positions in the last two elections and their ownership. Mansbridge WAS blathering like an idiot with Trudeau, but can anyone here say he lobbed anything but softballs at Harper when he had the chance to interview him?

 
Some of the organizations and people you think lean "Conservative" can only seem so for very Liberal/NDP flavours of "Conservative".

Endorsements and superficial fact reporting are the wrong places to look for bias.  Opinion pieces are where the action is.  Writers who discuss "politics of fear and division" as if it was something Conservatives recently invented and completely omit to place it in the context of the past 6 Canadian federal elections - which is to say, most writers - are not "lean Conservative".
 
...........and just because the mother ship backs a party, they typically, abstain from trying to control their journalists' reporting and opinion.
 
I don't know if anyone was paying attention during the National last night on CBC, but our friendly national broadcaster has now found a way to blame the military for past disasters that the military has nothing to do with:

They had a short presentation on the ceremony commemorating the Halifax Explosion and get this, they explain that the explosion was the result of the collision of two warships in the harbour. Of course that is nonsense. The two ships (the Mont Blanc, which blew up, and the Imo) were both cargo ships and the one which blew up carried explosives and ammunition for the war in Europe.

Funniest thing is, only a few years ago, the CBC ran a mini series on the very event, which got the factual side of things right - notwithstanding the infusion of fictional elements for entertainment value.

Anyway, I don't do this often, but I emailed a comment to CBC indicating that it does not say much about the quality of their research department if they can't get straight the basic facts behind an important Canadian historical event. I am waiting for an answer.
 
 
Gotta wonder if a researcher assumed that if there was ammo on the ships, they MUST have been "warships".
Oldgateboatdriver said:
.... I emailed a comment to CBC indicating that it does not say much about the quality of their research department if they can't get straight the basic facts behind an important Canadian historical event. I am waiting for an answer.
I'm beeting one of two responses:  canned, or  :crickets:
 
First rule of politics, kiddo: never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

- Enoch 'Nucky' Thompson (Character) Boardwalk Empire Season 1

And the CBC of today is all about politics and slamming the military every chance they get.
 
Oldgateboatdriver said:
I don't know if anyone was paying attention during the National last night on CBC, but our friendly national broadcaster has now found a way to blame the military for past disasters that the military has nothing to do with:

They had a short presentation on the ceremony commemorating the Halifax Explosion and get this, they explain that the explosion was the result of the collision of two warships in the harbour. Of course that is nonsense. The two ships (the Mont Blanc, which blew up, and the Imo) were both cargo ships and the one which blew up carried explosives and ammunition for the war in Europe.

Funniest thing is, only a few years ago, the CBC ran a mini series on the very event, which got the factual side of things right - notwithstanding the infusion of fictional elements for entertainment value.

Anyway, I don't do this often, but I emailed a comment to CBC indicating that it does not say much about the quality of their research department if they can't get straight the basic facts behind an important Canadian historical event. I am waiting for an answer.


LOL!  One that they already had all the facts researched and had produced a program on.  "New wheel gets the grease" I guess.

 
AP is reporting (on Twitter) that al Jazeera US is shutting down just over 2 years after launching, at a cost, over that period of $2 Billion. The service will continue in a digital mode, rather than being carried on cable. In my opinion a similar fate awaits ABC (both of them, the one in America and the other in Australia), BBC, CBC, CBS, CTV and all the others, all over the world.

I don't know what the new model will be ... except that my former colleagues think that 5G wireless (there are two (incompatible) versions right now) will may solve the "last mile" issue and that will be a game changer.
 
I live in a part of the country where any info arrives from a satellite, both tv and interwebs.  I'd just be happy if we could get cable and more than two bars on my phone.
 
Kat Stevens said:
I live in a part of the country where any info arrives from a satellite, both tv and interwebs.  I'd just be happy if we could get cable and more than two bars on my phone.


Nothing is going to solve the problem of the cost of serving "rural" subscribers. Market forces say that you must balance costs over subscribers, and rural subscribers are, broadly and generally, unwilling to pay more than their urban confrères and the urbanites object to subsidizing country folk. Regulators (the CRCTC) tell the companies that they cannot charge you more in order to bring you good adequate service and the customers, in the cities, tell the companies that they want to pay less and less and less ...
 
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