Liberal media bias? Not according to Tom Flanagan

Is the Canadian media a big, bad Liberal monolith out to get the Conservatives? Not according to Tom Flanagan, the University of Calgary political science professor, former senior adviser to Stephen Harper, former Conservative campaign manager, and the man oftem described as "Harper's Brain":

1:23 [Comment From GuestGuest: ]

Dear Mr. Flanagan Do you feel the Conservatives have to work extra hard to sell their proposals because of a more-than-usual hostile press?

1:28 Tom Flanagan: Our situation in Canada is very different from the USA, where the national media are definitely liberal (except for Fox News). In Canada both the Sun chain and the CanWest papers tend to be sympathetic or at least open-minded toward the Conservatives. The Globe and Mail sometimes indulges in quixotic crusades against the government (e.g., prorogation) but is pretty fair overall. The Toronto Star is relentlessly hostile, but nobody ever said you could make friends with everyone. I would say that, compared to most countries with which I have any famiiarity, the Conservatives in Canada actually have friendly media to work with. It was different in the past, but that's the way it is now.

Of course, this confirmation from their own camp, or even an objective analysis, won't stop the Conservatives from playing the media bias card at every opportunity. It's a strategy itself, of course, probably hatched with Flanagan's input back in the day: bang the media on the head regularly for being biased, they'll work extra hard to make sure they're not by bending the opposite way instead.

I've long maintained the only bias most media have isn't for the Liberals, the Conservatives or for Natural Law: it's for a good story. They won't bend things for any one party regularly, but they will bend things for a good headline -- the party involved is really irrelevant to them.

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Mike Duffy: Expert in media bias

CTV "journalist" turned Conservative senator Mike Duffy isn't backing down from his criticism of journalism schools, which he attacked for daring to teach "critical thinking." After refusing media requests for a few days, he went on a radio program yesterday to accuse journalism schools of "brainwashing" students:

Senator Mike Duffy isn’t backing down on his criticisms of the University of King’s College and other Canadian journalism programs, saying he “dared to show a little spotlight on some of the bias in the media.”

Last weekend, Duffy delivered a speech to local Conservatives in Amherst criticizing journalism schools for teaching critical thinking and Noam Chomksy’s book Manufacturing Consent. He also said students aren’t being taught to be fair and balanced.

“They all get preached to with the same cookie cutter thing,” Duffy told Tom Young’s Afternoon News program on Rogers radio Thursday. “And when you talk to these kids in job interviews, you realize some of them have been brainwashed.”

Actually, if there's anyone who would be an expert on biased media, it's Mike Duffy. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, arbiter of media ethics on the airwaves, certainly thinks so:

The arbiter of ethics on the airwaves ruled Wednesday that CTV violated industry codes when it included three false starts in a broadcast of an election interview with then Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.
...
The standards council also studied complaints lodged against CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy Live program. The show rebroadcast Dion's false starts and discussed it with a panel of politicians and later with journalists.

During the discussion, Liberal MP Geoff Regan suggested Dion might not have understood the question because of a hearing impairment, but then said it was not a subject worth discussing.

Duffy then repeatedly said that Regan was accusing the network of ridiculing a handicap.

The CBSC's national specialty services panel said Duffy "went too far."

"He was not fair, balanced or even-handed," the panel said, also agreeing the rebroadcasts of the restarts were in breach of industry code.

So Mike really knows what he's talking about here.

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Oh for god's sake, are you kidding me CP?

Usually, CP is a very competent journalistic organization. But they're pissing me off today. In addition to the piece I posted on earlier, they just moved this piece on the wire from the usually competent Joan Bryden:

Liberals stand down in election standoff (Fedbudget-Standoff)
Source: The Canadian Press
Mar 6, 2009 16:25

------------------------------

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By Joan Bryden

THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA _ Liberals are standing down from an election standoff with the Harper government, insisting they want to compromise over measures to stimulate Canada's sputtering economy.

Ralph Goodale, the Liberal House leader, says his party is in discussions with the Conservatives in hopes of finding a compromise that will get money flowing quickly without sacrificing government accountability.

``We are not aiming to set up some phoney confrontation,'' Goodale said Friday. ``This is no time to have some parliamentary showdown.''

This headline and lead is absolute bullcrap. I defy Joan and the Canadian Press to show me just where, just how, the Liberals are supposedly backing down. Please, show me. Show me position A, position B, and the difference and how it's backing down.

I'll wait.

Here's how this week has gone:

*Liberals: We want this money to move, but there needs to be basic reporting. Are we threatening an election? We're not making threats or playing games, we're saying Harper needs to dampen down the rhetoric and sit down work with the opposition here to work this out.

*Conservatives: This means an election! You guys are holding-up this funding that Canadians need, its a confidence matter, election, RAWRRR!

*Liberals: We want this money to move, but there needs to be basic reporting. Are we threatening an election? We're not making threats or playing games, we're saying Harper needs to dampen down the rhetoric and sit down work with the opposition here to work this out.

*Media: Liberals are backing down from election threat, they want to work with the Conservatives, the Cons huffed and the Liberals bluffed.

Newsflash, CP: this has been the Liberal position ALL THE WAY ALONG! It hasn't changed since Michael Ignatieff's presser on Tuesday through today's comments from Goodale. They've been saying the SAME THING all along. So, again, how are they backing down exactly?

Go and watch the video of Ignatieff's presser again if you don't believe me. Here's a few highlights:

“We feel we cannot write a blank check on $3B of stimulus. We have to have some indications on what programs this is going to be spent on. We want accountability before we vote, and we want accountability after we vote…this is very basic stuff, this is how democracy works. The government has to respect how democracy works. We want accountability, and we’ll demand it.”

Q: Harper says if you guys don’t like it, we’ll see you at the polls. Do you take that threat seriously?

*Laughs* “I find this threatening stuff ridiculous. We had about three weeks of kind of the era of good feeling, we were all sort of post-partisan and making happy-talk, and suddenly we’re into threats and menaces and my way or the highway and all this junk that we had before Christmas. The PM has to understand he drove this parliament off the cliff before Christmas, he had to prorogue parliament with this kind of aggressive partisanship. We’re now in an economic crisis where he’s got to walk back down the hill and talk to me. I’m not writing a blank check on $3B. No Canadian would respect me if I did. So, we’ve got to talk. Why don’t we talk instead of threats and menaces and bluffs and all this kind of stuff. I want to do the job that Canadians want us to do…I don’t respond well to threats and I don’t write blank checks, so if he wants to solve this problem we’ve got to talk.

Now contrast this with what Goodale said today, which according to CP is some kind of major stand down from the earlier position:

Ralph Goodale, the Liberal House leader, says his party is in discussions with the Conservatives in hopes of finding a compromise that will get money flowing quickly without sacrificing government accountability.

"We are not aiming to set up some phoney confrontation," Goodale said Friday. "This is no time to have some parliamentary showdown."

...

But Goodale said they won't debate the motion or force a vote on it until late March, giving the sides several weeks to reach a compromise.

He also indicated the Liberals could amend or drop the motion altogether if the government comes up with some other way of assuring them that the fund wouldn't simply be a blank cheque.

"We have signalled to the government one way to do it. They may have other proposals to make. We'd be very interested to hear what their proposals are."

I ask you, where is the stand-down here? Tuesday, Ignatieff says we want accountability, we need to talk. Friday, Goodale says we want accountability, we're talking, and if they have better ideas for accountability, we're open to hearing them.

This is utterly ridulous. And you know what else is ridulous? CP allowing this blatant lie by the Prime Minister of Canada to go by unchallenged:

"But there is no excuse for an opposition that has been saying we need to deliver money more quickly to now say we need to delay that money or say things like we need to have parliamentary sign-off on every individual project. That is not realistic. It's not going to work that way."

The opposition has never said that. The Liberal motion calls for nothing of the sort. Stephen Harper is lying. For CP to give him a platform to out and out lie to the Canadian people without pointing out the utter inaccuracy of his statements is extemly irresponsible.

That's stenography, not journalism.

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Is this "so-called" Liberal media bias?

You may have read today that PEI Premier Robert Ghiz is endorsing the Liberal Party's Green Shift initiative to reduce carbon emissions, including sweeping tax cuts for Canadians and specific help for those living in poverty.

“I think green shift is the way to go,’’ Ghiz said in an interview with The Guardian.

“I think it’s a good idea but what we have to do is make sure it doesn’t hurt jurisdictions like Prince Edward Island.

“What we have to do as a provincial government is make sure that we work with whatever party is in power federally to make sure that when that tax shift does take place that seniors have more money, that low-income Islanders do have more money.’’

Here's how the major paper in the province, The Guardian, which “covers Prince Edward Island like the dew” by the way, headlined the story:


A fairly neutral headline I think. Now, the Guardian put the story on the Canadian Press wire, and it was pulled down by a one of their maritime cousins, the Turo Daily News in Nova Scotia. They decided to put a different spin on the story by re-writing the headline thusly:


“So-called green shift”? Well, at least they didn't totally adopt Conservative talking points (like, say, the National Post editorial board) and call it a tax trick. But it's not a so-called Green Shift. It is called the Green Shift (pending the outcome of assorted wacky and contrived legal tom foolery). The headline writer may have their doubts on how green it is, or how shifty. But it's not their place to editorialize in the headlines of newspaper articles.

On another note, after the comments from Ghiz the article features commentary from the PEI Conservatives' energy critic, Mike Currie. His party has crunched the numbers and, surprise surprise, it's the end of the world as we know it. But here's what I found quite amusing:

“I think that this guy (Ghiz) is running this government off the seat of his pants,” said Currie, who has spent 20 years in the oil business.

Trust the oil man folks, this environment plan is all bad. Global warmin', schmobal swarmin'. Consume!

P.S. I tried mightily to work a Anne of Green Gables or Road to Avonlea reference into this post, but I could not. I apologize. I have failed you.

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Where's your Liberal media bias now?

It's just nice to see not all Conservatives hate the CBC:

Indian Affairs and Northern Development Minister Chuck Strahl has hired a new communications aide in his ministerial political office.

Josée Bellemare, former CBC Radio reporter, started her new job as press secretary to Minister Strahl (Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon, B.C.) who also is the federal interlocutor for Métis and non-status Indians, on Friday, Jan. 25.

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Lazy reporting, biased reporting, and just plain wrong reporting

Given the discussion the other day about the MSM's recent Conservative bias, it's interesting to see how different media outlets are reporting new federal polling results from Decima.

First, let's look at the Canadian Press:

New poll gives Harper Tories seven point spread on sagging Liberals
1 minute ago

OTTAWA - A new poll suggests the federal Conservatives have begun putting some distance between themselves and the sagging Liberal party.

The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey indicates a seven percentage point spread between Prime Minister Stephen Harper's governing Tories and Stephane Dion's opposition Grits.

The poll of just more than 1,000 Canadians last Thursday through Sunday put Conservative support at 35 per cent nationally, still one point below what the minority government achieved on election day in 2006.

The Liberals, however, slipped to 28 per cent among decided and leaning voters as three weeks of very public recriminations and infighting began to take their toll.

Editorializing here that's odd for a news organization like CP. Sagging would be a questionable comment for a news piece, even if it were supported by fact. And here they haven't backed it up. Where were the parties in the last poll, so we can compare the change and try to discern a trend? What's the margin of error? These are all things needed to accurately judge the poll.

But we'll get to that. Next, let's look at how another news wire, Reuters, covered the same poll:

Canada's ruling Conservatives open big poll lead

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's ruling Conservatives have opened up a big lead over the opposition Liberals but do not have enough backing to win a majority in a federal election, according to a poll released on Tuesday.

The Harris-Decima survey for Canadian Press suggested Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government was starting to benefit from turmoil inside the Liberal Party over what some members say is a poor performance by leader Stephane Dion.

The poll put the Conservatives at 35 percent, up from 29 percent in a survey the same firm did in mid-June. The Liberals dropped to 28 percent from 32 percent.

The Conservatives won power in January 2006 with 36 percent of the vote.
...
The Harris-Decima survey of 1,000 people was carried out from October 6 to 9 and is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

A big lead, hmm? Well, that's subjective.

At least we have some more information here. Unfortunately, they got it wrong. They transposed the Liberal and Con figures from the last poll. The last poll was Liberals 29, Cons 33, not vice versa. At least they tried to include it though, CP didn't even bother. So, now we see it's hard to say Liberal support sagged, they have it down one per cent. And the Cons up three per cent.

And they included the margin of error too. And it's 3.1 per cent. Which means all the movement was within the margin of error, something they overlook as they try to fit this into their pre-determined narrative of an ascendant Conservative Party and a sagging Liberal Party. In reality, you can't discern much of anything from these numbers. Both parties are still failing to gain much traction. Dido the NDP. Reading any more into the numbers is wishful thinking and spin. Which is certaintly fun, but not appropriate for news covergae.

Lastly, on the bias front, comes this line from Reuters:

Dion, who critics say is inexperienced and incompetent, is due to shuffle his shadow cabinet later on Tuesday.

Says who, your mom? Tom Flanagan?

A news story can't just toss out this kind of BS unsourced, it needs to be attributed. Who are these critics? This is a ridiculous slander to just toss into a non-opinion news piece. This is Reuters, not the Blogging Tories.

I'm a critic, and I think Stephen Harper is an arrogant and vindicative flip flopper and control freak who has failed to gain any ground among Canadians and leads a directionless and purposeless government that, despite all the Liberal troubles, is still well short of majority territory and is even off his last election result. And I'm far from the only one.

Why not toss that unsourced into your news coverage Reuters? It's just as valid and relevant, even if it doesn't for your pre-determined narrative.

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Reality check: Mike Duffy parrots Conservative talking points, forgets he's a "journalist"

I’m watching the supper-hour newscast here on the Toronto CTV affiliate, and every evening the anchor does a live chat with Mike Duffy from Ottawa for an update on the day’s events on Parliament Hill. Duffy just spewed a pile of crap so odious I had to hit rewind on the PVR to watch it again, then once more to transcribe the exchange.

The topic was the Decivin’ Steven’s rejection today of a call form the McGuinty Liberal government in Ontario for a ban on hand guns. Rather that present all sides of the issue, Duffy launched into a one-sided, unchallenged recitation of the Conservative talking points on the issue (probably straight from Sandra Buckler to his famed BlackBerry) and flat-out misrepresented, if not worse, the facts of the issue and the Liberal position. And running through it all was an strong sense of smugness and superiority from the Duffster.

First, here’s the complete exchange:

Anchor: Michael, I have to tell you, this seems like a no-brainer to many people in Toronto, especially in the wake of the Jordan Manners shooting. But the Federal Conservative government has rejected Ontario’s call for an all-out ban on handguns.

Duffy: And the reason is it’s chicken-soup legislation. I.E., it’s a law you can pass and it makes everyone feel good but, like chicken soup, it really doesn’t cure the cold. The federal government is saying they looked at this…Paul Martin tried this one during the last election campaign and it smacked of desperation. The Tories here tell me that Dalton McGuinty, with an election coming-up here October 10^th, is trying the same thing as a way to say don’t blame me, blame the federal government for gun violence in Toronto. What the federal Tories are saying is that a total ban would just be so huge, so difficult, it would take up so much resources trying to go after every gun collector and target shooter why don’t we just concentrate on gun violence among gangs, get the guns we an get now that are illegal out there. Let’s bring in mandatory prison terms for gun crimes. The Liberals are stalling and are opposed to it. The New Democrats and Conservatives voted in favour of it. So, at the end of the day, it’s time for a little (smugly fake-clears throat) reality check. Everybody hates guns. One politician saying blame the other doesn’t solve the problem. What solves the problem is more police putting more people in handcuffs and saying no to the hug-a-thug theory.

What a steaming pile of crap. You’d almost think Buckler had written the script for him, as a Blogging Tory couldn’t have done better. No ‘well this is one side and this is the other side’ but just a straight Con propaganda regurgitation.

First of all, Duffy claims this is “chicken soup legislation” which would seem to be his condescending way of saying a hand gun ban wouldn’t be effective. Stockwell Day made this same point today (same talking points no doubt) although he made it more eloquently than the Duffman:

Day argued that other countries where handguns have been banned have seen the numbers of gun crimes increase.

"In jurisdictions that have eliminated or tried to eliminate, to ban handguns - the United Kingdom, Ireland, other jurisdictions - in fact crime with guns has unfortunately gone up," Day said.

Unfortunately, Day was flat wrong. Rather than swallowing and regurgitating the Con talking-point like Duffy, the journalists at CP did some “journalism” as the kids like to call it and reported this (Scott's on this too):

Day's statements, however, don't appear to match with the facts.

There was a 16 per cent drop in the number of firearms offences in the United Kingdom in 2006 compared with the previous year, according to figures from Britain's Home Office. Injuries related to gun crimes also fell while fatalities rose slightly.

Police in London also reported an 11 per cent decrease in gun crime in the metropolitan London area during the same period.

Opps. You see, that’s the value of research Duffster. You must have some young interns on staff for that, right?

Then there’s Duffy’s ascertain that the Liberals are stalling on anti-crime legislation. Again, Duffy parrots an oft-repeated Con talking point unchallenged. Again, the talking point is full of crap. I don’t know if Duffy can remember as far back as, say, October, but if so he’d remember the Liberals offered to fast track more than half of the Conservative government’s crime fighting legislation. Yes, fast-track it. As in pass it quickly.

And how did Crime-fightin’ Decivin’ Steven respond to the offer? He said no thanks. As Globe columnist John Ibbitson explained, having the ‘soft on crime’ club to beat the Liberals with is more important to Harper than actually being, you know, tough on crime:

Then why do it? So Prime Minister Stephen Harper can turn the defeated bills into a wedge issue in the next election. "You see?" he will say. "This is the price we pay for a minority government. The Conservatives want criminals doing real time, rather than lounging around under house arrest. We want to keep dangerous offenders behind bars, and we want to protect people of faith from being compelled to act against their principles.

"But the opposition parties are more worried about the rights of criminals and pleadings of lawyers than they are about your protection. That is why we need a majority government."

The Liberals tried again in March, offering to pass four crime bills (C-18 (DNA Identification), C-22 (Age of Consent), C-23 (Criminal Procedure) and C-35 (Reverse Onus in Bail Hearings)) through the HoC in one day. The Con response? The used procedural measures to stall their own legislation! Yes Michael, the CONSERVATIVES stalled their own crime bills.

What’s more, to Duffy’s erroneous claim the Liberals are opposed to getting tough on gun crime and tough sentences, here’s what the Liberal platform has to say on the topic (I’m sure the OLO would be happy to hand-deliver him a copy) with some key parts bolded:

Tougher penalties – A Liberal government will re-introduce legislation to crack down on violent crimes and gang violence, and to double the mandatory minimum sentences for serious gun-related crimes. These reforms will also prevent courts from using conditional sentences in cases where there was serious personal injury, including all forms of sexual assault; terrorist activities; and organized crime-related offences.

Once again Michael, doing research beyond the Con talking points can be quite conducive to not only balanced reporting, but accurate reporting. Which is supposed to be the general idea.

And finally, what the hell was this “hug-a-thug” BS about Michael? How in the heck is banding handguns the equivalent to hugging criminals? I mean, seriously man?

I have to admit to not being a regular viewer of Mike Duffy Live. Is he always this full of crap, or did I just catch him on a bad day or something?

UPDATE: As Olaf mentions in the comments, Bob Tarantino has dug into the report cited in the CP piece on UK gun crime and found that while technically accurate, CP was selectivly misleading because overall, since the UK ban the stats have actually come up overall, although down in the period cited. So, bad CP, and bad me for taking CP at faith value. Let's hope the Brits have turned things around and numbers will continue their recent downward trend. Is the recent downward trend ban related? I dunno. Warren (the other Warren) has also examined the UK numbers and has some more nuanced thoughts.

My crow eaten and faith in CP shaken, back to selective and misleading stats. Some of the commenters over at Scott's find it quite selective that Stock specifically mentioned the UK and not, say Japan and Australia which they say also have bans and showed a drop. Are they right? I wouldn't put it past Stock but I don't know, and it's Friday night so I'm going to watch South Park instead of hitting Google.

Let me sign-off though by saying this, and I'm getting off my original theme of the Duffman here. But I'm sure no one is saying bans increase gun crime. You could read Stock that way, but I don't think that's what he was going for. I think the point he and most on his side would make would be that a ban would be ineffective. The veracity of that contention is unproven, barring a wider statistical sample of countries other than Stock's well-chosen UK example.

But even if a ban only leads to a minor decrease in gun crime, or serves to stem the rate of increase, isn't that a good thing. It's not an either/or situation as Duffy tries to make it out to be. We can both get tough on crime AND ban handguns. We can do both. Why not do everything we can to lower gun violence. Won't every bit help?

While Day and hand gun proponents, or ban opponents, whatever you want to call them, will argue a ban won't make a major difference, I don't think that's the real motivation for their opposition. For many of them, it's just that they like guns. They like the gun culture. They think owning a gun will make them more safe, they want it for protection.

And I don't buy that. I grew-up in the semi-rural West, and unlike many Liberals I'm willing to meet the right halfway on gun control. I understand the case for long-guns for hunting and pest control, the Liberal policy on the registry went too far in that regard. I worked on campaigns in B.C. where we made that point, and promised if elected to bring that view to the caucus table.

But you're not going to sell me on handguns. You don't shoot deer with a handgun. You shoot people with a handgun. So, not using any statistics, tell me again why we shouldn't ban handguns?

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