John Pepall: Mike Duffy's trial by media:
Sub judice. It’s the idea that when a matter is before the courts we should follow the allegations, the evidence and the arguments but leave the courts to decide what to make of it all.And while the column is about Duffy's trial, the most recent phase has really been the trial-by-media of Stephen Harper. Pepall's column would make a good open letter directed to the likes of Robert Fife (CTV) and Andrew Coyne (Post Media) [explicitly excluding Christy Blatchford].
... sub judice is not just some quaint leftover from the days when lawyers were supposed to know some Latin. It has a point: that matters that are to be decided by the courts should be left to them to decide; that they should not be subject to popular pressure telling them what to do.
... The media, when it is not just partisan, which much of it is, is flopping between unctuousness and the cultivation of populist [resentment] against anyone comfortable on the taxpayer’s dime.
... It’s juicy gossip. And like all gossip, it is fuelled by malice and ignorance. ...
Because there are little and big C conservatives who post here I'll digress from topic to urgently bring to Conservative attention something I have (strangely) just discovered with regard to the CBC -misconduct that demands quick action on the part of Conservatives and and whereas we are in an election- immediate attention from the CRTC, and CBC Ombudsman followed by an immediate public apology from the CBC and dismissals a la Solomon, Ghomeshi et al. I have frequently been enraged at CBC but rarely more so than just now after visiting (for the first time I believe) CBC's Power and Politics official twitter feed- photo stream : https://twitter.com/hashtag/pn... .
ReplyDeleteThe CBC's own Journalistic Standards and Practices website page:
http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca...
states it has an obligation to act responsibly and be accountable, to its' values of accuracy, fairness, balance, impartiality, and integrity,etc. Under the value of integrity the CBC website states that " The trust of the public is our most valued asset. We avoid putting ourselves in real or potential conflict of interest. This is essential to our credibility." I haven't checked but I strongly suspect these values are also enshrined or implicit in their Statutory mandate and CRTC conditions of license . It is difficult to envision a more egregious, flagrant departure from these values than this hateful,venomous, vitriolic, sexist, biased, unbalanced yea verily even unhinged photo-stream short of Frank Magazine and its ilk. It is totally unacceptable in an election campaign on CBC's flagship political show. Reflective of this shows incredibly low journalistic standards were the nightly polls they conducted( seem to have been discontinued for the summer) soliciting audience response to push-pull questions on political topics du jour drafted by such exemplars of journalistic integrity as Hannah Thibedeau - almost invariably they favoured the Liberal position by about a 95% margin-even a North Korean election result is less transparently phony. Are incompetence ,( Peter Principle anyone)shallowness, bias and rudeness CBC's requisites to host their flagship political show.Can Barton let a conservative guest or for that matter any guest utter more than two words without interrupting them and dismissing their thoughts as talking points. Her grand Inquisitor prosecutorial style- in fact the whole show is thinly veiled gossip and gotcha politics and does serious political discourse a grave disservice.Watch how PBS's Gwen Ifil or Judy Woodruffe or McNeil, Lehrer before them do respectful interviews and debates with guests from differing sides of the political spectrum.
Ever since the Senate affair began, I wondered why Robert Fife figured so prominently in doggedly "investigating" two former colleagues, Mike Duffy & Pamela Wallin. After all, if Fife was so interested in how senators claimed primary residency expenses, he could have looked into many other senators' expense claims. One in particular came to mind back in 2013, when it was briefly reported that a Liberal senator had continued to vote on legislation "after she was diagnosed with dementia and declared legally incompetent."
ReplyDeletehttp://globalnews.ca/news/280197/alberta-senator-allowed-to-vote-four-months-after-being-diagnosed-with-alzheimers/
Because of that report, I was curious to find out more about Senator Fairbairn. According to WIKI, Ms. Fairbairn "worked as a journalist in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa before being hired as a legislative assistant to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1970. In 1981, she became Communications Coordinator in the Prime Minister’s Office. On June 29, 1984, just prior to leaving office, Trudeau recommended her for appointment as a Liberal senator for Alberta, her home province.”
To me, Ms. Fairbairn's career path sounded a lot like Mike Duffy’s, with her working life spent primarily in Ottawa. I asked myself: where did Senator Fairbairn have her primary residence? Once she became a senator, did she file claims for her Ottawa living expenses, like Mike Duffy did? I don't know -- and at this stage of the game, with her having retired and being afflicted by that horrible condition of Alzheimer's, those questions are irrelevant. But the biggest question, still unanswered, is: how come Robert Fife's scandal antennae didn't start ringing loudly at the time? How come he zoomed in on 3 Conservative senators?
-- Gabby in QC
What you Harpercon apologists refuse to acknowledge or address in any way shape or form, is that if this was just "nothing going on here", why did the entire political apparatus of your Dear Leader spend virtually all of of its time and energy in trying to conceal, deceive qnd obfuscate, to the point of trying to change an independent audit?
ReplyDeleteHow does this reflect on the judgement of your hero that he appointed all of these fools in the first place and then - after they misbehaved badly - moved heaven and earth to protect them (at least in Duffy's case)?
As for "media bias", let's just remember that last election approximately 95% of all print media endorsed Harper and STILL you all cried anti-Harper bias. The CBC has become a very CPC friendly place, with its entire board and much of management now effectively composed of CPC loyalists.
Then again, I guess it is still short of the one-party state you seek with a government controlled press. Funny that - you wouldn't think that supposedly freedom loving "conservatives" (used loosely - you are but rabid partisans that cheer for your team no matter) would be so keen on that.
Liberal senator Rod Zimmer: $176,014 (appointed by Paul Martin,
ReplyDeleteretired)
Marie Charette-Poulin: $131,434 (appointed by Jean Chretien,
retired)
Rose-Marie Losier-Cool: $110,000 (appointed by Chretien, retired)
Sandra Lovelace Nicholas: $75,207 (appointed by Martin, sitting)
Nick Sibbeston: $50,102 (appointed by Chretien, sitting)
Colin Kenny: $37,000 (appointed by Pierre Elliott Trudeau,
sitting)
Terry Mercer: $29,338 (appointed by Chretien, sitting)
Joe Day: $19,634 (appointed by Chretien, sitting)
Bill Rompkey: $17,292 (appointed by Chretien, retired)
Vivienne Poy: $15,317 (appointed by Chretien, retired)
Robert Peterson: $11,493 (appointed by Martin, retired)
James Cowan: $10,397 (appointed by Martin, sitting)
Elaine McCoy: $10,298 (appointed by Martin, sitting)
Sharon Carstairs: $7,528 (appointed by Chretien, retired)
Pana Merchant: $5,500 (appointed by Chretien, sitting)
Sounds like media Double Standards. All being investigated by the RCMP.
Why do PMO staffers not read their email? Why do they let Harper accidentally mislead the Canadian public for weeks? Why does Harper have confidence in these incompetent lightweights?
ReplyDeleteIn interests of honesty and fairness and remaining credible I wish to post a partial retraction and apology for comments I made in an earlier post re the CBC Power and Politics twitter feed- photostream. While I stand by my negative comments on the abysmal quality of the show I believe I was incorrect in thinking that the CBC authorized the vile phostream I referred to- rather it was photos posted by twitter users(twits) under the hashtag of pnpcbc that provoked my ire.Not being a twit myself(hopefully ) I was unfamiliar with the intricacies of the medium
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Govt. should of took the Liberal McGuilty?Wynne route and hired an outsider to come in and delete all the emails.
ReplyDeleteIt seems very plain that the whole "Duffy" thing has been and remains mainly an anti-Conservative witch hunt - a big election "gotcha". I wouldn't be surprised to find actual collusion between the Media Party and the other opposition parties.
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