Skip to main content

The Peter Kent Challenge - Free Press provides exhibit A

When veteran broadcaster Peter Kent announced he was running for office as a candidate for the Conservative Party, he threw down a gauntlet. Not for his Liberal Party challenger in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's.

For journalism schools.

Kent, the former host of CBC's national newscast and later Global TV's national newscast, said he sees political bias creeping into television and radio reporting and certainly in the news pages. And that bias favours the Liberals at the expense of the Conservatives every time.

He challenged j-schools to do an election study to examine his allegations. Of course he recognized that most journalism school teachers are small L liberals, themselves. Maybe that's why we haven't heard which schools took up his challenge. If any.

But The Black Rod is up for it and we'll be the guide to any students from Red River or the University of Winnipeg who are game for The Peter Kent Challenge.

With the election announced on Monday, we didn't have to wait long for our first example of the type of reporter that Kent is warning about.

Exhibit A: Paul Samyn.

In a Page One story in Tuesday's Winnipeg Free Press, Samyn delivers the newspaper's overview of the election announced the day before.

But wait...There's something missing.

Oh, okay. There it is. IN PARAGRAPH EIGHTEEN.

ON THE JUMP PAGE inside the paper.

Samyn couldn't find room to mention the GOMERY REPORT until deep, deep in his story even though he admits it was "the trigger for the fall of the Martin government..."

But he did find plenty of space to slip a Liberal bias into his story before having to type the G-word.

The Free Press' Ottawa reporter begins with a cliche, always a good start.

"Canadians will be plunged...into a snow-shovelling, mud-throwing campaign..."

Plunged? The build-up to the non-confidence vote couldn't have been more telegraphed. Why the negative verb? Could the next sentence be a clue?

"The first federal winter campaign in almost 25 years will be launched despite the opinions of many Canadians who have said they do not want to see politicians at their doors at Christmastime."

Did you catch it? The subtle pitch of a Liberal Party campaign talking point. "...despite the opinions of many Canadians..." Many Canadians? What about the many Canadians who want an election. Why the emphasis on the "many" that allegedly don't?

Oh, here's why, right out of the mouth of Liberal leader Paul Martin:

"A general election, one forced over the holidays by the three opposition parties, will be held on Monday January 23rd."

'Unwanted election' talking point. Check.

Samyn's next paragraph is equally as subtle, depicting the "fragile government" of the Liberals as victims, "unable to survive" a non-confidence motion. Boo hoo.

And look, he says, now that an election is a certainly, the opposition parties have ganged up on the Liberals, resulting in nastiness. Bad parties. Bad.

The story meanders for another nine paragraphs on the front page, then is continued on Page Four. Another four paragraphs precede the first mention of the Gomery report which, we are told, "portrayed a trail of corruption within the Liberal party's Quebec wing."

Portrayed? Not revealed or exposed, but portrayed.

Even the Free Press editorial stated outright that the party "used organized theft and kickbacks to win power". The editorial writer notes that Judge John Gomery uncovered "the theft of some $100 million from the public treasury.." But, to Samyn, the judge's report "portrayed" a trail of corruption, which prodded the NDP to pull its support from "what they too called a corrupt government."

Samyn can't find room in his story for any details about this so-called corrupt government. because he has to let Liberal Reg Alcock boast that he is "enormously proud of what we have done (to repond to the sponsorship scandal)..." Still no details, which are obviously something that only gets in the way of a good story.

And it only delays the prediction, on the first day of the campaign, from Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, that "the question is will it be a Liberal minority or a Liberal majority."

Gee. Day One and Paul Samyn has already declared a winner. And it's---awww, you peeked.

Popular posts from this blog

The unreported bombshell conspiracy evidence in the Trudeau/SNC-Lavelin scandal

Wow. No, double-wow. A game-changing bombshell lies buried in the supplementary evidence provided to the House of Commons Judiciary Committee by former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould. It has gone virtually unreported since she submitted the material almost a week ago. As far as we can find, only one journalist-- Andrew Coyne, columnist for the National Post--- has even mentioned it and even then he badly missed what it meant, burying it in paragraph 10 of a 14 paragraph story. The gist of the greatest political scandal in modern Canadian history is well-known by now. It's bigger than Adscam, the revelation 15 years ago that prominent members of the Liberal Party of Canada and the party itself funneled tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks into their own pockets from federal spending in Quebec sponsoring ads promoting Canadian unity. That was just venal politicians and a crooked political party helping themselves to public money. The Trudeau-Snc-Lavalin scandal is

Crips and Bloodz true cultural anchors of Winnipeg's aboriginal gangs

(Bebo tribute page to Aaron Nabess on the right, his handgun-toting friend on the left) At least six murder victims in Winnipeg in the past year are linked to a network of thuglife, gangster rap-styled, mainly aboriginal street gangs calling themselves Crips and Bloods after the major black gangs of L.A. The Black Rod has been monitoring these gangs for several months ever since discovering memorial tributes to victim Josh Prince on numerous pages on Bebo.com, a social networking website like Myspace and Facebook. Josh Prince , a student of Kildonan East Collegiate, was stabbed to death the night of May 26 allegedly while breaking up a fight. His family said at the time he had once been associated with an unidentified gang, but had since broken away. But the devotion to Prince on sites like Watt Street Bloodz and Kingk Notorious Bloodz (King-K-BLOODZ4Life) shows that at the time of his death he was still accepted as one of their own. Our searches of Bebo have turned up another five ga

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. There, we said it.

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. Oh, you won't find anyone official to say it. Yet . Like relatives trying to appear cheery and optimistic around a loved one that's been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the people in power are in the first stage of grief -- denial. The prognosis for Hydro was delivered three weeks ago at hearings before the Public Utilities Board where the utility was seeking punishingly higher rates for customers in Manitoba. It took us this long to read through the hundred-plus pages of transcript, to decipher the coded language of the witnesses, to interpret what they were getting at, and, finally, to understand the terrible conclusion.  We couldn't believe it, just as, we're sure, you can't--- so we did it all again, to get a second opinion, so to speak.  Hydro conceded to the PUB that it undertook a massive expansion program--- involving three (it was once four) new dams and two new major powerlines (one in the United States)---whi

Nahanni Fontaine, the NDP's Christian-bashing, cop-smearing, other star candidate

As the vultures of the press circle over the wounded Liberal Party of Manitoba, one NDP star candidate must be laughing up her sleeve at how her extremist past has escaped the scrutiny of reporters and pundits. Parachuted into a safe NDP seat in Winnipeg's North End, she nonetheless feared a bruising campaign against a well-heeled Liberal opponent.  Ha ha.  Instead, the sleepy newspeeps have turned a blind eye to her years of vitriolic attacks on Christianity, white people, and police. * She's spent years  bashing Christianity  as the root cause of all the problems of native people in Canada. * She's called for  a boycott of white businesses . * And with her  Marxist research partner, she's  smeared city police as intransigent racists . Step up Nahanni Fontaine, running for election in St. John's riding as successor to the retiring Gord Macintosh. While her male counterpart in the NDP's galaxy of stars, Wab Kinew, has responded to the controversy over

Exposing the CBC/WFP double-team smear of a hero cop

Published since 2006 on territory ceded, released, surrendered and yielded up in 1871 to Her Majesty the Queen and successors forever. Exposing the CBC/FP double-team smear of a hero cop Some of the shoddiest journalism in recent times appeared this long August weekend when the CBC and Winnipeg Free Press doubled teamed on a blatant smear of a veteran city police officer. In the latest example of narrative journalism these media outlets spun stories with total disregard for facts that contradicted the central message of the reports which, simplified, is: police are bad and the system is covering up. Let's start with the story on the taxpayer funded CBC by Sarah Petz that can be summed up in the lead. "A February incident where an off-duty Winnipeg officer allegedly knocked a suspect unconscious wasn't reported to the province's police watchdog, and one criminologist says it shows how flawed oversight of law enforcement can be." There you have it. A policeman, not

Winnipeg needs a new police chief - ASAP

When did the magic die? A week ago the Winnipeg police department delivered the bad news---crime in the city is out of control. The picture painted by the numbers (for 2018) was appalling. Robberies up ten percent in  a single year.  (And that was the good news.) Property crimes were up almost 20 percent.  Total crime was 33 percent higher than the five year average. The measure of violent crime in Winnipeg had soared to a rating of 161.  Only four years earlier it stood at 116. That's a 38 percent deterioration in safety. How did it happen? How, when in 2015 the police and Winnipeg's police board announced they had discovered the magic solution to crime? "Smart Policing" they called it.    A team of crime analysts would pore through data to spot crime hot-spots and as soon as they identified a trend (car thefts, muggings, liquor store robberies) they could call in police resources to descend on the problem and nip it. The police