The Black Rod

How far will the Winnipeg Free Press go to manipulate their election coverage to promote the Liberals? We got the answer Saturday when FP columnist Dan Lett went so far as to invent a scenario which allegedly took place at an all-candidates meeting in Winnipeg South Centre, one of the ridings the Liberals hope to recapture in Winnipeg, and which he then used to smear the Conservative incumbent. Under the rubric 'Analysis', Lett, who had been the moderator at the meeting, wrote: "It was all going well until (Joyce) Bateman piqued the ire of the crowd when she starting reading off a list of names from the Liberal campaign -- volunteers, paid staff workers and candidates alike -- who had been identified by the Tories as "enemies" of Israel ." Mission accomplished . The column was gleefully snapped up and reprinted in pro-Liberal sites across the Web.   It was enough to attract the attention of media watchdog Ezra Levant who did a bit of digging ...

With the federal election campaign in full swing, it was only a matter of time before the issue of media bias bobbed up. On Saturday last, the Globe and Mail published a column by its "public editor" (remember when they were called ombudsmen?) Sylvia Stead which was titled:  "Who complains about campaign coverage – and why". The newspaper, said Sylvia, has an editorial code that "requires that The Globe maintain a reputation for “honesty, accuracy, objectivity and balance." Whiners aside, the Globe has lived up to its code, she said, and she, personally, is monitoring the balance of "overall coverage, where it plays within the paper" and even  "the number of photos."   So there.  Case closed. Welllll  ...  readers of The Black Rod know that we like to check assertions out for ourselves, so we went through Saturday's Globe cover to cover to see how Sylvia defines "fair and balanced" news coverage. Uh oh. ...