The Black Rod

Even as month-old information is passed off as "news" by the Winnipeg Free Press, the biggest crime story in Winnipeg languishes untouched by the city's "professional" journalists. Crime reporters have been trying to put the latest outbreak of shootings and home invasions into context. CTV on Friday blamed it on a clash between two street gangs---MOB and Indian Posse. Trying to advance the story in Saturday's paper, FP reporter Mike McIntyre breathlessly wrote that "police and justice sources tell the Free Press the M.O.B. is no longer a united front and has broken into two factions..." http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/mob-breakup-is-bad-news---edited-166628926.html Uh, yeah. That's what the Winnipeg Sun reported ONE MONTH AGO after the details were revealed in open court. http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/07/17/street-gang-splinters-into-two "A mysterious rift among members of a notorious Winnipe...

So the NDP got caught cheating in the provincial election. Gee, what else is new? When grinning Greg Selinger, Manitoba's dirtiest politician, joined Winnipeg Jets co-owner Mark Chipman to announce a mentoring program for high school students, it wasn't the first time the NDP broke the law during this campaign. And it wasn't an accident. Manitoba's Election Financing Act prohibits governments from publishing or advertising any information about its programs or activities starting 90 days before an election. The Winnipeg Jets/mentoring breach only made the news because Liberal leader Jon Gerrard officially complained to Elections Manitoba. But if the mainstream media had done their research, they would have known that Local Government Minister Ron Lemieux is already being investigated for breaking the same law in mid-August. Lemieux handed a government cheque for $15,000 to the Landmark Friendship Festival for organizers to buy new playground equipmen...

It was juicy and irresistable. How could Michael Ignatieff resist? So he took the bait. Only when the hook pierced his aristocratic lip did the leader of the Liberal Party realize his mistake and begin thrashing about in panic. Winnipeg Free Press reporter Mary Agnes Welch, who had trolled the sweet treat in front of Iggy, tried to save him, but wound up being pulled into the swamp herself. And this just after she had crawled out and dried herself off after her shenanigans during the civic election. Welch was only trying to use Iggy to smear the Conservatives in the byelection in Winnipeg North. Who knew it would backfire so badly? The reporter, whose controversial record of slanted and inaccurate reporting precedes her, asked Ignatieff a leading question, how pundits were saying the wily Conservatives were running a Filipino woman to siphon off Filipino votes from the Liberals to throw the election to the NDP. Iggy bit. "Let's have a straight-up figh...

They just can't help themselves. They've become so used to getting away with injecting their political bias into their reporting that they don't even try to hide it anymore. Mary Agnes Welch is a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press and a member of their "crack" election team providing (what they claim is) "Winnipeg's most comprehensive in-depth civic election coverage". And, until late Thursday afternoon, she was also a member in good standing of the Winnipeg Citizen's Coalition Facebook group. You know, the left-wing bunch created in 2008 to defeat Sam Katz and any councillor who supports him. To prove the adage of the Internet Age, "everybody knows something", a sharp-eyed reader of the Free Press called Welch out in the comments to one of her recent stories, the one telling how a Free Press commissioned poll found that Judy Alphabet's fight-poverty-not-criminals plan is wildly popular with the public. The spin ...

The blogosphere is humming with the revelation of emails showing left-wing journalists on a private web forum (Journolist) discussing ways to coordinate their coverage of the Obama presidential campaign to divert attention from his 20-year-association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his incendiary pastor. Pick one of Obama's critics, anyone will do, and accuse him of being a racist, was one suggestion. The editors, reporters, and columnists on the site swapped ideas on the best line of attack to undermine Sarah Palin as the Republican running mate, and, for good measure, they tried topping one another in showing their hatred of prominent conservative voices like Rush Limbaugh. Nine years ago CBS reporter and producer Bernard Goldberg wrote a book simply titled Bias . Calling on his 30 years of experience in the news business, Goldberg described how the mainstream media slants its reporting to promote the left-wing viewpoint without even thinking about it. There's no...

Just one day after The Black Rod revealed that the Winnipeg Free Press used a made-up quote as the basis for a front-page story villifying retired Crown Attorney George Dangerfield at the Driskell Inquiry, the newspaper "clarified " three stories written about Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz. Free Press Editor Bob Cox admitted the newspaper ran an erroneous headline over one story, used a twisted interpretation of Katz's answers to a barrage of questions in another, and allowed a reporter's opinionated slant into a news story about election candidates. In an unprecedented column, Cox acknowledged the errors. A headline saying Katz was eyeing a tax hike was blatantly wrong, said Cox. The story by Bartley Kives clearly said the opposite. A story by reporter Carol Sanders that said Katz was willing to forgive $100,000 in back taxes owed on Thunderbird House was also wrong. Katz was being asked questions at the same time by a radio reporter and Mary Agnes Welch, the Winnipeg Free...