Thursday 3 March 2011

CYBER STREET WHISPERS.

Fox News' Lies Keep Them Out of Canada
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Reader Supported News
01 March 11

s America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades - against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News - fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of the Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canadian regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada's right-wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.
Canada's Radio Act requires that "a licenser may not broadcast ... any false or misleading news." The provision has kept Fox News and right-wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage, including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the US airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish the anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non-partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper's proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right-wing network, "Sun TV News" which Canadians call "Fox News North."
Harper, often referred to as "George W. Bush's Mini Me," is known for having mounted a Bush-like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.
Harper's attempts to make lying legal on Canadian television are a stark admission that right-wing political ideology can only dominate national debate through dishonest propaganda. Since corporate profit-taking is not an attractive vessel for populism, a political party or broadcast network that makes itself the tool of corporate and financial elites must lie to make its agenda popular with the public. In the Unites States, Fox News and talk radio, the sock puppets of billionaires and corporate robber barons, have become the masters of propaganda and distortion on the public airwaves. Fox News' notoriously biased and dishonest coverage of the Wisconsin's protests is a prime example of the brand of news coverage Canada has smartly avoided.

Meanwhile, far away in another part of town...........cardigan news
Speaking on skymadeupnewsandfilth's newspaper review:

 Premier blogger and cringingly desperate wannabe Tory MP, Mrs Ian Cardigan, below,


Mr Ian Dale.

(On Rupert Murdoch) I think he's great. He single-handedly saved the Tories, I mean the Times;  I wish we had Fox News in this country. Oh, yes, and William Hague is definitely not gay, geddit?

10 comments:

PT Barnum said...

So Murdoch Inc. are allowed to buy all of BSkyB by agreeing to sell 61% of Sky News AND subsidise its running for x years into the future but they must NOT have a Murdoch-person in charge of Sky News.

No inquiry ensues this decision.

Hutzpah would be one word for it. I can think of a few others.

call me ishmael said...

Yes, Hunt the Cunt comes to mind.

mongoose said...

Rupert laughs himself to sleep most nights.

call me ishmael said...

But not, we must hope, for too many more.

yardarm said...

For 30 years Rupe has had a key to Downing Street, feet up on the Cabinet table, belching and farting while the puppets are lined up before him standing at attention like the recruits in Full Metal Jacket shouting " Sir yes sir ! "

george said...

PT..

" So Murdoch Inc. are allowed to buy all of BSkyB by agreeing to sell 61% of Sky News "

No. They've only ever owned 39% of Sky News. They will keep paying the bills for Sky News ( £20m annual loss) and will have the option to buy the remaining 61% in 9 years time.

I think I'd still prefer the US news. Our left wing UK MSM backed by the BBC may not tell overt lies but they just ignore the bits they don't like.
Their ideology prevents them from telling the full story. You will hardly get any critics of the EU, agw scam or multiculturalism in their news. Their hamstrung before they even start due to their inbuilt ideology. The biggest disaster is that we all pay into the £3Bn tax for a one sided biased BBC. At least Fox News pays for itself and doesn't leach off the long suffering taxpayers with threat of prison for non payment.

call me ishmael said...

To agree with you, mr george, about the shortcomings of the BBC is not to automatically endorse Murdoch, his is a filthy, lying, phonetapping, hypocritical, anti-democratic, redneck knocking shop, his servants unprincpled, even by the abysmal standards of journalism. I think that with the Sun, the News of The World and the Burley-Boulton gang he has done more harm to this country, to its fabric, its decency than could a whole regiment of Gordon Snots.

george said...

Couldn't agree with you I'm afraid Mr Ishmael.
I couldn't give a flying fuck what News of the Screw etc get up to. As long as they're taken to court for any lies and phone tappings etc then then can do what the fuck they like with their own money.
Living in Scotland we have a media that is 100% labour. It covers all the newspapers and tv. Even the sports programmes like 'Off the Ball' spend their time doing comedy sketches about Alex salmond and hammer away at the SNP. Not a word about the fuckwit Elmer Fudd ( sometimes called Ian Gray - labour leader in Scotland).
Personally I wouldn't vote for any of the useless bastards in Scotland but we should at least get to hear what the other side have to say without luvvies like stuart Cosgrove of radio scotland and Channel 4 giving us his one sided bollox.
The various media in Scotland go on holiday together , write for each others newspapers and spend all their time supporting Labour so Sky is a small chink of light in the darkness. As long as Murdoch keeps out of the editorship then we have somewhere to get relatively unbiased news. So I can't slag him off. He doesn't threaten me with prison if I don't pay a tv tax then shit on me with Labour bullshit all day every day.

call me ishmael said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
call me ishmael said...

You should give a fuck, mr george; teenage tits on the Sun-reading breakfast table, made-up scandals in the News of the World, the Murdoch partial ownership of the Metropolitan and who knows how many other police forces, the full-on assault on petty benefits fiddles whilst ignoring massive fraud and tax evasion, these should concern us all, shouldn't they?

As for Jock media I have written extensively here about its incestuous relationship with politics, Brian ten bellies Taylor, Iain McWhirter both insisting to their stinking dying breath that politicians, their mates, are all decent people, in it for the public service, the whole rancid crew giving themselves awards for this or that abuse; no branch of the Scottish mainstream media daring to question the Holly Greig scandal, the Dunblane cover-up and countless other examples of our rotten jurisprudencer, It isn't just that they are in hock to Labour, they'll suck any political knob.

But as I said, be that as it may, none of it excuses the cancerous, megalomaniacal, over-mighty grip on our country of skymadeupnewsandfilth.