today's blogs Royal Canadian Mess Parade By Bidisha Banerjee Posted Tuesday, April 5, 2005, at 3:21 PM PT
An American blogger's role in exposing allegations of massive government fraud in Canada is the talk of the blogosphere, as is San Fransisco's proposal to regulate political bloggers. Conservative bloggers also heap scorn upon the newly-awarded Pulitzer Prize for photojournalism.
Royal Canadian mess parade: Last year, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin set up a commission to investigate allegations that his Liberal Party gave $100 million to Quebecois advertising agencies that funneled the money back to the party. (Read details here.) Last week, Justice John Gomery, the commission's head, temporarily banned the Canadian media from reporting on the testimony of ad executive Jean Brault; Gomery said that he was trying to protect Brault's right to a fair trial. Rumors abounded that Brault's evidence could topple the Liberal government and that the Liberals would try to call a snap election. Since April 2, conservative American blog Captain's Quarters has been leaking the details of Brault's testimony, claiming that Brault "revealed a massive pattern of corruption going to the highest levels of the Liberal party and government." Canadian officials announced that they may charge Canadian bloggers who link to CQ with contempt of court.
"It's fairly obvious that Canadian publication bans simply don't apply outside of Canada. So is there any point to having a publication ban when we can easily get our news from outside the country?"asksRants of Issachar, the blog of a Canadian teacher. "Frankly, Canada is just a giant deep pit of greed. Moving to Europe is looking more and more like the only way to escape the stupidity of the Americas," sniffs techie Stephen Pierzchala on The Newest Industry. Pointing out that Gomery imposed the ban to protect the witnesses, Vancouver student Japnaam Singhhuffs, "It's irritating when Americans try to portray Canada as some kind of third-world nation in which Justice Gomery implemented the publication ban because Paul Martin told him too."
"In the election that's coming the issue of the American blogger and his ragged band of Yankee-loving followers may very well take centre-stage," writes Canadian Liberal-hater Angry in the Great White North, who also notes that a journalist who attended the hearing has verified the accuracy of CQ's Captain Ed's information. Wretchard at conservative The Belmont Clubbelieves that such blog-fueled scandals will force politicians to become honest: "There is a certain irony in the fact that the Gomery inquiry is dealing with a corrupt public relations ad campaign (Adscam) costing hundreds of millions of dollars that is now being done to death by a blog costing several hundred dollars."
Read more about the Canadian blogstorm on Technorati; conservative My Aisling has a roundup of blog posts here.
No matter how O'Reilly tries to spin it, his programme has more spin the my dryer.
press box Talk Television Fox News Channel and the talk-radio formula. By Jack Shafer Posted Monday, April 4, 2005, at 9:46 PM PT
The best article I've ever read about the contemporary cable TV-news business is a story about a Los Angeles talk-radio host in the April Atlantic, "Host."
Written by novelist David Foster Wallace, the piece profiles the tribulations and techniques of KFI-AM evening talker John Ziegler. As immersive a work of feature journalism as you'll read these days, the 22,500-word article breaks the talk-radio formula down to its constituent elements and annotates them—literally, via dozens of footnotes, a Wallace trademark. Although Wallace doesn't make the link directly, it's obvious that Fox News Channel and its imitators have incorporated many of talk radio's basic lessons into their architecture.
Wallace could be writing about Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity when he explains that KFI's Ziegler "is not a journalist—he is an entertainer. Or maybe it's better to say that he is part of a peculiar, modern, and very popular type of news industry, one that manages to enjoy the authority and influence of journalism without the stodgy constraints of fairness, objectivity, and responsibility that make trying to tell the truth such a drag for everyone involved." These radio and cable entertainers do precisely what they damn Mainstream Media reporters for doing: They "interpret, analyze, and explain" news inside their narrow political context.
Wallace continues:
Whatever the social effects of talk radio or the partisan agendas of certain hosts, it is a fallacy that political talk radio is motivated by ideology. It is not. Political talk radio is a business, and it is motivated by revenue. The conservatism that dominates today's AM airwaves does so because it generates high Arbitron ratings, high ad rates, and maximum profits.
Wallace further confirms the commercial essence of talk radio with a quotation from KFI talk show host John Kobylt. "The truth is, we do everything for ratings. Yes, that's our job. I can show you the contract," Kobylt told the Los Angeles Times. "This is not Meet the Press. It's not The Jim Lehrer News Hour."
To be sure, most of the journalism that answers to the first name of "Quality" contains measurable doses of entertainment. Likewise, quality journalism can't survive very long if it lacks a commercial component to attract audiences and advertisers—or a generous benefactor. What distinguishes talk radio, and by extension the evening talkers on Fox (O'Reilly and Hannity, and to a lesser degree tabloid newscaster Shepard Smith and Greta Van Susteren), from conventional journalism are the emotional extremes to which they go to draw audiences.
Kobylt's popular afternoon show on KFI, Wallace writes, is "based around finding stories and causes that will make white, middle-class Californians feel angry and disgusted, and then hammering away at these stories/causes day after day." Framed that way, it makes sense why such topics as the Scott Peterson murder trial, Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, Ward Churchill's big mouth, France, "America hatred," illegal immigrants, the elite media, the judiciary, and liberals possess such talk-radio staying power.
Kobylt's unvarying broadcasts, Wallace continues, require "an almost perpetual state of affronted rage." But the rage is a persona, he writes, "not exactly fabricated but certainly exaggerated ... and of course it's also demagoguery of the most classic and unabashed sort." As several KFI staffers tell Wallace off the record, "it's unlikely that any middle-aged man could really go around this upset all the time and not drop dead."
To appreciate O'Reilly's talent at refining his semi-contrived umbrage into evening diversion for the masses, try watching Joe Scarborough's execrable Scarborough Country on MSNBC. Scarborough picks the same scabs, seethes about the same issues, and fanny-whacks many of O'Reilly's enemies. But he sounds more like the third-most-popular conservative talker in Duluth than he does a prime-time cable host. His persona just can't carry the load. One suspects that he believes too much in his causes or too little.
Fox, on the other hand, excels at adapting the talk-radio mise en scene to television, right down to the talk-radiolike cut-ins for news briefs at the half hour; many segments running 10 or less; and the ever-present "sweepers," the broadcasting term of art for the tag line the show or the station wants its audience to associate with it—think "Fair and Balanced" and "No Spin Zone," in the Fox News/O'Reilly example.
Although Fox's radioized formula seems incredibly popular, the folks at Annenberg, Pew, FAIR, the Shorenstein Center, and Media Matters for America who monitor the media for incipient fascism can relax. In prime time, Fox News rarely attracts an audience larger than about 3.5 million, which is to say about 26 million less than the average combined audience for CBS, ABC, and NBC's evening news shows. Even PBS's interview program NewsHour, which deceptively bills itself as a news show, draws a reported 3 million viewers a night.
American demagoguery just ain't what it used to be when a show (O'Reilly's) that deliberately taps the accessible emotions of "anger, outrage, indignation, fear, despair, disgust, contempt, and a certain kind of a apocalyptic glee"—to lift from Wallace's talk-radio observations—can't dramatically outperform a public TV program (Lehrer's) that's designed to steer viewers into an early evening nap.
I have set up a site to publish some of the stories my students wrote for their class work. It is a great way to keep informed about what is happening at EIS.
What happens when you take a Canadian media icon like the CBC and conservative news pundit Bill O'Reilly from USA's most watched news programme Fox News? A good ol' Liberal and Conservative Battle.
Canada is traditionally more liberal in its politics and media while the USA is experiencing a growing and perhaps dominant conservative media. Watching this conflict will certainly not be boring.
Does O'Reilly have an anti-Canadian bias? Just look at a few of his comments he's made on his show. It seems that if anyone disagrees with him, that person is branded as a liberal or a terrorist sympathiser. If anyone disagrees with his view of American politics, that person is labled anti-American.
Ann Coulter displayed an unusual amount of ignorance in her comment that Canada sent troops to Vietnam. Canada never did. Neither did they send any to Iraq. Watch the movie here.
The Toronto Star, one of Canada's largest newspapers published this editorial criticising O'Reilly.
The war of words and politics is just warming up. This cross-border shoot out will raise important issues regarding terrorism, free speech, liberal and conservative ideals and will almost certainly ruffle more than a few American and Canadian feathers.
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