The Real Rape Culture on Campus

The gray lady, she shall never be the same.

She's been violated. Will she survive her victimization? And if so, will she survive intact? Only time will tell.

But what of her victimization? Well, it just so happens that there really is such a thing as a rape culture. But the real rape culture is that of social justice ideologies that exist to force their ideas into the minds of as many people as it can, to colonize as many institutions with its toxicity as it can.

It's not a sexual rape. It's not a rape of the body. It's a rape of the mind, and make no mistake, journalism has been raped.

For evidence of that, one needs look no further than the vile hoax perpetrated by Sabrina Rubin Erdley, whose story entitled "A Rape on Campus" was published by Rolling Stone. The story sparked a firestorm on university campuses across the world. It was also completely false.

Before other outlets began to do the pesky work of actually fact-checking Erdley's article, Erdley spent some time as a media darling. She was treated to slathering praise on such media outlets as MSNBC, wherein she was toasted for helping to crack the case on the "rape epidemic" on American university campuses.

Thankfully, this didn't last.

The story slowly unravelled until today, when the last thread was pulled. After the New York Times published a damning account of Erdley's shoddy journalistic work, Rolling Stone finally retracted her article in full.

But it turns out that there was more to the story than simply Erdley reporting a story she had been told. Rather, Erdley spent months going from campus to campus, "shopping" for the most sensational rape story she could find. Erdley had been to Harvard, Yale and Penn State (yes, that Penn State) before she finally found "Jackie," who claimed she'd been brutally gang raped at a fraternity party.

The story had literally everything Erdley was looking for, including convenient rape villains.

Even now, in the wake of the story's proven falsity, there are signs that the ideological violation of journalism may be harder to shake than it should be. Far, far harder to shake.

In Politico, UVA student Julia Horowitz offers her personal explanation for why the story got so much traction at UVA. The following excerpts offer a stunning revelation: Horowitz has learned nothing.

"The University of Virginia — like most American universities — has a problem with rape. Current estimates, cited earlier this year by Vice President Joe Biden, hold that one in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college. That means that in my 200-person politics lecture, roughly a full row will be filled with survivors. In my 20-person major seminar, there are at least two. That is not a calculus I should have to work out in the margins of my Marx-Engels reader."

"We were frustrated by the repeated use of the 'Rugby Road' song, which appeared to make fun of the rape culture on campus but which most students, in fact, had never heard."

"... from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake."

"Yes, the story was sensational. But even the most sensational story, it seems, can contain frightening elements of truth."

Clearly, Horowitz continues to staunchly believe that there is a "rape culture" on campus. She invokes the "1 in 5" canard, despite the study on which it's based having been thoroughly discredited. And she actually attempts to sublimate a disdain for fact-checking that she and Erdley share in common, and was in fact the very reason for this entire debacle in the first place.

Hopefully, someone at UVA is making Horowitz an appointment with a dunce cap. Perhaps she'd manage to learn something from that, even if she has learned nothing from the ignominious ending of Erdley's journalistic career.

And it is over, make no mistake about this. It's over as a reporter, and it had damn well better be over as a journalism instructor.

And in a terrifying portent for the future of journalism, it just so happens that Erdley has taught journalism at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Temple University.

Sabrina Rubin Erdley wrote a story based on a false account of gang rape. Rolling Stone published it. A group of young men were terrorized out of their fraternal home by a mob of psychos similarly-indocrinated into social justice ideologies as was Erdley, as was Horowitz. And from the looks of it, the next generation of journalists may be ready to rush out and repeat the injustice all over again with the same disdain for fact checking.

How could they not? Apparently they were taught by Erdley.

And when they do this, large swaths of the journalistic landscape will accept it unquestionably. Because of the narrative. Because of the agenda. Increasingly in journalism it's becoming the narrative, the agenda, that matters.

It's been an institutional rape of terrifying proportions, with horrifying results. Will the gray lady survive this violation? Only time will tell.

This Isn't a Defeat; It's an Opportunity

I'm not especially distressed to see that Sun News Network is going off the air.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm far from happy about it. It's a shame, really. It's very unfortunate for a lot of people, no less for the Canadian viewing public than for anyone else.

In attempting to enter the television news market, Sun News was attempting to wade into a hostile market. Their competitors showed their hostility time and time again by attempting to deny them access, and by jealously guarding all the benefits that were helping them sustain their own operations.

There are numerous reasons for this. Some are doubtlessly political, others were financial. But they don't matter.

Television news is a fading, perhaps even dying, model. Not a year goes by without these networks laying off hundreds of employees. The big difference is that these networks enjoyed years of preferential market access that stabilized their operations enough for them to survive these annual shocks, and Sun didn't.

Too bad there's no other broadcast model other than TV.

Oh, wait. There is.

The number of means for people to fund the independent media of their choosing are numerous, and constantly growing. It's dawned on me that Sun News wasted a great deal of time and resources trying to barge its way into the traditional media market, when new media is growing unabated.

Between YouTube ad revenue and services such as Patreon -- which allow interested media consumers to directly support the media they wish to see on a monthly basis, sometimes in exchange for perks -- a Canadian conservative online news network is within our grasp, far more easily than you may realize.

This is something we can do. All we require is the will to do it.

Sun News Network shutting down may be sad, but it's not a defeat. It's merely a setback. It's not game-ending, no matter how the far-left may desire it to be.

This is an opportunity. Can we find it in ourselves to grasp it, or will we let it slip away? That's in our hands to decide.

Gawker Feminism

So, let me ask you this: what would a "news" website staffed exclusively by awful people look like if it had any semblance of mainstream credibility?

Why, Gawker. Of course.

And if you took them at their word, you'd suspect that they're into feminism. Like really, really into feminism. Consider for example, Gawker's hilariously-outraged reaction to Wikipedia's decision to bar a number of feminist editors from editing the "Gamergate Controversy" wikipedia page:

"Theoretically, the free encyclopedia is a purely democratic operation—anyone can edit Wikipedia, after all—but there is a byzantine and largely unseen hierarchy that governs disputes among editors, culminating in a Supreme Court-style panel called the Arbitration Committee. The committee's latest decision: to punish a group of five editors who fought to maintain a Gamergate page that presented the 'controversy' largely as an assault on women—that is, who fought to present Gamergate as it actually is."

Gamergate's countless female members -- literally countless, because Gamergate has never been so obsessed with diversity-themed navel-gazing as to actually stop and count --  would certainly disagree with whether or not Gamergate is an "assault on women."

That's been the feminist demagogue take on Gamergate. (Oddly enough these identity zealots don't seem to take much notice of Gamergate's female supporters.)

So Gakwer is into feminism, right? Like really, really into feminism, right?

Well, if you thought so you'd be forgetting that Gawker rose to prominence via a website app that gave people a powerful tool with which to stalk celebrities, and that the 20-something nitwit they sent onto CNN to defend it dismissed concern about it as if it didn't even approach being a big deal.


There were reports of celebrities whose whereabouts were posted to "Gawker Stalker" within minutes -- mere minutes -- of them being there. Many were concerned that "Gawker Stalker" could be used by obsessed fans to beset such celebrities.

It would be foolish to think that female celebrities would be immune from such treatment. Frankly, Gawker was just fortunate that no one was hurt by some dangerous stalker type.

And here's the thing: for a "feminist" website like Gawker to publish such an app does not speak well to how much they do or do not care about the safety of celebrities, especially female celebrities who, it could be said, could be far more vulnerable to that behaviour than male celebrities. At the very least, this is what many feminists would presume.

It's strange to see a "feminist" website care so little for the physical safety of women. It's almost as if they're really, really into feminism until they can make a few bucks off of hanging famous women out to dry. Then, anything resembling a feminist concern for the safety of women is tossed out the window with little more than a smirk to acknowledge whether or not it was ever there at all.

I call it "Gawker feminism." It's a variant of "feminism" that has them espousing feminism when there's rhetorical advantage to be had against people they don't like -- and after Sam Biddle cost Gawker 7 figures of advertising revenue after suggesting people should respond to Gamergate by bringing back bullying, perhaps they have some reason to not like Gamergate -- and dispensing of it when they can earn a few sheckles by doing it.

In other words, they're extremely disingenuous people. That's no surprise. Awful people typically are.

On #Gamergate, CBC's Massive Ethical Fail

After months of waiting, viewers and readers concerned about the CBC's #Gamergate coverage have finally gotten a response. And that response is... underwhelming.

As One Angry Gamer reports,  CBC Ombudsman Esther Enkin has responded to these concerns by saying that everything with the CBC's coverage of #Gamergate is a-OK, despite the clear evidence that it is not. In particular, Enkin replied: "The fact that you reject the negative narrative does not mean it should not be discussed.”

Well. Is that what's been going on at the CBC? The negative narrative being discussed?

Well, a meaningful discussion of a narrative requires that both sides of it participate. And as it turns out, the CBC's coverage has permitted no participation by those on the business end of the "Gamergate harasses women" narrative.

This is made crystal clear by examining the following points of the reporting, on The National by Deana Sumanac-Johnson, and on the CBC's Community Blog by John Bowman.

Point 1 - #Gamergate has become a catchphrase for the online harassment of female gamers.

Sumanac-Johnson has repeated a claim made not by neutral observers, but by by #Gamergate's opponents. As such, Sumanac-Johnson has violated the CBC ethical code's guidelines on impartiality. It reads: “We provide professional judgment based on facts and expertise. We do not promote any particular point of view on matters of public debate.”

The story relies overwhelmingly on anecdotal evidence to support this claim. The anecdotal evidence may be offered by individuals judged by Sumanac-Johnson to have sufficient expertise to make that judgement, but expertise alone is not enough. Any judgement offered by Sumanac-Johnson must be backed by a sound basis in fact. Anecdotal evidence does not provice that basis, and should not be considered to provide that basis.

Sumanac-Johnson has taken numerous women on their word that they were harassed by #Gamergate. While it may not be unreasonable for her to take their word that they were harassed, it's not reasonable to take their word that they were harassed by #Gamergate. The hashtag has attracted a great number of third-party trolls, and Sumanac-Johnson seems to have made no effort whatsoever to confirm whether or not such harassment came from an individual truly sympathetic to #Gamergate's goals. If she did, that is not evident in her reporting.

Which takes us directly to the next point:

Point 2 - The exclusion of Jennifer Dawe.

When preparing reports, reporters make decisions not only regarding which facts to report, but also which facts to ignore. This also applies to voices. They make decisions not only regarding which voices to include, and which voices to exclude.

It's now a matter of public record that Jennifer Dawe, a game developer supportive of #Gamergate, was interviewed for this story. Yet her pro-#Gamergate voice is excluded while anti-#Gamergate voices were included -- exclusviely.

Dawe was advised that her interview could be published as a "reaction" to stories on #Gamergate. That would be very good in principle.

There was only one problem with that: Dawe's interview never aired. Ever.

Her voice -- that of a female video game developer -- was excluded from a story about alleged attempts to exclude female voices from video gaming.

That's rather ironic.

Point 3 - Gamerella.

Again, what is every bit as interesting about Sumanac-Johnson's piece isn't just information she includes, but rather information that she chooses to omit.

Sumanac-Johnson spends a great deal of time on the Gamerella gamejam, in which women interested in video games get together to to develop video games. There's nothing wrong with this in and of itself. Gamerella sounds like a great way to support women choosing to enter the video gaming field. However, the inclusion of Gamerella makes the omission of Zoe Quinn's past behaviour all the more interesting.

An early event in the #Gamergate saga was Quinn's attack on a gamejam with a similar goal. This one was organized by the Fine Young Capitalists, an Ontario-based second wave feminist organization.

Quinn accused them of "enslaving women," despite the detail that 8% of the proceeds from the sale of the gamejam's product would go to the woman on whose idea the game was based. Undeterred by this fact, Quinn then accused TFYC of being "transphobic" despite the fact that their policy on the inclusion of transexuals had been written by a human rights lawyer, and was later given a thumbs-up by an Ontario Human Rights Commissioner. (One of the few times that organization has been of any worth.)

As Quinn stepped up her attacks on TFYC,  the tactics her supporters used included DDOS attacks -- which Quinn herself was clearly well aware of -- and hacking their IndieGogo page in order to shut it down. Quinn's Twitter output during these episodes seemed to indicate that she was well aware of what was going on and condoned it.

If the topic was harassment of game developers keeping women out of the video gaming field, why did the harassment -- often by third-party trolls -- warrant mention, but Quinn's harassment of video game developers did not? Particularly as Quinn's deliberate torpedoing of the TFYC gamejam reduced opportunities for women to get involved in the video game field?

Point 4 - Video games victimize women?

Anita Sarkeesian herself could have written Sumanac-Johnson's line about Gamerella participants demanding "games that don't victimize women."

Of all the clear signs that Sumanac-Johnson has subscribed to a particular point-of-view and is promoting it via her reporting, this line is it.

Even if Sumanac-Johnson were simply conveying the opinion of the participants of the Gamerella gamejam, why not simply have included footage of one of the participants uttering such a remark (provided that she had such footage)? Even the optics of Sumanac-Johnson appearing to editorialize in her report contributes to an appearance of bias.

Point 5 - The CBC's coverage of #Gamergate has exclusively been of an anti-#Gamergate angle.

Sumanac-Johnson's reporting hasn't been the only CBC reporting on #Gamergate.  John Bowman, of the CBC's Community Blog, wrote an article going on at length about harassment experienced by female gamers in social media.

The article focuses intently on the harassment that Anita Sarkeesian -- allegedly at the hands of #Gamergate supporters, but with the number of third-party trolls active in the hashtag it's nigh-impossible to know -- and includes the following paragraph:
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"It's difficult to understand why a series of videos on sexist portrayals of women in video games would bring about such an extreme reaction..."

No mention is made by Bowman of the number of Sarkeesian's critiques have been confirmed as factually inaccurate. In particular, her claims that Hitman: Absolution "invites" players to murder strippers during a mission that actually penalizes the player if they happen to do so. (YouTube playthroughs of that mission posted by players invariably feature the player sneaking around the characters rather than interact with them.)

To have someone insinuate that you're misogynistic for enjoying a game that is not in fact misogynistic, and is in fact demonstrably not misogynistic, would make anyone angry. That Sarkeesian and her followers insist upon giving the targets of her critique no opporunity to confront their accuser makes it that much worse.

(I have to take a time out here for some full disclosure: I've encountered and confronted misguided pro-#Gamergate individualswho believed it would be perfectly acceptable to produce revenge porn with a Sarkeesian look-alike character. This is a taste of the anger that Sarkeesian has inspired with her demagoguery. The number of pro-#Gamergate individuals active in that discussion who condemned and discouraged this outnumbered the misguided individuals in question. Take note: while this is anecdotal evidence, those accusing #Gamergate of harassing Sarkeesian -- particularly at the CBC -- carry a burden of proof they've never satisfied, and in fact never even tried to satisfy.)

From the way the CBC has reported on #Gamergate an otherwise-uninformed person would never guess that there's two sides of the story. That there's no debate. And that simply isn't so.

Deana Sumanac-Johnson knows this. She interviewed Jennifer Dawe. So while John Bowman can theoretically feign ignorance on this point -- though few would believe him based on the anti-Gamergate agitprop appearing in his Twitter timeline -- Sumanac-Johnson cannot.

At a certain point when there is enough evidence that the CBC has set aside the very notion of its own impartiality standards it simply cannot be accepted as coincidental. So for CBC ombudsman Esther Enkin to tell individuals lodging complaints that the narrative should be discussed is pure hogwash.

In saying that the narrative should be discussed she's not wrong. The narrative should be discussed. But perhaps the narrative should be discussed by those on both sides of it. Such as, say... Jennifer Dawe. And yet we happen to know full well that while the CBC discusses the "#Gamergate harasses women" narrative exclusively from an anti-#Gamergate perspective, they sit on an interview from a woman of a pro-#Gamergate perspective.

That's not discussing the narrative. That's dictating the narrative.

Discussing the #Gamergate narrative meaningfully requires both sides to discuss it together. If the CBC is serious about discussing the narrative, my biggest question is this:

When can we expect that Jennifer Dawe interview to finally see airtime? When can those of us supportive of #Gamergate expect any kind of opportunity to rebut the anti-#Gamergate narrative being pushed by the CBC? When will we see any kind of research put into any of the CBC's #Gamergate reporting?

These are questions Enkin cannot expect to sweep aside.

The Phantom Menace, Pt II: Media Party's Outrage is Heavily Misplaced

No, it's not Attack of the Clones.

Previously on Bad Company I tackled the alarm raised about a series of emails exchanged between a consortium of Canadian media outlets about the use of copyrighted news footage in political advertisements. In 1988 a court case ruled that networks could not refuse to run an ad on copyright grounds, but the consortium is still threatening to do it in 2015.

Perhaps in response to or in anticipation of this, the Conservative Party has proposed to amend the Canada Copyright Act to allow for use of copyrighted news footage in political advertisements.

The Media Party immediately blew a gasket. And while the unequivocally unexplosive emails exchanged between various media bigwigs show no sign of collusion for political ends -- to my reading they seem genuinely and not-at-all-wrongly concerned about their copyrights -- the hands of media commentators are not nearly so clean.

Media commentators, on the other hand are frequently being downright hackish. They're overlooking the not-so-finer points of the matter and falling all over themselves to find something nefarious in all of this. Their greatest enabler so far has been copyright law expert Michael Geist. I don't dispute his expertise in copyright law, but his reading of elections law leaves a lot to be desired in his analysis of this amendment to the Copyright Act.

From Geist's column:

"...the proposal is very narrow. It would only apply to political parties, politicians, candidates, and their agents. The creation of an exception that only allows a select few to benefit is not a provision that can be defended on freedom of political speech grounds. We are all entitled to exercise our political speech rights. A new exception that guards against copyright stifling such speech should apply to all."

Really? Well, no. Let's look at the relevant section of the document Geist cites as his source:

Readers may want to do what Geist seems to have not done: read the bullet point before the one that refers to political parties.

"Proposed changes... would allow free use of 'news' content in political advertisements intended to promote or oppose a politician or political party or a position on a related issue."

That happens to be the Elections Act definition of third-party advertising. A registered third party is any group authorized to advertise in an election in support or opposition to a political party, or to promote or oppose a position on a related issue. Under the Elections Act, registered third parties are treated very much the same as a political party: they must have an official agent, report their expenses to Elections Canada, and are subject to spending limits.

In other words, for the purpose of the election, the registered third party is just that: a registered. Third. Party. Albeit a party that runs no candidates for election.

So while perhaps the next bullet point talks specifically about political parties, it's also helpful to note that it does so purely as a means of example -- that's what the "i.e." is meant to specify.

Don't expect anyone in the media party to correct this obvious mistake by Geist. As it turns out, Geist's error, even if they recognize it or not, helps them build up the idea that this is some nefarious hijacking of copyright law for political purposes. The fact that the amendment simply changes the Copyright Act (the legislation) to catch up to LPC vs CBC & CTV, 1988 (the case law) seems to be either entirely lost on them, or is simply being ignored. It wouldn't be the first time either transpired, especially where the Conservative Party happens to be involved.

And while the use of an ominbus budget bill to amend this legislation is a choice that is entirely open to be questioned (while omnibus bills are frequently used for such legislative "house-keeping," budget bills should contain the budget, and nothing else), that does not make the changes, in themselves, the sign of a malevolent or fascist government (as Don Martin recently suggested).

No matter how you slice it, there is more smoke than fire involved in this issue. It's just as simple as that.

The Phatnom Menace: Attack Ads, the Media Party & the Collusion Scandal That Isn't

So this is happening: the Conservative Party is planning to introduce legislation amending the Canada Copyright Act to exempt political ads from copyrights held by newsmedia. And the Media Party is up in arms over it. Right? Right?

Well, yes and no. Yes, they are up in arms. No, it's not really a political thing.

Recently, emails exchanged between representatives of several news outlets were released. Some people are pretending that these emails are damning evidence of collusion between those news outlets, perhaps for political ends.

If that's the argument intended, then the emails will disappoint. Far from explosive, they're really a quite-banal series of continuous consultations between various news outlets trying to discuss how they will protect their copyrighted material.

The ultimate result of this correspondence was the following letter:

It's actually very underwhelming stuff. Apparently they're concerned that the use of their footage in political ads will raise questions about their independence. Never mind that all sorts of people already raise all sorts of questions about the political independence of the news media: conservatives complain that the news media is too left-wing, and the left complains that it isn't left-wing enough.

The only thing in these emails that comes even close to being provocative, let alone damning or explosive, is this email from CBC's McGuire:

There may inevitably be questions about what construes an "out-of-context" use and whether or not there is sufficient context to justify that. (For example, partisan Liberals love to cite "context" in regards to Justin Trudeau's expressed admiration for China's basic dictatorship, but there is no context present that would make an aspiring democratic leader's admiration for a dictatorship acceptable.)

There are plenty of questions that McGuire and company should feel themselves compelled to answer. Such as: is use of their footage to expose the relevant shortcomings of a political candidate -- as was done to Stephen Dion (who, regardless of how bitterly Liberals may lament it was not a leader) not in the public interest? And can media outlets actually refuse to air an ad because it happens to use footage that may (or may not, as the case may be) belong to another news outlet? Previous case history (LPC v CBC, CTV, 1988) seems to indicate that they don't. Political ads were deemed to be in the public interest.

Are the media party simply taking this stand to protect Justin Trudeau? Their emails make mention of the coming 2015 election only by way of acknowledgement of its approach. And again, the case history -- the Liberal Party suing in 1988 to force CTV and CBC to air their attack ads -- seems to indicate this is not a matter of their political preferences.

In short, this story just is not what some people are making it out to be.

Dear Leah McLaren: Go Fuck Yourself, You Sanctimonious Bottomfeeder

Dear Leah McLaren,

Open letters are fun, aren't they? You've been getting a lot of them lately. Many of them are written by feminists -- those whom you seem to believe are otherwise your contemporaries -- criticizing you for your sexist treatment of Nazanin Asham-Jam MacKay. My favourite letter to you was from Asham-Jam MacKay herself.

Well, I'm not going to pretend to be kind to you. I'm going to say some pretty mean things to you, and it's not because you're a woman. It's because you embody the ongoing betrayal of the public interest that the Canadian media has become.

But mostly, I'm just come right out and say it: you can go fuck yourself, you sanctimonious bottomfeeder.

Not just you, really. You and every other so-called "journalist" pushing this pile-on of MacKay over comments that, it turns out, he never actually made and over emails that, as it turns out, he didn't actually write.

Apparently these are two facts that just don't matter in the eyes of you and every other muckraking demagogic hack masquerading as journalists in the Canadian media.

As I'm told, this is quite a change. I'm assured that, once upon a time, facts actually mattered in the media. When journalists and columnists decided to jump all over someone for some slight, it mattered whether or not there had actually been a slight. Real, not imagined. Or made up. And apparently I have to rely on these assurances, because of late in the media I've seen no evidence of this whatsoever.

Your arrogant, obnoxious and nasty letter to Mrs Asham-Jam MacKay was written long enough after this non-story had been thoroughly revealed to be false for you to actually know that the story had been revealed to be completely and utterly false. MacKay never actually made the comments in question, and not only did he not write the emails in question, but they were completely inoffensive to anyone other than clowns like you who were looking for something to be offended about.

Perhaps you would have preferred that the female staffer who wrote those emails have suggested that female civil servants who happen to double-shift as mothers neglect their kids? Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you?

That's not a rhetorical question, by the way. While some of the other open letters written to you do a fairly good job of explaining what the fuck is wrong with you, I'd actually like to hear, from you, your personal account of what the fuck is wrong with you.

Because guess what? To write a letter like that to the wife of a politician because he was alleged to have said something wrong when in fact he didn't say something wrong and you and innumerable other hacks in the media don't want to admit to it? Something is fucking wrong with you.

And while I'm honestly interested in hearing you account for what this is, I do have some ideas of my own. For example: you're a fucking idiot.

You insist that it's not true that not enough women don't apply for judicial appointments. For my own part, I don't actually know if that's true or not. Because it's never actually been shown whether or not that's the case. The best the Toronto Star -- who with their shoddy reporting started this farce in the first fucking place -- could do was conjure the example of a woman who admitted that her own application for a judicial appointment was based not on her qualifications but on her politics, but also based out of ideological hostility to the sitting government. And that's the one example the Star was able to come up with.

So let's get this clear: your case that there isn't a lack of women applying for judicial appointments is a sample of one. And not only on a sample of one, but a sample of one who pretty much admits that she didn't make her application in order to stand on her qualifications. Holy fuck, that's so stupid it's almost brilliant. And while it's becoming clear you must have eaten paint chips has a child, please do me this one favour: please, please, pleeeeease assure me you haven't been eating them while pregnant with or nursing your child. Please assure me this. You know, for the children.

So I'm sure you've figured out by this point that I'm angry. Really, really angry. Like punch a journalist in the face for participating in this farce then tell them exactly why they just got punched angry. Let me explain to you why.

It's because apparently the media in this country reported a story they knew they couldn't adequately support, then when they learned the story was false they just ignored that and went on reporting it as if it were true. Whether this was done out of malice or just plain old dumb-as-fuck stubbornness is immaterial. The media decided that the truth doesn't matter. And you have made yourself emblematic of this indifference to the truth.

Let me conclude this letter with some advice for you: retire. Retire, and darken the pages of Canada's newspapers with your garbage no more. This personal experiment of you trying your hand at journalism? It failed in the most spectacular fashion imaginable. And take every single "journalist" who participated in this smear of Peter MacKay with you. Not a single one of you is worthy of the title "journalist" -- only people willing to commit to a media where facts and truth matter are worthy of that title. And you've demonstrated that you aren't.

Canadians deserve a media where the truth matters, where facts matter. We need a media that will help us make good decisions based on facts and based on truth, not one that will have us making bad decisions based on stories that turn out to not actually be true. The former helps us. The latter hurts us. And as Jon Stewart once told Tucker Carlson, you're not helping us. You're hurting us.

And I don't mean hurting conservatives. Somehow I get the sense you wouldn't feel very bad about that. You're hurting the Canadian people by deliberately feeding them ideologically-narcissistic bullshit.

And for that you can go fuck yourself.

Go fuck yourself,
-Patrick Ross

ps For anyone reading this in the midwest, I'm sorry I said "fuck" so much.

Canada, Meet Your Newsmedia

So, this happened: "Justice Minister Peter MacKay defends suggestion women are too busy with their kids to be judges."

Except that, as it turns out, MacKay never actually made that remark. Apparently, someone who attended a closed-door meeting between MacKay and the Ontario Bar Association either misqupted MacKay, twisted his words, or just outright lied. And because the story reinforces the preferred political narrative of the newsmedia in Canada, they have run with it rather gleefully.

And apparently this never happened: "people have lost complete confidence in the Harper Government, because when there's a spill, or there's an explosion, the last place Stephen Harper visits...he still hasn't gone to Lac Mégantic. And that's a shame."

That was Adam Vaughan, the Liberal Party's candidate the Trinity-Spadina byelection trying to make political fodder out of the victims of the Lag Megantic tragedy. Something he did while Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was in the room with him.

Based on the coverage of these remarks -- or lack thereof -- you'd insist this never happened. Yet it did. The only place where Vaughan's ridiculous comments -- indicative of an irredeemable personality -- appear in the newsmedia is buried in an article entitled "Vaughan offside with Trudeau on pipelines."

Not even Sun News is reporting this story properly.

If it had been a Conservative stooping to such a horrendous low, the headline would be blaring on the front page of every newspaper in the country. But because it's a Liberal, the story is very clearly being suppressed.

It's almost as if the citizens of Trinity-Spadina don't deserve to know that one of the candidates trying to get elected to be their MP is a nasty little creep. Somehow the story about him missing a candidates' debate on climate change policy was bigger than this one. And this certainly pales in comparison to the attention paid to the made-up MacKay story. Hell, the Toronto Star even dug up some lawyer who admitted, in the course of the story, that she only applied to become a judge out of political hostility to the sitting government.

As it turns out, this government has appointed to the bench practically every qualified female or "ethnic" applicant it could find. And it's still looking for more.

And yet Adam Vaughan dances on the graves of Lac Megantic's victims and... nothing. Barely a blurb.

It's almost enough to make you think that the newsmedia in this country has nuzzled itself into a certain party's pocket.

But that would be crazy, right?

Just Another Reason to Privatize the CBC

So just what purpose does the CBC serve in Canada? Is it to provide Canadians with news and information programming? Or is it to campaign for the Liberal Party?

Following the recent Ontario election, Premier Kathleen Wynne -- who got herself and her government reelected despite a stunning level of incompetence and corruption -- made it perfectly clear: the media party, and the CBC in particular, were valuable allies to her and her party. She thanked the CBC correspondent at her party's victory party for working with them, and working hard.


So at least as Kathleen Wynne has it -- and a great many people would be inclined to agree -- the media party, and the CBC in particular, openly campaigned for the Liberals. And at least so far as the CBC goes, taxpayers paid for it.

Which brings me to my recent proposal to privatize the CBC -- by selling it to the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. No one could promise that the CBC wouldn't mold their coverage to effectively campaign for any political party. In fact, if the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting were running the CBC you could pretty much guarantee it.

But if Kathleen Wynne is to be taken at her word, that's already happening. At least if the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting were footing the bill to operate the mothercorp, then taxpayers wouldn't be footing the bill for this: the incredibly-partisan Superfriends would.

If you, like I, would prefer to see that, please sign my petition to this effect.

iPolitics: Where the Unethical Go to Obfuscate the Facts

Courtesy of would-be ethics watchdog Andrew Mitrovica, the iPolitics experiment continues to fail.

As we've seen in the past, Mitrovica likes to exploit his withering bona fides as a journalism instructor to shine a light on the alleged ethical lapses of journalists -- so long as they're not left-leaning journalists, or even himself.

In his most recent diatribe, Mitrovica sets out to fan the flames of a Twitter controversy regarding the alleged -- and as yet unconfirmed -- intervention by Globe and Mail Editor in Chief David Walmsley into the Globe's election endorsement of Tim Hudak. According to unnamed sources, Walmsley allegedly overturned the editorial board's alleged decision to endorse Kathleen Wynne and the Liberal Party.

Mitrovica refers to allegations made by Canadaland's Jesse Brown that the decision was made to benefit the interests of the Thompson family -- who own a controlling interest in the paper. What interests? Undisclosed. What evidence? Also undisclosed.

But one thing is for certain: UNIFOR -- the union that represents media workers at the Globe and Mail -- certainly thought that a Liberal government was in their best interests. And despite the increasing mass of evidence that Ontario's Liberal government is both the most inept and corrupt in Canadian history -- much of it featured prominently in the Globe and Mail -- the G&M's editorial board was allegedly about to give that their vote of approval. And this after UNIFOR's directive to their members to not support the Progressive Conservative Party.

Was this crucial and pivotal fact mentioned in Mitrovica's column?

No. Because mention of that crucial and pivotal fact is not of benefit to his ideological agenda. So of course he chooses to overlook these key facts. And here's how it so utterly reveals Mitrovica's disingenuous nature:

Union membership should not prevent any worker from plying their trade -- whatever it may be -- ethically. Yet as it pertains to Ontario's newsmedia, UNFIOR has managed to do precisely that. The UNIFOR-organized Globe & Mail editorial board has seemingly managed to give its vote of approval to a breathtakingly incompetent and corrupt government, practically under orders from UNIFOR itself. And would-be ethics crusader Andrew Mitrovica is choosing to look the other way.

It's ethically questionable, to say the least. But as it turns out, irrelevance -- in his column Mitrovica pouts at not being invited to a prominent media conference in Winnipeg -- is Andrew Mitrovica's friend. Not many people are really paying much attention to him.

Striking a Blow for Media Independence

When UNIFOR took a side in the Ontario election -- telling its members not to vote for Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservative Party -- media impartiality and independence in Canada (or at least the public perception of it) was dealt a stunning blow.

All the mismanagement, scandal, and misappropriation of taxpayer funds by the Ontario Liberal Party suddenly didn't matter. All that mattered, suddenly, was UNIFOR's interests, and very clearly UNIFOR's interests are better served by a Liberal or NDP government.

So if sources complaining to the Canadaland blog are telling the truth, Globe and Mail editor in chief David Walmsley had absolutely no choice but to overrule the newspaper's editorial board in an alleged decision to obey UNIFOR's missive and endorse Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. Media workers at the Globe and Mail are organized by UNIFOR.

It's impossible to believe that when UNIFOR comes out and tells its members how to vote that this will not affect their reporting as well. This is why UNIFOR's decision to take sides in the election was so reckless, so unethical, and so utterly unacceptable. And it's also why Walmsley couldn't sit back and allow even the perception that the Globe and Mail's endorsement had been tainted by UNIFOR's don't-vote-for-Hudak directive.

Simply put, a free press must not only be free and independent, but must also be seen to be free and independent. When journalists start blatantly toeing the line openly drawn by union leaders, media brass must step in.

David Walmsley struck a blow for media independence. He did the right thing.

The Media Party Will Never Be Able to Play Victim Again

So, this happened:

"The union representing journalists and other media workers across Ontario is asking its 2,600 members not to vote for Tim Hudak and his Progressive Conservative Party in Thursday's provincial election.

In an unprecedented move, Unifor Local 87-M, historically known as the Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild, has broken its traditional silence during elections by asking members not to vote Progressive Conservative."

That's the Media Party giving up any pretense of journalistic objectivity, credibility, or political independence. Moving forward, any time a journalist represented by Unifor prints any kind of anti-Progressive Conservative (or anti-Conservative) story, anyone paying attention to such things will have no choice but to wonder if it's really them talking, or if it's the union.

There's irony in this. Just last month the Canadian Media Guild was playing the victim:

"Journalists across Canada share my dismay today to learn the Conservative party’s dismissive and mercenary attitude toward the press and CBC in particular.

A just revealed 2010 letter from the then-chair of the CBC Board of Directors to Prime Minister Harper, warns Conservatives against 'intruding' on the CBC’s independence as they seek to 'influence the content of programming.' Tim Casgrain called the Conservative party’s public attacks against the CBC 'wilfully destructive,' and further alleges the unwarranted attacks 'disparaged the CBC in order to solicit political donations for the Conservative party.' 

As if Casgrain’s 2010 letter wasn’t shocking enough, instead of apologizing for past indiscretions as one might expect from anyone with a grain of respect for the role of a free and independent media in maintaining a democracy, Conservatives have been quick to react by exposing their continued bias and painfully thin skins."

The Media Party cannot cast political independence to the wind and then play victim when their political opponents -- and it's becoming increasingly clear that's how they see conservatives -- fundraise off the back of their obvious bias.

Never again will the Media Party -- whether its journalists organized under Unifor or under the Canadian Media Guild -- be able to play the victim again. Ever.