Card: It's About the Truth

Orson Scott Card, a Greensboro, North Carolina journalist and Democrat will not make a lot of friends with it, but his comment on the mainstream media's coverage of the U.S. Presidential election is nevertheless right on the money and well worth the read: Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

CRTC Seeks More Power

The CRTC is well-known to Canadian Christians. It is not a fond acquaintance. For years the CRTC has done its best to keep Christian programming off Canadian radio and TV, or at least to limit it as much as possible. Numerous applications for Christian-only radio stations and TV channels have been denied for various dubious reasons. Recently, as LifeSiteNews reported, the CRTC denied two applications for Christian radio stations in Ottawa, while approving a TV channel that promised to promote the Canadian pornography industry. This is nothing new for Christians or conservatives, such as those who had to fight to get the CRTC to allow the FOX News channel in Canada, even though it had in principle accepted Al Jazeera TV's application.

The CRTC's position and power are incredible. The Commission (where have we heard that word before?) is essentially promoting some things and censoring - in the true sense of the word - others. Between one Commission and the other, the government now decides what "free" Canadians are allowed to watch, here, say, and write. Now this is not all bad. Pornography, among other things, should be kept off of our TVs. It is a matter of decency. Libel must be prosecuted in the courts. It is a matter of protecting reputations. But censoring political commentary or religious broadcasting is a whole other matter. It is an assault on freedom.

Christians have recently taken to the Internet, where they are free from our eye- ear- and mouth-keepers over at the CRTC. There, radio is uncensored and freely accessible. It's no wonder the CRTC is trying to get its fingers on the Internet, too - see their notice. David Warren points out that the CRTC was not directed by Parliament to do so. No, this Commission, just like the HRC, feels quite comfortable expanding its jurisdiction as it sees fit, unaccountable to those it purports to serve.

That this announcement was made by the CRTC, rather than by Parliament, is an indication of the degree to which the CRTC is a law unto itself.

In the time-honoured, mealy-mouthed way, the CRTC will soon be explaining that its intentions are innocent, that it is merely trying to keep up with the convergence of broadcast and Internet technologies. Only a naive fool will believe that. The regulator has created a strict broadcasting environment in which Christian and all other views that do not conform to political correctness are effectively kept under siege. The left hungers for the ability to create a similar tightly regulated environment on the Internet, to bring the free reporting and opinions of bloggers and other citizen-journalists under its ideological jackboot.

But, just like with the HRCs, the Commission is not solely at fault. Whether it recognizes them or not, it has masters in Parliament, and it is these elected - and to that extent, accountable - representatives that have both the power and responsibility to liberate Canadians again. Their failure to do so is not the CRTC's fault. Both must be held accountable. For Parliament, it would mean functioning as designed. For the CRTC, it would mean a radical overhaul.