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.

Global Warming, Except for the Warming Part

Still believe that man-made C0₂ is sending the planet to dangerous levels of heat? Well, more and more people - yes, scientists too - are stepping aboard the Global Warming Deniers bandwagon. Lorne Gunter outlines the growing chorus of dissent:

Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."

An Army to be Proud Of

How is the Canadian army doing in Afghanistan? If you only get news from the mainstream media, you would be likely to think our boys are fighting for no good reason, losing a hopeless battle, they're demoralized, and ready to come home. Here's a dispatch by Michael Yon - directly from the battlefront - which bypasses the ideological filter of the mainstream media to give a picture of the true situation on the ground there: Where Eagles Dare. See also the update to this dispatch.

After seven years, the war in Afghanistan has morphed from a breathtaking expedition of a handful of special operators—often on horseback—to a sort of lethal day-to-day business. Morale is high among American, Aussie, British and Canadian soldiers...

The Canadians have an excellent reputation among British and American forces, and so the Canucks were tasked to clear the road for the convoy. This was a chain of many links: if the Canadians failed, the mission would fail.

And yes, our boys find time to play a little hockey out there.

Update: Your Tax Dollars at Work

There are some weak justifications, but, to CBC's credit, they are not standing behind Heather Mallick's terrible column regarding Sarah Palin. Via NoApologies.ca: CBC apologizes for foul Mallick rant.

Artists as Entrepreneurs?

I just saw a clip of NDP leader Jack Layton's campaign stop in Quebec today, where he promised increased funding for the arts. He said that Conservative cuts to arts funding are preventing artists from making a living. But it was interesting to me that he said he considers artists entrepreneurs.

My concept of entrepreneur must be different than Layton's. A quick search for definitions of entrepreneur backs me up. Here's a representative definition:

Entrepreneur: [an] individual who starts an enterprise with its associated risks and responsibilities.

If no one finds an entrepreneur's product or business venture useful or worthy of investment, it fails. If someone values it enough, it will be profitable.

It is the entrepreneur who runs the risk that his product or business venture will not be profitable. It is not the business of the government to bail out private products and ventures that are not profitable on their own.

I agree that artists should be like entrepreneurs - let the free market support or reject them. I think the demand for good art will always be there. I'll privately support such art as I like. But if artists can't survive without government funding - my taxes - propping them up, maybe that says something about the demand for their art.

Mr. Layton, if artists really are entrepreneurs, then the Conservatives are the ones who have this one right.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

More evidence of the CBC's far-left bias showing through: Columnist's labeling Palin backers 'White Trash' spurs review at Canadian TV:

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is reviewing complaints from both Americans and Canadians about a Web site columnist who recently described Sarah Palin’s supporters as “white trash,” compared the vice presidential candidate to a “porn actress” and called her daughter’s boyfriend a “redneck” and “ratboy.”

The incendiary column by Toronto-based writer Heather Mallick appeared on the CBC News site on Sept. 5, after the close of the Republican National Convention. On the same day, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published another column by Mallick in which she trashed Palin’s home state of Alaska as a “frontier state full of drunks and crazy people.”

Several years ago, Coach's Corner was put on a 6-second delay because of a perceived slur against French Canadians and Europeans by Don Cherry. His offense was declaring that the majority of hockey players wearing visors on their helmets are French Canadian or European. A Winnipeg lawyer did the math and found this statement to be factual, but it was still much too offensive for the CBC.

So you can imagine how the CBC dealt with Heather Mallick after she posted the article on a CBC website almost two weeks ago. Wrong. The CBC is still proudly displaying the article on its website. Watch the CBC twist itself into logical pretzels defending Mallick.

Meanwhile, will Stephen Harper continue to sign her paycheque? Will taxpayers' money continue to be spent on hopelessly mediocre programming and one-sided journalism?