Globe & Mail ‘torqued headlines’
p2pnet.net News:- The Globe & Mail boasts it carries, “the most authoritative news in Canada” but, “Perhaps entirely unaware of the irony, the Globe publishes a Canadian Press piece that points the finger at the web and wonders about torqued headlines,” posts Rob Hyndman today, going on:
“Oh, and by the way, in case you were asleep when reading the piece, its author, Bruce Cheadle, doesn’t appear to like Pierre Bourque (’failed Federal liberal candidate’ – ‘unsuccessful’, surely?). How much for a friendly mention?”
The item Hyndman is talking about is slugged Pirates of the Canadians and in it, Gayle MacDonald says, among other things, “For the third year in a row, the U.S. government has placed Canada on its ‘watch list’ for a lack of IPR (intellectual-property rights) enforcement, which means this country is in the same company as notorious film-piracy hubs such as Lebanon, China, the Philippines and Russia.”
It might be more correct to replace ‘U.S. government ‘ with ‘Hollywood’.
Unfortunately, this kind of thing isn’t new, and nor is the G&M alone. Like so many other news outlets around the world, it carries wire stories from the major services virtually untouched and unquestioned —– even when they’re obvious examples of reporting from material produced by equally obvious vested corporate interests.
“Recently, the national newspaper had CAAST, the Canadian clone of America’s Business Software Alliance, saying almost two-thirds of computer science students, who are preparing for careers in programming and software development, ‘pirate’ software, compared with 46% of students in other fields of study,” p2pnet posted in a story which kicked off with:
“Canada’s prestigious Globe and Mail has done it again —— featured entirely self-serving corporate studies commissioned by vested interests as though they come from credible sources.”
Nowhere in the report was the assertion questioned or balanced with counter-views, we said, going on:
“Now the Globe and Mail is running a Canadian Press item wittily headlined What’s with them young whippersnappers? with ‘Canadians illegally download 14 music CDs or other files from the Internet for every file they take from the web legally, a new recording-industry poll suggests’ as the intro.
“The piece is clear that the claims come from two polls commissioned by the CRIA, but it’s written in such a way as to give the assertions weight as serious statements from a credible body, quoting CRIA mouthpiece Graham Henderson but failing to balance his observations with others from national Canadian organizations such as the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC).”
All of the print and electronic media routinely carry one-sided and unbalanced reports, and not just in Canada. It happens around the world.
The only place the press is free is online, although the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are doing their best to change that.
But why is everyone so shocked and surprised? After all, vested interest lobbying isn’t confined solely to the corridors of power and behind closed doors in ministerial offices.
JN
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