CBC kowtows to Fox after online Palin attack
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Did Canadian freelancer Heather Mallick go over the top in her online attack on John McCain running mate Sarah Palin?
I think she did.
But didn’t a CBC editor read the item before it ran? And if s/he didn’t like it, why didn’t s/he do something about it then, or take it up with Mallick?
Here’s what might have happened »»»
See what she says about her hubby? – says a CBC editorial worker to other staffers peering at the monitor over his/her shoulder, chortling gleefully over the good bits.
Wow! ‘What normal father would want Levi “I’m a fuckin’ redneck” Johnson prodding his daughter?”
Jeez !!! That’ll get ‘em going !!!
“And what about ‘I’d destroy that ratboy before I’d let him get within scenting range of my daughter again’.
hehe.Let’s run it as-is (huge grin).
And it did get them going, especially over at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, the TV program renowned for its fairness and good taste, and in Canada’s National Post newspaper.
Apparently, the CBC at first refused to pull Mallick’s column, but caved in after receiving some 300 complaints.
Now, in an open letter, CBC News publisher John Cruickshank observes, with seeming wonderment, “this posting remains a subject of fascination in the blogosphere”.
It’s the Net, John. The Net. Here nothing dies.
He goes on »»»
Vince Carlin, the CBC ombudsman, has now issued his assessment of the Mallick column. He doesn’t fault her for riling readers by either the caustic nature of her tone or the polarizing nature of her opinion.
But he objects that many of her most savage assertions lack a basis in fact. And he is certainly correct.
Mallick’s column is a classic piece of political invective. It is viciously personal, grossly hyperbolic and intensely partisan.
And because it is all those things, this column should not have appeared on the CBCNews.ca site.
Healthy restraintOn the whole, the CBC News policy handbook takes a very anxious view of any mixing of opinion in with the news business. It sees the two as nitro and glycerin, innocuous on their own but explosive together. This is a very healthy restraint for a public broadcaster.
But every news organization needs to have an opinion dimension. Access to different viewpoints helps readers, listeners and viewers make reasoned choices, especially during an election campaign.
As a public broadcaster we have an added responsibility to provide an array of opinions and voices to complement our journalism. But we must do so carefully. And you should be able to trust us to provide you with work that’s based on solid reporting and free from the passionate excesses of partisanship.
We failed you in this case. And as a result we have put new editing procedures in place to insure that in the future, work that is not appropriate for our platforms, will not appear. We are open to contentious reasoned argument but not to partisan attack. It’s a fine line.
Ombudsman Carlin makes another significant observation in his response to complainants: when it does choose to print opinion, CBCNews.ca displays a very narrow range on its pages.
In this, Carlin is also correct.
This, too, is being immediately addressed. CBCNews.ca will soon expand the diversity of voices and opinions and be home to a diverse group of writers with many perspectives. In this, we will better reflect the depth and texture of this country.
We erred in our editorial judgment. You told us in no uncertain terms. And we have learned from it.
You did indeed err. But in not leaving the article online.
In a comment post, “I am truly disappointed with the CBC’s lack of courage, to stand up for free speech and to stand up to bullying from a right wing American news network,” says bear123.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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September 30th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Just goes to show how biased Fox News is. No other news agency or even the McCain/Palin campaign spoke against this journalist. Thank you Canada. Some of us Americans think that Fox News are a bunch of nut cases anyway.
September 30th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Interesting post, which really proves one thing: you don’t know what kowtow means.
September 30th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
^^ “to act in an obsequious manner; show servile deference ……” [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kowtow]
Cheers!
September 30th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
“Just goes to show how biased Fox News is.”
That’s why myself and many others call them Faux News. A more accurate name would be Rupert Murdoch’s Propaganda Network.
“No other news agency or even the McCain/Palin campaign spoke against this journalist.”
Karl Rove knows about the Streisand Effect.
I am very unhappy that CBC backed down. I normally count on them to provide unbiased reporting. As a US citizen, I can assure you that there is no unbiased reporting in the US anymore. I rely on Canadian, British, Australian, and Kiwi reporting combined with US reporting to get clues to where the truth lies. (it’s getting closer and closer to lying dead in a ditch.)
Faux News censored an AP story on Sunday that was actually a well done bit of journalism (must have been an accident).
The story’s headline was “Conservatives Begin Questioning Palin’s Heft”.
Here is the lead:
This story was on the Faux News website just long enough for the Google News and Yahoo News robots to find it, but If you didn’t read it immediately when it appeared you didn’t get to read it on Faux since it was disappeared rather quickly. The thinking is that AP stories appear automagically at Faux. Once they discovered that something in conflict with Rupert’s world view had appeared, they made it disappear. The US Media is now a lot like Scientology. Enturbulating facts just don’t exist since we hide them all.
I am fond of thought experiments, so let’s try this one:
“Democrats Begin Questioning Biden’s Heft”.
Here is the lead:
Do you think this story would disappear from Faux? I think it would be on the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post. I also think that Bill O’Reilly would be shouting about it nonstop for at least a week. I don’t know if the Palin story ran in any US newspaper since I haven’t checked. If it did, it wasn’t front page or else I would have heard about it from other sources.
Think of this thought experiment next time you hear a reich wing nutjob bitching and moaning about the ‘liberal media’.
More information on the ‘Strange case of the disappearing news stories’ can be found at Brad Blog
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6438
The truth is out there. Sometimes it’s hard to find.
SRG
September 30th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Heather Mallick’s fall from grace started long before her article on Sara Palin.
It seems to me that it started in July 2008 when I filed with Canadian Human Rights Commission, human rights complaint against; Mallick, CBC editors and Dr. Henry Morgentaler accusing them of spreading hate on the Internet.
See this link:
http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=102151&sid=a300f5a521d569f90fc0c4a08d94f9ed
It seems to me that Mallick is going to become a scape goat in Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s Order of Canada fiasco.
It is not that she did not deserve what is heading her way as for number of years she was pushing Morgentaler fiasco but it seems that she made it way too easy for CBC people to get rid of her when she produced Palin piece.
It might as well be that the real reason why CBC editors let her publish her venom on Palin was just because they figured that it is less expensive to fire her over Palin article than pay lawyers to defend her and CBC in front of Canadian Human Rights Commission.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Thank you very much for the additional and very interesting information Karol.
I think that your interpretation of events is very likely true.