Saturday, May 05, 2007

Media bias and blue lemons: Let the games begin.


And they're off and whining! As he promised, the Blogging Tories' Brian Lemon has opened an official "Biased Commentators Registry," to keep track of all that nasty, liberal bias in the Canadian MSM. Or whatever it is he's going to be keeping track of. Oh, hell, let's let Brian explain the rules (emphasis added):

When a person offers to, or accepts an opportunity to, comment on issues of interest to the public his position in society relative to this issue is no longer private. He or she has entered the public realm and as an influencer of public opinion, should be held accountable for any bias in his comments.

For example, stock market commentators are required to reveal whether they have any financial conflict of interest in any stocks that they discuss.

It is important that when someone is presented to the public as a person worthy of comment on a particular topic, that if there is a perceived bias or conflict of interest, that this be revealed.

Fuckin' A, Brian, I am so with you on this. And as a housewarming present, I'm going to invite you to start here:

Here's the story:

A new study suggests a safe-drug-injection site in Vancouver that has been hailed by scientists as a success is really a failure.


Well, darn ... that kinda sucks. Whoops, hang on ... Cathie's not done here:

First, the study's author Colin Mangham has been publishing reports for years against "harm reduction" drug policies -- which, briefly, are policies which tolerate drug use rather than try to prevent it. The safe injection site is a prime example of just such a policy in action -- and therefore, in this man's opinion, it must be stopped. What's the harm? Well, the problem seems to be that the harm reduction "ideology" makes us "vulnerable to the drug legalization movement". Can't have that, I guess.

Cathie has more, but let's let Alison over at Creekside take it from there:

The Drug Prevention Network of Canada is an offshoot of, wait for it, the Drug Prevention Network of America. It is headed up by Calvina L. Fay of Drug Free America, Save Our Society From Drugs, and Drug Watch International, dedicated to "combating the drug legalization movement globally".
An advisor to Bush on drug policy issues, you may have heard her on the news recently proselytising against the medical use of marijuana for cancer patients. Yeah! - War on drugs!

But let's have a look at the Board of Directors for the Canadian branch of DPNC :
~ Randy White - Reform and Alliance Party MP for 12 years, right up until he went public with the idea of using the "notwithstanding clause" to prevent the passage of SSM and that was the end of him - too hot for Harper.
~ Gwen Landolt - VP of REAL Women of Canada. Thanks for all your fine work fighting Status of Women Canada. I especially liked your argument that shelters for battered women are discriminatory because there aren't comparable shelters for battered men.
~ a couple of graduates from the Scientology Narconon Program, now working as drug counsellors...

Stay tuned as Brian explains why that doesn't count.

P.S. Just for the entertainment value, let's pop over to the actual registry to see who Brian has mercilessly exposed, shall we? Ah ... I see Brian is being as rigorous and objective as ever:

Biased Commentator Offenders Registry

Biographical notes of organizations and their representatives who appear in the media as "subject matter commentators" who may have a built in conflict of interest or bias.

Because, as we all know, when you can't produce any real bias, unconstrained speculation is always the next best thing.

P.P.S. I know I should resist, but I can't. Again, from the registry, Brian makes sure you understand just how strict this new venture is going to be (all emphasis added):

Rules for Posting Content and Comments

This blog will only permit posts or comments that report supportable facts on identified commentators. Such content should have a reference to source. It will be fully moderated and any content that cannot be supported by facts will be held unpublished until a suitable reference can be confirmed.

Awesome. So what do we know about that shrieking, leftist moonbat David Suzuki?

David Suzuki

Posted by Lemon at 2:42 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Somehow, when it comes to documenting media bias, I don't think Media Matters for America is worried about the new competition.

BONUS UNCRITICAL DUMBASSITUDE AT NO EXTRA CHARGE
: Courtesy of a commenter over at Alison's place, we learn that Maclean's is equally gullible.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a complete waste of blog space that registry is.

If I wanted to make a submission of possible media bias, there's no e-mail address to send it to, so it looks like the only way to submit ideas is to comment only on the people Brian has on his list.

He might as well have called that blog, "Here's a bunch of people I don't like, now tell me why you think they suck."

Big freaking deal. Is this guy in junior high school or what?

Alison said...

This is possibly the reason why there is no entry under David Suzuki.

But who is this "PornoChristian" who provides one of the only reference to source links? Oh, sorry, I see it's actually PomoChristian. Which is not much better when you think about it.

M@ said...

I can understand why a guy like Stephen Lewis would be on the list. Including him somewhat degrades the list's validity, I think, but I can see why he would make the blue lemons uncomfortable. But what in god's name is Yann Martel doing on there? Might as well put every decent writer in Canada on the list too.

I also notice that only left-leaning bias is considered biased. I wonder if that's evidence of bias -- maybe the list itself be put on the list -- wait, I think I just blew my mind, man.

Ferdzy said...

Macleans was unreadable thirty years ago. From anything I've heard (since I gave up trying to read it thirty years ago) it has only gotten worse.
I really don't understand why the corpse is still twitching.

Anonymous said...

Not even worth bookmarking, I'll try and remember to check in a couple of months to see if the registry address returns anything more than a 404 or an auto redirect back to the lemon.

Simon said...

Holy Big Brother. The Little Lemon is drawing up a list of names.What a scream.What a fucking idiot. Will somebody please give it a squeeze and make it shit itself.Thanks.

Ti-Guy said...

C'mon, go easy on the Little Citrus. He's only 7.