Proof of Canadian media's willingness to suppress news at Harper's behest

.....just like the media have suppressed the news that Harper's tax leakage argument is an utter lie.

What a La Presse columnist writes about the Afghanistan abduction

Michèle Ouimet : Negotiate with the enemy?

All the big media in English Canada, without exception, knew about the kidnapping from the beginning. All, chose to remain silent.
Would they have shown the same solidarity with a humanitarian worker of some obscure NGO? Several news organizations published the name of the Canadian journalist kidnapped in Somalia on August 23. Why? Because she was a freelance journalist and did not have the CBC machine to protect her? She is still being held hostage and no one is upset.
Mellissa Fung was kidnapped on October 12, that is to say two days before the Canadian election. During the election campaign, Stephen Harper was able to avoid the Afghanistan issue.
And if news of Ms. Fung’s kidnapping of had fallen like a bomb in the home stretch of the campaign? How would voters have reacted upon learning that the government negotiates with the Taliban or with criminals?
Would this story have influenced their vote? Perhaps. But that was for Canadians, not the media—who, with CBC in the lead, embargoed the story--to decide.
The journalists are the first to raise the public’s right to know, but they become super-sensitive when one of their own is threatened.
Canada is at war, its soldiers are dying. A war that costs billions of dollars. However, with the silence and complicity of the media the Harper government negotiated with the enemy to save a life. With no public discussion.

Editor's note about the author: *Michèle Ouimet, La Presse, Montreal,
2008 National Newspaper Award winner in the category of Investigations for stories on Canada's mission in Afghanistan and what has happened to aid sent there.