Saturday, January 10, 2009

James Travers: “'Seinfeld' election exposed media flaws”



Article: Here

My posted comment:

Jim. you forgot to mention this Seinfeld episode:


No James, where Canada’s media truly failed Canadians was on the income trust issue. The media played Blind Nurse Maid to Harper and Flaherty on this policy. A policy that cost Canadians $35 billion of their life savings, representing years of blood sweat and tears (assuming journalists are familiar with those concepts?). A policy that was predicated on the premise that income trusts cause “tax leakage”. Tax leakage being an infinitely provable or disprovable construct , for which Flaherty’s “proof” took the form of 18 pages of blacked out documents?

Some proof, eh Canada’s media pushovers? Pushovers like your colleague Carol Goar, who in a moment of brief honesty revealed: “I didn't explore the possibility that [Flaherty] was lying. Perhaps I should have.”

Well, duh?

True to your Seinfeld analogy, Canada's media is a comedy about nothing

2 comments:

Dr Mike said...

The media can whine & moan all they want about Harper & his crew fooling the vast majority of Canadians.

So who is to blame??

In years gone by , the media was our watchdog on gov`t mismanagement--where has our watchdog gone.

They cow-tow to the Gov`t out of fear of the "we won`t give you a story" reprisal if you are mean to us.

Well , boo hoo media types---get off your fat duffs & dig for the stories--they are there for the taking.

The trust debacle was handed to you on a silver platter but you reacted out of fear that the Cons would not give you any news in the future.

Just do something , you might feel better in the morning.

Dr Mike.

WesternGrit said...

It's easier for a "cajone-less" media to sit back and be given stories than to actually WORK for them... Investigative journalism? What's that? The "agglomeration" of media in limited private hands is the cause of this cancer. One editor sitting in Toronto or Winnipeg basically decides what gets printed, and stories are repeated in dailies across the land.

I laugh when I see "local" paper websites. There are no real local papers except the small ones like the "Black Media" community papers in BC (not related to Conrad Black), and the Georgia Straight, etc. We may as well just have one "blanket paper" across Canada... oh yeah... we do... it's called Canada.com.

When was the last time we saw someone with an actual journalism degree report anything down South in the US of A? With the exception of PBS, and some of the older chaps on 60 Mins, these clowns aren't even qualified to do what they do for a profession. Canada is not far behind. I can see a future (if we keep letting media cross-ownership occur) where only the CBC - if still around - would hire real journalists. Everyone else will be hiring ex-jocks and "Joe the Plumber".

Remember, it is way better to be popular, than it is to be intelligent.

We have to start fighting the "stupid revolution" in Canada - or we're all doomed to American style squalor.