Tasha Kheiriddin: RFK Jr. blasts Harper, Sun TV. ‘A wizard of bigotry and belligerent religiosity ‘
What is it with Americans who insist on commenting on Canadian issues about which they know, er, nothing? The latest about of delusional profundity comes from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in an article entitled, “Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all.”
As America’s middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades — against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News — fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators today announced they would reject efforts by Canada’s right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.
Note to Mr. Kennedy: Fox News is already here… you can subscribe to it in Canada, as long as you buy the right cable package. The only exception is for subscribers of Videotron, which does not offer the channel, so Quebec remains largely Fox-free. Ironically, it is the owners of Videotron – Quebecor Media – who are bringing the channel Mr. Kennedy is actually complaining about to Canadian airwaves: Sun TV News.
But it gets better. To hear Mr. Kennedy describe it, the only thing standing between Canadians and journalistic Armageddon is our law against dissemination of “false and misleading news”:
The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1988. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves.
Actually, it’s not that provision that makes Canada’s airwaves an alleged paragon of civility. Our version of the “fairness doctrine” is enshrined in the Canadian Broadcasting Act.
Section 3(1) (I) (iv) mandates that broadcasters,
“provide a reasonable opportunity for the public to be exposed to the expression of differing views on matters of public concern”
While Section 3(1)(d) states that
“the Canadian broadcasting system should
(i) serve to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada…
(iii) through its programming… serve the needs and interests, and reflect the circumstance and aspirations, of Canadian men, women and children, including equal rights, the linguistic duality and multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society and the special place of aboriginal peoples within that society…
In other words, broadcasters in Canada are obliged to provide differing views, but since the acceptable view is already defined as the left-leaning Trudeauvian vision of things, good luck establishing a station, network, or program devoted solely to questioning these sacred cows from the right.
Of course, figuring this out would imply actually reading the Act, which Mr. Kennedy no doubt has little time to do, between beating up polluters, teaching students about the evils of corporate America, and writing misleading articles. His comments remind me of the disinformation-dressed-up-as-film that was Sicko, Michael Moore’s 2007 opus on health care, in which Mr. Moore claimed to find no evidence of long wait times in Canadian emergency rooms.
But objectivity was never Mr. Moore’s forte. And it isn’t Mr. Kennedy’s either. As a closer, consider his description of Prime Minister Stephen Harper:
Harper, often referred to as “George W. Bush’s Mini Me,” is known for having mounted a Bush like war on government scientists, data collectors, transparency, and enlightenment in general. He is a wizard of all the familiar tools of demagoguery; false patriotism, bigotry, fear, selfishness and belligerent religiosity.
Wow, that’s balanced! And accurate! Maybe the U.S. should bring back its Fairness Doctrine, to oblige Mr. Kennedy to be civil like us good ol’ Canadians, eh? Just a thought.
National Post
