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By Rachel Marsden | Bio Five
months after Osama bin Laden’s propaganda network, Al-Jazeera, was approved
for viewing in Canada, Fox News was given the green light. Within
days, I was asked by a correspondent with the far-left leaning Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation whether Canadians having access to Fox News will be
detrimental to public discourse and debate in Canada. Despite
the fact that the CBC receives nearly a billion dollars in taxpayers’ money to
fund programs that are totally ignored by 93 percent of Canadians, they’re
still transparently petrified of any competition edging in on their “turf.”
What’s pathetic is that even with pitiful ratings like this, they still
think they’re contenders. These
guys probably go home after work and shoot hoops in the backyard while
pretending that they’re competing against Shaq. As
I said recently on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor”, this fear of Fox in
Canada doesn’t have much to do with “Canadian values” and an American
network tugging at the fabric of Canadian society.
Let’s get real. In this age of globalization, we all have access to the
Internet, shop on eBay, listen to both Madonna and Shania Twain, play basketball
and hockey, and eat Big Macs and maple syrup.
It has everything to do with across-the-board crappy Canadian programming
having to compete with compelling programming that just happens to be American.
It’s more a question of economics than values.
The
CBC is freaking out with the arrival of Fox.
So much so that they’re frantically working on a documentary about the
Fox News Canadian invasion, in which they will tell Canadians what to think.
Given that Fox News is now in direct competition with the CBC for
whatever remnants of an audience that the CBC has left, this has about as much
credibility as Ford doing a documentary about General Motors, telling you that
GM cars suck. The
CBC will undoubtedly question Fox News’ claim of “fairness and balance”.
It will be like Saddam Hussein complaining about naked pyramids at Abu
Ghraib prison violating Iraqi human rights. The
CBC’s idea of balance and fairness in journalism is airing a rabidly anti-Bush
documentary entitled, “The World According to Bush”, three times in the
run-up to the last US Presidential election.
The write-up on the CBC website looks like it was crafted by Michael
Moore: “A two-hour documentary about the inner-workings of the
Bush administration will alarm even the most hardened Washington-watchers.
Fans and critics of the acclaimed Fahrenheit 9/11 will want to see this
thoughtful and damning investigation of the U.S. administration.
Who are the Bushes? Apparently, they're the "quiet dynasty" of
modern America--but in reality, their "dynasty" is one of
inconceivable family secrets, painstakingly concealed.” Another
program that was thrice broadcast by the CBC right before the election was
“The Unauthorized Biography of Dick Cheney”.
It was part of a CBC series on conspiracy theories, which are generally
cooked up by people who think tin-foil makes for good hats, and for whom purple
Kool-Aid is the drink of choice--in other words, the CBC’s prime constituency.
The CBC website states: “Cheney's
remarkable life story involves the relentless accumulation of power in every
form...[The CBC] will show how he accomplished this, what it involved in terms
of costs for others and what history's judgement [sic] could be.” Not
that the CBC would ever want to be seen as telling you what “judgment” to
make! Finally,
the CBC recently commissioned and aired a documentary called “Stupidity”, in
which the message is that George W. Bush is officially a moron, because
according to the press release issued by the slag-piece’s producer, “a group
of Canadian stupidity experts” says so. Hey,
kids! Hear that?
Study hard, and grow up to become a “stupidity expert” on the CBC! When
Saddam Hussein was captured, the CBC showed a group of angry, pro-Saddam
loyalists--and then cut to a scene in Afghanistan to remind us that Osama bin
Laden was still at large. As far as the CBC was concerned, there was no upshot to the
fact that the biggest Weapon of Mass Destruction in Iraq -- Saddam himself --
was no longer a threat. Fox
News may lean conservative in terms of its editorial content, but its news
programming is more balanced, interesting and unique than anything else in the
media. The hosts of the various
current affairs programs are honest about where they stand ideologically, yet
they don’t let their politics get in the way of letting guests have their say.
The audience is left to form its own opinion as a result of hearing both
sides of an argument in a live, uncensored, unedited format. The same, unfortunately, can’t be said of the CBC, or of
many other media outlets. Interviewees
for the CBC piece on Fox include myself; right-wing pundit Ann Coulter; author
and media bias whistleblower, Bernie Goldberg; Bill O’Reilly’s favourite
yappy little liberal ankle-biter, Al Franken; and representatives with both the
conservative Media Research Center and the left-leaning Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting. Adv: What
does the government know about you? Fox
News representatives have refused to be interviewed, knowing that the story is
certain to constitute an attack on them. But
I think it’s important to always participate in these exercises, for the very
same reason that I’m really hoping Michael Moore takes home another Academy
Award this year: The more rope you
toss the Left, the closer these people come to hanging themselves.
In witnessing the outrageously biased antics of the likes of Michael Moore,
Hollywood, CBC, and most recently CBS News, the public is more likely to see
them for who they really are: agenda-driven ideologues who lie in pretending not
to be. No
doubt, all of the people on the Left will be portrayed in the piece as
candidates for sainthood -- much like the CBC has portrayed Palestinian
terrorists as freedom fighters -- and all of us on the Right will be made into
nutty-fruitcakes, courtesy of much editing and scripting. Any
personal skeletons will almost certainly be paraded around the CBC’s public
square, because if you’re a conservative, you’re not afforded any room to
make even the smallest mistakes in life without having them blown up to
gargantuan proportions. For liberals, ‘tolerance’, ‘compassion’ and ‘free
speech’ are only afforded to people who think like you do.
In fact,I was even asked during the CBC interview why I -- along with
Rush Limbaugh
and Bill O’Reilly -- ought to be entitled to have opinions when we’ve been
through personal ordeals. Of
course, they’re only really ‘ordeals’ because the liberal media and
anonymous Internet smear-meisters with websites like
www.goodlordihaterachelmarsden.com and www.billoreillytakesuptoomuchoxygen.com,
have propagated lies, exaggerations and distortions. Not that I’m complaining; these people save me a lot of
money on PR. Love or hate, just as
long as you pay attention and keep those ratings up! The
crack journalistic staff at the CBC is apparently fond of conducting its
esteemed “research” on Internet chat boards.
Just this week, I was forwarded an email sent behind my back, by the CBC,
to United Press International -- for whom I write -- asking them about some
“research” that the CBC correspondent happened to come across on the
prestigious Internet. After refuting the claim and having a good laugh about it, I
tried my hand at “researching” like a CBC reporter:
Just for kicks, I randomly typed the CBC journalist’s name, John
Kerry’s name, and the word “naked” into a Google search and came up with
some rather interesting hits on chat boards.
Maybe I should email his employer to enquire about my “research”,
too? If
lefties would have spent as much time stalking former Presidential candidate
John Kerry, and obsessing over his Senate record during the primaries, then
maybe they would have actually had a real contender in the last election.
If they would have spent even half the energy looking into the hypocrisy
of Michael Moore as they do analyzing every single one of my sentences three
ways from Sunday, then perhaps the Democrats wouldn’t have made the fatal
public relations mistake of cuddling up to “Porky Pinko” at the Democratic
Convention. If Al Franken had put
some effort into critiquing CBS’s slanted reporting, instead of airbrushing
splotches onto Bill O’Reilly’s face for the cover of his book, then perhaps
the entire liberal media wouldn’t have been exposed, mid-campaign, for the
agenda-pushers that they are in the CBS “Memogate” scandal. The
smallest details of right-leaning pundits’ private lives are fair game for the
Left, but apparently it’s a “witch-hunt” to similarly criticize any of
their fellow comrades. And that goes for President/Saint Bill Clinton, who spent his
tenure as Commander-in-Chief getting Hoovered by an intern in the Oral Office,
on the taxpayer’s dime.
Get
the Updated Popup Blocker! free
download! Fox
News ought to take the CBC’s knee-jerk reaction as a major compliment. If
the CBC really hates you, then you must be doing something right. Stalin feared
and hated the free press, too. The
CBC’s publicity will help Fox News reach Canadians who aren’t yet aware that
the channel is available. Fox
provides compelling, passionate, balanced, personality-driven, addictive current
affairs programming. In other
words, it’s everything that the CBC -- or any other Canadian current affairs
programming, for that matter -- is not. If
Fox News is able to incorporate some Canadian content, then it will quickly
become as powerful a ratings force as it has in the USA, while setting a new
standard in the Canadian market. Rachel
Marsden is a political strategist, columnist and talk show host who has worked in
politics and the media in both the USA and Canada.
Her website is www.rachelmarsden.com
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