Canadaland Does It Again

Jesse Brown' Canadaland, the investigative website whose work allowed The Toronto Star to develop its series uncovering the Jian Ghomeshi scandal, is once again proving its worth in a landscape littered with corporate news media. This time it has discovered, thanks to a tip from a reader, the mysterious removal by Global News of an investigative report into that right-wing cabal known as the Koch brothers and their connections to Canada.

Last Thursday at 11:06am, an article titled "The Koch Stake in Canada" ran on GlobalNews.ca. The piece, by veteran investigative reporter Bruce Livesey summarized an upcoming investigative report titled "The Koch Connection," which, the article promised, was set to air two days later, on Saturday January 31 at 7pm. Global News promoted the item with a post on 16x9's Facebook page and a tweet from an official account, which was retweeted by Global's Washington correspondent Jackson Proskow.

By Thursday night, the article had disappeared from GlobalNews.ca, the Facebook post and official tweet were deleted, as was Proskow's retweet.

Fortunately, the original article, but not the promotion video, can be found on Google Cache, and it certainly makes for some interesting reading.

It explains how the Koch brothers have a vested interest in seeing the Keystone XL pipeline become a reality, given their extensive holdings in the Canada's tarsands. It also discusses well-known facts about the brothers, including the vast sums of money they direct to conservative politicians and climate-change denial groups.

As well, and this is perhaps where the investigation might have earned unwanted attention, they

fund the climate-change denying Fraser Institute think tank here in Canada.

The cached document also observes the following:

Multiple generations of Fraser Institute staffers and donors and board members have had links to the federal Conservative Party,” says Rick Smith, executive director of the Broadbent Institute, a liberal think tank. “And you know there’s no doubt that the Fraser Institute’saggressive denial of climate change, the Fraser Institute’s views on tax policy and on immigration – you can see resonating in Harper government policy.”

Yet the Kochs don’t seem to need to spend much money in Canada: after all, the policies of the Harper government on energy, pipelines, climate change and the oil sands dovetailwith their own. In fact, the Harper government has taken measures against the environmental movement that benefit the Kochs directly or indirectly.

So what is the official reason for pulling the exposé?

Canadaland conducted a telephone interview with Ron Waksman, Global News' Senior Director of Online News, Current Affairs, Editorial Standards & Practices, to try to get some answers. According to Waksman, it "was not up to scratch" and "had some holes in it."

Perhaps his most definitive reason was,

Look, when we have an editorial hypothesis, we need facts to back it up, we didn't have the facts to back it up. In my opinion it didn't meet our standards of fairness and balance. It just wasn't up to scratch.

Maddeningly short on specifics, Waksman's 'answers' invite the critical thinker to entertain darker possibilities.

With Canadaland at the helm on this story, I'm sure this isn't the last we will hear about it.

Oh, and one more ort to chew upon: Global News is owned by Calagry-based Shaw Communications, who advertise their services to the oil & gas industries here.

Appeasement at the BBC

Whenever I travel, especially when a Canadian television station is not available, I tend to tune into the BBC, which generally practises the kind of hard-hitting journalism that the CBC was once known for, before embarking upon a policy of trying to appease the right-wing. Sadly, that virus of appeasement now seems to have been caught by the British national broadcaster, reflected in its decision to air only a five-second clip of Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead, the song which, in the wake of Margaret Thatcher's death, is likely to rise to number three on Sunday, in time for BBC Radio One's The Official Chart show.

The BBC has apparently been influenced in its decision by the howls of outrage from the British right-wing, upset by the implied disrespect of their patron, St. Margaret, that airing the full song, the usual practice of the show for rising songs, would demonstrate.

Compounding the craven capitulation is this disingenuous and self-serving remark by Tony Hall, the BBC's director general (italics mine):

"I understand the concerns about this campaign (the massive purchasing of the song to celebrate the week's major event). I personally believe it is distasteful and inappropriate.

"However, I do believe it would be wrong to ban the song outright as free speech is an important principle and a ban would only give it more publicity."

So in Mr. Hall's world, a little betrayal of public trust and integrity is okay. Hmm, sounds like just another politician ascending the ladder to me.

For those who cannot muster any sorrow for Maggie's passing, enjoy the following video which, I think, rather effectively captures the animus the Iron Lady was so adept at fostering:

Puncturing Right-Wing Mythology

I hope everyone will take five minutes to watch this video, originally considered too controversial for TED Talks. The speaker, entrepreneur Nick Hanauer, very deftly cuts through the mythology perpetuated by the right wing that the super-rich are our job creators and hence must be treated with taxation kid gloves.