Weaponizing The Media

Most will have heard about the unpleasant contretemps between Global's David Atkin and Pierre Poilievre when the latter announced he would not be taking any questions from the press at his 'news' conference. Atkin became aggressive over this point and later apologized for his outburst. 

That was apparently not good enough for PP. A friend of mine, who joined the Conservative Party in order to vote in its leadership campaign and follow it more closely (he is neither a Conservative nor did he vote for PP), received the following from the newly ensconced leader after the Atkins event.

Ray, You won’t believe this. I couldn’t believe it, and it happened to me. Today, I was delivering a statement about how Trudeau’s inflation is hurting everyday Canadians when someone started shouting. First, they hurled obscenities and then started shouting at me. Was it some left-wing protestor? Maybe it was a Liberal MP or staffer? No, it was a member of the media. That’s right. David Akin from Global News was swearing, shouting and heckling. He wasn’t interested in hearing what I had to say, and he certainly wasn’t interested in reporting it in an unbiased way. This is what we are up against. It’s not just the Liberals with all the advantages and resources of the federal government at their disposal. It’s the media, who are no longer interested in even pretending to be unbiased. They want us to lose. But we have a secret weapon. You, and hundreds of thousands of other Conservatives across this country. People who want inflation to go down, the out-of-control spending to end, the CBC to be defunded and all the hurt caused by Trudeau turned into hope for a better future. We can’t count on the media to communicate our messages to Canadians. We have to go around them and their biased coverage. We need to do it directly with ads, mail, phone calls and knocking on millions of doors. And to do all that we need your help. Chip in to help us go around the biased media. Thank you, -Pierre Poilievre PS. We can’t take on the Liberals and the media and win without your help. Chip in here: donate.conservative.ca

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If the above looks familiar, it should. It is a ploy taken directly out of the Trump playbook, the one in which the media are demonized as repositories and promoters of 'fake news,'' their avowed aim to tear down elected officials in order to advance an unholy 'woke' agenda.

Much is being written these days about the perils to democracy in our country. At the top of the list should be the threats posed by demagogues like PP and his ilk, whose motives in their rants have nothing to do with promoting our most cherished political principle.

 

 

UPDATE: Step Right Up

 

Here in Ontario, things are moving at a fast pace - if you  happen to be a senior in a hospital but have been deemed medically fit for discharge.

This is thanks to the undebated passage of Bill 7, called the More Beds and Better Care Act. As with so much else that pertains to the Ford government, there is far less here than meets the eye.

While the bill's ostensible purpose is to free up beds in our overburdened hospitals, its abject indifference to the lives of affected seniors is egregious. As it now stands, those awaiting placement in one of their five preferred long-term care homes can now be sent anywhere within certain certain geographic limits: 70 kms in larger urban areas, and 150 or more kms if residing in the north. The logistical challenges for elderly caregivers should be obvious. And if patients refuse to go, a levy of $400 per day can be applied by the hospitals.

As someone who has navigated the health-care system on behalf of my brother, a Parkinsons Disease sufferer, I know well the  perils that exist in some long-term-care facilities, but I won't bore you with the details. All I will say is that the rosy picture being painted by the government is wholly inaccurate, including the claim that many currently '"blocking hospital beds" can go home with the proper supports, as if arranging for home care were a simple and expeditious process. Experience with my brother showed that to be a myth.

Like a carnival barker inviting everyone to step up and take in the world of cruel illusion on offer, Doug Ford and his fellow travellers are hoping you will not scrutinize the situation and realize the hoax they are perpetrating.

- They are giving the illusion of making progress on our quickly-unravelling health-care system

- They are doing this in a way that costs the taxpayers 'nothing'.

The reality is somewhat different, in that Bill 7 does almost nothing to help solve our problems, the majority of which are caused by overworked doctors, nurses and technicians, many of who are either off sick, burnt out or leaving their respective professions. Add to that the fact that the province is villainizing a sizable part of an older demographic by suggesting they are the real problem.

Closely related to the above is the effect of Bill 124, which severely limits pay increases (to about 1%) in the public sector, including much-needed nurses, many of whom have reached their limits and are leaving in large numbers:

Morgan Hoffarth, the president of the RNAO, cited statistics that said nursing vacancies in Ontario have more than quadrupled over the last five years, adding there was a 56-per-cent increase in vacancies during the first half of 2021.

So for those who stayed home in the last provincial election or voted for Mr. Ford and his crew, as the old saying goes, "How's that working out for you?" 

You'll find out, sooner or later.

 UPDATE: Despite the rush to get oldsters into LTC homes that may be dangerous to their health, Press Progress reports that proactive, unannounced Resident Quality Inspections to determine their quality, will not yet resume:

While, in Summer 2020, Premier Ford promised “We are going to do surprise inspections right across the province, so my message to all long term care homes is to get your act together” that did not materialize.

Ontario Health Coalition Executive Director Natalie Mehra noted ... “Going into the homes and asking residents if they feel safe is how you find out about abuse,...It’s how you can tell if the resident is declining, or losing weight or have bruises or that they’re staring up at the ceiling because no one has positioned them to even watch TV. If inspectors don’t go into the home, they don’t see that.”

 

This Is Us

Increasingly misanthropic, I'm not sure I needed this video, sent to me by my friend Dom. It's been around for awhile, but if you haven't seen it, or would like to see it again, please enjoy this spectacle of our species at "our finest".

Considering the current state of politics and people's ongoing credulity, the above should serve as an object lesson for all 

The Latest From Moudakis

Although my medium, for better or worse, is words (sometimes too many, I know), I have long admired the brilliant succinctness of  some editorial cartoonists; while there are several whose work I savour, preeminent in the pantheon is Theo Moudakis.

This illustrates why:

Putting Things Into Perspective

With the passing of our beloved Queen, an icon of selfless dedication we fondly thought would go on for much longer than her 96 years, mortality is on the minds of many - especially if they have 'achieved' a certain stage of life.

A friend sent me the following, which puts things into perspective, I think.

The Cowards Who Walk Amongst Us

In my view, there are few things more vicious, contemptable and cowardly than directing threats and abuse at journalists. That viciousness and cowardice is compounded by the fact that most send their vitriol via encrypted, anonymous email services, and the majority seem directed against women and reporters of colour. 

Clearly, these miscreants lack the courage of their 'convictions'. Yet the damage they do is severe.

Here are a few examples of that damage:

Prior to fleeing to Canada as a refugee, Saba Eitizaz worked for the BBC in Pakistand. She left after fielding a number of death threats from the Taliban, and landed a job at the Toronto Star, but her newfound feelings of security proved to be ephemeral:

An Aug. 4 message, using a fake name and the encrypted email service Mailfence, said several men were looking at the photos of female reporters, who were described in racist, misogynistic terms. Eitizaz was singled out as the men decided “which ones need to be silenced first.”

“So I’m just waiting for a gunshot or for somebody to show up at my place or with a firearm,” Eitizaz said. “It takes just a little bit more anger or a little bit more of a feeling that you can do this with impunity for online violence to become real-life violence.”

 Eitizaz is one of several Canadian journalists — nearly all of them women, many of whom are Black, Indigenous, and women of colour — targeted by an escalating hate campaign using encrypted email services. The emails drip with racial hatred and include threats of violence and rape. In at least one case, threats were directed at a reporter’s family.

Presumably because she is a woman, a Global News reporter has also been repeatedly targeted with a variety of threats and obscenities. One of the mildest is this one:.

In Ottawa, Rachel Gilmore of Global News was told in an email that “Judgment Day is coming, sweetheart. You had better make peace with your god.”

Over at one of Torstar's sister papers, things are not any different. 

After two and half years of covering the COVID-19 pandemic and receiving an avalanche of hate mail laced with anti-vaccine conspiracy theories (and more references to the Nazis than she can remember), The Hamilton Spectator’s health reporter, Joanna Frketich, had come to believe nothing could surprise her anymore.

She was wrong.

The author of the email was playing at being cryptic, but it was only that. Playing.

It was filled with references Frketich knew well. The school her child went do. Her husband’s business. Their home address.

“Someone was threatening my children and my husband and my home. So that was something I’ve not really experienced ever in my journalism career,” Frketich said. “That took things to a whole new level for me. I pretty much try to ignore the personal attacks but that one did stop me in my tracks.”

Young journalists with limited time in the industry are feeling especially vulnerable:

The Spectator’s Fallon Hewitt, having been working in the industry only since 2018, has spent nearly half of her career working in an ecosystem of harassment.

Like Frketich, Hewitt said the pandemic radically and rapidly changed the tone of the kind of emails she received.

“It all seemed to actually relate to coverage I was doing about the pandemic,” she said. One particular story about a business that violated COVID-19 public health rules triggered a response so vitriolic that Hewitt joined the ranks of reports who wanted to avoid pandemic coverage.

The business owner fired off a message dripping with vulgar and sexist language.

“When this is all over, I honestly hope you rot in hell you sleazy piece of s--t. God forbid we ever cross paths,” the message said. “You should be f--king ashamed of yourself ... I hope you live a lonely miserable life!”

I won't reproduce some of the filth that has been directed at these people, but outside of the affront to human decency these cowardly notes represent, there is an even higher cost. According to an IPSOS survey, some 33 per cent of respondents have or are considering leaving the profession. As well, 

[t]he vitriol has left some journalists avoiding story subjects that they fear could worsen the harassment.

It is not hard to understand how all of this has developed. Egged on by people like Donald Trump in the U.S., who labelled the press "the enemy of the state," and echoed by Trump wannabes like Pierre Poilievre and Maxime Bernier in Canada, what has become know as rage farming has found especially fertile ground amongst the disaffected, the gullible, and the just-plain stupid, all supreme cowards for the tactics they employ because they cannot accept views that run contrary to their own.

However, probably the biggest victim in all of this is democracy. While I realize there are many who disdain the MSM as being mere toadies for their owners, the fact is that newspapers, as opposed to self-selected stories on social media, provide a much larger array of news and sense of the larger world than can be found by simply following our online biases. And when journalists begin to limit the stories they cover out of fear of reactionary blowback, we are all the poorer, and less-informed, for it.

 

 

 

 

UPDATED: What Is Wrong With People?

 It is a question I have asked myself on an almost daily basis these past few years, and it is the question TizzyEnt asks here:

UPDATE: Here is the link to an update posted by TizzyEnt. The only thing that has changed in the video is the location where this atrocity apparently happened.