Rumors are rampant in official Ottawa. Silly season arrived weeks ago.

What must Canadians think of all this talk of mergers, coalitions, fake lakes, and bailiffs chasing political staff around town? The ruckus on Rideau has drowned out some pretty legitimate debates: spiralling costs of the war, the environmental debt we are creating on the back of Conservative inaction on climate change, and millions being wasted on PMO PR while the public service is under threat.

One debate I didn’t think we would be having is about Fox News North.

In case you live outside of Ottawa, “Fox News North” is the nickname given to a new television venture by Quebecor’s Pierre Péladeau to be developed by his new VP, former PMO Communications Director Kory Teneycke.

It’s up for its official unveiling tomorrow and recently picked up two long-time Hill journalists to add to the Sun Ottawa bureau.

A number of people seeming to declare this the end of Canadian media as we know it. One columnist said this network was being brought here by people who don’t, “like Canada as it is and [want] to make lasting changes.” Another suggests that Fox, “mainly spews out propaganda that is dangerously misleading and often factually wrong.”

Predicting it’s entry into the market would create a seismic shift in Canadian politics and declaring the people behind it to want to change the very fabric of the media landscape these columnists and big-thinkers are giving a lot of credit to a station that doesn’t even have approval yet.

It’s all a little apocalyptic. Canadians brains are about to be turned to mush by a libertarian anti-environmentalist? I think not.

I’m mostly amused by the assumptions.

The knee-jerk reaction to the word “Fox” is no worse than the 2002 knee jerk ruling by the CRTC requiring Al Jazeera to be set on a delay and monitored 24/7.

Kory is a very smart communicator. Using the political show at CBC’s Power & Politics – which as many of you know I debated him on a few times–afforded him a way to demonstrate to the Quebecor executives that this style of brash
TV works. But I think reviewing that experience points us to the understanding that any “Canadian version of Fox” would be playing in a very different market.

Overall, the picture of news in the US is bleak. CNN isn’t objective. MSNBC isn’t either. Their local news has been sliding downhill for years–was this the fault of Fox? Or is this simply an American cultural trend driven by ratings and inherent commercial needs?

It hasn’t happened here. By and large our local news is pretty good, CBC maintains a high ethical standard, as do the folks at CTV stations. This is the market the new “Fox-style” station enters.

Plus, with all of the assumptions being made about how this would strengthen conservatism in Canada, has anyone looked beyond the American context?

Look only to the UK for a real-live example of how this can work. The media outlet that ostensibly pushed New Labour into Downing Street? The Sun.

Who was it owned by? Rupert Murdoch. Not a noted lefty. Oh, he also owns Fox?

What I’m trying to say is that this is a lot more complicated than some talking heads want you to believe. Do I like or believe anything Kory and Conservatives say? No. But, do I defend his right to say it? I certainly do. I’m not saying I know what it is this station will look like or stand for; but it seems pretty clear to me declaring it against the public interest is going too far.

Freedom of speech and open access to airwaves can’t simply be an ideal to uphold when you agree with the content being broadcast.

Interview with Alfred Hermida from Ian Capstick on Vimeo.

The first week of the election across the pond is over and the stakes are really heating up. Labour and Conservatives are locked in a horse race. And, with the Liberal-Democrats  included in the first ever national debates–anything is possible on May 6th.

Canadian political watchers love UK elections. There’s more humour, more gossip, and usually more fun than the hustings in the Great White North.

Each week day MediaStyle producer Travis Boisvenue will be curating the top political links directly from the UK. Travis has been editing our blog for a little while and I’m thrilled that he will be taking a more active role in curating content.

The news highlights:

• Election at-a-glance [BBC]

• Brown-must-go blogger plays high-profile role in manifesto launch [The Independent]

• No bloggers, but Tories also host a digitally aware manifesto launch [BBC: dot.Rory]

• UK Independence Party’s Farage promised the “edgiest campaign” in British history, delivers ejaculation jokes [the Guardian]

• Marketing experts say Tory leader hoped to benefit by association with “workaday” products [Times Online]

• PM and challenger tackle image problems by dispatching wives to campaign trail [AP]

• Clegg’s wife criticizes press: “Voters deserve more focus on the policies and less on the clothes” [politics.co.uk]

• Labour candidate sacked over Twitter rants [Times Online]

• Twitter, Youtube, and snail mail: targeting marginal constituents [the Guardian]

• Swapping drafts online: the team behind the Tory manifesto [Times Online]

• Keane pull a Muse, pissed at tories for using song [politics.co.uk]

I suppose this was bound to happen when you take away the team of highly trained producers, but could anyone have guessed Mike Duffy was going to fall on his face this many times?

The Canadian Press reports:

“Senator Mike Duffy has attacked the University of King’s College and other Canadian journalism schools for exposing students to Noam Chomsky and critical thinking….

“When I went to the school of hard knocks, we were told to be fair and balanced,” Duffy was quoted from his speech in yesterday’s issue of the Amherst Daily News. “That school doesn’t exist any more. Kids who go to King’s, or the other schools across the country, are taught from two main texts.”

“According to Duffy … those two texts are Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky’s book on mainstream media, and books about the theory of critical thinking.”

Atlantic radio host Rick Howe responded to the recently appointed Senator’s assertions better than I ever could, and he says what a lot of people in Ottawa have been thinking:

“Speaking of blowhards, I see where Senator MIke Duffy was spewing his dribble again. In a speech to Conservative party faithful in Amherst (who else would waste a night on Duffy) the former CTV News employee slammed journalism programs, like that offered at King’s here in Halifax, for turning out what he called leftist graduates. Duffy claims he went to the school of hard knocks where he was taught to be fair and balanced. If I correctly recall his nightly interview show on CTV, there was little fair and balanced about it. And of course today Duffy enjoys his reward for his pro-Tory bias.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Rick.

(h/t @nationalnewswatch for the Howe bit)

Photo credit

I’ll admit to being skeptical about how fresh a WWII documentary could be. Even with George Stroumboulopoulos as the narrator, HD location shoots, and and new historical footage from Russia and Japan.

I’m happy to say I was wrong to doubt. The CBC/Radio Canada coproduction Love, Hate & Propaganda hits all the right marks and lives up to the promise of a refreshed focus on a topic that has already been the subject of countless documentaries.

The writing and production truly shine. Weaving in first person stories from all sides of the war–and most interestingly from the citizens exposed to the fighting–propaganda, and aftermath of the war.

The particular episode I previewed, Selling War, had a brilliantly conceived segment demonstrating how Nazi propagandists used the Warsaw Ghetto as a “Hollywood back lot”. While the copy I was sent was a “screener” (and a rough cut at that), even without the slick animation Strombo’s careful narration was a solid backbone for the images, clever edits, and elegant first person sequences.

Fascinating exploration of the war. I’d suggest it will become regular viewing in high school history classes over the next few years.

Airing each Thursday until April 8th on CBC Television, 9pm in most areas.

The real story of who is behind the Gordon Lightfoot is sort of like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Each media outlet has a little bit of the puzzle, but there is still a bit of a mystery.

First, Facebook played an unseen role in this drama. The social networking site has become the go-to place for public grief, so it’s no surprise that it helped set off the first alarm bells about the “death.”  The source of the first digital mention? Ronnie Hawkins‘ wife, Wanda.

From Sean Michaels’ article in the Guardian (emphasis mine):

This will have come as a relief to Ronnie Hawkins, the musician whose backing band became the Band. A friend of Lightfoot’s, he was quoted in the early Canwest story, confirming the news. Hawkins said he had received a call from his management in Minneapolis, who had in turn received a call from Lightfoot’s grandson, telling them the singer had died. “I don’t know Gordon’s grandson,” Hawkins later told the Globe and Mail. “I didn’t even know if Gordon has a grandson. I called my wife in Florida and told her, and I guess she faxed some of her friends and now, all of a sudden, it’s all over the world. It’s terrible. I can’t even get hold of Gordon. Holy smoke, it’s unbelievable.” … Hawkins suggested they trace the phone call to Minneapolis. “I think they can trace that phone call, maybe, and see who did that,” he said. “I’m glad it is a sick joke, but it’s bad.”

Several sources have now confirmed that the prank call to Hawkins’ management set the ball in motion, and this is when Wanda Hawkins took to the phone, fax machine, and Facebook.

This is where our Ottawa tweeter, @fleminksi, comes in. She knows a close friend of Wanda Hawkins. Our Ottawa tweeter’s friend shared her grief on Facebook. The Ottawa tweeter in turn expresses her grief on Twitter and concurrently (and unrelated) CanWest is on the phone with Ronnie Hawkins–who no doubt believes his wife–and expresses his grief to the newspaper.

Meanwhile, this confirmation triggers an “alert” to go out across the CanWest newswire and CanWest reporters across Canada start tweeting it.

David Akin has some reflective and characteristically classy words about all of this on his blog.

And as Media Memo’s Peter Kafka says: Twitter didn’t kill Gordon Lightfoot, Big Media did.

But say it is true. Twitter still didn’t force Canwest, the big Canadian media conglomerate, to publish a wire report that said the singer was dead. As best I can tell, it was that story, which was picked up by various Canwest newspaper sites, that convinced people that Lightfoot had croaked.

As Kafka says, this doesn’t suggest that CanWest is off the hook for not double or triple sourcing their facts. And, had an editor at CanWest News Service jumped onto the Twitter search, they too could have found–in well less than 30 minutes–that Lightfoot was alive.

Here is the point I think people should be very clear on: while the tweet from @fleminski came first, it certainly wasn’t what set off the nearly 3,000+ tweets in two hours. That is most certainly the fault of whoever pressed the “go” button on the CanWest wire alert.

All in all, only one person should be very happy about all of this: Gordon Lightfoot. His radio play hasn’t been this big in decades and he just successfully introduced himself to a generation of Canucks who thought he was already dead.

Update:  Some added information from a friend of the “Ottawa tweeter” at ThreeSeven.ca

However, it appears that the mainstream media jumped on it. Within half an hour of tweeting, Fleminski received a phone call from a reporter from CanWest (1. holy sleuth work, and 2. boundaries much, media?) asking for the source. She replied honestly: Ronnie Hawkins. The media then called Hawkins who confirmed the story. Believing they had a confirmed story, the media then ran with it.

As Jack Layton battles prostate cancer he will continue to have his strong hand on the rudder of the New Democratic Party of Canada.

I’ve traveled the country with Layton, his stamina and personal endurance lives up to the legend and far outpaced my own. His daily workout regiment is not a product of spin – it’s a real and important part of his life.

Layton is a strong athlete. And a strong political strategist. He realized early on that opposition without proposition is useless and that to keep up his brutal pace – he had to be strict about what he ate, how he exercised and having his medical team regularly check him over.

As a strategist he knows New Democrats are strongest as a team when presenting reasonable, costed and measured changes to public policy.

Make no mistake, Layton has been the New Democrats’ single strongest asset for the past seven years. He may, on the rare occasion, step into controversy, but overall the party could not have found a stronger steward. The bilingual leader spends real time working; mastering his French, stressing always that he wants to learn how regular people would speak the language. It’s perhaps why he sounds more forthright in French some days. But it also speaks to how much attention to detail he has as a leader.

Rightly, many in Ottawa have been recently pointing to just how often Layton has been proven right in the long run. The war in Afghanistan, pensions for Canadian workers and the need to reform the auto industry stick out as three major issues where Layton’s pragmatic and affordable solutions were out ahead of the other political parties.

Layton is first out of the gate with solutions to issues.

Renegotiating an entire federal budget as he did in 2006 was no small feat. The way Layton and his finance critic Thomas Mulcair, have been able to push around the Finance Minister is unprecedented: on everything from ATM fees to bank fairness, the NDP calls for solutions have at least been responded to by the government. More than the Liberals can say.

Layton has taken the New Democrats from a side show in the House of Commons to the single largest influencer of public policy in Canada. Conservatives make the policy, Opposition Liberals oppose it and all the while Layton’s New Democrats tinker, change and massage bills to fit a social democratic ideal – or as close as it’s going to get.

As leader of one of the traditionally most unruly groups of Parliamentarians, Layton also performs extremely admirably. Deftly balancing the rural and urban split, the left and right divide and regional disparities. He leans on party elders to help chart his course; knowing it’s harder for the party to disagree with many of its’ luminaries at once.

The groundbreaking work with Greenpeace, the Canadian Autoworkers and New Democrats could have saved thousands of jobs in Southern Ontario. His first book could easily form the back bone for a proper public policy initiative to end homelessness and his second book highlights local solutions for climate change.

Some in official Ottawa may speculate that Layton’s illness may accelerate the pace of leadership preparations in the various camps eyeing the top job. They are right; but don’t expect a Liberal-leadership-race-style bloodbath of crossfire and spin in the media. Social democrats just don’t politic that way. We have too much respect for the people we elect to play those games.

The leader of our party has turned the New Democrats into a political force. And nothing – not even a bout with cancer – is going to dissuade Layton from his ultimate goal of seeing New Democrats govern the country.

For more on the documentary visit the official site. And, if you are in Vancouver during the Olympics and have a desire to contribute to a larger media project – visit the True North Media House and sign up.

O’Malley on the prorogation protest from Shawn Dearn on Vimeo.

It’s been a busy day. When I wasn’t freezing and tweeting at the Ottawa protest, I was tracking the crowd-counts from across Canada. With 32 communities that I could find tweeted reports on; I estimate that over 25,000 people rallied against the Prime Minister’s decision to prorogue parliament. I’ve uploaded and embedded below a PDF with the community totals and my methodology. I’m hoping to continue to add to the list, please comment if you have numbers from cities not listed (or if you have a correction.) Update: as of Sunday at 8:00 am I have added 7 more communities; including New York City and St. Johns. I’m still looking for smaller communities to report. About twenty listed events could push it to over 30,000. Again, please comment with corrections or more information.

Estimated Crowd Attendance for #CAPP Rallies

To provide a visual look at today’s Ottawa protest, this is Gregory Pang’s shots of the demonstration today from Flickr.

And lastly, a quick look at the instant popularity of the #noprorogue hash tag on Twitter.

Joanna Smith was one of the first Canadian reporters to travel to Haiti after the devastation. Her compelling, graphic and raw accounts of the aftermath of the devastation of the earthquake are regularly featured on the Toronto Star’s front page. I’m very grateful she she took a few minutes to answer a few questions about reporting from Haiti.

Smith’s usual stomping grounds are the scrums of Parliament Hill, as she explains in this interview the decision to go to Haiti “came so quickly…I had not even really had the chance to see the images on television until I had already agreed to go and I was preparing for the trip.”

New communications tools have played a big part in her sharing and reporting her experiences on the ground. Her active and regular use of Twitter has steadily been gainly Smith attention and positive word-of-mouth online; she was followed by about 700 people pre-Haiti and now 2200. While Haitian wireless service is spotty and she cannot regularly see her readers comments via Twitter she says contacts have emailed her about the massive response, she also weights in on two quiet debates in media circles about ethics of disaster reporting.

Traveling with her is photographer Lucas Olenluk and Smith’s parliamentary co-worker Allan Woods joined the team, riding along with a Canadian military aide flight.

Interview with Joanna Smith of the Toronto Star

Q: You have reported on deeply moving, emotional, brutal and hopeful moments in Haiti. How does the scene reconcile with the way you prepared yourself in your own mind as you made the trip to the ravaged areas; I suppose I’m asking – until you are there on the ground, can you even image how vast the destruction is?

Joanna Smith: It was nearly impossible for me to prepare mentally for the level of destruction before I got here, just as it remains extremely difficult to accurately convey what I am seeing in words.

The decision to send me here came so quickly. I knew there had been a devastating earthquake, but I had not even really had the chance to see the images on television until I had already agreed to go and I was preparing for the trip.

On the flight down I kept thinking: “This is going to be like Hurricane Katrina.” I didn’t cover that event at all. I read about it in the newspaper, heard it on the radio and watched it on television like most of the world. It was only several days into my assignment that I realized this was far, far worse in many different ways. You get used to a thing.

On the ground, everything is so much more immediate, obviously. I’m here. It is so difficult to describe the stench and even harder to understand how one gets used to it. I’ve stopped wearing my face mask, stopped noticing it on my clothes and stopped stepping around the garbage and just walking through it.

It feels surreal, as cliché a term as that may be when it comes to describing a disaster zone. I often feel detached, or as if I am on the set of a movie or in a wax museum. It is a very strange feeling to realize that you are seeing the things you are seeing and not breaking down into tears or getting sick. It’s a strange sensation to feel fine here, but something I am at the same time grateful for.

Q: You have been actively using Twitter to relay messages back home and around the world. You won’t be surprised to find many of us are glued to your status updates. Two questions. First, Does this help ease your families anxiety about you being in a disaster area?

JS: Absolutely. My friends and family tell me they are checking my updates constantly just to make sure that I am safe and sound. My dad has joined Twitter. He sent me an email asking if I could see his “tweets” and put the word in quotation marks like that. It was adorable. He is following just one person and it is me. He was terrified when he heard about the aftershock. I did not respond to his concerned email right away, so he logged onto Twitter and said he exhaled deeply when he saw that I was safe. The father of my colleague, Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk, has also joined Twitter to follow my updates. The other day he sent Lucas a text message suggesting we go to Canadian Tire because I had tweeted about our truck getting a flat tire after rolling over a shard of glass or anything else that was lying in the street. I managed a short telephone call to my husband the other night when there was a period of good reception and he already knew everything I was up to that day. It’s been a great way to stay in touch.

And second , how are you finding getting instant/near-instant feedback from readers?

JS: I am actually unable to see the @ replies very often. When I have seen them, my reactions have been mixed.

First, It was surprising to see how many people were interested in my work. I joined Twitter about seven or eight months ago and have already found it an incredible reporting tool, but have not seen the kind of response I have seen in Haiti. Covering H1N1 and live-tweeting parliamentary committees is a different thing, obviously. I began tweeting from Miami and Santo Domingo to keep myself busy, honestly. Then I had no email reception after we crossed the border into Haiti and so, out of necessity, filed an entire story via Twitter and just kept it up throughout the first day. I had absolutely no idea the level of response I was getting back home until friends started emailing me about it. Now I guess it has become my thing while I am here and I am happy to contribute to covering this story in that way. The 140-character limit brings an immediacy to the reporting. It forces you to forego flowery adjectives in favour of simple language: verbs and nouns. I find that style of writing is leaking into the stories I file to the newspaper as well and I see that as an improvement in my writing. I can tell that readers are responding well to that and it is nice to hear from them.

Second, it can be frustrating when followers mistake me for a relief worker, take tweets out of context or expect far more from me than I can possibly provide. I find that whenever I tweet the name of a location, followers ask me to help search for people at a nearby location. I can do no such thing. I am just a journalist writing about what I see. I know there has also been a large number of people asking me and other media to spend more time at the Hotel Montana and asking for more details about what I have seen there.  People need to understand there is little I can do to help. Rescue teams are there full-time. Embassies are in charge of identifying bodies and contacting their families. I cannot do that. I am not a search-and-rescue team and I do not have the level of access to databases and other clues that embassies have to be able to identify someone. I could be wrong and really hurt a family needlessly. For example, I found a suitcase with business cards from a U.S. doctor. I refrained from tweeting the name. I found out days later she had already been rescued. I understand how frustrating a lack of information can be, but I cannot be an authoritative source of information when it comes to things like finding missing loved ones.

Q: There have been ongoing debates – albeit quiet – about the number of journalists in Haiti from Western nations and then the semantics/connotations around the words looting, scavenging and collecting food for the hungry. Will you weigh in on these briefly from your perspective?

JS: The first part of your question is a debate that I have not witnessed here in Haiti, although that is not to say it is not happening. Every Haitian I have spoken to has been glad the media is here to tell the story. They wish I was an aid worker who could bring them a bottle of water of course, but failing that they are gracious about my role as someone who is here to tell their story and hold the Canadian government and the international community to account. I am sure Haitians in Port-au-Prince would rather we were here than not here and their opinions are the only ones I really care about right now. The world can talk again about this point once the media, including myself, begin pulling out of Haiti.

As for looting vs. scavenging, this is a debate I have addressed, albeit briefly, with readers via Twitter. There is something about being on the ground here that makes all debates like that seem academic and a little ridiculous. I do not mean to be condescending. I have participated in such debates many times throughout my own life and I no doubt will continue to do so. Just consider this: the Haitians have not had such debates. They call it “pillage” and they still manage to see the nuance in the word. Just because it is looting does not mean it is wrong in these circumstances. At the same time, what about the person who runs up to the person who just “looted” or “scavenged” from an abandoned storefront and takes whatever they “looted” or “scavenged” away with the threat of violence, or actual violence? Is that “looting” or “scavenging” or “stealing”? Is that person any more or less desperate than the person who took it from the abandoned storefront? Are they more or less justified in their actions? Context is everything. Unfortunately, the 140-character limit on Twitter does not allow for much of it, so I have warned readers that I will likely use “looting” in that forum, whereas I will think more carefully about it for the newspaper version. I might have called the 15-year-old girl who was shot dead by police a looter at one point, but the harsher criticism should undoubtedly be reserved for the one, or the system behind that one, who fired the gun.

Here is an embed of Joanna Smith’s most recent tweets. And, take a moment to donate to the Humanitarian Coalition or the Red Cross – they are going a great job on the ground.

Photo credits United National Development Agency; who have placed their images under Creative Commons. Bravo!