MSM on Gosnell: We Are Ignorant Shills!

Unending lies and spin force me to write about Kermit Gosnell. Again.

He was arrested on January 19, 2011; I wrote that blog-post on January 20, 2011. And in a remarkable show of prescience tedious prediction, I called it:

He'll become the fetus-fetishist poster boy for 'Late Term Abortion! Gosnell! Gosnell! SHRIEEEEEK!!!1!1'

Just checked. Yup, they're aaaall over it.

Kermit Gosnell: Hero of the Forced Pregnancy Gang.

For the last few days, fetus fetishists have been SHRIEEEEKING that the MSM has been totally, absolutely, left-wingedly ignoring this MAJOR story.

Which, as Snopes notes, is total crap.

Yet also noted in the Snopes piece are examples of grovelling from the MSM.

OMG how did we all miss this? wails Kirsten Powers in USA Today and Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.

As Snopes points out and as a Google search targetting January 2011 to June 2011 proves, there was tons of coverage and not just by RadFems, as we are styled.

Just on the first two pages pages, I see CBS, ABC, AOL News, BBC, as well as lots of local Philadelphia coverage.

So. Are the MSM pundits complete ignoramuses, incapable of nosing out timely stories for themselves?

Or are they tools of the Right Wing? Willing to SHRIEEEK on demand?

Because you really can't have it both ways.

Oh. Wait. You can. Ignorant shills.

#DenounceHarper

So. Is/was yesterday's online protest, #DenounceHarper newsworthy?

Not according to the Nothing-to-See-Move-Along Crowd. (This screen-shot was taken at 11:05 a.m. Monday, July 2/12.)

Thousands and thousands of people used that hashtag all day yesterday, Canada Day, (and it is continuing today) to remind ourselves of the many, many bad things this government has done to our beloved Canada.

Some were funny, but most were not. Most were pissed off. Many had links to relevant news stories.

The sources of outrage ranged from gutting environmental protections to muzzling scientists to Harper and Co's utter disdain for democracy. Some were quite specific, others more generally disgusted.

But here's the newsworthy bit.

#DenounceHarper began trending on Twitter early in the day, and was second only to #HappyCanadaDay across the country.

This tweep just said that it was even bigger than that.

@kady. The biggest news yesterday was not the fact Happy Canada Day was trending #1 worldwide butthat #denounceharper was #8 worldwide!!!!

— Parhez aka DJRaz(@dominaus) July 2, 2012

I asked for a source and got this (top and bottom of screenshot of worldwide trends):

@fernhilldammit @kady #denounceHarper twitter.com/dominaus/statu…

— Parhez aka DJRaz(@dominaus) July 2, 2012

@fernhilldammit @kady #denounceHarper twitter.com/dominaus/statu…

— Parhez aka DJRaz(@dominaus) July 2, 2012

It did get some half-assed coverage from the NatPo and somebody at CTV who couldn't be bothered to find out who started it.

While it’s unclear where the trend started, a Facebook group called #DenounceHarper: Your Stories had 320 members as of Sunday afternoon. The group stressed that it was non-partisan and encouraged participants to share their concerns about Canada’s future.

(Pro-tip: I asked on Twitter and got the answer in less than five minutes. It was Brandon Laraby, with a clarification here.)

Yahoo News characterized it as 'anti-conservatives use Canada Day for on-line protest'.

But the thing is -- it wasn't just anti-conservatives. My feed, being full of leftards, was brimming with it of course, but at the hashtag itself, there were zillions of different people. NOT just the usual suspects.

In fact, the whole exercise was quite joyous. Look at the top tweet, retweeted 402 times.

OMG, #DenounceHarper is trending on Canada Day. Love my country.

— Kyle Allen (@kyleallen1997) July 1, 2012

People utterly dismayed at where Harper is taking and has taken this country were finding solidarity and -- most important -- that they were faaaaar from alone.

The media saw fit to cover #TellVicEverything, which admittedly was much funnier, but while it made a lot of noise in the Canadian Tweetosphere, it did not trend. (Scroll down for the graphic. I may be wrong about trending, will correct if necessary.)

But thousands and thousands of pissed-off Canadians expressing love for their country and distress at its government is ^NOT newsworthy.

A topic trending second (and at times first) nationwide for hours and hours and hours.

On.

A.

Summer.

National.

Holiday.

Is ^NOT news.

Okey-dokey then.

We've already figured out that we have to be our own Opposition.

It's clear we have to be our own media too.

Hudak Weasels

Well, at least they tried to get an answer out of him.

Hudak won't address abortion beliefs

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak appears to be shying away from his previous anti-abortion position.

When he was running for the PC leadership in 2009, Hudak told the Association for Reformed Political Action he is pro-life and had signed petitions calling for the defunding of abortions.

Hudak said Monday he "may have" signed a petition in that regard, but quickly added he has no intention of re-opening the abortion debate if the Tories win the Oct. 6 Ontario election.

However, the Opposition Leader refused to say if he still opposes abortion.

When questioned by reporters, Hudak said only that he would follow Prime Minister Stephen Harper's lead and leave the abortion issue alone.

The Campaign Life Coalition, an anti-abortion group, says Hudak was strongly opposed to abortion when he first ran for provincial office in 1995, but has since not responded to any of their questionnaires.

Other media on it: Toronto Sun, CTV, and LifeShite.

Are you happy with this? I'm not.

ADDED: The Star. And Kinsella exhorts bloggers and tweeps to keep up the pressure.

ADDED: National Pest.

Really? MSM Is Alive?

Here's a lovely headline I never expected to see:

A chicken and a liar.

David Olive writes:

What on Earth possessed Harper yesterday to challenge Iggy to a duel? And less than 24 hours later refuse to show up? And then lie about the incident?

The Globe.

Odds are that Stephen Harper will post his third win on May 2 and there’s a decent chance he will get a majority to boot. But not if he keeps on campaigning the way he has this week.
. . .

His coalition fear mongering is starting to sound a tad obsessive, and less rational. And by talking about this well past the point when voters have lost interest, he’s allowing his opponents’ policy ideas, like Michael Ignatieff’s education passport, to find some room in the news hole.

And from Politics and Its Discontents, a piece from The Star not yet online.

Tensions rise as Conservative leader imposes daily cap on queries from reporters at campaign events

HALIFAX— The cost to travel with Stephen Harper’s campaign? $10,100 a week.

The number of questions Harper takes each day? Five.

Looking like an over-controlling politician? Priceless.

I don't have anything to say. Just sharing my pleasure in watching the MSM find their gonaddy bits.

But I'm not practising my chicken dance just yet.

UPDATE from dBO in the comments: The Star story was on online but has been pulled and replaced with this. The comments from before are still there, though. WTF? Good thing Politics and its Discontents reproduced the entire article. You can still read it there.

MSM: All the facts that fit our agenda

Here we go again with the fake pregnancy centres.

From The Globe and Mail (links added):

The William H. Donner Awards for Excellence in the Delivery of Social Services will be presented in Toronto on Oct. 16. The awards are hard to get: More than 500 social services agencies entered this year's competition, which will issue nine prizes worth a total of $60,000.

The Fraser Institute, the Vancouver-based think tank that administers the awards on behalf of the Donner Foundation, subjects contenders to rigorous assessment, grading them on 10 attributes (among them: the volunteers they use and the results they get).

The finalists in the category 'Counselling/Crisis Services' are:

Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre offers support and assistance to anyone "facing an unplanned pregnancy or experiencing post-abortion stress."

London Crisis Pregnancy Centre* in Ontario provides "practical and spiritual help" to women with an unplanned pregnancy, including abortion alternatives.

Sarnia-Lambton Rebound, in Ontario, operates court-approved programs for young people in trouble with the law.

OK, with the frikken Fraser Institute involved, this information about The Donner Canadian Foundation shouldn't come as a surprise:

The Donner Canadian Foundation was established in 1950 and for 43 years was a typical, uncontroversial Canadian charitable fund. In 1993, the conservative American Donner heirs who control the foundation changed its primary focus to that of supporting conservative research. From 1993 to 1999, under the leadership of executive directors Devon Gaffney Cross and then Patrick Luciani, the foundation provided the seed money to start several conservative Canadian think-tanks and publications, and became the "lifeblood of conservative research" in Canada. In 1999, the American Donner heirs who control the foundation began donating more of its money to land and wildlife conservation, international development, medical research and the arts, reducing funding of conservative research (though it is still one of the most generous benefactors to the right in Canada).

It would be nice, wouldn't it, if the dam MSM would mention the little fact that this is not a 'typical, uncontroversial Canadian charitable fund'?

(I left a comment at the Globe link. First time for me and I hadda register. I was so agitated, I didn't proofread properly. From now on, look for comments by 'fer nill'. *headslap*)

BTW, Calgary Pregnancy Care won a Donner award last year.

*That link for the London outfit is just a page-holder without a 'mission' statement. But it is listed here.