Journalism is NOT rocket science

A tweet by Sunny Hundal put a bug in my ear this morning.

This factual news report was produced by an independent, local TV resource and posted on Youtube.

REAL news are popping up everywhere, putting to shame many of the establishment media workers who have become far too cozy with their corporate overlords and the terms of their quasi-indentured employment.

So complacent and blasé are such pseudo-journos, they'd arrogantly assumed that quaint old notion of ethics with regard to conflict of interests in reporting was no longer relevant.

Karma is indeed a bitch.

Hundal's tweet reminded me of the modest yet thorough Lori Martin and the professional manner in which she handled a random PMO-generated information packet that arrived unsolicited at her newspaper, the Barrie Advance.

My co-blogger wrote this about Martin's extraordinary challenge to lazy, *laissez-faire* reporting which appears to have become standard operating procedure.  Martin refused to be a stenographer for the speaking points provided by a Harper Politburo/PMO communication hack.

There are still many old-school journalists steadily doing the news gathering and reporting they believe in - though ego-driven *enfants terribles* tend to get all the glory.

Michael Harris is of this calibre.  Not a single fact in his best-selling _Party of One_ has been countered, disputed or proven wrong by Harper's army of flunkeys at their keyboards.

Bloggers like Creekside and independent news organizations also hold a wild card: dissemination by social media, which sometimes goes viral.  Unless the Harper regime shuts down access with its new legislation that it will try to ram through Parliament to maintain their CPC partisan control. Though I trust more allies like this one will emerge to challenge PMSHithead's autocratic ploys.

Pressure from unfettered media, as well desperate attempts to spin damaging facts that will leak during the election campaign from those Harper's kleptocracy has bullied, antagonized and silenced, could derail the CPC communication strategy.  And the internal cracks are getting bigger.

Let's be fuelled and inspired by the model of what people power did in Greece which gained momentum and will prevail.

Abortion? What a Riot!!!

Bloggers rejoice! What could possibly go wrong with the RAPEublicans' plan to make abortion funny.

“How do you make abortion funny?” That was a key question mulled at a major conservative gathering Friday on how to make social conservatism appealing to young people, after an election where Republicans got trounced in the battle for millennial voters (who are are moving even further and further away from the Christian-right on marriage and other issues).

Abortion has to be made funny, the thinking goes, because funny sells on social media, and that’s where one goes to court young people. “You can engage with sarcasm, it’s hard with the abortion issue, but you have to,” said Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins at a breakout panel at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington today on how to win millennial voters. “Unfortunately we have to, because this is the generation that we’ve been dealt.”

If there's one thing conservatives cannot do, it's humour. And, as we know, the fetus fetishists among them are the most humour-impaired.

This is gonna be a gas. And not in the way they intend.

DJ!'s Fix for the Broken News Biz

It may well be as we suggested earlier that the Corrupt Party government-paid army of hacks were too busy with other ongoing trainwrecks to try to spin Tom Flanagan back out of the hole he'd pitched himself into.

But his brethren and sistren in the media have rallied. I'm not going to link -- you can find them. They have twisted themselves into various unattractive pretzels to find grounds on which to defend or mitigate his faceplant.

One thing they have in common though was noticed by our pal trapdinawrpool.

It appears the gatekeepers are upset the we mere proles took down one of their set #Flanagan #cdnpoli

— trapdinawrpool (@trapdinawrpool) March 1, 2013

Things get almost weepy at Pandering and Pissing Contests.

Dammit! Don't we proles get it that it's the pundits' job to end people's careers?

Another thing that can drive manly journos (of all genders) to weepy despair is the financial state of their biz.

I have a modest proposal. Fire all the opinionators. Keep the good reporters who actually ferret out what our overlords don't want us to know.

And leave the punditting to thoughtful -- and free -- bloggers like kirbycairo.

Win-win! More funding for real reporters, less noxious bloviating in the media.

Besides, it's not like the opinionators couldn't find other work worthy of their talents and ethics.

Social Media Election?

While the pundits suffer and blither over whether this is the social media election or not, one question can be answered.

Is social media affecting this election?

YES!

It's making it much more fun.

You got your Vote Mobs.

You got your (NSFW) scatological reprise of SHithead's time in office. With videos.

And you got your even less safe for work list of funny/pathetic excuses not to vote.*

I'm still clicking through that last one (h/t AntoniaZ) and LMAO.

Bonus: Interview with one of the perpetrators of the Shit Harper Did site and videos.

*I just clicked other links there. And they go to USian sites. Dommage, ^NOT Canadian.

Operation Maple

These short videos are popping up all over the Intertoobz. This one is for my virtual roomy -- two of her fave people in one video.

More at Operation Maple. The mission: Take Canada back.