March4Lies Part 2: Faith and truthy-ness

So, this happened on Thursday May 8.

There was a lame attempt by antiChoice Faith Goldy, a StunTV performance-artist-wannabe-Ann-Coulter, to bully members of the Radical Handmaids as well as other proChoice counter-protesters into saying something, anything while the camera was recording that could be edited and spun into a sensationalistic GOTCHA! - à la Ezra Levant school of faux-journalism.

What is it with StunTV media circus performers and their penchant for fake or trumped up news? Their broadcasts are never-ending infomercials, infotainment or simply outrageously skanky and amateurish filler engineered by Levant and his entourage.

Fortunately the media-savvy Julie Lalonde was one of the protesters approached by Goldy.

A pro-life rally in Ottawa Thursday that drew thousands of people to Parliament Hill got wall-to-wall coverage from Sun News Network, but some of the pro-choice activists who staged a counter-demonstration say the conservative news channel’s Faith Goldy crossed the line with her aggressive questioning.

Ottawa-based social justice activist Julie Lalonde said Goldy and a cameraman approached her and other pro-choice demonstrators and began peppering them with questions without introducing themselves or asking what brought them to the annual March for Life event.

“They were super fast, rapid-fire questions and the very first one was something about whether I supported abortion after 32 weeks. No ‘Why are you here today? What’s your group about?’” she wrote in an email to Canada.com. (Full disclosure: Lalonde has previously contributed to our site.)

“She filmed me extensively, even when I asked her to back away and leave us alone. She actually did a close up on me when I told her to leave us alone and said, ‘Or else? If I don’t walk away, what are you going to do?’

“She was clearly trolling and trying to provoke us to build some outrageous footage.”

From here.

She called out the unscrupulous tactic and followed up on Twitter and sent a media advisory to actual professional journalists and legitimate news gathering organizations.

And thus, just like the two FEMEN protesters, Goldy and her agit-prop shenanigans became the subject of other news media coverage of the March4Lies.

Fitting, is it not?

And remember, Mike likes 'em nubile!

[...] Michael Coren managed to, within three-and-a-half minutes, feign passion for women’s rights and follow it up with vicious and slanderous lies against women’s health providers. See for yourself in the September 7 “The Real War on Women.” Coren called Planned Parenthood “a group—remember this—dedicated to making sure that as many babies are aborted as possible.”

For a group so committed to this goal, they sure allocate their funds strangely. Abortions account for only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s total services. Cancer and HIV screenings, contraception, counseling and other services account for the remaining 97 percent.

So according to Sun News, Planned Parenthood, the largest reproductive health services provider in the US, is actually just a bunch of baby abortion fanatics; just look how much of their activity is abortion!

It doesn’t take more than a little research to find out the truth. Doesn’t Sun News have fact checkers? Or is Sun News just lying to its audience, believing they are too stupid to look up the facts for themselves?

Even though Coren apparently has no qualms about malevolently lying about an organization devoted to women’s health, he makes sure to assure us he’s on the side of women’s rights. “I also find it repulsive that after decades of struggle for female equality, there are still many people on the left who speak of women in the plural, and in the collective, as though they have no individual identities or ideas… it’s almost like a slave-master mentality from the 19th century isn’t it?”

From here.

This isn't the first time that religious fundamentalist and christian-Sharia zealot Michael Coren has attacked US Planned Parenthood as well as the international organization. He also parrots the talking points that supporters of M312 have been regurgitating for months.

That particular line of attack on Planned Parenthood in the US is not original to Coren, though it's been debunked.

Instead of posting a clip from StunTV showing Coren's glib prevarications, here's one that deconstructs the willful harm that deliberate lies carried by schlock media inflicts upon its audience.

As for the title of this post, it's a reference to the StunTV Limbaugh wannabe's alleged interest in p0rn0graphy that features *adult* women disguised to resemble pubescent girls.

Tar Sands: difference between The Tyee and StunTV is journalism

The Tyee responds to Ezra Levant's shallow, confrontational StunTV "Straight News Hard Talk" questions about its journalistic approach to covering the tar sands.

In your online reply to my comments, you say the Tyee's reporting is balanced. Have you ever published a pro-oilsands article?

The news reporting we publish does not set out to be pro or anti oil sands. We are interested in reporting that helps everyone get a better idea of whether the oil sands are sustainable, where the wealth they generate goes, how the oil sands might affect climate change, and such. We start with questions and are pleased to publish whatever answers we unearth. If the answers we arrive at aren't considered 'pro' oil sands by you or others, well, that's where the facts took us.

Here is another - and also hilarious! - spoof about the tar sands, one that features Harper government Enviro Minister Peter Kent.

StunTV *fakes the Oath*.

Last summer CBC producers started planning with communications staff at Citizenship and Immigration Canada an event that would be broadcast during the month of October.

The CBC broadcast an hour-long, full-fledged citizenship ceremony for 75 new Canadians that featured a studio audience, a bagpiper, a retired Mountie in his red serge and local dignitaries. That event, which was broadcast live a day after the Sun’s reaffirmation ceremony, had been planned with the department since the summer.

From here.

Quebecor's StunTV however, took a different tack with CONtempt Party hacks in Kenney's office.

Documents released to The Canadian Press under access-to-information legislation show that just a few weeks before Canada's Citizenship Week last October, Mr. Kenney's staff directed departmental officials to add a last-minute citizenship ceremony at the network to their list of scheduled events.

Bureaucrats scrambled to work out the logistics, suggesting to the minister's office that Sun News could cover one of the 13 scheduled ceremonies in Ontario — four of them in Toronto, including one at the Air Canada Centre.

One senior bureaucrat at the registrar of Canadian citizenship expressed concern to Mr. Kenney's office that Sun News seemed to want to feature “only” the oath, which might short-change new Canadians from the full ceremony experience. [...]

When a bureaucrat sent Sun News a list of possible citizenship ceremonies to cover in Ontario, a network employee suggested another scenario.

“Let's do it. We can fake the Oath,” reads an email from [name blacked out of the document] at sunmedia.ca email address [...]

So instead of sending out a camera crew and *real* journalists to cover an actual citizenship ceremony, StunTV insisted on staging a ridiculous, trumped-up cheap facsimile in their studio.

The kicker though, is this:

[Minister] Kenney has emphasized the solemnity of the act of citizenship, recently moving to force Muslim women who wear burkas or niqabs to reveal their faces.

“Finally we are ensuring that the citizenship oath itself is properly respected by all of those who take it so that they in taking a solemn commitment, being a witness publicly to the rest of their fellow citizens, demonstrate who they are and their commitment to Canada,” Mr. Kenney said last December.

One staff member from Mr. Kenney's office who appeared in the email chain about the event requested their name be blacked out before release under the Access to Information Act.

Grand merci to @a_picazo who tweeted this and this.

UPDATE: Quebec columnist Patrick Lagacé is no longer gobsmacked by StunTV fakery and calls it what it is: Con propaganda. As he points out, if StunTV only acknowledged that what it broadcasts is *infotainment* as their boss PK Péladeau freely admits, and not "Hard news, straight talk" as it's claimed.

He also directs a poke at Levant's brand of faux-journalism, which confuses staged *reality* with ethics.

Stop the CBC smackdown.

Finally.

People who are also *friends of public broadcasting* have decided to forsake the genteel approach of that venerable institution in favour of a campaign that challenges the rough bully tactics used by its attackers.

Here it is, replete with robust wit and admirable aplomb. And two testerically funny videos featuring the new private owner of the CBC, Lance Fury. Click!

Bravo.

By the way, compare and contrast the above website with this charming StunTV home page.

I listen to Radio-Canada while I work. During the 2008 federal election campaign, friends and supporters produced this delicious little spoof that perfectly captured the *cul serré* (clenched butt) style of the Cons.

The above has subtitles. Click on the cc button. The one below is the full version, en français.

"General Mishmash" sez Ezrant - oh noes!

There you go, Canadian journalists.

Consider yourselves MASSIVELY rebuked and chastized by none other than StunTV's Ezra Levant (aka Dame Ezra for his cross-dressing proclivities).

Ezrant seems to believe his own shrieeeking performances and divertissements for Quebecor's Sun media RWNJ are above reproach - though it would seem that it's a matter of public record that most of his claims and statements do not meet the veracity standards of rigorous journalism nor, interestingly enough since he appears to sport some law degree of sorts, those of the court.

But they are exemplary of the manner in which RWNJs present truthiness.

Responses to Ezrant's fictional orientation and diversions can be found here and here.

Update: Susan Delacourt's account of the panel attended by Levant. Kady O'Malley's.

Canadian Cynic observes.