Fox News: Too Stupid For Canada
Every once in a while we come across some serious, universally-relevant info of which we’d previously been uninformed. (Hey, we never claimed to be all-knowing!) What sets us apart from Republican voters, however, is that we welcome it and all new knowledge! And this case is no different.
Did you know that Canada (which we Americans have a time-honored tradition of goofing on – mainly for its sissy-like tendency to stay uninvolved in the various ill-conceived wars in which we so love to engage) has a law against the reporting of false or misleading news – and that, as a result, many right wing media entities long chastised by smart people for having contributed so robustly to the dumbing down of America (among them, the Fox News Channel and the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show) are illegal in Canada? I didn’t know that – even though one of our earliest head writers (a brilliant snarkist whom we miss dearly and wish would come back in spite of the fact that we can’t afford her) is Canadian! But she so regularly and expertly lambasts Fox News, Limbaugh, and the like that we just assumed she gets her knowledge of said spreaders of nonsense directly from the Canadian airwaves themselves! It seems we were wrong.
In February 2011 (before this blog was launched), the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) (Canada’s broadcasting regulation body) announced it would reject efforts by Canada’s right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal the law. (Speculation was that Harper’s proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new Canadian right wing network.) This news was reported in the U.S. by, among other sources, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in a piece which managed to get itself either copied-and-pasted on or referenced in just about every left-wing or otherwise objective-leaning blog that was researched for this post. You can read it via this link, at the HuffPost, and you can read the CRTC’s official announcement, made in May of 2011, at this link on its official website.
Conversely, for example, MSNBC, that network so hated by right-wingers for reporting news which contradicts their views (read: reporting news based on fact-checked reality) is legal in and shown in Canada. In fact, it began airing in Canada in 2001 under the banner MSNBC Canada, but after just two years came to the conclusion that, “because of the unique programming challenges presented by a 24 hour breaking news format, the [programming has] … proven to be financially burdensome beyond expectation.” (See, guys, fact-checking is expensive!) It therefore decided to replace the service with the American MSNBC feed instead. This move, of course, required CRTC approval, which was granted in 2004.
On the surface, all this makes Canada look pretty darn good. But don’t start packing your bags just yet.
Concerned Canadians gripe about the many right wing media types which are allowed to broadcast in Canada, with comments on rabble.ca fingering one commentator who is “the canadian Rush or at least as close as we can get. Bigot check, Xenophobe check, anti-gay check(though [he] does have a thing for men in uniform), pro war check, conservative and says so check. He also thinks no one in hockey uses ANY illegal substances ‘because our boys wouldn’t do that.’” (Hmm. Hateful and delusional! Sounds like our right-wing media types alright.) Another is described by a reader as “anti-immigrant, ‘law and order’(for the poor), … pro-war, anti-woman, fascist.” And these are just two of many! Apparently Canada does allow for the spreading of hatred and stupidity, as long as there are no verifiable figures involved.
And, of course, as mentioned, its current Prime Minister is conservative, as is the current majority party in Canadian government. (It’s not unfair to infer that the takeaway from the Prime Minister’s above-mentioned bid to repeal the law which bans “Canadian Fox News” and the like is that he assumes same as everyone else that the right wing’s survival hinges on its continued ability to misinform the electorate). On the other hand, however, the recent 2011 Canadian election saw a +178.38% gain in the number of seats for the relatively young New Democratic Party, which is a social-democratic party which advocates issues such as gender equality, gay rights, workers’ and human rights, international peace, and environment stewardship, and is analogous to the left wing in the U.S.
In short, it’s worth keeping an eye on.
