Showing posts with label MSM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MSM. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Harper's Lies & Deceit regarding the Canadian Economy

Stephen Harper is continuously deceiving and lying to Canadians about the state of our economy. Yesterday, Stephen Harper claimed:

There are more people working in Canada today than before the recession, the ONLY advanced country where that is the case.

This sounds all very positive, but, unfortunately, it's far from the truth.

Let's analyse.

Canada's unemployment is up (NOT down).

1) "There are more people working in Canada today than before the recession." That might well be the case, but there are also more Canadians without a job than before the recession. 
You don't believe me? 
Check out this report from our own Stats Canada (9 September 2011), and see the unemployment figure, which I have copied below:


You see? 7.4% of Canadians are unemployed now, while that number was close to 6% before the 2008 recession hit.Harper's "there are more people at work now than before the recession" implies unemployment is down, when in reality  unemployment is up.

But then it get's worse, and Harper moves from implicit deceit to explicitly lying, all in a single sentence (what a craftsman):


2) "Canada is the ONLY advanced country where that is the case" - Really? How about one of Europe's strongest economies, Germany?

Canadas economy performs far worse than Germany's (yes, Germany is an advanced country...) 

Apparently Germany has been doing really well throughout this recession. A simple Google News search shows how Harper is lying through his teeth. On August 31 Bloomberg's BusinessWeek.com reported:
[Germany's] jobless rate held at 7 percent, the lowest since records for a reunified Germany began in 1991.

Yesterday, the same website explains:
German unemployment at a two-decade low of 7 percent may boost household spending and help offset slowing exports.

This information is being backed up by a recent (and highly reliable) report by Germany's own Bundesagentur fur Arbeit (Germany's Federal Employment Agency.) On page 12, figure 6, the "Deutchland" line represents the falling unemployment (Arbeitslose) of all of Germany (copied below):


Germany's current unemployment numbers are far below those right before the recession, so, Harper, isn't it time for an apology to the Canadian people. Apparently not. Today Harper makes the same false claim again. Both times journalists (Gloria Galloway from the G&M, and Mark Kennedy from Post Media News) do not refute the false claims made by our country's Prime Minister. 

MSM journalists are failing us
Personally I don't really blame Stephen Harper for his lies and deceit.Apart from being a heartless asshole, he's just doing his work by playing politics with the facts. What bothers me most is the complacency of the Canadian newspapers, who simply copy and paste whatever comes out of Harper's ass. Journalist are supposed to keep our politicians honest by refuting lies and deceit, so why is it that they aren't doing their homework?

I get the impression that The Globe and Mail, a corporate entity, believes that painting rosy picture of the economy is good for business (and investment), and therefore G&M sides with their corporate advertisers (who, BTW, believe the same thing).NOT refuting Harper's lies is a "cheap" (or sophisticated, depending on one's own bias) way to feed the rosy picture of the economy and keep corporate advertisers happy, without doing the actual lying (Harper lied, G&M just spreads the lies); a win-win for the corporate elite, if you will.


Lame MSM has become mouthpiece for Conservatives and Corporate power
G&M (and Canada's MSM) clearly have become a mouthpiece of the Harper government, and one starts wondering how different such a media/government relationship really is from the one the Russia had some 30 years ago. They equally produce propaganda, journalistic garbage.

Monday, July 30, 2007

Why Americans Hate the Media

1. Because major media figures show no sense of ethics.
2. Because they do not care how the stories they cover affect people's lives.
3. Because they're wrong all the time and never have to admit it.
4. Because they have boring, one-track minds.
5. Because they are pampered, lazy know-nothings.
6. Because they think that the normal rules of civilization do not apply to them.
7. Because they think that everyone else is as dumb as they are.
8. Because they are so out of touch with the people that they don't even know that they're out of touch with the people.
9. Because they wouldn't care if they did know they're out of touch with the people.
10. Because they take nothing seriously and can't imagine why anyone else would.
- the Vanity Press
- John

Thursday, July 26, 2007

North American News is DEAD


Remember this? (I do)

Then there was this.

And now there's this.

North American MainStream News is DEAD.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Canadian journalism sucks or: WTF is with CanWest?

I'm getting so tired of the laziness of the mainstream media (MSM) in Canada. The following article is a mere example, but it show quite well the petty level of Canadian journalism today:

"[Stronach] echoed the disappointment voiced Friday by rock star Bono with the $60-billion G8 commitment to fight disease in Africa, saying it's just a reannouncement of prior commitments."
Well, so what is it? Is what Stronach says true, or not true? Why can't CanWest check this for me? Is it too hard for a journalist to find out if what's being said is actually the truth? In case it's true, the above could have read:
"[Stronach] echoed the disappointment voiced Friday by rock star Bono, because the $60-billion G8 commitment to fight disease in Africa was only a reannouncement of prior commitments.
MSM is so tiring....

Update: Some answers here
"I've never claimed it was new money," [Harper] said. "These are existing commitments. They were commitments for a 10-year period. We're not here to rewrite deals every single year."
- Wiktionary: journalism
  1. The activity or profession of being a journalist.
  2. The aggregating, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles for widespread distribution, typically in periodical print publications and broadcast news media, for the purpose of informing the audience.
  3. The style of writing characteristic of material in periodical print publications and broadcast news media, consisting of direct presentation of facts or events with an attempt to minimize analysis or interpretation.


Saturday, June 02, 2007

(audio) Why today's mainstream newspapers print an increasing amount of junk: Nancy Cleeland

From CounterSpin

A dispiriting sign of the times—yet another veteran, award-winning journalist leaving the field. Nancy Cleeland was a labour reporter (you've heard of that) at the Los Angeles Times; she wrote on a range of issues affecting working class people, even shared in a Pulitzer for a series on Wal-Mart. But, she says, the paper today just doesn't seem to care about stories about working people or the poor—no matter how critical those stories are. We'll hear from Nancy Cleeland.

Listen and Learn!



The interview with Nancy starts at 10:25.

- Fair - CounterSpin: Nancy Cleeland on leaving the L.A. Times
- Huffington Post: Nancy Cleeland Why I'm Leaving The L.A. Times
- Fair: Counterspin
- Wikipedia: CounterSpin