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A Good Reason to Boycott 'The Star'


DEFCON

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3 minutes ago, Airband said:

because they provided a opportunity for someone to express an opinion that might disagree with your own?

No.  They should be boycotted because they give a platform and therefore legitimacy to intellectually dishonest SJWs.

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Perhaps this so called contributing Star writer should interview some surviving WWII vets who fought for all of our freedoms. They would have some real horror stories to relate but I'm sure not one would want to see the CNE Airshow cancelled.

Also, all these events bring in loads of people and their money to the city of Toronto. Indy, CNE, TIFF, Caribana, etc.

Give me a break. 

 

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20 minutes ago, Airband said:

Yeah, 'freedom of speech'. Silly I know, but I'm kind of drawn to it.

I think we're all on the "freedom of speech" bandwagon. However this writer helped organize a picnic and show people how to use some networking apps so I guess this entitles him to tell us what's what. 

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22 minutes ago, Airband said:

Yeah, 'freedom of speech'. Silly I know, but I'm kind of drawn to it.

That's a false equivalency - boycotting The Star is not the same as being against freedom of speech.  The article is full of assumptions, exaggerations, false dichotomies, etc, etc.  It's intellectually dishonest. 

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1 hour ago, seeker said:

That's a false equivalency - boycotting The Star is not the same as being against freedom of speech.  The article is full of assumptions, exaggerations, false dichotomies, etc, etc.  It's intellectually dishonest. 

It's still a point of view that you don't happen to agree with. I do know people who come from parts of the world where bombing was a daily occurrence, and they do object to the air show. I don't happen to object, but I am willing to at least read or listen to views I don't share.

As for boycotting the Star, if Devcon is actually a subscriber, I'll be shocked. In my mind, he's more likely to get 90% of his news from Ezra Levant and maybe 10% from the National Post, but only from Lawrence Solomon and Lorne Gunter columns (which I read, if only to see what the other one-third thinks).

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I source information from a lot of places, which is how I came across the piece I posted.

Dogger would have you believe that media sources that present 'factual' information such as Ezra Levant and his crew over at the Rebel are somehow misleading us.   

Is rational debate even possible with a man that would enjoin with maybe a third of the overall population to support a part time high school drama teacher's ascension to the highest office in the land?

 

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1 minute ago, DEFCON said:

 

Is rational debate even possible with a man that would enjoin with maybe a third of the overall population to support a part time high school drama teacher's ascension to the highest office in the land?

 

Short answer "no".

Dogger gets all his info from Pravda Today I believe, an indisputable source of the truth. 

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It's refreshing to see that the University of Chicago has decided it's time to reverse the PC trend that favours, empowers & fosters cry babies on university campuses; the PC movement has apparently become so overbearing that even stand-up comics like Bill Maher now avoid on campus gigs.

 

 

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2 hours ago, DEFCON said:

I source information from a lot of places, which is how I came across the piece I posted.

Dogger would have you believe that media sources that present 'factual' information such as Ezra Levant and his crew over at the Rebel are somehow misleading us.   

Is rational debate even possible with a man that would enjoin with maybe a third of the overall population to support a part time high school drama teacher's ascension to the highest office in the land?

 

2 hours ago, mo32a said:

Short answer "no".

Dogger gets all his info from Pravda Today I believe, an indisputable source of the truth. 

 

First, let's note that it is only you guys foreclosing on debate. & Defcon - Your sourcing for some of the stuff you've put up on this forum is not beyond reproach.

Your nomination of Ezra Levant et al as "media sources tht present factual information" is risible. No other way to characterize it. Stretching my toleration of reprehensible but 'free' speech, the politest thing I could say is that Levant is a happy and boisterous, hyper-partisan right-wing warrior. Purveyor of un-biased "fact"? Absolutely laugh-out-loud-able.

Debating ideas requires a degree of respect for ones interlocutors that is utterly absent from Levant's diatribes. With respect, you might try to search out some more non-partisan commenters.

On point, here's a commentary about just one of Levant's 'presentations' (& lest you immediately conclude without evidence that the Bruce Anderson is some sort of lefty idiot, find a "lefty idiot's" appraisal :P -  http://www.canadalandshow.com/what-i-learned-being-focus-group-led-bruce-anderson/ ):

Quote

When I was about 10, living in Valleyfield, Que., I delivered the Montreal Gazette and the Montreal Star, riding a bike in the summer and pulling a toboggan in the winter.

My dad, although he never finished high school, loved reading about world affairs and brought us up to share his keen interest in news and politics. Every day, when I finished my routes, I’d read about hockey and baseball and then turn to columnists Charles Lynch and Douglas Fisher.

I dreamt that once my first career as an astronaut was concluded, I would try my hand at what Lynch and Fisher did: describe our national politics in words that drew readers in and left them feeling better for having invested the time.

So while neither of those career paths panned out, when The Globe recently asked me to provide a weekly column through the next election, I couldn’t say no.

Before getting into this week’s topic, I want to repeat a disclosure I’ve noted before. In the past, I’ve worked for Conservative and Liberal politicians but have not done partisan work for years, and won’t. Close family members have been active in senior roles in Conservative and Reform campaigns, and one of my daughters currently works in Justin Trudeau’s office.

Earlier this week, I was thinking about why I loved the journalism of Lynch and Fisher when I found myself clicking on a news story and watching Ezra Levant’s recent Sun TV commentary about Justin Trudeau.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a link. It should be required viewing in journalism schools.

The piece was a mess of invective and poor taste, including assertions that Mr. Trudeau’s father was slutty and his mother promiscuous.

This prompted Justin Trudeau to take an unusual step. He advised Quebecor, the owner of Sun Media, that he wouldn’t deal with Sun journalists until the company took appropriate action.

In turn, this has sparked a debate about whether Mr. Trudeau was right or wrong to take the action he did, whether it was clever or inept strategy, whether he was trying to bully or muzzle professional journalists, or just playing into the hands of his tormentors at Sun News.

There are plenty of people capable and willing to make the case for journalistic access, and there are worthy arguments to make.

Without in any way dismissing those arguments, I’m drawn to thinking what this might feel like from the politician’s point of view.

First off, if a competing politician uttered the things that Mr. Levant said about Justin Trudeau, we would expect an apology or a resignation, or both. If we wouldn’t tolerate such shameful behavior among political competitors, what would it say about how low we are willing to see media standards fall, if there were no consequences.

Second, maybe someone can explain why any of us should have to answer to anyone for the sexual habits of our parents. I’ve never heard a voter in a focus group say “I’d vote for candidate x, if his or her parents had been more sexually conservative.”

Even if you could get past the scummy irrelevancy of the assault on Mr. Trudeau and his parents, there are huge issues of accuracy in his piece. Watch Mr. Levant’s description of events, and then read the account of how the groom’s father saw the same moments. I suppose it’s possible that the father of the groom was lying, but I think another explanation seems more likely.

It’s unsettling how much time has been spent talking about the wisdom of Mr. Trudeau’s response than the integrity of Mr. Levant’s attack. What Mr. Levant did is an embarrassment to journalists, and to those in conservative politics that he is normally aligned with.

From my standpoint, Mr. Trudeau took a reasonable position, holding the publisher to account and using what leverage he can muster. His goal seems not to end or disrupt or manipulate media relations in a permanent or pervasive way, but to say this isn’t normal and it shouldn’t be treated as such.

When people in politics get attacked like this, one choice is to shrug it off and say, hey, get a thicker skin, roll with the punches, accept that these are the rules of the road.

Then years later, we can feel dismay at the sorry tone of our civic life, or wonder why few good people are willing to run for office.

Alternatively, we can recognize that if we see something that simply isn’t right and let it pass, we’re partly to blame for a drift to the bottom.

I fielded one call from a conservative who said that Mr. Trudeau was taking the coward’s way out by refusing to engage with Sun. I tried hard to understand that logic.

But in the end I couldn’t help but think that cowardice in that situation is doing nothing to defend your honour, and that of your parents.

I certainly get the need to protect professional journalism. But this week anyway, it needs more protection against what Ezra Levant would do to it, than what Justin Trudeau would. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/justin-trudeau-was-justified-to-block-sun-for-ezra-levants-comments/article20799994/

Cheers, IFG :b:

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I read the posts in this thread....and then read them again. I noted the intentional misspelling of the names of usual posters.

Why the insults and disparagging remarks? You are all reasonably intelligent people. Can you not acknowledge that reasonable people can reasonably disagree?

Start the conversation with the question ; "Why do we have air shows involving the use of military aircraft engaging in aerial manoevers?"

Some may think this is a great idea to venerate generations gone by who flew similar aircraft on combat missions. Others see this as a commercial venture. And....there are others who consider such exhibitions to be intrusive and unreasonable.

With a deep breath and quiet contemplation, surely you can all see the rationale in the arguments of either side and engage in a reasoned exchange of opinion......without the need for insult.

Isn't that the purpose of this forum......the free exchange of ideas without rancour?

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15 hours ago, seeker said:

Could not agree more - hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend.

It's about time common sense returns. Society has been under the cloud of PC and SJW's for far too long! An entire generation has been lost to this crap.

15 hours ago, seeker said:

 

 

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/ito/files/acceptance_letter.jpg

 

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Hello IFG

Unfortunately, the Levant story in question is no longer available, but I'll give the complainants the benefit of doubt; Levant got the facts wrong and reported incorrectly. I'd like to know what prompted Levant as the issue itself seems kind of innocuous and non-news worthy in the first place?

I'm not a subscriber, but from time to time I receive Rebel clips via the net from different acquaintances; Ezra is only one of several fine reporters that work for the group. Generally speaking, I appreciate the Rebel because it reports on subject matter that is of interest / concern to me and from a perspective that admittedly appeals to me.

Bruce Anderson does fine work I'm sure, but like 'all' media presenters, he is compelled by a personal and even professional ideology that is shared by his audience; it's the quest for public favour that leads to mistakes that can be damning; Dan Rather comes to mind. Reporters are all human after-all and in the highly competitive media game, I'll bet if we were to dig we'd come up with evidence of mistakes being made along the way by all the greats.

I'm going to forgive Ezra.

 

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Ezra Levant has been sanctioned in the past for libel...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/judge-orders-ezra-levant-to-pay-saskatchewan-lawyer-80000-in-defamation-suit/article21824295/

An Ontario Superior Court judge has delivered a stinging rebuke of Ezra Levant, declaring as part of an $80,000 libel judgment that the Sun Media personality displayed “reckless disregard for the truth” and “took little or no responsibility for the accuracy” of certain statements he published on his personal blog.

Finding that Levant acted with malice in his coverage of a 2008 British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, Justice Wendy Matheson said “he did little or no fact-checking regarding the posts complained of, either before or after their publication. Nor did he accurately report what was taking place at the hearing. And, with one exception, when he learned that he got his facts wrong, he made no corrections.”

 

And it doesn't take much searching to come up with other examples of his lack of journalistic integrity.

 

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Is it a weird form of irony, or just blinders, but it's pretty hard to miss an obvious pattern; a number of you stand prepared & ready to react and respond when any personality with a tilt to the Right screws up, but when it comes to players like Hilary, you become blind deaf - mutes?

 

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14 minutes ago, DEFCON said:

Is it a weird form of irony, or just blinders, but it's pretty hard to miss an obvious pattern; a number of you stand prepared & ready to react and respond when any personality with a tilt to the Right screws up, but when it comes to players like Hilary, you become blind deaf - mutes?

 

Hey!  No Hilary in this thread!  (No Trump either).

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