Canada For Truth: 2008: A Year in Review

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

2008: A Year in Review

2008: A Year in Review

December 24, 2008

Dear HonestReporting Canada subscriber:

As the 2008 calendar year comes to a close, we appeal to our devoted friends to make a generous contribution to HonestReporting Canada in support of our 2009 Campaign.

For the last five years, we have depended on the good will and generosity of concerned individuals like you who help us to combat anti-Israel media bias worldwide. Especially in this upcoming year, as many are cutting back their charitable giving due to the economic downturn, we must broaden our base of support.

The battle for public opinion is key for Israel and one in which HRC, working hand-in-hand with informed, committed people like you, is making a difference. Please help us raise $100,000 for our critical year end campaign by clicking here and making your donation now.

As a reader of our media action alerts, you are well aware of the profound impact that HRC has had this past year. For a more detailed review of our efforts in 2008, please see our special 2008: Year in Review below.

2008: Canadian Media Bias Against Israel

January: The Toronto Star Gives Fuel to Hamas Propaganda Machine

As the mainstream media were manipulated by Hamas spin doctors in exaggerating a humanitarian

crisis in Gaza, The Toronto Star was just one of those media outlets duped into fueling the Hamas propaganda machine.

Mideast bureau chief Oakland Ross gave a platform for Hamas extremism by reporting that: "A Hamas representative said yesterday that five patients died over the weekend in Gaza hospitals because of the latest fuel embargo," only there was no evidence to confirm the veracity of this allegation.

After HonestReporting Canada intervened, The Toronto Star issued a clarification in a follow-up report exonerating any Israeli culpability by noting that "five people died in their homes, for one reason or another, and were dead on arrival at the main hospital in Gaza City, but there was no evidence that the power shutdown played any role in their deaths."

February: Globe and Mail Paints Hamas as Pragmatic Peaceniks

The Globe and Mail, Canada's "paper of record," bought into false notions that Hamas had evolved into pragmatic peaceniks who advocated "non-violent resistance."

As there was no tangible evidence to support claims that Hamas had shed a new skin towards non-violence, we asked our readers to urge Globe and Mail editors to promptly clarify these false misconceptions. Within a matter of hours, hundreds of letters were dispatched sensitizing The Globe and Mail towards the need for fair and accurate reporting.

March: HonestReporting Canada Helps Secure Excalibur Apology

We broke the news that a York University campus newspaper, The Excalibur, had featured an opinion piece that justified the deadly terrorist attack at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Along with other concerned organizations, HonestReporting Canada condemned the publication of a column endorsing the murder of innocent children and asked the paper to issue an apology in the next edition. Within a week, the campus newspaper did just that and issued a formal printed apology.

April: HRC Launches Montreal Office & French Monitoring Unit

April was another busy month for HRC. While launching our Montreal office and expanding our media monitoring efforts to include French-language Canadian media coverage of Israel, we secured important retractions from Le Journal de Montreal and Agence France-Presse, while securing an on-air correction on CBC-TV.

May: Montreal Gazette Editor-in-Chief Admits Israel Rally Story "Missed the Mark"

A Montreal Gazette article about a pro-Israel rally in Montreal marking the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel "Missed the Mark" according to the Gazette's Editor-in-Chief.

The article which focused on an isolated incident where a youth picked up the Quebec flag and discarded it in exchange for the flag of Israel, took on a surprisingly negative tone in what should have been a straight forward article on the joyous and historic celebration of Israel at 60.

We encouraged our members to voice their concerns regarding The Gazette's coverage of the rally and within a matter of days, Gazette Editor-in-Chief Andrew Phillips acknowledged that their reporter's story had "Missed the Mark" and had stumbled at both the reporting and editorial levels.

June: HRC Launches "Insider's Briefing" Series

In our inaugural "Insider's Briefing" Paul Agoston, HRC Assistant Director in Montreal, sat down with Agence France-Presse Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Patrick Anidjar, for an insider's perspective on the Middle East and reporting in the region.

July: Media Monitor Reaches 20,000 Member Milestone

We announced the growth of our subscriber base to a remarkable 20,000 members from across Canada.

Our members, who act as "media patrollers," monitor local media outlets and notify HonestReporting Canada of lapses in accuracy or fairness, while complaining directly to the news outlet involved.

August: An Unforgivable Error and a Dismal "On-Air" Correction at City TV

After CityTV International carried a report which left viewers with the false impression that Israeli soldiers had killed 11 pro-Palestinian protestors, we complained to CityTV who in a subsequent edition of the program issued a correction to clarify that "11 people (were) hurt, not killed… in West Bank clashes."

September: CBC Critically Examines Israel's Enemies

When our public broadcaster, the CBC, went beyond Mideast "conventional wisdom" and featured critical reporting on the Iranian nuclear threat and on the dangers of Hamas' rule in Gaza, we felt that it was important to pause, take note, and expose excellence when it was deserving.

We encouraged our members to recognize the CBC's excellent reporting and had several hundred of our members send articulate letters commending the CBC.

October: Radio-Canada Wrong in Airing Pro-Palestinian Propaganda Film

On October 23, Radio-Canada, the French arm of the CBC, aired the pro-Palestinian propaganda film "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land" on its documentary film program "Les grands reportages." By airing a film rife with false premises, serious omissions, and unfounded malicious allegations, the network not only misinformed Canadians about the politics and history of the Middle East, it also breached its own journalistic standards and practices by airing a one-sided partisan polemic bent on vilifying a fellow democracy, the state of Israel.

After mobilizing hundreds of people to complain en masse, Radio-Canada acknowledged that the documentary was "clearly pro-Palestinian" and said that it would broadcast an additional film "offering other viewpoints on Israel and Gaza" in the future. Subsequently, Radio-Canada's ombudsman validated our objections noting that the film "shouldn't have been broadcast" in the first place.

November: HRC Conducts Media Bias Workshop at Concordia University

On November 5th, HonestReporting Canada was invited to speak at Concordia University in Montreal. HRC Executive Director, Mike Fegelman, addressed a political science and communications class, teaching a diverse group of students from varying backgrounds about the many impediments that exist which prevent fair and accurate media coverage of the Middle East.

December: HRC Refutes "Massacre" Claim in the Toronto Star

Toronto Star reporter Oakland Ross (pictured right) drudged up the old canard that Israel had committed a "massacre" in Jenin in 2002, thereby engaging in a cynical form

of historical revisionism.

After bringing our concerns to the attention of the Star's editors, they agreed that the report had lacked context. A letter submitted by HRC was printed in a subsequent edition of the Star in a means to rectify the situation.

HonestReporting.ca

Thank you for your commitment to fair and accurate media coverage of Israel

Please send contributions by cheque to:

HonestReporting Canada

PO Box 6, Station Q

Toronto, Ontario M4T 2L7

(416) 915-9157

You are currently subscribed to honestreportingcanada as: pressing4truth.canada@blogger.com
To unsubscribe click here
or send a blank email to leave-8775521-30846861.70055780e4c7785a46ecfd4be95feb9c@pr1.netatlantic.com

No comments:

We have become a nation of beggars

Terence Corcoran reports in the National Post on Friday, January 16, 2009 that the STIMULUS everyone is yelling for may only work over a short period and may actually MAKE THE ECONOMY WORSE over longer periods.

[Read the article below for the researchers who studied this phenomenon.]

POINTS

- "What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?"

- Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

-One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

-A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

-Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

- What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

The whole article by Terrance Corcoran follows:

Are you "shovel-ready," poised to hit the ground running, or merely desperate for cheap cash to get through the recession? If so, here's your last chance to apply to Ottawa for a piece of the massive government spending-bailout-infrastructure-stimulus operation now being prepared for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's Jan. 27 budget extravaganza.

To get you going, the National Post has created an all-purpose Stimulus Canada application document. Simply make sure your company/institution fills out the form here to get in on the action.

We're just kidding, of course, or at least we were until our satirical Stimulus Canada General Application Form was mugged by reality, which is rapidly turning out to be funnier than the fanciful idea of a government department called Stimulus Canada. To all intents and purposes, Stimulus Canada already exists.

Government money to flow, the taps are opening, deficits are no problem. The spending, as Stephen Harper said after a meeting with the premiers on Friday, will be "very significant" and there will be "very significant deficits." That could mean new spending of $20-billion and deficits of $40-billion.

Industry groups, corporate opportunists, charities, municipal politicians, arts groups, provincial premiers, tech firms, mining companies, forestry operators, banks, money lenders -- in fact, just about everybody has come forward to get in on Canada's portion of what is turning out to be a mad global government stimulus pandemic.

Each claims to have a plan or an idea that they say would produce jobs, spending, investment and activity that would get Canada through the recession and stimulate the economy.

At some point, though, the clamour of claims and calls becomes absurd, and that point looks to have been crossed the other day in the United States when porn merchant Larry Flint said the U.S. sex industry was falling on hard times, business was down 25%, and it needed a $5-billion slice of the $1.2-billion U.S. stimulus program.

And why not?

Mr. Flint has a point. It is not totally illogical for anyone to think that way. If you spend a dollar somewhere -- whether building a bridge or operating a forest company or buying a car -- it generates activity. And, after all, it's a grand old economic theory, created by John Maynard Keynes, that spending, especially government spending, rolls through the economy on a giant multiplier, piling jobs on jobs, growth on growth.

Except for one problem: What if it's not true? What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?

The Prime Minister, in his comments on Friday, seemed to be riding right into the barnyard. He said the government would be simply "borrowing money that is not being used" and "that business is afraid to invest." By borrowing that money, and turning it over to all the groups and interests looking for part of the stimulus spending, he would be jump-starting activity while the private sector got its legs back.

Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

Two other studies point in the same direction. A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

Over at Stimulus Canada, Mr. Harper's plan looks somewhat more modest and Canada is not in the same fiscal fix as the United States. But Ottawa and the provinces are clearly ready to borrow big wads of money from the future to stimulate the economy today. It's money that is supposedly sitting out there in the timid hands of investors who will be repaid with tax dollars later.

But if that stimulus spending does not generate much fresh economic growth, and the borrowing chews up money that private investors could invest in the future, the shovel-ready brigades who get the cash today will produce only short term gains at the expense of the long term health of the economy.

Canada For Truth

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

2008: A Year in Review

No comments:

VIDEO:Canada Human Rights

Iranian S-Elections?

Evolution / Intelligent Design

We have become a nation of beggars

Educational Purposes Only