Friday, June 26, 2009

Special Report: CBC Issues On-Air Clarification After HRC Complaint

 
            
 
 Special Report: CBC Issues On-Air Clarification After HRC Complaint  June 26, 2009
 
  By: Mike Fegelman, Executive Director

Click Here to View this Article Online and Discuss on Headlines and Deadlines
 
Dear HonestReporting Canada Subscriber,

Nobody likes watching a talking head read news script for hours on end. With this in mind, broadcasters feature graphics and roll stock footage in the background of a news anchors report to better illustrate what is being said. This footage aims to either reinforce the story's narrative or to expand on it with the relevant visuals to captivate and inform the viewer.
 
But sometimes what you see in the background of a news report is not actually as it should be.

Case in point: a recent CBC Newsworld report on Sunday June 14 discussed Hamas' 2nd anniversary where it violently wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah. CBC host Danielle Bochove stated the following:
"Whatever the Israeli Prime Minister says today he will have to address the issue of Hamas. The militant Palestinian group is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and today marks the 2nd anniversary of Hamas taking over Gaza. It was a violent power struggle between the radical Hamas and the more centrist political party Fatah. Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian territories, but voters also selected rival Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian President. The result is now a split between Gaza and the West Bank, with Gaza remaining under Hamas rule and the West Bank under the rule of Fatah."
Our concerns did not stem from what Ms. Bochove said, but rather from the background file footage that CBC staff used to illustrate this news story about the Palestinian civil war which began in earnest in 2006. With respect to this report, we would have expected to have seen file footage of either Palestinians at polling stations or stock footage of the intra-Palestinian blood feud between Fatah and Hamas, but instead, for some unknown reason, CBC staff decided to show footage of Israeli tanks, helicopters, armoured personnel carriers, and Israeli homes and citizens during Israel's war with Hamas in January 2009. These images had nothing to do with Hamas' "2nd anniversary" and instead painted a picture that could be falsely interpreted as Israel, in some way or another, playing a role in either Hamas' violent coup or in interfering with the Palestinian domestic legislative elections.

To view the full report please click here or on the image below:

               

Considering the severity of this error and the implications that it posed, we immediately brought our concerns to the attention of senior editors at CBC who commendably issued a prompt on-air clarification to remedy this error. We are also pleased to inform HRC members that senior CBC editors have reviewed procedures with their writers who we trust are now sensitized to our concerns.

To view the on-air clarification that was aired on Sunday June 21 please click here or on the image below:

                                             

Here is the transcript of the 30-second clarification: "Now a clarification about a story we told you about last week. Last Sunday on this program, we told you about the 2nd anniversary of the Hamas takeover of Gaza. In that report, we showed old video of Israeli military videos and aircraft firing missiles – those pictures were shown in error. The video was from another conflict, not the struggle between Hamas and its rival Fatah. Israeli forces were not involved in the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. We apologize for the mistake."

While we applaud the CBC for setting the record straight with this clarification and apology as a means of remedying  their original error, notwithstanding, many CBC viewers who saw the original report did not see this clarification and continue to be misled in believing that Israel had played a role in Hamas' coup d'état. Such is the importance of the media getting it right in the first place. Let this be a lesson for us all – remember to always keep a keen and critical eye on what you are seeing.
 
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VIDEO:Canada Human Rights

VIDEO of CTV PowerPlay Canada Human? Rights Commission?

Iranian S-Elections?

Evolution / Intelligent Design

Legitimate Questions Should Be Discussed

I am reminded of how established "science" has been wrong many times before such as in the case of Piltdown man. So could it be wrong now? Or has it been perfected? Should not reasonable arguments be considered?

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.

Educational Purposes Only

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We do not necessarily agree with all links posted here but we include them to bring balance to an unbalanced media.