Hey Canada: How much do you want your media to suck?

Cuz a few of our elected reps are really really into it.

Two big-ticket news items I've been foolishly sitting on while the east absolutely exploded are from right here at home, and they both have two things in common:

1) The CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) is behind them

2) They're both fucking terrifying.

so this is what the enemy looks like.

CRTC Nightmare the First: Internet Metering
The situation is this: while you were sleeping, going to work, and watching the game, major telecoms now have the right to charge you for -over-using the internet-. This makes per-byte billing for your home internet usage possible the same way we get gouged on smartphone data plans. It also makes any attempt at net neutrality (something that I think is as fundamental in this day and age as non-digital liberty, dag nabbit) basically unreachable.

Practically, this is what it looks like: loading data-intensive pages, streaming ANYTHING, listening to music, videos, or downloads of any kind, will get exorbitantly expensive. Because it's expensive, the internet will become more of the same sort of playing field as meatworld is now--where people with money get access to things that poor people can't.

You can't hear me, but I'm spitting in disgust by my shoes right now.

CRTC Nightmare the Second: Always At War with EastAsia.

While we were sleeping, watching the game and working like good polite little Canadians, the CRTC recently amended their broadcasting regulations to make it okay edit: EASIER to claim ignorance while broadcasting false or misleading news. (Thanks for keepin' me honest, Darryl)

What. 

The Harper government for the great and glorious 52nd state is already prepping for Fox News North; this is really just the first logical step.

I need to throw up now, but if this makes you angry/frightened/both, there's plenty you can do.



While I'm puking, feel free to make noise about this. Might be the last time we feel free in the media for a while.

Fox "News" Skews truth to Avoid the Blues about Climate Change and Health Care

Or: Fox Management requires journalists to abandon sense, and instead mindrape their audiences.

That thud you heard was my forehead, hitting my desk.

A Fox News managing editor (one Mr. Bill Sammon) sent an email mere hours before the Copenhagen Climate Summit demanding that every time climate change was mentioned, reporters IMMEDIATELY said something to cast doubt on the veracity of global warming. From the Media Matters exposé:

"In addition to the email, it said Fox had tried to delegitimise the work of climate scientists in its coverage of the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia. The network had displayed a pattern of trying to skew coverage in favour of the fringe minority which doubts the existence of climate change, Media Matters said."

The email reads: "We should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."

It goes on to say: "It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies."

...it's not your place as journalists to assert SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN FACTS as facts?!

I think I just threw up a little.

They were also at it in 2009 over the health care debate!

"At the height of the health care reform debate last fall, Bill Sammon, Fox News' controversial Washington managing editor, sent a memo directing his network's journalists not to use the phrase 'public option.'

Instead, Sammon wrote, Fox's reporters should use "government option" and similar phrases -- wording that a top Republican pollster had recommended in order to turn public opinion against the Democrats' reform efforts."

I mistakenly laboured under the impression that Fox News hired ready-made right-wingers--I never thought the management actually manufactured them.

If this is the state of First-Amendment-Protected news organizations, doesn't this make Wikileaks that much more important?