No crass bias
Childish opponents blow smoke over Sun TV News plan
Last Updated: September 11, 2010 2:00am
I arrived back in Canada last week to the sound of children misbehaving.
At least I assume they were children in that they acted like children and behaved in a childish manner. To be precise they were metaphorically stamping their feet and screaming and yelling because someone was preparing to challenge them.
The juveniles in question were various people who had signed a petition and got on board an American-backed initiative to try to prevent Sun TV News from making it to Canada’s airwaves.
I should declare a vested interest here. The organizers of the new network are my friends and I intend to play a role in making the station a first-class, professional, entertaining and informative television phenomenon. Unlike so much else that is on our screens in this country.
But that aside, I have my own TV show, a syndicated column, books and much else and am not beholden to anyone. Goodness, even my critics would acknowledge this.
I support Sun TV news because I believe not only in freedom of speech, but in diversity of speech. It’s why I also, for example, supported Al-Jazeera’s right to broadcast.
As the left have been telling moral conservatives in particular for decades now: “If you don’t like it, don’t watch.”
If it’s bad it will fail, if it’s absurdly one-sided it will lose most of the country. Simple as that, really.
What it certainly will do is provide jobs for people in media and, silly me, I assumed that the left supported increased employment and a broader communications industry.
In all fairness, many of them do — my friend Sid Ryan, one of the most important labour leaders in Canada, has the “bring-it-on” approach, the more argument and debate the better.
One figure who did not share this ideal appeared to be novelist Margaret Atwood, who signed the anti-Sun TV News petition.
An anecdote. When this exciting project was being discussed back in January one of the organizers said to me that the more opposition from the “usual suspects” the better. He then said — and as God is my witness this is true — “with any luck we’ll have Margaret Atwood coming out against us.” True, true, true.
Oh Peggy, Sun TV News couldn’t buy this kind of publicity and once again the left have shown their useful idiot qualities and displayed that combination of hypocrisy and misunderstanding of the popular will that has made them such electoral giants.
Every time another liberal type screams that this will be Fox North and that the right will dominate it and that it’s just not fair, the people in charge at Sun TV News open another bottle of their Bollinger Bolshevik and Champagne Socialist booze.
The station is going to happen. Just like the CBC it will have certain biases. Unlike the CBC it will not be as crass in displaying them and you won’t have to finance the people who make and present the shows.
The world is changing, comrades, and all opinions are now allowed. I know it’s frightening but, as I said earlier, we can’t be children forever and it’s now time to put away childish things and grow up.
Read Michael Coren’s blog at canoe.ca/corenscomment
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