Dan Gardner, the Media Party, and the Disintegration of Modern Journalism

Some Nexus readers may recall a Byline segment from early October wherein Brian Lilley commented on a segment of Canadian journalism he refers to as "the media party".

In the segment, Lilley actually names a few journalists he considers to be members of the media party. Chief among them is "author, journalist and lecturer" Dan Gardner.

Last night, Gardner witnessed Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney refer to unreported crime in explaining and defending the Conservative government's omnibus crime bill. Garner couldn't hold back his objection -- nor, necessarily, should he -- and took to Twitter to voice his objection.

Gardner, who Tweets under @DGardner decided to respond to Kenney's comments by first selectively citing data from the study, then by dismissing unreported crime as "trivial":

Your not-so-humble scribe couldn't resist the opportunity to ask Gardner a few questions about the assumptions he was making. Gardner's ultimate response was that he ultimately would not consider any other data points:

In other words, Gardner refused to talk about any weaknesses in the assumptions he was offering, or even any other information. If it was going to be discussed, it would have to be discussed with other people, because he won't.

There's good reason for this. The survey as a whole says far more than Gardner says it does, and the data points he himself is offering don't necessarily support his claims about it.

There are obvious problems with a response that begins and ends with "not important enough", and it has to do with the respondent's perception of the meaning of that phrase. The question of who the incident in question is perceived to be "not important enough to" is a very real question.

To blithely assume that this means that the victim of the crime in general didn't consider it important enough to report is to also assume that all respondents perceived the meaning of that phrase in a uniform manner. This would be a mistake.

When a response begins and ends with "not important enough", it's every bit as likely that the respondent could conclude that the crime in question was not important enough to the police as not important enough to them personally. In lieu of a better-defined response, either conclusion is equally likely, and it's much more reasonable -- and responsible -- to allow for the probability that those who submitted that response had either of these in mind. Some likely concluded the former, and some likely concluded the latter.

Yet to ask Dan Gardner if the conclusion he reached -- that this response indicates that most of Canada's unreported crime is trivial -- is reasonable considering the ambiguous nature of this data is apparently to precipitate a meltdown on his behalf. If last night's events are any indication, he simply can't cope with that idea.

To ask him about the second-ranked response -- "police could not do anything about it" -- is apparently to make it worse. Gardner's response was that this was a worthy point to be discussed, but that he personally wouldn't. (That the second-ranked response trailed the first-ranked response by less than ten percentage points apparently did nothing to boost the worthiness of this data point in Gardner's eyes.)

It becomes difficult to avoid reaching the conclusion that, in the canon of the far-left media, these are forbidden questions. "Does the data actually indicate what you're saying it does?" That question is forbidden. "Isn't the second-ranked response also worthy of consideration?" That question is also forbidden.

What seems to emerge, in Dan Gardner's case, is that of a man who has not embraced journalism as a means with which to provide people with information or even ideas. Rather, he's embraced the journalistic enterprise purely as a means of political advocacy. Nothing else.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that Gardner is simply a card-carrying member of the media party. The media party has an agenda, and in this case it's in preserving the soft-on-crime, hug-a-thug policies that they claim have reduced crime in Canada, but in reality have not. The Stats Can study itself states that in no uncertain terms -- victimization in Canada has remained stable.

In support of that agenda, Gardner sets out to turn public attention away from specific data points that do not support that agenda, and toward data points that seem to support it only if they go unexamined.

It's one thing to insist that Canadians aren't reporting specific crimes because they're "not important enough", whatever that might mean to the individuals who offered that response.

To insist that the unreported crimes are trivial is remarkably obtuse when one considers what those unreported crimes are:

Of the crimes unreported in Canada, the number one is break and enter. That is not a trivial crime. The second is motor vehicle or parts theft. That is not a trivial crime. The third is robbery. That is not a trivial crime. The fifth is physical assault. That is not a trivial crime.

The fourth was vandalism. That could be a trivial crime, but not necessarily. The sixth and seventh were theft, or personal property and household property respectively. That, too, could be a trivial crime, but not necessarily.

It's not up to Dan Gardner to decide if the unreported victimization of Canadians is trivial. It's up to each individual victim to decide that for themselves and admittedly, many of them might reach that conclusion. Many might not.

But this is how the media party operates: they assume that they speak for Canadians as a whole, then they pretend to.

In the end, Dan Gardner's impotent response to the questions he was asked was to label your not-so-humble scribe a "troll". Basically it amounts to an accusation that the questions over whether or not Gardner has given ample consideration to the meaning of the data points he offers is "inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic", as Wikipedia would have it.

The questions over whether or not Gardner is accurately interpreting the data offered by this survey are very clearly on-topic. It's simply a question that he considers forbidden: it's entirely reasonable to ask in the face of ambiguous data with a wide berth of potential meanings, but it seems to be Gardner's belief that no one is allowed to ask that question.

To this end, Dan Gardner is wrong. People have the right to ask these questions, and if Gardner, demanding merit in the public eye, refuses to discuss them, then it's he who has abandoned the lofty aspirations of journalism.

It's not what one would expect from a journalist. But it's precisely what one would expect from a member of the media party.

The Scandal Machine Backfires: Sask NDP Admits to Electioneering on Voting Day

When the NDP issued this press release, one can imagine the reaction they hoped to elicit was one of outrage.

Instead, they've drawn attention to what seems like a potential violation of Elections law. The press release, which claims that Saskatchewan Party staffers, including Deputy Chief of Staff to Premier Brad Wall Terri Harris, was issued on November 7, 2011. It claimed that the staffers had been spotted removing NDP door-hangers mere moments after they had been placed:

"The Sask Party operatives were removing NDP literature which helped the senior renters know where and when to vote, and offering rides to voters in the bad weather.

'I think she’s seen me,' said Rogochewsky upon being spotted by NDP team members, who had already noticed that literature seemed to be disappearing from doorknobs minutes after it was placed there."

The problem for the NDP is obvious. It's illegal to campaign on election day, and if they're in a seniors' apartment complex anywhere in the province hanging partisan material on door knobs, they're in violation of the elections act.

Certainly, it's awfully nice of them to offer rides to seniors. They can quite easily do that without leaving partisan material behind.

Any Saskatchewan Party staffers encountering the NDP leaving such material behind are certainly not obligated to allow the NDP to break the rules to the Saskatchewan Party's disadvantage. This is, of course, presuming that what the NDP claims is happening at all.

Considering that the NDP were already lying to the people of Saskatchewan before the writ was even dropped, they'll need some evidence. There's no reason to simply take their word for it.

When Does a Single Interview Cancellation Constitute a Ban?

The attention-hungry continue to falsely martyr themselves

There's no martyr like a self-made martyr. Over the last year, Canadians have seen far more self-made martyrs than anyone really needs.

Now Margie Gillis, Franke James and Brigette DePape have some strange company among them: Fog of War author Mark Bourrie.

According to Bourrie, he'd been scheduled to appear on Michael Coren's show on the Sun News Network. Later on, that interview was cancelled.

Quickly following the cancellation of his interview, Bourrie wrote a blog post for Ottawa magazine claiming he had been banned.

"Well, that’s it. I’m banned," Bourrie claimed. "I am lower than low, mere scrapings from the bottom of the dog walker’s boot. Yes, I’m not fit to be on the Sun News Network."

"My publicist booked me on Michael Coren’s show a couple of weeks ago. Last Wednesday, I got an e-mail saying the interview had been cancelled by Sun TV," Bourrie continued. "It wasn’t Coren or Coren’s producer who made the decision. Someone higher up had killed the booking and banned me from Sun TV."

The evidence Bourrie offers? Precisely none.

This author hasn't yet had access to Bourrie's book to give it a fair consideration of its merits. So your not-so-humble scribe won't automatically lump Mr Bourrie with mediocre self-made-martyrs like DePape, James or Gillis.

But Bourrie's martyrdom seems no less self-made.

Simply put, one interview cancellation does not a ban make. Bourrie's planned interview on Sun News could have been cancelled for any number of good reasons. Here's a very good one, and a very plausible one: perhaps the topic of episode on which Bourrie was scheduled to appear was changed.

This author doesn't know this to be the case. Nor does this author have any evidence to support it. However, under the evidence already offered -- Bourrie's complaint that his interview was cancelled -- this explanation is no more and no less plausible than Bourrie's.

The obvious difference is that Bourrie's explanation simultaneously lionizes himself while portraying himself as a victim. Bourrie's explanation unfortunately precludes any other possibility that doesn't require Sun News to be the bad guy of the story.

If Mark Bourrie wants to know what a real media ban looks like, this author has a story for him. Unfortunately for Bourrie, it doesn't make him out to be the martyr he seemingly wants to be so desperately, so he may not be interested.

LGR Advocates, You Have Some 'Splainin' To Do

Long gun registry not the life-saver they claim it is

With Canada's far-left scrambling to save the long gun registry by any means necessary, it seems the facts just aren't lining up to support their arguments.

When the Globe and Mail put crime data recently released by Stats Canada into a chart, the conclusions became unavoidable. Those who claim the long gun registry saves lives -- as former Liberal MP Mark Holland used to delight in doing -- have some serious explaining to do.

The chart reveals that the last time more long guns than hand guns were used in homicides was waaaaaay back in 1990. (The L'Ecole Polytechnique massacre happened the previous year.) The bill authorizing the long gun registry was passed in Parliament in 1995, and the registry itself was established in 1996.

There's good reason for this. As the numbers have it, murders involving long guns have been steadily declining in Canada since 1984 -- twelve years before the LGR ever existed. There were occasional spikes in homicides involving long guns, but the general trend has been a decline since 1984.

During the same period of time, murders involving handguns -- which the law has required to be registered since World War Two -- have remained stable.

This is very clearly a difficult question the champions of the LGR desperately need to answer. They have relentlessly attributed the reduction in homicides involving long guns to the registry. Yet not only does the decline pre-date the registry, the handgun registry has no noticeable effect.

It's clear that registration has not had the magical properties LGR advocates have attributed to it. They have some serious questions to answer, some serious explaining to do -- although previous experience with these individuals suggests they will simply decline.

There Is Something Deeply Wrong With Some of These People...

If you were to ask any of them to their face, the far-left in Canada are the champions of rainbows and puppydogs. Their leaders are all "inspirational", and their causes in the best interests of "99%".

But scratch the surface of some of these individuals, and what is left underneath is a complete lunatic. Stark, raving, mad. And brutish to the core.

For evidence one needs look no further than the individual who identifies himself as @HarrisAJackson. The "A" apparently stands for "Ace".

Okay then.

As it turns out, Ace is an advocate for the long gun registry. There's very little wrong with that, in and of itself. But how Ace deals with political defeat leaves a lot to be desired. He tweeted:

"Wonder how many hard core Cons will think deregulation of the long gun is a good idea, when they're [sic] son or daughter ends up dead? We can only hope its a conservative victim, since those with brains and national pride are fighting to keep it alive."

Ace subsequently insisted he didn't wish gun violence on anyone, but screencaps have the final say:

(Following several Tweets of this image directly to him, Ace still couldn't figure it out.)

Even while objecting that he hadn't wished gun violence on anyone, he literally couldn't stop. Couldn't help himself.

This issue has keenly focused the mania of individuals like our dear Ace. Irrational rage that would otherwise have thrashed helplessly across the Twitterverse is now brought to bear on this singular issue. For the first time, we can see just how disturbed these people are.

And Harris Ace Jackson is very disturbed indeed. The civilized approach to the issue of the long gun registry is -- whether one supports it or opposes it -- to wish for no gun violence. Ace has adopted a very different approach: he simply wishes the gun violence to be aimed at a very specific group of people.

It's sick. It's evil. It's reflective of someone crying out for help.

His LinkedIn profile identifies him as "Senior Analyst at UFO Investigator Citizen Reporter". He lives in the Vancouver area.

If you, or anyone you know, knows Harris Ace Jackson, reach out. Let him know about any mental health resources in his area, and urge him to seek help before he does something he may not be mentally healthy enough to regret.

Fuck It. Let Greece Burn

Greek leftism becoming a global parasite

Imagine, if you will, a close cousin or younger brother who just can't seem to live within his means.

Once a year, every year, he comes with his hand out, begging for a not-insubstantial amount of money to sustain his grandiose lifestyle.

After several years of indulging them, hoping they'll get their shit together, you finally decide enough is enough. You tell him that you'll only help him if he stops going to the pub every night, and drinking himself into a stupor while his bills go unpaid.

Stunned by the ultimatum, he instead tells you that he'll have to take a referendum of his barfly buddies before he's willing to make that kind of a commitment. Bankrolled by your generosity, he frequently buys rounds for the bar. They like that. One thing firmly in his favour is that he has a guarantor for all his bills, and that someone else will ultimately be on the hook if they go unpaid. From his point of view, his worst case scenario is that you and his other creditors go unpaid.

Substitute Greece for the bum in question and you have precisely what happened in Greece today. After the European Union worked tirelessly to come up with a bail out package and a stabilization plan for the Greek economy, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou told the EU that he and the people of Greece will have to think about it.

The Socialist Party has already declared the deal "dead".

So it's time for the EU to take a different approach: kick Greece out of the Eurozone and the European Union, direct their bailout package toward cutting the losses of Greece's creditors while they foreclose on every debt-backed piece of property or capital in Greece.

Enough is enough. It's time to let the far-left parasites in Greece burn in the economic fire they started. Far-left socialism, as it's manifested itself in Greek politics, has become a cancer on the global economy. It's time to excise the tumour.

Don't Circle the Wagons Now, Jimmy... Redux

The longer the Occupy movement -- spawned by Occupy Wall Street, and imitated and co-opted by now-countless others -- goes on, the more necessary the comparisons between it and the Tea Party become.

It's on this note that the Occupy movement has now reached two key milestones that were used by far-left antagonists to condemn the Tea Party.

The first is the participation in an Arizona Occupation rally of JT Ready, an infamous Arizona neo-Nazi. He brought his militia, the Arizona Border Guard, to Occupy Phoenix rally. More frighteningly, they came armed with AR-15 assault rifles.

Desperate to mitigate the damage, some contemporaries of the Occupy movement attempted to describe Ready's participation as a "counter-protest". Ready himself, as well as the Arizona Border Guard made themselves clear: they were there to -- in their words -- "use their second-amendment rights to protect the first-amendment rights of Occupy Phoenix".

Once one has it directly from the horse's mouth, one quickly becomes relieved that most of the participants at the Occupy Phoenix rally asked Ready and his militia to leave. Some, however, attempted to "reach out" to Ready, feeling a sense of socialist-to-socialist solidarity with Ready.

One elderly woman present was reported to have remarked "I kind of like socialism."

Okay then.

The other incident also involves an armed individual, but fortunately does not involve Nazis. A man was spotted at Occupy Atlanta with an AK-47 assault rifle, which prompted the city to order to crowd to disperse.

Some may remember the infamy of racebaitgate, in which MSNBC selectively edited footage from a Phoenix Tea Party event in order to portray a black man with an AR-15 assault rifle as a white man bent on assassinating the President for racial reasons.

(Contessa Brewer has since been dismissed from MSNBC. Dylan Ratigan, sadly, remains.)

Some may also remember a ThinkProgress video which fabricated evidence of Tea Party racism. Among them was a man proudly extolling his devotion to Nazism.

When the source video was identified, it was revealed that the video was actually of this man being chased out of a Tea Party rally. Think Progress shamelessly stood by the video despite the extent to which it was discredited.

Now, no one should expect Occupy Phoenix to physically chase armed militiamen away from their rally. The reasons are obvious.

But the mixture of armed individuals and a movement that promises to occupy public space over the long-term -- permanently, if need be -- is an alarming development, and should be alarming even to the most devoted Occupation enthusiasts.

Simply put, what started out as a laudably-peaceful protest is now taking on the vestiges of an actual armed occupation.

This is where the input of the aforementioned Occupation enthusiasts becomes so necessary.

Jim Parrot -- who by now needs no further introduction around these parts -- is as dedicated an Occupation enthusiast as they come. He even renamed his blog "Occupy Let Freedom Rain" at one point, likely until he finally realized he had always occupied that space.

He also previously promised that he won't circle the wagons to protect his own when they are wrong.

Having so deeply embraced the Occupation movement, he has made it his own. Perhaps he'll have something to say about this.

His previous forays into not circling the wagons were less than successful. But perhaps he'll do better this time.

Maybe. Just maybe.

No Explanation Required... Unless You've Confused the Issue

Religious belief that homosexuality is sinful not at odds with notion homosexuals shouldn't be bullied

The Toronto Star is reporting that Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale MP David Sweet is refusing to explain his participation in a recent "it gets better" YouTube video produced by John Baird.

This is as it should be. No explanation is required.

But for those obsessed with headhunting for Conservative MPs, Sweet's participation is as infuriating as Baird's. For a time, Baird was criticized for making the video while not being publicly fabulous enough. Baird refused to take the bait, so now the headhunters are on to their next target: David Sweet.

“For them to stand up and say, ‘It gets better, just hang in there kids,’ is so disrespectful and disingenuous and shows they’re out of touch with the community,” complained EGALE Canada executive director Helen Kennedy, who also complained the Tories aren't doing enough to satisfy the legislative demands of the LGBT community. “They actually have the power and authority and the responsibility to make it better. We’re talking about politicians who enact legislation, who bring in bills to the legislature, into the House of Commons to make a difference in everyone’s life and in particular in the case of our LGBT youth and the community in general and they’re not doing that.”

Of particular complaint has been Sweet's 2002 remarks that he believed homosexuality is a sin.

“Yes, absolutely,” Sweet agreed at the time. “We take the Scriptures as the word of God. We look at homosexual behaviour and say that’s not what’s prescribed in the Scripture.”

Some look at these comments, then look at Sweet's participation in an anti-bullying video, and suggest he has something to explain. They're absolutely wrong, on the most fundamental of logical pretenses.

Simply put, a religious belief that homosexuality is sinful -- a notion with which this author actually vociferously disagrees -- is not tantamount to a belief that homosexuals should be bullied. Nor is it at odds with a belief that homosexuals should not be bullied, because no one should be bullied.

The attitude adopted by those who believe Sweet has anything to explain seem to presume that Christians have some kind of moral duty to condemn anyone who sins on an existential basis. While some extreme religious sects seem to believe this to be the case, for the average Christian it isn't so.

Rather, Jesus Christ mandated that sinners are to be treated with compassion. So if one believes that homosexuality is sinful -- again, this author vehemently does not -- one's moral duty as a Christian is to offer them compassion and guidance.

Your not-so-humble scribe would posit that David Sweet is wrong about homosexuality. It doesn't disqualify him from speaking out against homophobic bullying, just as John Baird isn't disqualified for not being "out" enough.

If Helen Kennedy and her compatriots can't wrap their heads around that idea, that's their problem, not David Sweet's. Vis a vis his participation in the "it gets better" video, Sweet has nothing to explain, and so should explain nothing.

Canadian White Board: Still Making Up the Rules As They Go Along

CWB determined to maintain its own power, no matter what

The farce perpetually surrounding the Canadian Wheat Board has reached an impressive new high in

"This Harper government has acted illegally and unethically in its attacks on the Canadian Wheat Board and it must be stopped," declared Canadian Wheat Board chairman Allen Oberg. "We have no choice but to take this stand on behalf of farmers. We will not be intimidated by bullying tactics."

A Wheat Board chairman lecturing anyone on bullying is itself a spectacle in unintentional comedy. It was, after all, the Wheat Board that had farmers jailed for daring to demand the right to market their own grain. But what's most remarkable about this most recent episode is the extent to which the CWB is willing to go in order to make up the rules as it goes along.

In 2007, the Wheat Board won a challenge against an attempt by the federal government to remove the Board's monopoly on barley marketing by claiming that any change to the board had to made through an act of Parliament.

Now, the board is claiming that the changes can only be made following a plebiscite among grain farmers. A plebiscite not unlike, say, the one held in 2007 when farmers voted to eliminate the CWB's barley monopoly.

The CWB itself has already shown that it's opinion is that the results of any plebiscite don't matter, and that it could act however it pleased. Now that the government is poised to ignore the results of a plebiscite the CWB set up to support the maintenance its own tyrannical powers, it suddenly insists that the will of farmers must be respected.

In order to do this, they're willing to go back on the legal arguments they've already offered, and insist that it really should be left up to farmers. Unless farmers want something the board doesn't want. In which case, the will of farmers should be ignored.

The Wheat Board has already cast its die on this matter: they cast it in 2007. It's time for a Canadian court to stand up and finally make the CWB play by the rules as they are, not the rules it desperately wants to make up as it goes along.