Friday, September 29, 2006

This Just In: Kimveer Gill Loved Megadeth, Megadeth Evil

CBC mischaracterizes Megadeth frontman's comments

Almost immediately following the September 13 Dawson College shooting, the media started focusing on gunman Kimveer Gill's adoption of the gothic subculture.

Evidently, Kimveer Gill was also a big fan of Megadeth, and especially the song "A Toute La Monde", a french-language song which he claimed convinced him to finally go on his shooting spree in Montreal.

"The guy who went to Dawson College and shot everyone, it's terrible," Mustane announced at a recent Montreal concert (where, as usual, they played A "Toute La Monde" -- it's become something of a Montreal/Megadeth tradition).

"Aside from the fact that what he did was very wrong, we have a relationship with Montreal, and that really pissed us off," he added. "That guy was not worthy of being a Megadeth fan."

Yet, for some reason, the CBC recently ran the story under the headline "Megadeth defends music Dawson College gunman loved." But judging by Mustane's own words, perhaps a better headline would have been, "Megadeth to gunman: "fuck you"."

Interestingly, Gill also pictured himself wearing a Kane mask (Kane, of course, being a current WWE superstar). Perhaps Glenn Jacobs can be accused of "defending the wrestler gunman loved".

So, it seems that whether the CBC is putting an editorial slant on "news" stories through headlines, putting an editorial slant on "news" stories by mixing and matching questions and answers (by the way, Christina Lewand, please meet me at footnote number one), or banning dissenting columnists from the people's network, the CBC seems to be entirely comfortable with setting a new low standard for Canadian journalism.

Given that the Canadian tax payer is paying for this little exercise in embarrassment, perhaps it is time for the Canadian public to be a good deal less comfortable with this.

1.)OK, Christina. What were you thinking? Sure, you must have thought you were pretty sly, with that whole violating journalistic ethics and matching Stephen Harper's answers to the wrong question thing. But you had to have known that press conference was also being broadcast on CTV. So, you got busted.

Stupid. Real stupid. Look, Christine, if you're going to not like Stephen Harper, that's fine. But be honest while you're doing it. What you did was basically a form of lying. Not a good road for a journalist to be travelling.

For most journalists, being caught doing something like this would be throwing your career away. Fortunately for yourself, you work for CBC.