Media
CBC and others refuse to stop committing unmarked crimes against journalism
Plus! How media granted celebrity status to an obscure candidate, CTV’s shocking decision to declare Israel guilty of genocide and did Lee get Spiked by the NFL?
It doesn’t matter how many times newsroom managers and others try to correct the record, oodles of journalists continue to bungle reporting on claims of unmarked graves adjacent to Indian Residential Schools.
Controversy has surrounded claims of this nature since they were first made in 2021 in connection with the residential school in Kamloops. This stems from the fact that, despite considerable federal financial assistance, no excavations have taken place and no bodies have been discovered.
There was no mention of that in this report by Global News, this one by a federally-funded reporter at the Coast Reporter or this one by Black Press’s Northern View in Prince Rupert.
Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach wrote in their seminal book, Elements of Journalism, that reporters’ first obligation is to truth and that their primary loyalty should be to the citizen/reader. The stories I have highlighted fail on both counts by avoiding giving readers all the information and context available.
Canadian Press also dodged mentioning the lack of bodies, but did offer a more thorough report that reminded readers the shíshálh had said in 2023 that drawing conclusions based solely on ground-penetrating radar would be inaccurate and inconclusive. But even that wasn’t enough to stop reporters from inaccurately concluding otherwise.
The masterstroke in this tale of bush league reportage was left to the CBC. Reporter Alanna Kelly confidently Tweeted out the news that “41 more unmarked graves of children” had been discovered. This was a breathtaking occasion given that, in recent months, CBC has twice issued corrections – including to a statement by one of its highest profile presenters, Rosemary Barton – clarifying that these anomalies are possibly but definitely not proven graves. After being swiftly corrected by, among others, Quillette Editor Jonathan Kay and Holly Doan, publisher of Blacklock’s Reporter, Kelly deleted the post and put her Twitter account into lock down mode.
Clearly, CBC needs to do a much better job of ensuring its staff pay attention to its own corrections even if, as appears to be the case, they disagree with them.
The public, meanwhile, is left to speculate as to why journalists persist in serving them so poorly. One possibility is that they simply lack the courageous skepticism and curiosity the job requires.
I asked around to see if there was someone actively promoting her candidacy, but the media buzz and excitement surrounding independent candidate Bonnie Critchley in the recent Battle River-Crowfoot byelection appears to be, although unusual, entirely self-generated by journos.
I am all in favour of media reporting on serious (the unserious usually self-identify) candidates. What was unusual about Critchley was the amount of coverage she generated. There was in fact, so much, that the National Observer’s Max Fawcett was predicting “Pierre Poilievre’s safe seat isn’t so safe after all” and even my friends at The Line, dedicated as they are to calling out “bullshit,” featured her.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre won the byelection with just over 80 percent of the vote and Critchley cannibalized most of the traditional Liberal and NDP vote in the riding to win just under 10 percent. This was a credible showing but hardly indicative of the threat many media implied she posed.
All in all, no harm done, but weird. As noted by Toronto Sun columnist Lorrie Goldstein, media moved on to focus on those who had voted against Poilievre while Fawcett was in full Rumpelstiltskin tantrum mode on Twitter, trying to make something significant out of Poilievre’s share of the vote in the riding, which was two percent lower than the Tories won in the April general election. No one mentioned it was close to nine percent higher than in 2021.
Critchley, meanwhile, was invited on to CTV’s Alberta Prime Time program where she blamed her surprising loss on Tory “shenanigans.”
Columnist Brian Lilley had another perspective, posting;
“Bonnie Critchley didn’t get over 10% despite clear instructions from CBC and many other MSM outlets for people to go and back her.”
Speaking of CTV, its Vancouver Island news edition broke new ground when its news presenter, without batting an eyelid, declared that Israel was waging a “genocidal campaign against the people of Palestine.”
This outraged Honest Reporting Canada, an organization dedicated to seeking out anti-Israel news coverage and retired CTV journalist Alan Fryer who declared, “There was a time at CTV when that anchor and/or the writer would have been shown the door the minute she signed off.”
Months from now, maybe, we’ll get a decision from the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) regarding if it agrees with CTV. Your guess is as good as mine but the way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if the CBSC gave two thumbs up to hyperbolic statements about genocide, which are all the rage these days. Either way, it’s unlikely legacy media will report on the decision. They don’t shame easily.
Tom Jones writes a solid media column for the Poynter Institute and as football season is about to blossom, I thought this little piece of scuttlebutt was worth passing along.
ESPN was all lined up to broadcast Spike Lee’s seven part documentary on “Da saga of Colin Kaepernick,” the quarterback who became famous for “taking a knee” when the national anthem was played. But now the deal is off.
Jones points to some artistic differences but raises his eyebrows because:
“Just this month, in an unprecedented deal, ESPN acquired the NFL Network and the rights to the league’s RedZone Channel in a deal that will eventually lead to the NFL owning a 10% stake in ESPN. As soon as that deal was announced, there were questions about whether the network’s coverage of the league would be affected, seeing as how they were partners.”
ESPN owns 20 percent of Bellmedia’s sports network, TSN which, other than the CFL, avoids showing Canadian sports leagues unless they bring cash and has a strong bias towards US programming that it can get at pennies on the cost of production dollar. This is despite the fact TSN was created to prevent Canada being flooded with the sort of US programming TSN now floods it with. Both it and Rogers’ Sportsnet have become what they were created to protect Canadians from. But that’s another story.
Finally, a bouquet to The Free Press for revealing how easily (willingly?) legacy media have been manipulated by photos of undernourished children in Gaza who are, as it turns out, suffering from illnesses other than malnutrition. Maybe someone at CTV should watch this:
The Free Press investigated 12 of the most viral images of an alleged famine in Gaza. They each tell a much more complicated story than that published in mainstream media.
Enjoy the week and the long weekend to come.
(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)
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From LifeSiteNews
A new report reveals social media platform TikTok’s algorithm directs 13-year-olds to explicit content within clicks
Social media is now one of the primary pipelines to porn addiction for both children and young adults.
Global Witness, a campaign organization that investigates the impact of Big Tech on human rights, recently conducted a number of tests to determine how quickly children could access pornography on social media platforms.
According to the Guardian, Global Witness conducted one test before the implementation of the U.K.’s Online Safety Act in July, and one after. In just a few clicks, TikTok directed children’s accounts to pornography.
“Global Witness set up fake accounts using a 13-year-old’s birth date and turned on the video app’s ‘restricted mode,’ which limits exposure to ‘sexually suggestive’ content,” the Guardian reported. “Researchers found TikTok suggested sexualised and explicit search terms to seven test accounts that were created on clean phones with no search history.”
I have seen similar tests conducted myself – a completely new account set up, with no history, and no algorithm as of yet – and highly sexual content was recommended within minutes. The Global Witness investigation found that the “you may like” feature for the children’s accounts included “very, very rude skimpy outfits,” “very rude babes,” and “hardcore” porn.
A few clicks later, the researchers reported, the pornographic content escalated from “softcore” pornography of bare breasts to hardcore pornography of “penetrative sex.” The group emphasized that “the content attempted to evade moderation, usually showing the clip within an innocuous picture or video. For one account, the process took two clicks after logging on: one click on the search bar and then one on the suggested search.”
Even more disturbingly, Global Witness reported that two of the videos appeared to feature minors; both were sent to the Internet Watch Foundation as potentially criminal online child sexual abuse material.” Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, stated that Global Witness’s report has prompted an investigation into potential breaches of the Online Services Act.
But parents should not wait for the government to step in. I have encountered countless young people who were first exposed to pornographic material on social media; many teenagers have told me that Instagram is a key on-ramp into pornography.
If they so much as pause for a fraction of a second as they scroll past a sexually explicit image, the pause is detected by the algorithm, and more sexual content is pushed into their feed. That content escalates in explicitness, and the algorithm almost literally reels them in with a conveyor belt of sexual imagery. Many young men who had successfully freed themselves from pornography have told me that going onto Instagram caused relapses into addiction.
Snapchat is no better. Pornography is easily accessible within five clicks without ever leaving the app. The National Centre on Sexual Exploitation has been urging parents to keep children off of Snapchat for years, and lists the social media app as one of the worst offenders on its annual “Dirty Dozen” list. Snapchat has consistently ignored warnings from lawmakers concerning the dangers of its app as a primary mechanism of sexting, sextortion, and worse offences.
Having spoken to thousands of teens on pornography, I can state that this abdication of responsibility has led to enormous misery, addiction, and genuine damage, during the formative developmental years.
As Tim Challies wrote years ago already when begging parents not to give their children smartphones: “Please don’t give them porn for Christmas.”
From LifeSiteNews
By Joseph Quinn
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger explained how Wikipedia systematically blacklists and “deprecates” conservative sources. Wikipedia remains one of the most heavily used information sources online and is integrated with Google search results.
Elon Musk has announced plans to build “Grokipedia,” a new open-source online encyclopedia under his artificial intelligence company xAI.
“Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia,” Musk wrote on X. “Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
We are building Grokipedia @xAI.
Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia.
Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe. https://t.co/xvSeWkpALy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2025
The announcement came days after Tucker Carlson’s interview with Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia and a vocal critic of the organization since his departure in 2002.
Larry Sanger built Wikipedia as an unbiased repository of the world’s knowledge, and then stood helplessly by as activists and intel agencies turned it into the most comprehensive propaganda op in human history. There’s nothing more corrupt.
(0:00) The Origins of Wikipedia… pic.twitter.com/J59oEejCG2
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 29, 2025
Sanger explained how Wikipedia systematically blacklists and “deprecates” conservative sources. Seeing LifeSiteNews on the list, Carlson said that the platform has become “a weapon of ideological, theological war.”
Musk echoed Sanger’s criticisms, affirming Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton’s claim that “Wikipedia is a smear machine for the Left.”
💯
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2025
Musk later amplified memes promoting Grokipedia, calling it “an open source knowledge repository that is vastly better than Wikipedia.”
Join @xAI and help build Grokipedia, an open source knowledge repository that is vastly better than Wikipedia!
This will be available to the public with no limits on use. https://t.co/3CnfrvNIpI
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2025
He also affirmed Sanger’s “Nine Theses,” which call for dismantling Wikipedia’s centralized editorial control.
Some good suggestions from the co-founder of Wikipedia https://t.co/bgwBmi6uXN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2025
Musk has not released technical details of the Grokipedia project but said that Grok AI will be independent of Wikipedia “by the end of the year.”
Images of a potential logo were also shared on his X account.
Wikipedia should have just taken that $1 billion offer from Elon Musk, it’s too late, the rival is coming: Grokipedia! pic.twitter.com/cLBKfPRgyO
— SMX 🇺🇸 (@iam_smx) September 30, 2025
Wikipedia remains one of the most heavily used information sources online and is integrated with Google search results. Critics argue that its governance model allows biased editors – described as “ideologically-driven thought police” – to shape content and suppress dissenting viewpoints, particularly on political, cultural, and religious topics.
A similar initiative called “Infogalactic” was launched in 2016. A “fork” of Wikipedia, it was designed to decentralize control and allow multiple perspectives. While Infogalactic never reached Wikipedia’s scale, it established a model for alternative knowledge repositories.
Attracting a critical mass of editors and establishing credibility remain significant challenges facing such alternatives. Musk’s involvement signals a higher-profile challenge to Wikipedia’s dominance, combining xAI’s technological resources with his public platform on X.
Musk has not provided a clear timeline, but the announcement positions xAI to mount a direct challenge to Wikipedia’s dominance of the information ecosystem.
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