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Bruce Dowbiggin

Media Trading Places: Whose Side Are You On?

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Those expecting that a few adults might remain in the press gallery to keep Team Skippy focused received a jolt this week when CTV anchor Evan Solomon said, “Fuggit” and decamped for a job in NYC with something called  @gzeromedia and @EurasiaGroup. Bad look for a friend who has tried to appear in the middle. But if you live too long in Ottawa this is what eventually happens. Liberal values become your values.

Trudeau Svengali Gerry Butts, who recruited Solomon, said he’s “beyond excited” to hang Solomon’s scalp on the wall with all the other gormless journos the Liberals have compromised with their slush funds and intimidation. Green zealot Mark Carney was also wetting himself at the prospect of having Solomon guide his daffy dream for WEF dominance. “The intersection of geopolitics and economics is affecting everyone and (sic) one can interpret it better than Evan.”

Just to show that it’s no hard feelings/who gives a damn Solomon will somehow stay on as a “special correspondent” for CTV News. Because nothing says integrity like the head of a policy management group ladling out perspective to the cable-news suckers. Good luck, Evan.

Yes, just another banner day for the Trudeau regime as it seeks to neuter the press. How much better can it get? A lot more, apparently. Pesky objectivity is now out. Reporters baring their souls is in. La Presse is reporting that journalist unions are promoting that reporters be “allowed to express themselves, without consequences, in ways conducive to ‘dismantling the structural racism of the society’.

To “publicly defend their humanity or that of others” – CBC would let reporters express their public support for movements representing racial or ethnic minorities, such as Black Lives Matter, or Canada’s indigenous populations. (CBC is dismissing the report— which can only mean it’s just around the corner.)

Sure, what could go wrong with Rosie Barton going AOC? Besides, the stuff that worked for centuries is passé, says UBC journalism sessionist/ award-winning scribbler Steve Woodward: “I think objective journalism is almost an old-school term. With social media, people trust people. People don’t like other people because they’re objective.

They like them because they’re truthful, they’re honest, they’re human. People are looking for that out of their news. They’re looking for sources that are authentic and that’s different from objective.   It certainly is. So if you play for the right team you can now bloviate on whatever is tormenting your safe space, and people will like it. Because it’s YOU. You might win a Pulitzer. Thanks, Steve.

So when a federal cabinet minister backdates a controversial government document to the fictional April 31, 2022, in an apparent bid to mislead a federal judge reporters must consult their feelings on fraud before ever pronouncing it. Or check a calendar.

No wonder independent journalist Matt Taibbi— who worked alongside Chrystia Freeland in 1990s Russia— notes, “… At least in the seventies and eighties after My Lai and All the President’s Men, a lot of people thought reporters were cool. Now almost everyone thinks we’re massive douchebags.” Hey, that’s Mr. Douchebag to you, Micro-aggression Man.

But there’s more on the docket for consumers trying to get the straight goods. What with re-ordering genders, codifying The Science and declaring Canada as a genocidal state, you’d think that the current federal government has its hands full already. How much can one dashingly handsome PM accomplish between surfing and bungee jumps?

A lot. The honourable member for Papineau/ Dazed&Confused is hellbent on replacing equal opportunity with equal outcome. To do so he’s unravelling centuries of editorial independence with Bill C-11, a potage that will give the government “equity” czars control of the news cycle.  Now, government will decide the winners and losers based on their ESG scores. (Sounds like a Kamala Harris brainwave.)

For instance, says The Countersigned, “search engines, like Google, will be required to boost news organizations that promote ‘racialized communities, cultural and linguistic minorities, LGBTQ2+ communities, and persons with disabilities.’ Consequently, non-compliant news publishers not focusing on such progressive topics will be punished by receiving lower rankings in searches.

The Bill also wants the CRTC to put its finger on the scale of independent sources, too. Especially those critical of the Perfect One. As the indefatigable lawyer/ journalist Michael Geist has pointed out, Liberal assurances to the public on the bill are just so much lining for the poubelle. “Yesterday, Liberal MPs: assured the House that digital first creators were outside Bill C-11/ effectively admitted they were in but claimed would be excluded by a still-secret policy direction/ dismissed creator concerns as “Youtube talking points”.

The Bill made it past the NDP rubber stamp in the Commons (what doesn’t?), but miraculously, the Senate is actually holding up Skippy’s handiwork with some persnickety questions— something the Liberals avoided in the House. To wit, WTF Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez?

Naturally, this delay on a Liberal pet issue has produced the usual Grit backlash: serious charges of witness intimidation and bullying by government MPs, most notably Canadian Heritage Parliamentary Secretary Chris Bittle. A charge that only looks worse the more Liberals defend it. Geist describes their hissy fit as “cartoonishly misleading”

They do have the support of loyal media associations like  CMA: “We are proud to stand alongside the many organizations, representing hundreds of thousands of Canadians who work in media production, broadcasting, and music, calling on the government to #PassBillC11The Libs would much prefer to keep their business in-house, says former CRTC vice chair Peter Menzies. “Once this gets to the CRTC they know they can control it through overwhelming the hearing process or politically.”

Which is par for the course, says Menzies. “The one thing this process has made abundantly clear is that the interests of anyone outside their club are irrelevant to all inside it.” And come to think of it, isn’t that really all Skippy wants? A club? With costumes? And dances? And decoder rings for his pals? Why can’t people see that?

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft YearsIn NHL History, , his new book with his son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book of by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Hyperbole Is Dead. Big Brother Killed Him

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Antietam, Maryland: On Sept 17, 1862, the combined forces of the Union Army (under George McLellan) and the Confederate army (under Robert E. Lee) met on sleepy farmland west of Washington. When the ten hours of vicious fighting was done, there was an appalling 22,717 casualties. It still stands as the most lethal day in American military history.

History records it as a draw, although the Union army stopped an attack by Lee’s 30,000-man army on the U.S. capital. Walking the rolling lands alongside the Potomac River with Matthew Brady’s grisly photographic record in mind a modern visitor would ask how did it come to this slaughter? What issue was so divisive that it led to this?

The issue as seen today was slavery, although the Confederates would say it was states’ rights. From the day the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence the issue of slavery pointed to that day in 1862. Attempts to reconcile the issue of the South’s dependence on slavery produced failed compromises (The Great Compromise of 1787) and the creation of the Republican Party.

It all failed. The reason? For 75 years, the two sides divorced themselves from one another, demonizing and distancing in escalating rhetoric and political corruption. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, an abolition-sympathetic Republican, war was on. Before it ended in 1865 there were 828,000 Union casualties while the South experienced 864,000 casualties. There were almost a million civilians and free slaves left dead as well.

This ominous historical note is relevant today as the two sides in the American and Canadian debate slide inexorably toward a schism. With a presidential election this November and a Canadian federal election likely next year, the sides have given up on policy. Oh, they still make a show of plans for the economy. Or housing. Or the military.

But the real battlefield is the war on information. Who will be censored? Who will write history? As a picture of intolerance it has reached DefCon 4. No better example exists than the hissy-fit from employees of the NBC News department at the attempt to hire Rona McDaniel, former RNC chairwoman as an employee. The sanctimonious stars of NBC and MSNBC news— several of them Obama-era employees or Democratic fundraisers— launched a collective insurrection against the hire, saying McDaniel was a purveyor of lies and disinformation in the service of Beelzebub aka Donald Trump.

Never mind that Racial Maddow and Joyless Reid and Chuckles Todd spent the past eight years carrying water for Hillary Clinton’s demented RussiaGate and Hunter Biden’s laptop hoax. Former Republican Joe Scarborough spoke of the “sacred trust” with viewers as grounds for forcing NBC to fire McDaniel after about 48 hours.

No one is now allowed to pollute the minds of Morning Joe viewers. A narrative is a narrative, and no niece of Mitt Romney is getting in the way of that carefully crafted line as we head to November. Trump World is a cesspool of Nazis and enemies of democracy, and they’re going to play that card.

Viewers of last Sunday’s 60 Minutes saw a more subtle version of demonizing the other. In the fusty Tiffany Network style they introduced  Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and a leader of a “misinformation research group” created ahead of the 2020 election. Who gave her that title is left to the listeners’ imagination.

Naturally Ms. Starbird did a hit job on Jim Jordan and the GOP. Naturally, 60 Minutes neglected to mention Starboard is a longtime Democrat donor and foot soldier in the 2024 Biden Army. Naturally, the divide was widened further. The effect was achieved. Anyone voting Trump is a dedicated Nazi.

It will only ramp up from here because, with no successes to brag about and Biden’s polls plunging, fear is king. (Adding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to siphon left-wing votes is another threat.) They know Biden is a millstone in efforts to eradicate Trump. And 40 percent of the U.S. population thinks this is reality, much the way the opposing sides at Antietam saw the devil across the Bloody Ditch and Antietam Bridge.

The federal Liberals in Canada have been paying attention. With polls that even Biden would faint over, Justin Trudeau is ramping up the disinformation dodge with the same fervour as the MSNBC fainting goats. Skippy has added a little Russian sauce to his equation, claiming that Putin has Conservative leader Pierre Polievre in his control, manipulating the public to abandon Ukraine.

How Ukraine figures in Canada’s national interest isn’t explained, but if Canadians elect the Tories next year Western society will collapse, pace Trudeau. The PM’s lightweight posse is jumping in, too. Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, who applauds Nazis in Parliament, is predicting a bleak future for the country unless the evil-thinkers to the Right are brought under control.

Hence Bill-63, the Liberal/ NDP diktat to criminalize WrongThink on the internet and what’s left on the traditional media. Not only in the run-up to what may be the Waterloo for Trudeau and NDP fashion model Jagmeet Singh. Freeland’s bill gives faceless bureaucrats the right to criminalize future behaviour as well. Holy Karnak!

There will be many attempts to pretend that permanently silencing the opponent is not the key issue of 2024-2025. Don’t believe them. People who just a few years ago laughed at the images of Mao’s purges in the Cultural Revolution now have succumbed to a new Little Red Book. They praise their heroes Obama and Clinton and demand jail for Trump. Hyperbole is dead. Big Brother killed him.

circa 1970: Chinese Red Guards reading from the little red book of Thoughts of Chairman Mao before starting their day. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

From Hall of Fame To Hall of Shame? Shohei Faces Banishment

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Holy Backtrack, Batman. With MLB Opening Day— the North American, not Korean version— days away, the sport’s biggest star is up to the bill of his new L.A. Dodgers cap in gambling controversy. Turns out that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s closest companion since coming to North America in 2018, has committed “massive theft” and stolen a reported sum of at least $4.5 million to pay off debts to an alleged illegal bookmaker.

At least that is one story. There are others. After the Dodgers’ first of two games in Seoul last week, Mizuhara admitted that his buddy Ohtani had “loaned” him $4.5 million to pay off a gambling debt which has a paper trail to California and possibly Japan. Sooner than you can say Cy Young, Ohtani’s lawyers said, nay, nay… he didn’t lend anything to Ippei, and Ohtani is severing his relationship with him.

(Which is just as well, because the Dodgers were firing Mizuhara already.) Then Mizuhara did a complete reversal, telling ESPN that Ohtani had no knowledge of his gambling debts, and that Ohtani had not transferred money to a bookmaking operation in California, where there is no legal gambling. About this time someone got to Mizuhara and told him it might be a good idea if he 黙って (Japanese for damare or STFU).

Friday, reports emerged showing large amounts being bet in Japan on games played by Ohtani and his lousy performance in those games. While no one has been able to say the bets were placed by the pitcher or those around him, there are a few games that look highly suspicious. Monday, Ohtani sought to distance himself from his former buddy.

What is undeniable is that payoff money came from Ohtani’s account. And that for almost five years, a gambling addict had complete access to the inner workings of the California Angels dressing room. What injury insights and insider knowledge might Ippei Mizuhara have traded for gambling debts or favours? MLB and the police say they are investigating, but if it can be shown the Ohtani had any betting interest in his own team or other MLB games he will— based on the Joe Jackson and Pete Rose examples— be banned for life from MLB.

Also, are these stories exposing Ohtani about something else? Some believe the allegations may be revenge for Ohtani signing a friendly contract that backloads most of his compensation till after he retires— thereby depriving tax-hungry California of hundreds of millions in taxes.  Finally, why was MLB, which purports to have a security department, caught flat-footed here, and why are they only “gathering information”? Not a good look on any of these fronts for a business already struggling to re-capture lost audience share.

For those who like comedy we can only hope this mess has the entertainment value of the NHL when its greatest star ever was caught gambling with a shady character outside Philly. Okay, Wayne Gretzky never bet on sports , which was then illegal everywhere in North America outside Las Vegas. Never. Perish the thought.

When the Gretzky story broke in 2006 we were informed by people throughout hockey—including many sniffers in the sports media who still have jobs— that it was Wayne’s wife Janet and his pal Rich Tocchet who had the gambling problem. The walls around No. 99 went up quickly to protect him. There was concern about Gretzky’s eligibility to manage the 2006 Olympic mens hockey team.

VANCOUVER, BC – OCTOBER 20: Head coach Wayne Gretzky and assistant coach Rick Tocchet (R) of the Phoenix Coyotes discuss a play during their game against the Vancouver Canucks at General Motors Place on October 20, 2005 in Vancouver, Canada. The Canucks defeated the Coyotes 3-2. (Photo by Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images)

For weeks the police and the NHL did a dance around the Gretzkys, placing most of the blame on Tocchet as the point man who financed and placed bets. Much was made of No. 99’s simon-pure record, even though wiretaps later showed his knowledge of the scheme and of Janet’s “involvement”.

Janet, who was taking the heat for hubby, later whined to Chatelaine Magazine. “It’s unfair that Wayne and I have had a great marriage for 20 years and a nice family, and the people in the media could care less if they are trying to cause friction in your marriage, trouble in your family, and make your kids feel a certain way. That was a little hurtful, because it was like, ‘Why? What have we ever done to you?’”

Um, as the wife of a hockey legend, you were, at the very least, dealing with illegal gambling when any such activity at the time was strictly verboten in the NHL and with the cops. That’s what you did. Your marriage had nothing to do with it.

Just to prove that Gretzky is not the type to get involved with the sleaze of gambling he immediately signed up to advertise sports betting as soon as it became legal in 2022. He’s done commercials with Connor McDavid yukking it up over parlays and teasers. He’s the hockey face of legal gambling. But he’s not a gambler.

This story was never going to be told straight in 2006 with Gretzky’s name involved. He’s just too big in Canada to be taken down for a silly betting scheme with a few goombahs in Tony Soprano’s old Jersey neighbourhood. You could tell by the indignation of Team Gretzky in the day that they were calling in their markers… er, discussing the issue with friendly media on burying the story.

MLB can just hope that it has enough lackeys of its own in the press and friends in the DOJ to keep the Japanese Babe Ruth out of trouble. But the bases are full and the runners will be in motion with the next pitch

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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