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Bruce Dowbiggin

Snobs & Yobs: How Canadian Media Made Themselves The Convoy Story

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In case you missed it, the most compelling story to emerge from the #Convoy2022 was the disrespect shown to Canada’s media covering the event. Just ask them. While the stalemate dragged on, heart-wrenching stories of reporters scorned and told to “get lost” dominated the feed of the Media Party. One Radio-Canada stalwart was actually shoved live on-air. Gasp.

It was poignant to hear how people supported by government handouts bravely did the jobs reporters have done for ages without complaint. They were the stars of their coverage, and we were going to hear about it. (Right on cue the hapless Toronto media lifted the flag of Press Infallibility, calling the harassment a national disgrace. pace G & M TV critic. )

No one had had the heart to tell the ladies, gentlemen and others of the press before the event that a large portion of the population now dismisses them as mouthpieces for the prime minister and his coterie of WEF followers. Even though their ratings had cratered and their influence disappeared it was business as usual in the minds of CBC, CTV, Global and the titans of the printed word.

They were brave, intrepid warriors wandering like Diogenes, searching for the flickering light of truth amongst the protesters. Doing a dirty job for all the world to see their courage. Even as they carried #PMJT water about swastikas, white power, KKK and national threats they took a bow at their own courage. It’s hard to think how this could be more out of touch, but we’re sure they’ll find a way.

This just in: They hate you. No one cares. Do your job.

Sarcasm aside, the descent of the media’s credibility— already crumbled— plunged faster than the bobsleighs at the Beijing Olympics. They ignored the PM’s salvo against truckers that started the debacle— “‘antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia and transphobia that we’ve seen in display.’ “— to concentrate their scorn on the horn-honking rabble who came to sully the Glebe, Centretown and Sandy Hill. They were, the words of Andrew Coyne, “Yobs”.

The crisis moment arrived when the police advanced on protesters on Friday. CBC and CTV locked off their cameras to focus solely on the fray. Former police officials from across the nation were deputized as “experts” to cover the clashes. They pronounced the police reluctance to use force— in the words of Liberal MP Mark Gerretson— as the “gold standard”.

Then the damned New York Times broke the spell. The Parnassus to Canadian journalists reported that police had advanced with guns drawn. Immediately CBC grandee Carol Off denounced the Times’ story. Then video appeared showing—oops— a squad of cops arresting a man in a van at gunpoint. The Times then lectured their “see no evil” junior cousins on how to cover a riot. How embarrassing.

Okay, it happens. Anyone can get a story wrong once in a while. But, we were assured by Canadian media, the rest of the police work was impeccable. Sadly, CBC and its colleagues forgot that this is the age of citizen journalists. Despite police attempts to keep prying eyes away from the “battle zone” the police gold-standard myth was exposed by private citizens and Rebel Media.

Footage showed police viciously kneeing and assaulting a Romanian immigrant driver as he lay trapped on the ground (only Fox’s Tucker Carlson interviewed him). Video showed cops using similar WWE tactics in other parts of the lines. In another segment heavily protected cops shoved a woman and tossed her phone to the ground as they threatened her with arrest.

Most egregious, an indigenous woman, run over in her wheelchair by a formation of mounted police, was taken to hospital for her injuries. (Remember #PMJT said this was a white-power protest) This assault only came to light as a denial of rumours she’d died. Which was made worse when an RCMP private chat room showed Mounties laughing at the woman being ridden over and promising to do the same when called up for duty. With no rebuke from #PMJT.

The point is not did cops have physical encounters with demonstrators. These things happen when cops engage unarmed but unruly demonstrators. The point is the snow job performed by CBC/ CTV/ Global and their colleagues on any of this, instead interviewing and congratulating friendly cops and themselves on escaping danger.

Even after video rebutted the narrative of brave reporters and heroic cops, it was repeated— without media correction— by Liberal MPs in the parliamentary debate the networks ignored for almost three days. Liberals seemed to conflate defiance in the face of @CBCNews / @CTVNews interviewers with assault.

Journalistic assault is reporting the Liberals’ fake stories about swastikas, condo fires, Putin influence, cenotaph clearing and property destruction without corroboration. Or having no recall of previous indigenous blockades of rail lines, the “Occupy” movement in many cities, the never-ending siege of Caledonia, etc. All of which lasted months, not weeks. No ther Convoy was unprecedented.

Media had no curiosity about who was carrying swastikas and Confederate flags among the protesters (anyone interview any of them?)— even after they were kicked out by the demonstrators. Instead the media disgraced itself further when an illegally hacked list of donors to the Convoy was printed by media. The suddenly curious Jimmy Olsens published it, then left no stone unturned to find a lady making a $50 donation in BC.

Make no mistake, the past three weeks were about one thing for MSM journos: covering #PMJT’s fatal error in underestimating the Convoy movement. Everything— enlisting media, inventing alt-right threats, false flags and now martial law— was to protect his leadership and reputation with his globalist cousins.

Example: Did anyone grill him on the real terrorism on the pipeline that weekend? Twenty people with axes? Setting fire to vehicles with people inside them? No? Anyone doing their jobs?

There were some reporters who brooked the urge to go all-in on the narratives. CBC Radio’s Evan Dyer tried to bring perspectives to what’s involved in reporting a riot. David Common kept his cool. And CTV’s Evan Solomon attempted to push back on the size of the threat and ask pointed questions. For the rest, it was demonize the demonstrators, not the PM. Burnish their own halos for surviving an “occupation”.

When you see such Media Party enterprise journalism remember that they’re not writing stories for the public or their bosses or even Trudeau. They’re writing to impress each other. Bragging rights in the morning story meeting is the gold medal. (Just ask Wendy Mesley what happens when you diverge from the party line in story meetings.) Hell, they brag on air about how good they are.

And nothing got bigger props than building up the Liberals now-cancelled Emergencies Act by raking the truckers’ incursion on NIMBY Ottawans. As Kelly McParland of the National Post writes, “The belief that Liberalism is Canada, and any criticism is unCanadian and unacceptable may be the defining quality of this government.”

While Canadian reporters blissfully back-patted each other, their peers outside Canada were less impressed with the comfy-pillow treatment of Trudeau. Here’s the NY Times shooting holes in the media’s demonizing of the truckers’ behaviour: “They have a right to be noisy and even disruptive. Protests are a necessary form of expression in a democratic society, particularly for those whose opinions do not command broad popular support.”

Here’s the Wall Street Journal on Trudeau’s enormous gaffe imposing martial law.. Here’s the Financial Times, the voice of British business, on the faux-Emergency act. “The measures are designed to respond to insurrection, espionage and genuine threats to the Canadian Constitution rather than peaceful protest, no matter how irritating and inconvenient,” Here’s Piers Morgan on Trudeau’s strategy that went unchallenged in his purchased media.

Even the EU took time from its Ukraine threat. Cristian Terhes, a member of the European Parliament, declared that Canada’s prime minister was acting “exactly like a tyrant, a dictator. If you raise doubts about the vaccines, you’re outcast.” Yobs, indeed.

For an independent press this upbraiding of their coverage would be embarrassing. Coming from a press that is fulsomely rewarded by the ruling government it was an existential failure.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on 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

All Bets Are Off: Why Prop Betting Scares Sports Leagues, Police

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Sunday’s Super Bowl concluded another season of wagering on the sport made great by gambling. With billions wagered legally— and billions wagered illegally—the NFL is a Frankenstein of the betting industry. Everything is done to create parity while simultaneously promoting chaos. When other leagues talk about success they are talking about the NFL’s colossal gambling industry.

The penetration of betting has only increased with legalization in Canada (Ontario is the only “open” legal market at the moment) and the United States (38 states currently allow sports wagering). It has gotten to the point where sports bettors in Las Vegas, for decades the only legal spot for sports gambling, complain that Nevada is falling behind its neighbours. Some drive across state lines to wager on sports offerings not made in Vegas.

We could do a small book on all the new betting applications that have sprung up with sharps applying stock-market analytics and trading strategies to break down a football game. But for today we’ll concentrate on the device that has turbo-charged public betting in the past generation: Proposition bets. And the enormous risk they bring.

In the bad old days when gambling was underground, dominated by organized crime, football betting meant the money line (who will win), sides (by how many points) and totals (how many points would be scored in as game). The range of options within these parameters was limited. You could parlay (two bets), tease (two or more choices with alternate odds) or do future bets.

Then along came proposition bets (props). There are propositions on everything from how many yards player X will run for, how many interceptions Player Y will throw and how many touchdowns player Z will score. There are also team props. The range of props covers almost any result generated by a football game— and a few generated by halftime shows and coin flips.

When props first began to catch the public interest, they were a novelty. Snobs saw them as sucker bets for squares. In Vegas, books would stage a glitzy launch ten days before the game to announce their props. No more. The first props for SB LIX were out minutes after the conference final games were decided. The brushfire is now a conflagration.

The two weeks before SB LIX were saturated with experts breaking down the teams, their predilections and their models for predicting prop winners. In a game with no appreciable favourite this meant every microchip of data being examined. (We had at least a dozen props then added a couple more during the game to hedge against any losers.)

The great fallibility of prop betting is their individual nature. With totals and sides the results are determined by efforts of the 92 NFL players allowed to suit up each week. Outside of the QBs, kickers, coaches and perhaps the referees, no single person could determine a W or L. Not so with props.

A player can drop a pass or miss a tackle— affecting his prop— without anyone being the wiser. The NFL scrutinizes players for erratic patterns, but on a single basis anything is possible for a player who is being influenced by bettors. Integrity of the product is paramount for the NFL and its gambling partners. So a rogue player is like a communist in Joe McCarthy’s America.

There is also betting on non-football props concerning length of national anthem, colour of Gatorade used to douse the winning coach and clothing choices of the halftime performers. Here, bettors are truly on their own as the NFL has no control on Kendrick Lamar’s playlist. (Considering KL’s associates “in the hood” this a very Wild West way to lose money) own the colour of Gatorade used (yellow).

So far the NFL has avoided any public gambling scandal like the one that landed  the personal translator for Dodgers’s star Hideki Ohtani in jail for tipping off  gamblers. (So far MLB has managed to wall off Hideki from the crimes). But the possibilities are there in NFL and other sports where a player compromised by debts, drug issues or sexual activity can be leveraged for profit.

The league with the most visible prop problem is the NBA with its small rosters (15 players game day). For a reminder the NBA was forced to admit that there is a current police probe into player Terry Rozier, now of the Miami Heat. “In March 2023, the NBA was alerted to unusual betting activity related to Terry Rozier’s performance in a game between Charlotte and New Orleans,” NBA spokesman said. While the NBA has cleared Rozier police area not satisfied.

In the 2023 matchup between the Hornets and the New Orleans Rozier pulled himself from the game after just nine minutes. As a result Rozier finished well below his prop bet of 32.5 combined points, assists and rebounds. Bettors howled about the suspicious nature of Rozier’s exit with a foot problem.

What made cops suspicious was that the network of gamblers placing money on Rozier was the same network that had allegedly manipulated former Raptor Jontay Porter’s prop numbers. Porter has been banned for life over charges he shaved numbers for the nefarious characters cited in the rosier story. Police are still investigating him.

The NBA is still reverberating from the 2007 scandal of referee Tim Donaghy who used his knowledge of the NBA to bet on professional basketball games and tip off crimes figures. He was banned for life and sentenced to 15 months in prison. Now released from prison Donaghy continues to warn about the vulnerability of betting NBA games.

Then there is the risk associated with U.S. college athletics now that players are paid to attend a certain college. Money and temptation flow freely in the new portal system that allows players to transfer schools midway through their eligibility.

Sunday’s game produced a one-sided windfall for Eagles’ bettors and the usual controversial referee calls did not affect the outcome. But it should not be seen as a reason to be less vigilant, particularly with props.

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. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

The Limping Loonie: Are Canada’s Pro Sports Team In Trouble Again?

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With the Canada/ U.S. Tariff War going from talking conflict to hot trade war on Feb. 1 there are numerous predictions as to what might happen if the dispute drags on. As the sides in the Ukraine War will tell you very few of the outcomes so far were foreseen by the sides when the shooting started. That’s the nature of these conflicts.

One immediate byproduct seems to be the continued descent toward 60 cents by the Canadian dollar. If Trudeau and his anointed successor Mark Carney are true to character it will also involve billions in cheques going out the door— a la Covid— to those citizens “harmed” by the Liberals stumbling into a highly predictable and easily avoidable trade war. If past is prologue, vast amounts of that money will disappear as bad actors find a way to access the funds. While Canada’s GDP collapses some more.

For the moment, however, let us concentrate on what Justin Trudeau’s ineptitude might be costing Canadian professional sports teams in American-based leagues. On the purely trivial level it means that your beer at the park/ arena will be Canadian suds exclusively. Not cheaper or better. Just Canadian. Owners will stock luxury boxes with Canadian wine, etc. A road trip to see the Canucks in L.A. or the Canadiens in NYC will balloon, too.

But on a more serious level the showdown between Donald Trump and Trudeau could well return Canadian teams in the NHL to the bad-old days of the early  21st century. Despite efforts then to create a Canadian fund to save teams, two clubs— Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques— were forced to sell because of a dollar that bottomed out around 62 cents U.S. Winnipeg went to Phoenix/ Quebec City went to Colorado as a result

In Montreal the MLB Expos also moved— to Washington— after 37 years, because no one in Quebec would/ could pony up the money to make up for the declining dollar or repair the disastrous Olympic Stadium. Expos fans then had the cruel fate of watching Washington win the 2019 World Series after the Expos had never gotten that far. (Nordiques fans saw Colorado win two Stanley Cups after escaping Quebec.)

Why were these teams forced to move? Because while teams collect revenues locally in Canadian dollars almost all their payroll and other costs are paid in American dollars. So when you see the Toronto Blue Jays facing a possible US $500 million price tag to keep star Vladimir Guerrero you’re really talking about raising $750,000 million in CDN revenues to meet the demand. Multiply those jumps over a 25-man roster and you’re talking a huge jump in payroll— or being consigned to after-ran status.

While no one  is about to hold a tag day for Toronto it will make the Jays’ job of competing in a division with the big-spending New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox that much harder. With a national market of almost 40 million now to exploit they still have resources. But will American players want to play in Canada during a hot trade war between the nations? Now that yahoos fed by a doltish CDN media have started booing the Star Spangled Banner in Ottawa and Vancouver before games do you think that will encourage American stars on teams there to stick around?

But the NHL is where the biggest losses will be seen. Already there have been concerns about the Jets.2 surviving in Winnipeg. Last week it was revealed that after years spent coming back from Covid revenue shortages, the NHL is going to raise its salary cap from today’s US $88 million to as much as an estimated US $115 million in three or four years. The news that players will no longer have escrow payments held back to compensate owners for revenue shortages was greeted with cheers by players and their agent.

The boost in the cap will likely mean that today’s US$14 million peak (Leon Draisaitl) will also advance to somewhere just beneath US$20 million a season. And while that figure is a few years off, teams will have to start negotiating today with their stars with that figure in mind if they wish to retain them.

The test case will be superstar Connor McDavid who is due for a new contract after 2025-26. For the small-market Edmonton Oilers that will mean creating a template that buys him out of estimated salary later by boosting his salary before the cap arrives at its peak. With Draisaitl already pulling down top dollar the Oilers’ resources will be stretched thin to accommodate McDavid— while still paying the rest of the roster.

Could the drop in the dollar produce another Gretzky-like trade for Edmonton when the Oilers were forced to dump the greatest scorer in NHL history to L.A. because his worth exceeded the Oilers’ ability to pay? We chronicle the trade in depth in our new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey.

The fate of hockey stars will be only a small piece of any future U.S. trade deals. But they will be highly visible to Canada’s hockey fans. Not being able to satisfy them is a political price no pelican wants to face. But given the current intransigence by Justin Trudeau scrambling to stay in office it is far from improbable.

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. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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