Canada’s Macleans magazine sent out a news release to their media bretheren today, all in a tizzy about a story in their latest issue about Fox News Channel (maybe) being allowed into Canada.
It didn’t seem to phase the reporter, Charlie Gillis, that he had to leave Canada in order to be allowed watch Fox News Channel. That part seems normal and fair to him.
Here’s the actual news release they sent to Canada News Wire:
Attention News Editors:
Are Canadians ready for Loudmouth Fox News?
In the issue hitting newsstands today, Maclean’s asks if we’re ready for the rude and rabidly pro-Bush Fox News ChannelTORONTO, Sept. 27 /CNW/ – Last April, Canada’s cable TV providers applied to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for permission to broadcast Fox News Channel, brainchild of Rupert Murdoch and ratings sensation of the 2004 U.S. election campaign. They’d been turned down once before, but this time, the public input phase wound up without a hitch. When the CRTC invited comment on the new channel, fully 85 per cent of the 600 respondents voiced support. By Christmas Day, Bill O’Reilly, the network’s pugnacious star, could be beaming into Canadian living rooms.
After being denied access to the New York studios of the network that touts its own journalism as “fair and balanced,” Maclean’s national affairs correspondent, Charlie Gillis, locked himself up in a motel room in suburban Rochester to judge the network by its product.
He’s subjected to an onslaught of anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, pro-Republican rhetoric that only a true believer could construe as impartial. Softball questions for Bushies, sneers for Kerry backers; lingering shots of Bush noshing with the regular folk and brief clips of Kerry looking tired and awkward.
“Right-wing partisans billed as impartial experts fill the channel’s prime-time shows,” writes Gillis. “Canadians should be applauded for inviting in a network that challenges prevailing values. But if the upstarts at Fox have anything to teach us, it’s that fairness and balance are highly elastic terms.”
The Loudmouth TV issue is available on newsstands today and online at http://www.macleans.ca.
About Maclean’s: As Canada’s weekly newsmagazine, Maclean’s spotlights Canada’s rising talent, thinkers and doers from business to entertainment, from politics to sports. With more than 3 million readers a week, the magazine enjoys a larger one-time audience than all other Canadian news and public affairs media. Maclean’s provides a forum for a new generation of Canadian writers, illustrators and photographers and last year was the Canadian consumer magazine most honoured for design excellence.
For further information: or an interview with Charlie Gillis, please contact Suneel Khanna, (416) 764-1219/(416) 816-4244, [email protected]
What a balanced look at the issue. Even the news release—well it’s one that only other media could appreciate as normal. They don’t take sides at all in calling Fox News “rude and rabidly pro-Bush”. The article they’re talking about then goes on to discuss how Fox News Channel is an abomination because it presents a conservative side to stories instead of only a liberal side. The gall.
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