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Media Report

Republicans didn't win--Democrats lost

by Arthur Weinreb

November 18, 2002

The left wing bias of the mainstream media became obvious in their coverage of the results of the U.S. mid-term elections that were held on November 5. Page A15 of the November 8 National Post was devoted to the elections and contained three articles. One was a continuation of a page one article concerning the U.N. and Iraq and the remaining two were sub-headed "Republicans" and "Democrats" respectively.

The article about Democrats was about, well, Democrats. A major portion of the story described the just commenced race for House Minority Leader after the resignation of current leader, Dick Gephardt. The "Republican" article, written by the Post’s Washington correspondent, Jan Cienski, perhaps the most left wing of that paper’s regulars, was about, well, Democrats too. Cienski’s article uses such descriptive phrases as George W Bush "savouring his shattering defeat of the diminished Democrats". The article was more about the Democrats losing than the Republicans winning. In the column, the word "Republican" or a derivative thereof appears twice while the word "Democrat" or "Democratic Party" appears 8 times. Unlike the "Republican" article, this one comes with a picture. Of a surprise Republican winner? Nope. The picture is of Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), an extremely liberal Democrat and a media darling. Kennedy is quoted in the article as warning of the dire consequences of Bush appointing "right wing ideologues" to the bench.

Perhaps the most telling part of the Cienski article is that it seems to be newsworthy that Bush was asked, even though his party controls both the House and Senate, if he plans to govern from the centre. The lefties can’t imagine that even conservatives would want to govern conservatively when they are elected. Can you ever imagine a journalist asking Jean Chrétien, after one of his massive majority victories, if he was then going to move to the right? Not likely.

Paul Martin--good PM or too old?

The results of an SES Canada Research poll, conducted for the Sun Media and reported on in the Toronto Sunday Sun on November 10, showed that if an election were to be called now, the Liberals would end up with 49 per cent support. The article, stated in part, that "Sixty-two per cent of Canadians agreed [Paul] Martin deserves a chance to be prime minister. Only 23 percent said they believed Martin, at age 65, was too old and should retire."

This article points out the meaninglessness of writing articles about opinion polls without reproducing the questions that were asked of respondents. It appears from the article that there are only two choices; Martin should be prime minister or he’s too old. This leaves out an obvious third choice that is some might not feel Martin should lead the country for reasons other than his age. They don’t seem to be counted unless they are in the 15 percent that we are not told about. How much of the remaining 15 percent simply had no opinion or preferred another Liberal leader.

16 is twice as much as 8--most of the time

At the end of the first full week in November, temperatures in Toronto and area reached a balmy 16 degrees Celsius. A common comment, both in the local print and television media was that the temperature was double the seasonal temperature of 8 degrees C.

Duh! When it comes to the Celsius scale of measuring temperature, 16 is not twice as much as eight. Sixteen, being double the amount of 8 only works when starting at zero and the Celsius scale does not start at zero. It is merely the point at which water freezes. As the temperature scale starts at absolute zero, which is —273.15 degrees C., the increase in temperature was hardly twice or double what the seasonal average is. Makes you wonder what other wrong information we’re being fed.

Arthur Weinreb is a lawyer and author and Associate Editor of Canadafreepress.com



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