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From the Editor

Backbiting the Blacks

by Judi McLeod

March 29, 2004

Into the bland Canadian pudding, came crimson Conrad Black, the first public figure since Pierre Elliot Trudeau to heighten public imagination.

Black, who did more to influence Canadian journalism than any other individual, will be with his wife Barbara amiel, the unwitting star of a CTV television movie.

Like most things Canadienne, it will be anti-climatic in comparison to april 2004’s Vanity Fair feature.

Buried deep in writer Duff McDonald’s "investigation", is some truth about the beleaguered Black: "Nevertheless, most people who’ve worked for Black say he’s a man who truly cares about the quality of journalism in his papers.

"Black also has fans in the journalistic community in Canada, where his audacious 1998 launch of the right-of-center National Post sent the industry scrambling. `The Globe and Mail made it seem as if the impetus of the paper was to effect a coup of the national government,’ says Ken Whyte, the editor of National Post from its launch until april of last year. `But I think we proved there were a number of Canadians who felt themselves ill served by newspapers that were center or center left.’ While some decried Black’s creeping influence in Canadian media (he once owned 60 of the country’s 105 daily newspapers), most journalists will admit he raised overall editorial quality–and reporters’ salaries."

That’s a fact destined to be all but lost in the giddy media’s ongoing backbiting of the Blacks.

It’s a classic story of the haves and have-nots, as later in the Vanity Fair piece, McDonald claims: "It was quite difficult to find any social sympathy for the Blacks among Canadians, a people they have seemingly gone out of their way to denigrate."

McDonald’s proof positive of this is taken from last June’s 60th-birthday celebration for Hilary Weston, wife of Canadian billionaire Galen Weston, at Fort Belevedere, near Windsor Castle.

Describing how Barbara amiel had ignored "most of the Canadian women who had crossed the atlantic for the event, McDonald wrote that someone (emphasis mine) who attended the party said: `She had this vague aristocratic look on her face that said, `Now remind me who you are again.’"

How Babs automatically spotted the Canadians in the birthday crowd, was never explained.

But in life’s long saga of the haves and have-nots there is always an unidentified someone, isn’t there?

"Before your time in journalism is done, take pains to ask disinterestedly any human being who knows (Black). You will learn that he is extraordinarily learned, profoundly instructed, modest in demeanor, eloquent in speech and in kindness," conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in a letter to the New York Observer.

These are the precise characteristics that make Black the victim of media types. add to these that not only is his remarkable vocabulary better than most scribes and that he knows how to use these words in his own writing, and the green monster begins raising its ugly head.

I first met Conrad Black on his august 25th birthday in 1993. The media baron had contacted me for my research help for a speech he was writing for presentation at the Canadian Club.

as I sat trying to keep my teacup from clattering against its saucer, Black was giving his attention to a broken fax machine. Unaware of it, his school age son, clad in pajamas was standing with gaily-wrapped presents behind his back.

When I mentioned that the lad was waiting, Black stopped trying to repair the fax to open the "surprise" birthday gifts, which included what appeared to be a water pistol and a rubber duck.

"Do you really, really like them?" the boy asked his father.

"I particularly like the rubber duck. You have no idea how lonely daddy gets in the bathtub," he answered the beaming youngster.

The little domestic vignette told me that Conrad Black owned a great sense of humour and was a wonderful father. His future kindness to an obscure newspaper owner made him the personal hero of my life.

How dare that Canuck Conrad Black marry the brilliant and beautiful Barbara amiel, acquire influential newspapers, own mansions and attend the same birthday parties as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11?

It’s human nature to envy those who travel so much further than the rest of us.

The Conrad Blacks will always be the enemy of the chattering have-nots.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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