Alberta: Get Rich or Die Trying

Alberta government bans CBC....well sort of

On Thursday, the Alberta government banned CBC from media lockups 'for at least a year'. This means that CBC reporters in Alberta will no longer have access to government documents prior to their public release. News organizations  are given early access in exchange for their promise not release any information until the Public Affairs Bureau (the PCs' information clearinghouse/spin machine) says its OK. Unfortunately, during the recent release of the provincial budget a CBC reporter breached this contract by sharing some  information with a Calgary official, in an effort to get a head start getting budget reactions (prior to the budget announcement). To be clear here, the information was never broadcasted on air or in anyway released to the public at large. While this was an error on the part of the reporter I doubt this isn't the first time a situation like this has occurred.

What strikes me as interesting about this whole ordeal is the harsh and swift reaction of the government. In the past few months (especially) I have noticed that CBC Edmonton's editorial line has become more and more critical of the Alberta government. In particular, reporters Kim Trynacity and John Archer were highly critical of the PCs during their last campaign and seem to have continued this trend.* I appreciate their perspectives and I certainly don't blame them for taking a position (does anyone still cling to the illusion of media neutrality?). In contrasr, the Edmonton Sun is usually painfully conservative and pro-AB government (and as such, I don't read their tabloid....I mean 'newspaper').** But, I wonder if they would have received the same punishment had one of their staffers made a minor breach?

Check out the CBC staff blog, for more deets/commentary.

*take a close look at the two photos in this last article.
**No self-respecting newspaper should frequently feature half-naked women or men on their pages.

UPDATE: Graham Thomson's Saturday column in the Edmonton Journal discusses Stelmach's penchant for vindictiveness and his 'don't mess with the Alberta government' attitude.

Touchy-feely good, sexual assault bad

LV is back after a prolonged absence with a new post, check it out:

Despite efforts by activists, feminists and women-loving people in general, the mainstream media is STILL minimizing and denying the effects and experiences of sexual assault.  And this article from today's Edmonton Journal is no different.  The article, entitled "Appeal rejected for touchy-feely doctor", details the case of an Edmonton physician who groped and assaulted several of his patients during routine examinations.  Here is what happened:

"A 2005 investigation by a college committee heard from one woman who said she felt violated after Litchfield pinched her nipples during a routine physical. Another woman, who went to hospital with a migraine, allowed Litchfield to loosen her bra to check her back for muscle spasms, but then felt him cupping her breasts with his hands and pulling her against his groin, court documents revealed at the time."

While this excerpt clearly demonstrates that the doctor completely violated the trust and body of his patient, the Edmonton Journal headline writers choose to refer to his actions as "touchy-feely".  Obviously, at some point they completely missed the boat. 

According to the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre, "sexual assault" is any form of sexual contact without voluntary consent (Adapted from the Criminal Code of Canada, Sec.270).

• kissing, fondling, sexual intercourse, anal intercourse, and oral sex are all examples of sexual assault if they are done without voluntary consent.
• consent obtained through pressure, coercion, force, or threats of force is not voluntary consent.

And consent is not given if,

• it is given by someone else
• the person is incapable of consenting (i.e. unconscious, drunk, stoned, or sleeping)
• it is an abuse of power, trust, or authority
• the person does not say yes, says no, or through words or behavior implies no
• the person changes her/his mind

Get that Journal editors?  Unwanted groping and fondling by a person who has authority, power and trust  is sexual assault. Period.  This "doctor" is not "touchy-feely", he is perpy. Ask the women, I'm sure they would agree. 

Not only is this a clear case of sexual assault, but it also is a flagrant example of the abuse of medical authority, and our tendency to brush it off.  We need to start asking ourselves why this doctor is called "touchy-feely," when if a pedophile enacted the exact same physical actions on the body of a young girl, the media would be up in arms. The news media holds special privileges and rights in our society, but with those comes the obligation and responsibility to not minimize and treat lightly sexual violence.  Let's hope the Edmonton Journal steps it up.

What Capitol Hill Senators and Congresspeople woke up to yesterday morning

Read about it here and here.

Tim Robbins takes American broadcasters to task

I'm sorry this post is a bit outside of the Albertan-political realm, but I couldn't resist. You see this story is exactly the type of story that blogs are designed for: something the mainstream media refuses to report on. On Monday night, Tim Robbins gave the keynote address to the annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas. His speech, entitled "The Power and Responsibility of our Nation's Broadcasters," provides a scathing critique of the current state of television broadcasting in the US. Some highlights include,

"...Let's face it, we are at an abyss, as an industry and as a country."

"I'm here to tell you that we don't need to look at the car crash. We don't need to live off the pain and humiliation of the unfortunate. We don't need to celebrate our pornographic obsession with celebrity culture. We are better than that."

"Now is time to leave behind from our lesser selves, now is the time to stop making money on the misfortunes of other, and the prurient and salacious desires of the public..."

The speech did not go off without any controversy, and in fact Robbins had been asked by organizers not to give it (for a full rundown of the speech and audience reaction, check out NPR TV Critic David Bianculli's blog post on the subject). Below, I'm providing you with what some random person (and Advertising Age) has labeled the best six minutes of Robbin's speech (not because I agree, but rather because it is the only YouTube clip I could find). However, if you're a fan of biting sarcasm delivered at  Fox-news types (he is seriously no-holds-barred), I highly recommend you read or listen to the entire speech, too.

Monday morning reading

For a Monday morning, there's a surprising amount of interesting Alberta-related news items in today's dailies:

• The Globe and Mail has a really interesting run-down of Imperial Oil's Kearl project , the challenges it faces and the risks it poses to Alberta's environment. The latest news is, that - in light of a federal court ruling, which nulled the decision of a joint federal-Alberta government environmental review panel to approve the Kearl project earlier this month -  the federal fisheries department has also decided to revoke the project's water permit. This means that the land set aside for the project - a strip mine that would cover an area of undisturbed Boreal forest bog the size of 20 000 football fields - cannot begin to be prepped for mining.  The article provides an overview of one of the most controversial oilsands projects in recent memory, so I highly recommend reading it. UPDATE: Imperial Oil plans to appeal the government's decision to revoke their water license.
  

• The Edmonton Journal has an interesting front-page feature on the future of high-speed rail in Alberta. The article highlights potential time-frames and some obstacles to and opportunities for the rail link's construction.  One of the key barriers outlined by the article is securing the land necessary from farmers and rural landowners. As I have argued before, high speed rail provide an important opportunity for Alberta to begin to off-set our embarrassing track-record on greenhouse gas emissions. Stelmach going on the record in support of high-speed rail was one of the few things he's done that I applaud, and his ability to move this project forward could demonstrate that he's able to think beyond the immediate future, something we have yet to see.

• The Calgary Herald has a story revealing that, Stephen Harper (i.e. the man with the climate change plan that puts Alberta's to shame), has continually ignored warnings from the Canadian government's top scientists that Canada faces climate disaster if it continues on its course of blocking international progress on climate change. Sadly, this revelation is so unsurprising, I'm surprised it made the papers at all.

• Finally, this is a bit late, but better late then never. This story provides yet another reason to forget Ralph Klein was premier of this province for 14 years. (Check out his Wikipedia page if you need any others). Klein was awarded the French equivalent of the Order of Canada and these remarks are are the best he could come up with? France shares in some of the embarrassment too. I mean, seriously France, you couldn't think of anyone better to award your highest honor?

Everyone's doing it

Dear beloved readers,

Sadly, the AGRDT blog infrastructure has been having some difficulties of a technical nature over the past couple of days. Mainly, we've been having some 'pinging' problems. For those of you non-bloggers, pinging means our blog is refusing to consistently notify affiliate aggregation sites like Alberta Blogs, Progressive blogs, Technorati of when we have a new post, so it looks like we do not post very regularly on those blogrolls. This is sad for us, because technically inept we may be, but slackers we are not.

Rest assured we are working on rectifying the problem. However, in the meantime we do have one suggestion suggestion for you: subscribe to our blog's feed! We just created a fantastic new Feedburner feed (that works with every platform) and a spiffy new graphic to aid with your subscription process. (For those of you who don't spend the better part of your waking hours on the internet, here's some information about 'feeds' is available here and here). If feeds aren't your style you can also sign up for email updates (in the side bar near the bottom), this is brought to you via Feedburner as well.

Finally, if this all sounds too complex, that's cool - we understand. Just remember to check back regularly as we publish new content almost daily. As always, feel free to email us any feedback you may have.

Sincerely,

The AGRDT Team

Grit Dream Team, or Dion's Nightmare?

I'm not going to lie: I blatantly stole this blog post title from Maisonneuve's MediaScout. However, I think I can more than repay the favor by shamelessly plugging The Scout in this post. A few of you may remember, that a while back the AGRDT team promised  that wherever possible we would highlight good examples of alternative media methods and innovative vehicles.  MediaScout is an excellent example of this. Each day, the team at Maisonneuve Magazine goes through seven of Canada's major dailies and compiles a digest consisting of their front page items and leads. This format allows one to quickly determine what's making news in Canada, and alternately which stories are falling by the wayside. Each digest also includes commentary on the mainstream media's strategies and angles in relation to their coverage of each story and links to the various stories it summarizes. What a handy way to read the morning news, hey?

Anyhow, today's lead story, Grit Dream Team, or Dion's Nightmare?, basically sums up my take on the implications of yesterday's by-election drama (i.e. no one really knows what this means, but it will be nice to have a few more articulate and intellegent MPs in Rae and Hall Finlay kicking around), so I've posted it below.

The only thing I would add is this: here's hoping that we don't see a rash of Liberal in-fighting as a result. As well, way to go, Green Party for their second place finish in Willowdale and their virtual ties with the NDP in the other ridings.

If someone had claimed in 1995, as then-Ontario Premier Bob Rae prepared to leave office, that the New Democrat would re-emerge thirteen years later as a possible future Liberal prime minister, MediaScout would have laughed the notion straight out of town. After all, besides the unlikely political apostasy, Rae’s premiership, widely regarded as a disaster, left the province in financial ruin and his political stock in the basement. It’s a good thing for MediaScout’s reputation, then, that no one had the gall or the foresight to make such a prediction. Rae, who narrowly lost the Liberal leadership race to Stéphane Dion in 2006, easily won a by-election yesterday in the riding of Toronto Centre, which will allow him to join his new party as an MP in Ottawa. Rae’s win and his imminent arrival in the Liberal shadow cabinet—probably in a continuation of his role as foreign affairs critic—are interpreted in two, possibly contradictory, ways in today’s sources: As a boon for the party or as the next step in the man’s ongoing hunt for the keys to 24 Sussex Drive.

Meanwhile, in three other by-elections held yesterday, the Liberals retained two seats (Willowdale in Toronto and Vancouver Quadra) and lost one (Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan). Despite the best efforts of Robert Fife on CTV News to interpret each riding’s results as a bellwether of the Liberal party’s vitality, the significance of the victories in the three Grit stronghold ridings and the narrow defeat in the swing Saskatchewan seat remains murky. What is clear is that with the addition to the House of Rae and former rival leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay, who handily won in Willowdale, the already star-studded Liberal benches will now boast an even more formidable line-up of political powerhouses. This is in contrast to the Conservative government, described by Don Martin in the Post as a one-man show and “a wasteland of rival ambition.” According to the Globe, Dion plans to use the strength of his team as a selling point, declaring, “I am a team player and a team builder and tonight it’s clearer than ever that I have a much better team than Stephen Harper.” However, Dion likely sees that the perceived competence of his right-hand men and women is as much a curse as it is a blessing; the embattled leader’s failure to convert the government’s political mistakes into gains in the polls only reinforces the impression of Rae and his former roommate, deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, as “leaders-in-waiting,” as Don Martin describes them. Though Dion’s team may be better than Harper’s, the Liberal leader might find that they’re a bit too good for his own good.

If the Liberals can manage to hold things together, it looks like we'll be heading into an election sooner than we thought. If on the other hand, if Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff can't learn to get along (both are strongly divided over the question of Liberal election readiness, with Rae on the cautious side and Ignatieff on the full-speed-ahead end of things), we will likely see the maintenance of the current government, a another Stephen Harper minority win, or, even worse -- and I can barely write the words -- a Harper majority. I kind of like being the most progressive country in North America, I've got my fingers crossed for the Dream Team alternative. The Liberals are a long ways from perfect, but they're equally far from my worst nightmare. 

Age of persuasion

Weekends in Alberta politics are usually pretty slow, so if you'll allow me this small digression...

As inspired by Straight Outta Edmonton's latest post, it's shows like this that inspire my love for the CBC. The Age of Persuasion is an half hour program that airs on Radio One every Saturday morning and discusses everything you ever wanted to know about advertising.

For reasons unknown to me, I have this fascination with the ways in which advertisers try to manipulate the public's emotions for the gains of private interests. Although the host of the show (Terry O'Reilly) is an ad-person himself - and therefore probably not as critical of the profession as I would like him to be - he is incredibly forthright. If you're skeptical, check out 23 three things I'd like to change about advertising. His conclusion to that show is great. The Age of Persuasion is apparently working on creating a podcast, but in the meantime you can listen to each episode via streaming audio on the show's site.

On a less positive note, it's men like this, that make me fear for the CBC's future.
 

Stelmach backs off on allegations of job losses, well sort of... UPDATE.

Ed Stelmach has finally revealed where he got his statistic about the 300 000 plus jobs that would be lost if the Alberta Liberal's GHG plan was implemented. This comes via Scott Dippel at the CBC's Reporter's Notebook.

Speaking of Stelmach, it's day 25 of 28 day campaign. He still can't source his claim that a Liberal government's environment plan will kill 345,000 jobs in Alberta... or as we found out at a campaign stop this week, he meant to say Canada.

When asked to name which organization produced this statistic, he tells reporters: "I forget the name of the board." The PC campaign team can't name a website, document or author.

Hmmmm....maybe because you're blatantly lying. You made it up, there's not stats and no report. Obviously this behaviour makes my blood boil. Why must the Alberta's government persist (to the point of fabricating evidence) with such dated, backwards logic that environment=recession, when every one else in the developed world is moving on. It's just embarrassing.

Anyhow, Dippel's post cites more examples of why the Conservatives have had a bad campaign (which, you will discover is the understatement of the year for describing these gems) so I encourage you to go check it out. For now, here's one more particularly pathetic (and oh so depressing) example:

Two members of a Conservative candidate's team in rural Alberta storm into a local newspaper office. The candidate wants the editor's head on a plate. His crime: the paper dared to print a picture of Liberal Leader Kevin Taft on its front page.

The editor agrees to tell this story to CBC News but stops at the last minute. That's because the paper's publisher tells the editor that "if he values his job," he won't speak about the incident.

Sense of entitlement, much?

Wildrose Alliance Party Ads

Since we have already posted PC, NDP and Liberal campaign ads, I thought it was only fair to put up the latest from the WAP. I know, I know, they are a "grassroots" party with little cash and Paul Hinman seems like a nice man, so I shouldn't mock them. But couldn't they have at least tried to make him look less creepy? And why do the ads look like they were made during the height of the 1980s? If you have a minute, go check out the second longer ad on YouTube. That music!

Oh well, here's hoping these ads help split the vote on the right...

Quick Hit: Have your say in the leaders debate

CBC News' Kim Trynacity will be one of the four panel members in next week's televised leaders' debate. Her most recent 'reporter's notebook' blog post is requesting some suggestions for debate questions. So go ahead and let her know what's on your mind.

How long have they been holding on to this jewel?

I can just see the editors of the Edmonton Journal now... it's a dark, smoke-filled room.  The clickety-clack of keys is only interrupted by the odd sigh of a frustrated but morally righteous journalist trying to beat the clock and make the deadline.  Suddenly, an editor's voice rings through the air:  That story is gold! RUN IT!!

And voila, out of the Department of Truth slides: "Duck billed Dinosaur may have trumpeted love songs to mates".  A kitschy cupid-meets-Barney article about a dinosaur that sings love songs. Seriously.

While I anticipated the usual barrage of sentimental made-for-a-country-song pieces about first loves, lost loves, and "being single is alright" moments, I definitely was unprepared for the Journal's willingness to stretch this decidedly un-valentines day story into a made-for-tv moment.  By now it's obvious that the consumerism of Valentines Day spreads farther than the likes of diamonds, chocolate and flowers.  The invocation of the Valentines Day juggernaut can increasingly be seen in many industries in order to sell less romantic commodities (like newspapers).  Am I concerned that Purdy's and deBeers are losing their monopoly on V-Day? No. They deserve to be shaken up.  What I am concerned with is how journalistic integrity and critical analysis is taking a back-seat to feel-good pieces.

Why not challenge this whole notion of Romantic Love?  It's a fairly new invention... the concept of 'marriage' that we know today did not start out as the combining of two soul-mates, but was more accurately the combining of two wealthy families in order to ensure future trade and peace.  Or how about refusing to play along with the attribution of contemporary definitions of emotions and sentimentality onto animals and inanimate objects ?

Obviously, there is a place for feel-good pieces--god knows in this Alberta election period we are gonna need some sort of release-- but let's make sure these pieces don't invoke old story-lines that risk repeating tired cliches that reinforce narrow and antiquated understandings of love and partnership.