Holy Crap, Fox News and CNN are Full of Shit

While the Canadian media reacted with shock at the meager size of the anti-Bush protests, estimated by police at about 5000 demonstrators, the US media on both the left and right fired up the spin machine to full throttle, and added some nitrous oxide to the mix.

Both Fox and CNN used narrow-angle shots of the protest in an attempt to portray the demonstrations as much larger than they were.

Fox took the position, the right-wing position if you will, that the demonstration was a perfect example of how ungrateful and a useless friend Canada is, while CNN chose to use it as an example of the Bush-invoked chaos going on north of the border.

I’ve actually criticized the US media before, but this is just ridiculous. I mean, these protests were tiny by any measure. In fact, they were only a fraction of the sizes of the protests at both the APEC and G8 summits. Yet, US media outlets chose to leave the impression of out-of-control civil unrest in Ottawa.

I don’t care if you’re pro-American, anti-American, pro-Bush, anti-Bush, conservative or socialist, to not find the American news coverage in this case completely ridiculous and spin-doctored, then I have to say that you must be off your rocker.

People who read my blog know that I am most certainly a right-winger; some would even call me an “extremist”. But I can tell you, and I’ve expressed this in comments on other blogs: I hate Fox News.

I lived in the United States for four years up until last summer, and I have been well-exposed to this television station. While I appreciate it being allowed into Canada, because I believe in freedom of expression, I find that this channel is an enemy of Canada, whether you are on the left or the right. This is a channel which actually dedicates regular segments to bashing Canada, generalizing Canadians as anti-American and convincing Americans that we are irrelevant and should be ignored.

When Pat Buchanan decides to bring someone on the show to speak for Canada, people like Heather Mallick of the Globe and Mail are high on his list. He deliberately seeks out the most extreme left and anti-American views in Canada in what I believe, is a deliberate attempt to paint all Canadians in a derogatory light.

As a conservative who places value in the US-Canadian relationship, I consider Fox News to be an obstacle for us in Canada. The programmers of Fox News are as bad as people like Heather Mallick, as she is anti-American, they are anti-Canadian.