Heavyweight indeed
In “The Steyn show trial” in the Western Standard, Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere lay bare the dhimmitude of the mainstream media in Canada, when Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine were hauled up in front of the Thought Police for daring to voice their resistance to jihad and Islamization.
By the time the “show trial” against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s began on June 2, 2008 the case had become a cause celebre in the formidable U.S. conservative media network of blogs and talk radio. Four heavyweight pundits–Jonah Goldberg, Robert Spencer, David Harsanyi and Pat Buchanan–rebuked the censors of “Soviet Canuckistan” on the very same day.
But Canada’s liberal mainstream media more or less shrugged. Veteran journalism professor John Miller condemned the “xenophobic” Steyn in an online forum by and for professional reporters, accusing Steyn of failing to express his opinions “in food [sic] faith”, then scolding prissily that “everyone must obey the law.” This lead Parliament Hill reporter Deborah Gyapong to ask the obvious question: “What if the law advocated slavery or chopping off hands?”
With professors like John Miller training journalists, it is no wonder that the state-run, taxpayer-funded CBC got the name of Steyn’s book wrong or that their local reporters admitted that they knew nothing about the trial they”d been sent to cover. Their broadcasting rival outlet, CTV, published a glorified review of America Alone in lieu of an objective news report. (They at least managed to render the book’s title correctly.)
Columnist David Warren bluntly explained: “Among the spookiest aspects of these cases is the silence over, and indifference to them, on the part of journalists whose predecessors imagined themselves vigilant in the cause of freedom. As I”ve learned first-hand through email, many Canadian journalists today take the view that, “˜I don’t like these people, therefore I don’t care what happens to them.” It is a view that, at best, is extremely short-sighted.”
Indeed it is, and it isn’t limited solely to Canada.
Read it all.