Ask yourself this question, without Sun News, would a story like this ever see the light of day?
http://www.canadiantvfirst.ca/saintsuzuki.php
Saint Suzuki’s scandal
January 28, 2013 17:54
Ezra reveals some details about Suzuki's speaking demands at schools, found in an access to information request, that's sure to make some parents concerned.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/29/jonathan-kay-david-suzuki-is-poster-boy-for-why-canada-needs-suns-hater-brand-of-journalism/
National Post - Jonathan Kay - Jan 29, 2013
Jonathan Kay: David Suzuki is poster boy for why Canada needs Sun’s brand of journalism
Unlike Andrew Coyne and Pierre Karl Péladeau, I am no expert on CRTC television policy. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a “must-carry” Class A license, a Class B carry-at-will, and a class X concealed-carry. But I do know a little about what makes for good journalism. And on that basis, I’d hate to see Sun News get taken off the air for want of revenue.
Sun’s enemies accuse the network’s hosts of being a bunch of haters. And it’s hard to deny the charge. Among the people they hate: Occupy protesters, fake hunger strikers and sanctimonious left-wing activists.
And Omar Khadr. Wow, do they hate Omar Khadr.
We know this because Sun News TV segments tend to go light on actual news, and heavy on middle-aged white guys shouting about people they don’t like. Sometimes, they sit around their Toronto studio interviewing each other. It’s a sort of performance art that might well be dubbed — by the surprisingly large number of left-wing Toronto hipsters who watch the channel ironically — as Confirmation-Bias Theatre Of The Absurd.
So, yes, they’re haters. But here’s the weird thing about hate: It often is the genesis of good journalism.
The folks at the Toronto Star who hate Harper, and hate the police state (as they see it), are the ones who broke numerous aspects of the G20 Summit story. Someone who hated Theresa Spence leaked the Attawapiskat audit. Julian Assange hates the U.S. government. When you don’t like someone, and you think they’re hiding something evil or creepy, it tends to motivate one’s truth-finding enterprises.
Which brings us to David Suzuki, another left-wing icon whom Sun News loves to hate. Few in this country would dare say a negative word about Suzuki, who has repeatedly been voted the most-trusted Canadian in Readers Digest magazine-sponsored polls. But Sun, and Ezra Levant in particular, have been going after Suzuki for years, and Suzuki himself admitted that Sun’s focus on his politicized activities was one of the reasons he felt obliged to step down from the board of the David Suzuki Foundation.
This week, Sun scored another win: Through access-to-information requests, the network discovered emails that reveal the odd demands Suzuki made in regard to a 2012 visit to John Abbott College in Montreal — which apparently cost the college more than $40,000, including Suzuki’s own $30,000 fee. In the correspondence, one of the university officials reports to her colleagues as follows:
We have learned, via Dr. Suzuki’s assistant, that although the Dr. does not like to have bodyguards per se, he does not mind having a couple of ladies (females) that would act as body guards in order that he may travel from one venue to another without being accosted too many times along the way. Why females you ask? Well, he is a male. No seriously, I believe it is his way of being discrete and less intimidating.
There is also chatter about how these “ladies” should be dressed, and then this:
In terms of acknowledging their contribution after the tours are completed, we will need to gather [the ladies] together at the end to either give them some brief time with Suzuki (which I will try to make happen, either by having him step out of the penthouse or enabling them to join the group in the sanctified air).
To be clear, this is not Bill-Clinton-in-Arkansas stuff. But it certainly is very much at variance with the usual image of Suzuki as a sort of eternally selfless Elder Spirit and a real-life Lorax.
The story doesn’t surprise me that much. I have had some dealings with the people who surround David Suzuki, and have found their treatment of him somewhat cultish, with each of his pronouncements being treated like pearls of wisdom from a Chinese emperor. When you have so many people drinking your Kool-Aid, it’s only a matter of time before you develop a sense of entitlement to match.
Nevertheless, I’m not sure I would have pursued this story — even if I’d been the one who got the initial tip from John Abbott. Partially, it’s because I just don’t dislike Suzuki enough, let alone hate him. In fact, I probably have drunk a little of the Kool-Aid myself over the years; and so I am handicapped by the vague sense that it would somehow be wrong or impolite to make this great Canadian icon look bad.
Why, some day, if I become famous enough, I might even aspire to share a table with him at some awards banquet or other. Wouldn’t want to say anything that renders such a meeting awkward.
The great virtue of Sun — and yes, it’s a virtue — is that the people who work there don’t seem to be hobbled by such constraints. They’re the ones who tell us that Theresa Spence is still fat, and that modern dance is for ninnies — and they don’t apologize for it, because they know that most people think these things, even if they don’t say them.
Moreover, there’s no tuxedo in the host’s trunk, lest he be invited at the last minute to one of Toronto’s many Distinguished Evenings in Commemoration of Excellence. And so there’s nothing to impede the hate instinct that provides lots and lots of empty blather and nonsense on Sun News broadcasts, but also, every once in awhile, a real story that few other journalists in this country will touch.
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