Centrerion Canadian Politics

CTV is terrible. Surprised?

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Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, is gravely sick, and our beloved CTV is editorializing in most of its coverage.
For that, we can thank Tom Kennedy, the CTV.ca news staff, and of course our nationally funded network's the absurdly low institutional standards (why do we fund such a mediocre group anyways?).
The most blatant example of bias and general weak coverage is this:
"One such [retaliatory] attack occurred in 1953, just across the border in Jordan. Known as the Massacre of Kibya, Sharon led an attack, intended to punish the Palestinians. The attack led the deaths of 69 civilians. Most of them were women and children."
Anyone who reads accounts of what took place would know that Sharon and co. made an effort to empty the houses they were blowing up, and believed them to be empty when they detonated the charges. Naturally, CTV having its anti-Israel slant means that this sort of information doesn't show up on the page. You can read more on Kibya here.
Of course, no historical gloss of Sharon's record by the CTV could miss the opportunity to rag on him for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
More editorializing later in the article:
"Though he refused to back down from Israel's policy of "targeted killings," Sharon took steps towards peace."
The killings referred to are attacks aimed at known terrorists, usually leaders. Now, whether or not one believes that killing murderers is contrary to peace is absolutely irrelevant to a news report. Saying that he took steps towards peace in spite of such and such a policy implies that the policy was contrary to peace, and as such, is an opinion.
Count on CTV to deny Israel it's legitimate right to self-defense. Would any other country not kill terrorists it couldn't catch without risking more of it's own people's lives? Where's CTV when Russia trashes a Chechen village? Where are they when Sudanese government planes bomb innocent villagers in Darfur?

On a related note, I'd like to start the Putziest Prizes. They would be the inverted opposite to the Pulitzer Prizes, which are awarded for excellency in journalism. The Putziest Prizes would be awarded to people in the media (it's an insult to decent journalists and reporters to call them that, so I'll stick to "people in the media") who do a terrible job giving their audiences the news. The slogan would be "They'd like to earn be the Pulitzer, but the fact of the matter is that these people are simply the Puztziest." A putz is frigging moron, in Yiddish. A real schmuck.

posted by lecentre @ 1:47 a.m.