News

Mark Steyn asks whether Fox News is more biased than CBC or BBC

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Story from Maclean’s magazine.

You all remember that I had written about how a Quebec news media billionaire was contemplating the launch of a center-right news network in Canada, modeled off of Fox News? Well, guess what? The government-run CBC and the government-run university leftist professors are not pleased.

Mark Steyn explains:

Meanwhile, back at the CBC, Don Newman explains it for us: “Fox News has been hugely polarizing. It specializes in drive-by attacks and misrepresentations, and is positively Orwellian at times, claiming to be ‘fair and balanced’ while implying that its competitors aren’t.
“The reality is that it mainly spews out propaganda that is dangerously misleading and often factually wrong.”

Again: example? Just one?

Now I’m not a responsible, objective, neutral journalist like Mr. Newman. But even we hyperventilating schoolyard bullies spewing to the converted and debasing all others know enough about passing ourselves off as journalists to be aware that you can’t just declare things to be so without producing some evidence thereof. And yet Messrs. Dornan and Newman spend, between them, 2,000 words doing just that. Surely with so many “drive-by attacks” and so much Orwellian bombast to choose from, it would be the work of moments to produce some devastating sound bite by this or that right-wing blowhard. Otherwise, it risks looking a bit like—how would one put it?—a “positively Orwellian” “drive-by attack” by someone “claiming to be fair and balanced” while insisting his competitors aren’t.

And what about the BBC?

A couple of weeks ago, the BBC’s so-called “Ethical Man” Justin Rowlatt presented an analysis of professor James Lovelock’s assertion that “climate change” is so serious a crisis that it “may be necessary to put democracy on hold.” As a BBC host, Mr. Rowlatt is scrupulous not to have any views of his own; he merely presents those of others—and, as he put it, “there is a growing view that mitigating climate change means we have to change our view of democracy.”

Really? That view is “growing”? Certainly in the BBC green room. Six of the seven experts interviewed by Justin Rowlatt were in favour of suspending democracy—i.e., fascism. But don’t worry: it’s to save the environment, so it’s eco-fascism, which has a nicer ring, doesn’t it? The show concluded with Mayer Hillman of the Policy Studies Institute insisting that “the condition of the planet for future generations is more important than the retention of democratic principles.” The BBC, paid for by the citizenry, has just broadcast a lavishly produced advertorial for totalitarianism.

It’s worth a read. Fox News dominates the cable news ratings race – no other network comes close.

News

Battle escalates over homeschooled child seized by Swedish government

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Story from the HSLDA. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

On June 25, attorneys with the Home School Legal Defense Association and Alliance Defense Fund filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights asking it to hear the case of a 7-year-old boy seized by Swedish authorities because his parents homeschool.

“We are gravely concerned about this case because of the threat it represents to other homeschooling families,” said Mike Donnelly, staff attorney for HSLDA and one of nearly 1,700 attorneys in the ADF alliance. “In response to our inquiries, Swedish authorities have cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to explain and defend their actions. If the U.S. were to ever ratify this treaty, as the White House and some members of Congress desire, then this sort of thing could occur here,” he added.

Swedish authorities forcibly removed Domenic Johansson from his parents, Christer and Annie Johansson, in June 2009 from a plane they had boarded to move to Annie’s home country of India. The officials did not have a warrant nor have they charged the Johanssons with any crime. The officials seized the child because they believe homeschooling is an inappropriate way to raise a child and insist the government should raise Domenic instead. Social services authorities have placed Domenic in foster care as well as a government school and are only allowing Christer and Annie to visit their son for one hour every five weeks.

Let this be a lesson to all you homeschoolers. Either you are going to have an influence on the world or the world is going to have an influence on you. And whatever you do, don’t think that you can be a social conservative without being a fiscal conservative. If you vote for big government because you like universal health care, then you are voting against your own liberty. Big government means small persons.

My advice is to get a college degree and go to grad school. And remember where you came from when you have influence to do something about it.

Commentary

The case against Elena Kagan, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee

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From the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

We know she cut corners in order to preserve partial-birth abortions. Vast majorities of the American public oppose partial-birth abortion, which involves crushing the skull of a partially born baby and which the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan characterized as, for all intents and purposes, open “infanticide.” Yet when serving as a legal adviser to former President Bill Clinton, Ms. Kagan deliberately withheld from the president a finding by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that partial-birth abortion is virtually never “the least risky, let alone the ‘necessary,’ approach.” As accurately summarized by the National Right to Life Committee, the result was this: “Ms. Kagan played a key role in keeping the brutal partial-birth abortion method legal for an additional decade.”

We know she is willing to undercut First Amendment free speech for political purposes. Ms. Kagan argued before the Supreme Court that the law should be read to allow the government to prohibit the publication of political pamphlets. In a nation stirred to its own founding by political pamphlets such as “Common Sense” and “The Federalist Papers,” this is an extremely disturbing position. Ms. Kagan also has written of the benefits of “redistribution of expression,” and has written that speech rights are to be “dol[ed] out” as a “favor” from government rather than being pre-existing rights that government cannot take away. She has argued that government would be justified in “disfavoring [an] idea [to] ‘unskew,’ rather than skew, public discourse.”

Read the whole thing.

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